Badly Done, Emma Lee

by Leah Marie Brown

“A chef? Does she have a restaurant here in town?”

  “No, ma’am. Tara works at WCSC Channel Five, the CBS-affiliated television station for the Lowcountry. She films news pieces about Charleston’s food scene and a weekly cooking segment.”

  “I knew that.” She sighs and resumes fanning her face. “I swear, the stress of planning this wedding is killing what’s left of my menopausal brain.”

  My cheeks flush with heat at the word menopausal. Oh. My. God. Dying like Hazel Grace in The Fault in Our Stars! Doesn’t Mrs. Armistead know Southern women never discuss their nether regions? I swear, my sister Manderley still refers to a man’s naughty bits as his little Elvis, and my sister Tara calls her you-know-what Mount Pleasant, which was mighty confusing to me growing up, because Mount Pleasant is also the name of a town outside Charleston.

  Mrs. Armistead squats down beside my chair so she can look me in my mortified eyes. I swear, if she asks me to go and fetch her a box of Estroven for Menopause Relief, I will drown myself in my bowl of she-crab soup.

  “When Alexandria said she wanted me to host the engagement party here in Charleston instead of Richmond, I about cried. I didn’t know how I was going to make her Antebellum-Splendor-Meets-Enchanted-Garden theme happen from four hundred miles away.” She wraps her clammy palm around my arm and gives it a good squeeze. “This evening would have been less enchanting without your help, Emma Lee.”

  “It was nothing, really.”

  “Nothing?” Tears fill her eyes. “It was your idea to hold the dinner at the Gadsden House. You suggested the florist and the caterer. Have you thought about being a wedding planner?”

  “No.”

  “Alexandria told me you have your heart set on being a matchmaker, but maybe you should consider being a matchmaker and a wedding planner. ‘From first date to I do.’”

  “You think?”

  “Absolutely.” She lets go of my arm and stands up. “Now, are you all set to give the toast?”

  Toast? A sour taste fills my mouth and I suddenly feel nauseous. The she-crab is crawling around my stomach, looking for a way back out.

  “Good heavens,” she says, squeezing my arm again. “You’ve gone green, dear. Are you nervous?”

  “I am not nervous.”

  I graduated from Clemson University (Go Tigers!) with a degree in public relations and communications. Speaking in public doesn’t give me she-crab belly. Speaking in public when I’m pretty sure my cue cards are sitting at home beside a half-consumed glass of rosé, now that’s a different story.

  “You’ll be fine, dear.”

  She pats my cheek and hurries back to her place at the head table. Tavish Barton is watching me from across the table, one corner of his mouth twisted down in a knowing smirk. I plaster a big old smile on my face and try to recall the things I put in my purse. MAC Viva Glam red lipstick. Hourglass Lippie in Forbidden Apple. NARS Matte Lip Pencil in Dragon Girl. Tin of Altoids. iPhone. Key to Tara’s condo. Cab fare. Cue cards?

  I lift the cloth napkin off my lap and slowly fold it into a neat rectangle. I am cool as cucumber slices floating in ice water. I am calm, composed, and confident. Standing, I lift my Tyler Ellis Candy Clutch by its slender gold chain, toss the napkin on the seat of my chair, and walk casually across the courtyard, waving and saying “Hey y’all” to various guests. I thank the string quartet for the beautiful music and walk into Gadsden House with the poise of a pageant queen.

  “Hey, Emma Lee.”

  “Good to see you, Emma Lee.”

  “How you been, girl?”

  Sweet Jesus! Why is it when a girl wants to be alone she can’t say boo without scaring up an Aiken? My daddy used to say they had more kin than sense. Remembering Chase smiling at me with his orange rind teeth, I’d have to say Daddy was right.

  I slip into the empty banquet room and hurry over to the fireplace, my heels tap-tap-tapping on the polished wood floor.

  Please, please sweet Jesus, let my cue cards be in my purse.

  I sit on the marble hearth, open my purse, and look inside at the tubes of lipstick, tin of mints, iPhone, and house key resting neatly against the red velvet lining.

  Oh. My. God. This is not happening.

  So. Not. Happening.

  I close my eyes and will the cards to be there. Be there. Be there. I open my eyes and cry out when I realize the cards have not magically apparated into my purse.

