The Wedding Bees (25 page)

“The wilds of Alphabet City and beyond?” suggested Theo, with just the right levity.

“My parents wouldn't let me come anywhere near here when I was growing up,” admitted Rosalie. “They used to say Avenue A was all right, but B was for brave, C was for crazy and D was for dead.”

“Flores Street is a very safe place for Ruby to be,” Sugar said.

“I know,” said her mother. “And I can see that she's happier now than she was at home, but she still has anorexia.”

“She has promised to seek help,” Sugar said. “That's what she said, and I think she really is trying.”

“Ms. Wallace . . . Sugar . . . I am very grateful to you for looking out for my daughter, but I know this disease far better than you, far better than Ruby herself, and she is most unlikely to survive it by ‘trying' on her own. She needs very specific treatment and, while she would never take a referral from me, she may well take it from someone like you. Which is actually why I'm here. I was wondering if I could enlist your support.”

Sugar breathed deeply. “I'm not sure, Rosalie. I understand, of course, that you want to help her but I would hate to feel like I'm going behind her back.”

“I don't need to have anything to do with it. I've found a woman at a clinic on the Upper West Side—she's a holistic counselor but she's also a registered psychologist—and I think she could be worth a try. I've spoken to her and she sounds totally off-the-wall to me, which means Ruby will no doubt love her. And she has been getting results. So if you would just consider it . . .” She handed Sugar a business card. “That's all I ask. You could say you found her. She knows to bill me if Ruby comes to see her. She'll say she takes pro bono clients in special cases such as hers.”

“You don't want to come and see Ruby yourself while you're down here?”

“I would, of course I would, but I don't think that will help her right now,” Rosalie said. “All I want is for her to get better and I'm not part of that, not now, but I hope to be one day and until then I'll just wait and, well, I will watch. It's all I can do.”

Sugar looked at the card in her hands and felt the lump in her throat again. “I don't think you're a monster,” she said. “I think you're a good mom. And when Ruby gets better, she'll be able to tell you that herself, I'm sure of it.”

Rosalie stood up, a resigned look on her face. “I sincerely hope so,” she said. “Thank you, Theo, for arranging this. And thank you, Sugar. Is that your real name? I confess I find it a little . . .”

“Yes, my mother doesn't care for it, either,” Sugar said.

“What does she call you?”

“I'm sorry to say, but I'm Sugar regardless.”

Rosalie reached for her hand, and held it. “Don't be sorry,” she said. “I can tell you're a good daughter too.”

“If only she knew,” Sugar said, as they watched her leave. “Not that my mama would ever spy on me. She doesn't even answer my letters.”

Theo took her hand and kissed it. “Bless you,” he said, “for being the only thirty-six-year-old in the world who still writes letters.”

39
TH

L
ola and Mrs. Keschl were having challah French toast at the Odessa diner on Avenue A while Mr. McNally was with Ethan in the park. Both women liked the vinegary white wine that was served in the old diner and had just drained their first glasses even though it was barely eleven
A.M.

“Should I call you Hannah?” Lola asked.

“No, you should not,” Mrs. Keschl said.

“Good. Because that would be weird, right?”

“What is weird is that you have so many patrons going into your balloon shop and none of them are coming out with balloons.”

“Oh, so this is a landlady thing?” Lola plonked down her glass and got ready to be defensive. “You going to read me the riot act? Jesus, I should have known.”

“First of all,” said Mrs. Keschl, “I chose you to live at 33 because I like your name and you and the kid needed a break. No! Don't interrupt. This is how it works. I still choose you to live there—do you hear me? I still choose you to live there, but if you're turning the basement into a den of iniquity, that has got to stop. Those are the rules.”

“A den of iniquity? You mean, like, opium?”

“You can still get opium?”

“I don't know. I don't do drugs! And I'm pretty sure I don't do iniquity either! Not anymore. I'm a single mom, Mrs. Keschl. I'm just trying to get by.”

“OK, but you're not selling balloons yet you have a lot of customers so perhaps you might like to tell me what you are doing down there.”

“Promise not to freak?”

“I don't think I ever have before, so yes, I promise.”

“Tattoos.” Lola sighed. “I'm doing tattoos. And actually I'm pretty good at it but I don't even have a diploma or a license or anything; I just learned from my ex-boyfriend back in San Francisco. I started out doing one for this guy Rollo and then his friend Rex liked it so much he wanted one and all of a sudden people started coming to see me and so I started tattooing for money. I didn't know if it was illegal, I didn't know you were the landlady, I didn't—”

“Is this you freaking?” asked Mrs. Keschl.

