The wedding was all any of us could talk about once the invitations had arrived. Shiny gold squares of paper with cursive so fancy you had to squint just to read it, tucked inside a white envelope with gold trim, closed with a seal that bore the first lady’s initials, a slanting L propped against a curvy S. The bright invitations bounced light and when we held ours close at coffee hour, the card made our faces glow. We’d all heard secret details about the wedding; Deacon Ray’s wife, Judy, told Flora the cake was from Heaven Sent Desserts, three levels high and rich enough to lose a tooth. Third John told Agnes there would be over a thousand guests at the wedding. At bingo, Cordelia, the church organist, whispered to Betty that the reception would be in the pastor’s own house, servants ushering glass flutes on silver trays to and fro.
You can’t blame us. At our age, we’d seen plenty of weddings, far too many of them, really. Weddings so boring we nearly slipped to sleep before the minister even spoke, weddings between people who had no business even thinking about marrying, who couldn’t bring themselves to share a sandwich, let alone a life. But this wedding, it got us feeling hopeful again. We were generally unimpressed with the stock of young people in our congregation. The boys were sullen and slow, slouching in the pews, tight-mouthed when you tried to speak to them. When we were girls, we knew boys who were Spirit-filled, Bible-quoting believers. (We also knew pool-shooting, cigarette-smoking gamblers, but at least they had enough sense to wear a belt.) Now the girls were even worse. Our mamas would’ve whooped our legs if we’d dared to come to church like these girls, bubblegum-popping and hair-twirling and hip-switching. Anyone knows a church is only as good as its women, and when we all passed on to glory, who would hold this church up? Serve on the auxiliaries board? Organize the Women of Worth conferences? Hand out food baskets during Christmas? We looked into the future and saw the long banquet tables growing dusty in the basement, the women’s Bible studies emptied, assuming these girls didn’t turn the meeting room into a disco hall.
But Aubrey Evans was different. When we’d seen her crying at the altar all those years ago, she’d reminded us of ourselves. Back when we were just girls piling into camp meetings wearing starched calico dresses and white gloves; girls who sang solos and baked sweet potato pies for the church picnic; girls who kneeled in segregated churches, forced to sit off to the side so the white preacher didn’t have to look at us. In her, we saw us, or us as we used to be. Girls who had felt that first spark of a slow love. A pastor’s hand on our forehead and we had fallen, hands back and arms wide and crying out, for the first time, a man’s name. Jesus! And when we’d cried out a man’s name for the second time, it felt like a shadow of that first moment. So even though we hadn’t known where she’d come from, we’d understood why Aubrey Evans couldn’t stop crying when the pastor asked what gift she’d come forward to receive and she whispered, salvation.
—
THE NIGHT SHADI ARRIVED, Nadia’s father took them out to eat at a restaurant at the harbor called Dominic’s. She’d spent all morning searching through her mother’s prayer book. She turned each page slowly, pausing when she spotted her mother’s loopy handwriting scribbled in the margins. Most times, her mother’s blue pen had underlined a word or phrase in the prayer, random, abstract words like peace or refuge. Occasionally, her mother had written notes but those were impossible to understand—under one psalm, she’d jotted down what looked like a grocery list. Nadia wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for—a clue, maybe, but a clue that indicated what? Why her mother had wanted to die? What did she expect to find in the prayer book? A suicide note?
“It makes sense,” Shadi had said, on the ride home from the airport. “Don’t most people leave notes?”
Part of her had always felt relieved that her mother had never left one. In Nadia’s mind, her mother’s suicide had always been impulsive and urgent, a need to die that had blinded her until she could see nothing else. If she’d had time to sit down and write a note, then she would have had enough time to realize that she shouldn’t shoot herself. A note would seem selfish, a desire to justify what she’d already known was a hurtful choice. Still, Nadia had searched the prayer book, hoping to find anything that would help her understand her mother.
At dinner, her father ordered shrimp scampi and bought a bottle of merlot for the table. She didn’t tell him that he’d paired his wine wrong. Her father didn’t drink wine and he went out to nice restaurants like Dominic’s even less. He wanted to impress Shadi, and their chumminess only annoyed her. When she’d brought Shadi home, her father had given him a slow tour around the house, the two men standing almost identically, hands in their jeans pockets. They talked easily about things she didn’t care about—golf, Michigan football—and she stood by awkwardly, listening, as if she were the guest meeting the parent for the first time. Worse, at one point during his tour, her father had gestured to the blank walls.
“Sorry,” he told Shadi. “As you can see, we need to do some redecorating around here.”
Both men had laughed. She’d excused herself from the room. But the more she thought about it, the more incensed she grew, until she was silent and surly at dinner.
“You had no right to do that, you know,” she finally said.
Shadi glanced at her. Her father paused, pasta flopping over the prongs of his fork.
“What?” he said.
“Take her pictures down.”
Her father’s jaw clenched. He set his fork on the edge of his plate.
“Nadia,” he said, “it’s been four years—”
“I don’t care. She’s my mother! How do you think that makes me feel? To walk in and she’s just gone?”
“She is gone,” her father said. “And you’ve been gone too but now you want to tell me how to live in my own house? You think everyone’s life just stands still while you’re away?”
He slowly wiped his mouth with a napkin, then pushed away from the table. She watched him disappear around the corner to the bathroom, hating herself for not keeping her mouth shut. She held her head in her hands and felt Shadi massaging her neck. Later that night, he tiptoed into her bedroom, slipping under the covers. She felt crowded with him squeezed onto her twin bed, but she was too miserable to refuse his company.
“I’m such a bitch,” she said.
“You’re not,” he said. “It’s okay to be angry.”
She felt suddenly annoyed by his patience. He was endlessly reasonable in a way she could never be. Just once, she wished he would get upset at her. Just once, she wished he would see her for who she truly was.
“I fucked the groom,” she said.
He was silent so long, she wondered if he’d fallen asleep.
“When?” he finally said.
“Four years ago.”
“Well,” he said evenly, “then that was four years ago.”
“He’s marrying my best friend,” she said. “You wouldn’t give a shit if your best friend had fucked me?”
“Not if you were seventeen then. When you’re seventeen, you fuck everybody.”
He tightened his grip around her waist. Once he’d fallen asleep, she slipped out from under his heavy arm. She sat by the window, falling asleep in the moonlight, cradling the stolen prayer book.
—
NADIA CRIED THREE TIMES at the wedding.