Queen Bee

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “A little more detail would be nice,” Momma said, in her more caustic voice, because she had been starved of Leslie’s company for a few days.

  “Well, let’s put it this way. If you went to a bar with impersonators on the outskirts of Charleston, you’d have one level of costume. You know, a nice gown but maybe the wig might be of a type that is natural hair, trying to pass for Ann-Margret when she was young.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Momma said.

  “But when you go to Las Vegas, the ladies there have on extraordinary wigs, eyelashes so long and thick they’re like awnings, glitter in their makeup and on their bodies, gorgeous gowns like they wore in the old days of Hollywood, and so much jewelry it borders on garish. They’ve got huge attitude that’s regal but naughty and sassy at the same time. And most of them have hilariously funny personalities. I think quite a few of them started out doing stand-up and for one reason or another, they graduated to impersonators who also do stand-up.”

  “Did you take pictures?” Momma said.

  “Of course!” Leslie said.

  “Let’s see,” Momma said.

  Leslie clicked around on her phone and then slid it over to Momma. I got up and stood behind her so I could see them, too.

  “You were not exaggerating,” I said.

  “No, she did not stretch the truth,” Momma said.

  From one to the next, the ladies were stunningly beautiful, and you could not tell they weren’t women. Then we came to the pictures of Charlie. He paled by comparison in terms of hair, wardrobe, and accessories. Momma sat back and considered his pictures for a moment or two, and then she scrolled back to the others.

  “I used to sew, you know. In fact, you know I always wanted to be a pattern maker.”

  I had forgotten that, but it was true. When Leslie and I were little, Momma had at least three Singer sewing machines, always trading up. But what was she saying? Was she offering to sew for Charlie?

  Then she scrolled back to the other female impersonators.

  “Looks like Charlie’s wearing a prom dress next to those other ladies,” she said. “I can’t stand by and let him look like that. He’ll never get anywhere if that’s what the competition looks like.”

  “What do you mean?” Leslie said.

  “I mean, I could probably make a few gowns for him every so often when he’s got a new show coming up. It might be fun, and he’ll certainly be no more worse off than he is in this getup. What do you think?”

  “You mean you’d come to Las Vegas and stay with us and do this?” Leslie said.

  I was just trying to keep my jaw off the floor.

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. I wouldn’t be moving in with you permanently, but I couldn’t really do this for him from this island, now could I? And we need to find him a wig maker. Farrah Fawcett he isn’t, with all those wings and wisps. He looks like a refugee from the 1980s.”

  Okay, it wasn’t lost on me that my mother now fancied herself to be a fashion maven. And she expected us to believe her.

  Leslie did.

  “Oh, Momma! That would be so wonderful! Charlie will be so thrilled! The thing is, the gowns have to be custom! Oh! I can’t wait to tell him!”

  She ran from the room to call him.

  “Let me get this straight. You’re going to get on a plane and fly to Las Vegas and live with Leslie while you sew for Charlie.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said and thought, Now I’ve heard it all.

  “Don’t ever eat bananas around a beehive,” I said.

  “Why not?” they said.

  “Because the smell of them might cause the bees to swarm.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Splash!

  Momma was out shopping for luxury fabrics with Leslie. That whole situation still boggled my mind. If you’d told me a year ago my momma would get out of bed, I’d have said, fat chance. And if you’d told me she’d be designing and making evening gowns for her son-in-law’s lip-sync competitions, I’d have thought you’d lost your damn mind. But then, Momma would do anything for Leslie. And it turned out that Leslie would do just about anything for Charlie.

  So I was on my own to take up a small problem with Archie. His car was in the driveway. He must not have had classes that afternoon. I walked across the street and rang their doorbell.

  Archie answered after a few moments.

  “Hi, Holly! What’s going on?”

  “Archie? Is there a place we can talk without being overheard?”

  “Sure,” he said and stepped out onto the porch, closing the door behind him quietly. “Is something wrong?”

  “I’m not sure where to start. Tyler is a popular kid, but I assume you know that. Hunter is as well.”

  “I assume they have friends at school,” he said.

  I thought, The thing to say would’ve been, I know they have a lot of nice friends. They used to come here all the time. But the waters had been sullied and all the rules had changed. Now, maybe they had friends at school. And they were no longer welcome.

  “Yes. They have a lot of them, good kids from nice families. Anyway, there’s a new child, Matthew, who’s just moved here from Tennessee. His dad works for Boeing. His momma’s name is Maureen Thomas. Maureen inherited a big house on the beach over at Station Twenty-seven from her grandmother. In an effort to make friends for her son, she planned a birthday party for Tyler.”

  “When is this party supposed to take place?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “Well, Tyler’s in lockdown.”

  “Again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So I suppose Maureen went to great effort?”

  “Yes.” I was quiet and just stared at him for a few minutes. “Balloons, a lifeguard, twenty kids . . .”

  “Well, this is a dilemma.” He stared at me, seeming lost.

