The Wedding Bill With My Name On It
I did not sleep much that week. I went to work, I signed in the second graders, I came home and sat with that folder open on the table like it might explain itself differently the second or third time through. It never did. The signature on page two was mine, plain as anything, Marilyn J. Hoff, in the same hand I use to sign report cards and insurance forms, given over a cup of coffee to a woman I had no reason yet to distrust.
Prairie Table Catering runs out of a converted feed building on the north edge of town, with a gravel lot and a hand painted sign and a kitchen Donna Pratt built herself, two burners and an oven at a time, over about fifteen years, catering every wedding, funeral, and Rotary dinner within thirty miles. I know Donna the way you know most people in a town of two thousand. Her daughter and Shelby ran track together. She brought a casserole when Ed died.
I called her on a Tuesday and asked if I could come by, not about the menu, about the guest list. She said sure, come on by, like it was nothing, and I think for her it was nothing, because in her mind I was the mother of the bride looking over names the way mothers of brides do.
I sat across the folding table from her in that kitchen that smelled like onions and bread flour, and I asked her a question I had practiced in my car on the drive over so it would come out even.
“Donna, would you read me that guest list? One name at a time. I want to go through it slow.”
She looked at me for a second too long before she pulled it up on her laptop. “You’ve seen this, haven’t you? Gail sent it over back in July.”
“I’ve seen a list,” I said. “I want to hear it.”
She started reading. Pierce and Carol Dunham. I didn’t know them. Donna said she thought the Dunhams owned the Chevrolet store two towns over, Roger’s main competitor turned golfing friend. Next was the Osterhouts, from the country club board. Next was somebody named Meyer from the bank that financed Roger’s dealership expansion two years back. Then four names I recognized as Roger’s sales staff and their spouses. Then a run of names from something called the Midwest Auto Dealers Association, a title Donna read right off the RSVP card like it belonged on a wedding guest list, which told me somebody had printed these invitations straight off a mailing list and never once asked whether that was a strange thing to do.