Now it’s two hours before Katie Rae’s wedding, and Ray’s setting up the snacks for the groomsmen and bridesmaids in their separate rooms. Kitty B. made her famous California tarts, and Ray made some pimento cheese as well as ham, pepper, and onion finger sandwiches for them to munch on. And they brought ginger ale for those who might come down with a queasy stomach.
“Have you heard from Priscilla?” Sis calls on her way toward the organ.
“Not yet,” Ray says. “I’m expecting her to show up any time now.”
Ray can’t believe she hasn’t heard from her daughter. She’s called her cell phone eight times with no response. Priscilla and Donovan were supposed to be on the flight from Baltimore this morning, and when Cousin Willy and Justin went to Charleston to pick them up, they were nowhere to be found. Ray is sure there must be some odd little glitch. Perhaps they overslept or they missed their flight, but you’d think she’d have the decency to call and let them know.
The guests are filing in and to Ray’s surprise everyone seems nice and well-dressed. She knows there are over two hundred of Roscoe’s parishioners who are invited to the wedding, and she half expected them to show up in shackets and stiff baseball caps, but these people are dressed quite well in their suits and ties and Christmas dresses.
Shawna Bennington comes running out of the ladies’ room in her sparkly red sweater dress to embrace Ray. She’s got these red feathers along the neckline that tickle Ray’s chin. “I can’t believe what you all have done to the cathedral!”
Ray gives a tight-lipped smile. “Thank you,” she says. “It just goes to show that flowers and greenery mean everything to a space.”
“Mmm hmm,” Shawna nods and waves to a familiar parishioner. “And I hear y’all gussied up Kitty B.’s house too.”
“You’re going to die when you see it,” Ray says as she pictures the way Kitty B.’s looked this afternoon as she oversaw the setup. “It’s like a whole new place. And with the tent on the river and the Christmas lights around the live oaks, it is truly—”
“Excuse me, dear,” Shawna says. “I see my Aunt Alvina coming. She drove all the way from Arkansas.”
“Hurry up and get a bite to eat, girls,” Ray says to the bridesmaids after glancing at the clock. “We’ve got to get your dresses on in just a moment.” Ray loves to stay with the bridal party so she stations herself in the girls’ dressing room and holds open her tackle box of wedding essentials.
The girls are still in their street clothes, but their faces and hair are all fixed up. Kitty B. treated them all to an afternoon with Sylvia and Trudi Prescott, who sculpted beautiful French twists with fine little curled wisps for everyone with long enough hair.
Katie Rae smiles and laughs on the edge of the gathering. She’s managed to keep off most of the weight from her Special K diet, and she’s going to be a more beautiful bride than Ray ever imagined. Sylvia fixed her hair down, but she’s taken two strands from the front and tied them back with a pearl clasp so that it looks very free and natural. Quite a good choice for her. Oh, what will Ray do about Priscilla’s dreadlocks? Surely, she can talk her daughter into cutting them off before her big day.
Ray watches as Katie Rae leans into Froot Loop’s cage and pats his head. She doesn’t know why in the world Katie Rae insisted that the parrot attend the ceremony, but she’s always been a bit off when it comes to animals. Anyhow, Marshall arranged it so that two groomsmen will bring Froot Loop’s cage out just before the ceremony, and they will set it in the far corner of the stage so he can have a good view. Thank goodness Marshall didn’t ask to bring any reptiles!
Now Ray zips up dress after glorious bridesmaid dress. She guided Katie Rae on the selection, and she was thrilled when she chose the lovely green velvet gown in the window of Berlin’s. They are sleeveless with a regal square neckline and floor-length A-line skirt. Also, they have a satin stole that the bridesmaids are to wear around their necks. The stole settles along their shoulder blades and highlights the velvet-covered buttons on the back of the dress. They are remarkably elegant, and Ray has already ordered next season’s styles for Priscilla to choose from.
