“Your granddad and I got married in the parsonage parlor in Erie on a Tuesday in 1962,” Grandma said. “The preacher’s wife and the hired man were our witnesses. Then we went home and milked the cows.”
She steadied herself on the cane.
“I have been married, and widowed, and I’ve been to sixty years of other people’s weddings. And I have never one time had a wedding dance. You keep that band.”
“Yes ma’am,” I said.
Pastor Dale offered to make the announcement. Daddy said no thank you. He said it was his to make.
So the two of us went in through the side door by the piano. The organist saw us and stopped right in the middle of a measure.
I didn’t know a church could get that quiet with that many people in it.
Every face turned toward us. My fourth grade teacher. The girls from the pharmacy, where I’d worked the counter for nine years. Daddy’s buddies from the VFW post in their sport coats.
On the other side of the aisle sat Derrick’s people. Fifty or sixty of them. Aunts and cousins, and the men he worked with at the co-op. They looked like folks who had shown up at the wrong funeral.
The front pew on his side had a gap in it. Right where Lorna had been sitting.
My father does not speak in front of people. In thirty-one years of my life, I had never once heard him do it. He walked to the front of the church. He didn’t climb up on the platform. He stood on the floor, down on the same level as everybody else, and he held his hands together in front of him.
“Folks,” he said. “I’m Ray. Most of you know me.”
Somewhere a baby fussed and got shushed.
“There’s not going to be a wedding today. Derrick has decided he’s not coming. That’s about all I know, and it’s about all I intend to say about it.”
A sound went through the whole room at once. Not a word. Just a hundred and forty breaths going out.
“Now,” Daddy said. “There’s a roast beef supper for a hundred and forty waiting over at the VFW hall. It’s hot and it’s paid for. There’s a band. And my sister made a cake you ought to see. My daughter would like you all to come and eat it with her.”
He cleared his throat.
“That’s the whole thing. Supper’s at five thirty. You know where the hall is.”
He looked over at me, in case I wanted to add anything.
I hadn’t planned to. But I was looking at Derrick’s side of the church. At his Aunt Judy with her purse already in her lap. At his little cousins in their clip-on ties. I could see every one of them figuring they were the ones who ought to slip out the back quietly.
“That means both sides of the aisle,” I said.
My voice came out steadier than I felt.
“Nobody in this room did anything wrong. You drove a long way, and you got dressed up. Please come eat.”
For a second, nobody moved.
Then old Harold Dawson stood up in the fourth row.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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