“I'm sorry,” said Lola. “But the balloon thing isn't working out.”

“You do better than the psychic.”

“She was a shit psychic,” Lola said. “I went to see her once and she charged ten bucks to tell me I would face many challenges.”

“And did you?”

“Yes, but
I
could have told
her
that. She should have said that I would have an idea to open a store right where she was sitting and it would be the dumbest thing I ever did.”

“But if you could make everyone who got a tattoo buy a dozen balloons you could take us all to Florida for the winter,” Mrs. Keschl said.

“They're just not a balloon-buying crowd.”

“So why not turn it into a tattoo shop?”

Lola blinked.

“You goigeous goils want another top up here?” the Odessa's pint-sized waiter asked. “I got another vat of this stuff out the back we need to get rid of and you two are the only ones who can stomach it.”

“But I don't even know if it's legal to tattoo people if you're not, I don't know, licensed or whatever,” Lola said, ignoring him.

“We'll have one more each and then that's it,” Mrs. Keschl told the waiter. “By the way, do you happen to know if you need a license to tattoo people?”

“My cousin, Walter, was working at Fioruccio's Meats in Jersey City one day,” the waiter said, “and opened Hard Knox Ink Studio two blocks down the street the next. Took one visit from the Health Department and a hundred bucks.”

“That was it? Are you sure?”

“He was better at sausages than tattoos, if you ask me, but he stays on the right side of the law. These days, anyway.”

“I never thought to ask anyone,” Lola said as he scuttled off. “You think I could do that? In the basement?”

“You already are,” said Mrs. Keschl.

“What would I call it?”

“What's wrong with Lola's Balloons? Gives it an air of mystery. ‘Lola's Balloons? But why am I here for a tattoo?' Like a speakeasy, that sort of thing.”

“You're a genius, Mrs. Keschl.”

“That I am not,” she said. “But I'm OK.” They looked out the window as across the road Mr. McNally took Ethan's hand and talked him through crossing the road to the diner. “I'm better than OK.”

40
TH

O
n Sunday Sugar enlisted Theo to help her out at the greenmarket. Her stall had become so popular that at certain times of the day she needed an extra pair of hands but also she just loved having him there.

Midmorning a woman in sweats pushed her way to the front and stood, hands on hips, looking at the two of them. “Well, looky here!” she said.

“Hello, ma'am, can I help you?”

“It's me!” the woman said. “Maria. Chocolate chip, two pints, remember? Hey, Minty,” she called over her shoulder and Sugar saw an old man licking at a green ice cream in the background.

It was the pair from the day she had worked Marcus Morretti's ice-cream stand.

“So you two finally got it on, huh? And guess what? Since we met that day, Minty and I are walking buddies. Hey, Minty! The cute chick finally got it on with Gerard Butler here. See?”

Minty charged his ice cream. “They always go for the loons. I seen it a hundred times before,” he called.

“Turns out he's not as loony as I thought,” Sugar said to Maria. “And there's no pot or poetry either,” she called back to Minty.

“Excuse me, could I please have some of that Rhode Island honey?” A slim young woman was pointing to Sugar's stocks. “My boyfriend's mom is from Rhode Island. Maybe she'll like that. She certainly doesn't like anything else.”

“Mothers-in-law,” said Maria. “Can't eat 'em, can't shoot 'em.”

“Can't shut them up for more than thirty seconds either,” said the man standing next to her.

“So spit it out. You two getting married?” Maria asked Sugar. “Did he ask you properly this time?”

“I'm not allowed to ask her,” Theo said, handing another customer a tester of elbow cream.

“But you love him, right?” Maria was looking at Sugar. “Of course you do. Look at the two of you. Why won't you let him ask you?”

“You know I would much rather talk about honey,” Sugar said.

“Apologies in advance,” Maria said to her. “But I'm a real committee person and I can't let this one go.” She turned to face the other shoppers. “Hands up who wants to hear about honey?” she asked, at which no one raised a single hand. “And hands up who wants to hear about why she won't marry the cute guy in the bum shirt?” Everyone put their hands up.

“Dish the dirt, sweetheart. The people have spoken.”