Kitty B. looks beautiful. She’s in a gold silk jacket she bought in the boutique section at Steinmart and a black velvet skirt that sweeps the floor. She’s wearing her mama’s triple strand of pearls and her long white kid gloves, and she’s lost at least ten pounds in the last two weeks so that she looks more like Roberta than ever.
Sis pops in to check on everyone. She sports her standard winter concert dress: a sleeveless black velvet top and a red raw silk skirt. She reminds Ray of a china doll or Snow White with her dark hair, ivory skin, and bright red lipstick. How in world has a man not swooped her up by now? That’s one of life’s greatest mysteries.
“Come on,” Ray says, pulling Katie Rae’s arm gently away from Froot Loop’s cage. “Let’s get the bride dressed.”
“Okay,” she says sheepishly, and the other girls giggle as they check one another’s dresses. Vangie’s seamstress did a fair job with Kitty B.’s old dress, but it doesn’t have Hilda’s touch. Hilda could have cut out the puffy sleeves and created a strapless top trimmed with the beading from the old sleeves, but this gal just sewed some new silk trim across the top, and it doesn’t quite match the color of the aged dress. Ray hopes to heaven that Hilda will come out before Priscilla’s wedding.
Just as she snaps the final button on Katie Rae’s dress, the bride turns to Ray, plunks down on the vanity stool, and starts to weep. Kitty B. and Cricket run over and Ray scurries to find a handkerchief in the bridal emergency kit, which she quickly hands to Katie Rae and says, “Heavens, don’t let your makeup run!”
“And don’t let your mascara get on the dress, darlin’,” Kitty B. adds.
Katie Rae wipes her eyes with a handkerchief then turns to look at her reflection. “I just don’t know if I can go through with this.” She looks up at Kitty B.’s reflection in the vanity mirror. Ray glances at Kitty B. and then back to Katie Ray. It’s thirty minutes before the ceremony, Ray thinks. She can’t be doing this.
“Sweetheart, what do you mean?” Kitty B. asks. “Is there something wrong?”
“I’m just scared.” Katie Rae spins her engagement ring round and round her finger as her large chest rises and falls dramatically as if she is starting to hyperventilate. For a minute Ray’s afraid her bosoms are going to flop right over the top of the beaded trim, but Katie Rae pulls up her top and says, “I mean this is the rest of my life, Mama. And I haven’t known Marshall all that long.”
Just then Ray’s cell phone rings and though she hesitates to answer it, she can’t help herself once she sees Priscilla’s cell number lighting up the small screen.
“Excuse me just one moment,” Ray says to the gals as she takes a few steps back into the bathroom. She knows she should help get Katie Rae settled down, but she just has to find out about the proposal.
“Mama, you’re going to die,” Priscilla says from the other end of the phone. Though the connection isn’t perfect Ray can tell that she’s either giddy or drunk.
“What?” Ray says. “Tell me, darling! I’ve been waiting for this call all day.”
“Vegas, baby,” a hoarse male voice hollers into the phone. It sounds vaguely familiar, but Ray can’t quite place it.
“Who is that?” she asks. “Did Donovan propose? I helped him with the ring. We picked it out at Croghan’s. Don’t you love it?”
“That’s J.K., Mama.”
“J.K.?” Ray says as her gut begins to churn. “As in Knucklehead J.K.?”
“Yes,” she says, giggling. “Stop that,” she says to him in a hushed tone. “Mama, we’re in Las Vegas.”
“Las Vegas? What in the world are you doing there? And with J.K.?”
Kitty B. and Sis peer into the open door of the bathroom. Then they start eyeing each other over Ray, and their faces begin to redden with what they’re guessing is a kind of panic or fear. Katie Rae still weeps at the vanity, but they’ve dropped her arm and they’re leaning in to listen to Ray’s conversation. Ray moves toward a lavender stall and rests her head against its plastic door. There is a laminated poster right at her eye level that reads, “CREATOR,” and it has a picture of this grand waterfall spewing over a lush valley.
