Chapter 44

I hadn’t been trying to keep this night a secret, so I wasn’t really surprised by the fact that June had champagne in flutes, ready for us and for them when we walked over. Of course, she first wanted to see the ring, then hug my bride-to-be. It was only after they had finished whispering to each other that I got a hug as well. My uncle shook my hand.

June handed a flute of bubbling wine to each of us.

“To the happy couple. May they live long lives and love each other more and more every day.”

I could drink to that. “Cheers.”

“What did your mother say, Paige?” June asked.

“We haven’t called them yet. This man of mine took so long with the preliminaries that by the time we got to the main event it was almost midnight their time. I’ll call in the morning.”

June laughed. “You will not! This is something she won’t mind hearing from you whatever the hour. Where’s your phone?”

Paige handed it over and June found the appropriate number.

“Evie, this is June. No, nothing’s wrong, I just made her give me her phone. She was going to wait until morning ... Okay, hold on.”

She passed the phone back to Paige. “It’s your mother.”

Sarcastic Paige showed up for the first time that night. “Thanks.”

The phone lifted to her ear, and her eyes sought out mine. It became clear to me how much this evening had affected Paige when a quiet voice emerged from her.

“Mom? I’m getting married. To Tim. He asked me tonight and I said yes.”

There were tears in her eyes as she turned the iPhone to me. All of us could hear Evie screaming on the other end. “I think she wants to talk to you.”

I waited until the noise abated.

“Mom? I’m getting married. To Paige. I asked her tonight and she said yes.”

This time there was laughter instead of screaming.

“Is Dad there? Oh.”

I held my hand over the transmitter part. “He had to go calm the twins down. Their mother’s screaming frightened them.”

The phone returned to my ear. “Look, we know it’s late over there. How about if we Skype with you tomorrow and then you can see the ring and everything ... Sure, ten our time. We love you. Give our love to Dad too.”

I hung up. “Whoo boy, Dad’s going to get lucky tonight.”

Paige swatted at me and took her phone back, but she didn’t naysay it or stop grinning. “Who’s next?”

Candace and Lionel would skin me alive if they didn’t get the news yet tonight. “Grandma and grandpa, both sets.”

I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I knew by heart. It rang a few times before being picked up. “Hello, this is the McKenzie residence.”

I waited, just as I had on a summer’s day so many years ago.

“Mrs. McKenzie?”

“Yes, who is this?”

She obviously hadn’t looked at the caller ID or recognized my voice.

“This is Tim ... uh, Tim McKenzie.”

“Tim, you brat. What are you doing calling so late? Is everything okay?”

“No, Grandma, you’re supposed to say, ‘Tim? From Seattle? My grandson?’”

I made her laugh as she obviously remembered that first call. “Fine. My grandson?”

“Grandma, we just passed a road sign and it says that you had to be told tonight, that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow. I’m getting married.”

Grandma was no nonsense, and she didn’t scream either. “I see. Give the phone to Paige.”

I did.

“Grandma?”

Now there was screaming. Paige’s phone rang while she was jabbering away with Grandma on mine, so I answered.

“Tim?”

“Grandpa. Sorry about all this, but Grandma would have killed me if we hadn’t called.”

“I understand. Been there, done that. So I gather that congratulations are in order?”

“Yup, I asked, she said yes. It was sort of anticlimactic.”

Paige proved she was multitasking when I was chastised for my irreverence. “Be nice.”

Grandpa sounded tired. “Okay, I’m going to hang up and in ten seconds I’m going to take my wife’s phone and hang it up too. Warn your fiancé.”

The line went dead, and I started a ten fingered countdown for Paige. She kept talking faster and faster until just before we got to zero she blurted out, “ByeGrandmaweloveyou.”

We finally made the call to the Edwards grandparents who were still wide awake since it wasn’t quite ten yet on the West Coast. Talking to them was a much more relaxed experience that lasted close to fifteen minutes. I was on the phone with them for less than one.

When all of that was over, we returned through the softly falling snow, back to our house and a darkened love seat, finding Paige’s favorite spot and staying like that kissing and murmuring sweet nothings to each other until she went up to bed. I cleaned up the kitchen after that and then, once the adrenaline had worn off, made my way up to my room and crashed.

I had long ago given control over my Facebook page to my girlfriend so she could update it with pictures she took, those her friends took, those my friends took, and any others she could collect along the way. She obviously didn’t get much sleep last night as my status had already been updated by the time I awakened to the sound of ringing cell phones.

