A Wrench Passed Down at the Rehearsal Dinner
I put the wrench in his hand and closed his fingers over it, the way Harold did mine. His hand was shaking. “This was never mine,” I said, low, so only the near seats could hear. “I was holding it for you. I’m sorry I didn’t say so sooner.”
My son looked at the wrench. He looked at the two letters. He looked at me. He said in a cracked voice, “Dad, I don’t.”
“You do,” I said. “You always did.”
I held on to him for a long moment, in a tie I’d knotted in a truck mirror, and I stopped caring who saw.
When I sat down, Pastor Burl cleared his throat and said, to no one in particular, “I believe the salads are ready.” That was the whole ceremony. Nobody stood. Nobody raised a glass. A waiter came around with the water pitcher, and the room found its forks.
Rick did not say a word. I did not look at him, and I decided, sitting there, that I would not. Whatever was going to happen to him would have to happen by itself.
But I saw him in the corner of my eye, his glass halfway to the table, white as a man who has put his hand into a machine he thought was off. He sat through the salads. Between the salad and the prime rib he set his napkin by his plate and went out through the patio doors, and nobody followed him except his wife. Rosemary Whitcomb is a small, quiet woman who has never, to my knowledge, said a harsh word to anybody in public. She touched Megan’s shoulder as she passed.
They did not come back in. Someone said Rick had a headache. Someone else said he had a call.
Megan found me at the coat rack afterward, still in her rehearsal dress. She did not hug me. She stood next to me with her arms crossed tight over herself.
“I knew you worked for Grandpa once,” she said. “I didn’t know about the wrench. Dad always says Grandpa ‘was in implements.'” She looked toward the patio. “Why is Dad like this?”
“Your father was nineteen when I met him, and he got the idea you could be too good to look like his daddy. It’s no excuse. He said a mean thing in front of your whole family, and he ought to answer for it. But a man who says what he said tonight isn’t really talking about Danny.”
“I told him in the hall,” Megan said. “I told him I loved him and I was furious at him. He didn’t say anything.” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen him with nothing to say.”
The wedding was at two the next afternoon, and it was the wedding it was supposed to be. I am not going to tell you it was perfect. Rick stood where he was supposed to stand, in a gray suit, and looked at the front of the church. He did not look at me, and I did not make him.