Beach Wedding Read online

  “We’re throwing the wedding in Pelican Key Cove,” I sigh, collapsing in a seat.

  “Isn’t that where you’re from?”

  “Yup.” I look at him, defeated, “I’m going home.”

  Chapter Four

  What Marcie wants, Marcie gets: barely a week later, we’re exiting the airport at Miami International. We’re down to shoot something she calls a ‘sizzle reel’ of footage, kind of a video mood board to show the network what they’re thinking for the show. I left Theo manning the ship back in NYC. I figure if anyone can keep my current clients happy, it’s him. Plus, that leaves me with one less person tagging along on my blast from the past.

  Hot blast, that is. The warm air greets us the minute we step out of the terminal. I wince. I’d almost forgotten how the humidity feels as it hugs you with its soggy warmth. My hair is going to be 100% frizz in no time.

  “Ginny!”

  I turn at the yell. Marcie is striding out with Pixie and Clyde in tow. They all flew first class, of course, while I squeezed in coach.

  “Are we ready to get this show on the road, yeah?” Clyde seems to be actually melting as he takes off his black leather jacket, slinging it over his shoulder.

  “You guys have a limo waiting,” Marcie tells them. Before I can get excited about the thought of AC and a driver, she says to me, “We’ll be driving ourselves. This is Nick and Neil.” She points to the guys toting cases of AV equipment. “They’ll go in the limo and start shooting footage. I’ll ride with you. You can fill me in on this town of yours.” She strides to the rental car booth.

  I lose her in the cluster of people, but it’s not hard find Marcie in the crowd. She’s the one with the loudest voice, demanding GPS, AC, and WiFi en route. Soon, I’m behind the wheel of the rental car, hitting the highway with Marcie in the passenger seat.

  We drive away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and it doesn't take long until we break away from the Miami traffic. Marcie fields a constant stream of calls, talking “press strategy” and “demographic shifts” and “live plus three ratings bumps.” She yells, cajoles, and threatens, and by the time she finally hangs up and turns her attention to me, I’m intimidated and more than a little impressed.

  “So, I’ve talked to the mayor of Pelican Crawl Klatch,” she starts. I’m through trying to correct her. “He says we have to give a presentation at a town meeting. It’s probably just a formality to get them to sign off on the permits.” She catches my look. “What?”

  “Nothing. Town meetings can be kind of… odd, that’s all.”

  “This whole place sounds like a nut factor. But if wooing the locals over at a town meeting is what it takes, when in Rome…”

  “Pelican Key Cove is anything but Rome. No aqueducts,” I say.

  She looks at me funny. “What about ducks? I thought it was pelicans.”

  “Never mind.”

  “So, is it true about the alligators?”

  “What about them?”

  “That they’re roaming wild.”

  “More like slithering.” I catch her look of panic. “Don’t worry. If you stay out of the marshes, you’ll be fine. Most of them are harmless.” I smile. “My aunts even adopted one, old Algernon, who lives down in the creek on the back of the ranch.”

  “A pet alligator?” Marcie curls her lip. “Are they crazy?”

  “Nope. Just from Florida.”

  I drive on. The highway crosses the bay and into the keys, a gorgeous stretch with beach views and the wide blue horizon. My heart is beating faster now, closer to home. I’ve avoided making this trip for so long, but now I can’t help but feel the ocean vibes take me over, nostalgia thick in the summer breeze. The built-up tourist strips and beachfront hotels pass by, and now we’re really getting out into nature: beaches and swampland, small-towns strung along like sparkling jewels, the road getting sandier with every passing mile.

  Growing up in paradise, it was easy to take all of this for granted. As a kid, I dreamed about big cities and the hustle and bustle of a million people, a place where nobody knew my name. It was a restlessness that only grew the older I got. Some people love the laid-back pace of life by the beach, but I felt stifled, impatient for my real life to begin. Looking back, I can see I was still grieving my parents’ deaths. I wanted to be far away from the painful memories. My aunts did their best. They loved me and raised me to never feel alone. But still, I couldn’t shake the hunger of knowing there was a big wide world out there my parents never got a real chance to explore. It was all on me to do it for them.

