The Wedding Song at the Legion Hall

Who was standing by the door

When the lights came back up, I saw her.

Pam was standing just inside the side door. She had washed her face in the Legion bathroom; I could tell by the wet hair at her temples and the mascara gone. She had her purse clutched in front of her in both hands like a girl at her first dance.

I do not know how much of the Sunday video she saw. Enough. Her eyes were red all over again.

Ninety people saw her standing there. I watched it go around the room, table to table, the way news goes around a small town, without anyone saying a word. Some of them looked at her, and some of them very carefully did not.

That was the real price of what she had done, and I think she knew it. She would be hearing about this night at the grocery store and the post office for years. In Benson, things do not get forgotten. They just get quieter.

Arlene was the one who moved. She turned her wheelchair around at the end of the head table, raised one hand, and waved her daughter over, the way you call a child in from the yard.

Pam walked the whole length of that hall. It is not a long room. It looked long that night.

She stopped in front of the head table. She looked at her mother, and then at me, and then at Dave.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Not into a microphone. Just to us, but loud enough for the tables nearby. “Lori, I’m sorry. Dave, I’m sorry. That was a mean thing to do on your night, and you two didn’t deserve it, and the kids didn’t deserve it. I don’t have a good reason. I had a sad one.”

Dave did not say anything right away. Then he stood up and pulled out the empty chair next to his mother.

“Sit down, Pammy,” he said. “Have some cake.”

He had not called her Pammy since they were kids. I knew that, because she told me so later.

She sat. Arlene took her hand and held it in her lap and did not let go.