The Wedding Bees (24 page)

37
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hanks to the new glasses Sugar had insisted Mrs. Keschl buy, she was spring-cleaning.

Without them she'd had no idea how much grime had gathered in how many places in her apartment. With them, she couldn't move without her slippers starting a dust storm or a cobweb catching her eye.

She'd found things in her refrigerator that had been there since the nineties and was just tasting a spoonful of something bright yellow and spicy from a jar she could not remember ever seeing before when she heard a knock. Thinking it might be Sugar with more cookies, or candles, or a jar of honey or a soothing cream for her roughened elbows, she shuffled over and pulled the door open.

It was Mr. McNally in his Sunday best, holding a portable cassette player.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Keschl.

She was wearing her frumpiest cleaning smock, a pair of holey pantyhose, an old scarf tied roughly around her unbrushed hair and no lipstick. (She'd given up on it; it traveled too far into the canyons of her wrinkles.)

But when Mr. McNally looked at her, on this particular occasion, he saw none of that. All he saw was the seventeen-year-old girl that he had spotted right outside on Flores Street so many years before and wooed with a single red rose. She could have been wearing a sack and he wouldn't have cared. In fact, she pretty much was, and he didn't.

Hannah Keschl was slowly bringing the joy back to his life no matter how synthetic her ill-fitting frock.

And despite being on the back foot, feeling thoroughly sprung, with a spot of something yellow on her nose and a ringing in her ears she'd had for two years now, Mrs. Keschl could tell this. Something about the look in his eyes told her she need not retreat to the safety of the barbed comments that had hidden her true feelings for so many years. “Jimmy McNally,” she said instead, as if she was wearing the finest furs and dripping with diamonds, “what brings you to my door at this hour of the day?”

It was, after all, only seven in the morning.

“Hannah Keschl,” he said, a familiar twinkle in his eye, “I would very much like the pleasure of the next dance.”

He fumbled with the cassette player, the apartment filled with music, and it occurred to her that other than the TV, there had been no sound like that in her home for a long, long time.

“‘Sixteen Candles,'” she said, feeling tears well up in her eyes. It was the first song they had ever danced to.

“I got new lifts,” Mr. McNally said. “Just like I said. So may I come in?”

Mrs. Keschl nodded and he swept past her, placed the cassette recorder on top of the television, then turned and held out his arms. She stepped into them, without a moment's hesitation, and they danced, slowly, around the room.

“Remember, Hannah, when you were my teenage queen?”

“That, yes,” she said. “Why I bought three jars of Thai curry paste I couldn't tell you.”

“You're still a good dancer, you know that?”

“I could say the same about you. You been practicing all these years?”

“Not even once. And you?”

“Never.”

She rested her tired head on his shoulder. “You stopped the drinking, Jimmy? Is that true?”

“The day you threw me out. Not a drop since.”

“I only threw you out—”

“I know, Hannah, I know. I can't in all conscience blame you, although I did. But not anymore. You would have been mad to keep me. I was a terrible husband and I'm sorry.”

It had taken twenty-seven years, but there it was. An apology. Never mind dancing, Mrs. Keschl was floating.

“We fit together,” Mr. McNally said. “So help me God, I'd forgotten.”

So had she, but it was all coming back now. “Shut up and dance, Jimmy,” she said.

He shut up. And they danced.

38
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heo and Sugar dated, just like normal people only slower.

He bought her heart-shaped boxes of candy and living plants for her rooftop and sent her cards, one every day by U.S. mail, each with a handwritten message.

Can't wait to see you tonight,
the first one said.

I love your laugh,
read the second.

Sorry for spilling ketchup on your dress
, came the third.

She made him pork chops with honey mustard sauce and her favorite date-and-honey nut loaf and a fetching gingham jacket for Princess, who ate it the moment they turned their back on him.

Her heart had been right to take the front seat on this particular roller coaster. The more time she spent with Theo, the more perfect for her he seemed.

The only stumbling block involved the big double bed that took up half of her apartment.

She very much wanted Theo to throw her on top of it and do his worst with the hospital corners but she still was too scared to let herself go that far. It wasn't that she was worried in a getting-back-on-the-horse sort of a way. Every experience after Grady had been an improvement, and she thought she could more than hold her own on that front. But sleeping with Theo was going to be the most intimate obstacle to overcome and she didn't want it to be a letdown.

The man sucked the breath out of her just with his presence, electrified her with his touch and, while she admitted now to being crazy in love with him, a tiny part of her—the scarred, vulnerable part—was still looking for loopholes. A tiny part of her wanted to hold on to the old familiar prospect of moving on and not taking anyone else with her.

Then she met his niece and came to the conclusion, once and for all, that moving on might not be an option.

Frankie and I cordially invite you for a picnic tonight at dusk in the Sixth Street Community Garden,
read the handwritten card of the day.

Sugar brought her honey pie, Theo a nice bottle of rosé, plus bagels and lox from Russ & Daughters, and Frankie a dwarf lilac in a terra-cotta pot. “For your bees,” she said, handing it over. She was a sophisticated girl with pink streaks in her hair. “I looked up what they like.”

