The Bouquet I Handed My Mother

The Dance

Through the whole song, my father held both of my hands. Not one hand on my back the way you are supposed to. Both hands, his big rough milking hands, squeezing mine.

Every few bars, he would squeeze again. Like he was telling me something he did not have words for. Squeeze. And a little while later, squeeze again.

“You all right, Daddy?” I whispered.

“Hush,” he said. His eyes were wet. “I’m dancing.”

I put my forehead against his shoulder. I smelled the outlet-store suit and, underneath it, very faintly, the barn, because no amount of soap gets that all the way off a dairyman, and I would not want it to.

When I was six, I used to stand on his boots in the milking parlor while he worked, and he would walk me around between the stalls like we were dancing.

I had not thought of that in twenty years. I thought of it then.

“You did a good thing,” he said, very low, into my hair. “A good thing, Brynnie. Your granddaddy should have done it twenty-eight years ago.”

I could not answer him. I just held on.

What Mama Did

The song ended. People clapped, uncertain, the way you clap when you do not know yet what you are clapping for.

And I turned around.

My mother was standing exactly where I had left her, holding the bouquet in both hands against the front of that white satin gown.

She had not moved. She was looking down at the roses, and tears were running off her chin onto the ribbon.

She was not making a sound. Mama has never made a sound when she cries. I learned that when Granny died.

Then a chair scraped.

Aunt Dot pushed back from the family table and stood up. She did not say anything.

She just walked the three steps to her little sister and put both arms around her, bouquet and all, and held on.

Mama put her face down on Dot’s shoulder. And I heard her say, muffled, “I’m sorry. Oh, Dot, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” Dot said, loud enough for half the barn to hear. “You waited twenty-eight years, that’s all. You just picked a fool of a day to stop waiting.”

Somebody at the next table laughed, softly, but it was not mean. It was the kind of laugh that lets the air back into a room.

And then, all through the barn, I heard people start to breathe again.

Mama lifted her head. She looked at me over Dot’s shoulder, with mascara down both cheeks and my bouquet crushed against her chest.

“Brynn,” she said. “Baby. I’m so ashamed.”

“I know, Mama,” I said. “It’s all right. We’ll talk about it later. Tonight, you just hold on to those.”