Olympia and Zelda were out in the garden tending to the pumpkins when Yasmine drove up in the yard. The girl smiled when she saw the two old women because she knew they were lovingly tending the pumpkins so that they would be ready for her wedding.
“They are getting so big,” Yasmine exclaimed walking over. “They are going to be perfect.”
“They’d be a hell of a lot bigger if Lympy’d used the Miracle Grow.”
Olympia rolled her eyes at the suggestion. “The concoction Artemis made for us to pour over the root system has worked just fine,” she said. “I refuse to use factory chemicals in my garden.”
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with taking advantage of technology.”
“You do your garden your way, Zelda, and leave me to do mine my way. These pumpkins are perfect.”
Yasmine rolled a couple of pumpkins over and checked their undersides. They were utterly perfect. These gourds had been well tended and adjusted every day to ensure they didn’t become misshapen. She looked at the two old women working so diligently to make her wedding perfect and felt gratitude.
“Did Howard send those checks off for me as I requested?” Olympia asked her granddaughter.
“Yes, ma’am,” Yasmine answered, adding with a laugh, “He almost had a stroke doing it, too. He complained all morning about the amounts.”
“The Wildlife Preservation Fund, Greenpeace, and ASPCA are excellent charities. They deserve large contributions. Times were hard this year for the average income earner. I’m sure their organizations had a reduction in donations. I wanted to supplement the loss.”
“You know Howard,” Yasmine laughed. “He thinks you’re foolish to give so much away.”
“Your granny may be a lot of things,” Zelda said, pulling a clump of weeds from around one of the pumpkin vines. “She’s old as Methuselah, stubborn as a mule pulling a square-wheeled wagon, and can’t ever admit she’s wrong about anything, but a fool she ain’t.”
“Well— thank you, Zelda,” Olympia huffed. “I don’t know if I want to hug you or hit you with this jug of fertilizer.”
The two old friends exchanged a playful smirk as they went on with their work. They had been bantering this way all of their lives. Yasmine picked up a soft towel nearby and reached down to wipe her grandmother and Zelda’s sweaty brows. They each rose up to meet her as the soft towel dabbed their foreheads.
“Zelda, did you invite Sarah and Melinda to my wedding?” Yasmine asked.
“Yes, but I hope they won’t come. I’ll have more fun without them,” Zelda gave a hearty chuckle and gave a quick slap at Yasmine’s wrist. “Wait till you hear what happened to Sarah yesterday.”
“Don’t tell that story again,” Olympia scolded. “It’s disgusting, and I’ve heard it three times already today.”
“Shut up, you old heifer,” Zelda snorted. “Yazzy ain’t heard it.” Zelda righted herself to a stand and began telling Yasmine the latest saga in the world of her miserable daughter. “Sarah’s been constipated this week. Result of some terrible new diet she’s on…”
“I’m serious, Zelda,” Olympia snapped, rearing up on her knees. “I do not care to hear this story again.”
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“Then don’t listen.’ Zelda scoffed before continuing. “Anyways, Sarah had a job interview. She’s trying to break into local commercials. She did that one car commercial, and so she went in to talk to a guy shooting one for a real estate office. She done pretty well through the interview. Then the guy wants to test her on camera, so he hauls her off to the production room, and they start recordin’ her doin’ a script they had ready. Well, she does pretty good. She’s pretty sure she’ll get the job, but as she’s fixin’ to leave, she knocks her purse over. All these suppositories fall out on the floor—which is bad enough. But while she’s bent over pickin’ ‘em up, something cuts loose, and she shits herself right in the office building!”
Yasmine burst into laughter. “You’re joking!”
Zelda’s weathered face, now pinched in laughter, accentuated the crags and crevices time had marked. “Naw, she just soiled herself right there in the production room—with the camera still rollin’. They got it all on digital!”
“That is a revolting story, Zelda,” Olympia said sternly. “I don’t think Sarah would appreciate your telling it around.”
“Not my problem,” Zelda snickered. “I think it’s funny as hell.”
Olympia heard enough. Handing the hoe over to her friend, she said, “You finish up, I have to show Yasmine something in the house.”
Yasmine joined Olympia in Olympia’s bedroom whereupon Olympia removed a large box from her dresser. Opening the box there was a beautiful white dress inside. She lifted its delicate lace out to show it to Yasmine in its full length.
“This dress belonged to your mother and your grandmother. Both of them wore it on their wedding day. Your grandfather asked me to give it to you to wear whenever you got married. I’ve had it cleaned and restored and resized to fit your small frame.”
Yasmine stared at the dress. Olympia had obviously gone to great trouble to make it this lovely again. She knew she should have been overjoyed. This had been her mother’s dress, but Yasmine’s reaction to it fell flatter than she expected.
“It’s really beautiful—it is—but I thought I would wear your wedding dress. The one Salem wore. She told me she’d bring it to me before the wedding and help me with the fitting.”
“That’s lovely, child,” Olympia beamed. “And I’d be honored to see you wear my original wedding dress. But it meant a great deal to your grandfather that you wear this one. As I said, it was worn by your mother and your grandmother.”
“You are my grandmother.”
A lot was hidden in that sentence, for both of them. Olympia stared into the bright eyes of her youngest granddaughter and smiled. Those eyes—Hazel most of the time, green when she was sad, and on rare occasions blue if she were hiding something. They were a bluish green now.
“I am your grandmother, Yasmine, in every important way that matters. Nothing changes that between us. Certainly not a dress, but I have never broken a promise to Sinclair. I do not plan to begin now. I have given you the dress and told you his wish. The rest is your decision.”
Yasmine shrugged her shoulders and said, “Why not? If it was that important to him, I’ll wear his dress. For you.”
Olympia smiled and patted her shoulder. “You know of all my husbands, I cherished your grandfather most of all. Now do not get me wrong, I loved all the men I married. John Windham was my first and father of my children. He is always special to me for that. Martin Caswell was a kind man, but he was not very well, even when I married him. Had two heart attacks before he died.
“But your grandfather, Yasmine. Oh, that man! That man gave me the deepest happiness of them all. And the most frustration.”
“He was destroying some land you were fighting to persevere, right?”
Olympia’s eyes lit up a little at the recollection. “Oh, how we fought over that land. He was the most egotistical, stubborn man I had ever met. I hated his guts. And I fell head over heels for him at every turn. I remember being so excited for one of our courtroom battles simply because I’d get to see him again.”
“And for your wedding present he gave you the land he’d won in the court battle,” Yasmine beamed.
“You know the story as well as I do.”
“It is my favorite story about him,” Yasmine smiled. “Then he brought me here to live with you after my family died.”
“And that, my dear, gave me more happiness than I ever thought possible. Having you here made it so much easier after he was gone. You are so much like him—but thankfully you are more like me.”
And you have always been my favorite. Olympia thought it, but did not speak it. That would not have been appropriate, despite how true it was.
Yasmine kissed her grandmother’s cheek. “I have never once felt alone in my life. Even losing my parents and brother in the crash…then when Grandfather died. I have never felt alone or unloved in this family.”
“And now, my dear, although you have always been a Blanchard, you will have the name to match!”
