The Wedding Gift (10 page)

When Doc Miller said that,
my own daddy went all nuts again and told George he was going to
marry me right quick or he’d be spending the rest of his days at
the bottom of Lake Injun. Then Miz Willets told Daddy that their
little trashy bleached blond daughter (can you believe she said
that about me?) would be lucky if they would even pay for an
abortion as “
Who knows who the father
really is
.”

The weirdest part of the
whole sad affair is that George turned to his mama and told her to
shut up, which she did, being in shock. And then George’s daddy
tells him to apologize to his mother, and George said
“
No, I won’t
.” And
then he turned to my daddy and said nice as pie
“
Sir, I am real sorry about taking
advantage of Leeann behind your back. That was awful wrong of me,
but I am aiming to make it right. I love her, and I want to marry
her as soon as we can, and raise our little baby
together
.”

Well, poor daddy, you can
only imagine his feelings; here he was getting all happy about
getting to kill George and then murder him and everything, and then
George goes and says that nice thing, which must have took the wind
right out of daddy’s puffed up sails.

I was pretty surprised to
hear about what George said myself, to tell the strict truth. I
still hated George of course for how he had acted that afternoon,
but then it made me feel kind of warm to think of him standing up
to his mama like that, and talking to my daddy so nice about me in
front of everyone.

Mama saw I was softening up
and she laughed a little, and said that when she first got home
from the shop and saw George and Mr. and Miz Willets sitting in her
living room, she thought the world must have ended because, by the
time Mama got in on things, they had changed and everybody was
trying to act all chummy. With the help of the bottle of Johnny
Walker Black that George had brought along, he and Daddy and Mr.
Willets was all best friends by then; only Miz Willets still looked
like a snake bit yard dog.

I guess Miz Willets must
have known she was beat that day, and was just sitting there
plotting how she would get me later for this when I became a
legally wedded Willets, because Mama said she tried to act real
gracious, even though she did ask for a towel to sit on, saying in
a voice sweet as poison “
Because your
furniture is just covered in cat hair … My Lord
.”

So after Mama was brought
into the loop, they all decided that George and I would get married
on June Fifteenth, which was the first Saturday after my
graduation, and that the Willets would pay for the reception
because, as Miz Willets said (this is her being gracious by the
way), “
They couldn’t let their only son
have his wedding reception in the basement of some church and serve
Twinkies and spam for the food
.”

Mama was laughing when she
repeated that, but I would bet my hair that she didn’t laugh when
Miz high and mighty Willets said it to her face. When Mama finished
talking I just nodded, mostly because I could see she was still on
the edge of a huge old nervous breakdown and I wasn’t looking to
get slapped again.

Since I had gotten up that
morning, I had had a full day at school, which on its own is pretty
demanding. All day long, every day, I have to smile at everyone who
wants to say “
Hey,
Leeann
,” to me, which is just about
everyone and the janitor at Dalton High. If you want to know the
truth, being popular is an awful lot of work; well not for Jessie,
but she’s crazy. Why, once she said out loud in class that she
wondered if the only reason our school hadn’t had itself a
Columbine was because there were just too many assholes for anyone
to know where to start shooting. That little speech landed her on a
shrink’s couch for a week, but I guess the poor man either gave up
or ended up needing a shrink himself ‘cause we didn’t hear no more
about it.

But this isn’t about
school, it’s about my horrible day, so, anyway, after school I had
to watch for Jessie during the commission of her crime at the
pharmacy. I found out I was pregnant, I heard George say things it
would surely take me fifty years or so to forget. After all them
good times, I had to have that awful scene, complete with vomiting
just like that girl in the movie ‘The Exorcist’ in the hallway with
my daddy looking on. Shoot, and then my perfect day was topped off
by hearing my very own cat laughing at me in the dark, like another
scene out of some horror movie, and, just to ice my cake, then my
mama about knocked my teeth down my throat.

Yes it had surely been
quite a day. If I had any thoughts right then about still trying to
get those diamond earrings to a pawn broker and maybe having myself
a little old termination procedure and running off forever to parts
unknown, but most probably Hollywood, then I was going to keep
those thoughts all to myself and, just like Scarlett, I would think
about the whole mess tomorrow.

But oh hell no, 'cause
there was Mama still sitting there on the edge of my bed, looking
at me like isn’t this all so wonderful … how her and Daddy fixed
everything up for me. I then and there decided to just give in and
start crying. It seemed the best plan and, anyway, I had a hell of
a lot to cry about!

So that’s what I did. I
started bawling like a scalded calf, and finally Mama started
acting more like herself. She started crooning and stroking me,
telling me that I was still her good girl, her darling girl, and
that was more like it, I’ll tell you.

It was too good to last,
cause then, oh hell, if she didn’t ask me if I wanted to maybe wash
my face and go on downstairs and see George. She said he was just
sitting there “
so sweet and patient,
waiting for you to wake up
.” That really
tore it for me … See George? Oh poop no, not then anyway, and I
thought maybe not ever, at least not till I could see Jessie
anyway.

I shook my head real
sad-like at Mama, and said I felt so bad and so tired, and could
she please just send him home and tell him to come by tomorrow
after school instead? But if Jessie was still downstairs could she
send her on up?

Mama told me that Jessie
went home hours ago, but that, yes, she would send George home for
the night … that I did look terrible peaked, and she was just going
to go down and send him away and she would bring me up some supper.
Well, if I couldn’t have Jessie, then supper sounded pretty good to
me as long as there was no George for dessert. I ate, and then
turned off my light. I guessed that tonight anyway I would get away
with not taking down my dishes and, besides, I just was not ready
to see my daddy.

