The Sixty Fifth on the Church Lawn

The flower girl and the bridesmaids

Lottie lives in Mifflintown, it turned out, six blocks from my office. She is 70 now and she still has the solemn face from the picture. She worked forty years in the shirt factory and then at the school cafeteria.

When I told her, she put her hand over her mouth. “I still have the basket,” she said. “Mother kept it in the cedar chest. I’ll bring it.”

Mom’s cousin from Thompsontown said yes before I finished the sentence. Her daughter would drive her.

The friend from the egg route was in a wheelchair now, but her son said he’d bring her if he had to carry her across the lawn himself.

I was keeping a list on the refrigerator. Every name I crossed off, I felt a little lighter.

I didn’t tell Dad anything yet. The doctor had said surprises could upset him, but so could waiting and worrying over a date. Mom and I agreed we’d tell him the week before, and then every morning after that.

What Vonda did

About three weeks after I called the church, my phone rang on a Saturday morning while I was weeding the beans. It was one of Dad’s cousins, the one up near McAlisterville who used to run an Allis Chalmers.

“Meg,” he said, “I wanted to ask you about this anniversary. Your sister called me Thursday.”

I stood up slowly with a handful of pigweed.

“She said she thought it would be hard on Clair,” he said. “Too many people. She said it might be better for him if the old crowd stayed home and let it be small. I didn’t know what to think. I don’t want to make it worse for him.”

I found out that afternoon she had called one more cousin too, a widow over in Richfield, and told her the same thing.

The Richfield cousin said she’d come anyway. The McAlisterville cousin said he’d better stay home, he didn’t want to upset anybody.

I want to be fair to my sister. I don’t believe she did it to hurt me. But she did it.

She went behind my back and behind Mom’s and told people who loved our father to stay away from him on the day he married our mother.

And it was wrong. There isn’t a softer word for it that is also true.

That afternoon I drove over to Vonda’s. She was out in her garden in a straw hat, staking tomatoes. She saw my car and kept on working until I was standing at the end of the row.

“You called the cousins,” I said.

“I did,” she said. She didn’t stop tying. “Somebody had to think about Dad.”

“I am thinking about Dad.”

“No, you are thinking about the party.” She yanked the twine tight. “You’re thinking about the pictures, and everybody saying what a good daughter Meg is. And Dad is going to sit there in front of a hundred people and not know who they are, and every one of them is going to see it.”

She stopped then. She stood there with the twine in her hand, and her chin was going.

“He looked right at me, Meg,” she said. “At Christmas. He looked at me like I was a lady from church. I held his hand when Mom had me. I’m the one who learned to drive the hay wagon so he wouldn’t have to hire a boy. And he called me ma’am.”

“I know,” I said.

“I can’t watch that again,” she said. “Not in front of everybody. I can’t stand there in front of the whole church and watch my father not know my name.”

I understood her then. I did. But understanding her didn’t make it right to tell Dad’s own cousin to stay home.

I didn’t argue. I didn’t tell her she was wrong, though she was.

I reached into my pocket and took out the invitation I’d printed for her, and I set it on top of her fence post with a stone on it so it wouldn’t blow.

“Two o’clock,” I said. “On the lawn. Your chair is at the head table, Von. It’ll be there whether you sit in it or not.”

Then I went home and called the McAlisterville cousin back and told him Dad would be glad to see him, and that I’d save him a seat in the shade.