The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [92]
“John’ll mind if he wakes up and finds you gone,” I said. “But I’m glad for the company.” He thumped his tail. “You’re a good dog. Should’ve named you Faithful.” And then I thought about Isaac being gone when I needed him home. I thought about his plans to leave us this winter, and how I’d be doing my own leaving too.
With my foot, I pushed the rocker back and forth, trying to ease the ache in my back. Things could go bad if Mary had to deliver the baby. She had a steady hand and a stout heart, but all the same, she was just a child. Grown women had been known to panic if a birthing went wrong. If something bad happened, it’d go rough on Mary. It’d be the kind of thing she’d never forget. Or forgive herself for.
Through watery eyes, I saw my wedding dress that I’d left on the bed. I got up, picked it up, and sat back down. I blew the thin layer of gray dust that coated it. The white scalloped lace collar was so pretty, I’d nearly forgotten. And it hadn’t yellowed at all. That would please Mama no end. She had made the lace.
My back throbbed. I shifted my weight some, grateful that the labor pains had stopped. Everything is all right, I told myself. The baby was waiting on Isaac.
I fingered the lace collar, following the scalloped edging. On the very first Saturday afternoon after Isaac had agreed to marry me, I had met Mama and Sue on the corner across the street from the Palmer Hotel. They laughed when they saw me coming. Like them, I had just gotten off work and I was nearly running with excitement, darting around knots of slow-moving people, the cloth handbag with my weekly pay in it pressed to my bosom. I smiled to think what Mrs. DuPree would do if she knew how I planned to spend the money. At the street corner, the three of us caught the trolley that carried us to Green’s Fine Fabrics. There we studied books of dress patterns and fingered bolts of material.
I wanted my wedding dress to be a light blue, and Sue thought I looked best in yellow. It was Mama what settled the matter. “You’ll want something dark for the train ride,” she said. “The soot will be something awful, going all that way.” After a while, the three of us settled on a plum-colored satin.
Every Sunday afternoon for five weeks we sewed in the front room of our two-bedroom rented house. Mama did the lace work while Sue worked the Singer machine making the skirt. I stitched by hand the bodice with its full, pleated sleeves and made the buttonholes that ran down the back. While we worked, we talked about that morning’s preaching, and who was in church and who wasn’t. We talked about who had the fanciest hat with the most feathers, and who was making eyes at who. We talked about the people at our jobs, and we talked about all of Sue’s suitors and how Paul Anders kept asking her to marry him. We talked about what I needed for my own kitchen. But the one thing we didn’t talk about was how far away I was going or how lonesome it’d be for those left behind.
On my wedding day—a Wednesday—Mama and Sue helped me get into my dress. “Just look at you,” Mama told me. “You’re as pretty as a picture.”
“Prettier,” Sue said.
They kissed me good-bye; we told each other again that we’d write every Sunday. Mama cried some, and then they went on to work at the hotel. That left just me and Dad in the kitchen, with neither of us having much to say. My traveling trunk filled with clothes, linens, dishes, and pans sat by the back door. I was too nervous to eat the breakfast I’d cooked, but Dad’s appetite was good and he ate in a hurry. After he mopped up the last of his eggs with a crust of bread, he left without saying a word and limped back to his bedroom. I washed up the dishes, wearing my apron to cover my dress. I got weepy thinking how it was the last time I’d wash Mama’s dishes. I was drying the last one when Dad came in wearing his Sunday suit, his gray hair combed. “What’re you looking at?” he said.
“Nothing.” I swallowed. Then, “You.”
“Isn’t this your wedding day?” I nodded, all at once smiling, happy, not minding his gruffness. I hadn’t figured