'Know what? What's going on?'
'Mr. Beaumont,' he said softly. 'I'm sorry to have to tell you this. I thought you knew. Kelly's mother has cancer. She's had it for more than a year.'
'Karen?' I stammered. 'She has cancer? How can that be?' I tried to focus my stricken mind on what Jeremy was saying, but his words drifted over me from far away, as if beamed to earth from a distant planet.
'Kelly's been stuck in denial, and I understand that. It happened to me, too, but I've been trying to tell her all along that it was wrong to run away, that she couldn't hide out from what was happening forever. I wanted her to go back home and face up to it, but she's stubborn. You know how women are.'
But that wasn't true. Listening to Jeremy talk, I realized once again that I still don't know the first damn thing about women. Any of them.
CHAPTER 22
If I do say so myself, it was a hell of a wedding. Kelly and Jeremy had paid for the first wedding themselves- the one that didn't happen. I figured the second one was on me. We did it on the twenty-first of September, the day Little Karen, my granddaughter, was four months old.
The wedding still had to be held on Monday afternoon, because that's still the only day the theaters are dark in Ashland and the only day when theater people could attend.
But instead of being in June, in the height of the summer tourist season, this was the end of September, shortly before the outdoor theater goes dark for the winter. The end-of-season weather was beautiful-crystal-blue skies with the sharp, fresh bite of fall lingering in the air as soon as the sun went down.
Remembering Guy Lewis' down-filled jacket, I encouraged everyone to come prepared for chilly weather, and they did. With Florence's able help, we managed to find suitable accommodations. Most of the out-of-town guests arrived on Thursday and stayed through until Tuesday with a liberal sprinkling of theater dropped into the celebration for good measure.
For me the real coup was flying my grandparents, Jonas and Beverly Piedmont, down from Seattle. They hadn't been out of town for years, and neither one of them had ever flown in an airplane before, so coming to Ashland was a huge adventure for them. Not only that, my grandfather is wheelchair-bound, so there were some real physical hurdles involved in boarding that Seattle-Portland-Medford shuttle.
My grandparents have a beloved old white dog named Mandy that had to be cared for in their absence. Given the problem, Ames found a place nearby called the Academy for Canine Behavior. According to him, it was more of a doggie resort than a kennel. That news put Mandy's traveling owners at ease.
Because of a long-standing rift in our family caused by my own out-of-wedlock birth, Kelly and Scott had never met their great-grandparents. As soon as Grandma Piedmont saw Kelly, she burst into tears at Kelly's amazing resemblance to her daughter. Once she mentioned it, I saw it was true. Kelly really does look like my mother. If the grandmother of the bride had any derogatory comments about Karen Louise's birthday preceding the wedding by several months, she kept them discreetly to herself.
The one most likely to voice disapproval-my scrawny, tough-minded Presbyterian forebear who had disowned and never reclaimed my mother, his own unwed daughter-also kept quiet on the subject, due primarily to the fact that he suffered a stroke two years ago. Speech, for him, is all but impossible. But he sat there in Lithia Park, with his wheelchair parked next to my son Scott, nodding and beaming throughout the ceremony, so I don't think he was very much opposed.
Given some advance notice, Jeremy's dad, Colonel Jeremy Todd Cartwright II, managed to get leave and fly home from his command somewhere in Korea. He's career army. We didn't have a lot of time for visiting, but he's an interesting guy, and I'm looking forward to crossing paths with him at holiday family gatherings, christenings, and the like.
Incidentally, the minister christened Karen Louise Beaumont Cartwright-Kayla for short-in the same park immediately prior to the wedding, which is getting things slightly out of order, but I doubt God is that much of a stickler for observance of form. At my age, I've come to believe He's a whole lot more concerned with substance.
Gordon Fraymore turned up at the wedding. Jeremy had already showed me Fraymore's wedding gift-an almost complete set of automotive tools in a red, multi-drawered tool chest.
'Jeremy's so proud of his tools he can barely stand it.'
Fraymore shrugged modestly. 'Picked the whole shebang up from a garage sale up in Grants Pass,' he said. 'He's going to need tools if he expects to keep that old van of his running.'
Weddings have a way of making the father of the bride feel like an extraneous jackass. Fraymore and I had gravitated over to the side of the crowd and stationed ourselves near a punch bowl at the liquid-refreshment table, a place where I hoped to stay out of harm's way.
'How are you doing?' I asked.
Fraymore looked at me as if trying to assess exactly how the question was intended. He nodded. 'Okay, I guess.' He thought about it a minute and then added, 'It's tough.'
From personal experience, I knew that was true.
'My wife and I are going for counseling,' he continued. 'She doesn't know about Marjorie. Confession may be good for the soul, but I don't think it's all that good for putting broken marriages back together.'
Scott came searching for me right about then. 'Dad, they're looking for you. It's time to cut the cake.'
I waved to Fraymore. 'Duty calls.'
'Wait,' he said. 'Before you go, I have something for you.' He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small white envelope, which he handed to me. It had been folded down to the size of a regular business card. 'Open it,' he said.
Inside I found a single key and recognized it at once-the ignition key from Anne Corley's 928.
'It must have been blown clear by the explosion,' Gordon Fraymore explained. 'The crime-scene guys didn't find it until several days later. I mentioned it to Jeremy. He said he thought you'd like to have it back, maybe have it framed or something.'
My hand closed around the key. I probably only imagined it, but it felt warm to the touch. I didn't know what to say. 'Thanks,' I mumbled finally.
'It's nothing,' Gordon Fraymore said. 'I owe you way more than that.'
With a lump in my throat, I stumbled off to attend to the picture-taking of the cake-cutting ceremony. Nobody thought anything of it. On his daughter's wedding day, the father of the bride is allowed to be a maudlin, sentimental slob.
Ralph Ames had been pleased to present Kelly and Jeremy with not one but two gifts. In keeping with his penchant for gadgets, one was an automatic-bakery thing, an appliance that supposedly bakes bread from scratch. The other was an absolutely magnificent wedding cake.
The multitiered edifice had actually arrived in Ashland the night before the wedding, naked and in pieces, driven down I-5 in a '68 Cadillac limo chauffeured by none other than Ralph Ames himself and accompanied by Mary, the wizard woman who had baked the cake and also owned the limo.
Mary, Ralph Ames' lovely new lady friend of the willowy blond variety, presides over her own dining/dessert establishment in Seattle, a place called Queen Mary's. She agreed to do an out-of-state cake only on the condition that she accompany Ralph to the wedding so she could decorate it in situ as an enthralled Ralph told me with a love-besotted smile.
The cake was suitably beautiful. I was happy Jeremy and Kelly restrained themselves from smashing it all over one another's faces. That's one of those currently popular customs I personally find disgusting. By the time the cake was served, it was almost evening, and I was feeling pretty damn proud of myself. As far as I could see, the whole event had gone off without a hitch.
I have a friend down in Arizona who paints watercolors. Rhonda tells me that what makes a beautiful picture isn't the colors so much as it is the contrast between light and dark. I believe the same holds true for weddings.
There was lots of light. After three months Kelly's hair wasn't much longer than mine but she looked lovely in
