ustxtxb_obs_2006_01_13_50_00035-00000_000.pdf

Page 2

by

mention them when they were sitting at breakfast, making it sound as if he was only doing it in passing, and not letting her know that he had scoured the racks of local vendors for newspapers from other small towns located nearby. “Se va a casar una muchachita que se llama Elizabeth Montemayor con Luis Placencia en Alice,” he would say casually over coffee. “A young girl named Elizabeth Montemayor is going to marry a young man named Luis Placencia in Alice.” Then he would casually mention the hours and the name of the church. She preferred church weddings, he had realized, and avoided those held in city or other public buildings. Once mentioned, he always thought she had forgotten the details of time and place until he would notice, some two hours before the wedding was scheduled to begin, that she would start to get dressed and ask him to get ready to take her. He was her driver during those occasions. In the beginning, when he used to go with her, he would sit beside her quietly, watching some young couple getting married whom neither had ever seen before, wondering what the family thought of them sitting so close to the front, or of her tears when the young couple exchanged vows. Dorotea Jimenez had finally told him, alleviating his sense of obligation, that he didn’t have to go inside with her anymore. The way she patted his forearm, and the way she smiled at him, made him realize that it was okayand that she meant it. Her second husband was given that speechwith much the same deliverythe first time he took her to a wedding. He had bought a jacket for the occasion, and she had stopped him outside, by the car, and let him know it was okay not to go in. He seemed relieved when she smiled at him, patting his arm as she spoke. They didn’t know the couple, she explained, and “you look uncomfortable in a jacket right now.” That day he waited patiently in the heat, sitting on the passenger’s side and occasionally leaning against the outside of their car, until she had come out beaming. The look on her face had convinced him to do what his predecessor had donesearch the newspapers for wedding announcements until the day he died. Illustration by Mike Krone JANUARY 13, 2006 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 35