“You and I,” said Sugar, “are going to get along just fine.”

Another couple with two younger children came and sat nearby, bringing their own picnic of meatball subs and apple pie, and a pet rabbit with a Happy Birthday balloon tied to its harness.

“Now there's an idea that Lola could develop,” Sugar said. The balloon shop had been open more often in recent times, but the people going in and out of it still did not strike Sugar as likely to be after balloons.

“Although I think Princess wants to eat the rabbit,” Frankie pointed out.

The picnicking mother looked up and smiled conspiratorially at Sugar and she realized that she, Theo and Frankie themselves looked like a regular family. Tears tickled the backs of her eyelids. She'd kissed all thoughts of a regular family away so long ago. But now, as she sat in the last of the dappled evening sun, Princess panting on one side, Theo and Frankie playing cards and ribbing each other on the other, she opened her heart to all the possibilities.

She thought of her brothers, Ben and Troy; of their wives and the daughters she had never seen; of her once-proud father and her disappointed mother. Of the streets south of Broad where she had roamed with Miss Pickles as a girl, and where she had fled the prospect of a miserable life with Grady.

She thought of all the years she had missed out on being part of that, and then she looked at Theo, his dimple permanently in place, his broad shoulders more than willing to take on her worries as well as his own and she felt something else, something magical, like champagne bubbles dancing in her mouth, shooting hope into all her farthest points.

It was time.

“You should come back to my place after you've taken Frankie home,” she whispered in his ear when the two of them dropped her off on Flores Street.

Frankie had never been taken home so quickly.

When Theo got to her apartment, Sugar had candles flickering gently all around the room: ylang-ylang, rose, vanilla and orange oil. It was a beautiful night, the twinkling lights of lower Manhattan emerging from the dusky pink sunset, the buzz of the city playing in the background like a distant orchestra.

Theo was a patient man, he would have waited for Sugar forever, but he could tell by the look on her face the moment she opened the door to him that he would not have to. She pulled him inside, over to the bed, then without saying a word unbuttoned his shirt, turned and held up her hair so he could unfasten her dress. It slid to the floor, leaving her bathed in nothing but the trembling light of the moon and her candles.

“I'm ready to show you my secret freckle,” she said, and so she did, and a few more things besides.

On top of the world of Manhattan's Alphabet City, Theo and Sugar made tender, gentle, perfect love. He did not let her down. She did not tire of finding out how much.

“It does look like George W. Bush; you're right,” Theo said of the freckle, on the third morning in a row of waking up next to her.

He was stroking her flat belly, looking at the blotch above her hip bone, while she was watching her bees out through the French doors, buzzing happily in front of their hive. They'd continued to abscond on a daily basis until now.

“I guess Elizabeth the Sixth really does like you,” she said. “Not only has she failed to kill you, but when you stay here, so does she.”

“I am adorable,” Theo agreed. “All the insects say so.”

He pulled her close and kissed her again.

Understandably wary of lawyers, Sugar had changed her tune when she found out Theo now worked for a nonprofit organization that helped house homeless and low-income New Yorkers.

“But when George fell on you and you thought he was homeless, you never even stopped your phone call,” she said. “I saw it with my own two eyes.”

“I never thought he was homeless,” Theo said. “He had clean fingernails and he smelled of Old Spice.”

“That's what I said!”

“And the phone call was me arranging emergency financing for a shelter that was about to be closed in the Bronx. We kept that from happening, thank you for asking.”

He had spent a long time working with very rich people, he told her, and for a while he even was one. That was when he met Carolyn, the woman who became his wife, and who to begin with ticked all the boxes.

“But then I started to wonder if the boxes had been on someone else's list,” he confessed.

She lived to party while he soon tired of it. She slept late but he liked to get up early. She didn't eat much and he ate like a horse. She loved the Hamptons and he always felt like an alien there. Carolyn brought out a side of Theo he didn't know he had nor ever wanted to see again.

He'd started to turn his life around, he said, about a year after his divorce, when he woke up one morning and realized he didn't have a single friend. “And I'm a nice guy. Although back then—you might find this hard to believe—I was a bit of an arsehole.”

“You know, I have a problem with cursing,” Sugar said. “But I don't find it that hard to believe. Although I have to say it sounds better in Scottish.”

“My mother had a problem with cursing. She said it showed a lack of imagination.”

“She sounds truly wonderful, Theo. No wonder you miss her so much.”

“I wish you could have met her. Never a penny to her name but the original heart of gold.”

“She must have been very proud of you.”

“She was in the beginning, and she would be again now, but if she had seen me in the middle when I was squandering my hard-earned cash on five-hundred-dollar ties and bottles of Krug, she would have kicked me into the middle of next week.”

“You're lucky to have had a mom like that,” Sugar said, unable to hide the wistfulness in her voice.

“Yes,” Theo said, treading delicately around the subject of Sugar's own family. “And I'm even luckier to have you.”

