Page 7 of June Bride
It was totally the wrong shade, but it was a good start. Yet Brandelyn couldn’t stop thinking that it truly highlighted the stark difference between the bride in her porcelain princess gown and the ambiguously-gendered person in a suit and pink cummerbund.Sunny deserves better than this.Whatever cake topper they used should represent both of their personalities, let alone appearances! Her sandy blond hair could not be thoroughly represented by a male figurine with brown hair. Yet the blond ones highlighted the masculine features that didnotlook like Sunny at all! Her heart-shaped face, soft curves, and kindly brown eyes were nowhere to be seen in these booklets. Brandelyn had no qualms picking the first brunette bride standing proudly on her wedding, but she would be damned if her guests looked at her cake topper and wondered whatguyshe was marrying!
“No, none of these will do.” Shaking her head, Brandelyn closed the book and opened the one with two brides in wedding gowns. She might as well look. Maybe it would take the bad taste now forming on her tongue. “They don’t look anything like Sunny. I know you haven’tseenher much, but…”
“I know what she looks like,” Debbie said through gritted teeth. “There is one in the book you have there…”
Brandelyn paused on the page Debbie looked at with a little fondness. “Is this the one?” Brandy pointed to the two brides holding hands, both in identical gowns, but their bouquets a lovely degree of red and pink. The bride on the right had her dark hair up in the bun with the kind of ringlets Brandy considered for her matrimonial fashion. The blonde must have had long hair pulled back into a ponytail, but looking at her from the front, it was easy to imagine she kept it close to her skull.
It looked like Sunny. Or as close as porcelain or plastic could come.
“Too bad she’s not wearing a dress,” Debbie said with a sigh. “Unless you think she might be offended by a topper with a dress…”
“You know how she is.” Brandy closed the book. “I haven’t seen her wear a dress in all the years I’ve known her. Hm. Except for that one time. Except it was a long time ago, and she’s said so herself that she doesn’t like skirts.” Sometimes Sunny wore a long, cotton skirt on the hottest days of the year, but she kept them to the Waterlily House and claimed to favor them only because of the ventilation. Brandelyn had never questioned her about it. Why would she? Some women wore skirts. Others didn’t for whatever reason. What was it to her? She remindedbothher female and male patients that they should keep certain body parts regularly aired out and free from constricting pants. Honestly, it didn’t matter what they kept in those pants. Proper ventilation was important!The amount of chafing and the number of infections I’ve seen…
“Are you all right?” Debbie asked, as soon as Brandy shuddered in her seat.
“Oh, absolutely peachy.”Just thinking about yeast infections. Don’t mind me.The worst part about being the only doctor in town was walking around the grocery store and thinking,“Your yeast infection was the worst I’ve ever seen! Andyourrash was totally preventable if you used that after-sex cream I prescribed you. God, have you started proper hygiene routines yet? If half this town knew you didn’t wash your you-know-what…”“I’m sorry I’m so difficult, Debbie. But I recognize that this isn’t onlymywedding. Sunny may have put most of it in my hands, but I want to make sure she’s properly represented as well. For God’s sake, she’s the reason we’re having it at Waterlily House.” Compromising on the chapel wedding of her dreams was one of the hardest things Brandy had ever done, but she knew how much the B&B meant to Sunny. Besides, Sunny’s arguments that they weren’t religious and that it would be much cheaper to have both the ceremony and reception in a place they didn’t have to rent were sound. Didn’t mean Brandelynlikedthem, but they made sense.Still, I always wanted to be like Princess Di walking down that aisle with church pews full of people…When she watched Kate Middleton walk down the aisle at Westminster Abbey, Brandelyn’s eyes were full of tears. It was the most beautiful sight she had seen since she was four!
She would chase another dream for Sunny. Waterlily Housewasa picturesque location for any wedding, and Brandy came around to the idea of an outdoor ceremony when she double-checked Paradise Valley’s historical records for weather at the end of June. Perfect temperatures – not too hot yet and cool in the evenings – and little rain after the start of June. The morning might be foggy, but that was why they scheduled the ceremony for two in the afternoon. They didn’t need to do earlier when the guests could migrate straight to the reception a few yards away.That reminds me, I need to check in with those Port-a-John rentals.Three hundred people were not about to share the four bathrooms in Waterlily House. The fewer people coming in and out of there, the better.
Besides, Waterlily House was where they shared their first kiss! Their first night together! It was the perfect romantic place for their nuptials. Who cared about some stuffy church they had never been to before? If there were a God, He could as easily come bless their vows outside in his own creation!
