Nolde Alexius

Who Mae was marrying didn’t matter to anyone and, though she had other reasons, for her that was enough motivation to leave town as soon as possible. The general disinterest people had in Tom was remarkable to Mae and she could have excused it somehow, except that in its place, clearly, was a disproportionate pawing and scraping for visuals of her flower arrangements and wedding dress, and the thickness of her invitation list. What mattered was the ceremony. It carried with it the smells of all the weddings before hers, and would somehow direct all that came after. It would enter the consciousness of everyone there, affirm this part of the society in which they lived – the way to celebrate, to love, to celebrate love – and drift away into the vault of past weddings, the place that every new bride in town could visit and enhance with her reinvention of some small part of the celebration. There in the vault it would stay, and Mae’s decision to marry Tom in particular would escape notice. She knew she had to go in for all of it – a flower girl, fourteen bridesmaids, two readings at least and lots of bodies rustling in the pews. High drama was the thing. Her mother, Kathleen, assured her that it was all going to be fun. If it wasn’t fun, why do it, Kathleen said. But Mae saw veins of cruelty in it that, though they were in retaliation to everyone’s yen for the petty details, tainted the whole just the same: a shameless attempt to best her married friends’ ideas of a nice wedding, a feeling of triumph over those girls who had never been engaged, relief that now Mae would not turn out to be independent – the veiled term for old maid. She could not talk about her wedding without feeling as if she was boasting. For awhile, when people asked her about the ceremony, she tried always to harp on the statement, It’s so fun to plan a wedding! instead of going over her aesthetic. She felt she might avoid boasting this way, if she focused on how fun it all was supposed to be.

She knew she was forcing Tom to emerge from their wedding with the same ignorance all other husbands carried forth. Just as Mae’s father had stepped aside during the whole wedding phase except to offer money, she was allowing Tom to grow into the uninvolved, implicitly inept father-of-the-bride by keeping all of her planning from him. This was more of a challenge than she had expected because Tom did not go in for traditional male disinterest. He had questions about everything. He wanted to know what she was doing, who she was meeting and how he fit in. He wanted to help. She loved this about him but denied him. Leaving town was her goal, and the wedding was the necessary means to the goal. If she let Tom in on the planning stages, he might realize that they were more than a following of tradition. He might see in her meticulous vision for the day a plan for escape instead of celebration of a new life, and question her feelings for him.

If he discovered this, she feared she would not be able to make Tom understand because she did not quite grasp why she looked so forward to leaving. To herself, she said she had to leave because the people in her town were more concerned over a social statement than over love. This wasn’t all, she knew; but it was enough. Instead of bucking the system, her urge to get away without challenges caused her to become obsessed with getting married. The very thing she pointed to as her reason for leaving was also her method of escape. She felt as attached to the event as she imagined she would to a child, with a fierce impulse to control every image and implication so that it would turn out perfectly. If the day came and went without her tears, without a story of Tom’s nervous energy and clumsiness on the altar – if the in-laws did not display regional strangeness of a sort, and the bridesmaids did not find one night stands to agonize over later – how would people put her into the vault? They wouldn’t, Mae thought. Instead, they would resort to discussing Tom. They would speculate on the marriage. Mae became obsessed and, though it was a strange feeling, she knew what it worked to prevent. And she knew how to stay obsessed – by keeping one word in mind: flight.

At the altar of St. James Episcopal Church, the only Protestant place of worship in town with exposed beams and hand-carved wood paneling, the flowers and candles were pink, green and yellow according to Mae’s wishes. Her mother approved of these colors – if the organist and the wedding committee did not – so Mae had confidence in her decision to use them even though the month was October, and called for more oranges, browns, and reds.

