— The Rehearsal Dinner
Veronica Hargreaves planned the rehearsal dinner the way she planned everything, with a list in one hand and a pen in the other, and she did not like it when the list was questioned. She had been at the house since midmorning, walking from room to room with her notebook open, measuring the dining table with her eyes and moving the chairs a fraction of an inch this way or that. She had chosen the flowers, white roses and pale green leaves, and the tablecloths and the candles and the place cards, each one written in her neat, slanted hand. The house smelled of the lavender she had put in every room, and the sound of her heels on the wooden floor followed me from the kitchen to the workshop door.
"Beau," she said, when she found me in the hallway, "we need to talk about Poppy's hair."
I had a plank of oak under my arm and sawdust on my shirt, and I was on my way back to the workshop to finish a chair I had promised a customer. I stopped because she had used that tone, the reasonable tone, the one that made everything sound like a small practical matter. "What about it?" I asked.
"It will not sit still," Veronica said. "I have tried every brush in the house. It springs back the moment you let it go. For the rehearsal dinner, and for the wedding, she needs to look tidy. People will be taking photographs."
"She is six," I said. "Photographs of a six-year-old are supposed to look like a six-year-old."
Veronica smiled, but the smile did not reach her eyes. "I only want what is best for her, Beau. A little girl should look her best on her father's wedding day. It is a reflection on the family."
I did not argue. I told myself I was tired, and that the chair was waiting, and that a woman who cared about place cards was allowed to care about hair. I went back to the workshop and sanded the chair until my hands ached, but the words stayed with me, the way a splinter stays under the skin. A reflection on the family. As if Poppy were a piece of furniture that needed to match the room.
That evening, Veronica came into the kitchen while Dolores was setting the table for supper. Poppy was sitting on the floor with her dolls, lining them up in a row and telling them a story about a queen who lived in a tree. Veronica stopped beside her and looked down at her hair for a long moment, and then she reached out and smoothed one curl with her hand, the way you might smooth a wrinkle out of a cloth.
"Poppy," she said, "would you like me to make your hair pretty for the dinner? Really pretty, like the girls in the magazines?"
Poppy looked up at her, and her eyes were wide. "My hair is already pretty," she said. "Mama said so."
Veronica's hand paused. "Your mama is not here anymore, sweetheart. I am going to be your new mama, and I know what pretty looks like."
The room went very quiet. Dolores stopped setting the table. I stood in the doorway with a glass of water in my hand, and I felt the air change, the way the air changes before a storm. Poppy did not answer. She picked up her favorite doll and held it against her chest, and she looked at me, and in that look I saw the question she was too young to put into words. Was this woman right? Was her hair wrong? Was her mother wrong?
I crossed the room and crouched down beside her. "Your mama was right," I said, and I said it loud enough for everyone in the kitchen to hear. "Your hair is beautiful, and it is yours, and nobody gets to change it."
Veronica laughed, a light, easy laugh, as if I had made a joke. "Of course, darling. I only meant a little smoothing. You are so sensitive, Beau. It is only hair."
Only hair. I let it go. I let it go because the wedding was days away and the invitations had been sent and the flowers had been ordered, and because I did not want a fight in front of my daughter. I told myself that Veronica loved Poppy in her own way, and that her own way was simply stricter than mine. I told myself that mothers came in different shapes, and that a little strictness would not hurt a child who had so much love around her.
After supper, Veronica showed me the seating plan for the rehearsal dinner. She had placed Poppy at the far end of the table, next to an empty chair, so that she would not be in the photographs taken at the head of the table. When I asked her why, she said it was so Poppy could be near Dolores, who would be serving. I looked at the plan for a long time, and then I took the pen from her hand and moved Poppy's place card to the seat beside mine.
"She sits with me," I said.
Veronica did not argue. She simply folded the plan and put it back in her notebook, and she smiled at me as if I had won a small point in a game we were both playing. That night, after Poppy was asleep, I stood at the window of my workshop and wondered for the first time whether I truly knew the woman I was about to marry.