But back to the wedding. I know for a fact that everybody in Mooreville and half of Tupelo were there. I’ve seen the guest book.
You might think a wedding done on the fly would be small, family only. But you don’t know the Valentines. They’re Mooreville’s answer to royalty. What with Charlie’s Eternal Rest Funeral Home over in Tupelo, Lovie’s Luscious Eats (a catering service known all over Mississippi and the one always requested for the best wedding and funeral receptions), Ruby Nell’s popular Everlasting Monuments, and Callie’s beauty shop where she not only keeps Mooreville’s glitterati beautiful but also fixes up the dearly departed at Eternal Rest, the Valentines know everybody in Lee County and the surrounding area. Leaving somebody off the guest list would be bad manners, not to mention bad business.
Callie and Jack didn’t send out invitations. They put an announcement in the paper inviting anybody who wanted to come. For good measure, Fayrene put a flyer in the window at Gas, Grits and Guts.
The way Fayrene tells it, she was the main reason everybody who was anybody attended the wedding.
o0o
Fayrene
I was the first one to point out the business advantage of posting flyers.
Ruby Nell and I were sitting on my sexual sofa having a cup of tea with just a touch of something stronger. After a hard day dispensing hostility at Gas, Grits and Guts, that little something extra was just what I needed.
“We ought to put wedding flyers in our places of business, Ruby Nell.”
“Flitter, Fayrene. They’ll read it in the paper.”
“Some of my customers don’t even get the paper. And they’ll have their feelings hurt if they don’t get invited to the society wedding of the year.”
“Put that way, it makes good business sense. But I think Callie will balk at the idea of putting a wedding invitation in a place that sells tombstones.”
“You’ve got a point. But what’s to stop me from putting one at Gas, Grits and Guts?”
When Ruby Nell clicked her cup against mine, I knew I’d won my point. We agreed not to tell Callie and just let her find out all by herself. Which is nothing new for us. If we told that girl everything we do, she’d have a Cadillac arrest.
Anyhow, I designed these cute little flyers with red hearts and white love birds, then used a whole box of silver glitter spiffying them up so they’d stand out from the display of pickled pigs lips. That’s our specialty and it’s my bright idea to highlight the fact with a fateful display in the window.
The first person to notice the wedding flyer was Mayor Earl Getty. He’s a common sewer of my pickled pigs lips, and drives all the way from Tupelo for his weekly supply. Of course, he always fills up with gas, too, which accounts for his great popularity around here.
“Did you see the wedding flyers, Mayor?”
“I did. Callie is a great favorite with Junie Mae.” That’s the mayor’s wife, who won’t let anybody but Callie do her color. “She’ll be there will bells on.”
“Well, Callie will never get over it if you don’t come, too.”
I could tell he was fixing to come up with some excuse. But Mayor Getty is known for caving in when you put him in the hot seat, and if that’s what it took to get him to celibate Callie’s nuptials, than I wasn’t above supplying the fire.
It didn’t take him half a second to say, “Of course. I’ll be there.”
See. That’s what I’m talking about.
The next bigwig to cave in to my special brand of hostility was Sheriff Trice. He’s a big favorite among the topless, and I knew Callie’s wedding would not be complete without him.
With the help of my glitter wedding poster, I lit more than a few fires under the seats of my customers. I’m the main reason that wedding chapel was packed with Tupelo’s glum and beautiful.
o0o
If anybody qualifies as one of Tupelo’s glam and beautiful, it’s yours truly. I wish I could have been at the wedding. Of course, that was before my time. I didn’t come into the picture until I entered the Valentine-Jones household as the best gift Callie ever got. Just ask her.
Anyhow, all was not going as smoothly on the wedding front as Fayrene’s story would indicate. Over in Tupelo, Lovie was having some trouble.
o0o
Lovie
I’d give away my recipe for Prohibition Punch before I’d let Callie know it, but for a while there, it looked like my cousin would have to have a wedding without a reception.
It started with the cheese. I could have sworn that I bought twenty pounds of goat cheese, but when I got ready to start making the watermelon/goat cheese crumble salad, every bit of the cheese was missing.
Normally, I’m more organized than a five-star general laying plans to quell an uprising, but this was not just any old wedding. I wanted everything to be perfect for Cal, who is my best friend forever, so I guess I was a little rattled. For all I knew I could have left the goat cheese sitting on the counter at the grocery store.
After I’d torn my kitchen apart searching, I said a few words that would have made Callie faint; then I ponied up for some more without telling her a thing. But you can bet your wedding garters I wrote down which refrigerator shelf I put it on, just in case.
With the goat cheese safe, I set in to getting just the right shade of pink for the cake icing. This a pure art. Counting all those little drops of red food coloring, knowing just how much powered sugar and butter to mix to ice the cake and all the petit fours.