As a definite snub to the two-woman committee of St. James, Mae hired Mrs. Treat, Central Louisiana’s favorite seamstress, to take care of business in the nursery where the bridesmaids changed into their gowns before the wedding. Mrs. Treat had a reputation for remembering deodorant and fingernail polish remover for pantyhose runs. But she earned her nickname, wedding nazi, the day Tracy Scott was married when, right before the bridesmaids were to walk down the aisle, Mrs. Treat placed her hand under each of their chins like a spittoon, forcing them to maneuver tiny wads of chewing gum from inconspicuous places in their mouths into her hand. The bridesmaids had felt that they were too old to be ordered about, and called Mrs. Treat wedding nazi behind her back until one of them spoke before checking if she were in close proximity, and the seamstress heard it. To the bridesmaids’ annoyance, she thought it was funny. Twice, the bridesmaids heard her retell the story of her nickname with glee.

She arrived at the nursery armed with those essentials that nobody in the wedding party ever remembered: needle and thread, Band Aids and aspirin, and a crochet hook that made buttoning the long back of Mae’s dress a cinch. She kept it all in a big Neiman Marcus shopping bag that she placed on a table next to a bottle of champagne and a white bakery box of chicken salad sandwiches. The room was warm. The young women were smiling, active in their chattering and gazing into the mirror.

Mae looked like a confection; a smooth expanse of white being the image of her that lasted, as opposed to the irregular, but no less elegant chocolate brown of the bridesmaids-in-a-blink-of-an-eye – the time necessary to be photographed. Normal daily life permitted hairs astray, fingernails undone, mascara running. On Mae’s wedding day, bobby pins and gel ruled out the possibility of bad hair. The bridal get-up forcefully surrounded Mae from head to feet. She had no bad side. And then there was her smile. It was red and white and straight. It continued with the certainty that left no time for flaws. She devoted a lot of time to worrying over her appearance in the blink-of-an-eye, a theory Mrs. Treat invented to prove her conscientiousness to M.O.B.’s, or, mothers of the bride. The seamstress told Mae’s mother of her concern for a bride to look soft, straight, or concealed, depending on the body part. “The camera picks up everything,” she said. “Mae must be ready to be photographed from every angle.” Undoubtedly, Mae was flawless. Mrs. Treat did her job well.

Her sixpence firm in the heel of her shoe, Mae walked to the nursery door. She opened it a crack and listened for sounds coming from the priest’s office where the groomsmen, most of them stockbrokers from South Carolina, were changing. Her father had gotten them drunk, and she hoped that they wouldn’t throw up in the church. While they were drinking that afternoon, Mae slept, read sentimental letters from her bridesmaids, and generally tried not to think about all the bad things that could happen at the ceremony because of these men in rented tuxedos. Instead, she thought of her boy from Florida, Tom Taft. They had found through pre-marital counseling that their relationship occasionally bordered on mother/son, or teacher/student. The priest told them that this was okay, but not to expect this to change, as when people age they only become whatever they are already to a higher degree. She thought of Tom in his tuxedo, his red hair combed, his shoes shined; his grin, a look that said, You are my whole world.

Neither Mae nor Tom had entered their engagement with jobs. Even though Mae did not have a job, she was practical. She had explained to her bridesmaids and to Mrs. Treat, that instead of going on a two week honeymoon to Hawaii, they were going to West Virginia to white-water raft and camp in George Washington Forest, because this was the more affordable vacation and less likely to put their first feelings as a married couple out of proportion to real life. Mrs. Treat tried to draw Mae back into the room, questioning her further about the life she expected to have. “What do you want to do?” she asked.

“Work in a city,” said Mae.

“We all have to work on some level, unfortunately,” Mrs. Treat said. “I find an immense amount of satisfaction in my work. Just find what you like to do, and figure out a way to get paid for it, is the way I approached it.”

“Mom says to find what I would die for, and then try to get paid for it,” Mae said. Kathleen smiled at them triumphantly, expecting Mrs. Treat to realize the accuracy of Mae’s words.

“Well, I wouldn’t die for sewing,” the seamstress said. “I think that you should apply that way of thinking to marriage, not to work. You find the man you would die for, and then you marry him. If you won’t die for him, you shouldn’t marry him. That’s certain.”

“It’s bad luck to talk about death on a wedding day,” said Kathleen. “Mae, don’t go dying for anybody.”