  “I know,” I said. “Look, Archie. This will be the first time in his life he hasn’t had a birthday celebration with his friends. And I know it’s none of my business, but does the punishment fit the crime?”

  He paused before answering me.

  “Between us? I thought being grounded for a week was too harsh. But I have to back up Sharon, even when she’s over the top, or else it undermines our relationship. You understand that, don’t you?”

  I chose my words carefully.

  “What I understand is that it’s a little boy’s birthday today, who barely a year ago lost his mother, who’s got to be on his mind, especially today, and that he’s got a stepmother that may not be the perfect fit. And no matter what he did or said, this punishment isn’t going to make him love Sharon. It’s only going to make him miss his own mother even more.”

  “Did you ever think about becoming a child psychologist?”

  “I’ve toyed with a lot of different ideas about my future. But do you see what I’m talking about?”

  “I’ll call Sharon and see if I can get him some time off for good behavior. Maybe even get the whole sentence commuted.”

  “There you go! Great! Thanks, Archie.”

  “It would be a shame for Tyler to miss his own party.” He looked at me in such a funny way, and then he said something so stupid, I almost fell off the porch. He said, “Why do you care so much?”

  I wanted to say, Why don’t you care more?

  “Because I really love Hunter and Tyler, that’s why. I have since you and Carin brought them home from the hospital.”

  Archie stood there on the porch, reminiscing.

  “I miss her, you know?” he said.

  “I know. Everyone does, but I think your boys might miss her the most.”

  Archie nodded his head.

  “Thanks, Holly. Somehow I always find myself thanking you for something. What can I do to make up for all you do for us?”

  Well, I thought, you could toss Sharon off the top of the Ravenel Bridge into the Cooper River and let the sharks eat her. That would take care of it.

/>   “You know, before you got married, I had a conversation with the boys. They both said they didn’t want another mother, that they liked things just as they were. Y’all had a boys’ club, in their mind anyway. Just you and them against the world, and together, nothing would ever hurt them again. With Sharon on the scene, they lost that, too. Do you see what I mean?”

  “Do you think I made a mistake marrying Sharon?”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then . . . good.” I looked at the ground as my face got red and hot. “Maybe, if you wanted to do something, just try to temper Sharon’s rules and regulations. There might be a few that could be loosened up a bit.”

  The look on his face said that I might have won Tyler a reprieve, but I had inadvertently embarrassed Archie by implying he wasn’t giving enough vigilance to what was going on. He knew that I knew he had simply turned the boys over to Sharon to raise like house plants. He also knew I knew she was doing a terrible disservice to two little boys who deserved one helluva lot more than they were getting.

  “I can take them over to Maureen’s if you’d like,” I said.

  “Let me talk to Sharon first,” he said. “I’ll call you, okay?”

  “Sure,” I said. I went down the stairs into the yard and turned back. “Archie?”

  He just stood there looking at me.

  “It’s his birthday. Come on. He’s just a little boy.”

  “I’ll call you,” he said.

  What else could he say?

  I went home and called Maureen, telling her every detail.

  “So that’s the latest,” I said.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think that if she doesn’t let this child come to his own birthday party, I’ll be so furious with Sharon, I’ll rip her head off. How’s that?”

  “I’ll help you.”

  And so, I waited and waited and waited.

  I went out to my apiary to check on the girls. Naturally, I told them everything. My cell phone rang in my back pocket. It was Archie. I took off my gloves and answered it.

  “Sharon said no,” he said.

  “Are you serious? You can’t be serious!”

  “She really feels very strongly that Tyler needs to learn a lesson. Holly, he called her a terrible name. He can’t do that.”

  “So let me get this straight. Hunter is going to Tyler’s birthday party without him?”

  “When she found out there was a party for Tyler and that she had not been told the truth, she was furious. Hunter isn’t going, either.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because she thinks they both knew and didn’t tell her.”

  “It’s a surprise party, Archie.”

  “She’s got the final word, Holly. She’s coming home at two thirty to talk to him.”

  “Y’all are unbelievable.” I hit the end button. I turned back to my hives, told them the story, and said, “What now?”

  It didn’t take long for me to get an answer to that question. At precisely two thirty, Sharon pulled up in the driveway. My bees from the pink hive bearded her car, so many of them that all the windows were covered. I could see them leave the hive as they flew over in a swarm. She started blowing her horn over and over.

  “Help!” Sharon was screaming bloody murder. “Help! Archie! Help!”

  The bees were undeterred. Archie and the boys came running out of the house and stopped dead in their tracks when they saw what was happening.

  “Call the police!” she was screaming. “Call them!”

  She turned her windshield wipers on and began spraying them with the wiper fluid. This infuriated the bees, who quickly flew away and joined their sisters on the sides of the car.

  I saw Archie give Tyler a push to come over to our house, presumably to get me. Maybe he thought I could do something.

  I met him at the door.

  “What’s going on, Tyler? Happy birthday, by the way.”

  “Thanks! There’s a billion bees that have Sharon trapped in her car! Dad says for you to come quick!”