“What are you saying, Priscilla?” Ray says.
“J.K. and I just tied the knot, Mama!” she says. “When Donovan proposed yesterday, I just couldn’t say yes. Something just wouldn’t let me do it, you know? It was just too perfect or something. And then I called J.K. and by last night we were on our way to Vegas. We got married in this cheesy little white chapel that was actually in the center of a casino! Isn’t that a riot?”
This is a joke, Ray thinks. Some kind of awful, ugly prank.
Then Priscilla continues, “This is right for me, Mama. I know it’s not the way you would have planned things, but Donovan’s proposal made me realize how much I love J.K. It made it crystal clear in my mind, and we wanted to make it official as quickly as we could. We wanted to be whimsical, too, you know?”
Now bile rises in Ray’s throat. She scratches her thigh, which causes a three-pronged run in her new Talbots extra-sheer black hose. This cannot be happening. Her heart beats at a rapid pace. She might faint, she thinks. She might collapse. She might die right here before Katie Rae makes it down the aisle. It’ll be the second ambulance the purple cathedral will have seen in a twenty-four hour time span.
“We can throw a big party in Jasper whenever you want, Mama,” Priscilla says.
“Yeah!” says J.K. “Absolutely, doll!”
“Mama?” says Priscilla. “You can pull out all of the stops like you’ve always wanted to. It will be great! Mama?”
Ray is speechless. She’s still half expecting Donovan to come on the line and say it’s all a joke, but she knows deep down it’s not.
“Hey there, Mrs. Montgomery,” a raspy voice hollers into the phone. “Yesterday was the greatest day of my life,” he says. “I love your daughter so much. I thought I had lost her for good.”
Before he utters another word, Ray snaps her cell phone closed, bangs it against the wall several times then throws it in the purple plastic trash can in the church bathroom. Sis and Kitty B. rush in and move cautiously around her as though she’s a pig trapped in a flower bed and they want to minimize her destruction.
“Poop 2,” Ray says as they take a step closer and try to read her eyes. She can’t stop the tears of fury from brimming over. “Priscilla flew to Las Vegas last night and married Poop 2.”
Sis and Kitty B. shake their heads and move in to pat her back. “Oh Ray,” Kitty B. says. “I’m so sorry.”
Then Cricket comes in and says. “Mama, it’s ten minutes until the ceremony, and Katie Rae is still upset and refusing to put her veil on.
Well, I’ve had about enough of Katie Rae’s nonsense. Ray walks fast and furious out of the bathroom and grabs the bride firmly by the shoulders. “Hush up, Katie Rae, and get your fanny ready to go down that aisle. That is a good and devoted man out there who wants to pledge his love to you, and you will be lucky to have him, do you hear me? It’s time to buck up now.”
That seems to be just what Katie Rae needs to hear. She wipes her nose and hands Cricket the veil and as soon as it is fixed, she stands up and grabs LeMar’s arm and heads straight down the aisle.
Ray never makes it into the sanctuary. She sits for a moment in the reception area and grits her teeth as she watches Katie Rae descend the aisle from the television monitor above the receptionist’s desk. She thinks of all of the time she’s put in at the church, and she doesn’t know why God allowed this to happen.
How could You? Ray says to her Maker as she stares at the acrylic cross at the center of the altar on the colored screen. How in the world could You, after all I’ve worked for? It’s unfair. It’s painfully unfair.
And though Ray wants to spit and cry and catch the next flight to Las Vegas to wring Priscilla’s rebellious little neck, she doesn’t. Tonight is not the night. And she couldn’t shirk her Wedding Guild duties any more than she could let a piece of floral tape show in an arrangement.
She simply walks to her car, slips off her heels, and puts on her tennis shoes. Then she drives back down Highway 17 in the cool, clear December night so that she can make her way over to Cottage Hill Island. It’s time to put the final touches on Katie Rae’s reception. And as usual, she’s the one to do it.