Everybody in town knew what was happening over at First Methodist an hour from now. There would be lots of reporters at the church, and Tess had no desire to encounter her groom for the first time with shutters clicking from fifteen directions. So she and Kenny had made their secret plans.
She took Mary’s hands, and said, “You understand, don’t you, Momma? Kenny and I just want a few minutes alone together before we go to church.”
“Well, of course. You got a right to do your wedding day the way you want. I’ll get my purse, then I’m all ready to go.”
While she went off to the bedroom, walking with scarcely a visible hitch these days, Tess and Renee exchanged a sentimental smile.
“Thanks so much for being with me this morning,” Tess said, going to hug Renee, who rubbed her back.
“I wouldn’t have missed it.”
“You sure it’s okay that I didn’t ask you to be my bridesmaid?”
“Absolutely. You picked the perfect ones.”
“Thanks for understanding.”
“All ready,” Mary announced, returning. “Let’s go, Renee, and leave these two to do whatever it is they want to do.”
At the back door, Renee paused, the last one out, and looked back at the bride. “It is the happiest day of her life, and it’s no secret who’s going to be her favorite son-in-law from now on. We’re all happy about it, Tess.”
“Thanks, sis.”
They went out and the house grew quiet. In the alley the car doors slammed, an engine started, then disappeared. The only sound in the kitchen came from the humming of the clock. Tess went to the window above the sink and looked out. The back lawns were neatly mowed. Heavy red tomatoes hung on the vines in the garden. Up the side of Kenny’s garage a huge purple clematis vine cascaded with brilliant blooms. The sun shone on his back porch where she and he had played together when they were children. His garage door was up, and inside she could see the tail end of a brand-new Mercedes she’d bought him for a wedding gift. It was a smart buy, he’d told her, for it could be legally written off on her taxes as a business expense, since he was now a vice president of Wintergreen Enterprises.
She smiled, realizing how perfectly his life was meshing with hers, and how much help he’d be to her in the future.
Then she checked the time again, and got her gardenia out of the refrigerator.
“Well, here goes,” she whispered to herself, and headed from the room. But reaching the doorway, she turned to scan her mother’s kitchen one last time as a single woman. She had no inkling what prompted her to pause and look back, but doing so, she experienced an unexpected bolt of nostalgia, and thought, Let it never change, let me always come home and find it just this way, plastic doily and all.
Outside on the stoop the sun was hot on her head as she paused and looked across the alley. It took less than five seconds before Kenny appeared on his back step, too, dressed in a gray tux with a cutaway jacket and a pleated white shirt. Even from this distance, his appearance made her heart race, this man she’d taken for conservative, who was constantly surprising her with his clothes.
They stood for a moment, studying each other across the depth of two backyards, recalling a dawn with the sun coming up through the trees behind him, and the sprinkler fanning the garden while Tess jumped the rows of wet vegetables, barefooted, and Kenny stood watching her with a cup of coffee in his hand and his bare toes curled over the back step.
No bare toes today. Instead, two enchanted people in their wedding finery, initiating a ceremony of their own design.
They walked slowly down their respective steps, across the backyards, between patches of summer grass. Instead of an organ, the cicadas piped a song from somewhere among the rhubarb leaves. Instead of bridesmaids, a pair of white cabbage moths fluttered along in front of Tess. Instead of an aisle, a coarse concrete sidewalk; and instead of an altar, an alley.
They met in it, dead center, halfway between his house and hers, where they had met so many times during the weeks when they were falling in love.
The sun lit his dark, neatly combed hair and put little flames into her red curls. It picked out the intensity in his eyes and threw it into hers.
He took her hands lightly, the single oversized gardenia falling back over her knuckles.
“Hello,” he said softly.
“Hello.”
“Happy wedding day.”
“Happy wedding day to you, too.”
“You look …” He searched for a word. “Radiant.”
“I feel radiant. And you look exquisite.”
“I feel like the luckiest man on earth.”
They smiled some, then he asked, “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“So am I. Go ahead.”
She dropped her gaze momentarily, composing her words, then looked up into his eyes.
“I, Tess McPhail …”
“I, Kenneth Kronek …”
“Take you, Kenneth Kronek …”
“Take you, Tess McPhail …”
“To be my beloved husband for the rest of my life.”
“To be my beloved wife for the rest of my life.”
“To love you as I love you today …”
“To love you as I love you today …”
“Renouncing all others …”
“Most definitely renouncing all others …”
“And we will share all that we have, and all that we will have … the joys and the sorrows, the work and the play, the worries and the wonders … and your daughter … and my mother … and all the love and commitment it will take to see them through the years ahead …”
“And we’ll be kind to each other …”
“Yes. And respectful …”
“And I swear to love you, sustain you, be your strength when you need it and your ease when you need it.”
“And I’ll do the same for you.”
They tried to think of anything they’d missed. He thought of something. “And I renounce all jealousy … of your fans and their demands on you.”
She smiled, and said, “Why, Kenny, how sweet of you.”
