Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [104]
Sandy added, “The weatherman says it’ll be a fifty percent chance of rain tomorrow.”
“The Lord wouldn’t do that to me,” Mom said. “I’ve been asking for sunshine six months now. He’s promised it to me.”
Sandy grabbed the sides of Mom’s seat and peered around the headrest. “It’s a left here,” she said, pointing.
“I know where I’m going,” Mom snapped. Her hands were tight on the wheel, her knuckles white.
“It will be beautiful,” I said to her when we began unloading at the church. I expected rain, but I wanted to show a sign of solidarity.
“Sandy doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Mom replied. “That woman sits home all day watching the weather channel like it’s the greatest thing since Lawrence Welk.”
Mom: 2; Sunday school women: 0.
I took the boxes she was unloading and followed her across the parking lot, intrigued by this woman who was playing my mother.
The chapel was smaller than I had expected, narrow with a crowded aisle leading to a crowded platform. A stained-glass window featuring the ascension of Christ loomed over the little sanctuary. There was a piano to the right and a pair of candelabras at either side of the communion table. The place might have been pretty but for the garish purple carpet. It smelled musty, with the lingering odor of cleaning detergent used to polish blond wood furniture that had been all the rage in the seventies but now appeared tawdry and worn.
Brian and Marie had arrived earlier with two of her bridesmaids, who were already busy folding bulletins for the next day’s guests. Marie’s father had been charged with setting candles on the windowsills. Cousins were tying bows to every other pew, Marie’s mother following to undo and more perfectly retie every single one.
Within the hour, the rest of the bridal party arrived, the minister second to last, and—to everyone’s surprise—my father last of all.
“Darren,” Mom exclaimed.
I looked at Brian, alarmed. Don’t look at me, he mouthed.
Dad strode to the front of the chapel. He wore sunglasses on his head, sandals on his feet, a tourist stumbling onto what he hoped would be a good beach party. Though I had known there was a chance he would show before the wedding, his presence was scandalous. Perhaps it was the nonchalance of his entrance, the way he so casually interrupted the lives we’d made for ourselves without him.
Mom met him halfway down the aisle. “How are you?” she asked.
“Doing all right.” Chewing his gum, he surveyed the pews, the candelabras, the altar. “The place looks good. Real good.”
“When we didn’t hear from you, we assumed you couldn’t make it.”
Dad said, “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
“Well, you can sit in the back,” Mom instructed. “We’re just getting started.”
He obligingly sat in the very last pew, a safe distance away from conversation with anyone involved in the wedding.
I walked purposefully to his pew. “Anyone sitting here?”
“Hey, sport,” he said, rising to give me a hug.
Tall and thick-shouldered with a mane of white hair that hadn’t diminished over the years, my father was what some women might consider handsome. Brian and I had our father’s bold features: long nose, expressive eyes, full lips. But taking a seat beside him, I couldn’t help noticing he had changed a great deal since I’d last seen him. He was heavier, his waist wider and lower, his now-full cheeks bristled with a pepper-and-salt beard. He was crumpled and weary. Old.
“We’re glad you could make it,” I said.
“I’m real proud of your brother. He’s a fine kid.”
Dad often spoke about us as if gossiping to a neighbor about someone else’s family. It was particularly unnerving when he did this while addressing one of us directly.
The wedding planner corralled the bridesmaids into place at the foyer doors.
“How’s school going?” Dad asked.
I told him that other than the weekly desire to jump off a cliff, I did all right.
“I couldn’t do what you do.” He shook his head wonderingly. “It takes a special kind of person to be a teacher.”
“I’m not a teacher,