Raney (2 page)

II

You would think a man could get married without getting drunk, especially after I explained that nobody in my family drunk alcohol except Uncle Nate, who was in the Navy in World War II, but got burned in combat on over fifty percent of his body, and caught pneumonia and had to be discharged from the Pacific. He had to stay in the hospital for three and a half months. Now he has asthma spells.

Uncle Nate comes to our house in a taxi at any hour of the day or night, drunk, cussing his former wife, who's dead
—
Joanne. And when I say drunk, I mean so drunk he can't get up the front steps without me and Mama and sometimes the taxi driver helping him. And smell?
—
Uncle Nate I'm talking about
—
whew. A sweat-whisky smell that lingers in the house as solid as flower smells at a funeral
—
lingers long after Mama's undressed him, got him in the tub, and piled his clothes on the back porch. And the thing is, he don't ever get asthma when he's drunk.

Mary Faye and Norris have to stand there in the middle of all that, being influenced in no telling what ways.

When Uncle Nate's sober he's my favorite uncle. I love his stories about when he was growing up with Mama and Aunt Flossie and Uncle Norris (who lives in Charlotte) and their Uncle Pugg. And he always gives me presents and says I'm his favorite niece.

He's always lived with us and worked at Daddy's store part time. His lung troubles make him disabled, so he gets a check every month from the government. They think he inhaled so much smoke he'll never recover. The scars are mostly on his body under his clothes so you can't ever see them except on his left wrist and under his left ear. He never talks about it except to Uncle Newton, who was in the war, too. Sometimes his asthma gets so bad he has to sit perfectly still for three or four hours. So he can't get a job anywhere, of course
—
except helping Daddy out at the store. Daddy says he makes a big difference and is very dependable
—
unless he's drunk.

I don't know what Mama will do about getting him out of the taxi and up the steps since I'll be living here in Listre. Mary Faye and Norris will have to help. But Mama hates for them to be exposed to such.

Charles
knew
all about Uncle Nate and how I
—
how my whole family
—
feels about drinking.

So at the rehearsal Friday night everything was going fine except Mama caught Norris hiding in the baptism place and made him sit on the front row. She'd already caught him once. I told him the water would flow in there and drown him if he didn't watch out. Mary Faye was one of my attendants and being as smart as she could be.

I'm standing in the back of the church with Daddy and Flora, my cousin, who directed the wedding, and I notice that Charles's friend, Buddy Shellar, from Maryland, who I had never met until that night, keeps going outside. And Charles keeps following him. Phil, Jim, Dale, and Crafton
—
my cousins
—
were of course staying in their places like they were supposed to. Flora gives me a little push and I start down the aisle with Daddy. Charles is standing with this red-faced grin. When Preacher Gordon says you may kiss the bride, I turned to Charles and there were these little red blood vessels in his left eye that looked like red thread and all of a sudden I caught a whiff of you-know-what. It hit me. It all suddenly fell together. I thought they had been going outside to
talk.

The thing you won't believe is: Charles's daddy looked lit too.

I did not kiss Charles. I kept my lips clamped. I grabbed him by the arm and led him right up the aisle and out the front door. Madora Bryant, my maid of honor, and some of the other girls were clapping as hard as they could. They couldn't tell what was really happening. When I got him out on the front porch
—
right beside the bell rope
—
I said: (now I was really tore up) "Charles, I have told you for months about the condition Uncle Nate has put our family in with alcohol, and you promised me you would not have a bachelor party and get drunk and here you are, drunk, under the nose of Preacher Gordon, Mama, Daddy, Flora and Aunt Naomi and Aunt Flossie and my bridesmaids and Mary Faye and Norris and I will never forget this as long as I live."

"Raney," he says, "first of all, I am not having a bachelor party, and second of all, I am not drunk. I am not doing anybody any harm. I
—
"

"Not doing any harm? Charles, I
—
"

"Raney, Buddy drove all the way down here from Baltimore, Maryland, and he has one little pint of something in his car, and we were in the
war
together and if you will just relax. And he's the
only
one of my close friends in the wedding. All these damn cousins of yours."

"Charles, please do not start cussing right here on church property. And if you are mad about my cousins being in the wedding I would have appreciated you saying something about that before now
—
like while I was spending all my time getting this whole thing planned."

Charles's daddy, Dr. Shepherd, walks up. I could not believe what was happening, yet I dared not make a scene in front of him. I was thinking that if Mama and Aunt Naomi and Aunt Flossie found out about all this drinking I would die.

"Raney, honey," Dr. Shepherd says, "
you
look adorable." He's a big man and wears those glasses without any rims
—
s
haped like stop signs. He's a math professor, of all things. A doctor. And Mrs. Shepherd is a school teacher. They use these long words I know Mama and Daddy don't know. And they should know Mama and Daddy don't know them. But they'll go on back down to Atlanta after the wedding and we won't see them except maybe a few times a year. Charles says they belong to a country club and all that. What gets me is that Charles said he explained to them about us being Christians and not drinking which I didn't even know we
had
to explain until Madora told me that Charles's parents would probably be used to drinking spiked punch at weddings and what were we going to do?

I hadn't thought about it. I've never been to a wedding where they drink liquor in the punch. I mean there's usually a preacher at a wedding and it's usually at a church. But Madora explained how rich people
—
or at least Episcopalians and Catholics and sometimes Methodists
—
will get married in church and then ride over to a country club or someplace where they all drink up a storm.