“That might be my hardest part,” he admitted.
She rubbed his knuckles, and replied, “For me, too … being away from you.”
They paused once again, adoring each other without smiles, because the moment seemed too sacred to diminish with smiles.
“I love you, Kenny.”
“I love you, Tess.”
“Forever.”
“Forever.”
He leaned down and kissed her lightly while bluebottle flies buzzed nearby and the white summer sun lifted the scent of her gardenia and mixed it with the dusty smell of the graveled alley.
When he straightened, they smiled fully, as they had not earlier.
“I feel as married as I’ll ever feel,” she said.
“So do I. Now let’s go do it for everybody else.”
It was, to the surprise of many, one of the most modest weddings ever held at First Methodist. Some expected luminaries from the recording industry to sing at the ceremony. Instead, only the First Methodist choir sang, directed by Mrs. Atherton, who was back as their leader. Some expected an entire chorus line of attendants, but there were only two. Some expected the attendants to be both male and female. But tradition was shot to the four winds when Casey Kronek and Mary McPhail, smiling fit to kill, each walked up the aisle solo. And when the bride appeared, everyone craned around, supposing she’d be decked out in several thousand dollars’ worth of wedding finery shaped like a mushroom cloud. Instead she wore the simple white dress and the simpler ring of girlish flowers in her hair.
She smiled at Kenny all the way up the aisle. He was waiting at the chancel with Reverend Giddings, and when Giddings asked, “Who gives this woman to be married to this man,” Mary answered first.
“I do.”
Followed by Casey, “And I do.”
Though smiles were exchanged behind them, and a soft ripple
of amusement lifted from the congregation, everyone thought, how perfect that these two should give their public blessings to this match, because everyone in that church knew how Kenny doted on Mary, and took care of her, and how she’d practically been a grandma to the girl since Casey’s own grandma had died. And who but the famous Tess McPhail would have had the temerity to have two women as attendants at her wedding and get by with it?
She spurned tradition once again at the traditional giving of the roses. Normally the parents of the nuptials couple received them. But while Kenny gave one to Mary, Tess gave one to Casey, and as their cheeks touched, most eyes in the house got misty.
The wedding guests had one more surprise in store when, after the exchange of vows, the bride took a microphone and sang to her husband. They shouldn’t have been surprised by the time Casey took another microphone and sang backup harmony. After all, what about this wedding ceremony matched preconceived notions? Furthermore, the word had spread that the song was co-written by the new “mother-daughter” duo, and that it would be released in the fall as the title song from Tess’s new album.
There was, at the Kronek—McPhail wedding, one element of glamour. Among the guests were a bunch of Tess’s friends who had flown in from Nashville. Their names were household words, and their faces were recognized in airports and restaurants wherever they went. They were the crème de la crème of the Nashville country music scene, the stars whom Tess numbered among her friends.
When the bride and groom swept jubilantly out of the church to form the receiving line, those stars took their turns just like all the other guests, being dismissed by the ushers and congratulating the newlyweds while the towns-folk from Wintergreen grew rattled, being elbow to elbow with them.
While their presence at the wedding was notable, the presence of another was even more notable. Faith had come. There had been a question about whether or not to invite her, but in the end Kenny and Tess had decided that, given how important she’d been in Kenny’s life, she certainly should be asked.
She was every inch a lady, doing the proper thing as she came through the receiving line, taking Tess’s hand and smiling. “Congratulations, Tess, you look lovely. Thank you for inviting me.” She took Kenny’s hand, too, and kept her smile intact, giving away nothing but pleasure in being here, no matter what heartbreak might be lingering. “Kenny, I hope you and Tess will be very, very happy together.”
The bride and groom rode in a white limo out to Current River Cove where their reception was little different than hundreds of others that had been held there. The fried chicken dinner was geared for down-home tastes. The dance, however, turned out to be the talk of the year. Tess’s own band played, and a slough of Nashville stars got up, one after another, and sang their hits for the dancers. In the middle of this spontaneous show, Judy got huffy and stalked off to the ladies’ room to fluff her hair and fume.
“Showing off all her famous friends!” she hissed to two women who were in there freshening their lipstick. “It’s sickening.”
Judy would never accept the facts of Tess’s life: many of her friends were famous, just as she was. Many of them were idolized on albums and magazine covers just as she was. Many were millionaires. But for Tess not to invite them today would have been a snub. And for them to adjust their schedules to be here was a measure of their affection for her.
Vince Gill and Reba McEntire were singing together on his old classic “Oklahoma Swing” when Judy came out of the washroom. From the dance floor, Tess saw her and said to her new husband, “There’s Judy … in one of her jealous snits.”
He smoothly turned her so her back was to Judy and said, “You know what, darlin’? You’re never going to change Judy.”
“I know that by now.”
“And you’re not going to let her ruin your wedding day, are you?”
She flashed him an honest smile without undertones.