“I won’t, Momma,” Mae said. She heard loud shuffling and cat-calls from the office and shut the door. She turned around and saw that her bridesmaids were passing the champagne bottle, taking long pulls on it so that the glass rim turned a purplish red, a mixture of six different shades of lipstick. Feeling faint, she looked for a chair but remembered in time that Mrs. Treat had prohibited her from sitting once she put on the dress. She could only stand. She breathed deeply, feeling her chest contracting, burning a little. Her hands did not shake; legs did not buckle. All was going fine. Yelling at the top of their lungs, the groomsmen’s deep voices penetrated the nursery walls with, “Chug! Chug!”

Mae and Kathleen read each other’s looks with concern. Mae’s look said, What has Dad done? Kathleen’s said, Yes, my husband has done this, and later he’ll pay for it. She looked over Mae’s dress, shaking off the topic like snowflakes. “Why don’t you and Tom stay in Alexandria?” she said.

“Tom has a mortal fear of Spanish moss,” said Mae. The bridesmaids, not having heard Mae’s full statement, looked at each other, perplexed.

“What?” several of them asked. “What did you say about moss?”

Kathleen said, “Oh, you silly goose. Why, really?”

“Also, gardens,” said Mae. “He’s petrified of latticework.”

“I feel certain that Virginia lawns have a little latticework,” said Kathleen.

“But they don’t have moss in the trees,” said Mae. “The two together force Tom to drink.”       

“I can never tell when to believe you,” said Kathleen. She walked over to her daughter and put both hands on her shoulders. She looked at her with, Mae thought, longing.

“We just can’t find work, here, Mom,” Mae said.  

“I’m only teasing. It is better for you to go,” Kathleen said. She kissed Mae on the forehead, took a Kleenex from the unsolicited box Mrs. Treat offered, and wiped away the lipstick from Mae’s skin.

“What time is it?” Mae asked. The bridesmaids searched their bags for their watches, which Mrs. Treat had ordered them to remove from their wrists. Beating them to it, Mrs. Treat glanced at the stopwatch around her neck and looked at Mae with pleasure. “It is time to get married,” she said.

In the vestibule, the wedding nazi and the wedding committee confronted each other. Mrs. Treat looked particularly threatening as she whispered through the needles between her lips. “I’ll leave if you want me to,” she said, but she said it with the confidence that no one was going to have the guts to tell her to leave.

“We have ladies here to help already. Ladies here already,” the committee said.

“I’ll leave, then,” said Mrs. Treat. But the bridesmaids saw that fright in Mae’s eyes; that look that said Mrs. Treat should stay and things would go horribly wrong if she left. In their various ways, the girls made it clear to the committee who they favored. This was too much animosity for the two ladies, and they left the vestibule for vacant spaces in the back pew on the groom’s side, not taking care to close the heavy oak door, but letting it slam behind them.

The girls swished and giggled around each other after the ladies had gone, and Mae breathed a sigh of relief. Mrs. Treat examined her veil, and said, “I hope I don’t get into trouble!”

Mae put a hand on the woman’s arm and squeezed. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll handle it.”

The girls were so pleased with themselves for defending Mrs. Treat that she had to tell them to line up and hold their bouquets with both hands. In quick, chocolate brown swirls, they moved to their positions in front of Mae, and stood with their chests puffed out and chins raised.

The M.O.B. music began, and Mrs. Treat opened the doors. Tom’s mother stepped onto the white runner, moving slowly down the aisle. Kathleen stood next in line, waiting for her cue. She turned slowly to look at her daughter and nodded. Just before she turned her head, Mae saw that she was crying, holding it all in with Herculean effort. Mae whispered, “Momma, come back!” Kathleen shook her head, pointed to the nave.

“What is it?” she asked Mae.

“Are you really upset with me for leaving?” Mae whispered. The bridesmaids turned their heads as if at a tennis match.

“No, darling.”

A question occurred to Mae and though there wasn’t time, she asked it. “Why did you never leave?”

