Step-Ball-Change (27 page)

Taffy received a couple of postcards from Holden and Jack, one sent from Cap Ferret and another from a small town on the Italian coast. Holden said they had rented a boat, that they were eating persimmons, and that they would be coming home soon. Work, she said, had gotten completely out of control in her absence.

“What are you going to say to her when she comes back?” I asked.

“By the time she comes back,” Taffy said, “I think I’ll be over it.”

Sometimes, when Taffy needed a partner, she would ask George to come to the studio and dance with her. He was happy to do it. He missed teaching his class even though he didn’t have the time for it now. They would tap together in wide circles across the empty studio, their feet rattling out such perfect staccato time that
when the tape was over, they didn’t stop to put another one on. George was a relentless dancer and he took a certain pleasure in trying to run Taffy into the ground. She could go pretty far, and then finally she’d throw up her hands and scream, collapsing into a heap on the floor. “You’re too good,” she said. “And you’re too damn young.”

“Get up,” he said, his feet still slapping and riffing.

“I’m dead. You’ve killed me.”

So then George and I would go a couple of rounds. I was sorry he was going to be a lawyer. I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t understand how anyone could dance as well as George and not want to make it his life’s work. When we were all three lying on the hardwood floor in puddles of our own sweat, George rolled over on his stomach and looked at us.

“I’ve got to tell you something,” he said.

“What?”

“I’m going to ask Erica to marry me.”

Taffy and I both sat up, light-headed from exhaustion but suddenly, fully alert. “
Another
wedding?” Taffy said.

George shook his head. “Just an engagement, I swear. We wouldn’t get married for at least two years. We both want to finish school first and we don’t have the money to live together.”

“So why not wait?” I asked. “I mean, I’m happy for you, don’t get me wrong, but is there a hurry?” I hoped I was happy for him. I wanted to be happy for him, but George and Erica were so impossibly young, despite my own personal history. If they really did wait two years, that would be better. Twenty-seven sounded more marriageable than twenty-five.

“I just want her to know, I want everyone to know, this is absolutely it for me. This is the woman I’m going to marry even if
we can’t do it right now. I just wanted to tell you first, what with everything that happened with Holden and Jack, and I don’t think this is the time for any more surprises in the family. I was going to wait and tell you and Dad tonight, but I don’t know, dancing always makes me think about getting married now. Everything makes me think about getting married.”

“How could it not?” Taffy said. “It’s all anybody in this family ever talks about.” She put her sweaty hands together and pulled one of them over the other. “Here,” she said, and slid something bright and shiny across the floor in George’s direction. “Give her this.”

George held it up to the light. It was Taffy’s engagement ring.

“I’d have it reset,” she said. “Just to make it Erica’s, but there’s no bad luck in the diamond. Diamonds are too hard to absorb bad luck. It’s part of their charm.”

“I can’t take this,” George said.

“Of course you can.”

“What would Neddy say?”

Taffy smiled and looked at her hand. There was just a little platinum band there now. It looked nice, simpler. “Neddy would never notice it was missing. Anyway, Neddy and I are getting a divorce, so I won’t be wearing it.”

“You’re getting a divorce?” I said.

“I called Buddy Lewis yesterday.”

“Were you going to tell me?”

“I wanted to try it on by myself first, see how it felt.” She shrugged. “It feels okay.”

I scooted over next to George and looked at the beginnings of Taffy’s married life. “I remember the day you got that ring,” I said. “Mother called me over to the house so I could come see it. You
were so excited you could barely hold your hand still. I thought it was the most gorgeous, frivolous thing I’d ever seen in my life.”

“You don’t remember the day I got that ring,” she said. “It was seven years ago, it was at Tiffany’s, and I picked it out myself. That is actually my fourth engagement ring. Neddy let me get a new one every ten years. He called it my upgrade.”

“But shouldn’t you give this to Holden?” George said. He was turning the ring from side to side. Now that he was holding it, he wanted it.

“She can have the other ones.”

“You
kept
the other ones?” George said.

“Of course I did. A diamond doesn’t mean anything, not in the long run. That’s why your mother never bothered with them, which is why she doesn’t have one to give to you now.”

“You’re wrong,” George said. “It means a lot.”

“It means a lot to you, right now. That’s why I want you to have it.”

T
HE NEXT WEEK
we had four reasons to have a party: Kay and Trey set the date for their wedding, George and Erica announced their engagement, Holden and Jack came back from France married, and the Florida room was finished if not paid for. We would need to invite all of the Woodrow girls, and their families, and Jack’s family, and Trey’s family, and all of their friends. By the time the guest list reached one hundred and fifty, we decided instead to simply reassemble the crowd from Taffy’s birthday party and have a little dinner party at which to discuss larger parties that would follow in the future. Still, Erica thought we should have invitations, and so she wrote each one by hand.

