Secrets Revealed:
House-hunting took up most of my time for the next several weeks. Poor Davey was well and truly back in the swing at his hospital. He came home to Sybil’s house every night wrung out and ready to drop, but that inner steel of his kept him going back for more, keeping his head above water and his mind in the game through all that punishing schedule.
In turn, I was overwhelmingly, unbelievably proud of him. Mom had told me once how he’d fought to get where he was today, willpower and sheer determination to succeed in his calling and be like his daddy keeping him afloat where so many other men would have given up and sunk without trace, and it was beginning to pay off.
So while he studied, worked, trained, and learned, I did what I could to find the place we could call home; Sybil’s house, for all its warmth and welcome, was her home, not ours, and I couldn’t help but feel twinges of discomfort at the thought of how much we were imposing on her. She never said a word, bless her, and her warm presence was a boon and a blessing, but nevertheless I would have felt more comfortable in a place of our own, and she understood that; Sybil’s was a place of refuge, and gladly given, but we had to strike out on own, and soon.
And then Sophie finally came home. By the time the days rolled around to the day she was due to arrive, I was a frazzled wreck; I’d spent the night before they were due back pacing and worrying and fretting and snapping at Davey, Rosie, Jimmy, everyone, really, and driving poor Davey insane.
By the time we set out to meet her at Heathrow, I’d swung the other way, and now I was a terrified bag of nerves, all sorts of weird fears and bizarre feelings roiling around inside of me; at one point I was actually convinced she’d forgotten me, which probably gives a great, big, neon-lit clue as to my mental state right there and then.
Davey was comforting and Jimmy kept his mouth shut and stared stolidly ahead after I bit his head off for no good reason, but I could see the looks he and Davey were exchanging, those special ‘shutupshutupshutup, she nuts, don’t set her off, for fuck’s sake!’ glances that would have pissed me off if I wasn’t so busy freaking-out.
Actually arriving at Heathrow Airport and getting to the Arrivals Area was a blur, and still is; I don’t rightly know how we got there, because all I remember was circling round and round in the parking garage, then next thing I know we’re in the Terminal 5 Arrivals Area. After several lifetimes of alternately fretting, feeling scared, losing it with Davey and poor Jimmy, and slowly losing my mind, suddenly she was here, my mom was home, she was here, and I could finally hold her again.
I don’t think I need to go into what I was feeling; all I could do was squeak ‘Mom, Mom’, endlessly, and she was too busy squeezing the life out me to correct me, and Uncle Richard’s arms around both of sealed us together; Sophie may have been Davey’s aunt, but now she was truly my mom, I could feel it in waves running through and through me, and Uncle Richard was everything Daddy had been, he felt so like my daddy it was impossible not to think of him as anything else, and he was there, warm, loving, making me his daughter, drawing me in and making us a family.
I glanced at Davey, and his expression was unreadable; he looked transfigured, as if he’d finally worked out what was going on inside me, like he’d finally got it for real, not just what I’d told him before, and I loved him even more for that. From where I stood, I could see the knowledge dawning in his eyes that Sophie was my mom now, and if she was my mom, then in a very real sense she was his mom too. She was just who he needed in his life, and everything about her that had shouted ‘MOM!’ at me was doing it to him, too. We were truly family now.
*
Sophie is a master of organization, and with her around, the pace stepped up a notch, whether house-hunting with me or interviewing dressmakers, caterers, venues, florists, and jewellers, then project-managing the whole thing into one complete event. I was awestruck; I thought I was capable, and reasonably organized, but what I knew amounted to tidying a toy-box compared to Sophie, with her memory like an elephant, her ability to relate one fact to another, and her razor-sharp attention to detail.
The day after she arrived home, we went shopping, picking out the watered silk for my wedding dress, then we went off to interview, bully, coerce, and intimidate various seamstresses she knew of until she found one she liked. She was adamant and unshakeable on several key points: no peach, apricot, or champagne – Royals and Eurotrash did that and it was vulgar, and no satin, taffeta, or organdie; brides in this family married in white watered silk and Honiton Lace, with subtle seed pearls, no sequins, ruffles, bows, mutton-chop sleeves or shepherdess petticoats, idiotic Bo-Peep bonnets, or angel wings, and definitely no silly Marie Antoinette extravagance. As far as she was concerned (and that meant as far as everyone was concerned), my dress was going to be modest, ladylike, subtle, and devastatingly gorgeous, with long sleeves and a sweetheart neckline – no plunging necklines, especially with a set like mine, no push-up bras or willpower dresses, no bare shoulders, and especially no garters to take off in public; Davey wouldn’t like that, and most definitely neither would Richard. ‘Nuff said.
