ROY
The time came when Roy couldn’t wait any longer. By mid-May, the spring in his step had turned into an out-and-out jump. One day, Ms. B. took him aside and said, “Shall we go look at some rings?”
“I want to,” he said. “I just don’t want it to be too fast for her.”
“Look,” Ms. B. said. She narrowed her little gray eyes. “I’ve known Anne Brumley all her life, and she’s one of the finest young ladies in this city. I’ve known you a little while, but I have a real good feeling about you.” She winked. “It’s not too fast.”
That night he had a sit-down with Rose about the matter. He took her out on the second-floor piazza with two glasses of milk and a plate full of Oreo cookies.
She was onto him immediately. “Why all the treats, Daddy?”
“Well,” he said as they took a seat on the plastic lawn furniture at the edge of the piazza. “We need to talk about something.”
“Okay,” she said. She leaned forward in her chair and grabbed a cookie, which she dunked in the milk.
“Remember that day you got that invitation to the mother-daughter tea party, and you told me that you wanted me to meet someone?”
She nodded. “And you have.”
“Yes, I have.” He rolled his shoulder forward, then patted her knee. “I want to know . . . I guess I want to see how you feel about the idea of me asking Anne to marry me.”
Rose’s eyes grew wide and she nodded her head yes.
He held up his hand to slow her down. “Now, there’s no guarantee that she’s gonna say yes, Rosebud. I can’t know anything for sure. We haven’t known each other that long, so I don’t want you to get your hopes up too high.”
She went from nodding to bouncing in her chair. “Okay, but can’t I be a little excited? I’m not sure if I can help it!”
“Of course you can.” He looked out over the rooftops and then back to her as she rose and fell on the seat of her chair. “So you like the idea of it? You’d like it if she said yes and came and made her home here with us?”
“Daddy.” Rose gave an exasperated sigh. “You know I do. I’ve wanted this a lot longer than you have.”
“Maybe she’s the one.” He felt his throat tighten. He wanted to protect his precious child, but he couldn’t help but share in her excitement.
She crinkled her head. “Who else would there be?”
“All right then.” He rubbed his calloused palms together. “Since I have your blessing, I’m going to do it.”
Rose dunked her cookie in the milk a second time, took a soggy bite, and smiled a chocolate smile. “I knew it would happen,” she said.
The next week, Ms. B. took him down to look at rings at Croghan’s on King Street. They were awfully expensive but beautiful, and he settled on a single solitaire set in platinum that he thought would be just right for her. Ms. B. approved, and late in the afternoon on the last Tuesday in May, he grabbed Anne’s hand after their usual lunch date and said, “Let’s go to the top of the steeple. I heard you can see the Spoleto sculpture on top of the Exchange Building from there.”
“Okay,” she said and she led the way up the several flights of winding stairs to the utmost balcony at the tip-top of the 186-foot steeple. Once they were there, she looked down Broad Street toward the exhibit, and when she turned back around, he was down on his knees holding a little blue velvet box in his hands.
She cupped her freckled cheeks and her face turned bright red, and when she broke into a smile, he opened up the box and said, “Anne Brumley. Every good and perfect gift is from above. And I believe that you are a gift to me. I hope you will say yes and be my beloved partner on this earth for the rest of our days. Will you?”
She took a deep breath and reached down and took his strong, thick hands in hers. She pulled him up and looked him right in his eyes. “There is nothing I would love more.”
“Whoo hoo!” he called. Then he took her in his arms, as her soft, sweet-smelling hair blanketed his face. They stood this way for a long time until he remembered the plan and stomped his foot four times on the balcony. It was the signal he had given to Ms. B., who had coordinated the bell ringers to ring a whole peal if she said yes, and the poor lady had been waiting on a rickety staircase for nearly a half hour before she got the sign.
Then as the rounds began and the steeple swayed the way it did when the bells were calling out to the city, he took the ring out of the box, slipped it on Anne’s delicate finger, and embraced her beneath the beautiful arches as Rose and Mama looked on from the rectory window and clapped.
As he held his future wife in his arms, Roy looked down at the picturesque old city and then out to the harbor, where the sails of the boats twittered like moths on the water as the sun lit up the surface with little chips of light. He chuckled at how reluctant he had been to move to Charleston. God’s plans were always better than ours. And he could feel a sermon forming in his mind about how we might miss the blessing if we don’t acknowledge our shortsightedness, trust in his grace, and make ourselves downright pliable.
As the bells reverberated, filling the air with the sound of God’s glory, Roy knew the Almighty had given him a gift he never thought he could have again. Roy loved the city, he had to admit it now, and the city, to his great surprise, loved him back. He had a new home, a very happy little girl, and a partner he could lean on until the end of their fleeting days of this earthly life.