“I didn’t know I could,” Kathleen said. She had her back to the congregation now. Her corsage was backed with baby’s breath, and pieces of it flew to the floor as she turned. “So, you better go!” With a loud click, the photographer caught Mae and Kathleen from profile, their faces anxious; the bridesmaids, puzzled.

The church was half full on both sides. Even though Tom was not from Louisiana, those who cared had flown themselves in for the wedding. Mae placed her hand on her father’s arm, trying not to appear alarmed at the strong, whiskey smell on his breath as he kissed her cheek. There was her high school English teacher, and the florist who had been congratulated extensively for thinking of sunflowers for the rehearsal dinner. Turning only his head toward her as Mae approached was one of her bridesmaids’ fathers, a judge; and his grinning wife, practically in the aisle. The editor of The Alexandria Daily Town Talk was on the groom’s side for some reason with, not exactly a frown on his face, but more a look of interest. Tom’s mother cried without a handkerchief, and Mae had to fight the impulse to hand her the one pinned to the bridal bouquet. The altar was pink, green, and yellow, after all. The priest’s red stole clashed, but the music was loud and strong. Kathleen watched Mae walk past, and smiled with determination. Tom stood apart from the long line of men, in fig leaf until he offered his arm to Mae. She took it. Like a horse pulling a carriage, Mae put her blinders on. She got married in no time.

The priest gave Mae and Tom permission to kiss. His lips were soft, unexpectedly lingering. There was not one worrisome bit of saliva between them; just smooth, soft lips and Tom’s subtle, masculine smell Mae loved. She forgot that a half-full St. James waited for them to walk outside. She could not imagine her body without his lips. This was the first time all day she did not feel she had to smile or speak. And she realized that the silence of the moment, as well as the softness of Tom’s lips, was her ticket out – if not to peace, then to hope. She thought as they kissed that she had missed the point of the whole event, that none of it mattered except Tom – the red top of his head, the green eyes, the smile.

The recessional began in the choir loft, and the newlyweds turned to walk down the aisle. Mrs. Treat opened the doors to the vestibule, then the doors to the front steps. The night was clear and warm, and they hurried, smiling, down the aisle holding hands, looking briefly into the flashes from the crouched photographer, and walked down the steps towards Alexandria’s only limousine, which was red. Mae climbed inside headfirst, the train of her dress gleaming against the red paint. She waited for Tom to help stuff the long panels of silk into the car. He turned to face the church, waved to the few guests who already stood on the steps, and gave a loud whoop. Mae tugged on his jacket, and he sat down beside her while the guests applauded.

“Mrs. Taft!” he said. He kissed Mae and laughed.

“I think I’m sitting on something,” said Mae.

“Oh!” Tom said. He pushed her hip so that she leaned on her side against the door, and pulled two 24 ounce Budweisers from underneath her dress.  “I told Billy to stash these.”

“You know it!” said Billy, the limo driver who would transport them to the reception. “Yeah, buddy. Y’all going to have fun tonight!” Billy pulled the gear out of neutral and steered onto the two-lane in front of St. James. “That’s going to be some party!” he said.

Billy smiled while he drove. Mae recognized his expression, the slightly pensive kind that marks a guy who, at any moment, could pull you into a corner and tell you a good one. She leaned against Tom’s arm. He twisted open the bottles and gave one to her. He rolled down his window and hugged her, kissed her and squeezed her leg with his right hand. “I love no one in the world as much as you,” he whispered.

“You know it!” said Billy. The beer was still cold. Mae folded down the edge of the paper bag when it got in the way of her mouth. She looked at Tom and winked. “We’re married,” she said. Her head had never been so clear.

If not for Kathleen, Mae would have skipped her reception entirely. The discovery that she did not necessarily need to leave town to find happiness astounded her, and she felt that she owed her mother some recognition of this fact. She followed her mother around at the party more than a bride usually feels is necessary. Kathleen understood.

Because she had Tom, Mae had achieved an escape more important than that of her town. Independence, the old maid fate was no longer a danger. She felt so happy about this that she forgot her former regard of the euphoria that accompanies independence. It was replaced by a connection that seemed more important than any feeling she had ever known. She did not need to leave, she thought.