Whether we liked it or not, this was going to be a society wedding, and I had to make sure that no matter who turned up to try and upstage me, whether out of spite, malice, or just sheer bloody-mindedness, I was going to outshine them or die trying; it was my day, and no ex, also-ran, never-was, or wannabe was going to take first prize away from me. Sophie wanted the competition (if any) to show up, stare, gnash their teeth, and go home and cry.
What did I tell you about Ladies Who Organize?
In the midst of all this, I found the house I wanted, in the same village as Sophie and Uncle Richard (was there ever any doubt…?), a beautiful, mellow, red-brick and sandstone vicarage dating from the middle of the eighteenth century, with dozens of unexpected little rooms and hidden, snug little corners, tiny, private, walnut-panelled sitting rooms with their own fireplaces, just big and cosy enough for two people to sit and enjoy the fire with a cup of tea, a slice of cake, and some private conversation, large, imposing reception rooms and bedroom suites with tall, classically Georgian windows and polished wood floors, and two wide, sweeping, almost terminally elegant staircases; Davey told me that was because one was for going up, and the other was for coming down, and I almost bought it, until I saw that grin he was trying to hide, so I paid him back with an elbow in the ribs and accidentally-on-purpose stepping on his toes in my peg-heeled cowboy boots.
The house stood in several acres of gardens, ancient apple and pear orchards, with a large duck-pond, and best of all, a paddock with two sweet, silky-muzzled little grey donkeys and a gigantic English Shire Horse with a head like a beer-barrel and feet like gunpowder kegs. The animals came with the house, their care was one of the conditions of sale, and without them there was no sale, but I was in love at first sight with those three beauties, so I signed without hesitation; I wanted that house, it ticked all my boxes, and the three special additions were the sweetener on the deal as far as I was concerned.
Sophie had decided that Davey and I, like his daddy, and his grandfather before him, should be married in the chapel of Kings College, Cambridge, their Alma Mater; when Sophie took me to meet the dean of King’s College chapel, I was bowled over by the place; I was expecting a small, modest, chapel-type chapel, with room for a few dozen people, kind of like the one I always avoided back home, not the huge, magnificent Gothic masterpiece it actually was, bigger, older, and more imposing than the cathedrals in some cities. Davey’s daddy had married our mom here, so Sophie felt it was appropriate we formally tie the knot here too; it was something of a family tradition. As soon as I walked into the chapel I knew I wanted to be married to my Davey in this place, it was in our blood, and, if and when our children married, it should be here too; this place was part of us, of Davey and me, and it should be part of them too.
Bridesmaids: Rosie was going to be my Maid of Honor, no question about that, but Sophie and I felt I should have someone who knew me, preferably my oldest friends, pretty much family, to be my bridesmaids, and I should decide soon; the dressmaker wanted to start on the dresses, and she needed to know who she was making them for. Of course, Sara Mason and Josie Gregor were my choice; we’d been inseparable since kindergarten; there was no way I was leaving them out of the most important day of my life.
Inviting Sara and Josie was a lot easier than explaining who I was marrying; they were in college in California and Texas respectively, and were unaware I’d left Des Moines, let alone that I’d met someone and we were getting married, and especially who I was marrying; dancing around the truth like a cat on springs was the only way I could avoid flat-out lying to the pair of them, but it gave me a few uncomfortable moments, I can assure you!
Calling Sara and telling her I was getting married, in England, and I wanted her to be my bridesmaid with Josie was hard enough; telling Josie was almost impossible. She’d always known, or suspected, that there was something I wasn’t telling her, and when I told her my husband’s name was ‘David Denham, I could hear her mind going “OHOO, Really!!!???” all the way down that phone line, even though she didn’t know the ‘Denham’ name; she’d always known Davey as ‘Davey Keene’; as far as she knew that’s who he was, but mercifully she didn’t quiz me any further. When I told the girls to get their passports sorted out, their tickets were waiting at the Air Canada desk at La Guardia, open flights, so get moving, we had dresses to fit, they promised to be here inside a week. Tick one more item off the list of several thousand…