Silly East Coasters. Don’t they know that seven their time is only four ours? I found that I didn’t have to get the word out to my friends back in Georgia – they were already calling. Most of them apologized when they heard the sleep in my voice but wished me congratulations anyway. Mandy, Tara and Sandy were more considerate, allowing me to try to sleep in until six. After that they started screaming and then told me to give my phone to Paige. I had no idea why they hadn’t just called her directly.

No matter. I went looking for my intended, finding her and a huge mug of steaming McKenzie blend which she gently wrapped my fingers around. She was full of kind words this morning.

“You look terrible, like you didn’t get any sleep.”

“I didn’t. Everyone started calling at four this morning. On top of that, I only had alcohol last night and didn’t eat anything. I think my blood sugar level is low.”

The hated woman started laughing at me. I forgave her when Cheerios appeared in the largest bowl we had in the kitchen, and milk was generously splashed over them. I got handed a huge serving spoon.

“Eat, I’ll mind the phones.”

I ate, which made me tired. It was too much effort to walk upstairs, so I lay down on the couch opposite last night’s love seat. I had barely closed my eyes when Paige came and sat, lifting my head off the pillows and placing it in her lap. While she talked quietly, she rubbed my scalp and temples – I love it when she does that. I even managed to fall asleep.

That only lasted until close to ten, the time that we had promised to Skype with Mom and Dad. I was awakened gently by ruby lips nibbling on mine. She sent me upstairs to our bathroom to take a shower while she set things up for the video call. As soon as my shower was over, I dressed and then came downstairs feeling ninety percent better than I had when Paige awakened me. Coffee, McKenzie blend, took care of the other ten percent.

The bleep-blurp of an incoming call notified us to connect, and suddenly there was the rest of the joint McKenzie-Mercer family, adults and twin toddlers staring at us from the screen. Evie got right down to it.

“The ring, hold the ring up to the camera so I can see it.”

I watched the little inset that showed what the other end was viewing and all that it displayed was a white blob. That was corrected when I positioned Paige’s finger at a better distance. She wasn’t exactly tracking right in her excitement.

“Hi, Dad, Mom.” I figured someone should at least get greetings in. They couldn’t see me over the monster finger on their screen, but I waved anyway.

“Hi, Constance. Hi, David.” Of course two squirming toddlers at hearing their names called from the vicinity of the computer wanted to attack it. Dad was encouraging them to communicate, not attack.

“Can you say, ‘Hi big brother?’ No? How about, ‘Hi, Tim. Hi, Paige.’”

Dad turned to the camera. “I swear, we just practiced that a minute ago, and now they can’t do it.”

Mom and Dad were in the media room and I watched him put our siblings down. They immediately climbed into one of the big chairs behind him and found the remotes for the TV.

“So, did Savant Two make the proposal romantic?” Dad wanted to know.

Paige finally took the ring out of the picture, so now they could see us.

“He did. He recreated the Sensory Deprivation date from Atlanta, only without the Sensory Deprivation.”

Dad turned to his wife. “What does that mean?”

Evie explained. “It means that he fed her by hand, but she could watch his face and his eyes while he did it.”

“Oh. Do women like that?”

Evie was shaking her head in disbelief. “Try it sometime, won’t you? Yes, I would love it if you did that for me. You might even get lucky.”

He turned back to the camera, shrugging. “Still making me look bad, I see. Anyway, go on.”

Paige managed to recite what I had said almost word for word.

“Mom, you should have seen him. He was so nervous that his whole body was shaking, and that’s a lot of man to set in motion. He knew I was going to say ‘yes,’ but it meant so much to him, and it was so endearing that he was that amped.”

“How did he know you’d say yes?”

“Because he as much as told me yesterday morning that he was going to ask me last night. So when he sat me down for dinner, I told him to ask in his own time, and when he did he wouldn’t have to worry.”

Dad was rolling his eyes and gagging behind his wife’s back, forgetting that she could see him in the small inset.

“Quit that, James. It’s nice that someone made his proposal private instead of droning on and on in public when the bride needed to pee, and then botching the actual question.”

“What?” he said plaintively. “I thought my proposal was romantic. At least his fiancé didn’t keep him waiting. You didn’t, did you, Paige?”

“Of course not. I called him my silly, beautiful, amazing, romantic man and then I reminded him that I had told him that the answer was going to be yes so he didn’t need to be nervous, and then I said yes.”

Evie turned motherly, “So are you happy, Baby?”

“I am! I really am! I almost answered him the way that you answered Dad, ‘What took you so long?’ but then I realized that his timing was impeccable, although it could have been a little earlier in the evening so we didn’t wake everyone back in Georgia.”

The mother switched gears. “So when is the wedding?”

I fielded that one. “We haven’t discussed any of that yet...” Bride Paige was holding up two fingers and mimed moving a tassel on a mortarboard.