I wanted to give him a
chance to cool down and remember how much he loved me first. I was
bone tired, but too anxious to sleep. I did not know what the hell
to do. I could run away, but where to? Jessie would help me, but
she wouldn’t come with me. I knew as long as Mark was here, that
was where she would be. For a tiny minute I just laid there hating
him for having such a big part of Jessie. I didn’t have any money
and I figured by now Daddy had hidden those diamond earrings
somewhere where I would never find them, like at the bottom of Lake
Injun or in the dumpster behind Piggly.

My daddy may have hated the
Willets but he would have hated the idea of an unwed pregnant
daughter more. And since Daddy and I were two of a kind, he must
have guessed already that I was thinking of using the diamonds as
an escape hatch. I damned my stupid self for a fool for leaving
those rocks in the hallway covered in my vomit. I had a small last
hope, though. I thought maybe Jessie had saved them for me. So,
okay, that was one possible plan, if Jessie had taken the earrings,
I could pawn them, end the pregnancy and head on up to California,
and do something.

Oh, but I knew I would be
so lonely if I left Dalton. I had never been away from Mama and
Daddy for more than one night at a time in my whole life. Even
thinking about how it would be to never see them or Jessie, or my
brother and Sarah Beth and little Tallulah again made me feel like
I might die of loneliness. Why, just considering leaving made tears
start up again.

No, I didn’t really want to
go to California where, anyway, Mama was always telling stories
about beautiful young girls just like me being “
swept up into pornography, and then never being heard from
again
.” What I really wanted was just to go
on being me, Leanne Worthier, “
the
prettiest girl ever born in Dalton, OK
.”
Why I was a shoo-in for Corn Princess next month, I knew I was.
That was all I really wanted, just to stay at home and graduate
from school, and then marry Donny Readle. It was that last thought
which brought me up short and back to my senses. Donny was married
and therefore forever out of my reach. And me? Well I was pregnant
… pregnant with George Willets’ baby. I knew my mama would never in
a million years let me have an abortion, so what were my real
choices if California was out? I knew my mama and daddy would never
throw me out into the cold. Nope, I could stay right where I was. I
could have the baby and keep sleeping in my pretty lavender
bedroom, just with a crib beside the bed. Of course, if I did that,
then instead of being the girl everyone in town wanted to be, I
would become a living cautionary whale instead. Shoot, if I played
my cards right, maybe after a while I could even have a career at
the Piggly, since Britney’s daddy ran the place and I knew he liked
me. Yep, I could just see myself now standing at the cash register
wearing my little maternity smock and a boatload of humiliation as
an accessory, taking out cartons for the dumpster and trying not to
get rat bit.

I could watch all my
girlfriends having their big fancy weddings and maybe, after I got
my figure back, I could even be a bridesmaid for one or two of
them, that is if anyone would still talk to me, Dalton not being
exactly progressive in its views on unwed girls. I knew Jessie
would always be my best friend, but I thought she might end up
being the only one in town who would not be pointing and whispering
every time they saw me.

Then there was choice
number three: marry George and become part of the richest family in
town. I could have the biggest damn spit-in-your-eye wedding anyone
ever saw, and pretend like this was a honeymoon baby.

If I did that, then every
girl in Dalton would be green as glass with jealousy. I figured
that everyone in town would think it was just fitting if the most
beautiful girl married the richest boy, and lived happily ever
after; lived happily in the big old house that George would build
for me. Shoot, I didn’t really hate George. Heck before yesterday,
I had liked him fine. And since I knew I would be spending my whole
life living without the only man I could ever love, why not marry
George? He was a lot better than the stupid boys from school who
looked at me all pop-eyed. I had never agreed with that saying
“money can’t buy happiness.” Hell no, I agreed with the other
saying, the one that went “people who say money can’t buy happiness
aren’t shopping in the right stores.”

I felt better after I had
worked out all the pros and cons of my situation. I knew I could
sleep then. There was just one thing I wondered about before I
finally went out like a light: had that really been Muffin laughing
in the hall earlier? I certainly hoped it had been, even though
owning a cat who could laugh like a girl would be odd to say the
least. I hoped after a million years of living in this house that
we weren’t getting all infested with ghosts all of sudden. I would
not like that one bit, and Mama, whoa, she would hit the ceiling. I
knew if she thought we had a ghost she would make poor Daddy start
going to church with her. I could just imagine what she would
say.

“
Well, Charlie, see there,
do you see what your God ignoring ways have brought on us? Now we
have ourselves a demon living upstairs in our hallway and you are
going to start going to church with me and letting me have Reverend
Lawton over for dinner too! You brought this on us and you are
going to repent
.”

Course I knew if she said
that, then Daddy would for sure tell her that he would rather share
his damned house with a demon than crazy ole Reverend Lawton who
had bugs in his head and was always looking behind people’s
furniture to see if the devil was hiding there. I hate to be all
disrespectful about a man of God, but I got to say that I tended to
agree with Daddy when he said that he “
thought old scratch might have better things to do with his
time than hide behind a respectable man’s Lazy Boy recliner like
some kind of garden toad
.”

Just thinking about the two
of them arguing over a demon in the hallway made me start to laugh,
and then finally I was asleep and the world’s longest day was
over.

Chapter 15

The next day at school
Jessie kept eyeing me up and down all morning long. She acted like
a big nasty tom cat just waiting to eat some poor canary, and when
she finally got me alone at lunch, she just started in like there
was no tomorrow.

“
Christ on a crutch,
Leeann, you sure sunk us in it this time. Do you know that when I
told your daddy about you and old fat ass George, I thought he was
going to kill himself or maybe me, and then what the fuck if I
don’t get dragged off to old Doc Millers along with the rest of the
circus, just so I can find out if fat George can shoot live rounds
or not. You want to talk about too much information, you try
sitting and listening to something like that. It’s real sad for you
but I guess he can, huh?
”