“The ceremony was only about twenty minutes. And then everyone ate. On another part of the cliff, away from the ceremony, they’d set up a long table, covered in white tablecloths, white candles, white china. Jed’s dad oversaw all the cooking. He did it almost all himself; he must have spent weeks preparing. He had both our favorite foods. Jed loves Mexican food, so there were chimichangas and chile rellenos. I love cheeseburgers. He made gourmet buffalo burgers and turkey burgers. I don’t even remember all the side dishes he made; it was too overwhelming to take it all in. The only thing Jed’s dad didn’t make was the wedding cake. We got it from a little bakery his mom recommended. It was fairly simple. Five white square layers, stacked off center, of course. The only thing we had on it was a cascade of white flowers.
“After we ate, we opened our gifts. That was my idea. I guess out there people open their presents when they get back from the honeymoon. I like it how we do it here, though. I always enjoyed getting to see the bride and groom’s expression as they opened the gifts, and it was fun to see what everyone else would get them, both the reallygreat stuff and the really horrible stuff too. I wanted to have that experience myself. Jed’s parents had contacted everyone and told them to wrap the presents in white wrapping paper and ribbon. By that time, it was dark outside, so we went into their living room to open them. When we were done, it looked like it had snowed inside, various white patterns of paper shredded all over the place.
“After that, we left for our honeymoon. I know it sounds cliché, but we went to Hawaii. Neither of us had ever been there. It couldn’t have been better. We were there three weeks. His folks paid, of course. You wouldn’t believe how nice they are to me. I wish we would get to see them more. They would love you, Maudra. I hope you get to meet them one day.” All of a sudden I realized Maudra had quit playing the piano. I wasn’t sure how long she had been silent. I opened my eyes. Maudra had turned sideways on the piano bench and was watching me intensely, tears pouring down her face. “Maudra, what is it?”
It took her a bit to get herself together where she could speak. When she did, her voice was scratchy. “I’m so sorry, Brooke. I wasn’t ’spectin’ to have that reaction. I didn’t ’spect it to be so beautiful. I jist wanted to help ya to ’member your weddin’. I know you and Jed’re goin’ through a rough patch at the moment, and I figured you thinkin’ about good times might help. Then, I started thinkin’ ’bout Ray, and I jist broke down. It’s more’n I can handle sometimes.” She blew her nose on a lace-edged handkerchief. She picked up the picture of herself and the pretty man off the piano and caressed his face with her finger.
I reached out to touch her, but she waved me away.
“Oh, I’ll be fine. Jist actin’ like an old woman. I’m right ashamed of myself.” She blew her nose again. “You don’t remember Ray that much, do ya?”
I shook my head apologetically.
“I’m not surprised. Every mother here in town warned their boys ta stay away from him.” It was true enough. I remember very clearly being terrified of Ray. “The last five or six years of his life, he hardly ever left the house. ’Course, ever’body said he was dyin’ of AIDS. ’Course, they didn’t say the name. They jist called it that ‘gay disease.’ He didn’t have AIDS. He had prostate cancer, and fer him it was a long and painful death. A lonely one too, no thanks to anyone else. I jist wish he coulda had even a taste of what you have.
“He only went away fer one year of college. He was gonna be a teacher, like yer Jed. Momma got sick, and he moved back home ta help me care fer her. After she died, he never went back. I guess both of us were a little ’fraid to be out in the world. Neither of us fittin’ in.
“He didn’t even tell me he was gay until after Momma died. ’Course, I already knew. The whole town knew, ever since we was kids. He couldn’t pull off actin’ straight. He was always too flighty, too excitable. He told me he’d had a boyfriend that one year in college, some guy named Richard. They broke up when Ray came back to help me with Momma. I don’t think he ever got over ’im.
“I thought people were mean to him when we were kids. Weren’t nothin’ compared to how they treated him when we were growed up. Even when we went to church. The preacher, the one we had before you were born, would preach about him from the pulpit, sayin’ he was possessed, that he was a demon. People would say horrible things to him. Tell him how he was goin’ to Hell. How he deservedHell. How he was a child molester, how he was disgustin’.” She looked at me, fierce anger in her eyes. She was almost yelling. “He wasn’t a damned child molester! He woulda never hurt anybody!” Tears were flowing even more freely now. She took several deep breaths and continued in a whisper. “He always wanted to be a father. That was the only other thing he would ever cry about. He wanted a husband, ’course he called it a partner in those days, ’n’ he wanted a child.
“There wasn’t a week went by that we didn’t get some kinda threat, a phone call, a letter, a note left on our door, rocks thrown through our car windows. Was always somethin’.
“Truth be told, he did better ’n me with all of it. He hardly ever complained, and it was a rare moment when I would catch him a-cryin’. Fact, the only time he really broke down was a few years after Momma died.
“I’d been dating a man, Charles. Oh, Brooke, he was handsome. Kinda looked like that young Tom Selleck actor. He had jist moved to town as a consultant to the shirt factory. Well, I worked there at the time, and he and I hit it off. We was dating several weeks when somebody told him ’bout Ray. Well, I didn’t know he knew anything ’bout Ray yet. I hadn’t figgered out how ta tell ’im. I was gonna, but I needed time ta figger it out. I shoulda known I wouldn’t be able ta keep it a secret fer long.
