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"They want to get married in Texas? That doesn't sound like Jules."
"I don't even know what they're thinking, Shelley," groans Tami, shifting the phone against her shoulder so her hands are free to shave carrots into the salad. "That's not fair. I know what they're thinking."
"Everything's cheaper in Texas?"
"Naw," laughs Tami. "I think they think it's romantic. Something about the setting for their love story being the setting for their wedding."
"Aw, to be young enough to still think up shit like that."
"Shelley," Tami chides, but she's laughing.
"Where do you even go to have a nice wedding in Dillon?"
"It's not Dillon," Tami shifts the phone against her shoulder so she can unbraid Gracie Bell's hair. "I think they're looking at a sculpture garden in Austin — "
"So what we're talking about here is a destination wedding, in Texas, for Julie Taylor — "
Gracie Bell's always been more of a dogs girl than a princesses girl, so the bride phase is pretty unprecedented. The first time she trails through the living room in a big white dress, headed outside in white heels Tami hasn't worn since the early 90s to play in the mud like any other Saturday, Eric gives her the most comically stupified look she's seen from him in awhile.
Gracie's costume chest isn't Fisher Price costumes so much as it's retired clothes of Julie's and Tami's that might sort of almost be able to fit a little girl, but Gracie is adaptable. In her bride phase, she comes up with a hundred different designs — the old white tutu acts both as a skirt and as a veil, and Tami's white nightgowns start disappearing out of drawers and reappearing wadded up in corners.
When she finds a particularly inventive one, she stalks into the office and tugs on Tami's sleeve with her sticky little girl fingers. "Mama, take a picture!" She doesn't like the ones they take on the real camera, though — she likes them on phones, so she can look at them in the car, and send them to Julie.
One day, when Eric says he'll be coming home late, she digs her own wedding dress out of its box and lets Gracie Bell try it on. It's comically big on her — they need pins just to get her arms to poke out of the sleeves — but she still preens, beaming at Tami from the swath of skirts around her. (It gets a little emotional. Tami used to dream about passing it down, when Julie was still the size of one of Eric's shoes, and the gown hadn't made it to the 'laughably dated' stage yet. This is as close as she gets.)
What Tami remembers about her own wedding is the end of it: sitting on one of the empty buffet tables, curved into Eric, her laughing about something-or-other that must not have been that funny in the first place, because he'd leaned in then and warmly accused her of being drunk.
"Love drunk," she'd crooned at him, proving his point. He'd just laughed, cinching her in tighter with his forearm.
"Okay," she'd giggled into his shirt. "It's the damn champagne. Straight to my head. Don't let me drink anymore."
"Like I could stop you," he'd said, dropping a kiss into her hair.
For the rest of the wedding there are pictures, and her mother and her sister, both of whom can still describe every decoration on every tier of the cake. But this and him — they're hers to treasure.
Julie was still a baby when she got engaged — she looked tall enough and thought deep enough to fool anyone into thinking she was grown, except Tami. Tami was her mother. She'd seen her at her lowest, most immature. When Julie'd looked her in the eyes, all, mom, don't you trust me, she had thought — baby, you just crashed a car to get out of college.
Even when Julie'd called and told her to circle the 28th of March on her calendar, it felt like the rest of the engagement — uncertain. It meant something, sure, it commitment, but the idea of a wedding and a marriage, well, it just wasn't something that was on the table, until it was on the table, literally, in the form of a bright and friendly and terribly tangible invitation. Tucked into embossed pink and orange flowers are the words "Mr. and Mrs. Eric Taylor request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their daughter Julie Taylor". Like they're giving her away.
When did she ever sign on a dotted line that said she'd be ready for that?
Ten miles out of Waco, the day before the wedding, she and Tyra get pulled over.
"I have no problem with the speed you were going," explains the state trooper carefully, keeping his eye fixed on Tyra like he's waiting for her to fume at him (again). "The issue here is the flowers."
"The flowers?" asks Tami.
"Yes, ma'am. I know ya'll aren't from here — "
"Where exactly are you getting that from — " Tyra begins angrily, but Tami holds up an arm and she stops.
"From the Pennsylvania license plates," he snaps back condescendingly. "But if ya'll are from around here then you should know very well how seriously we take our state flower, and that it's illegal to pick them. The very fact that you had enough of 'em in your car that I could see it from the road — "
"Don't you think if we had picked that many bluebonnets off of one of your precious highway medians, someone would've noticed?"
"Tyra, hang on," says Tami. "Look, Officer, there's a perfectly logical explanation for all of this, and I promise you, we did not pick a thing. My daughter's getting married in Austin, and we were just picking these up as a special order in Dallas."
"Ma'am, you know we're going to have to confirm that."
"Asshole," Tyra mutters as he stalks away, the business card of their florist in hand. "Couldn't just admit that he was wrong and let us go, he's gotta confirm it."
Tyra's hair is long and blonde again, and as she leans against the car in the late afternoon sun, expression twisted in churlishness, Tami can almost pretend she's the same Tyra Collette she was nine years ago, when she met her. Arrested in time. Tami has a wisp of thought about how sweet that is, but it goes away as quickly as it comes. The beauty of Tyra is how far she's come, even if she's never going to get a real rein on that temper of hers.
"We are gonna be late," says Tyra conversationally, still glaring back at the State Trooper's car.
"Yes we are," sighs Tami. "And we've still gotta get dressed before we show up at the rehearsal dinner."
"And who's gonna make sure that whole thing is gonna run smoothly if we aren't there? Coach? That Alice girl? Some maid-of-honor. If she doesn't spend the entire dinner flirting with Landry, I'm gonna eat my hat."
Julie steps out of the bathroom, coiffed and dressed and radiating with nervous excitement. It isn't that Tami didn't think about this moment — she's rolled the idea of it over and over again in her head, like that would dull the edges. It didn't. It doesn't. She thinks who is this woman?, puerily, because she knows exactly who it is.
She cries, of course. She expects Julie to laugh it off, to say, "aw, Mom, don't spoil it", but Julie isn't that girl anymore. She's grown into herself, out of useless embarrassment. When Tami hugs her, Julie cries too, her voice heavy as she whispers, "I love you, Mom. Thank you for everything." She lets that moment hang around them for just long enough before she breaks it with, "This is exactly why I decided makeup should come after the dress."
Her girl. Her wise, brave, accomplished girl, who can juggle her life and her boy (alright, her man), and still make a wedding happen, somehow, almost by herself. She's so vibrant, so ready for this next chapter of her life.
His last technical paternal duty fulfilled, Julie delivered to gaggle of grooms and bridesmaids and people at the front of the ampitheater, Eric sits between her and Gracie Bell, wrapping them both in close with his arms. "Look at what we made," he whispers into Tami's hair.
Like she could look away.