Badly Done, Emma Lee

According to Men’s Health, you are 227 percent more likely to meet a potential girlfriend through a friend than in a bar, at the gym, or on the street. Just another reason for being social, y’all!

“Someone wise told me to start this toast off by telling the meet-cute story.” I smile at Lexi and Cash, standing beside their three-tiered engagement cake. “For those of you who don’t know, meet-cute is a screenwriting term used to describe a situation that brings two characters together in an entertaining, unusual, and perhaps even cosmically destined way. So, here goes . . .” I pause for dramatic effect. “The first time I saw Lexi, she was holding a big old hypodermic needle.”

The guests laugh.

“What?” I scrunch up my nose and look around the courtyard as if confused. “Were y’all expecting a different meet-cute story?”

“I think they meant our meet-cute,” Cash says.

I wave my hand dismissively, and the guests laugh again.

“We were freshman at Clemson. Lexi was volunteering at the blood drive and I was a donor. She jabbed that big old needle in my arm, and I swear my ears started buzzing, my vision narrowed. I passed out like a preteen at a Taylor Swift concert, y’all. I woke up flat on my back with Lexi arranging my hair and brushing bronzer on my cheeks. I knew then, we were destined to be best friends and soul sisters. I mean, any girl sweet enough to remember to brush bronzer on your face after you’ve passed out is a keeper, right?”

Laughter ripples around the courtyard.

“That’s always been my mantra,” Truman cries.

The guests laugh even louder. I smile real big and wait for them to fall silent.

“My daddy used to say”—tears fill my eyes, but I blink them away—“ ‘Emma, darling, beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes down clean to the bone.’ Now that I have reached the wise old age of twenty-four, I disagree with my daddy. Beauty goes clean to the bone, too. I know this because Lexi’s bones are about the most beautiful bones a person could have.” I reach for my champagne glass, hold it out toward Lexi and Cash, and wait for the guests to raise their glasses. “Sadly, not everyone will find and marry a beautiful person, but you, Cash Aiken, you have found a truly beautiful person, clear down to her bones. I know you will share a long, happy life—just as I knew you would make the perfect couple. So, to Lexi and Cash.”

To Lexi and Cash.

Cheers!

The quartet begins playing “Marry You” by Bruno Mars, and the guests rush to hug the happy couple. I drain my champagne glass and join my friends, who are congregating around the makeshift bar.

“That was a fab toast, Ems,” Maddie says.

“Did you tell the quartet to play this song?” Kristen asks.

I grin. “Marry You” is one of Lexi’s favorite songs.

I was tempted to have them play “Tale As Old As Time,” the theme song from Beauty and the Beast. Lexi loves that movie. She knows the entire film by heart and even sings the “Bonjour” song in all the different voices. After Cash’s comment about her dress, I am glad I went with Bruno instead.

“You did all right, girl,” Truman says.

“Thanks a mil, Truman.”

“Hear, hear,” Tavish says, raising his nearly empty champagne glass. “In fact, I think Emma Lee’s toast deserves a toast of its own.”

I roll my eyes.

“To Emma Lee Maxwell, may your journey to England to be a sheep farmer’s mail-order bride go off as seamlessly as this evening,” he says, winking at me. “Cheers!”

“Cheers to Emma Lee,” Kristen cries.

Someone gasps, and I turn to find Miss Ida Mae Rawlins staring at me with her mouth agape. Her lipstick has bled into the fine wrinkles around her mouth like tiny tributaries off a giant coral-hued lake. Miss Ida Mae was sweet on my daddy way back before he married my momma, but Daddy wasn’t sweet on her. The matriarch of the Aiken clan, Miss Virginia, is standing beside Miss Ida Mae.

“Emma Lee Maxwell, is this true?” Miss Virginia asks. “I knew things were difficult since your daddy—”

“—God rest his soul,” Miss Ida Mae interjects.

“Amen,” Miss Virginia says, hastily making the sign of the cross. “I heard things were difficult on account of your daddy owing all that money to the IRS, but I had no idea it was this dire.”

I shoot Tavish the stink-eye. He gives me one of those highly infuriating Barton boy shit-eating grins and finishes his champagne in a single swallow.

Miss Virginia is president of the God Love Her Club. She’s one of those Southern women who believe adding bless her heart or God love her to negative remarks will make them sound more genteel and compassionate. She couldn’t bake a decent peach cobbler if Paula Deen showed her the way, bless her heart. She can gossip like all get-out. So, I widen my eyes and play dumb.

“Is what true, Miss Virginia?”

Miss Virginia and Miss Ida Mae exchange looks, and I can almost hear the silent conversation taking place between them.

Go on, ask her.

If I ask her, she will know we were eavesdropping.

We were eavesdropping. Don’t be a ninny; ask her.

“We couldn’t help overhearing the toast,” Miss Ida Mae says, her powdery parchment face staining with color. “Are you moving to England? Truly?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Miss Ida Mae gasps.

“Emma Lee Maxwell,” Miss Virginia says. “You are not selling yourself in matrimony to a . . . a . . .”

“Sheep farmer?” Savannah offers.

The two old misses nod their heads.

“She sure is!” Savannah says. “A widowed sheep farmer in Sheffield paid ten thousand dollars and two bags of wool for Emma Lee.”

“Ten thousand dollars?” Miss Virginia gasps.

“That’s right,” Savannah says. “He set up a GoFundMe and his seven kids went door to door selling their homemade sheep milk cheese to raise the bride price.”

“He wanted her . . . baaad.”

Maddie bleats the word bad, and the Barton boys burst out laughing. Kristen and Savannah join in, hooting like a pair of owls.

You know the lemon juice concentrate that comes in the plastic lemon-shaped container you get in the produce department? ReaLemon? Well, Miss Virginia looks like someone spiked her champagne with a whole mess of the stuff. My daddy used to make lemonade using ReaLemon, sugar, and water that was so tart, one sip made your lips all puckery.

Miss Virginia clutches Miss Ida Mae’s elbow and leads her away, muttering something about those Barton boys and their friends “from off.”

From off is local lingo used to describe people who are not from Charleston, specifically the Charleston Peninsula, where the folks with ancient names and old fortunes reside. Miss Virginia lives in the Aiken-Winter House, a three-story Federal on the Battery, which is the oldest and most exclusive area on the peninsula.

I should be angry at my friends for tweaking the nose of the doyenne, the grandest dame, of Charleston society, but I reckon giving hoity-toity Miss Virginia Aiken a hard time was their way of showing their loyalty.

“Ignore that old crab,” Maddie says, grabbing my hand and lacing her fingers with mine. “Don’t let her steal your light, sunshine.”

Maddie is the most sensitive of my Kappa Kappa Gamma sisters. Growing up the way she did, shunned by her half siblings, she gets my struggle. She knows how difficult it has been since Daddy passed and the news of his precarious financial situation was made public. One day, I was helping organize the Spring Cotillion and planning what I would wear to the Victory Cup; the next, I was standing on the lawn at Black Ash, watching my daddy’s belongings auctioned off like junk at a flea market. People I thought were my friends stopped inviting me to their charitable and social events.

That sort of humiliation either scars or shapes a body.