Dad wasn’t consciously cruel, but he was cruel nonetheless. He’d remarried and brought three more children into the world. He’d resurfaced long enough to get Leslie up the aisle six years ago. He sure did object wildly and loudly to contributing to Leslie’s wedding bills. Eventually he gave in but complained the whole time that Momma should’ve been saving for Leslie’s wedding expenses from the alimony and child support he’d given her all these years, as though he’d given her millions. I wondered then, if I ever married, would he assume he was doing the same for me? Probably not, if it entailed any financial responsibility. I wondered if his new children ever had to eat cereal for supper, as we had, or if they wore hand-me-downs, or if their mother cut their hair. Probably not.
I had long considered myself to be fatherless due to lack of paternal interest. The more I thought about him, the more upset I became. If I ever did find someone to marry, I sure wouldn’t let that jerk overshadow my day as he had Leslie’s. I’d never forget the gossiping at her wedding. All those old biddies down at Stella Maris saying things like, Oh, isn’t he so good to come back to do this? I always said he was a good man. Well, you know, it was never easy for him living with her. Who could blame him for walking away from her?
Not that they were wrong, but it sure shifted the tone of my sister’s wedding day, putting him in the spotlight. Leslie didn’t care. She was marrying the Wallet and she was immune to all else. About six months before the wedding Momma went on a crash diet, determined to look good for the big day. She’d be so drop-dead gorgeous, Daddy would be sorry he left, she said about a thousand times while she choked down dozens of hard-boiled eggs and chomped on celery sticks. When the day arrived, she looked the best that she had in ages, but a magician she wasn’t. And don’t you know Dad just had to bring his new wife with him? Would you believe Lola was her name? She looked like a young Jackie Kennedy. Momma took one look at her and wanted to just lay down and die. That was the other time I felt truly sorry for her. Getting kicked to the curb in front of Sullivan’s Island society is the worst. But being undone at your daughter’s wedding by the presence of the stunning woman who stole your husband is horrific. Momma wasn’t stupid; she knew he was catting around when she found condoms hidden in the air conditioner when she was changing the filter.
As in many small towns across the country, everyone on this island has something to say about everybody’s business. I mean, most of the time I didn’t like Momma very much, but I didn’t like Dad at all. These were not easy people to like or love. But I didn’t want to see my mother publicly humiliated.
It didn’t seem to bother Dad or Leslie. Not one bit. I remember I took Momma aside and said, “Screw Dad. Lola’s nothing but trash.” She burst into tears and I took her to the ladies’ room. She washed her face and said, “I think I’d like to eat some cake.” That was the end of Skinny Katherine. Pretty soon, Big Mean Momma was back. And maybe that’s another reason I didn’t leave her. By the time her divorce from Dad was final, she’d had enough rejection to last ten lifetimes. And while we’re on the subject of weight? Momma could weigh a thousand pounds if she wanted to, but I had always worried for her health. Nowhere in any medical journal did the experts say that being overweight was a good idea. It was just as dangerous as being too skinny. And now here we were. Momma’s health was officially in jeopardy. Of course, while I couldn’t swear her weight had a thing to do with it, it couldn’t have helped.
The whistle of the kettle snapped me back into reality. I swirled a dollop of honey into the bottom of a mug, dropped a Constant Comment tea bag in, and covered it all with boiling hot water. I decided to call Leslie first and cook supper later. It was still early.
She answered on the third ring. Of course.
“Hey,” I said. “You busy?”
“Hey, Holly. No,” she said. “What’s going on?”
“Well, here’s the bad news. Momma’s got some itty-bitty tumors in her liver and her pancreas.”
“What? Oh, no!”
“Wait, hang on. Don’t get upset. The doctors think that whatever she’s got is benign, but they want to monitor her. So she’s still in the hospital because they want to do some more tests.”
“Good grief! How’d she handle the news? Is she hysterical?”
“There was a moment of rebellion.”
