I remembered those days as Westley and I traveled along back roads between Bynum and Baxter in a car that came as a complete surprise. Sometime during the week, Westley had traded his Pinto in for a brand-new Caprice convertible, the color so red I thought it looked like a tube of lipstick shooting down the road. He arrived at my house at two o’clock on the afternoon of our departure for his brother’s, shocking me but thrilling my mother as it bounded into the driveway.
“What in the world—” I asked. Mama and I stood at the living room window where we’d taken up vigil, waiting for the Pinto to appear.
“How utterly delightful,” Mama said, a declaration that caused my mouth to gape. “Riding in a convertible. It’s been years …” And then off she went, through the dining room, the family room, and out the side door to greet her future son-in-law.
Before loading my luggage into the trunk, Westley took Mama for a spin around the neighborhood, then deposited her back on the driveway and exchanged her for me. By two thirty we were gliding past the city limits. Westley managed to wait that long before his foot pressed hard against the gas pedal. I turned to him with my hand fisted around my hair to keep it on my head and bellowed, “Can we afford this?”
Westley grinned behind his aviator sunglasses. “What?” he asked, as if he didn’t know. “This?” He took his hands off the steering wheel, throwing them up in the air like a child sitting in the front seat of a roller coaster, heading down the first big dip.
“Westley,” I screamed, horrified.
He laughed easily as his foot pressed lightly on the brake and his hands came back down. “Go easy, little girl,” he said then. “I’m just excited.”
“Can you just make sure you get me there in one piece,” I said, as if my admonition mattered. “I’d like to meet your brother and sister-in-law without cuts and bruises. Or in a casket.”
Westley laughed again, then slowed the car to a near stop, rolled the car onto the shoulder of the road until it rested between the tall blades of wiregrass and broomsedge. Before I could ask what we were doing, he gathered me to himself as he’d done the day of the engagement, kissed me for all he was worth, then pulled back. “You need a pair of sunglasses,” he said as he reached for the glove compartment latch. After it sprang open, nearly hitting my knees, he reached in for a small sack with the drugstore’s logo printed across the top. “Gotcha something.” He handed the package to me; I opened it and peered inside to find a swanky pair of oversized, tortoiseshell Foster Grants.
“Hey,” I said, sliding them on, then pulling the sun visor down in hopes of finding a mirror and smiling broadly when my wish came true. “Hey,” I said again. “I like these … a lot.” I flipped the visor up, then turned and gave Westley the same sort of kiss he’d given me.
When we came up for air, he said, “Had I known I’d get this kind of reaction, I would have brought you a pair every time I came over.”
I slapped at his arm. “I think we’d better get back on the road. I really am excited about meeting Paul and DiAnn.”
Westley pulled his shades up to expose his eyes, waggled his brow, and said, “I reckon.”
We slid back onto the road, a two-lane blacktop, where little traffic met us. I rested my head against the car seat, closed my eyes behind the Foster Grants, and allowed the movement of the car, the warmth of the afternoon autumn sunshine tanning my arms and face, and the lulling effect of Carole King in the 8-track to send me back to my grandmother’s front porch … the joy of a good book … and the trill of insects and birds vying for God’s attention.
Four and a half hours after we left my mother standing and waving in the driveway, Westley drove up a snakelike drive flanked by tall trees and thick bushes that seemed to only end at infinity. Eventually a clearing made way for a wide and lush lawn that carpeted the earth all the way to an imposing brick structure with white trim and shutters, and a dark-green door spotlighted by the front porch overhead light. “Is this your brother’s house?” I asked as if Westley would have driven more than four hours and stopped at anyone else’s.
Westley slid the gearshift to park, then turned with a grin. “Yeah. Nice, huh?”
“Nice? It’s like a mansion. What did you say he does for a living?”
“He’s in pharmaceutical sales.” Westley opened his door and stuck one leg out. “He does all right by himself, but DiAnn works for her father who owns a finance company, and that helps.”
“Oh,” I said, completely unsure whether I should open my door or let Westley come around and do the gentlemanly thing. He usually did, but here, in front of his brother’s home, I felt shy and awkward. The world we’d come from—the one we’d driven through—had been bright and sunny. We were now cloaked in near darkness, in a place I knew nothing of, about to walk into a home where I knew no one.
Westley opened my door and extended a hand. “Come on, Ali. Don’t be scared.”
“Do they have kids?” I asked as he all but pulled me from the Caprice.
His warm hand gathered mine as we started down a sidewalk leading from the