“Absolutely not.” She had come to accept Judy’s insecurities as the root of her jealousy, and to pity her instead of getting angry. For there, on the other side of the dance floor, was her sister Renee dancing with Jim, and Renee counterbalanced all of Judy’s jealousy with a sure and constant love that looked beyond superficiality. And there, too, was Momma ….
Flirting with Alan Jackson!
She was sitting at a table surrounded by her friends, who were all making a big fuss over him and gathering enough fodder for a year’s worth of card-party table talk.
“Look at Momma,” Tess said.
Kenny looked. And chuckled. “I think she’s half-shnockered up on champagne again.”
“Six months ago I’d probably have gone over and apologized to Alan, but now I don’t see any need to apologize for anything on Momma’s behalf. She is what she is, and I love her.”
She told Mary as much soon after that when they went to wish her good-bye and sneak away without farewells to the crowd in general. Mary said, “Now, you kids come home soon as you can.”
“We will.”
“And I’ll keep an eye on Casey while she’s here.” Casey was staying in Wintergreen for a week before driving Kenny’s new Mercedes back home to Nashville.
“Thanks, Momma,” Tess said as they exchanged a kiss.
“Thanks, Momma,” Kenny said, and made Mary all emotional, calling her that for the first time.
She grabbed his face in two hands and planted a kiss on his cheek. “You dear thing,” she said. “I’ll bet your own Momma is smiling down from heaven at this very moment. Now go on, take your wife and go.”
They found Casey and told her they were slipping away. Kenny handed her the car keys, and said, “Be careful with my new Mercedes.”
She gave him a smooch on the cheek, and said, “Be careful with my new mother.” Then she added, “ ‘Bye, Mother Mac, have a nice honeymoon.”
On their way to the airport—lo and behold—the limo got caught behind Conn Hendrickson’s lumbering fuel oil truck.
Tess threw her head back against the leather seat and laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Just like the day I came back home last April. I followed Conn’s truck all the way around the town square. That was the day I met you.”
“Mmm … not exactly,” he added.
“Again,” she amended.
“There ya got it.”
Her private plane was waiting at Three Rivers Airport and flew them to Nashville, where her Z was waiting at another airport.
She gave her hubby a smirk, and asked, “How’d you like to drive?”
“Wow,” he said drolly, accepting the keys, “this is really true love after all, then, isn’t it?”
Some would have thought that a millionaire like Tess McPhail Kronek would choose to spend her wedding night in the fanciest bridal suite of the most exotic city in the world, but she’d spent enough time in hotels that home was her idea of luxury.
Besides, though Kenny’s things had been moved in, he had never moved in. They’d decided for several reasons that he would not sleep there until their wedding night. One reason was Casey, whose respect he still valued, who lived down the hall and should not witness a bad example, no matter what he’d been wearing that morning in L.A. Another reason was the “rags” and their trade gossip, ever watchful of people of Tess’s fame, just waiting to print a dirty headline. But most importantly there were Tess and Kenny themselves, who chose to have a wedding night complete with anticipation.
When they reached her house, Kenny said, “May I do the honors, Mrs. Kronek?”
And she answered, “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Mr. Kronek.”
When he carried her inside, the built-in sound system was playing softly—not country or rock, but Debussy’s “Reverie.” They paused to kiss just inside the entry before he set her down and they went exploring. Maria had left walnut chicken breasts in brandy sauce ready to warm in the oven along with a crisp French boule, and an artichoke-heart salad in the refrigerator. A table for two was set
with candles and a single white rose floating in a glass compote. In the living room they found some wedding gifts piled up on the piano bench, and upstairs, the double doors to the master bedroom suite stood open, while inside, on a dresser, a bouquet of red roses filled the room with scent.
Kenny stopped in the doorway, holding Tess’s hand.
He was filled with a sense of excess that seemed, momentarily, beyond accepting.
“I can’t believe I’m going to live here with you.”
“Sometimes I can’t believe it either.”
“That we’re this lucky … that we have all this.”
“And love, too. It does seem a bit much, doesn’t it?”
But it was theirs to accept, and they stepped inside to begin their life together.
Later, when they’d consummated their unity in bed, and eaten Maria’s delicious walnut chicken, and taken a swim in the pool, and opened the pile of wedding gifts, they were sitting on the floor among the wrappings with one small gift unopened.
“Momma said to open it last,” Tess said.
“Well, go ahead,” he said.
She began pulling at the Scotch tape. “What do you suppose it is?”
“I don’t know.” It was no bigger than a billfold. When the wrapping was off, she opened the end flap of a small cardboard box and tipped it till something slid out into her hand: a picture frame, and in it a photograph of Tess and Kenny at about ages two and three, eating watermelon on the back steps of Mary’s house, their knees together, feet bare, toes hooked over the edge of the step, faces sunburned and dirty, as if they’d been hard at play just before the picture was taken.
Tess’s reaction to it was as emotional as Mary’s had been to the announcement of their wedding plans.
“Oh,” she said, a hand going to her lips and tears stinging her eyes as she turned the picture his way. “Oh, look …”