  I close my eyes tight. Think, Emma Lee. Try to remember what was on the cue cards. Think. Think. Think. Think pink ink.

  In my mind, I see my large loopy handwriting scrawled over three-by-five cards in bold pink ink, but I can’t see the words. Other than a pink happy-face daisy doodled in the corner of one of the cards, I can’t remember anything I wrote.

  What would Manderley do?

  There’s only one woman I admire more than Reese Witherspoon (hail): my big sister, Manderley. She is calm and terribly clever. She was editor of Columbia University’s literary magazine. She’s brilliant with words. Absolutely brill. She will tell me what to say. I pull my iPhone out of my purse and start clicking.

  Text to Manderley Maxwell de Maloret:

  I am supposed to give a toast at Lexi’s engagement party and I forgot my cue cards. My mind is emptier than a whorehouse on Sunday morning. Help!

  I have just enough time to pop an Altoid in my mouth and dab a little Viva Glam on my lips before Manderley’s response hits my phone.

  Text from Manderley:

  People love meet-cute stories. Tell them the meet-cute story.

  Text to Manderley:

  OMG! You’re brill, Mandy! One more thing: what’s a haint?

  Text from Manderley:

  Emma Lee Maxwell! You were born and raised in Charleston. You should know a haint is a ghost.

  I told you, my big sister is brilliant.

  Chapter Three

  Emma Lee Maxwell’s Facebook Update:

  According to Men’s Health, you are 227 percent more likely to meet a potential girlfriend through a friend than in a bar, at the gym, or on the street. Just another reason for being social, y’all!

  “Someone wise told me to start this toast off by telling the meet-cute story.” I smile at Lexi and Cash, standing beside their three-tiered engagement cake. “For those of you who don’t know, meet-cute is a screenwriting term used to describe a situation that brings two characters together in an entertaining, unusual, and perhaps even cosmically destined way. So, here goes . . .” I pause for dramatic effect. “The first time I saw Lexi, she was holding a big old hypodermic needle.”

  The guests laugh.

  “What?” I scrunch up my nose and look around the courtyard as if confused. “Were y’all expecting a different meet-cute story?”

  “I think they meant our meet-cute,” Cash says.

  I wave my hand dismissively, and the guests laugh again.

  “We were freshman at Clemson. Lexi was volunteering at the blood drive and I was a donor. She jabbed that big old needle in my arm, and I swear my ears started buzzing, my vision narrowed. I passed out like a preteen at a Taylor Swift concert, y’all. I woke up flat on my back with Lexi arranging my hair and brushing bronzer on my cheeks. I knew then, we were destined to be best friends and soul sisters. I mean, any girl sweet enough to remember to brush bronzer on your face after you’ve passed out is a keeper, right?”

  Laughter ripples around the courtyard.

  “That’s always been my mantra,” Truman cries.

  The guests laugh even louder. I smile real big and wait for them to fall silent.

  “My daddy used to say”—tears fill my eyes, but I blink them away—“ ‘Emma, darling, beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes down clean to the bone.’ Now that I have reached the wise old age of twenty-four, I disagree with my daddy. Beauty goes clean to the bone, too. I know this because Lexi’s bones are about the most beautiful bones a person could have.” I reach for my champagne glass, hold it out toward Lexi and Cash, and wait for the guests
to raise their glasses. “Sadly, not everyone will find and marry a beautiful person, but you, Cash Aiken, you have found a truly beautiful person, clear down to her bones. I know you will share a long, happy life—just as I knew you would make the perfect couple. So, to Lexi and Cash.”

  To Lexi and Cash.

  Cheers!

  The quartet begins playing “Marry You” by Bruno Mars, and the guests rush to hug the happy couple. I drain my champagne glass and join my friends, who are congregating around the makeshift bar.

  “That was a fab toast, Ems,” Maddie says.

  “Did you tell the quartet to play this song?” Kristen asks.

  I grin. “Marry You” is one of Lexi’s favorite songs.

  I was tempted to have them play “Tale As Old As Time,” the theme song from Beauty and the Beast. Lexi loves that movie. She knows the entire film by heart and even sings the “Bonjour” song in all the different voices. After Cash’s comment about her dress, I am glad I went with Bruno instead.