  “I’ll be along in a minute. Let me get my suit on.”

  He followed me through the house and out the back door to my shed.

  “I don’t know why he thinks I can do a thing about it,” I said. “Now, Tyler, I want you to stand way back from her car, okay? Maybe my smoker will help. Maybe it won’t. Let’s hope.”

  I pulled my veil down and lit my smoker. When I got to the scene, Sharon was beyond hysterical.

  “You’re a menace!” she was screaming at me. “I’m going to sue you for a million dollars!”

  “Good luck with that,” I said and started smoking the girls. They began to land on me, and when I had them all, and I estimated ten thousand or so, I simply began walking them back to their hive.

  “The bees are all over her!” Sharon screamed. “Oh, my God! She’s a freak!”

  “No. I’m not. I’m a beekeeper,” I said calmly.

  A few bees, which might have been affected by the windshield washer fluid, hung back.

  “Maybe that will teach her a lesson,” I said quietly to them. “I love you, girls!”

  They buzzed all around me in a waggle and returned home to their hive.

  It goes without saying that Tyler was allowed to go to his party with Hunter and all charges against him were dropped by his jailer. Archie told me that he’d had a chat with Sharon and told her she was being too strict. She was so upset about my bees swarming her car that she relented. I drove them to Maureen’s with the cake tucked away out of their sight in the back of my SUV. Sure enough, it represented the Sullivan’s Island playground, with a tiny marzipan Tyler playing basketball with Matthew and Brian, and Hunter hanging upside down from the monkey bars.

  Tyler shrieked with delight when the kids yelled, “Surprise!” There were presents and pizza and cannonballs into the pool. They played Marco Polo until the adults couldn’t stand it for another minute. They dried off and sang “Happy Birthday” loud enough to wake the dead; Tyler blew out the candles and they all ate cake. The parents took pictures of everything. Tyler’s parents weren’t there, but he was absolutely beaming with happiness. That was all I wanted to see. If Carin was watching she’d be pleased.

  Maureen finally got around to asking me how I got Tyler out of restriction and to the party.

  “I had just about given up and I thought, Well, we’ll have the party anyway,” she said.

  “You’re right. My honey bees helped me.”

  “You keep honey bees?” Alice said. “I love them!”

  “No, how wonderful!” Maureen said. “They’re the most fascinating little creatures, aren’t they?”

  “Uh, yass. Listen to this story.”

  I told them about the bees and how I talk to them. Then I told them the story about how they used Sharon’s car for target practice on their cleansing flight and about how today they swarmed her windows. They didn’t know how to respond to the implications of what I had just told them.

  “Well, first of all,” Maureen said, “I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am we put this little shindig together for Tyler. That is one precious little boy.”

  “He was tickled to bits,” Alice said.

  “And don’t you know he was probably missing his momma today?” I said. “It’s his first birthday without her.”

  “Poor baby,” Alice said. “Well, time for me to go.”

  Alice gave Tyler and Hunter a ride home with all of Tyler’s gifts, and I stayed behind to help Maureen finish cleaning up. Everyone else had said good-bye and gone home.

  “Those kids are going to sleep like stones tonight,” I said. “They hardly got out of the pool, except to eat.”

  “Yeah, they will sleep good, but my yard looks like we were hit by a tornado!” Maureen said.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll make it all go away. I need a big black garbage bag.”

  She handed me one and I started wadding up wra
pping paper and ribbon.

  “I’m not worried in the least! But now that I have you alone, I want to ask you something.”

  “Sure! Anything.”

  “Do you think the bees acted in response to the stories you told them?”

  “Maureen?” I laughed and shook my head. “You’re going to learn all about the Lowcountry. You’re not in Tennessee anymore.”

  “That’s for sure, but you didn’t answer my question.”

  “Okay, here’s what I think. I think there is no scientific proof anywhere, in any written record, that bees can do your bidding. It’s impossible. They have hive mentality, and they only work to preserve the queen and the hive. They can’t decide, oh, that Sharon is a terrible wretch who needs to know we’re onto her psychodrama. That’s not what bees do. It’s not their nature.”

  “Okay. But aren’t there bees that kill?”

  “Yes. African bees are super aggressive. But honey bees are sweethearts. Anyway, Maureen, you did a really good thing today.”

  “So did your bees,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Guess what happens to the drone bees?” I said.

  “What?” Hunter asked.

  “When it cools off in the fall, they get thrown out of the hive.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Vapors (Part 2)

  When I got home, there was a police car in front of Archie’s house. I thought, Oh, come on. Really? What was the point of that? I went in our house. Momma was in the dining room. She had pushed all the catalogs and magazines aside and was spreading swatches of fabric by color group.

  “Hey!” I said, curious to see what she had brought home.

  “Hay is for horses,” she said.

  “Fine. Did you and Leslie have a successful shopping trip?”

  “Well, we got started. It’s a big project, you know.”

  “No, I do know!” I said.

  She said, “Well, do you know why the authorities are parked in front of Archie’s house?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Would you like to share?”