Authors: Grace Octavia

What He's Been Missing (14 page)

BOOK: What He's Been Missing

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“From the airport?” I probed. “You should've said something. We have people here to do that. Thought I told you.”

“No . . . from Atlanta,” Ian said and I could hear the anger in his voice now.

“Atlanta?”

“They missed their flight this morning, and they couldn't get on another one,” he said.

“There's some kind of conference here this weekend,” Scarlet added.

“We were on our way to the airport when they called, so we all decided to just drive,” Ian said. “Seven whole hours.”

“Well, where are they now?” Krista asked.

“Mom has a headache and Dad's returning calls from the practice.” Scarlet looked like she was hiding behind Ian. Suddenly, all of her Black Power militancy was gone. She was a little girl. I had a feeling that she wanted us to handle everything.

I reached for Ian's hand. “It'll be fine.”

I could feel Krista frowning beside me. “Are they coming down to the rehearsal?” She looked at her watch. “It's in an hour.”

“Don't know. My mother has these migraines.”

I could imagine how this was going to go over with Mrs. Dupree. This would be the story for years.

“We can fix it,” I said. “Krista, send one of the staffers to their room to get a time and explain that they must at least come down to watch the rehearsal.”

“Gotcha, boss lady.”

“And take Ian's room key,” I added. “Go up to his room and get his brown tweed Brooks Brothers jacket. That'll look great with what he's wearing.”

“Done.” Krista reached for the plastic room key card in Ian's hand.

“How do you know whether I have that jacket?” Ian asked, smiling because he did.

“You don't travel without that jacket, Mr. Dupree,” I said.

“You swear you know me.”

“I know you better than you know,” I said and immediately regretted the intimacy in my voice.

Scarlet tightened her grip and looked like she was about to say something but felt she shouldn't.

Once Krista came back with the jacket, I escorted Scarlet and Ian into the reception, where Uncle Cat led a hysterical toast to the weekend by telling a story about the first time Ian fell in love.

“He came to his Uncle Cat, and I told de boy, love come Sunday, leave pain on Monday!”

We laughed at his frankness, but Krista, I noticed, was laughing the hardest. She was also gazing, in the style of a zombie, into Uncle Cat's eyes. I watched her tickle the inside of her elbow as he spoke.

“You OK?” I murmured, nudging her.

She smiled and straightened her arms.

Uncle Cat went on to welcome everyone to his hometown and share that New Orleans isn't Vegas, so “there's no âwhat happens in New Orleans stays in New Orleans' rule.” He said that no one in New Orleans should be sober enough to know or care what you're doing in New Orleans, so the only rule is to have a good time. “And be careful in the Quarter,” he concluded. “For sure, whatever a man be seeking in the Quarter goin' crawl behind, follow him home at night. Wake wit' him in de mornin'. And I'm not talking no living desires neither. You can find anything in the Quarter. Your worst nightmare. Your best dream!”

Everyone was quiet, trying to decipher the weight of the mysterious message. Suddenly, though we knew better, we all imagined voodoo priestesses and witches' cauldrons mounted on every street corner in the Quarter.

“You stop it, now,” Mrs. Dupree said, pulling Uncle Cat's arm. “You scaring these people half to death. Ain't nothing like that going on. This is a wedding. My son's wedding!” She smiled and turned to Ian. “I'm so proud of you!”

“Thanks, Mama,” Ian said, kissing his mother on the cheek.

“My pride and joy,” she beamed, hugging him.

As Mrs. Dupree loved on Ian, Krista announced that the wedding party needed to move to the hotel's atrium to rehearse for the ceremony and that the other guests were free to continue to party in the suite.

One of Mrs. Dupree's sisters started taking pictures of the Duprees and insisted that Scarlet get into some of the shots. Mrs. Dupree was still frowning, though, and kept her eyes sharp on Scarlet.

“Gwendolin, you get into the picture with Scarlet and Ian,” the sister ordered. “I want one of just the three of you.”

“Yeah!” Scarlet forced in her cheerleader voice, but I could tell she'd sensed Mrs. Dupree's stare. Everyone had. For some reason, Scarlet tried to trade places with Ian and stand next to Mrs. Dupree in the picture, but she looked at Scarlet like she was a dead squirrel and I literally felt the chill in the room. Ian wiped his forehead and smiled at his mother. There was nothing he could do but pray that she'd warm up to whatever was keeping her on ice.

Before her sister could snap the photo, Mrs. Dupree pointed to me and said, “You come on, Rachel! You get in the photo!”

“I can't; I'm working,” I said.

“Nonsense,” she argued. “I want a picture with you. Come on!” She called like I was her own child.

And I moved.

“Cheese!” we said as the cameras flashed. I was standing on the end beside Mrs. Dupree, who was beside Ian and Scarlet.

“Cheese!” again.

Mrs. Dupree rubbed my shoulder. “OK, now,” she started, stepping backward and pushing Ian and me together, “let's get a picture of these two.” She inched behind Ian and took Scarlet's hand.

“Mama, what are you doing?” Ian asked, seeing the repositioning come together.

“I want a picture of the two of you!” she replied. “You and Rachel.” She pulled Scarlet. “Come on, sweetie!” she said like Scarlet was some hurt fawn.

The cameras started flashing again.

“Just perfect,” Mrs. Dupree said, gripping Scarlet's arm. “Perfect.”

“OK, we don't have long in here,” Krista said, calming the wedding party down after the group trek to the atrium. “There's actually a ceremony in here tonight, so we're just going to walk through things one time and then we're out of here.”

She had one of the staffers seat us in line order in the little white chairs in the front of the atrium as she went through the fine points of the ceremony on her iPad with Scarlet.

