Marry or Burn by Valerie Trueblood

was first alone. Her daughter had left for school. A daughter, her sister warned her, had to get out. She had to go to college; she couldn’t stay behind to manage for her mother. A daughter had to leave off being the steady little girl with an eye out for everything and everybody, steering her mother through the days into the blind evenings. This sister had stepped forward with an unexpected determination to get her straightened out, and she had agreed to it. It was something to try.
    For a while, at her worst, after the quickly ruined time with her sister and before her sons stepped in, she shared a place not far from the station in Baltimore with two women whose names she doesn’t like to remember, nor their red faces squashed in sleep, who tried to convince her to pack up and hop on a freight with them when spring came. They might know the switchman but what did they know about her? She was still major steps away from that.

4.
    STATELY AS THE deep organ chords issuing from the keyboard, a little prow comes forward against her breastbone, or it may be the bone itself pressing there as she is borne to the heights of tenderness for her daughter. It doesn’t matter that two men, her sons, are in the row behind, with wives beside them who had been carefully seated too far down the row of wineglasses at the rehearsal dinner to make themselves heard if they spoke to her. It doesn’t matter that in their wallets are pictures of children who have not been told of her, and better so.
    Next she is escorted under the arbor of woven ferns and ribbon and led down the wide hall to the reception, the groom’s
mother following on her usher’s arm with clear taps of her beautiful fawn pumps, not quite catching up. They are the first to arrive in the big echoing room; the bridal pair are behind a door in a private space where newlyweds can spend a few minutes getting their bearings before the reception. At the far end are waiters, with a forest of green bottles and the cake.
    A tall man stands apart from them at the long table laden with candles and real autumn leaves, banked platters and swirled fabric, red and gold. Instead of greeting them when they came in he turned his back. He may be the wedding consultant, passing a hand over his bald scalp as he scans the table.
    The guests will serve themselves and find tables of their own choosing. The real planner of the whole thing was the maid of honor, her daughter’s best friend who works for the mayor. It was to be a little like a church supper in the bride’s home town in West Virginia, she declared. But a sophisticated church supper, with wonderful food. This girl could imagine her way into a bride’s intentions better than any hotel wedding consultant. Everyone agreed she should start her own business.
    â€œOhhh . . .” the mother had heard herself groan from the velvet couch in the bride’s dressing room. “Oh, I didn’t pay for anything.” What a ridiculous thing to say, in anguish or surprise, to the daughter who came for her and flew her here and groomed her like a child and got her dressed and pinned jewelry onto her.
    â€œDon’t worry about that,” her daughter said quickly. “You’re here.” Then her daughter pulled her close against the big white rustling dress and hugged her as if she were a little thing with stage fright.
    She knows the bride and groom are to enter and greet everybody and then give the band a sign and just dance out onto the empty floor. There is not to be a receiving line; why should
anyone “receive” anyone else? her daughter had said, over the groom’s mild protest. It was exactly that, his assuming certain obligations could be laughed at but would be met, that got the best friend going with her changes.
    A receiving line seems to be forming up anyway, with the bride and groom trying to present to his parents various young women in black dresses with thin straps. Then