I was in the midst of counting red drops when the next door neighbor’s dog set up a commotion. Glancing out my window, I saw a figure rise up out of the hydrangeas under my kitchen window and race across my back yard. I grabbed the nearest weapon handy, which just so happened to be my filleting knife. Armed and dangerous, I streaked out the back door.
“Stop right there!”
The culprit hung onto his baseball hat and ducked behind my tea olive, which I’ve let grow so big it looks like it belongs in a jungle. All I could see was a glimpse of blue jeans and sneakers as he scrambled over the back fence. For good measure, I yelled, “If you come back I’m calling the cops.”
I probably wouldn’t, though. The neighborhood kids love to play pranks, sneaking into back yards and dumping the garbage or winding toilet paper around the trees. They’re more nuisance than threat. Though something about that particular prankster gave me shivers.
For one thing, he was the biggest kid I’d ever seen. Or maybe the intruder was a girl. Under that cap, who could tell?
Anyhow, I thought nothing more of it until that evening when I went onto my front porch. I like to sit out there with a glass of lemonade and watch the stars. That night, though, it wasn’t stars that captured my attention: it was the package on my doorstep.
The note on top of the box read: “Something blue.” And inside was a pound of goat cheese, covered in blue mold.
Looking back, maybe I should have told Daddy, at the very least. But I just said a word that would have made Callie blush and then chalked it up to another prank.
Besides, I had more pressing matters on my mind. While I was dumping the molded goat cheese into the garbage, Callie called with a case of cold feet.
The first words out of her mouth were, “I can’t marry Jack.”
I’ve had more boyfriends than Elvis had hit records, and more than my share of proposals. Not a single one even got me within spitting distance of the altar, so you could safely say I’m not the best person to consult about true love. You might even say I’m not the marrying kind.
A part of me wanted to shout Hallelujah when Callie said she was backing out of the wedding. Though I was crazy about Jack and could see how much he loved Callie, I couldn’t imagine him fitting into our friendship without causing problems. I was scared of losing Callie. Selfish of me, I know, but I never claimed to be a saint.
Still, I wasn’t about to stoop low enough to ruin Callie’s future for my own advantage.
“Do you love him, Cal?”
“Yes. He’s amazing in every way.”
More than one of my ex-boyfriends was amazing, but not in the dreamy-voiced way Callie was talking about. If you want to know the truth, I got a little teary-eyed when she said that.
“Trust me. You just have pre-wedding jitters. Marry him, Callie.”“
“What’s he going to do when I announce on our honeymoon that I want to start trying to have a baby?”
I said a word that would frizzle hair. “You don’t have to announce that on your honeymoon! For Pete sake, give the man six weeks to adjust to matrimony before you scare the shit out him.”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about. I ought to tell him before the wedding so he has a chance to back out.”
Now, I’d gone and done it. My cousin was going to back out of the wedding, Aunt Ruby Nell would never speak to me again, Callie would never forgive me for losing Jack, and I’d have to find somebody else to do my hair. Since Fayrene was neck deep in the nuptials, I’d even have to find somewhere else to buy my gas.
“Are you at home, Cal?”
“Yes.”
“I’m coming right over. We’ll straighten this out. Don’t you dare do a thing till I get there. Promise?”
“Okay.”
I grabbed a boxed set of “I Love Lucy” reruns, a six pack of Hersheys, and a bag of popcorn in case Callie was out. Then I lit out for Mooreville as if Brad Pitt were hot on my tail and I was searching for the nearest bedroom.
Here’s my motto: The best way to get through a crisis is with buttered popcorn, a few belly laughs and lots of chocolate.
We ended up sitting in the middle of Callie’s bed, talking and laughing till two in the morning. When I was finally convinced I’d talked Callie into the notion that telling everything she knows does nothing but spoil the fun, I put on one of my plus-sized nightshirts I keep in her closet because most of our gab sessions end as spend-the-night parties. This one was pink with red lettering across the front: Red Hot Diva.
Then I settled on top of the popcorn hulls to sleep with a clear conscience.
o0o
Lovie enjoys telling that story. She thinks she saved the day, but it was actually Charlie Valentine who did that. Or maybe it was Jack.
Listen, I’m a dog in the know.
Still, although I’m closer to my human dad than anybody else - except my human mom, of course – Jack doesn’t even tell yours truly everything he knows.
But I’ve heard enough to know that he’s nobody’s slouch when it comes to courting his true love on the front porch swing. Add moonlight, a little of Jack’s harmonica and a whole lot of his charm, and you get the picture.
Whether he was tipped off by Lovie, or whether his own private radar picked up Callie’s cold feet, he stepped up his game. It would be safe to say my human dad made my human mom see stars, and not just the ones in the sky.