Queen Bee

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “Good Lord,” I said.

  I didn’t have the time to polish it all by hand. And then I had a thought. There had to be a fast way to clean silver. I went online and found a solution that seemed too good to be true. But since I had nothing to lose, I tried it.

  I took Momma’s biggest pot and filled it with water. Then I put it on to boil. Next, I crumpled aluminum foil—shiny side out—and dropped a few balls of it into the pot. Then I added about half a box of baking soda. When the water came to a boil, I carefully lowered in the silver and let it boil and bubble for about five minutes. I must say, the fragrance was that of rotten eggs, but if it worked, who cared? Momma, Leslie, and Suzanne stood there the whole time like a Greek chorus telling me this would never work. That the only way to polish silver was elbow grease.

  “What’s that horrible smell?”

  “You need that expensive pink stuff and a whole afternoon,” Momma said.

  I removed each piece with tongs, and voilà, it was all as good as new.

  “Really?” I said. “Apparently not.”

  I laid it all out on dish towels and began drying it and buffing it with a soft cloth.

  “I’ll be damned,” Suzanne said.

  “Would you look at that?” Leslie said and picked up a cloth to help me.

  Now the dining room tablecloth had something else to make it sparkle. And of course, Momma had wedding china that had not been used since her wedding, just sitting in the china cabinet, all stacked up, collecting dust. There was nothing wrong with it a little soap and water couldn’t cure. And besides, I only needed six place settings. That simple task took fifteen minutes with Leslie’s help.

  “Should I put them on the table?” she asked.

  “Why not? Sure!”

  “Who’s coming to dinner with all this hurrah?” Momma said.

  “Well, there is the queen to be considered,” Suzanne said.

  “I just felt that with all the trouble Suzanne went to scrubbing that awful old grill of ours plus buying wine and steaks, and the fact that Archie and Ted are coming to dinner, that maybe we should put our best foot forward,” I said. “I think the table looks really beautiful. Come see!”

  Momma followed me to the dining room and was speechless for a moment.

  Then she said, “I don’t know why we don’t do this all the time! It’s so pretty! Nice job, girls!”

  “Thank Holly,” Leslie said. “This was all her idea.”

  “I don’t know. I sort of miss Catalog Mountain,” I said and laughed. “We’re missing one thing.”

  “I can’t imagine what,” Momma said.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said.

  I went to my room and unplugged my portable turntable and brought it to the kitchen. We were going to have dinner with George Gershwin. I texted Ted, Bring your Ella vinyl! He texted back, You bet! I plugged it in and put an album on and dropped the needle in the first groove. “Rhapsody in Blue” began to play.

  “May I have the pleasure of a dance, my dove?” Suzanne said.

  “Of course!”

  For the next five minutes or so, Suzanne waltzed Momma around the kitchen table. She was an amazing dancer—Suzanne, that is. Momma followed her lead the best she could, blushing and stammering while Suzanne nuzzled her neck and she blushed some more.

  “Too precious,” Leslie said.

  “Should we have cocktails in the kitchen or on the front porch?” I said.

  “I vote for the kitchen, so I won’t miss any of the conversation while I’m grilling on the back porch,” Suzanne said.

  “Yes, and I think it’s too hot on the front porch,” Momma said.

  “And we have a ceiling fan in here,” Leslie said.

  “Then the kitchen it is,” I said.

  It was five o’clock. Ted and Archie were expected at six. I took the Jarlsberg out of the refrigerator, so it wouldn’t be as hard as a brick, and put it on a cutting board with a box of crackers. Then I lined up the wine bottles and a half dozen wineglasses and remembered I couldn’t find a corkscrew the last time I looked for one.

  “Leslie? Please see if you can find a corkscrew, and if you can’t, ask the Scarecrow to bring one. Please? I’m going to go and change.”

  The Scarecrow was the guy in The Wizard of Oz without a brain.

  “Good one,” Momma said.

  I stopped in my tracks and looked back. She gave me a thumbs-up.