Dr. Shepherd stands there kind of flushed and glassy-eyed and tells me how proud he is
—
and he laughs at everything he says, funny or not
—
and I'll be durn if he didn't reach up right then and there and pull the church bell rope and ring the bell. I could just see old Mrs. Bledsoe, down the road, figure it was not Friday night at all, but Wednesday night
—
prayer meeting night
—
instead, and get all upset and maybe grab
Mr.
Bledsoe, who can't hear, and cart him off to a prayer meeting which don't exist. Not to mention all the other people in hearing distance.

The rehearsal dinner was in the education building around behind the church. I walked down the church steps between Charles and his daddy
—
their arms locked through mine
—
not able to say a word, and hot behind my ears with embarrassment at the prospect of a scandal.

When we got to the education building there was Mrs. Shepherd
—
Millie
—
standing at the door, smiling.

"Smooth as could be," she said, and kissed Dr. Shepherd on the lips
—
right there in the door to the education building.

Inside, there were two long tables and a head table. Aunt Naomi was in charge. She had got Betty Winnberry to cater. Steaks. T-bone steaks. French fries. The works. I had hoped all along it wouldn't be tacky
—
like paper tablecloths, which Aunt Naomi was talking about along at first. I'm certainly not going to be cow-tied to any fancy ways of the Shepherds, but I did want things to be proper for everybody concerned.

On the tables were about twelve or thirteen red-checkered, overlapped tablecloths that Aunt Flossie had borrowed from Penny's Grill (and had to wash and dry later that night in order to get them back to the grill in time for Penny to serve breakfast. They open at six
a.m.).
And over in the corner Mack Lumley was sitting on a bale of hay playing his guitar. He didn't charge but ten dollars, and furnished the hay, too. Somebody suggested me and Charles sing, but I think singing at your own wedding wouldn't be right.

Aunt Flossie had put together the prettiest flower arrangement
—
right in the middle of the head table: roses, daisies, and Queen Anne's lace, and pittosporum and nandina for greenery.

Just before supper, Charles and Buddy went out for you-know-what, I guess. I had to keep smiling and be as nice as I could to everybody. The supper
was
meaningful, but while I
w
as cutting a piece of T-bone steak I bent over to Charles and whispered: "Charles, I will never forget this." But Charles just turned to Daddy and started talking about the Braves. They always talk about the Braves. As soon as they see one another they start talking about the Braves. I wanted to say, "Daddy, don't you see what Charles is doing? How can you sit there and talk about the Braves while Charles is doing what he's doing?" But I didn't say anything. Lord knows, there was disturbance enough.

I had spent all that time working out the arrangements and Charles wrote all the invitations by hand
—
he has this beautiful handwriting
—
and we had talked all about his new library job and our house and our future and how everything was going to work out, and he had been so good about running little errands. Then this.

Charles is very intelligent, and good looking in his own way
—
his head is slightly large, but I think it just seems that way because his shoulders are narrow
—
and, oh, we had one or two little fusses getting ready for the wedding, but no more than you'd shake a stick at. And we've been playing music at different gatherings right along through
all this
—
getting
better and better and having lots of fun. Charles learns real fast and we like the same music mostly.

Then I end up sitting at my own wedding rehearsal dinner fussing at Charles for doing the one thing I was hoping against hope wouldn't happen ever since Madora explained about how some people get drunk at weddings. We had talked about drinking several times, and I had this feeling of not being able to get a clear picture of how Charles felt. He talks a lot about "psychology."

The actual wedding itself went off without a hitch. It was the most wonderful day of my life. Charles was perfect. Dr. and Mrs. Shepherd were perfect. Mary Faye and Norris were perfect. Mama and Daddy were perfect. Mama wore a long dress
—
pink
—
and she was real pretty, except her hair-do was a little tight. Daddy looked the way he always does at church: out of place in a suit, and his head white where his hat goes, and his face red. (He
looks
like he has high blood pressure, but it's normal and always has been.) Right before we walked down the aisle, he said, "Honey, I'm real happy for you. Charles is a good man." His chin was quivering, and two tears rolled down his cheeks. He was holding my hand, which was something I don't remember him doing since I was a little girl.
Daddy don't
show much emotion.

A bunch of people said it was the nicest wedding they had ever been to. I was just flushed throughout the whole thing. It went exactly according to plans. Charles was handsomer than I've ever seen him. The shoulders in his tux were padded.

The wedding was fairly short and we all went straight to the reception in the education building
without
getting our pictures made, so people wouldn't have to wait. Mama was real worried about us not getting a photographer, but Mack Lumley did it for only ten dollars over cost.

Mama and Mrs. Shepherd
—
Millie
—
cried several times each, and so did Flora and Aunt Naomi and Aunt Flossie, and two or three times Dr. Shepherd gave Millie a long hug right in front of everybody. Charles's friend, Buddy Shellar, spent some time talking to Mary Faye and Norris. I thought that was nice. Buddy and my cousins fixed up our car with tin cans and shaving cream; we changed clothes; Sylvia Curtis caught the bouquet; we ran to Charles's Dodge Dart under all that rice, and headed for Myrtle Beach.

Now. The honeymoon. I do not have the nerve to explain everything that happened on the first night there in the Holiday Inn. We had talked about it some before
—
or Charles had talked about it. And we had, you know,
necked
the same as any engaged couple. And I had told Charles way
back,
of course, that I wanted my marriage consumed
after
I was married. Not before. Because if it was consumed before, then I would have to carry the thought of that throughout my entire life and it's hard to undo that which has already been done.