Ernestine arrived just after supper.
She didn't knock properly.
She tapped twice and opened the screen door before I could answer.
That was how my baby sister had behaved for most of her life.
She believed a family member's house was practically an extension of her own.
She came carrying a small purse and wearing the reading glasses she always pushed up onto her forehead.
I was sitting at the kitchen table.
The invitation was beside my cup.
She noticed it before she even took off her coat.
"What's that?"
"Something from the post office."
She gave me a look.
"Don't start."
I pushed the card toward her.
She picked it up and began reading.
At first, she smiled.
Then she reached the handwritten message.
Her mouth opened slightly.
She read it again.
After that, she lowered the invitation onto the table.
"Well, I'll be."
I didn't say anything.
She looked at me over her glasses.
"That's Bonnie's handwriting."
I raised an eyebrow.
"You know her writing?"
"I know enough."
Ernestine had a habit of knowing things without explaining how she knew them.
She had spent years driving the church van.
She knew everybody's business, though she always insisted people volunteered the information.
She turned the invitation around.
"She wrote this herself."
"I suspected."
"That's a nasty little thing to put on somebody's birthday card."
"Yes."
She sat down.
For a few seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then Ernestine leaned back in her chair.
"What's she expecting you to do?"
I looked at the card.
"I don't know."
"Of course you do."
I sighed.
She tapped the handwritten sentence with one finger.
"She wants you to walk in there and see Garland surrounded by his sons. She wants you to look at them and remember what happened."
I didn't answer.
"She wants you feeling small."
"I can read, Ernestine."
"I know you can."
She wasn't trying to insult me.
That was simply how she talked when she was angry on somebody else's behalf.
I picked up my cup.
The tea had gone cold.
Ernestine looked toward the sink.
Then she looked back at me.
"Are you going?"
I hadn't decided.
At least, that was what I told myself.
The truth was that I had been thinking about it since the moment I opened the envelope.
I imagined the hall.
The tables.
The cake.
Garland standing there with his new family.
I imagined Bonnie looking at me.
I imagined the three sons.
I wondered whether they knew anything about the woman their father had married before their mother.
Perhaps they knew nothing.
Perhaps Garland had told them I was some unfortunate chapter in his younger years.
Perhaps he had told them we simply weren't right for each other.
People can make almost anything sound reasonable when they leave out the part that makes them look bad.
I wondered whether Bonnie had even mentioned my name before sending the invitation.
Ernestine interrupted my thoughts.
"You're going."
I looked up.
"That sounded like a decision."
"It is."
She took off her glasses and cleaned them with the corner of her blouse.
"You've spent enough years allowing that man to decide how you feel."
I didn't like hearing that.
Not because it was untrue.
Because it was close enough to the truth to hurt.
I had worked for thirty-six years.
I had paid my own bills.
I had learned to repair things around my house.
I had planted tomatoes and handled a broken water heater without waiting for a man to come home.
I had lived a whole life.
And still, one birthday invitation had managed to bring back an old feeling.
That bothered me more than the message itself.
Ernestine reached for the card again.
"Look at this. A real family."
She shook her head.
"What does she think you are?"
I shrugged.
"Somebody she doesn't like."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got."
Ernestine placed the invitation down.
For years, she had watched me build my life after Garland.
She had seen the difficult mornings.
She had seen the long hours.
She had seen the way I sometimes avoided family gatherings where people talked about husbands and children.
She had also seen the changes.
The little boy who came into my life.
The other children who followed.
The school bus.
The church van.
The Christmas gatherings.
She knew there was more to my life than one marriage.
That was why she was angry.
"You're not going to sit in a corner and let that woman decide who you are."
I looked at her.
"I haven't agreed to anything."
"You don't have to agree with her."
She paused.
"But you ought to go."
I turned the invitation toward myself.
There was a little RSVP card tucked inside.
It asked for the number of guests attending.
I picked up my pen.
Ernestine watched me.
"What are you doing?"
I didn't answer immediately.
I looked at the empty space beside the number attending.
Then I wrote three words.
Party of twelve.
Ernestine stared at the card.
For one second, she looked confused.
Then she laughed.
Not a polite laugh.
A real one.
She laughed so hard that she had to put her cup down before she spilled it.
I smiled despite myself.
"What's so funny?"
"You!"
She wiped her eyes.
"Della, you are something else."
I placed the pen on the table.
"It asks how many people."
"It certainly does."
She picked up the RSVP card and read my answer again.
Then her expression changed.
She looked at me more carefully.
"Della."
"What?"
"You know what people are going to think."
I already knew.
She didn't need to explain.
"They'll say you're still carrying a torch for Garland."
I looked toward the window.
The evening was getting dark.
"They can say what they want."
"They'll say you drove all the way to Tupelo just to make him notice you."
That one landed differently.
I wanted to tell her she was being ridiculous.
I wanted to say I didn't care about other people's opinions.
But there was a small part of me that wondered whether she might be right.
What if I was doing exactly that?
What if I had spent forty-two years telling myself I was finished with Garland, only to discover that one invitation could still move me?
What if I was simply an old woman looking for an excuse to stand in front of the man who had once rejected her?
I looked down at my hands.
They weren't the hands I had when I was twenty-three.
The skin was thinner.
The knuckles were larger.
There were little marks from gardening and years of work.
I had lived too much life to pretend those years meant nothing.
"I'm not going because I want Garland back."
Ernestine didn't interrupt.
"I'm not going to ask him why he left. I'm not going to ask whether he ever thought about me. I'm not going to ask if he regrets anything."
I paused.
"I'm going because Bonnie thinks she knows what a family looks like."
Ernestine became very quiet.
She looked at the RSVP card.
Then she looked at me.
"All right."
That was all she said.
She didn't ask another question.
I placed the card inside the envelope.
The next morning, I mailed it.
I didn't send a letter.
I didn't explain the number.
I didn't write anything about Bonnie's message.
I simply returned the card.
Party of twelve.
That was enough.
A few days passed.
I went back to my ordinary routine.
I watered the tomatoes.
I cleaned the kitchen.
I visited the grocery store.
I complained about the price of eggs.
But I kept looking at the telephone.
Not because I expected Garland to call.
I didn't.
I was waiting for another kind of conversation.
There were eleven people I needed to speak with.
And making those calls would take more courage than mailing that little RSVP card.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: I Made Eleven Telephone Calls That Night, And Every Person I Reached Reminded Me That Garland Had Never Known My Whole Life
The Birthday Invitation That Arrived Forty-Two Years After My Marriage Ended Had One Cruel Sentence Written at the Bottom
Part 2 of 20
