The Bouquet I Handed My Mother

The Next Dance

The DJ, who by now I think deserved a raise, played something slow by Alan Jackson. And my father let go of my hands and walked over to my mother.

He stood in front of her in his gray suit with no tie. He did not say a word about the dress, not then, not that night. He held out his hand.

“Lorna,” he said. “Would you dance with me?”

Mama looked at him like she did not understand the question. She looked down at the bouquet.

Dot reached over and took it out of her hands, gently, and said, “Go on. I’ll hold it.”

So my mother put her hand in my father’s hand and let him walk her out onto the floor.

And they danced in the middle of that tobacco barn under the string lights, for the first time at any wedding, I realized, as the bride and groom.

I was standing next to Austin by then, with his arm around me. I watched Daddy lean down and say something in Mama’s ear.

I watched her laugh, one short surprised laugh, and put her face against his chest.

Later, a long time later, I asked Daddy what he said to her.

He was out by the bulk tank again, checking the temperature on the gauge. He did not look up.

“I told her she looked just the way she did at twenty-one,” he said. “Which is the truth. She did.”

What 180 People Saw

I will not pretend that everyone in that barn walked away thinking only kind thoughts.

People talked. Of course they talked. A mother of the bride in a white floor-length gown is the kind of thing a small town chews on for a long time.

For weeks afterward, I would hear about it in line at the Kroger.

The women at Mama’s cafeteria talked. I know because one of them told me so herself, at the bank, while she was in for a car loan.

“We all just about fell over,” she said, “when Lorna came down that aisle.”

And Mama heard it. She heard every word of it, I’m sure, at the steam table and the church fellowship supper and the beauty shop.

She did not hide from any of it. She went to work every day and made the rolls on Thursday.

That was her consequence, and she knew it. She had stood up in front of 180 people in a dress that was not hers to wear, and every one of those 180 people had seen it.

But every one of them had also seen something else. They had seen whom the bride gave her bouquet to. And I found that, in town, that was the part people told.

“That was the sweetest thing I ever saw,” the cafeteria lady said at the bank, before she signed.

“I told my husband. I said, that girl could have torn her up, and she gave her mama the flowers instead.”

The Week After

Austin and I spent four days at a cabin in the Smokies. We hiked, and slept late, and ate pancakes at a place in Pigeon Forge with a line out the door.

I did not think about the dress much. I did not want to.

On the Saturday after we got home, I was in the kitchen of our little rental house in town, unpacking wedding presents, when I saw Mama’s car pull into the driveway.

She came up the porch steps slowly, carrying a garment bag over one arm and an envelope in her hand.

She knocked, though she has never knocked at a door of mine in her life.

I let her in. She stood in my kitchen in her cafeteria clothes, the black pants and the gray polo shirt, with her honey-brown hair still flat from the hairnet, and she looked about a hundred years old.

“Can I sit down?” she asked.

“Mama, of course you can sit down.”

She sat at my kitchen table. She laid the garment bag over the back of the other chair. Then she set the envelope on the table and pushed it toward me with two fingers.

“Open it,” she said.

Inside was a receipt from a bridal shop in Louisville. One formal gown, white satin, floor-length. $1,940, plus tax. Dated the second week of May.

Underneath the receipt were two hundred dollars in twenties.

“That’s the first two hundred,” Mama said. She did not look at me; she looked at the table.

“I’ll give you two hundred a month out of my check until it’s all paid back. That’s two thousand. I know the tax was more. I’ll pay the tax too.”

“Mama, you don’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I do.” Her voice cracked. “I made you a promise at that table in February, and then I broke it, and then I lied to you about why. I told you money was tight. Money wasn’t tight. I was.”

I did not say anything. I let her talk. I could tell she had been carrying the words around for a week.