Charlotte Gullick: WEDDING DRESS • Cleaver Magazine

Flash Nonfiction by Charlotte Gullick
WEDDING DRESS

Right now, the daughter and father are alone, the girlfriend—his—sits outside. She pulls on a joint, distancing herself from this, his dying. The girlfriend tries to make room for his children, for the connection that does not—cannot—include her. She draws the smoke in, piercing the July afternoon with her responding cough. Inside, the daughter sits quietly with him—he has three, but it feels like so many more when the girlfriend wants to be with him alone. At least they don’t sleep here, not yet. But she knows this is coming, that as the tumor grows in malignant terror—his girls, as he calls them—even though they are all grown—will circle tighter.

Careful, she cautions herself. It’s vital she remain positive, that’s how they will beat the cancer. She needs to tend her thoughts. This tending, and some remedies she has taken from a Native book—she is sure he’s Indian—will beat the disease. If only she could make the bond with him stronger. She holds out her right hand, examining the engagement ring that she’s decided to wear today, despite how many times the diamond has cut her, cut him. The ring and its rock what binds them now; that and nine years of living together.

The daughter with him now, she’d become ordained, she’s performed a wedding and a baby christening. Wasn’t this sharing in itself a nod that this daughter would approve if the man and the girlfriend married? The dress was picked out in a thrift store six months before, after he offered the ring; it hangs in the closet in white expectancy.

She’d looked magnificent in the dress, even the store clerk had said so. Despite the scratchiness of the bodice, it was a glory to wear, and if they couldn’t have a long life together, they could have this: the bedside wedding, the exchange of vows, something to hold onto as his life slipped away. If the prayers and spells and incantations didn’t do what she so deeply hoped.

Maybe the daughter’s mother’s Jehovah’s Witness religion, and its holiday austerity, was more of an issue than he’d ever disclosed to his family. He liked dressing up—especially since he was so often dirty: collecting garbage, cutting trees, running cattle; he was someone who worked and when he wasn’t working, he wanted to feel clean, impressive, a person sharp in dress and personality. He had his town clothes, the black felt cowboy hat, the black boots, the silver and turquoise bolo tie.

The daughter leaves in the early afternoon; she’ll return in a couple of hours. The idea loops around the girlfriend—she twirls the ring, not so annoyed now that he didn’t get it sized. She sits by the phone, his napping breaths only a few feet away in the other room. With a straightening of posture, she calls the house where the daughter is staying, asking, “Can you marry us?”

The daughter doesn’t say no, doesn’t say yes. In that space, the girlfriend’s hope blooms.

Later, when the sun tips toward the mountains, night curling in the shadows, the daughter returns. The girlfriend and the man lie on the bed. The daughter is quiet in the other room, and from the bedroom, the girlfriend calls, “We’re in here.” Her voice is steadier than she feels.

The daughter steps to the threshold, and the girlfriend rises to take the wedding dress, an A-line, 50s-style, lace-covered garment from the closet where it has waited with the Western-cut shirts and denim jackets. She holds it up, a small quaver in the words. “What do you say, Big Jack? Let’s get married.”

The man, sluggish in his illness, his morphine, his waking from day sleeping, struggles to open his eyes. The girlfriend’s gaze stays steady on his face, for any indication of whether his answer is yes. They wait.

A dog barks outside, a big rig downshifts on the highway, climbing the grade. The man’s hands jerk and tremble in their own private, dying dance.

The girlfriend pulls the dress close, holding tightly to what might’ve been. Finally, she takes a deep breath, nods, and nestles the gown back into the closet. She runs her hand over a sleeve, the texture of the lace, its grid pattern. The engagement ring slides on her finger as she turns back to the man and his daughter, asking for the grace of acceptance. Its own kind of prayer.

Charlotte Gullick is a writer and educator with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Charlotte’s novel, By Way of Water, was published by Blue Hen Books, and her nonfiction has appeared in The Rumpus, Brevity, The Best of Brevity, Pembroke, Dogwood, and The MacGuffin.