Mrs. Dupree kept asking about Scarlet's parents every thirty seconds or so, her voice getting more haughty, suggesting that if they didn't make it to the rehearsal maybe they didn't care about the wedding. “I wouldn't have missed this rehearsal for the world,” she said at one point. “Even if I was dead, I would've paid the good Lord to resurrect me, so I could get back here to be with my baby.”

Ian got up and pulled her into the back corner to talk to her. Some of Scarlet's other relatives had been listening to Mrs. Dupree's various comments and they were looking restless.

When Mr. and Mrs. Bloom finally did walk into the atrium, looking cool and nonchalant, everyone got quiet.

“Mami! Papi!” Scarlet ran to hug them like she hadn't seen them in years.

“Finally,” Mrs. Dupree said, escaping Ian's hold in the corner. She straightened her jacket and headed to greet them, walking with her head high like she was some kind of New Orleans dignitary.

Mr. Dupree and Ian hurried behind her, looking less like anxious greeters and more like well-practiced buffers.

“Gwennie is about to show her ass,” Uncle Cat said under his breath. “Sure as the sky is blue.”

“Well, it's nice to finally meet you two,” Mrs. Dupree said, loudly enough so we could hear in the front of the atrium. “It's not every day that two kids get married when their parents don't know each otherâhaven't met. Not where I'm from.”

Krista ushered the parents to the front row.

Mr. and Mrs. Bloom were more beautiful than I remembered. I saw them at one of Ian's lectures at the public library when Scarlet and Ian first started dating. They looked like each other's patientsâperfectly sculpted everything from head to toe. Mrs. Bloom's cream-colored skin looked like she sat in a vat of olive oil all day. She was dainty. Looked like she was always wearing St. John. It was hard to imagine that someone so lovely could survive medical school and work with a scalpel everyday but easy to imagine she was Scarlet's mother. She looked just twenty-four hours older than Scarlet, but everything perfect in her face had been given to her daughter. The only thing she hadn't bequeathed was her color. That came from Scarlet's father. He was a muscular miracle in sepia. The kind of fine-ass older man that made girls more than half his age look at him and say, “He could get it . . . today.”

This beauty meant nothing to Mrs. Dupree. It only gave her more reason to act upon her suspicions about Scarlet's parents and why she hadn't met them. For this, their punishment was incessant over-talking and grandstanding as Mrs. Dupree let them know that this was her town, her wedding, and her show. Even if they wanted to say something, they couldn't. Her tone said, “Pay attention before you get bitten.”

Krista led the wedding party to the back of the atrium and got us in order, leaving Ian and his parents and Mrs. Bloom in the front. I was the last bridesmaid to walk down the aisle, with Scarlet's cousin. The matron of honor was behind me and then there was Scarlet.

“Now remember, bridesmaids and groomsmen, I don't want you to do a two-step tomorrow. You're walking to âAve Maria,' so just go slow and at your own pace,” Krista said to us. “Let everyone get a look at you, take pictures, smile. Be natural.”

“Don't be nervous, Star,” Mr. Bloom said to Scarlet. Ian had told me that her parents wanted to name her Starlet, but there was a typo on her birth certificate and when they saw it, they liked Scarlet more.

I turned around and Mr. Bloom was gently massaging Scarlet's hand linked over his arm. She looked pale. Had the fearful look most brides had on their actual wedding day.

The line started moving forward after Krista cued the music.

Ian was already standing up front.

Mr. and Mrs. Dupree were seated in the front row in front of him.

Mrs. Bloom was seated in the second seat in the front row on the other side.

This order was so etched into my brain, it was like brushing my teeth.

“Ave Maria” continued to play and the line moved farther along. Jennifer and two of the triplets in front of me turned around playfully to wave good-bye to Scarlet before they left.

“Es mala suerte,” Mrs. Bloom said, getting up from her seat right when I was about to step over the threshold. “Ella no puede pasar por el pasillo.”

“What?” Mrs. Dupree shot up from the other side of the aisle.

“Mama!” Ian warned.

“What, she doesn't speak English?” Mrs. Dupree said. “No wonder she's so quiet.”

“Of course she speaks English, Gwennie,” Mr. Dupree said. “You just talk too damn much.”

“It's bad luck,” Mrs. Bloom said, translating her words, though her English was just as melodic and romantic as her Spanish. “She can't walk down the aisle. It's bad luck.”

My first thoughts went to me. I assumed she was talking about me, since I was next. Oh my God! Did she know what I was thinking about? Did she know about my feelings for Ian?

“What is she saying? This is just plain rude!” Mrs. Dupree fired off. “You know those women at my nail salon, they always speak in another language so they canâ”

“Ain't nobody talking about you, Gwennie. Shut up,” Mr. Dupree ordered.

“She wants me to sit down,” Scarlet said. “It's bad luck for me to walk down the aisle before my wedding day.”

“Of course,” Krista said. “We're going to have your cousin, the matron of honor, walk down for you. I just wanted you in the back so you can see how the room will look when you walk in.”

“Oh no, that's bad luck, too,” Mrs. Dupree said.

“Mama!” Ian tried.

“I'm serious,” she went on. “You can't have a married woman pretend to be a new bride. Down here that's almost like cheating on your husband.”

“I ain't heard that before,” Mr. Dupree said.

“Well, you
ain't
been in no wedding but your own neither, so unless someone else in here knows about New Orleans wedding traditions, I suggest we find someone else, who isn't married, to walk down the aisle for whatever her name is.”

“Mama, stop it! Her name is Scarlet,” Ian said.

“I'm sorry, son, but people keep calling her all types of things and stuff and I just met her, so I'm trying to keep up.”

BOOK: What He's Been Missing

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