“Uh, I believe we’re looking at the Saturday two weeks after Paige’s graduation.”

There was a nod, telling me I had correctly interpreted the hand signals.

“We’ll have the wedding at our church here in Seattle, and then we’ll take our honeymoon, after which we’ll stop in Georgia on the way back from wherever it is we went, and we can have a reception for our friends there. It could be more of a barbeque at your house if you’d like or we could rent the Armory Ballroom again.”

Paige nodded, picking up the thread. “Mom, I’m sorry, but I want you in the mother of the bride’s place of honor, not on the stage with me. Are you okay with that?”

“I’m fine, Honey.”

“And you and Dad will be giving me away, okay?”

Dad chimed in. “Nothing would make us happier.”

“Um, Constance and David are still a little too young to be part of the wedding party, so is it okay if they just sit with you guys? Erin will be our flower girl.”

The two in question were getting restless, so Evie went and got them. “That’s probably for the best. Look, we need to go but before we do, have you called Candace and Lionel yet?”

“Last night.”

“Oh, good. I’ll get in touch with mom McKenzie then. Bye, love you.”

“Bye, Mom.”

It was a Saturday so both of us had chores to do around the house before we could sit down and really talk about the logistics of what we had set in motion. We decided to take care of laundry and cleaning, and then spend the rest of the day together calling friends and letting them know what had taken place in our lives.

As one of my first tasks, I set some dough to rising so we could have one of our favorite meals of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, made with fresh bread. I took care of mopping the kitchen and cleaning the downstairs while Paige did laundry and cleaned the second floor. We were tired and ready to eat by the time we were done.

After lunch, we needed to make some decisions concerning the wedding. We had already told Mom and Dad it would be here, now we needed to actually focus on the ceremony. Paige wanted a bridesmaid and three other attendants: Gloria, Touloulah ‘Lulu’ Bell, Delia Lassiter, the former Anderson Prep volleyball player who had started at Oregon but later transferred to play with Paige and Touloula at UW, and June.

For me, I wanted to ask Trent to be my best man. For groomsmen I would ask Matt, Gloria’s husband, Mike Norris, a good friend from University, and Erik Nilson, a Viking on one of my crews who had turned out to be one of the finest men I knew. He, along with his wife, was a friend to both me and Paige.

Once that was decided, we worked on our guest list. The number of invitees quickly passed the five hundred mark, what with good friends at school, those made in the course of building and renovating houses, people from church, and athletes with whom Paige interacted, and for whom she was a leader and mentor, both on and off the court. We weren’t sure what to do with such a host of people.

My fiancé had a solution – check the internet. The obvious advice was to have a huge ceremony at the largest venue we could find, followed by a reception. That really didn’t seem right for us since we were looking for an intimate setting and service. The internet offered up several ideas in addition to the first, and we selected one that would meet our needs.

We would have an intimate ceremony; relatives and very close friends only, along with a reception just for them. Following that would be our honeymoon and then two parties, one in Georgia and one in Seattle. All the people we had wanted to invite to the wedding but couldn’t, would be encouraged to come. We’d book a large venue, have a buffet dinner, dancing, play area for the kids, we’d get to mingle with everyone and they could all celebrate the beginning of our marriage.

Once we had decided that, the numbers were much easier to pare down. Relatives, that was twelve people – close friends – well, that was a different matter. We decided on the Fosters which made eight with spouses and in Jake’s case, child as well, Alfonse, and Amber and Roland who had gotten married in Minneapolis last summer, an event we had attended. Of course, we had to invite the Emersons, Blacks and Swifts, telling Mandy to bring her S.O., and there were various others from school both in Georgia and here. Paige’s teammates, at least those we both liked, and a host of other really good friends would be expected to attend. The list came to around one hundred, which we felt was limited enough that the other four or five hundred wouldn’t feel snubbed.

I had no idea that advanced planning of a wedding was so much work. When Mom and Dad got married, it seemed to be manageable to do all in one week. I mentioned as much to Paige.

She caressed my cheek, “You are a remarkable man, but just like Dad, you can be so dense at times.”

I received a smile to blunt the rebuke in there.

“Mom had almost twenty-five years to plan her wedding to Dad. She put thought into every single facet that she could imagine. When it came right down to it, she simply selected those things from her vast repertoire of preparations that would work with the time frame and venues that were available to us. Think of how many woman-hours went into that.”

“Oh.” Now that was daunting. “And you? Have you been doing the same?”

Paige climbed onto her favorite seat and kissed my lips. “I used to, until I met you. You have a wonderful talent for making the most of every moment, and I learned soon after coming to live with you that I could accept that. There is really only one thing that I ‘Must Have.’”