  I got to my room and stopped again. Something had changed in the house. I wondered what it was and finally, I realized what was different. Everyone was happy. That may seem to be an overly simplistic way to state the very complicated facts, but it was the truth. That happiness was so hard won. I had scars to prove it. We all did.

  I took off my dirty gardening clothes, rinsed off in a fast shower, and put on a clean sundress and sandals. I couldn’t wait to see Ted. I could’ve waited a long time before I saw Archie, but if I guessed correctly, he was going to be here a lot, sniffing around for Leslie like an old hound dog. What can I say? It had always been this way. She was Brigitte Bardot to my Tammy Tell Me True. She was wired in a way that was the complete opposite of me. And did it really matter to me if Archie wanted Leslie and not me? Well, there was a smidgen of a sting to it, but I had Ted, and I didn’t have to change myself for him to like me. In the cool of the afternoon, that matters just a whole lot more to me.

  Ted and Archie were prompt. Leslie answered the door and I remembered she had not really been introduced to Ted. Although Ted knew Archie, because of Sharon’s hysteria and, ultimately, her death. So I hurried out to meet them to make sure that Ted was introduced to Suzanne as well.

  “Hey!” I said to Ted. “Don’t you look nice? Hey, Archie.”

  “Hi, Holly. It’s nice of y’all to have me.”

  Leslie smiled at Archie like a large, slinky, satisfied feline. Archie gave her kind of a lascivious look. Ted caught it, raised his eyebrows, looked at me, and handed me his Ella Fitzgerald album.

  “There you go!” I said. “Y’all come on in!”

  All at once the physical differences between Archie and Ted were crystal clear. Ted was a younger man, muscular and fit. His hair was close cropped and he was tanned. Ted was a well-made specimen. Archie’s posture wasn’t as sturdy as Ted’s and he looked pale and unkempt instead of like the Sexy Professor. And he had a little belly I’d never noticed before. The truth was that Archie was a lot less appealing, to me, anyway. Leslie seemed to be less picky.

  Archie, who had brought his corkscrew, shook hands with Suzanne and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

  Suzanne said, “I’m just the proverbial boy named Sue. Me and Johnny Cash.”

  “That’s funny,” Archie said. “Miss Katherine? I heard you were under the weather? I hope you’re feeling better now.”

  “I’ve never felt better,” Momma said. “Thank you.”

  Suzanne turned to Ted and said, “And you’ve got to be Ted.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Ted said and extended his hand for a shake.

  “Thanks, son,” Suzanne said and shook his hand soundly without batting an eye.

  Leslie began filling glasses halfway with wine and handing them around. Ted, who in my experience was a beer drinker, took a glass and thanked her. I put the music on and soon Ella’s rendition of “All Through the Night” filled the room.

  “That’s our song,” I said to Ted.

  “So, young man,” Suzanne said to Ted, “do you know your way around a grill?”

  “I think I might,” Ted said. “Can I give you a hand?”

  “You sure can. Grab that tray of meat and follow me outside.” Suzanne passed me and whispered. “Love this guy. He’s a dream.”

  Momma picked up a shrimp on a toothpick and said to Archie, “I pickled these today. May I offer you one?”

  Memories of Momma’s gastronomic prowess must’ve crept into his tiny mind because he said, “I’m going to wait for dinner, but thank y
ou. Big lunch.”

  “So, did you find a home for Sharon’s cats?” I asked.

  “Yes, I gave them to one of my students,” he said. “I’m really more of a dog person.”

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “Oh? Do you have a dog?” Ted said, as he came back into the kitchen for the peppermill. “I’ve got a golden named Stubble.”

  “Stubble?” I said. “That’s a funny name!”

  “Well, his snout always looks like it needs a shave. That’s why.” He went back to the porch.

  “I love goldens,” I said to the room.

  Ted stuck his head back in and gave me a wink. He had a golden, we had a song, and it was all good.

  We made it to the table, which everyone complimented, and sat down to eat. I had plated the steaks and potatoes in the kitchen and brought the salad bowl to the table. Everything smelled delicious and it was. There wasn’t a lot of chitchat because we were all busy eating, but as Suzanne finished her steak she said, “I’d like to propose a toast to the Queen Bee.”