  “You did all right, girl,” Truman says.

  “Thanks a mil, Truman.”

  “Hear, hear,” Tavish says, raising his nearly empty champagne glass. “In fact, I think Emma Lee’s toast deserves a toast of its own.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “To Emma Lee Maxwell, may your journey to England to be a sheep farmer’s mail-order bride go off as seamlessly as this evening,” he says, winking at me. “Cheers!”

  “Cheers to Emma Lee,” Kristen cries.

  Someone gasps, and I turn to find Miss Ida Mae Rawlins staring at me with her mouth agape. Her lipstick has bled into the fine wrinkles around her mouth like tiny tributaries off a giant coral-hued lake. Miss Ida Mae was sweet on my daddy way back before he married my momma, but Daddy wasn’t sweet on her. The matriarch of the Aiken clan, Miss Virginia, is standing beside Miss Ida Mae.

  “Emma Lee Maxwell, is this true?” Miss Virginia asks. “I knew things were difficult since your daddy—”

  “—God rest his soul,” Miss Ida Mae interjects.

  “Amen,” Miss Virginia says, hastily making the sign of the cross. “I heard things were difficult on account of your daddy owing all that money to the IRS, but I had no idea it was this dire.”

  I shoot Tavish the stink-eye. He gives me one of those highly infuriating Barton boy shit-eating grins and finishes his champagne in a single swallow.

  Miss Virginia is president of the God Love Her Club. She’s one of those Southern women who believe adding bless her heart or God love her to negative remarks will make them sound more genteel and compassionate. She couldn’t bake a decent peach cobbler if Paula Deen showed her the way, bless her heart. She can gossip like all get-out. So, I widen my eyes and play dumb.

  “Is what true, Miss Virginia?”

  Miss Virginia and Miss Ida Mae exchange looks, and I can almost hear the silent conversation taking place between them.

  Go on, ask her.

  If I ask her, she will know we were eavesdropping.

  We were eavesdropping. Don’t be a ninny; ask her.

  “We couldn’t help overhearing the toast,” Miss Ida Mae says, her powdery parchment face staining with color. “Are you moving to England? Truly?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Miss Ida Mae gasps.

  “Emma Lee Maxwell,” Miss Virginia says. “You are not selling yourself in matrimony to a . . . a . . .”

  “Sheep farmer?” Savannah offers.

  The two old misses nod their heads.

  “She sure is!” Savannah says. “A widowed sheep farmer in Sheffield paid ten thousand dollars and two bags of wool for Emma Lee.”

  “Ten thousand dollars?” Miss Virginia gasps.

  “That’s right,” Savannah says. “He set up a GoFundMe and his seven kids went door to door selling their homemade sheep milk cheese to raise the bride price.”

  “He wanted her . . . baaad.”

  Maddie bleats the word bad, and the Barton boys burst out laughing. Kristen and Savannah join in, hooting like a pair of owls.

  You know the lemon juice concentrate that comes in the plastic lemon-shaped container you get in the produce department? ReaLemon? Well, Miss Virginia looks like someone spiked her champagne with a whole mess of the stuff. My daddy used to make lemonade using ReaLemon, sugar, and water that was so tart, one sip made your lips all puckery.

  Miss Virginia clutches Miss Ida Mae’s elbow and leads her away, muttering something about those Barton boys and their friends “from off.”

  From off is local lingo used to describe people who are not from Charleston, specifically the Charleston Peninsula, where the folks with ancient names and old fortunes reside. Miss Virginia lives in the Aiken-Winter House, a three-story Federal on the Battery, which is the oldest and most exclusive area on the peninsula.

  I should be angry at my friends for tweaking the nose of the doyenne, the grandest dame, of Charleston society, but I reckon giving hoity-toity Miss Virginia Aiken a hard time was their way of showing their loyalty.

  “Ignore that old crab,” Maddie says, grabbing my hand and lacing her fingers with mine. “Don’t let her steal your light, sunshine.”

  Maddie is the most sensitive of my Kappa Kappa Gamma sisters. Growing up the way she did, shunned by her half siblings, she gets my struggle. She knows how difficult it has been since Daddy passed and the news of his precarious financial situation was made public. One day, I was helping organize the Spring Cotillion and planning what I would wear to the Victory Cup; the next, I was standing on the lawn at Black Ash, watching my daddy’s belongings auctioned off like junk at a flea market. People I thought were my friends stopped inviting me to their charitable and social events.