I heard the quotes and the capitalizations.

“You and me. Can’t have a wedding without the bride and groom, family and friends. That’s it. I don’t need to spend fifty or a hundred thousand dollars on an event.”

My eyes glazed at the thought of that much money being spent just to get married and she noticed.

“Listen up!” She caught my chin and forced me to focus on her eyes. “The wedding is an event, a single blip in our lives. The marriage is what’s important, you for me and me for you, for as long as we both shall live.”

We sat in my chair like that until she had convinced me that she knew what she was talking about.

“Now, I have to leave my favorite spot and make some calls to see if I can convince my girlfriends to be in the wedding. You have to get in touch with your guys and do the same. When we’re done, here’s the plan – I’ll make dinner for us later and then we can watch a movie after to reduce stress. How does that sound?”

Sounded like a really good idea to me. She left to use the media room for the quiet it provided, while I went into the home office to make my calls. I spent about a half hour talking with Trent, catching up, shooting the breeze, and finding out what was in store for him now that his rookie season with the Texans was almost over. They hadn’t made the playoffs this season so in a few weeks they’d be done for the year and would be spectators all the way through the Superbowl. He agreed that he could make the wedding, be my best man, and then agreed to come west for our Superbowl party well before any of the other things happened.

I caught my buddy, Mike Norris destressing in his apartment after all of his exams, and explained my situation. After receiving congratulations from him, he quickly agreed to be in the wedding party. We could talk more when we started classes again in January, so that call lasted maybe five minutes. Matt Jenkins already knew about the wedding, and I guess Gloria was on the phone with Seattle at the moment so he was at loose ends. I ran the idea of being a groomsman by him and he was good with that – another five minutes. Lastly was Erik Nilson who was one of those families that had purchased and rehabbed one of the worst properties in the neighborhood. I caught him while he was working on his honey-do list so he was happy to exchange fix-it tasks for a talk with his friend and boss. Five minutes later he was a member of my retinue and back to working for his wife. All told, I was done in less than an hour.

I spent the rest of the afternoon working on the 427, not that anything needed to be done, other than a bit of cleanup on the engine and then a wash and wax in the garage. There were fixes to minor issues that Paige or I had noted, some time spent visiting with my little cousins next door, and lastly, generally whiling my time away on the computer looking for honeymoon locations. When Paige still hadn’t emerged by four to start on supper, I took it upon myself to perform that task.

I actually had to interrupt the call with Gloria to let Paige know that supper was ready. She didn’t want to hang up, but I let her gently know that Gloria’s husband, Matt, would probably like some time with his wife today, too. When that didn’t work, I took her phone, said goodbye to Gloria and that she owed some attention to her man, and hung up. A laughing woman accepted her communications device back and promised to be better about time management in the future. The smells of dinner surprised her as we found our way back to the kitchen.

“Oops, I guess I went a little overboard there, didn’t I?

I settled her at our breakfast nook, poured her a glass of white wine and placed the casserole I had made on the table. “Just a little I think.”

She looked abjectly apologetic. “I’m sorry. So what did you do today while I neglected you?”

She spotted the smile when I thought about that. “One day is all it took and now we’re living separate lives? The horror!”

“Be quiet.” I couldn’t stop the chuckle. “I’ll have you’ll know, today I worked on things to please you, I wasn’t just having fun.”

Sarcastic Paige was in the wings, waiting to make an entrance.

“You know that’s not what I meant to say.”

Her grin was tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“What I meant to say was that I had fun doing things to please you, things I wanted to do.”

Sarcastic Paige was banished, and Loving Paige came out. “Thank you, that sounds better. So what did you do?”

“Let’s see, washed and waxed the Cobra, fixed a bunch of leaky faucets, you really need to stop tightening them all the way down, took apart that door knob that’s been sticking and lubricated it, cleaned the outdoor screens, shoveled the snow off the walk, and then the neighbor’s walk, and then the McKenzie walk, played with Erin and Siobhan, and started on planning the honeymoon. By the way, that brings up a question – where do you want to go?”

Paige toyed with her wine glass. “Someplace warm, I think. Beaches, things to do and see, cool evenings and nights in our soundproofed villa, lingerie, privacy...”

My glass came up and clinked against hers. “I like your location already. Now I just have to find it.”

A week later and we were bound out of SEATAC for Atlanta, flying first-class on the company dime to attend business meetings in Macon. Oh, it was legit, we’d do some of that, but the main function of our ten day stay was family and friends. Since the twins had our old rooms and Evie’s former living space had been converted for her business use, we were given the in-law suite when we arrived. Dad located me in the garage that evening, searching for something I knew had to be there.