  “Stop!”

  I’m pulled from my reverie by Marcie’s ear-splitting shriek. “What’s wrong?” I panic, wrenching the wheel.

  “Here! Right here!” Marcie points. It’s the ‘Welcome to Pelican Key Cove’ sign, stuck in sand by the side of the road. “Pull over!”

  I do as she says, my heart still racing. “What’s the big emergency?”

  “This will be perfect for B-roll.” Marcie grabs her phone. “Hey, Nick? Keep an eye for the sign and stop the car. It’ll be perfect for the sizzle reel.” She leaps out of the car and begins pacing, making more calls.

  OK then.

  Soon, the limo pulls over, too. Pixie and Clyde emerge. Clyde’s got a chilled bottle of sparkling water in one hand and a plate of fresh fruit in the other.

  “That ride is bloody great!” he exclaims, munching a slice of mango. “Did you know they have a PlayStation hooked up? I’ve been beating Nick at Grand Theft Auto.”

  “Not for long, mate!” Nick calls. “Beginner’s luck.”

  Marcie takes over corralling Pixie and Clyde in front of the sign. The camera guys set up, shooting footage of them kissing and playing around.

  I smile. Everyone in town’s taken that photo in front of the sign. The summer before senior year, it was my turn. The whole group was hanging out: me and Luke, his buddy, Wes, and my best friend, Jules. The graduating class was holding their annual scavenger hunt, and we were determined to take the crown. We stole garden gnomes from the mayor’s house, planted weeds on the fifty-yard line, and followed the clues all the way out here.

  “What does it say?” I’d called, laughing, as Jules opened the envelope.

  “Take a photo with the pelicans,” she read aloud.

  “Is that it?” Luke had laughed, his arm slung around my shoulders.

  Jules winked. “Topless.”

  Wes hooted. “Aw yeah! Get it off, girls!”

  I’d flushed and giggled, but I wasn’t about to back down from a bet. And neither was Jules. We stripped down to our cut-offs behind the sign then posed, hands cupping our bare chests, at the guys hollered for more. Jules always said she destroyed the Polaroid from that day, but Jules always said a lot of things.

  I wonder what she’s doing now. After I left town, I tried my best to stay in touch: phone calls, and emails, and even letters, but she drifted out of touch during college. I haven’t heard from her since. She’s probably miles away by now, off living in a big city somewhere, big enough to contain her wild personality.

  I snap back to reality. The crew looks like they’ll be here a while, so I pull Marcie aside. “OK if I go on ahead?”

  “Sure,” she drags her gaze away from the shoot. “Just be at the meeting by six. It’s on 3rd street—”

  “I know where it is.”

  “Great. Wait, Pixie, do that again with your arms around him!” Marcie turns back, striding over.

  I get in the car and drive on alone. Without Marcie to overrule me, I roll the windows down and turn the radio up loud, letting the warm ocean winds tangle my hair as the road leads me closer to home. I cross the last bridge and suddenly, I’m here. It’s strange to see how much things have both changed and stayed the same in town. The wide Main Street is clustered with faded old stores and newer tourists joints. There’s the hardware-slash-grocery sitting next to a new ice-cream parlor, a fancy new coffee shop on the corner by the library. There’s the church, the tramp
led green of the town square. I see the old gazebo and make a mental note for wedding locations. I’ll have to do a thorough search before I can really plan this thing. We’ll need a venue for the service, another for the reception, plus photos and parties. I can’t imagine the crowd Pixie and Clyde will have coming. As far as I remember, there’s just the B&B for out-of-towners, or the motel up the highway. Somehow, I don’t picture the rest of the Park Avenue Princesses sleeping four to a room on those loose-spring beds with nothing but a broken ice machine for refreshment.

  I keep driving further down the coast. Out of town, I can see more evidence of development. Some big, shiny beach houses sit along the shore, and a small complex of townhouses and vacation apartments are arranged around a pool. The scenery turns rural, until I finally turn off the highway and down a near-dirt road into the trees.

