Chapter 32

Cecelia had been working while I'd been planning, and she'd done a mountain of cooking. There was our lunch, which we'd eat after church, and there was the big lunch for everyone after the wedding. Lunch, that is, if that was the right word. I know what it is when you eat between breakfast and lunch, but what is it when you eat between lunch and supper? Do you call it lupper or sunch? And then there are the people who call lunch "dinner," or supper "dinner" – what would they do with the meal in between?

It was all beyond me. I'd fetched and carried at times, and cut things up at times, but mostly I'd stayed out of the kitchen. Cecelia and I have an unspoken agreement – I don't cook, and the food is delicious. My culinary skills extend to what comes in cans and boxes, and no further.

No, that's not quite true. For our lunch she'd decided on beans and cornbread and fried potatoes, and after church she put me to work on the potatoes. They're the one thing I can cook from scratch, and cook well. And I've got the patience for fried potatoes, which are not something you do right in five minutes. If you cook 'em right, it can be an hour after they go into the skillet before they're ready to eat, golden brown and crispy, and tasting of the real butter we use. I whopped up a skilletful, using the monster cast iron job we call the king skillet, and knew it wouldn't be too much.

Cecelia had stayed home from church that day so she could tend to the cooking. I've told her more than once that if she wanted to she could run a restaurant with customers lined up around the block, and for once she was doing what I said, after a fashion. We'd gotten it settled, finally – there'd be the three of us; Rudy and Sara and Gacela; Rudy's parents; and Sara's parents, and her five brothers. That would be 15 people, which would be about all the study could comfortably hold. Eating arrangements would have to encompass different areas – we'd need at least the dining room, the counter between it and the kitchen, and the patio. If it were a bad weather day, it would get pretty cramped inside.

It wasn't a bad weather day. It was still early September, which meant late summer weather during the day, with the possibility of rain in the afternoon and evening, it being New Mexico's monsoon season. As I let the potatoes cook, I pulled the picnic table away from the back wall, where we stow it when it's not in use. I grabbed chairs and put them in the study – the new study, which I still couldn't believe was mine – so that people could sit down during the ceremony. We had enough, by using every dining room chair, every chair from the back yard, and every chair from our bedroom and Cecelia's sewing room. One of them was my old study chair, a standard computer chair with plastic arms and cloth upholstery. The only chairs we didn't use were Cecelia's rocker; the company chair, which is a recliner; and my big fancy executive's chair in the study. It was, as far as I could tell, a twin to the one Cecelia'd bought for my office a few years back. Every time I think I've spent serious money on her, she proves that she knows more about spending than I do. But then she knows more about making money than I do, and while I don't know exactly how much either of us has, I know she's richer than I am.

We ate our lunch, and I helped Cecelia clean up, and then we relaxed for a bit. It was a good thing we like the early service at church. It gave us time for doing our stuff and then changing gears.

People started arriving around 1:30. Rudy, Sara, and Gacela were first, and Darlia took Gacela off into her room to play with dolls, and color, and whatever else excited girls do while they're waiting for the party to start. After that came a trickle, and then a flood. At five till two – my watch is analog, not digital, by my deliberate choice – we had a houseful. I went into the study and closed the door behind me, making sure I was ready. There was no podium – Cecelia hadn't thought I'd need one, or I'm sure she'd have had someone make it for me – but then I wouldn't need one. I have two hands, after all.

A few minutes later Cecelia led the crowd in. She was in a black dress, floor length, with wrist length sleeves that puffed out around her shoulders. There was gold lace at the wrists and down the front where the buttons were, and she'd pulled her hair back with the gold clip I bought her a while back. She was wearing all her jewelry – her wedding ring, the opal ring I'd gotten her for Christmas, the diamond piercing glittering in her nose, and the necklace which glowed like crimson fire on the front of her dress. I couldn't breathe for a moment; the emotion that came up in me was so strong that I couldn't do much of anything as I looked at her.

I was all dressed up as well. I had on one of my few white shirts, the white relieved by Cecelia's embroidery along the edges of the yoke and on the pockets. The snaps were genuine mother of pearl, and I'd always been afraid to ask where she'd gotten 'em or how much they'd cost. I had on a new pair of jeans, and I had my fanciest boots on my feet, the ones Cecelia bought for me with my initials stitched into the leather.

Darlia was with Cecelia, in her current pink dress, one that hit her at her knees, sleeveless, with her initials in slightly darker pink over her heart. She'd had Cecelia put her hair in a French braid that hung to her waist, and the braid was as thick as her arm. Though Cecelia doesn't use makeup, Sara had put just a little on Darlia, enough to enhance her eyes and give the slightest pink tinge to her golden cheeks. I don't like makeup, and find that most women look better to me without it, but I couldn't deny that Darlia was as beautiful as ever, in a new and different way.

Cecelia got everyone seated, and then brought in Rudy and Sara, Gacela between them. We'd decided that Gacela would have a part in the ceremony, and she'd been ecstatic about that.

Cecelia, in her role as flower girl, led them in bearing a bouquet of roses and lilacs and I couldn't tell what all else. I know as much about flowers as I do about conditions at the center of a black hole. If it's not a cactus flower, I'm doing good just to recognize it. She led the couple and their daughter to their position in front of me, as I stood in front of my desk, Bible in hand. She gave me a quick kiss, and laid the bouquet on the desk to my left, as we'd planned. Then she sat down in her seat, not blending in at all. It was all I could do to take my eyes off her and focus on my job.