A Wedding Invitation (19 page)

I relent. “Sure, you can push me in the swing.” I climb on one of the metal seats, plant my feet on the ground, and wait for him to get behind me. His hands are gentle yet strong against my back. I watch the ground grow farther and farther away from my feet, the breeze cooling my moist and warm skin. Suddenly, I miss and long for a world of yesterdays; I wish to be a child in a swing again, with my daddy pushing me.

“I love you to the Milky Way and back, Sam
.
”

The swing slows as the pushes from Carson become less frequent. Soon, my feet are once more on the surface of the playground.

“What’s wrong?” he asks when I don’t get off.

“Just thinking of my dad and how we’d go to this park in Falls Church.”

“And there was a playground with a swing set?” Carson’s warm tone makes me nostalgic for a man whose love I never doubted.

“Yes. Rickety and old, but Dad pushed me high.” Getting off the swing, I go to Carson’s side. “I guess you never stop missing those who’ve died.”

Carson’s embrace is powerful and catches me off guard. I resist the urge to bury my nose in his shoulder, to breathe in the fabric-softener scent that clings to his T-shirt and bawl. Pulling away, I put my hands in my pockets.

“I’ll race you,” he says.

“To where?”

Pointing ahead, he says, “That tree.”

“Which one? The tiny one by the path or that larger one?”

Still pointing, he says, “That big one on the right. See it?”

Without hesitating, I take off running, knowing I’ll hear him complain that I’ve cheated.

Sure enough, he cries, “That’s not fair, Sam!” Then he is at my side, both of us racing toward the tree. Laughing, we touch the thick, gnarly trunk. “I won,” I boast.

“You are disqualified.”

“No.” I catch my breath.

He playfully touches my chin. “You are a cheater.”

No, I want to say as we head back to the parking lot because it is almost time for his shift at the station. You are the cheater. You will not give me a straight answer. Instead, I ask if he remembers the surprise birthday party I gave for him when he turned twenty-four. I had the mess hall bake a chocolate cake and bought six flavors of ice cream, including fruit ones made of mango and ube.

“That was a nice surprise,” he says as his eyes graze my face. “You were good to me there.”

Back at Dovie’s, I help with dinner preparation, chopping vegetables for Brunswick stew. Beanie has the broth seasoned and simmering as I add onions, potatoes, and carrots. She browns cubes of beef in a skillet and then spoons the beef into the pot with the vegetables.

With slices of buttered oatmeal bread, we fill up on the stew, talking about butterflies and the possibility of creating a new brochure for Dovie with the pictures I’ve taken of the insects.

“I want to have something nice to hand out to folks who want to hire me out,” my aunt explains.

“You don’t charge enough,” says Beanie. “For all you do, you should have higher fees.”

Little comes home on her bike at nine thirty, and we warm her up a bowl of stew. Slowly, in her halting manner, she tells us about her day at Wendy’s, complaining about an irate customer who turned his Frosty over onto the floor and then demanded a refund. Dovie rubs her feet as Little cries.

Dovie soothes the woman’s feet and tries to ease her mind. “Sometimes people are already angry when they come into a store. Something completely unrelated to you has made them feel ugly. So they act mean. You have to believe that it wasn’t your fault.”

I agree. Working in retail, I do know this happens. Women angry about jobs or spouses, or lack of jobs and spouses. They come into the shop hoping an afternoon spending spree will make them feel better, but I know no satin blouse or black party dress can permanently remove weeks of tension.

“Got bunions,” says Little, the words slurring into each other. “They hurt like fire.”

“Need my herbal balm?” asks Beanie. She opens a cabinet above the sink.

Little holds up a hand. “No, none of that for me, thank you. I’m allergic to it, I think.”

I peer into the dark cabinet, wanting to see what Beanie’s herbal balm looks like, but I only see a bottle of Dawn dish soap.

Soon Dovie and Little join Pearl in the den to watch a movie. I take a seat on the couch by Pearl, who is crocheting a turquoise bootie. I know she completed the matching one earlier today before her nap. This set is for her great-grandchild, due after Christmas. The movie has James Dean in it, and I watch until Beanie calls me into her room. “Hurry, Sammie girl, hurry, hurry!”

I leap up the stairs and enter her room just as the voice on the radio says, “So here it is. For Samantha.” Then the music plays, and of course I recognize it: “Still Crazy After All These Years.”

Beanie has flopped onto her bed, her dark hair a stark contrast to the white pillowcase. She watches me as the words fill her room.

“ ‘I met my old lover on the street today. She seemed so glad to see me, I just smiled.’ ”

Beanie shows an ample smile as I stand at her door and listen.

When the song ends and a commercial for tires comes on, Beanie turns down the volume to her radio and says, “You didn’t tell me you were in love.”

I’m admiring the candles she’s made. She has six of them in candleholders on a shelf in her bookcase. Last summer when I came to visit, she taught Dovie and me how to create homemade candles from beeswax. I bend over to sniff a thick one with a strong gardenia scent. “That one smells great.” I step back and finger each candle. “These are so pretty.”