Sugar could not deny how happy she was with Theo, happier than she had ever been, freer than she had ever been and it wasn't that she didn't want to be Theo's wife. It was just that . . .

“I'm not ready,” she said, feeling feeble, but Theo put his arm around her and kissed her delicately on the temple because he knew exactly what she was and what she wasn't.

“OK,” said Maria, watching this. “Now I get it. You got your own mother-in-law thing, right?”

Sugar looked away, Theo bit his lip and Maria shook her head.

“Those bitches,” she said. “Mine comes from Hoboken so I'll take the honey that comes from nowhere near there and I'll tell you this for nothing: she's not going to get a drop of it.”

Sugar was unusually quiet for the rest of the day and not particularly interested in Theo's duck pancakes that night. She wanted to go to bed early, citing a headache.

“A penny for your thoughts?” Theo asked, tucking her in. He could not bear to see her sad.

But Sugar could not put her thoughts—let alone her feelings—into words. She loved Theo more than she had ever loved anyone or anything and that was just getting better and better as the days flew by. But inasmuch as he had awakened the sweetest parts of her, he had stirred up a fair share of sludge as well.

Theo, rightly, felt Maria's spiel at the greenmarket had further agitated this particular swamp. “Well, if you want to know what I've been thinking,” he said, tracing the outline of her jaw with his fingers, “it's that I would like to meet your family.”

Sugar sat up in the bed.

“Trust me, Theo. You most certainly would not.”

“It doesn't have to mean anything, Sugar, in the strict formal sense of meeting a potential mother-in-law, because I know your feelings on that. But they're your last missing piece.”

That was all he said—that they were Sugar's last missing piece—and she knew instantly that he was right.

“Oh, but it's been so long and I would be so . . .”

“Scared?”

To her dismay, Sugar started to cry.

“You can't let them haunt you, sweetheart,” Theo said, pulling her into him, holding her, rocking her.

“They don't haunt me, exactly,” Sugar said as she wept. But that was exactly what they did do.

“Let's go this weekend, to Charleston,” Theo said. “Let's get this over and get on with our lives. Don't worry, Sugar. Everything will be all right. I promise you.”

One of Ruby's bridal couples from the
Times
had married, Sugar recalled, on just such a promise. Theo had no way of knowing it was going to be all right, but he believed it anyway. “Do you really truly think so?” she asked, getting a clean handkerchief from under her pillow.

“I really truly do,” he answered. “I'm not scared of them and there's nothing they can do to hurt me so I can help you. We can do this together. Trust me, Sugar.”

It felt so good to be in his arms, as though anything truly were possible, and she really did like having someone to trust. “All right then,” she said. “Oh, my goodness gracious me. All right.”

“You have no idea how happy you make me,” Theo said, leaning in to kiss her.

“Hang on to that feeling,” Sugar said. “You're going to need it once you meet my mama.”

41
ST

T
he moment the taxi crossed Broad Street and slowed down enough for her to open the window, Sugar took her first deep breath of Charleston air in fifteen years.

Oh, but it tasted good.

Her native city had lost none of its sparkle while she'd been away. It dazzled, like diamonds on velvet in God's highest-end jewelry store.

The vast Cooper River shimmered to their left, the sky an impossibly Venetian blue above it, Fort Sumter's island battalions a hazy silhouette in the distance. To their right, the pastel-painted Rainbow Row colonials winked behind the palmetto trees before East Bay Street opened out to reveal Charleston's grandest mansions standing four stories tall and proud as punch, their lush gardens and musical fountains hidden behind filigreed fences and ornate gates as intricate as iron cobwebs.

“There really is no other place like it.” Sugar sighed, turning to Theo. “I swear I'd forgotten.”

“It's sort of like a low-slung Paris,” Theo agreed. “Only with better weather and more horses.”

“And the jasmine,” Sugar said. “The Confederate jasmine. Can you smell it?”

Theo took a dramatic sniff. “Can I what. Leaves that Yankee jasmine for dead.”

He squeezed her hand. She'd hardly spoken on the flight down and, although she didn't look quite so sick now they were in Charleston, she was still as pale as the jasmine that indeed bloomed flirtatiously over nearly every gate, railing, doorway and streetlamp in sight.

The driver slowed to turn into a cobbled street heading away from the river.

“Excuse me, sir,” Sugar said, “but would you mind taking us down to Battery Park first? My friend here has never had the pleasure of seeing the tip of our peninsula where the Cooper meets the Ashley and I'd like to show him on the way.”

