Queen Bee

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “This is delicious,” said Tyler, who was taking down a creamy orange ice cream concoction in a tube.

  “Mine’s better,” said Hunter, who was making fast work of a fudge bar on a stick.

  “Let’s make a deal,” I said, while luxuriating in the awesomeness of an ice cream sandwich.

  “What’s the deal?” Tyler said.

  “If y’all take your baths and get ready for bed early, I’ll make spaghetti and meatballs and let y’all stay up and watch 60 Minutes with me. We can eat in front of the television.”

  “Do we get garlic bread?” Hunter asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Cool! What’s 60 Minutes?” Tyler said.

  “Well, it’s only the most interesting program on television, that’s all.”

  “What’s it about?” Hunter said.

  “That’s the thing! It’s about new things every single week. Sometimes it’s about mountain climbers or the jungle in the Amazon or a symphony orchestra or kids who are prodigies. It can be about anything and everything, but different every week,” I said. “And it gives you something to talk about that other people might not know about.”

  “What’s prodigies?” Hunter asked.

  “Really super talented individuals,” I said.

  “You mean like National Geographic programs are different every week?”

  “Exactly, but National Geographic deals more with the natural world and 60 Minutes looks for newsworthy people who are doing incredible things, like inventing things to make the world a better place.”

  “Sounds too educational,” Hunter said.

  “I’ll give it a shot,” Tyler said.

  “Wise decision, young man! Let’s move on.”

  The rest of the evening went as planned. Bubble baths were enjoyed. Pajamas were put on. Beds were turned down. Spaghetti and garlic bread filled our tummies. Backpacks were by the door for a fast getaway in the morning. And a whole new world was opened up to them through the ingenious work of Steve Kroft, Lesley Stahl, and others.

  I followed them upstairs to supervise teeth brushing and tuck-ins.

  “This was a great day,” Tyler said, as I helped him comb his damp hair.

  “Yes, it was. I had lots of fun, too,” I said and meant it.

  “Are we gonna get a bedtime story?” Hunter said.

  “Sure! Do y’all say prayers before sleep?” I asked.

  “We used to say prayers with our momma,” Tyler said.

  “Would you like to say some with me?” I asked.

  “Sure!” Hunter said and launched into “Now I lay me down to sleep” followed by a litany of people to bless.

  I made the list. Sharon did not. I didn’t mention it. I should’ve, I know I should’ve, but I didn’t. I just wanted that moment for myself. Was that so wrong?

  I told them a story about the American Revolution and the Battle of Sullivan’s Island.

  “Try to imagine how brave the soldiers were!”

  Then we said good night, and I left the door slightly ajar so I could hear them.

  My cell phone rang around ten o’clock that night, and I remembered I’d left it in the kitchen. I jumped up from the sofa to answer it, hoping not to wake the boys. Who would be calling at this hour? It was Archie.

  “Hi,” he said. “Sorry to call so late. I just wanted to be sure everything was okay.”

  “Oh! Everything here is just perfect. The boys are fast asleep. How’s it going there?”

  “Not so great,” he said.

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “Well, it turns out that Sharon didn’t know that she had a terrible allergy to a certain strain of strawberries. She ate a ton of them and blew up like a blowfish. She’s okay, but she’s in the hospital. But she could’ve died. They had to give her a trach.”

  “Oh, my God! That’s terrible!”

  “Yeah, it wasn’t pretty.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Who, me? Oh, yeah, I’m perfectly fine.”

  There was a very pregnant pause. He was not perfectly fine. But I wasn’t going to ask why. I knew why, and I didn’t want to hear it.

  “Okay, then, I’m going to go to bed now. Early call in the morning, you know.”

  “Where are you sleeping?”

  I thought, Why are you asking that? To see if your pillow smells like me when you get home? What kind of a question was that? I wanted to say, Yeah, I’m sleeping with your pillows and your sheets and I’m rolling all over your bed. Why should I even answer? But I did.

  I said, “In Hunter’s bed. He’s sleeping in Tyler’s bunk.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “And everything is fine?”

  “Yes, Archie. Everything is fine. The rentals are gone. I took the boys to the park to play. They ran around like nuts for over an hour. Then we had ice cream. I made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, which they inhaled, and then we watched 60 Minutes. They took a long bubble bath and then they practically passed out, they were so tired.”

  “Wow. You’re incredible, do you know that?” He didn’t say it in just any old friendly tone. He said it like, well, you know.

  “Don’t play with my heart, Mr. MacLean.”

  He was on his honeymoon with Sharon, but I was on his brain. Well, wasn’t that nice? No. It wasn’t.

  “I’m not playing with you at all. I am just acknowledging that you amaze me, that you’re able to step in and accomplish so much, especially with my boys. It’s simply remarkable. Carin was like that. She arranged everything for them.”

  “Well, I love those little rascals. You know that.”

  “Yes, and I’m grateful for that, too.” There was a long sigh from Bermuda. “I’ll check in with you tomorrow.”

  We hung up and I thought, Holy hell, I need some advice on this one. I’d consult the hives in the morning.