  ‘Xanadu’, the sign above the rusted gates reads. My aunts are both artsy and, well, eccentric is the polite way to put it. They were just a little older than I am now when my mom died and I arrived on their doorstep, but they never skipped a beat. They quit their jobs and moved here so I could have some sense of continuity to my life. They found this old ranch and gradually fixed it up, adopting a whole menagerie of animals along the way. Now they live in rustic bliss, with plenty of space for whatever creative projects strike their fancy.

  I drive on, keeping an eye on the road for stray wildlife. This time, I just see a couple of llamas munching in the undergrowth – from that time Bettina decided to start selling their wool – and some tropical birds circling overhead. I pull around the bend in the road, and there’s the ranch: peeling paint, a bright purple shed, and a daisy mural all along the far wall.

  Home.

  “Watch out!” I hear a cry, and slam on the brakes just as a squawking bundle of feathers bounds across the road. It’s a pelican – with a sling?

  “Get him!” my aunt Rae calls, racing out of the house. She’s dressed in a bright yellow kaftan, her hair dyed red. “We’re trying to fix his wing.”

  I climb out, and join the chase. My other aunt, Bettina, circles around from the left. She’s wearing denim overalls with her hair up in a bun, banging two saucepans together and trying to scare the injured bird back towards the house. “A little to the left!” she calls.

  “Try singing!” Rae urges. “He loves that!”

  Bettina begins to sing a familiar song.

  “What is that?” I ask, dashing to block the pelican’s escape.

  “Freebird!”

  “Isn’t that giving him the wrong idea?” I laugh.

  She bangs louder. “That’s it! He’s moving!”

  Whether it’s the singing or the sight of Bettina doing her percussion, the pelican decides it’s not worth the fight. He turns and hops back into the house. Rae slams the door behind him with a cheer.

  “Phew,” she gasps. “I could use a drink. Mai Tai time?”

  “Sign me up, sugar,” Bettina agrees. I’m catching my breath when they both grab me for a hug.

  “Welcome home!”

  Inside, everything is the same as I remember: eclectic woven hangings on the walls, and Rae’s sculpture pottery displayed on every surface. She’s actually well-respected. There are galleries all the way up the Keys displaying her weird fusion of ceramics and found objects.

  “Want see my new centaur?” she asks, heading for the kitchen. “I call him George.”

  I wonder for a second if my aunts have started taking in mythological creatures in addition to emus and injured pelicans, but then Rae shows me a rather dashing looking terracotta centaur. “I based his face off Colin Firth and his horse body off Secretariat.”

  I laugh. “Physical perfection.”

  “A centaur aficionado out of Key West wanted one for his sculpture garden. I’m also making him a Burt Reynolds/Seabiscuit as a fountain.”

  Bettina joins us and pours some sweet iced tea from the pitcher in the fridge. “What are you working on?” I ask her. Bettina is a composer and musician, and keeps her studio out back. “Any more TV jingles?”

  “Just a couple. I’m mainly doing background scores,” she says. “You know, the ‘duh duh duh’ music for when the cops catch the bad guys.”

  “She’s also working on an opera, composed to the music of Prince,” Rae pipes up. “It’s really coming along.”

  Bettina nods. “I’m on the fifth part already.”

  “How many parts are there going to be?” I ask. I should know better than to be surprised by their latest projects.

  “Oh, at least twenty-two,” Bettina says, pouring a liberal dash of something from a flask into her iced tea. “I’m taking him through the ‘artist formally-known-as’ years, through the squiggle era, and back.”

  “Sounds… ambitious. I’m sure it’ll be great.”

  We head out to the back porch, and take a seat on the rickety wicker furniture. I sit back, relaxing after the drive.

  “It’s so good to have you home, sweetheart.” Rae leans over and squeezes my shoulder. “We’ve missed you.”

  “It’s good to see you both, too.” I smile at them. “Coming back here, it’s like nothing even changed.”

  “Sure it has,” Rae protests. “Did you see that new café on the square? People were lining up when it opened.”

  “Poor Gil down at the Quick-n-Pick can’t give his coffee away.”

  “Serves him right,” Rae snorts. “Watered down swill. Give me a non-fat mocha any day.”

