The Wedding Machine by Beth Webb Hart Page B

and waves to Hilda from her organ perch in the balcony above the church doors, and she nods back, thankful to see a friendly face.
    Hilda hasn’t stepped inside this church for over four years. She stopped coming after Angus left, though she knew he switched over to Trudi’s Baptist church on the outskirts of town where there is no Tiffany stained glass window and no incense and no port wine poured into silver chalices for the sacrament. Talk about uncivilized!
    Angus and Hilda were married at this very altar just over twenty-eight years ago beneath the ornate brass cross and the Ten Commandments chiseled in the marble panels behind it. And Little Hilda was christened at the baptismal font on the left side of the altar along with Priscilla the winter after their birth. That was a bittersweet ceremony, since Kitty B. and LeMar had buried Baby Roberta two months earlier.
    ~ FEBRUARY 24, 1980 ~
    Hilda peered out through the north side window during her daughter’s baptism at the stone that marked Baby Roberta’s grave—a small, rectangular outline with a fresh patch of grass in the center and a square frame at its head where an angel knelt above the name and the date of her very short life: Roberta Ferguson Hathaway, October 14, 1980–December 20, 1980.
    The rectangular stones reminded Hilda of an empty bassinet, and her knees buckled at the thought of it as she stood before the baptismal font the morning of Little Hilda’s christening.
    It was Little Hilda’s shrill cry after Old Stained Glass poured the cold water across her forehead that pulled Hilda’s back to the ceremony. Baby Roberta was supposed to be christened with Hilda and Ray’s daughters that day. They had decided upon a triple baptism, and Hilda quietly broke down the day the invitations arrived with Baby Roberta’s name etched in the center of them. She immediately called the stationery store and asked them to reprint them. Then she asked Richadene to watch over her baby while she took the old invitations out to the backyard and burned them in a metal trash can, spearing them with the poker from her fireplace until every last piece of the embossed crosses and the names and the dates had turned to ash.

    As Hilda takes her place in the mother-of-the bride pew, she hears the shuffle of feet on the slate aisle, and out of the corner of her eye she feels someone staring at her. When she turns, she sees it is Dodi, her ex-husband’s girlfriend’s daughter and the junior bridesmaid of the wedding party. Dodi bites the inside of her chubby cheek as she stares Hilda down. Hilda shakes her head in disapproval and turns to watch Giuseppe’s relatives file in behind her, speaking in hushed Italian words.
    When Dodi turns to talk to one of the acolytes, Hilda glances back and studies her. Her dull brown hair is curled in ringlets, and she’s wearing a pale shade of lipstick and dangly, rhinestone earrings that are far too old for her. What is she, nine or ten? She’s in an iridescent green full-length dress that looks like it was made for a 1980s prom, and she has these bushy black eyebrows that would put Brooke Shields to shame. Hilda looks around for Trudi, who ought to be appalled at how tacky her child is dressed, but she is nowhere to be seen. Hilda smirks at the possibility of having run her off from this gathering.
    Now Ray, a patch over her black, swollen eye, directs everyone to the proper pews. She’s decked out in a tailored pink linen suit with her mother-in-law’s pearl hummingbird on her lapel. Hilda can’t believe the stamina Ray has. If Hilda had hit a deer, she’d still be lying in bed with ice packs on her face.
    â€œThe south side is for the groom’s family and the north side for the bride’s,” Ray calls. Vangie Dreggs stands like an unwanted shadow directly behind Ray. Naturally, she wants to join the Wedding Guild, and it is Ray’s charge to show her the