  She stood and raised her glass and walked around the table to Momma’s side. She placed her glass on the table and reached into her pocket, producing a small velvet sack.

  “I bought champagne for a very special reason,” she said and sort of dropped to one knee with a small grunt, hanging on to the arm of Momma’s chair. “This will make it official.” Out came a beautiful diamond ring, and she put it on Momma’s finger. “Katherine Jensen, will you make me the happiest person alive and say yes?”

  Momma’s eyes filled with tears and she blurted her response.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  Momma got up, helped Suzanne up, and they hugged. We all clapped and cheered. Archie and Ted got up and shook Suzanne’s hand and kissed Momma’s cheek.

  “I’ll get the champagne!” I said and hurried to the kitchen.

  Ted followed me. I reached in the refrigerator, took out the bottle, and handed it to him.

  “I’ll definitely break something with an exploding cork.”

  “I’ve got it.” He easily removed the cork with the smallest pop. “Isn’t that something? Your Momma and—was it Sue?”

  “Suzanne,” I said.

  “Well, whatever. Still. There’s nothing like love.”

  “Yeah, I think I just found that out. I mean, really found it out. Sort of.”

  “You are the one, you know,” he said.

  It was a reference to the lyrics of “Night and Day,” or so I thought.

  “I love Cole Porter, too, and Ella? Wow, what a voice!”

  “No, I mean you and me. This is it.”

  “Oh, that! Oh, yeah, I know that. But they’re waiting for champagne.”

  “Don’t steal your momma’s night. But soon?”

  “Yeah, sure, big shot. We’ll see,” I said and hoped he meant it.

  We stole a quick kiss, then went back to the dining room and poured champagne. I put on George Gershwin’s Great Hits and the first song to play was “Love Is Here to Stay.”

  There was more toasting and lots of good wishes. The rest of the evening was spent, as it should have been, in a beautiful and prolonged dream about love and happiness.

  Finally, Leslie said, “I’m going to walk Archie home.”

  We all knew what that meant.

  “Thank you for a wonderful night,” Archie said. “And congratulations.”

  “You’re welcome,” Momma said, grinning like an eighteen-year-old blushing bride. “I’m going to help my fiancé clean the kitchen.”

  “I’ll be along in a minute,” I said, with the intention of walking Ted to his car.

  “Good night, y’all!” he said. “Thanks for a great night!”

  One of those star-filled skies was waiting for us outside, the kind you only see in a magazine with the pictures taken by super powerful telescopes.

  “Look at that, would you?” he said. “It’s hard to believe it’s real.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes I like to come out and look at the stars and just lose myself in them.”

  “We should do that,” he said. “You know, take a blanket down to the dark end of the island on a clear night, lie there, and just get lost in the stars.”

  I looked at him and a thousand things raced through my mind. The main one was I knew that if we did that, I wouldn’t honestly be wearing white on my wedding day. Now that I had waited so long, I wasn’t budging.

  “After we’re married,” I said. “I’m not that kind of girl. Sorry.”

  “Oh, God! Of course! Only after we’re married!”

  “Make it soon, okay?” I said. “Good night.”

  “Where do you think you’re going so fast?”

  All I can tell you is that it took Ted Meyers, chief of police, about two minutes to leave me breathless, weak in the knees, with an unfamiliar clench in an area I did not know could clench involuntarily. I felt like my bones had turned to jelly.

  “Well, I just learned something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why people lie down to you know, you know . . .”

  “Yeah, I think it’s so they won’t fall down.”

  “You’d better get out of here.”

  “I’ll be back, Little Queen Bee.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You need your own hive.” He smiled. “And I’m going to give it to you.”

  “G’night!” I said and thought, Holy shit, there’s sex in my future after all.

  Epilogue

  SULLIVAN’S ISLAND

  April 2019

  Leslie finally divorced Charlie, who, as predicted by everyone involved, went on to become wildly successful as Cher’s long-lost identical twin sister, Char. We were actually all delighted for her. And Leslie’s involvement with Archie became more serious. Who cared? They were both happy. The boys were happy. But she would not marry him.