  I laugh. “And there I was thinking Pelican Key Cove was back in the dark ages.”

  Bettina smiles. “The more things change, the more they stay the same. Did you hear that Wes Lansing is police chief now?”

  “Wes-from-high-school Wes?” I can’t believe it. “He used to be the one getting in all kinds of trouble!”

  “Yep, he turned into quite the pillar of the community. He married Becky Sheridan and they have two adorable little girls,” Rae elaborates. “They come by to visit the goats sometime.”

  I try to stop myself, but I can’t help it. “What about Luke?”

  My aunts share a not-so-subtle look.

  “What? You can tell me,” I promise. “Is he married now? A congressman?”

  “None of the above, but I hear he’s doing just fine,” Rae says. “We don’t see him in town too much.”

  I try to ignore the relief.

  My relief is cut short when I feel something slither over my feet. I yelp. My aunts laugh. “It’s just Lancelot,” Rae reassures me, as the old snake slithers past. “He’s excited to see you again. Look at the way he’s sticking out his tongue. He only does that when he’s happy.” Bettina strokes the snake’s head as if he were a fuzzy Yorkshire terrier and not a boa constrictor.

  I recover my breathing. I forgot that staying at the ranch means things crawling, slithering, and waddling through the house at all hours.

  “Do you know how long you’ll be staying?” Rae asks, looking hopeful.

  “I’m not sure.” I take a sip of iced tea and splutter.

  “Whoops, mine.” Bettina switches the glasses with a wink. I laugh,

  “It all depends if they can get the permits to film. Then I guess they’ll stay in Miami for a few weeks while we pull the wedding together. I can’t imagine Pixie and Clyde setting up shop here for long.”

  “We’re happy to have you for as long as you can stay,” Rae says warmly. “Your room is more or less the same. There might be a few more centaurs than you’re used to,” she adds.

  “Thank you.” I smile, look around, and feel a warm glow. “It’s good to be home.”

  My phone beeps with a text.

  “Where r u??? meeting in 15.”

  “It’s Marcie,” I sigh. “I better get going, before she manages to piss off the whole town.”

  Bettina and Rae get up. “Well, we’d best get going!”

  “Y’all are coming, too?” I hear myself say y’all and shake my head. Old habits.

  “You know we n
ever miss them, honey. Ooh, Betts, get the Chex Mix, you just know this one is going to be a show!”

  Chapter Five

  Rae insists on driving, so we all pile into the cab of her ancient red pickup truck and head over to the Town Hall. The parking lot is almost full by the time we arrive. I see Marcie up on the front steps, gesturing furiously as she talks on her cell phone. I don’t envy whoever’s on the other end of the line, so I slip past with my aunts before she notices me.

  Inside, it looks like half the town has turned out. I’d forgotten what a tradition these meetings are. Even when we were teenagers, Luke and Jules and I used to turn up to enjoy the show: neighbors bickering, crazy new requests, the mayor going off on a monologue about when he was a boy. Sure, maybe we were starved for entertainment, but it was always a fun time.

  Now I see Pixie and Clyde sitting up front, drawing stares and whispers. “I’ll see you guys after,” I tell my aunts, making my way to the front. It seems every few steps, somebody recognizes me.

  “Is that little Ginny? Oh my, you’ve grown ten feet!”

  “I never thought I’d see the day! How’s life in the big city treating you?”

  “You must drop by for a slice of pie. Your aunts showed me all the photos of your weddings, and my niece Brandy’s getting hitched next June—”

  “Great, thanks, it’s nice to see you too!” I manage to duck away and join the crew in their row. They definitely look out of place. With Clyde’s leather pants and Pixie’s bright white romper, they look ready for a fashion shoot, not the general business of Pelican Key Cove.

  “Hi guys.” I slide into a seat beside them. “Where’s the rest of the team?”

  Pixie beams. “Hey Ginny! Isn’t this cute? This whole town, it’s like something out of a TV show.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Hey, is there, like, a vending machine around here?” Pixie asks. “My blood sugar’s super low, and you don’t want to see me when I’m hangry.”