On the morning after the wedding, she looked out of the honeymoon cabin that her parents rented for her on her wedding night. It was dropped snugly behind a large sugar cane field on the outskirts of town.

Tom was finally dressed and packing his suitcase. Mae said, “I could live in this cabin.”

Tom said, “Maybe we will someday.”

To them, on the morning after their wedding, nothing seemed impossible. The fields outside the porch window were soft on Mae’s eyes. They worked like a cold compress on her forehead, which throbbed a little. “We could be farmers,” she said.

Tom looked outside at the tall fields, thinking. Together they thought, and then Mae said, “What are you thinking?” She expected it was something nice, something good.

“I am thinking about work.”

“But, you don’t have a job.”

“Lack of work, then.”

“Because I said ‘farmers.’”

“Probably so.”

“The world is ours,” Mae said. “Don’t you think?”

Tom took her hand and lead her onto the porch. They stood for a moment like pre-schoolers in line for a field trip, hand-in-hand, partners. On top of the fields a thick fog moved around, side to side, and the first tractor of the day rolled past, slowly, where a dirt road divided the fields.          

The windows of the limousine said, “No longer cut off!” “Smoke that Virginia Ham!” “Get laid!” Billy leaned against the driver’s side, arms folded. Tom opened the door and threw his sport coat on the long back seat. “What are we going to do about this?” asked Billy, pointing at the windows.

“Hey, man. I’m really sorry. I told them not to do it,” said Tom. Mae carried her bags to the porch and returned inside to check for forgotten belongings.

She knelt on the hardwood floor and looked under the bed. The bed had wheels, which explained the scratches on the floor. The bed she and Tom would share in Virginia was brass and did not have wheels. Its mattress was as high as Mae’s waist, and she liked the idea of climbing up onto it every night with Tom – as if it was a ride at an amusement park; or the mattress a magic carpet. On her hands and knees, she moved around the bed, around the set of wheels on the right side, and lifted the bedspread again. Tiny pieces of lint flew at her face and she had to sit back to sneeze. She heard Tom speaking to Billy about tents. “It sleeps two,” Tom said. Somehow, he had done away with the graffiti problem.

Her right knee had a splinter in it. Mae was annoyed at first, because she didn’t even feel it find its way into her skin, but then she laughed. It was just a splinter, after all, and it somehow reminded her of Mrs. Treat. Why this was, she could not really say. Except for being longer than the average splinter, and pine-colored, there was nothing remarkable about it. It didn’t even hurt her. It stuck up out of her knee like a thrown javelin in a ring of dirt. It was cocky. That was it, the way it was like the seamstress. Mrs. Treat had said, I’ll leave if you want me to.

But she had said it as Kathleen used to tell Mae, If you don’t want to do your homework, that’s fine with me. Alone on the floor, Mae continued to laugh at herself. She, too, felt arrogant. She had married without a job. She laughed. Maybe this used to be okay for a woman. But what could she say to an employer who didn’t see things her way? – If you don’t want to give me a raise, that’s fine with me! The limo waited outside to take them on their honeymoon; to fly from Baton Rouge to Memphis, then into the mountains. There they would rent a car and drive to the border between Virginia and West Virginia, and camp. Tom had a tent and a Swiss Army Knife. Mae had a bottle of Ben’s to keep bugs away, not that there would be many this time of year. Instead of cane fields, they would wake up to very tall trees, mountains in the distance, and no signs of industry for miles.

Tom peeked his head in the door and saw her sitting on the floor. “Ready to go?” he asked. “What’s wrong with your knee?”

She looked at it again, and there was blood dripping down the side of it. Some found its way to the floor, and another stream of it forked to the right, clinging to her calf, drying immediately. “It’s okay,” she said. “Look at the splinter!”