Sugar in turn could not believe her own luck, although her ability to completely trust it was still a work in progress.

“Now don't be mad,” Theo said one morning after bringing her breakfast in bed (thick slices of sourdough toast with fresh farm butter and Idaho honey—his favorite). “But I have someone I want you to meet.”

Her heart sank. “Why would I be mad? You're not still married are you? Or gay? Or swapping yourself every day with your identical twin brother, also called Theo?”

“Wow,” Theo said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “No. None of the above.”

He took the toast away from her again and held both her hands in his.

“Nothing is going to go wrong between you and me,” he said. “Ever. Well, maybe the normal things like I'm scared of your bees and you're scared of my shirts but there are no dirty secrets I haven't already told you. There is no disaster lurking around the corner. I have nothing that can hurt you. I love you, Sugar, with all my heart and soul, and there is nothing that can change that, I promise.”

She kissed him.

“Although if I was going to keep a secret,” he said, “an identical twin brother with the same name would be a really good one.”

 

They went for lunch at a new place on the Square to meet Theo's friend. She arrived not long after they were seated, a plump blond woman swathed in layers of expensive black cashmere shawls squeezing her way between the tables toward them.

Theo stood as she approached.

There was something about her that was familiar, yet Sugar couldn't quite place her. She had a Birkin bag and wore an enormous diamond ring. She did not look like an Alphabet City regular.

“Rosalie Portman,” Theo said, as she checked the chair for dirt before gingerly lowering herself onto it. “This is Sugar Wallace.”

Portman?

“Ruby's mother,” said Rosalie.

Sugar could barely hide her surprise. Ruby painted her mother as cool and controlling and Sugar had imagined an Upper East Side version of Etta. But this woman was not cool. She was flustered. Her expertly colored blond hair was refusing to stay swept up; she had flushed cheeks and beads of sweat on her top lip. She was nervous.

“I met Rosalie here when I was looking for you,” explained Theo. “All those months ago before the ice cream.”

“You met here in the café?”

“Yes,” said Rosalie. “I come here quite a bit.”

“All the stalkers do,” Theo said.

Rosalie laughed and her face lit up like a Paris streetlight, full of charm and warmth. “Yes, Theo was the first person to make me feel good about spying on my own daughter.” She smiled at him. “In fact, he was the first person I told.”

“You've been spying on her?”

“It doesn't sound very nice but—look, I know you've become good friends,” she said, “so I'm assuming she's told you that we have a difficult relationship.”

“I just tell her mothers always care for their daughters, even if it isn't always obvious.”

“Thank you,” said Rosalie. “That's very diplomatic. I appreciate it—and of course I care for her. I love her to distraction in fact but . . .” She lost her composure briefly, then wrangled it back. “You're obviously aware that Ruby suffers from anorexia.”

Ruby never called it that, but Sugar nodded.

“I still find it hard to believe. She was such a beautiful little girl. Here, I have a photo.” She opened her purse and pulled out a picture of Ruby as a chubby preschooler with long curly blond hair, holding a giant multicolored lollipop and smiling. She looked like an angel.

“And here's one of her when she was older, just before it began.” In this one, Ruby was wearing jeans and a loose-fitting shirt. Her hair was thick and fell in huge glossy curls over her shoulders but the smile was gone: there was a familiar sort of distance in her eyes. Her face was round and her body was soft and feminine.

“Oh,” said Sugar, swallowing the lump in her throat, because she didn't bear much resemblance to the Ruby she knew now. “She is beautiful.”

“Isn't she?” Rosalie replied. “Nothing I ever said could convince her of it. She was teased at school. I made the wrong choice there, I think. And girls that age can be so cruel. I did the best I could but she blames me. I know she does. I love to eat, to entertain, to cook, to shop. It's the way my mother was too; it was a passion that we shared. But Ruby thinks I made her fat.”

“She doesn't look fat to me,” said Theo, scrutinizing the photo.

“Nor me. That was taken just after her thirteenth birthday. I had just remarried and actually that had gone quite smoothly but there had been this constant trouble at school. She was bullied, I suppose, and then she just stopped eating. For a while she seemed to actually like the attention. Then she got worse and worse.”

“It must have been scary,” Theo said, handing the picture back.

“To begin with I thought we could deal with it but then I realized it went so much deeper. Sometimes it felt like she was doing it to hurt me, to punish me for loving food so much by starving herself. But other times I could see that she really didn't want to be like that, that she was trapped, and angry.”

“I'm so sorry, Rosalie,” Sugar said.

“I'm her mother, I can take it,” said Rosalie. “But it's a very hard disease for a family to live with. My husband has two sons and it was very frightening for them because they loved Ruby; she was such a kind, loving little girl, but the disease stole her away from us all.” She turned her face to hide her tears.

Sugar reached out and squeezed her arm. “She is still kind and loving,” she said. “I see that.”

“Thank you,” Rosalie said, attempting a weak smile. “And I'm so sorry. You probably think I'm a monster. It is not natural to send your daughter out into . . .”