The Dress My Neighbor Wore Saturday

Fourteen houses. I counted about forty people by the time it got going.

At four o’clock I carried my potato salad across the street in the yellow bowl. Dennis came behind me with the folding chairs.

“You’re quiet,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve been fine since Tuesday.”

“Dennis,” I said. “Whatever happens over there this afternoon, I need you to stand next to me and not say a word. Can you do that?”

He stopped walking. He looked at me, and then he looked at Vicki’s house, and then he looked at me again.

“I can do that,” he said.

Brenda was already on the patio with a glass of sweet tea. She is seventy-three, taught fourth grade for thirty-five years, lost her husband Roy two winters ago. Jeff and Kim were setting out buns. Carol was cutting a pan of brownies into squares exactly the same size, the way she does.

Gary was at the smoker in his apron. He lifted his tongs at us.

“Lori! Dennis! Shoulder’s about ready. Vicki’s inside getting fancy.”

“Is she,” I said.

I set my bowl on the table and found a place to stand where I could see the back door.

It opened at ten minutes past four.

She had kept her promise. Dusty blue lace, and her good pearl earrings, and her hair done. She had cut the tag off. She stepped out onto her own patio like a woman walking into a reception.

There was a little murmur. Kim said, “Well, look at you!” Somebody whistled.

“Gary’s anniversary present,” Vicki said, and turned so the skirt moved. “Lori made me promise to wear it.”

Every face on that patio turned to me, smiling.

“I did,” I said. “I told her it was too pretty to keep in a closet.”

Gary looked up from the smoker. I saw his eyebrows draw together, just slightly, the way a man’s do when he hears something that does not match what he was told. Then the fat flared up and he looked back down.

I felt Dennis go still beside me. He had seen that dress on my phone. Amber had sent him the fitting room picture in August with the words, Dad do not tell her how much she’s going to cry.

He did not say a word. He put his hand on the small of my back and left it there.

For twenty minutes, nothing happened. I want you to know how long twenty minutes is. People fixed plates. Vicki moved from table to table, being told she looked beautiful. She came by me and squeezed my arm.

“You were right,” she whispered. “I feel like a million dollars.”

“You look it,” I said.

Then Brenda got up to refill her tea.

The drink table was against the patio post, and on a hook on that post, just above her head, hung a hummingbird feeder. Blown glass, hand painted. Red trumpet flowers and a little green bird, and a copper base gone soft in the sun.

Brenda set her cup down. She did not pour.

She reached up and turned that feeder in her fingers, slowly, the way you would turn a Christmas ornament to find the name on it.