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RUTH BAXTER’S CONSIDERED OPINION was that an autumn wedding was more unusual and therefore smarter than a June wedding or even a Christmas wedding, though you had more freedom with a Christmas wedding in choosing the colors of the bridesmaids’ dresses; but if, as Claire insisted, there were only going to be three bridal attendants (you could not say “bridesmaids,” because Lillian was not a “maid”), and four junior bridesmaids (Debbie, Janny, Tina, and Annie), then the color problem was easily solved — autumnal yellows and golds, with a touch of red here and there to go with autumn flowers (“Not the brightest of the year, but very classy,” said Ruth). Ruth’s own marital plans remained unclear, but Claire had become firmer in her identity as the future wife of Dr. Paul Darnell. For one thing, she had gotten fairly adept at her secretarial job, and it seemed silly for Paul to employ his current secretary when Claire could do the work for free; for another, she was almost twenty-four. Even if she got pregnant right away, she would be almost twenty-five when the baby was born, which meant that it might be rather difficult to regain her current figure afterward.
She went in and out of Paul’s house, installing her cookbooks on a shelf in the kitchen, even cleaning the frozen remains of unidentifiable leftovers out of his freezer for when they got back from their Point Clear, Alabama, honeymoon. She spent a morning clearing shelves in his garage, and then went to his bedroom — she just stood in the doorway and looked around, knowing that, in a few weeks, folding, washing, and hanging up all of these articles of clothing that were so redolent of Dr. Paul Darnell would be her job.
She loved him. Her mother was proud of the way she had come around to that — not by means of romance or being swept off her feet, but by means of patience and friendship. After Claire made it clear that she was going to marry Paul, Rosanna said, “Well, he is a diamond in the rough, a very good man deep down, and the children will smooth off the edges.” These days, Rosanna recalled Walter as the opinionated one, the hard-to-please one; though neither Claire nor anyone else remembered the two of them in this way, Claire thought it reassuring that Paul reminded Rosanna of her father. The wedding was set for October 14. Minnie and Lois were putting together the reception, to be held at Joe and Lois’s house, and Annie was training Jesse to carry the rings on a pillow.
Around the first of October, the crying started. Claire and Ruth went to a movie called I Thank a Fool, expecting that Susan Hayward was going to be good, but the movie was irritating and confusing, not sad. Nevertheless, at the point when the villain broke through the fence he was leaning against and fell over the cliff, Claire felt herself seize up, and then there were tears off and on all the way back to the apartment she and Ruth were sharing. They made popcorn, and she forgot about it. In the morning, more tears came when she ran her stocking, and then tears again when, after lunch break, her boss told her that she had to retype a letter she had given him, because she had misspelled “receipt” three times. Two days later, she froze in that weird way again and cried over a chicken sandwich in the commissary, and the day after that, Paul called her late at night, and when he hung up without saying, “I love you,” she cried again, even though he had called her “honey” three times and “sweetheart” once.
Crying was a little time-consuming when you were going to the florist and the bakery and calling the justice of the peace on the phone about last-minute arrangements and reading Lois’s list of what she was making (finger sandwiches with tiny shrimp and rémoulade sauce, Swedish meatballs, sliced apples smeared with blue cheese from Kalona). She cried on the phone with Rosanna while they were talking about where the Darnells were going to stay the weekend; Rosanna was suspicious and reluctant to drop the subject of why she was crying.
Ruth thought the crying was charming and appropriate — she was getting married! She would be with Paul for the rest of her life! That could be fifty or sixty or seventy years, and much sadder if it were not that long than if it was! Obviously, it was sad to leave Ruth herself behind, but Ruth had hope, because there were three men she knew now, and one had gone to Grinnell.
After five days of the crying, she decided that it was just another thing to organize, so she equipped herself with plenty of Kleenex and continued about her business. October 14 barreled toward her; soon enough, Lillian and Arthur and Tim and Debbie and Dean and Tina and Frank and Andy and Janny and Richie and Michael and that woman Nedra, who had to come along, and Henry (no girlfriend) were wandering in and out of Rosanna’s house and Joe and Lois’s house, and there were two boys from the high school, too, whom Minnie had hired to hand around trays, put out chairs, and empty ashtrays. Eloise couldn’t come, but she’d sent a set of dessert plates with seashells painted around the rim that were Claire’s favorite present, and reminded her of that New Year’s trip to California with Granny Elizabeth, who had died this past spring (and the only thing sad about her passing, at almost ninety, was that she had never made it to Hawaii). Claire thought Granny Elizabeth would have said that she had done a good job — just what she herself advised, waiting this long, and choosing Paul.
Debbie got the younger girls dressed, and when they stood up in a row to have their picture taken, Claire thought that the way their velvet dresses shaded in color from green to gold made a beautiful effect. Lillian, Ruth, and Paul’s sister, Irene, looked nice, too, and Lillian, of course, made much of Claire’s own dress — how lovely it looked on Claire; the one thing she, Lillian, would never have in this lifetime was a wedding; of course, the war had made everything different, but what a luxury, and Claire had done such a good job planning all of this — Lillian just kept talking, in spite of the hairpins between her lips, as she buttoned all of the buttons down Claire’s back, and secured her bun and pulled out the curls on either side of her forehead so that they framed her face for when Paul would lift the veil and kiss her. Lillian had never understood the idea of a morning wedding — late-afternoon weddings, like this one, gave you such a warm, cozy feeling.
Joe gave her away. He looked very handsome — Lois had basted some alterations into his rented tux, and he had gotten a good haircut. When they were standing in the vestibule, watching the girls follow Jesse (who did succeed in balancing the rings on the pillow all the way down), he put his hand on her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek and said that he was very proud of her, and then he squared up and off they went, and tears leapt into her eyes when Paul turned and watched her come, smiling happily. Then he grabbed her hand when she got there, as if he might have missed her at the last moment, and so, when it came time to say, “I do,” she said it a little loudly. On the way back up the aisle, she saw that her new in-laws were smiling at her as if they meant it, even Dr. Evan. Then Arthur had to leave, rush back to Washington all of a sudden, but Lillian said that was the Kennedys for you — they always wanted everything right now, no matter how unimportant it was. “If people only knew what they are really like. Shocking.” But then she made a lip-zipping gesture and rolled her eyes.
Lois managed the reception perfectly — the whole house was lit with candles, and there were plates of food everywhere, all of it delicious. And when Claire stood on the landing of Lois and Joe’s staircase, and tossed her bouquet, Debbie made sure to catch it. Moments later, they were off in Paul’s cream-colored Oldsmobile, Dr. and Mrs. Paul Darnell, 1209 Ashworth Road, West Des Moines, Iowa.
1963
