WHEN THINGS GO SOUTH

Chapter 3 - White Wedding

"Why buy the cow when you get the milk free? That's probably what that little weasel is thinking." Momma tilts her head toward the backseat, "And Riley Blair, if that's how he feels, then you tell him to kiss your ass; you don't need him! We will help you raise this baby. If he don't want to get married, then you be done with him."

Momma is wound up tighter than her Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. Daddy Number Seven just drives and nods his head in agreement; he knows better than not to. I just sit quietly in the back seat, rolling my eyes to the Heavens.

We pull into the gravel drive at Nick's house. An old white two-story house with crumbling concrete steps that looks dreadfully gloomy from the outside and about the same in. Smoke rolls from the chimney and the doorway, where Nick's father Marlin is standing on the top step with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth while holding the screen door open for us. Marlin has this tough guy stern look, an Army man with silver hair and a flat top haircut. Hard-ass type with a few Army tattoos. A very blunt man.

"Well, Hell, I knew we shouldn't have got Nick that sports car. It must have really turned the ladies on." As he gives me a wink and Daddy Number Seven a nudge in the gut with his elbow.

Nick's mom Nancy stood beside him. Short curled gray hair, a gray button-up oxford tucked in a long-pleated polyester skirt, and glasses that hung from a chain around her neck. Nick's parents were quite different from mine. Nick's mother was a reserved, educated, and solemn woman. They were also more than a few years older than my parents.

With lips perched, Nancy hushes him with, "Marlin, that's enough."

Marlin laughs, "Oh, I'm just bullshitting 'em, y'all come on in."

Momma walks in the door very confident, in her tight jeans and even tighter cashmere sweater covered by her Aigner leather jacket. With her frosted Farrah Fawcett-styled hair, pink rose-colored cowgirl boots, gorgeous green eyes, and thousand-watt smile, Momma was beautiful, she always had been. Unfortunately, along with beauty came a lot of propositions. I think her looks were what got her in trouble a lot. Daddy Number Seven was a bit more reserved. A cross between Robert Duvall and a used car dealer, with his pocket protector, swooped hair, and Members-only jacket.

Nick and I sit and watch TV as our parents decide our futures over some country ham and biscuits, a few RC colas, and a game of Rook at the card table.

At one point, Momma turns to me and asks, "Do ya'll wanna get married?" We both just kind of look like I dunno and shrug our shoulders.

Of course, as a little girl, I dreamed of a beautiful wedding. What girl doesn't? I had sat glued to the TV set on July 29th, 1981, with hearts in my eyes as I watched Princess Diana and Prince Charles's wedding, dreaming of a day like this of my own. A fairytale wedding in a designer taffeta gown. Riding off into eternal bliss in a horse-led carriage.

Not in a maternity dress from Sears and Roebuck, in a beat-up Chevy Impala, to the Holiday Inn at the next town down the road.

Our parents decide then and there we will be married on February 23rd, which gives us only about six weeks to plan, but at least I won't be showing.

I won't be getting that dream wedding; it's not dream circumstances. There will be no Cathedral; we will be lucky to even have a church wedding; we are apparent sinners. Depending on how Pa takes the news, my dream wedding may be reduced to the local VFW if they can squeeze us in before bingo. I have to muster up the courage to shamefully ask Pa to marry us at his church.

Thankfully, Pa agrees to marry us at the little church he pastors. The same little church I had found the Lord at. Pa says just because I have backslid, it don't mean I am banned from the Lord's house; I just need to be renewed up. Granny Ree agrees, quoting Jesus himself, "It is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners."