Shadows on a Cape Cod Wedding Read Free Page A

I want to have a clean desk then. So I have an agenda, too. Shall we all be off?” He stood up, and Maggie followed.
    “Wait! Before we leave here, I want to give Maggie a preview of the wedding,” Gussie said, a bit slyly. “I thought I’d show her the dress your mother chose for her. And had shipped all the way from Atlanta.”
    “You haven’t told her?” Jim looked at his bride-to-be incredulously. “I can’t believe you haven’t told her.”
    “I wanted it to be a surprise,” Gussie said, with a stern look at him.
    “You have a dress for me?” Maggie asked. “When we talked about dresses a month ago you said the wedding wasn’t going to be formal, and I should bring my favorite cocktail dress. I brought a couple with me; I thought you could choose whichever one you thought would work best with whatever you’d decided to wear.”
    Gussie shook her head. “Remember, I said I needed you to come to the Cape early?”
    “Of course. I had to pull in a lot of favors to get people to cover all my classes for ten days,” said Maggie. “I assumed you needed help getting the house ready before the wedding.” She gestured at the unpacked boxes.
    “I do. Believe me. At my old home, and here, and at both the old and the new Aunt Agatha’s Attics,” said Gussie. “I still can’t believe that in this housing market my dear sister Ellen managed to sell the building with both my house and store, so I need to move both before the wedding.” Gussie paused for a moment and shook her head, as though still trying to convince herself it was true. Then she looked back at Maggie. “But, no, those little details are only the beginning.” She headed her scooter toward the closed door to the future guest room. “Follow me.”
    Maggie glanced at Jim, who had suddenly become fascinated by the view out the window, and followed Gussie.
    “ That ,” said Gussie, throwing the door to the guest room open dramatically and pointing, “is the dress Jim’s mother sent for you to wear to the wedding.”
    For a moment Maggie said nothing. She stared in horror at the pink-green-and-yellow-flowered, off-the-shoulder, Scarlett O’Hara-style dress, complete with flounces, stays, and a hoop skirt, that was hanging from the wrought iron chandelier in the middle of the empty guest room. The dress occupied a space that might have been filled by a table seating eight.
    “You’re my best friend in all the world, Gussie,” she finally said, breaking the silence. “You know I’d do anything for you. But you cannot expect me to wear that .”
    Gussie’s knuckles on the hand control of her electric scooter were almost white. “I told you it was an emergency. That is only the beginning.”
    Maggie took a deep breath. “I brought you and Jim a case of special champagne as a wedding present. I’d thought maybe tonight, after dinner, you and I could break out a similar bottle, so I also brought a couple of extras. When we get to your old house I’m going to put them in the refrigerator. While we’re eating dinner I want you to tell me what’s really going on with this wedding. And then, after a few more drinks, I want you to tell me everything you won’t have told me over dinner.”
    Gussie grinned. “Have I told you how really, really happy I am that you’re here?”
    “Just keep saying that, my friend. Because I have a feeling that before the next ten days are over you’re going to owe me. Big time!”

Chapter 4
    Picturesque New England Industries: Lobstering Off Scituate. (From Sketches by Joseph Becker.) Full page from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 21, 1887, including a paragraph on the lobster industry, and sketches of setting the traps (“lobster boats are a species of small lugger, with one large sail and one small one”), measuring the lobster (“none less than 10½ inches long may be kept”), pegging the claws, and arriving at a boiling and canning factory. Black and white. The way life used to be.