“That's where the American Civil War started, right over there,” the driver said, slowing down and pointing at Fort Sumter. “Things never been quite the same since.”

“The city sure is looking fine though,” Sugar told him. “Y'all have done a good job of looking after the place.”

“You been gone awhile, ma'am?” he asked, checking her out in the rearview mirror.

“A long while.” She smiled.

“No matter,” he said. “Once a Charlestonian, always a Charlestonian.”

Theo elbowed her and grinned.

“Nobody ever feels wishy-washy about Charleston,” Sugar said, but they were getting close to her parents' house and she was feeling sick with nerves.

“Number fifteen Legare Street, ma'am, that's what you said?” the taxi driver asked. “This one here? The white one?”

“Yes, sir, thank you,” Sugar said. “This is it.”

“The Wallace place?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This your folks' house?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you must be the Buzz-off Bride!”

“I'm sorry?”

“Shee-yoot, it's good to meet you, Ms. Wallace. They still talk about you, you know.”

“I'm sorry, what did you just call me?”

“Here, let me take those bags,” Theo said, paying the fare and overtipping the driver to shut him up.

“Welcome home,” he said, before climbing back in his car as he counted his cash.

“Did he just call me the Buzz-off Bride?” Sugar asked as they stood on the sidewalk.

“What a lovely home. You grew up here?”

“Theo, I just can't believe that all the while I've been gone they've been calling me the Buzz-off Bride. It's beyond embarrassing.”

“Ah, come on. It shows a certain sense of humor, don't you think? It's better than being called the Heartbreaking Honey or the Wife-to-Flee.”

“It is?”

“Um. Look at those lovely balconies!” They were looking up at a three-story white wooden mansion that ran sideways to the street with long porches spanning the length of each floor.

“They're called piazzas round here,” Sugar said, peering into the expertly manicured garden only just visible through the fancy ironwork fence.

“It looks like a very neat cake,” Theo said.

“A wedding cake,” Sugar added drily. She looked nervously at her watch. “You know, on second thought I think maybe we should go and check in to the hotel first, before just crashing on in here. I always liked the Vendue Inn. It's cute. Not too flashy. And it used to have a rooftop bar.”

“What do you mean ‘crashing on in'?” Theo asked, stepping into the shade to escape the searing heat. “They're expecting us, aren't they?”

“About that,” said Sugar. “I never actually did quite get around to telling them we were coming.”

Theo pulled her into the billowing jasmine. “They don't know we're here?”

“I tried, Theo! I really tried. But every time I picked up the phone to call the number just flew right out of my head or I felt like upchucking or I saw myself packing my bags and running away to Peru and in the end I just thought better to come here and let the cards fall where they may even though it is the height of bad manners to turn up unannounced and you know how I feel about bad manners.”

Theo looked at her sternly. “I always wanted to go to Peru,” he said, and Sugar loved him so much right then that she forgot to be scared and just kissed him. How her grandfather would have approved of this man.

This was the moment her mother chose to return from the hairdresser. She honked the horn to get the riffraff away from the front of her house as she drove through the automatic gates, glancing disdainfully as she passed, then disappearing into the property.

Theo and Sugar stayed where they were.

“Was that her?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did she see you?” Theo asked.

“I don't know.”

“Would she recognize you?”

“Don't mothers normally know their daughters?”

“Can she get into the house from the garage?”

“I don't know, the garage is new,” Sugar said. “But she never did like to get her hair mussed up so I'm thinking yes she can. Theo, I have a bad feeling. I think we should go back to New York. Forget about this. If she didn't recognize me she'll be none the wiser. If she did recognize me then I guess she doesn't want to see me.”

“Sugar, you promised to do this and, more important, you promised me grits for breakfast! I don't even know what that is but I'm not going back home without it. Listen to me; she is not my mother and I'm not scared of her. You want scary, you should come to Barlanark and meet my aunties. They will terrify the pants off you, and not in a good way. We're just being polite, apart from the whole not mentioning that we were dropping by thing.”

At that, a big shining chestnut horse pulling a blissful-looking young couple in a white carriage trotted past them, its hooves beating out sharp cracks on the cobbles of Legare Street.

“Afternoon,” said the carriage driver. “Sure is a beauty. Hope y'all enjoy it.” He doffed his cap and the couple waved at them.