Caroline McSwain and Tom McSwain and

Taffy Bishop and Felix Woodrow

Invite you to a celebration of the marriage of

Holden and Jack Carroll

and the engagements of

Katherine McSwain and Trey Bennett

and

Erica Woodrow and George McSwain

~

Saturday evening at 7
P.M
.

Casual

She had elegant, sloping handwriting. The diamond ring sparkled on her hand as it moved across the paper. When she finished with one invitation, she would lay it out on the dining-room table and start the next.

“But that’s all of us,” Taffy whispered to me. “There’s no one coming who isn’t on the invitation.”

“I like doing them,” Erica said, keeping her eyes on the work at hand.

Holden and Jack waltzed in as if they had only just been to the corner to pick up a carton of milk. They were both casual and golden. Jack had shaved and was wearing a new suit. Holden wore a short suede skirt and kept her legs bare. Holden and Taffy fell into each other’s arms as if nothing had happened at all. “Mother, I only wish you could have been there,” Holden said. “We were on the beach at sunset, barefoot. It was the most beautiful wedding.”

“I wish I could have been there, too,” Taffy said.

We took everyone in to see the Florida room. We didn’t have the furniture in there yet, but it was finished, beautiful, and perfectly clean.

“Daddy’s a genius,” Erica said. Taffy took Woodrow’s arm.

“And speaking of genius,
you,
” Holden said to Kay. “Now you really are my favorite cousin.”

“I was just glad to help,” Kay said. She kissed Jack on the cheek as if he were a distant, little-remembered relative, which, I suppose, he was.

“When are you getting married?” Jack asked George.

I don’t think George had quite forgiven Jack. He put his arm around Erica and pulled her close to him. “We’re going to wait at least two years. It’s so great to be engaged, there isn’t any point in rushing it.”

Jack smiled and tapped George on the chest. “You think it’s great being engaged, you should try getting married.”

“With the new engagement averaging law between family members, it will mean that we were both engaged a year,” Holden said to George.

“When are you getting married?” Jack asked Kay. “It seems like you’ve been engaged forever.”

“That’s because you’ve been so busy lately,” Kay said. “Remember Einstein’s Theory of Relativity? Time moves at different rates of speed depending on what you’re doing.”

“A little less than a year.”

“Eight months from now,” Trey said, answering the question. He turned to Erica. “Maybe we should have a double wedding. I understand that’s the kind of thing they do in musicals.”

“Are we living a musical now?”

Woodrow put his hands on his daughter’s shoulders. “With all due respect to your generous offer, I don’t think we could afford to take on half of your wedding.”

“No, really, the whole thing’s paid for. The more the merrier.”

Tom and I both heard the sentence and we stepped in the direction of that particularly interesting conversation.

“Your wedding is already paid for?” Taffy said. God bless Taffy, she’d jump right in there.

“Well, we’re paying for it. I certainly would be happy to have Erica and George share it with us.”

“You’re paying for it?” Tom said, trying to keep the incredulity out of his voice.

“Okay, let’s be honest here,” Kay said. “Trey’s paying for it. I’ll buy the Jordan almonds or something. Daddy, why are you looking at me like that?”

“Mrs. Bennett told your parents that they would be paying for half the wedding,” Taffy said. I was grateful. I don’t think I would have been able to explain it quite so succinctly.

“That’s insane!” Kay laughed and took a sip of champagne.
“You would have been completely wiped off the map even paying half. Do you have any idea what this thing is going to cost?”

“Some idea,” Tom said weakly.

“This is awful,” Trey said. “I guess my mother and I have never talked about it. I always planned to pay for the wedding. She doesn’t talk to me about wedding details. She never should have talked to you about money, though.”

“And you never even told me?” Kay put her arm around my shoulder. “Why didn’t you talk to me about this? You must have been going out of your mind.”

“It seems funny now,” I said. “Or it will seem funny soon.”

“Maybe you should think about this generous offer,” Woodrow said to Erica.

“Every girl wants her own wedding,” Erica said. “Unless she’s in a musical.”

“Where do we even start the toasts?” Tom said, raising his glass.

“To my daughter and her husband on a day several days after their wedding day,” Taffy said. “I wish you every happiness in the world.”

“To my daughter and her husband-to-be on their engagement,” Woodrow said. “I could not be more proud or more pleased.”

“To our daughter and her husband-to-be,” I said. “May tonight be the beginning of the happiest time of your life.”

grand finale