Chapter 21

The problem with having the reception in the fellowship hall was making room to dance while still having places to sit and eat. We'd decided not to go to the expense of a standard wedding cake, but there was cake – two full sheets, one chocolate and one white, with curlicues of icing and statues of bride and groom. There was ice cream as well, and various sorts of drinks. It wasn't a meal, but it was something good to eat.

And dance we would. Max's parents had objected during the planning, preferring no reception at all to one that included dancing, but my background included plenty of dancing, and Max had moved away from the no dancing position she'd grown up with – and besides, we liked to slow dance, though we'd never tried any other sort and didn't plan to.

Earl prayed before we dug in, and then while everyone got pieces of cake – we'd foregone the military tradition of Max cutting the cake with her sword, which saved her the trouble of digging out and polishing the one she'd gotten at the Academy – she and I stepped out into the middle of the room. We'd arranged the music beforehand, and now the first notes of Toto's "Africa" came from the speakers. We clung to each other, and as the refrain came we sang to each other, in soft voices. When the song was over I held Max's shoulders and said to her, "It will take a lot to drag me away from you. That song says exactly how I feel about you. Whatever happens, I'm yours forever."

She bent her head, and I saw sparkles on her lashes. When she looked up she said, "I don't know if fighter pilots are supposed to cry when in uniform, but I'm so happy I can't help it. I'll never leave you, beloved. Nothing can take me away from you either."

We remembered that there was a crowd around us, so we went to our seats, holding hands, and took the cake and ice cream and drinks that various hands put in front of us. There was something else playing now, something with music but no words, and Ruby and Amethyst had each found someone to dance with. My parents were out there, and several others. There wasn't room for much movement, and so the dancing wasn't much more organized that the slow dancing Max and I had done.

The buzz of voices was rising, and different people – friends, family members, people from the church or the squadron – kept coming by to congratulate us. I'd always thought that right after a wedding there would be an irresistible urge to start the honeymoon, and for me at least it was very nearly irresistible. During a brief lull in visits I leaned toward Max and said, "I can't wait to get you out of here."

She turned red and leaned toward me. "Derek, we're in church."

"I know, and I wasn't just thinking of that. I just want you for myself, and to myself, for the next month."

She giggled. "Okay, I'll accept that. I have to admit that I'm not ready to share you with everyone else. Now that I'm here, I'm kind of glad we couldn't have the full-blown wedding with rehearsals and big receptions and everything. This way we'll get home sooner."

I didn't get a chance to answer, for here came more greetings. My sisters had each taken a turn dancing with Roddy, and now all three came and sat down at our table. Amethyst leaned her head playfully against his shoulder and said, "I just might marry this one, Derek."

I glanced at Max, who was giggling. "I don't think his sister will object," I said. "But have you asked Debra for his hand yet?" A couple of weeks before, Max's parents had asked me to call them by their names.

"Not yet. But I just might. I have to be sure to sew things up before Ruby does."

Ruby laughed at that. "I'm not marrying any Okie," she said, "so you're safe, Amy. Besides, I've got a boyfriend." Ruby was the only one who used that short form; for some reason the rest of us had always said the whole thing. "If you want Rowdy Roddy, you can have him. I'm going to marry someone Portuguese..."

"At the rate things are going, you'll be the only one," I said.

"That's all right. With Max and Roddy in the family, we'll have enough mixture. I can handle being the one to preserve our purity." She was laughing as she said it, and I knew her well enough – I ought to – to know that she wasn't serious.

"You mean you don't want children with this wonderful white skin?" Max asked. "Personally, I think this sort of hair is much better than yours."

Ruby laughed, tossing her short dark curls. "But you married that sort of hair."

I glanced over at Roddy and Amethyst. If they were just joking about getting married, as I suspected – though he hadn't said anything, preferring to use his mouth to eat and drink with – it would have been hard to prove it. They were sitting right next to each other, shoulders and, I was sure, hips touching. Amethyst was glancing at him every so often, and he would look back. "And it looks like Roddy's going to," I said.

He looked up at me and pointed his fork. "Don't y'all go marrying me off just yet. I've got to propose first."

Max reached across the table and patted his hand. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

He looked at her for a moment. "The right time, Sis."

Max looked at me, startled. "I think he means it."

I looked over at Amethyst. "You might want to be careful. He just might mean it."

She looked at me, and at Ruby, and back at me. "If he does propose, I just might say yes."

Ruby put her hand on her sister's arm. "Are you sure, Amy?"

"I'm sure that I might say yes. But Roddy and I have to talk first, before either of us knows even whether we're going to be friends instead of in-laws. And we can't do that here. So don't get too excited."

Ruby shook her head. "I ought to cut your hair so it matches mine."

"You'll do no such thing!" Amethyst's hair was thick, curly like all of us except my mother, and down to her waist. She'd caught it in a silver colored clip of some sort, and it framed her face in a thick mass, gathered at the nape of her neck, and then spread out across her shoulders and down her back. It almost looked African in its color and the tightness of its curls, and I wondered, not for the first time, if we had any Cape Verde Portuguese in our background.

"Don't fuss, girls," I said.

"You always say that," Ruby said with a pout.

"Because I always have to say it," I said.

Max cut off further dispute. "Which of you is the oldest?" she asked. I glared at her, but she was impervious.

"I am," Ruby said. "Then Amy, and then Derek."

"You can't be very far apart," Max continued. She was very effectively silencing the quasi-argument, and though I had myself tried to calm the sisters it irked me that she'd taken over.

"We're not." Ruby was still carrying that side of the conversation. "I was born in 1980, Amy in 81, and Derek in 83."

"So Amy's 27," Max said in a musing tone. "And Rowdy Roddy's two years younger than I am, which means he's Amy's age." It seemed that Max had very quickly picked up the diminutive of Amethyst's name.

"They do seem to like each other," Ruby said before I could open my mouth.

Roddy gave Amethyst a look, and she returned it. And then, as though they'd choreographed it, they both stood up, taking their plates and Styrofoam cups, and walked off. Ruby raised her voice to carry. "Don't they make a handsome couple?"

"Ruby, will you kindly shut if off?" I asked.

She grinned at me. "Now I will. But you have to admit it was fun."

"Yes, it was," Max said. "And I really think they fit well together."

"I swear, you two—"

"Derek, this is our wedding day, you know." Max was looking at me, with her hand on my arm. "Can't we have a little fun?"

"That's my big sister you're having fun with."

"And my little brother," she said. "And they're grownups who can figure out for themselves whether they're just joking, or whether there might be something more between them. And we're family. You'll remember that we didn't have family these past few months, not so close at hand. We had to figure it out for ourselves."

I hated what I had to say. "Okay, Max, you're right." I looked at her, and thought that if anyone could make an Air Force dress uniform look good, it was Max. "You know, you look good in fruit salad."

She looked down at the two rows of ribbons on her chest, the top row shorter than the lower one. "These are nothing. Anyone who's been in as long as I have, and can fly as well, will have about the same decorations."

"So what do they mean?" Ruby asked, leaning forward with her forearms on the table. I applied myself to my cake, while Max explained how to read the ribbons. And before I was done with my piece – which, like Max's was about three times the size of everyone else's – I'd calmed down. She had been right, and I'd been wrong, and anyway it would have been silly to let it disrupt our wedding day. So I didn't let it disrupt mine.

After a couple of hours, during which my father had danced with Max and Debra had danced with me, and Willard had even loosed up enough to dance for a couple of minutes with his daughter, both sets of parents got up during a lull and stood in the center of the room. Slowly the noise of multiple voices died down, and my father nodded at Willard.