Sugar waved back. “Thank you and the same to you,” she called. Polite, she could do.

“Come on,” said Theo. “We're going in,” and he strode to the front door and knocked robustly. “Just remember, we're adults,” he said. “We've done nothing wrong. Well, me especially. Not that your mother knows about anyway.”

Sugar heard the clicking of her mother's heels across the parquet floor on the other side of the door, then she felt the breath squeeze out of her as the door opened and there she was, looking exactly as she had that dreadful day fifteen years before, only this time wearing primrose, which she always favored because it did great things for her skin and her eyes.

“Cherie-Lynn,” she said without a hint of a smile, looking Theo up and down. “And friend.”

Theo was wearing a plaid shirt and shorts, quite restrained for him, but Sugar knew her mama would not look kindly on such attire.

“To what could I possibly owe this pleasure?” Etta asked.

“Sorry, Mama. Sorry not to call first.”

“You're sorry for that?”

Sugar got her beauty from her mama, was Theo's first impression, but this woman did not strike him as having a heart of gold. She looked rich and mean, the opposite of his own mother, and he felt proud that Sugar had turned out the way she had despite that.

“This is Theo Fitzgerald,” Sugar said.

“Delighted to meet you, Mr. Fitzgerald,” Etta said, sounding anything but. “But really there's no need to stand outside like encyclopedia salespeople. Although for all I know you are encyclopedia salespeople. Please, come in.”

They stepped into the house and followed her to the formal living room.

Etta had aged superbly: there was no question about that. Her long blond hair was swept back into a style that had never gone out of date, her makeup was perfect, her pale yellow suit the same size she had always worn and her heels, if possible, an inch higher.

She looked stunning. And if she had wrinkles, the room was either lit to downplay them or she had dealt with them surgically. She could have passed for Sugar's older, colder sister.

“Please, Mr. Fitzgerald, Cherie-Lynn, take a seat. Iced tea for you both? I'll see to it right away. Excuse me.”

“Ouch,” whispered Theo, after she left the room. “She's not going to make this easy.”

“I didn't think for a moment that she would,” Sugar said, getting off the sofa where she had been uncomfortably perched and going over to the grand piano, a new feature in the room since she'd last been there, covered with silver-framed photos.

She wasn't in a single one. There were separate ones of her mother and father together throughout the years, and of her two brothers as they sprouted from preppy little boys to preppy young men to preppy husbands and fathers.

“Oh, this is Troy's first wife, Marianna,” she said, picking up a wedding photo of her brother and a beautiful blonde in a strapless gown. “We went to high school together but she was tricky,” she said. “And this must be his new wife, Lucy—she's pretty, don't you think? Oh, and these will be their daughters, Emma and Sophia. What beautiful girls. And here's my other brother, Ben.” She held up a photo of a handsome man with another blond woman and two more little girls. “That's his wife, Jeanne, and their girls, Charlotte and Rebecca. Aren't they precious? Grampa's lawyer writes me once a year to keep me up to date but to see them all here . . .”

Theo took the photo from her hands and put it gently back on the piano, then wiped the tear Sugar hardly knew she'd shed from her cheek with his thumb, and kissed the spot where it had been. “If they came to your apartment, Sugar, they wouldn't find their photos either.”

“That's because it hurts,” she said.

“My point exactly” came his reply. They both turned as the
click-clack
of Etta's heels heralded her return to the room.

“Tea,” she said, placing a tray on the table, then pouring them a glass each from a crystal pitcher. “I'm sorry I can't stay,” she said. “I have a prior engagement. Had I known you were coming . . . Anyway, I've spoken to your father and he suggests we have dinner tonight—at the Yacht Club. Cherie-Lynn, I hope that isn't uncomfortable for you? He is going to see if your brothers can make it but at such short notice . . . Well, I assume that as you have arrived here without warning you have arranged accommodation elsewhere? Don't rush your drinks; Neesie, the housekeeper, will let you out; she's just finishing in the laundry. Eight tonight, Cherie-Lynn. Good to meet you, Mr. Fitzgerald. Please accept my apologies but I have a busy schedule and anyway, yes . . . I will see you later. Goodbye now.”

She swept out of the room, leaving it feeling two degrees colder than when she came in.

“Well, that didn't go so badly,” Theo said as Sugar sank back into the sofa cushions, closed her eyes and wished herself back on her Manhattan rooftop.