“Meaning?”
“She decided she was leaving and ripped the IV out of her hand.”
“Sweet Mary, Mother of God. What happened?”
“They bribed her to stay with chocolate pudding. Trust me, you don’t want the details. It was too stupid.”
“I’m sure. So, what do you think? Do you think she’s dying?”
“Not a chance. I think the situation is serious but not dire. I mean, the doctors talked about some new treatment but said it was for down the road and only if necessary.”
“Well, that makes me feel slightly better. I don’t have to panic and run home?”
“Definitely not. There will be plenty of time to panic. But it’s not now.”
“I didn’t order flowers yet. Should I wait?”
“Up to you. She’ll probably come home tomorrow.”
“Maybe I’ll just send her a card.”
“Totally your call.”
We chatted about Momma for a few more minutes and hung up. I promised to call her if anything changed. As always, she didn’t ask about my life. I didn’t tell her I got a job because she would’ve said icing cakes at Publix was déclassé (which it was not) as though we grew up in the White House. But she came to be self-absorbed honestly, taking after our mother in so many ways. By tomorrow that card would become a phone call. I knew her. She didn’t go out of her way for anyone, not even her own mother.
I drained my cup of tea and began digging around in the drawer for a corkscrew, thinking I’d have a glass of wine while I cooked like they did on fancy television programs like Julia Child’s. Of course, there was no corkscrew to be found. Then it dawned on me that Archie probably had one. I’d just go next door and borrow it. He wouldn’t mind.
I went straight to the front door and had my hand on the doorknob when I realized this was an opportunity to impress him. I wasn’t unattractive, but my appearance was improved with grooming. So I brushed my hair and put on a little lip gloss.
“Better,” I said to the mirror.
A few minutes later, I rang his doorbell. He answered and seemed pleasantly surprised to see me there with a bottle of wine in my hands.
“Well! What’s this? Are we having a party?” he said. “A bottle of mead?”
Oh! He knew about mead!
“No, sadly, it’s just wine. I can’t find our corkscrew. Do you have one I might borrow?”
“Of course! Come in.” He held the door open and I stepped inside.
“Thanks,” I said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but I really love your floors.”
Maybe saying love was overstating it.
“You do?”
“Yes. They’re so pretty and they really shine. But not like they’ve got some fake finish. Do you know what I mean? They have a lustrous quality, like pearls have a luster.”
Was I really using a word with lust in it? Twice? Did he read into that? His eyebrows were sort of scrunched together. Not good.
“I have kind of a thing for flooring,” Archie said. “All these boards are reclaimed from an old house in Walterboro that was being torn down. They’re hand-hewed and pegged. You don’t see that anymore. They get waxed by hand twice a year. You know, for some guys it’s sports cars, although I wouldn’t mind a Lamborghini. For me? It’s flooring, which is also attainable.” He stopped and looked at me. “You might be the only person who ever noticed the patina.”
“Really?” I didn’t tell him about the car fund.
“Yeah. Come on. Let’s pull that cork.”
I followed him to the kitchen thinking I was really glad my remark didn’t win me a Dork of the Year trophy, because the minute
the words left my mouth, I realized they sounded awkward. But that was another reason I liked Archie so well. He never made me feel like I was weird or something.
At first glance, his kitchen was way too sterile. I don’t mean too clean, I mean it didn’t have a soul. Hunter and Tyler were seated at the kitchen table doing homework. The only small appliances on the counter were a coffeemaker and a toaster. Other than those two things, the counters were bare. And there was no meal preparation in evidence. Were they having pizza again?
“Hey, Mith Holly!” Tyler said.
“Hey!” Hunter said, looking up. “You coming for supper?”
“No, no. Just stopping by for a moment,” I said.
“Here it is,” Archie said. “Shall I open it for you?”
“Gosh, thanks. Sure.”
