When my husband let go of my hands and turned to face his father in the middle of the church in Springfield, two hundred guests held their breath. I am Natalie Prescott, thirty one years old, in my white dress at the altar, and I did not know what Ben was about to say. The pastor stood frozen with his book open. My father in law Frank stood in the third pew, red in the face, with his finger still pointing at me, having just told the entire church that I was after the money of his son.
“Dad,” said Ben, calmly, “you are right that I have no money. I have a used truck and four thousand dollars. Natalie earns twice what I do. That is the whole of what she is after.” A ripple of laughter ran through the church and faded. “But you want me to say what I think, in front of everyone, and so I will. Thirty four years ago, in a church not far from here, your father stood up in the same way and said the same words about my mother.”
The finger of Frank fell. His mouth opened. Ben continued, in a steady voice. “My mother told me last Sunday. She told me that Grandpa Walt objected at your wedding because she was a nurse and earned more than you did, and she refused to quit. You stood at that altar and said that you would not marry a woman who did not need you to be a man. You walked out. She stood there. Grandma went after you and brought you back by the ear. Do you remember what you told her afterward? You said you would never be your father.”
A single word spoken in a crowded church gave one bride the morning to bring her father in law back to his family in Springfield.
I gave my terms next, because the pastor had finally found his voice and looked at me for permission. “Frank, we are going to finish this wedding. Ben and I are going to be married today, and you are welcome to stay and watch. You are welcome to sit with your wife, and to dance, and to eat cake. But you will not speak of my work or my money again. If you can do that, then I will call you Dad at the reception, and mean it. If you cannot, there is the door.”
The church was so quiet that I heard a baby cough in the balcony. Frank sat down slowly in the pew, and his wife Marlene put her arm through his. He sat there for a long time, with his big hands hanging between his knees. Then he looked up at his son, and I saw tears running down his face. “I never forgot it,” he said, hoarsely. “I swore I would never be like him. And look at me. I am worse.” He stood, and said to me, across the whole church, “Natalie, I am sorry. I am an old fool.”
Not everyone was ready for peace. The brother of Frank, Uncle Roy, a heavy man in a tight suit who had always agreed with whatever Frank said, leapt up from the second pew, red with embarrassment on behalf of the family, and charged for the sound table at the side of the nave. He seized the cable of the microphone and began yanking it out, shouting that the show was over. He did not get far. The ring bearer, a solemn six year old nephew of mine named Oliver, who had been carrying the pillow down the aisle, simply sat down on the cable with the pillow in his lap and looked up at him. The flower girl sat down beside him. Uncle Roy stood there with a fistful of wire, towering over two children, and had nothing to say.
Marlene started laughing first, covering her mouth. Then the whole church went with her. Even Frank laughed, wiping his eyes. Uncle Roy dropped the cable, spread his hands, and sat down with his ears red. The pastor cleared his throat and said, “If there are no further objections.” Two hundred voices answered, “No!” Ben took my hands again. We were married in a church that smelled of lilies and old wood, and when we turned around at the end, Frank was standing in the aisle with his arms open, and I walked into them.
The money consequences were small, as promised. Ben and I had four thousand dollars and a used truck, and we spent a good part of it on a honeymoon at a lake cabin outside Branson. Frank wrote us a check for ten thousand dollars at the reception, and I handed it back, and he put it in the collection plate of the church. The following year, I was promoted at the insurance firm, and I earned more than ever, and Frank bragged about it to the whole congregation at the Wednesday supper.
In the name of the grandmother of Ben, Edith, who passed in 2012, we started the Edith Prescott Fund. It pays for premarital counseling, small weddings and scholarships for working women, in Greene, Christian and Webster counties. In the first year we helped twenty seven couples and funded fourteen scholarships. One was a night shift nurse from Nixa who was finishing her degree in the hours between her children and her work. She read the letter of acceptance to us over the telephone, laughing and crying.
On our first anniversary, Frank stood up at the dinner table and asked for the attention of everyone. He had written a toast, on an index card, and his hands shook. “To my daughter in law,” he read. “She is smarter than me, she earns more than me, and she has made my son the happiest man in Greene County. I object to nothing.” The whole table roared. I got up and kissed his cheek, and he blushed to the roots of his gray hair. Marlene wiped her eyes with her napkin and said, “He practiced all week.”
