Forty Chairs Under the Cottonwood

Emily told me about the first time she said no. It was at Christmas, at Bonnie’s apartment, the day after Josh gave her the ring.

Bonnie already had a yellow legal pad out and was writing a guest list.

“I told her, Grandma, we want it small,” Emily said. “She patted my hand like I was eight years old and said, ‘You’ll feel different when you see the club, honey.'”

The second time was in March. Lisa took her to lunch at the Olive Garden on 41st Street and brought a brochure from the club with a white ribbon tied around it.

Emily said no again, kindly, at the table. Lisa cried in the parking lot.

The third time was in June, when Emily found out her mother and grandmother had put down a deposit anyway.

She called me from the break room on her lunch, at three in the morning. I could hear the pop machine humming behind her.

“I said no, Dad. I said it three times. I said it in plain English. And they booked it anyway. Mom says it’s a gift and I’m being ungrateful.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “I want you to do exactly what we said in January. I just need to know you won’t change on me.”

I told her I would not change. Three weeks later, the envelope came.

I called Lisa that night. I sat on the back step with the phone and watched the light go orange behind the cottonwood, and I waited while it rang four times.

“You got it,” she said. She did not say hello.

“I got it,” I said. “Lisa, I never signed anything with that club.”

“You don’t have to sign anything. You’re her father. The bride’s father pays, Roger. That is how it has always been done. My mother says so, and she is right.”

“Your mother didn’t pay for ours,” I said. Then I wished I had not said it, because it was a small thing to say and also true, and those two together make the worst kind of remark a man can make.

There was a long quiet on the line. I could hear Tom in the background saying something low, and Lisa saying, “Not now, Tom.”

“I am trying to give our daughter what I never had,” she said finally. Her voice was very even, which is how I knew she was close to crying. “I would think you, of all people, would understand that.”

“I do understand it,” I said. “But it isn’t what she asked for. She asked for forty chairs under the tree. I told her I would pay for that, and I will. Every bit of it. That’s what I’m paying for.”

“Then you can explain to two hundred people why her father was too cheap to give her a real wedding.”

She hung up before I could answer. I sat on the step until the mosquitoes drove me inside.

I am not a man who likes a misunderstanding left lying around. The next morning I called the club and asked for the events office. A young woman named Megan answered, very polite.

I asked her who was on the contract for the Lindahl and Peterka reception.

She looked it up and told me it was Lisa Kemper. The deposit was hers, and so was the balance.