I was glad he was opening the bottle instead of me. I’d never had a lot of luck with corks. But then, I’d never had many bottles. Wine was sort of new for me. I didn’t know much about it except that a glass took the edge off my annoyance when I was annoyed. Therefore, wine was a good thing. There was a popping sound and my visit was about to end.
“Would you like to share a glass with me?” I said.
I don’t even know where I found the nerve to ask him. The words just popped out of my mouth.
“Oh! That’s so nice of you to ask. But I’ve got to feed these rascals. It’s getting late for their supper.”
“Oh! Of course! What are y’all having? For dinner, I mean.”
“Well, I was going to, you know, go get a pizza.”
“Pizza,” I said and just looked at him as if to say, come on, bubba, can’t you do better than that?
“Why? What are you doing for dinner?” he asked.
This got the boys’ attention.
“Pork chops, stuffing, applesauce, braised carrots, and creamed spinach. There’s plenty. Pork chops were on sale, so I bought a slug of them.” I was trying to remember if I had another pie in the freezer and I thought I did. Maybe peach? “Give me like forty-five minutes?”
“Oh, we shouldn’t . . .” he said.
“Stuffing? Ah, come on, Dad! Please?” Tyler said, his hands folded in desperate prayer. “I can’t believe I’m saying thith, but I’m thick of pizza.”
“You are?” Archie said.
“I love pork chops,” Hunter said with a very sad face. “We haven’t had pork chops in years.” He slid to the floor and pretended to be unconscious from starvation, or maybe it was malnutrition.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Really!”
Archie looked at the faces of his little boys and saw that they were missing home-cooked meals.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll see you soon.”
“Great!”
I hurried home and threw dinner together in record time. The flowers were still fresh and I knew the unchipped plates were on top of the stack. The bacon sizzled in my cast-iron skillet, and I did indeed have a peach pie in the depths of the freezer. Soon our house smelled like bacon and fruit. What could be more mouthwatering?
Over dinner Archie said, “I haven’t had pork chops this good since my momma cooked them. I’m not kidding.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Would you like another one?”
“I sure would,” Hunter said.
“Me, too,” said Tyler.
Archie shot them a stern look and refilled my wineglass halfway. Wine with dinner made me feel very sophisticated.
“Please?” they said.
“Of course!” I said and passed the platter to them, followed by the applesauce and the spinach. “So, I got a job today.”
“You did?” Archie said, knowing without me saying a word that my taking a job was tantamount to a full-scale revolution. The QB was going to have a cow.
“Yeah, decorating cakes at Publix. Isn’t that crazy?”
“Not at all,” he said politely and smiled in a way that said he approved of the revolution.
“Decorating cakes?” Hunter said. “That’s the coolest job in the world!”
“My birf-day is in June,” Tyler said, implying I should decorate a cake for him.
I smiled at him.
“Well, if I still have this job in June, I’ll bring you the biggest cake you’ve ever seen!”
Tyler looked at me with the sweetest expression and said, “Isn’t Mith Holly great, Dad? Isn’t she?”
“Yeah, she’s pretty great,” he said and smiled at me with his twinkling eyes.
“But I still intend to teach at your school when something opens up!”
“Tell us a bee fact,” Hunter said. “Please?”
“Well, honey bees were used as the symbol of government by Emperor Napoleon I. Have you ever heard of him?”
“Cool!” Tyler said.
“And the ancient Greeks associated lips anointed with honey with the gift of eloquence—you know, honeyed lips?” Archie said. “And the Delphic bee was the priestess of Delphi!”
“And Utah is the Beehive State,” I said.
“It is?” Hunter said.
“Archie? Tell us some more about cargo cults,” I said.
“No, really?” he said, obviously flattered to be asked.
“Yeah, Dad!” Tyler said. “Tell us!”
“Well, all right . . .”