“Ignoring me isn’t any good.”

“I’m not ignoring you.”

“Well?”

“We aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend if that’s what you mean.”

Beanie raises an eyebrow and says, “Then why did he choose that song to dedicate to you?”

“It was one we sang. Together. Once.”

Beanie lets out her signature huff. “What else can you tell me?”

I know I could say that I think he played Paul Simon’s song because of today and how we acted crazy at the park. I could tell Beanie that, but I don’t.

Muttering, Beanie says she’s tired and going to sleep. She pulls back the quilt on her bed, exposing sheets with a floral pattern. Fluffing her pillow, she says, “I was hoping for a nice love story.”

“There isn’t one.”

I leave her room as she calls out, “Radio station’s number is 103.9 in case you want to listen.”

I head to the basement. Dovie comes down the creaking steps with Milkweed to take a load of clothes out of the washer and heave them into the dryer. Once she turns the dryer on, I have to crank up the volume on the radio.

Carson’s voice announces another dedication, this time America’s “I Need You” from Hilly in High Point to her man, Billy.

“Hilly and Billy,” I hear him say. I know he’s trying not to laugh.

Milkweed leaps onto the bed and settles against my arm. As the words and music to the song play, I think of how we made fun of this song in high school, calling it sappy.
“Like the winter needs the spring, you know I need you. . . .”

Now, it rates right up there with Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are,” carrying with it a hope that someday someone will play the lyrics just for me.

twenty-four

I
dream I’m dressed in a feathery blue ao dai and trying to escape from a snorting bulldozer at Washington Park. The bulldozer’s grunts grow less threatening when I hear faint noises overhead. Dovie comes down the steps into the basement with Milkweed trailing after her. I’m not fully awake and still grappling with why I couldn’t outrun the machine. I hear a cheery, “Good morning!” My eyes open just as she hands me the cordless phone.

Milkweed jumps onto my bed, her tail brushing my face.

My fingers wrap around the receiver as the soles of Dovie’s slippers scuff up the stairs. “Hello?” Clearing my voice, I try again, “Hello.”

“Good morning.” Carson’s voice is like candy.

“Hey.” I push Milkweed’s tail off my nose. “What’s up?”

“Lien wants us to come over to the restaurant.”

“Again?”

“She wants to see you before you go.”

I stretch my legs and look at the digital clock radio Dovie placed on the counter near the dripping faucet. Eight fifteen. “I’ll be here all week,” I say, and then regret that I admitted that to him.

“Great! She’ll be glad to see you many times while you’re in town, I’m sure.”

“It’s Tuesday, right?”

“Yeah.”

I yawn and then clear my throat as Milkweed nestles against my thigh and lets out a purr. “So what are you doing today?”

“Laundry. Playing the sax. I need to practice a piece I’m supposed to play next Sunday at my church.” As he speaks of his saxophone, I can almost hear the tunes he played at the camp, and once more I know I must safeguard my heart.

“Where do you live?”

“I bought a house here a year ago.” As I’m imagining what type of house Carson would live in, he says, “I work the afternoon shift at the station today. How about dinner?”

“What?”

“Can I pick you up for dinner tonight?”

“I don’t—”

“How about six-thirty?”

“I don’t really—”

“Great! I’ll see you then.”

I start to protest, but he’s already hung up.

Milkweed closes her eyes as I shake my head. Just who does he think he is? Aloud I gripe, “What if I had plans?” Stroking the cat’s head, I tell her, “I could be busy tonight. Do I seem like the type of girl who would just drop everything for a man?”

The cat raises her head as though she’s going to tell me what she thinks, and for a second I wish she could. Her gaze darts toward the radio alarm clock. She probably wants to say,
Be sure to tell him how much the song dedication meant to you last night. I saw you smiling. Wasn’t that the first time anyone has ever dedicated a song on the radio to you?

He takes me to Old Salem. I’m amused that someone who lives in this tourist town actually goes to this old Moravian community. A friend of mine from James Madison grew up in Las Vegas and claimed he hated going to the Strip. “Tourists are always pushing and congesting the place,” he said.

But Carson doesn’t seem to mind that there are plenty of tourists here in Old Salem. He walks along the cobblestone streets comfortably, not bothered like I am by a couple with a double stroller stopping right in front of us, blocking our path.

The woman points to a house that belonged to a tinsmith and is now open for the public to view. She shouts, “I thought you wanted to go in here now.”

“No, I never said that.” The man has walked past the store.

“Yes, you did,” she continues loudly.

“I said I was hungry and wanted to eat.”

“No, you said we’d eat later.”

Meanwhile, their two kids in the stroller both start to cry, and the smallest one flings her stuffed bear onto the street, the bear hitting a passerby in the shin.

Carson guides me past the whole scene as I shake my head in disbelief.

He waits as I pause to watch a gentleman by a candle shop put on a demonstration of dipping string into hot wax to form layers for a tapering candle. I think of how Beanie showed us how to do this ancient art at Dovie’s kitchen table.