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We’d had a few video calls since we’d decided to get married. I’d expected the first one to be awkward. I hadn’t expected that they wouldn’t get any better.
Tamantha jumped up. “Sit here.”
She offered the seat with no less alacrity than a prisoner giving up his turn in the electric chair. She also didn’t wait to see if I complied before returning to her previous spot.
I found a smile and took the chair next to Tom.
It was a little spooky how much Tom looked like his father in facial structure, features, and coloring. And infinitely reassuring that you had to look analytically for that resemblance, because the first impression of the two men was not at all alike.
“We’re not sure we can get all the way up there for the wedding,” his father said.
He made it sound like they’d trek cross-country for months in horse and wagon instead of a few hours’ flight or a day-or-two’s drive.
“It’s not until late June,” Tom said.
His father grunted.
As I told Tom later, it was a neutral grunt. Could have been hostile or dismissive and it wasn’t. Tom grunted at my comment. A grunt that had a way to climb to reach neutral. I didn’t point that out to him.
Now, his mother smiled — genuine, though sandwiched around a sideways look toward her husband at his grunt.
“That’s a lovely time in Sherman.”
Was that a trace of wistfulness in her voice?
“Exactly why we chose June. Of course, we wanted to avoid the winter months in case of bad weather for people coming from out of town—” Not to mention my husband-to-be and mother ganged up on me to allow months for “proper” planning. “—and spring’s so unpredictable with calving season, so late June was the decision.”
No one said anything.
I tried again, echoing, “It is a lovely time. The flowers, the birds.”
“Unless the grasshoppers hit,” Vanessa Burrell said. “There were some years...”
Plagues of grasshoppers? I’d seen some around here, but that didn’t sound like what she was talking about. “Of course. Unless the grasshoppers hit.”
After that topic faded back to silence, his mother said, “How are the wedding plans coming?”
I cravenly pulled in Tamantha to respond there, gesturing her to return to this side of the table. Far more subdued than usual, she updated them succinctly, then excused herself.
With neither Tom nor his father filling in the next gap, I called on my best this interview is going south but at least I’ll live up to the standard of the musicians who played Nearer, My God, To Thee as the Titanic sank voice and said, “We’ll let you know all the details not covered in the invitation — you should get that any day — as soon as we settle them, because of course we very much hope you’ll come.”
“We’ll try very hard to be there.”
I had the feeling the hard would come from her husband, the trying from her.
We said good-bye shortly after that.
Another silence developed locally.
“Did you know the musicians on the Titanic, the ones who played music to keep people calm as the ship sank, were mostly in their twenties and early thirties?” I asked.
Tom rolled his eyes toward me. Tamantha’s head popped up from her homework.
I kept going. “One was forty, the rest all a lot younger and one was only twenty.”
“That’s my friend Madison’s older sister’s favorite old movie. She says she loved Jack, even though he died.”
The spray of wrinkles at the corners of Tom’s eyes deepened. “Association of ideas — the call, the Titanic?” he said under his breath.