  “What happens if the queen bee dies?” Hunter said.

  “The colony can’t survive without a queen, so they make a new one.”

  “How do they do that?” Tyler asked.

  “Two parts royal jelly and one part bee magic!” I said. “Or you can actually buy them.”

  “Wow,” they said. “Cool.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Bee Advised

  Getting the boys off to school was the best start of my day, controlled chaos, but a time filled with laughter. I knew I would miss them until they came home, and I told them so. They blushed, and my heart sent out beams of love like the Care Bears used to do. I was just smitten.

  I went back to my house to change clothes, and Momma and Leslie weren’t there. I wondered where they had gone. There was no note. They’d probably gone shopping. I was dying to hear what had happened over her breakfast with Charlie. I wondered how he’d shown up and where they’d gone and boy, I would’ve loved to have been in the booth or table next to theirs! If I’d been the waitress, I’d be refilling their coffee cups every two seconds and then running away to write in a journal. I would have given them the tip back and said something like y’all gave me more than I gave y’all. Don’t you know that’s the truth? But all joking aside, I wondered how Leslie was taking this. She seemed too stoic or something. Numb? Well, I’d be numb for a long time, I think. I just hoped she wasn’t too heartbroken.

  I showered and changed and went out to my apiary to check on the girls. Time to add another box! Gosh, we were going to have tons of honey this year. Of course, I wound up giving them an earful of Sharon, Archie, and Charlie stories. What a week it had been, and it was only Monday!

  I worked my shift at Publix, decorating a hundred cupcakes for a bridal shower with white icing and white crystal-looking sprinkles that sparkled but were edible. When they were all lined up they looked like a field of beautiful clouds made of glitter. It sounds simple, I guess, but through this almost mindless work I found some creative satisfaction that left me wanting more. Maybe I’d try some designs that were more intricate.

  We were having
leftover spaghetti for supper, so there was not much need to grocery-shop. But I did bring home milk and a freshly baked apple pie. If this job hadn’t done anything else for me, it had turned me on to fresh baked versus frozen, although frozen pies were still a wonderful thing to have on hand in case you had to have pie right that minute. Sometimes I felt like that.

  I was home about half an hour before the boys would be there. Leslie’s car was back in the driveway, so I left a note on the door for the boys and hurried over to get the latest on Charlie.

  “Leslie?” I called her name as soon as I was inside the door.

  “In the kitchen!”

  Weren’t we always in the kitchen?

  “So, spill it, sister,” I said. “What happened with Charlie?”

  “Oh, Lord,” she said. “It’s complicated like all hell. Sit down.”

  I took a place at the table.

  “No kidding. I’m sure.”

  “You want tea?”

  As you know, in our house that meant iced tea. It could be freezing outside, and we still drank our tea with ice.

  “Sure.” She poured both of us a glass and sat, pushing the evil sugar bowl across the table to me. “Thanks. Remember the day I broke this?”

  “Are you serious? I thought Momma was going to put you up for adoption.”

  “Me, too. So what happened?”

  “I thought about what you and Momma said about full disclosure. Y’all were right. Charlie should’ve told me before he married me. I asked him that and he said he was afraid to tell me, afraid I wouldn’t love him anymore, that he loved me. But this other passion of his never stopped him from being all man in the bedroom, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s good to know.”

  “We had six years of bliss, him spoiling me to death with cars and jewelry and trips and fabulous dinners, but he never said a word.”

  “Do you think he was dressing up all the time?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You’ve never told me how this all came about in the first place. How you found out, I mean.”

  “Okay, brace yourself. Charlie was out with the guys one night, or so I thought. Anyway, he was really at a club where female impersonators perform. He was dressed up as Cher and lip-synced “I Got You Babe” hoping to win free drinks. He won free drinks, but he also got a DUI on the way home. He was too loaded to change his clothes at the club. He thought I’d be sleeping at that hour anyway, that he could just sneak in and change in the guest room, but the nice policeman took him to jail and then he called me to bail him out.”

  “Holy crap! So you go to the jail and there he is dressed up like Cher?”

  “All except the wig. He had to take it off for his mug shot.”

  “So you were pretty shocked.”

  “You could say that. Yeah.”

  “Then what?”

  “We had words. He felt I was being cruel to him, that if I loved him, I should just love him no matter what he was wearing.”

  “You know, that actually kind of sounds fair to me,” I said, “but I’m not the one struggling with it.”

  “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? He’s right. If I love him, I love him. My problem is the deceit. Charlie was always a little bit effeminate. The world knew that. That’s fine with me. He played some sports, tennis and golf, and he got along with the jocks. In fact, I always liked him because he was more compassionate or nicer than the other guys. He was a sweetheart. It’s why I fell in love with him in the first place. But this deceit was so huge, I just freaked out.”

  “Well, I understand that. I hate lying. Especially given the nature of the lie. So now what?”

  “I don’t know. It turns out that he’s a super talented lip-sync impersonator. Some big producer in Vegas wants to have him audition for some huge lip-sync group. The money is crazy.”

  “Are you for real?”