Tom looked then rested his wrist gently on her leg and pinched the splinter. He removed it slowly from her skin. He kissed her and she felt again the certainty she had felt in the church. He moved his hand up her leg, onto the inside of her thigh, then kissed her there. She knew before he moved to the cut on her leg that he would kiss her there, too. He remained kneeling beside her, kissing her knee, cleaning it with his lips and tongue, and the feeling of certainty moved into a deeper place within her. She thought, If we don’t leave now, we’ll never leave. This came to her because she could have made love to him again right then, but also because she knew she was no longer sure she wanted to go. Tom couldn’t have known about these thoughts, but he stopped kissing her as if he had had to persuade himself, as if he knew he must. He helped her up and lead her by the hand out of the cabin, into the limousine.

They drove on the Old Baton Rouge Highway past cotton fields, a dairy, and onto a gravel road that lead to Highway 71. To the right, railroad tracks paralleled the highway, and a train gained on them. Union Pacific, it said. The highway was four-lane with a median that formed a ditch. Stopping a car there was not encouraged. Signs for the political campaigns of Ned Randolph, John Cooksey, and other politicians were there, stuck firmly in the dirt, flapping in the wind.

They drove past the Old Grey Mule vegetable market. Donkeys and geese, an occasional rooster, and egrets and peacocks roamed the fenced-in meadow for food and who knew what else. A young boy in the parking lot waved at them, and Mae laughed, feeling important.

Her mother had said, Why don’t you stay in Alexandria? knowing it was not a consideration, ever. Why don’t you stay? she said, stressing “don’t.”

Mae had asked her, Why did you never leave?

Kathleen had replied, I didn’t know I could.

Mrs. Treat said die for a man. Kathleen said don’t. You better go! her mother had said.

The limo drove past LSU at Alexandria; then past an abandoned sugar mill, its red brick walls high but crumbling, porthole windows symmetrical, at least from Mae’s distance, with no sickly sweet smell reaching anybody anymore. Then fields and more fields, soybeans and again, cotton. Turning around, looking out of the back window, Mae saw massive clouds blow in the way of the sun, blocking it from the farm land, and for only seconds, rain looked imminent. Tom looked, too, and they could do nothing but take it to mean that they had crossed the line between home and house, work and job, love and life.

The Union Pacific caught up to them. Billy put on one brown driving glove, then another. He gripped the steering wheel at twelve o’clock and three o’clock. He looked into his rear-view mirror at neither Mae nor Tom, but at the angle of his chauffeur’s hat. His shoulders shook a little as he settled in.

“We’re winning, Billy!” said Tom. “Go! Go!”

“You know it!” said Billy.

“We’re going!” said Mae.

“Yes, we’re going!” said Tom. “We’re winning!” he said, thinking that is what Mae really meant to say.
She looked at him and said again, “We’re going.”
This time, he understood. He lifted her hand from the seat and pressed it against her lips. “Kiss,” he said. He didn’t smile. This wasn’t a joke. “Please,” he said, “kiss.” He held onto her wrist and his hand smelled fresh like leather. She wondered if he would smell that way in Virginia. “Hurry! Kiss!” he said. “I see the sign for Lecompte!” Oh, she thought, we are leaving! She looked longingly at Tom and kissed her hand. He shoved his free palm under her, squeezed her rear end, and pushed her toward the window. She flung her hand and her kiss out of the window and waved. They raced the train until its tracks took it chugging away, into the woods.

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Nolde Alexius teaches creative writing, literature, and composition in the Louisiana State University English department. Her fiction has been published in The Southern Review, Phoebe, So To Speak, and Country Roads Magazine. Louisiana Division of the Arts has awarded her two artist support grants in literature. In 2002, she won the Poets & Writers, Inc. Writers Exchange in fiction. She is the co-editor of the fiction anthology, Best of LSU Fiction (The Southern Review 2010), which was inspired by a literature class she teaches at LSU, and in turn inspired her to create a campus literary tour. She holds an MFA in creative writing from George Mason University, where she first taught creative writing and served as fiction editor of So To Speak, and a BA in English and Drama from Randolph-Macon College, where she performed in plays such as Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart and a simultaneous production of Lanford Wilson’s Talley’s Folly and Talley and Son, and directed a one-act play by David Mamet, “The Duck Variations.”  She is writing a novel set in her native Louisiana.