Chapter 3 - The Price of a Seat
Richard didn't walk; he stumbled.
His leather dress shoes slid slightly on the polished floorboards, his face alternating between gray ash and crimson blotches. Beside him, Allison gathered up her heavy satin train with both hands, her French manicure digging into the lace so hard I thought the fabric would rip.
“Arthur,” Richard said, his voice cracking into that thin, boyish register he used whenever his father looked at him too long. “Dad, what is this? What’s going on? You’re making a scene in front of the Senator’s staff.”
Allison pushed her way past Richard’s shoulder, her smile stretched so tight across her cheekbones it looked like scar tissue.
“Admiral Collins, please,” she purred, her eyes darting nervously toward the front tables where her Dallas bridesmaids were watching with open mouths. “There’s been a mix-up with the seating. Grace… well, Grace didn't RSVP until Tuesday, and with her mobility needs, we thought she would be more comfortable back here near the exit. You know, so she doesn't have to walk so far on that… on her leg.”
The lie hung in the air like bad exhaust.
I didn't say a word. I just looked at my sister. The dark blue dress I wore had cost forty dollars at an outlet store in Freeport; her custom gown had cost nine thousand. But standing there with Arthur Collins between us, she looked naked.
Collins didn't look at her dress. He looked at her eyes until she flinched and looked down at her bouquet of white gardenias.
“My son tells me you work in luxury public relations, Miss Miller,” Collins said, his tone deceptively mild.
“Yes, sir,” Allison said quickly, eager to grab the lifeline. “I manage corporate accounts for—”
“Then you must understand the concept of value,” the Admiral interrupted.
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a heavy cream envelope, sealed with red wax bearing the anchor of the Naval Command. He didn't hand it to her. He held it between two fingers, tapping it against his palm.
“In this envelope is the deed to the family cottage in Camden,” Collins said. “The one Richard has been begging me to sign over for six months so you two could use it as collateral for your condominium in Preston Hollow.”
Richard’s eyes flared with sudden, naked greed. “Dad, you brought the deed?”
“I did,” Collins said. He looked down at the paper place card on Table 28. Then he looked at Richard. “I brought it because I believed that whatever my personal reservations about your career choices, you were still an officer’s son. I believed that you had been raised with enough common decency to understand what sacrifice looks like.”
Collins took a step toward Table 28, pulled out the wobbly metal folding chair, and ran his thumb over the chipped white paint on the backrest.
“Lieutenant Commander Hastings,” Collins called out.
The tallest of the three young officers stepped forward, snapping to attention. “Sir!”
“Take the Admiral’s flag from the lead staff car,” Collins commanded, not taking his eyes off his son. “Bring it inside. Set it up right here beside this table.”
Hastings blinked once, then his jaw set. “Aye, aye, sir!”
“Wait,” Richard gasped, reaching out a hand as Hastings spun on his heel toward the double doors. “Dad, wait! You can’t put the flag at the back table! The photographers are at the head riser! The press from the Dallas Morning News is sitting at Table One!”
“Then I suggest they bring their telephoto lenses,” Collins said.
He turned back to the room. The silence was so dense that the hum of the kitchen ice machine sounded like a diesel engine. Two hundred and fifty guests sat with their forks suspended, their wineglasses halfway to their lips, watching the social hierarchy of the evening get torn apart with three sentences.
My mother, Evelyn, finally broke through the paralysis. She came scuttling down the aisle in a champagne-colored mother-of-the-bride gown, her silver bangles clinking frantically.
“Arthur, please!” she gasped, her hands fluttering near her chest. “I’m Evelyn, Grace and Allison’s mother. There’s been a dreadful misunderstanding. Grace has always been… well, she’s very independent! She prefers quiet spaces! She’s never liked big parties, even before the accident!”
The accident.
The words dropped between us like a dirty rag.
I felt the heat rise in my throat, but before I could speak, Collins took half a step forward, towering over my mother by eight inches.
“An accident, Mrs. Miller?” Collins whispered.
The word was so cold Evelyn actually took a step back, her heel catching on the carpet.
“A training failure is an accident,” Collins said, his voice rising just enough to reach every table in the room. “A dropped wrench in a dry dock is an accident. What happened on the USS Hawthorne was a Class-Alpha catastrophic combat fire during an unacknowledged interdiction operation sixty miles off the Horn of Africa.”
He turned his head, his gaze impaling the man at the bar who had asked me, twenty minutes earlier, if my captain’s title was still useful without a ship. The man went white, set his scotch down on the mahogany rail, and slid off his stool, looking for a side door.
“Your daughter,” Collins continued, looking back down at my mother, “was the commanding officer of a ship that took three direct torpedo strikes from an unmanned submersible while your other daughter was in Dallas complaining about the color of her bridesmaid ribbons.”
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“Arthur,” Richard pleaded, stepping between his father and Allison, his hands shaking. “Stop it. Just stop it. You're ruining our wedding.”
“No, Richard,” Collins said, his face carved from dark granite. “You ruined your wedding the second you let this woman treat your brother’s savior like a dog under the table.”