  “I’m just dividing my time between our house and his. That’s enough for me. You think I want to be his third dead wife? No way, baby. Uh-uh.”

  In the Lowcountry, we believed bad things happened in threes. Becoming the third wife of a man twice widowed was a terrifying prospect.

  “I don’t blame you,” I said.

  But good things also happened in threes. I had so many good things happening around me and to me, I wasn’t quite sure where to start counting. I’d started teaching at Sullivan’s Island Elementary School eight months earlier, and I loved it. Because of that and a few other details, I couldn’t go to Italy with Maureen, but Ted promised to take me there someday.

  “When’s the baby coming?” Tyler asked.

  “Any day now,” I said.

  Last fall, Ted gave me a diamond ring. It wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t too small, either. We got married as soon as we could, right after Suzanne and Momma. Everyone knew we would run to the altar because our pants were on fire. We had a small ceremony at Stella Maris Church. Monsignor Ben Michaels performed the ceremony and Lynn Bagnal played the organ. Leslie was a maid of honor and, in a surprise choice, Ted asked Suzanne to be his best man. They had become very close. He had taken to calling her Suz, which Suzanne said suited her better anyway. It was a gender-neutral name. So first Suz walked me up the aisle to give me away and then she stood by Ted.

  My friends from Publix and school came and, of course, friends of Ted’s, lots of folks from the township office and the police force, our neighbors, Maureen, her husband and son, and Archie and his boys. Archie and his boys bought us a remote-controlled toy Maserati as a wedding gift and I thought it was really sweet. Of course, Mark and Darlene were there, too. Afterward, we had a small reception at home with wedding cake from Publix, finger sandwiches, and champagne. It was simple but beautiful, and exactly what we wanted.

  My garden was a botanical wonder that season, with so many gorgeous roses and dahlias, still in bloom, as though they were staying in bloom, waiting for my wedding to happen. They filled every container we owned, and I
even made my own bouquet. I decorated my beehives and the fence around them with yards and yards of white tulle and bouquets of herbs. And of course, I got a sense that the bees were pleased for me. I really did.

  Don’t you know that when we announced we were going on a short honeymoon to Bermuda, Hunter wanted to come.

  “Aren’t we related yet?” he asked with those gorgeous eyes of his.

  “You are such a little charmer,” I said and tousled his hair.

  The boys had survived the reign and wrath of Sharon and appeared to be unscathed.

  “I’ll take you to Bermuda this summer if you have a good year in school. And Tyler, too, of course,” Archie said.

  Leslie shot Archie a hairy eyeball.

  “And you, too!” he said. “Of course!”

  There must’ve been some magic in the coral sand where we stretched out on beach towels to watch the stars in the night sky over Bermuda, because I came home with a little biscuit in my oven and a whole lot smarter about what goes on between the sheets. All I can say is that I wish I’d taken Ted more seriously in high school. I would’ve married him the day we graduated and dragged him to bed every chance I had. All those wasted years of self-deprivation! Ah, well. Deprivation no more!

  When we got home we moved my hives to Ted’s backyard, which was now our backyard, and he quickly constructed a fence to keep Stubble from getting into trouble. Stubble became my constant companion. The bees buzzed around and bearded some, but overall, after a bit, they settled down and got back to the business of foraging, pollinating, and making delicious honey. I kicked up some dirt in the long-neglected flower beds and said I could get them going again. I did, and by April, our yard looked like somebody loved it. We were only a few blocks from Momma, in case, well, you know, if something happened and she needed us.

  What of Momma and Suz? If laughter and happiness were the best medicines, then Suz was going to keep Momma alive on this earth forever. I’d never seen her so happy. And oh, interesting side note, all those pounds on Momma just melted away. Suz had her walking all over the island and the result was astounding. Her doctors told her to ditch her blood pressure meds and her statin. She was delighted. And there had been no recurrence of tumors.