My Best Man by Andy Schell (unputdownable books .txt) 📗

smile. I step out of my increasingly ragged new car; they walk toward me. “Hi,” I say as they approach, the woman carrying a pie. “Amity’s out of town. You’re her parents, aren’t you?”

“How did you know?” the woman asks, smiling. Her twang is softer than Amity’s, and she’s plain and sweet. Auburn hair pulled back into a bun. Forest green dress, brown flat shoes. She looks nothing like Amity.

“I knew she couldn’t hide you forever,” I answer honestly. “She’d try,” the man says candidly, just the slightest amount of hurt on his face. He’s a large man in a big brown suit. His wingtip shoes are polished into a gleaming shine. “Jim Stubbs,” the man announces, reaching out to shake my hand. “And this here’s my wife, Erline.” His Texas accent is thicker than his wife’s.

I like them immediately. “Harry Ford,” I say, shaking their hands.

“She’s told us all about you,” Mr. Stubbs smiles.

“We were so relieved to finally get a letter,” his wife adds. “Come on in the house.”

“OK, but don’t tell Amity,” Mrs. Stubbs answers, giving me an impish wink.

I take them into the sitting room and seat them on the couch. After taking a folding chair from the hall closet, I sit next to them. Mrs. Stubbs puts the pie on the coffee table. “It’s homemade peach, Amy’s. I mean Amity’s favorite.”

I smile. “I know. So did you drive over from Waco?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Stubbs answers, “but we’re supposed to be from Fort Worth,” she chuckles nervously.

“I guess you’re wonderin’ why we’re here,” Mr. Stubbs says. Before I answer, he continues. “We’d been worded because she hadn’t been returnin’ our calls or letters, and in the past, that’s meant she’s fallen off the wagon.”

“She has a history of substance-abuse problems,” her mother says knowingly, as if she’s spent time with a family counselor. “But that’s all behind her now.”

I smile and withhold. What good will it do to tell them she’s gone wild with the cocaine again?

Her mother continues. “I know she’ll want to kill us for coming unannounced, but we were so thrilled to learn all about you, and when she told us she would be getting married again, well, we wanted to do something, so we baked her a pie.”

“That’s very sweet. She’ll be glad, I’m sure.”

“You must be something’ special, young man,” her father tells me, “because she’s never invited us to the other weddin’s.” Weddings. Plural. How many? I wonder.

“We were so impressed with what she wrote about you,” her mother says, in awe. “How your family background has made you the right man for her.”

Oh, I’m sure. She probably couldn’t wait to tell them that I was a Ford and how much my inheritance would be.

Her father looks at me with regard. “She says you’re different from any man she’s ever met.”

What? Gay? Dumber than the others?

“Kind and sweet,” her mother says softly. Then she grins, “But watch out for his sense of humor, she told us. “He makes me laugh till I’m standing in a pee puddle,” she wrote!”

“We were surprised,” her dad says honestly. “We never learn anything until after she’s married, and by then she’s usually divorced.”

“We suspect you must have money,” her mom laughs, “but we don’t give a hoot. Because this time we know it’s right. She says you’ve overcome your family to be the man you are, and that’s why she feels she knows you, because she’ sd one the same thing.” “What do you mean?”

“Oh, we don’t take it personal no more,” her father says. “Nope,” her mother decrees. She wears no makeup but has a few freckles on her nose, and they give her face a youthful quality for her age. “It was like she was born to the wrong family from day one. She used to look up from my breast and just squint, like “Who the hell are you? My real mother’s a queen.” And I’d look down and think, “Oh, Lord, this one’s going to be trouble.” “

“She was wearing makeup by the age of three,” her father laughs. “But Erline here don’t wear any, so she had to steal it from her little playmate’s mother next door. Can you imagine? Three years old and stealing makeup?”

“Don’t misunderstand,” Mrs. Stubbs says politely. “We always loved her. She just wasn’t like other kids. I mean, how many six year olds play the character of Blanche Dubois in a scene from A Streetcar Named Desire at their first grade talent night, with feeling I can tell by Mrs. Stubbs’s smile that she’s reliving the scene in her head.

“She read Gone With the Wind from cover to cover at the age of seven,” Mr. Stubbs gloats. Then he chuckles. “She’s always had a flair for the dramatic.”

“We’re not stupid, Mr. Ford,” Mrs. Stubbs says quietly, smoothing her skirt. “We know there’s an ache in her heart. We just don’t know what it is. It’s like she always feels she’s missing something.”

Her father shakes his head. “When we’d have tornadoes, I’d have to drag her to the cellar kickin’ and screamin’, because she

always wanted to stay in the house and fly over the rainbow to

Oz.” ‘

“Yep,” Mrs. Stubbs adds. “She’s always thought there’s some thing better than what she has, and if she moves fast enough, she’ll catch up with it.”

“We’re thinkin’ maybe she’s finally caught up with it,” Mr. Stubbs tells me sincerely. “Because she sure ain’t never wrote a letter about anyone like she did the one about you. She makes it sound like you hung the moon, and she put no dollar figure on it. That’s a good sign.”

Her mother looks at me with soulful eyes. “We just wish she felt she had a family. Of course we are her family, but if we’re not good enough, just ‘cuz we buy our underwear at Wards and prefer beer over that imported champagne she drinks well, then OK, we can accept that. We just want her to make a family of