Archie went on to embellish the stories about the cargo cults and a mythical character named John Frum while I watched his boys’ faces. They were entranced by their father. You could see it in their eyes. This was what they all needed. To be whole. To be a normal family again. I’d brought them together again around a table to talk about their day, to share a good meal, and to give them a chance to feel okay about their lives. They even ate the spinach.
I said, “So, kids, it’s not like the bees love the flowers. It’s a business relationship.”
Tyler said, “What do you mean?”
I said, “Well, the bees use the flowers to get nectar and pollen. And the flowers know the bees will pollinate other flowers as they move around the garden. It’s all in the name of self-preservation.”
Chapter Five
All the Buzz
I brought Momma home from the hospital the next day and she seemed to be fine. It quickly became clear, to me at least, that she was ignoring her precarious state, because she refused to discuss it. She didn’t want to talk about follow-up appointments or doctors or anything at all that had to do with her health in general. Certainly not exercise.
“I can take care of myself,” she said.
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s hope you’re right.”
Denial set in. She resumed her prone position, changed the batteries in her television remote, and went back to shopping on QVC and HSN.
She also didn’t want to discuss my job at Publix. When I told her what I was doing she set her jaw into a lock and barely spoke to me for a few days. That was actually not such a bad thing. In fact, it was peaceful.
I’d gotten in the habit of saving coupons, buying whatever was on sale, and cooking more than we needed so that I could take a meal to the boys. If they couldn’t have a momma in their kitchen, they could have me bringing supper. One day, out of nowhere, Momma called me an idiot. After all, she could only be nice for so long. We argued.
“You’re making a fool out of yourself,” she said, “throwing yourself at that man.”
“I’m not throwing myself at anybody,” I said. “I’m doing something nice. This is what doing something nice looks like, Momma.”
“I’m telling you, Holly, I know men. At some point he’s going to feel insulted by all your casseroles and spaghettis. It will be like you think he needs charity or something.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. I honestly could not see Archie feeling like that.
“Just don’t be surprised.”
I told the bees what Momma said. I swear to you the pink hive buzzed in a way that sounded like they didn’t agree with Momma. It was like my pink hive had an opinion. I’m not exaggerating. Every
one who knows anything about bees knows that they know how to reach a consensus. For example, when it’s time for the older queen bee to be replaced, the worker bees know it. They build new queen cells, load them up with healthy pupae, and flood them with royal jelly. Or, they ball her, which is a term that does not have the naughty connotation that used to travel around with the expression. It’s more like a visit from the goon squad. To ball the queen, worker bees cluster all around her, causing her body temperature to rise to the point where she dies, which is bad enough. Anyway, crazy as it may sound, I felt as if my bees were on my side.
I was feeling pretty good about myself and my newfound culinary skills, maybe even a little superior, until the evening I brought them a chicken Divan casserole and Archie met me at the door.
“This has to stop,” he said.
“What?” I said and turned every color of red on the spectrum. I felt stung.
“It’s not like I can’t feed my children,” he said.
“Who said you couldn’t feed your children?” I said. Now my head broke a sweat.
“It’s just bad,” he said. “I’m sorry, Holly. It just doesn’t feel right to me for you to cook for us all the time. You’ve got to at least let me pay you, okay?”
“Wow,” I said. For once in my chatty life I was at a loss for words. “I don’t know what to say.”
All at once my fantasy of being Tyler and Hunter’s stepmother seemed to lose its footing and fall off a cliff. And I was deeply mortified.
“But you do know how much we appreciate everything you do for us, don’t you?” he said, his tone softening somewhat.
“Sure,” I said.
“Why don’t I give you an allowance of sorts and you spend it. When you run out, I’ll give you some more. How does that sound? But only if you’re cooking anyway. I don’t want to inconvenience you.”
“Okay, I guess,” I said and still didn’t feel any better. There would be no putting the bubble back together again. “Anyway, here’s a chicken and broccoli casserole and some biscuits. Just warm it up in your microwave. I can take my Pyrex dish back another time.”
Queen Bee Page 5
