Either to the dark, velvet-cushioned lounges––where South Highlands brats celebrate their ID’s turning legal by trying to get to New York City or LA with watermelon martinis and ambient music before the lights come up; or they go to the Saddle Ridge in Bossier––where mechanical bulls and Vodka Bulls graze on a plywood pasture with shouting Barksdale airmen and Revlon-smeared country girls.
Cam mills over the night while he eats a Louis Rich turkey and mayonnaise sandwich over the kitchen counter. On his way out of the kitchen to a much-needed shower, he gives a dismissive look to the picture of him in his marine dress blues on the fridge. But his eyes snag on what’s pinned under a magnet beside it––a large, gold-bordered wedding invitation that has been up on the fridge for weeks. He goes outside and interrupts his mother’s gardening.
“Is it the fourth?” asks Cam.
“Yes,” she says.
“I thought you were goin’ to that wedding.”
“Melanie couldn’t go with me, her father’s not doing so well.”
“Oh,” says Cam. “Just saw the invitation, thought you might’ve forgot.”
“No,” she says.
Cam goes back inside to shower, wondering why anybody cares about weddings outside of their own close circles.
But his mother’s floral distraction from her disappointment at not going proves that weddings aren’t just about the newlyweds. They must be about women wanting something to get pretty for and men wanting something to get drunk for. Or about old women remembering their better days through young couples’ happiness, and old men remembering their better days through young brides’ figures. Like most things people do in groups, it must be about doing things for yourself that you need other people to participate in.
As he leaves the bathroom in a towel, he watches his mother through the living room window, on her hands and knees in the late afternoon sun, emptying the Radio Flyer’s colorful payload into the tiny garden that neighborhood dogs use as a latrine. Nearer to him is a Blockbuster bag on the coffee table, which also means there’s a pint of his mother’s favorite mint chip ice cream in the freezer. He steps into the kitchen to look at the invitation again, then goes out onto the front doorstep.
“Cam, don’t let the neighbors see you like that!”
He backs up and covers his towel-wrapped body with the door.
“You want to go?” asks Cam.
“It’s too late.”
“The reception doesn’t start for another forty-five minutes.”
“I’m a mess,” she says, looking down at the soil-blackened thighs of her Chic jeans.
“Let’s go,” says Cam, “You have time.”
“Both of us?” she asks.
Cam shrugs.
“You can wear Andrew’s old suit again… the one you wore for graduation,” she says, with sudden eagerness, “You looked so handsome in it.”
“Where is it?”
“Back of your closet in the Dillard’s bag. I’ll press a shirt for you if you need me to.”
“No, I’ll do it,” says Cam.
She hops up and drags the Radio Flyer back around to the side yard. Then she hurries into the house and disappears into her bedroom. Seconds later, her bathroom shower starts running.
A thought comes into Cam’s head that he’d rather not have there. It’s about himself as a little boy, maybe five years old, standing in her bathroom and noticing a dark triangle of pubic hair through her fogged glass shower door. For years, that triangle was a symbol of women and sexuality that he would uncover the meaning of when he grew up. But by the time he was old enough to be naked with women, the whole lot of them had decided to do away with that triangle of hair almost entirely. He never did uncover the mystery of women that this triangle represented to him, and it now seems as elusive as the hair that symbolized it. He pushes the thought out of his head as he digs into the Dillard’s bag in his closet and pulls out the white twill dress shirt and gray pinstripe suit that have been on loan from the wardrobe of Andrew Daltry since Cam’s high school graduation.
Cam sets up the ironing board in the kitchen and presses his shirt to near military specs. Then he buttons the hot cotton up to his neck and goes back to his room for the suit. There’s a high school commencement program folded in half in the inside pocket. It still smells like it did that day, three years ago, when he stuffed it in there through the front of his Josten’s acetate gown as he and his classmates filed up to the podium on the football field to smile over diplomas they’d never look at again and shake hands with a headmaster they’d never speak to again. He wonders where his diploma is now, as he drops the program into his bathroom trashcan.
Chapter Four
Cam hasn’t worn a pressed shirt since his grandfather’s funeral, and hasn’t seen his mother in so much makeup since she chaperoned his senior prom. He drives them to the reception in her minivan––the last bastion of her young housewife days.
Cam pulls into the Norton Art Gallery’s broad circular drive, stops the car at the back of a line of idle taillights, and then trades the keys for a ticket from the valet. He steps around the car and helps his mother out by her proudly arched hand. He can tell by the way she takes his arm, and by the way her heels strike the pavement with steady, confident clicks that he is more man to her at the moment than he is son. They follow white paper luminaries to the ten-foot glass doors at the center of the modern brick building. Its boxy wings stretch out on either side of the front entrance into Azalea gardens that wealthy Shreveporters use as a backdrop for family portraits.
The foyer is watched over by the Mr. Norton Senior that the museum is named for. But most people wouldn’t know who he was anymore if it weren’t for the large brass plaque beneath his portrait. From the foyer, marble-floored exhibit rooms radiate off in every direction––walled with western landscapes and populated by Remington’s bronze cowboys and Indians.
Big band music barrels through the rooms from the main gallery. As they work their way into the crowd, a black-vested man passes by with a tray of Champagne flutes and Cam grabs two for himself and his mother. She awkwardly clinks her glass against his without a word of toast, as if rehearsing a ritual she doesn’t quite yet understand. Cam downs his glass in a few sips as he follows her lead into the crowd.
A rented parquet dance floor is laid out over the marble floor in front of the bandstand, and is alive with the elegant swishing of dresses and the stiff movements of dark suits that try to lead but usually follow. Women have a way with wedding dances, notices Cam, which only a few men share. And Cam isn’t one of those few. His mother leads him to the groom’s side of the room, a former student of hers. Cam vaguely recognizes many of the faces around them––some from church, some from graduation days at school, and some just from the Uptown grocery store.
“Oh my word, it’s Ms. Daltry!” says a woman whose sharp nose and cleft chin tell Cam she’s the groom’s mother. “And you must be Andrew,” she adds, upon noticing Cam.
“No this is Cam,” says his mother.
Good