  That sort of humiliation either scars or shapes a body.

  Chapter Four

  Emma Lee Maxwell’s Facebook Update:

  “Someone you haven’t met is wondering what it would be like to know someone like you.” I saw that on a T-shirt the other day. It’s exciting to think the next person you meet might be that special someone, the one who has been looking for you all along, isn’t it?

  Two months ago, Manderley was working a thankless job in Cannes with no prospects of romance on her horizon. Then she met Xavier de Maloret, a handsome French aristocrat who looks like David Gandy, that gorgeous model in the Dolce & Gabbana ads. Now, my sensible, bookish big sister is a glamourous jet-setter with a crazy hot husband. Isn’t that romantic?

  I hope Tara meets her someone special soon. My heart aches imagining her here all on her own—without Daddy around, warning her to watch her rebel ways, without me raiding her closet. I thought Grayson Calhoun, her on-again, off-again boyfriend, was going to ask her to marry him, but instead, he popped the question to Maribelle Cravath.

  I glance over at my sister, sitting in the driver’s seat, her long, toned legs looking fab in white skinny jeans, and my vision blurs with unshed tears. Maybe I am making a mistake. Maybe I shouldn’t leave Charleston. I shift my gaze to the new Burberry trench folded in my lap—a generous bon voyage gift from Manderley after I told her Mrs. Nickerson said a proper, classically stylish raincoat is a staple of every British woman’s wardrobe—and the clouds of doubt melt away.

  I thought my sensible big sister was going to laugh when I told her I was thinking about moving to the Cotswolds so I could live in the cottage our aunt left me in her will. I thought she was going to tell me to stop talking nonsense and waddle about being a matchmaker.

  But she didn’t.

  Go after your dreams, darlin’ Emma Lee, she said. Move to England and become a matchmaker, if that’s what you truly want. Tara will be just fine. Daddy would want you to follow your dreams.

  So, I am. Even if that means saying good-bye to the familiar—like the sweet old woman who sells “bald” peanuts out of a cart. Daddy bought me a bag every time I went with him to his favorite barbershop over on Broad Street. After he died, she took to giving me the bag for free. If I close my eyes, I can almost smell the
warm, salty husks.

  “Did you remember your passport?”

  “Yes, Tara.”

  “What about your iPhone charger? I want you to call me as soon as you land and when you have arrived at Wood House.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you remembered to make your train reservations from London to the Cotswolds?”

  “Mrs. Nickerson said she would send Knightley to pick me up.”

  “Knightley?”

  “Her son.”

  “That’s awfully generous of them.”

  “Isabella said it was the least she could do for the niece of one of her oldest and dearest friends. Besides, Knightley is some bigwig publisher. Apparently, he splits his time between London and the Cotswolds. So, it’s not like it’s a big deal for him to let me hitch a ride.”

  “Even so, be sure to thank him and Mrs. Nickerson.”

  “Please, Tara,” I say, feeling as chastened as I did when Miss Belle told me I put too much sugar in my tea (as if you can put too much sugar in tea). “I’m Southern born and raised. I know how to do gratitude. I went to the Candy Kitchen and bought a big old box of pecan pralines for Isabella and a bag of bourbon balls for Knightley.”

  Tara slows to a stop at the intersection before the entrance to the Charleston International Airport and turns to look at me. I wonder who she sees when she looks at me. The knock-kneed little girl who used to follow her around, always two steps behind? The flighty teenager who forgot to return the clothes/shoes/makeup she borrowed?

  I lift my chin and smile. I am not that little girl anymore. I don’t need my big sisters chasing me around with a safety net just in case I take a leap too far.

  “Are you sure about all this, Emma Lee? When was the last time Aunt Pattycake lived in Wood House? What if it hasn’t been cleaned? What if it is infested with vermin? What if—?”

  “Don’t get your feathers all ruffled up, momma hen,” I say, laughing. “Mrs. Nickerson said Aunt Patricia gave her a key to Wood House years ago, so she could look after it while she was away. Mrs. Nickerson sent her maid to clean the cottage and stock the larder, which I assume is a pantry.”