Chapter 15: A Very Public Fight

"I will not," I said, "walk down any aisle on your arm."

It was eleven thirty on the lawn, and twelve relatives were unfolding chairs in rows of six.

Every one of them stopped.

Judy's seating chart for the processional was taped to a tent pole, and it said, in Judy's round hand, KATE + JACK, FIRST PAIR, SMILING.

"It's two hundred feet of grass," said Jack. "It's not a lifetime commitment."

"It's two hundred feet of you."

"You've been walking next to me all week."

"Under protest."

"Under the quilt," said a cousin, quietly, and her husband elbowed her.

Jack didn't look at them.

He was good at this, I was finding out.

He stood with his arms folded and his jaw tight and his green eyes flat.

He looked exactly like a man who had been insulted by a woman he'd been warned about.

"You know what your problem is?" I said.

"Please. I have a pie to get back to."

"You think everyone else has a script and you're the only one improvising."

"That's a very strange thing to say."

"You snore like a bag of wrenches."

"I don't snore."

"My father asked Judy, and Judy said you don't snore, and I said, with respect, Judy has not been in the bed."

That one landed.

A man in a sun hat dropped a chair.

"Oh, you did not," said Jack.

"I absolutely did."

"You talk," he said, loud enough for the back row of the tent. "You say a man's name all night, and it isn't mine."

"It's yours, you liar, and you know it."

Nobody on the lawn breathed.

I realized a second too late what I had just told twelve people and a dog.

Jack realized it too, and a muscle jumped in his cheek.

"Excuse me," I said, with great dignity, and turned on my heel.

"I'm not finished."

"I am."

"Good!" he shouted at my back. "Go inside and be right about something!"

"I will!"

I stalked across the lawn and up the porch steps and through the screen door.

I let it slam so hard the cherries rattled in the pantry.

Behind me, I heard a cousin say, "Ten dollars on the wedding night."

"You're on," said someone else.

I went through the kitchen, past a stove holding eight pies, and down the short back hall, and into the laundry room.

It was a narrow room with a slanted ceiling and one small window, a washer, a dryer.

A shelf of folded tablecloths for the dinner.

The dryer was running.

It shook the whole floor with a warm, steady hum.

I stood in front of it with both hands over my face, shaking with laughter and fury and want.