The Bouquet My Sister Handed Back

What Dorothy Said

Now I will tell you what Dorothy said to Tanner, because it is my favorite part of the whole day, and I have thought about it more than I have thought about anything else.

Late that night, after the dollar dance and the cake and the bouquet toss that I skipped because I did not have the heart to throw my mother’s peonies at anybody, I went and sat down beside Dorothy.

Her daughter was getting the car.

Ryan’s grandpa Walt was sitting on her other side. He is 91, and he had worn a bolo tie to the wedding, and he had been asleep for most of the toasts. He was awake now.

“I heard what you told Tanner,” I said to Dorothy. “Ryan wouldn’t tell me. He said it was yours to tell.”

Dorothy laughed. She has a laugh like a girl’s, high and quick, and it does not go with her face at all.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. “It’s just that it’s happened before. It happened to me.”

“Somebody proposed at your wedding?”

“No, no. Somebody proposed to me at somebody else’s.” She tipped her head toward Walt without looking at him. “This one.”

Walt grunted.

“It was June of 1956,” Dorothy said. “My cousin Arlene married a Peterson boy at the Lutheran church in Lake Preston. The reception was in the church basement. Ham sandwiches and coffee and green Jell-O salad, and somebody’s uncle playing the accordion.”

“And Walt proposed?”

“Right in the middle of Arlene’s first dance with her husband. He’d had two beers in the parking lot to get up his nerve. He walked right out between the tables in front of the whole basement and got down on one knee on that linoleum.”

I looked at Walt. He was looking at his hands, but he was smiling.

“What did Arlene do?” I asked.

Dorothy’s eyes got bright. She reached over and patted my wrist with her cold soft fingers.

“She did just what you did, honey,” she said. “She walked over and handed me her flowers. Little white carnations, from the grocery in De Smet. She said, here, Dottie, you’re the bride now.”

I put my hand over my mouth.

“And you know what I did?” Dorothy said.

“You gave them back.”