“Well, he showed up on my doorstep one evenin’. I stepped outside, hopin’ that he would jist take me ta dinner or somethin’. He asked ta come in. What was I ’posed to say? Ray was in the kitchen when Charles walked in. Ray was surprised. I had told ’im ’bout Charles, ’course, but we had agreed we should give it more time ’fore we made interductions. Ray tried to be nice, a’course. He even triedto lower his voice, poor dear. But as soon as Ray said hello, Charles turned ta me. I’d never seen such a look. I thought he was gonna hit me. He jist looked me up ’n’ down and glared at me. ‘Woman,’ he said, ‘yer disgusting!’ He turned back ta Ray and spit in his face. ’Fore I could even think what ta do, he was already out the door. I never went back to the shirt factory. Didn’t even call ta quit. I was sure they would all hear the story anyhow. Hell, the whole town heard the story.
“That night, when I went ta kiss Ray good night, I found him in his bed, a couple a empty aspirin bottles ’side ’im. I called the hospital, but as soon as they heard it was fer Ray, they refused to send an ambulance. Said he would get the other patients sick. Took me nearly ten minutes to drag ’im to the car. Took me another fifteen to convince someone ta look at him once I got ta the hospital. It was Chuck’s big sister, she was a nurse ya know, who finally got the doctor ta help him.”
By this time, I was beside Maudra on the piano bench, my arm wrapped tightly around her shoulder. When she finally managed to stop crying, she placed her hand on my knee and squeezed it tightly. “Brooke, I am so proud of ya. Proud of ya fer getting away, being brave enough to find that husband a yers. Proud of ya fer being strong enough to come back and face whatever you gotta face here. And I’m so happy the world has changed so much that you don’t have ta face what Ray did. I can’t help but think Ray’s up there watchin’ down on ya, so happy. Jist so happy.”
It was another half hour before I actually got up to the bedroom. The first thing I did was get the phone out of the drawer and call Jed. He answered on the first ring, as if he hadbeen waiting for my call.
By the time I hung up the phone, I felt both relieved and silly. It seemed Donnie was right. I was being overly dramatic. Jed assured me he wasn’t even tempted to leave me or not come to Missouri. He said he hadn’t called because he knew how upset I was, and he knew I needed time to figure everything out in my own head. I imagine he wanted to make me miss him more as well, but I couldn’t get him to admit to that aspect. He did apologize, saying he wasn’t trying to belittle what I was feeling and going through in being back home. I apologized for suggesting he was wanting out of the marriage. After all the tears of the day, I fell into an exhausted sleep. I dreamed about nothing, which is just how I like it.
Sixteen
Therewas a statue made out of bronze or pewter in my great-grandfather’s office. It was probably about a foot tall. The base of it was a Bible, and on top of that were two masculine hands with the palms pressed flat together in a state of eternal prayer. I don’t remember how old I was when he died, probably three or four. All I remember of him is that statue. In my mind, his hands were the hands in the statue. Grandpa had it for a while after his father died; I remember seeing it in my grandparents’ living room for years. To me, it was like my great-grandfather never died. He was that statue. Always praying. I would go to it every time I was at their house. I would caress it and enclose the metal hands between my two small ones; at times I would pray, other times I would pretend I was holding his hands again. I don’t really understand how I was able to have such a strong connection to someone I don’t even remember very much. I don’t know where the statue is today. There was a huge yard sale after my grandma died. I assume it was sold to someone then. There have been so many times in my life when I have wanted to wrap my hands around those strong fingers, feel their solidity, their strength, absorb it into myself.
Somehow, the image of that statue got commingled in my mind with the altar at church. I’m sure the statue was never there. I am equally certain I was never at the altar with my great-grandfather. Who knows how a child’s mind works? The association of that statue helped make that altar the single most important spiritual location of my life. If you walked behind the altar, there was a little cornerright in the middle that was enclosed on three sides, by the back of the altar, the podium, and the platform for the choir. On the side closed off by the platform, there was a heating vent. I would nestle into that little nook during prayer meetings, close my eyes, feel the heat urging me to sleep, and feel safer than I did anywhere in the world.
The church never got into things like those who worshiped God by playing with poisonous snakes, nor did they pray in tongues. However, I think their philosophy included the belief that the louder the prayer, the easier it is for God to hear, and the more apt to be answered. I think if not heard from infancy, such an experience would leave most children in a state of terror and panic. Grown men would be praying at the top of their lungs, crying, singing, yelling. Probably many a person walking their dog outside the church building at such occasions thought someone had just died and people were distraught, or someone was being murdered by a gang of hate-filled villagers. To me, though, the cacophony acted like a blanket that covered me. When I was in that cranny, I was snuggled within the hands of that statue, within the hands of God and my great-grandfather. Even if the sermon was the kind that made me feel I was an abomination, I was loved by God, as long as I stayed in my warm little universe behind the altar.
That altar was on my mind the next morning. I wanted to shrink back to child size and stay there for days. To be assured that God really did love me, the real me. To not have to think about my mother, about being back in Missouri, even about my relationship with Jed. It was that altar that called me to come to church. It was that altar that made me willing to suffer the inquisition that was sure to follow from the parishioners. It was that altar that mademe shower, put on khakis and a black dress shirt, and meet Maudra, who feigned surprise, by the front door.
We were a few blocks away from the church, my lap filled with six trays of cookies, when Maudra, applying another layer of lipstick in the rearview mirror, glanced over. “I’m excited fer you ta see the new sanctuary. It’s so much bigger. It’s like one of them you see at those mega-churches on the TV. It took me a while to get used to it, not likin’ change ’n’ all, but it’s right fancy.”
“New sanctuary?” Uh-oh.
“A’course, they moved the sanctuary into the addition they built a few years back.”
“The addition! I forgot.” How could I forget that? I’d noticed it the other day. It took every ounce of decorum to not ask Maudra to turn the car around. “Did they move the altar into the new sanctuary?”
“The altar? You mean that old one covered in the red carpet?”
“Yeah.”