“I’ll keep my eye out for a proper cake topper,” Debbie said. “You and Sunny might also consider one that doesn’t depict people at all. Is there a symbol that is important to your relationship? Many couples go with hearts these days. Or a symbol from their cultures. Ooh, have I shown you the photo of this one couple who had an elaborate, beaded sculpture created for their cake? It’s a bit last minute for something like that, but we could search for a pre-made one that…”
“I’d prefer people.” Lest anyone forget who the stars of the wedding were.
Still, it was the first time Brandelyn considered Sunny in a wedding dress. It might be a pleasant sight, since Sunny had the perfect cheekbones, bust, and hips for a nice dress. But it was so unlike her! The concept of her wearing a wedding dress had never crossed Brandy’s mind before, and she wasn’t about to bring it up. Besides, the image Brandelyn had always envisioned waswedding dress and tuxedo.That’s how it was when one went traditional. Who was to say that lesbians could not be traditional? Wasn’t it a bigger kick in the teeth to the patriarchy and all things oppressive if Sunny showed up in a tux and claimed her bride?
“Brandy?” Debbie sweetly said. “Are you there? Where have you gone? We have a few things to go over still.”
Whoops. Brandelyn always did fall into fantasy when she imagined her fiancée being her usual badass self.
Chapter 6
SUNNY
“Do you need this for next year?” Sunny held up a red and green Christmas streamer made of construction paper. Knowing Anita, the English teacher put it up around Christmastime and never bothered to take it down again before the end of the year. When posters of Shakespeare, Maya Angelou, and Jane Austen already covered the walls, a harried teacher was not wont to consider what might come down after the second semester began. “Because if you don’t, I might steal it for my Christmas decorations this year.”
“It goes in the orange tote!” Anita called from outside her opened classroom door. The windows were likewise open, allowing the cool, late spring air filter through the stuffy classroom.This place sure is quiet without a hundred students running around.Clark High School served the towns of Paradise Valley and Roundabout, but that didn’t mean a large population of students to recruit. The school district was lucky to have a hundred high schoolers at any moment. One hundred and twenty during a good year.When I graduated, we had eighty in the whole school.Her class had been a humble nineteen students. Even now, when wandering the hallways and looking at portraits of classes past, she noted that hers was one of the smallest. Anita’s, meanwhile, boasted a whole twenty-three!Someone’s class had fewer dropouts than mine.Sunny would never forget the scandal when two of her female classmates dropped out because they got pregnant at the same time. It hadn’t been a pact of any kind, but when they discovered their kids had the same father? Anarchy.
The orange tote Anita had referred to currently sat on a desk near the front of the classroom, and was already stuffed with seasonal decorations like Styrofoam jack-o-lanterns and paper snowflakes. Anita apparently had construction paper streamers for every season, but she never bothered to put up the third and fourth semester ones. Shame. That yellow and pink for spring was really pretty.
Anita returned a few seconds later, her long white skirt swishing against the linoleum that had covered the floors of Clark High School since they were teenagers. She hooked a clear bin beneath her arm and pulled the cursive letters off their perches above the whiteboard.That’s a recent addition. Never forget the screech of chalk against a blackboard.Sunny didn’t have a lot of nostalgia for her school years, but she definitely hadmemories.Like the senior prank that included a mountain of opened Skittles dumped across the main entrance.We made the freshmen pick them up, one by one!They couldn’t get away with that now. Sunny was surprised to walk in a few years ago and see a giant sign by the secretary’s office that said,“How To Be A Good Person. #1) Bullying and Hazing Are Not Tolerated…”Apparently, they had to spell it out now.
Still, being a teacher wasn’t easy. It couldn’t have been, since not only did Sunny remember how she tormented her own teachers – some of themstillaround – but she heard the horror stories from Ms. Tichenor. When Sunny asked about the giant chunk of whiteboard missing, Anita explained that one of her students went “freakin’ nuts” about his parents’ divorce and ripped it out when her back was turned. That was considered a good day.
“What are we doing with the Holy Trinity?” Sunny asked, referring to the posters.
“Take ‘em down. I have to removeeverything.”
“That’s so dumb. Did teachers do that when we were kids?” Sunny hopped up on a stool and undid the pushpin holding Billy Shakes to the wall. He unceremoniously limped forward as gravity took hold.
“No. It’s a more recent policy that we take everything down over the summer. In case they want to shuffle the classrooms around again.”
“How often does that happen?”
“Every other year, at least.”
Sunny rolled her eyes. She also rolled up the poster of Shakespeare and gingerly tucked him into a tube she found in another tote. “Change for change’s sake, it sounds like.”