  “Oh, yeah. Apparently, there’s big money in this business. And here’s the thing, Charlie doesn’t really need the money. He got oodles from his dad’s estate. But pretending to be Cher makes Charlie happier than I’ve ever seen him. I mean, he’s downright dizzy with happiness!”

  “Was Cher at breakfast?”

  “Good grief, no! We had breakfast at the Sand Dollar on the Isle of Palms.”

  “Yeah, I can see him getting some heat here.” I thought then that perhaps they had made some kind of peace with each other. “So where did you leave it with him?”

  “Well, I’m beginning to understand this aspect of Charlie’s personality a little better. And he’s agreed to compromise with me on certain things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as not showing up unannounced at my mother’s dressed as Charlene. I just told him, I said, ‘Charlie? My momma’s an older lady, from another generation, and she just can’t take it. And Momma feels like you duped me by not telling me in the first place. She needs to know you’re the same wonderful man that married her daughter.’ I’ll tell you, Holly, him showing up as Charlene with no warning wasn’t nice. I mean, how about a heads-up?”

  “But I seem to remember you laughing!” I said.

  “Nervously. Because I didn’t know what else to do!” she said.

  “Yeah, I don’t think I would’ve known what to do, either.”

  “He wants me to come to Vegas with him to watch this competition.”

  “Are you going to go?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Well, let’s think about it.”

  “How did last night go?”

  “Terrific,” I said and then told her about Sharon’s strawberry allergy.

  I thought she was going to burst a blood vessel, she laughed so hard. I mean, she really laughed more than I thought she should have. I wrote it off to her anxiety over dealing with Charlie’s new ambitions.

  “I know. How terrible, right?” I said. “I’ll see you later.”

  The boys were just coming up the steps and I was almost right behind them.

  “Hey! How was school?”

  They babbled on while I got the door open and then they followed me inside, still talking a mile a minute.

  “Anybody want a snack?”

  “Yes!” they said.

  “Okay, backpacks down and go wash your hands!”

  They scattered like mercury and were back in a flash.

  I put sliced apples and peanut butter in front of them on a platter to share, and I sat down at the table with them.

  “Okay, Tyler, you first. Tell me every single thing that happened to you today, and make sure you include at least one good thing. Hunter? You should be thinking about what you’re going to say.”

  They told me their stories about math and lunch and recess and what was coming up and who they played with and what games they played. By the time they were finished talking, the platter was empty.

  “Okay! Now, who’s got homework?”

  Worksheets were pulled from their backpacks and they got down to business. I quizzed Tyler with spelling words and helped him complete a two-digit math sheet with and without carrying numbers. Next, I watched Hunter form letters.

  “Hunter? Do you know I had the exact same practice paper when I went to school?”

  “You did?” He said this in such amazement that I realized he thought I was ancient.

  “Yup,” I said and crossed my eyes at him.

  “You shouldn’t do that. They might get stuck,” he said.

  “Baloney,” I said. “Who told you that?”

  “Momma,” he said.

  “Well, then, it’s true. Now what else do you have?”

  “An Under the Sea math sheet,” Hunter said.

  “And I have a counting money sheet,” Tyler said. “And a sheet on homophones.”

  “Well, let’s get on it so we might have an hour for the playground before supper!”

  “Yay!” they both said and focused on the job at hand.

  I marveled a
t the fact that although Tyler sometimes seemed to have all the earmarks of an adult already in place, he didn’t yet know how to tell time or the difference in coin values and how they related to basic math skills and social literacy. And it was the same with Hunter. He was still learning his ABC’s and how to write his name when otherwise he seemed like he knew everything in the world. I thought then about who was going to help them with this work. Who was going to praise their small incremental leaps and big accomplishments? Would it be Archie? Well, to be honest, he might help with special projects like building a papier-mâché volcano, but it was doubtful he’d be available on a day-to-day basis to help his boys with these small tasks. Would Sharon? The answer to that would be a strong hell, no in neon lights.

  “I love doing homework with y’all,” I said.

  “We love doing homework with you, too,” Tyler said.

  “Yeah, you make it fun,” Hunter said.

  “Well, listen, when your daddy and Sharon get back, I’ll still help you with homework any old time. How’s that?”

  “Boy, that would be great. I was worried about that,” Tyler said.

  “You shouldn’t worry about anything. It’s not a big deal at all,” I said. “Okay, let’s pack everything up so it’s ready for the morning when we make the mad dash! In fact, why don’t we go to school on the golf cart tomorrow?”

  Big smiles broke out on their faces, as they repacked their backpacks and zipped them closed.

  “Can we?” Hunter said.

  “Our mom used to take us on the golf cart all the time,” Tyler said. “I don’t know if it even still works.”

  “We should find out. I suspect it’s probably pretty dirty from just sitting under the house for so long. Let’s go find out.”

  I took a roll of paper towels, a garbage bag, and a bottle of spray cleaner, and the boys and I went outside and under the house to investigate. We lifted the cover off and stood back. The cart was surely in need of some attention, because the seats were covered in mildew stains and the floor was all sandy.