The Wedding Bees (22 page)

The queen passed this on to all her subjects and replied, in her own way, that the pleasure was all hers.

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hat is some story,” George admitted. “You just kept on going?”

“Yes, sir. I called, soon enough, to let Mama and Daddy know that I was OK, not that that particular piece of news seemed to please them, but it would have been rude not to. And I'd been rude enough.”

“But how did you get by, Miss Sugar? To begin with, how did you ever get by?”

“I stopped in Virginia to see Jay, my best friend from high school—you met him that first day although he may have seemed a bit snippy. Anyway, he wasn't at the wedding owing to he'd been kind of run out of Charleston for refusing to stay in the closet, or that's how he saw it. I
kind of figured he would understand, which he did. He even went back to pick up a few things for me. It's never as easy as just up and going. But I couldn't stay with him, he was still running away himself, and so the bees and I, well, we just followed our noses and kept following them, year after year after year.”

It sounded like such a small thing when she put it like that—half a lifetime, almost, of arriving and leaving, with nothing but a few cases of honey and an address book full of grateful friends and neighbors to show for each stop. And Lord knew it hadn't always been easy, especially to begin with when she was full of shame and secrets and had yet to work out that fitting in wherever she landed felt better than not fitting in where she started out.

But despite that, she had never regretted leaving Grady at the altar. She regretted causing him pain, and humiliation, of course she did, because no one deserved that, and she did love him. She just didn't love him enough to be bullied into putting aside everything she liked about herself in order to make him happy. A life with bees and pockets of emptiness was and always would be hands down better than that.

“For what it's worth,” said George, “I think you did the right thing. For you, at that time. You had to pay the price, sure, but the fact is, Sugar, it may just be about time you stopped paying it. It's pretty much the same for anyone who makes a big call like that. I know how you must have felt—I do: I ran away and never went back either. The only difference is, I had someone to remind me every day that I did the right thing. I had Eliza. And you had no one.”

“I've never had no one, George,” Sugar insisted. “I don't want you to think that I've been lonesome or sad or any of that jazz, because I haven't. I've had a good life. And I've made a lot of friends and seen a lot of places and done a lot of things and besides, there's always my bees.”

“Strikes me those bees are no ordinary critters.”

“I know; that's why I'm so worried that Elizabeth the Sixth has gone and lost her marbles. I don't want to lose her this soon. I'm only just getting to know her.”

“Sugar, you're a smart woman in most respects. But you are blind in one.”

“You think?”

“Those bees of yours are trying to tell you something now just like those other ones told you before.”

“You mean the wedding bees? I'll never know if they were mine.”

“Are you crazy? Of course they were! You think that was a coincidence? Your granddaddy told them to look out for you and that was what they were doing. They didn't want you to marry a man who was going to bully you and take away the things you loved. And you ask me, those bees are doing it all over again, but in reverse.”

“Elizabeth is clever, George, but she's not that clever.”

“You said it yourself, Sugar. Your bees saved you. Back then they saved you and I figure they're doing it again. Now you might want to think on that a while, that's all I'm saying.”

Behind them a plume of bees rose up from behind the hydrangea bush and headed through the neighboring backyards to Sugar's own rooftop.

They had a lot to waggle about.

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he following morning at precisely eleven, George knocked on the door of Sugar's apartment and informed her that he'd taken the liberty of inviting everyone in the building to one of her famous brunches and told them it was potluck.

“Goodness gracious, George,” she said, letting him in. “Why?”

“Because I thought you might not have enough food.”

“No, I mean why did you invite them?”

“To celebrate a special occasion,” he said. “The special occasion of you not making a terrible mistake all those years ago.” He was hanging on to the kitchen counter like he was in a boat on the high sea. “Such bold moves ought to be celebrated.”

“It's not common knowledge,” protested Sugar. “You're the only person I've told and I'm not ready for it to be out there. I will never be ready for it to be out there.”

“Well, it's not exactly out there, Miss Sugar. I guess I intimated that it was more your birthday.”

“My birthday is in the fall.”

“You'll get to celebrate it twice then,” said George. “Miss Sugar, I feel like I'm in your bedroom again and I have trouble with that.”

“If you're going to ask people to my house without telling me, you'll have to live with the layout.”

“I couldn't hardly ask them to Harlem. Or to Miss Ruby's. Seems to me she only eats celery. And there'll be nothing tasty at Miss Lola's. Mrs. Keschl lives on canned tuna, I know that for a fact, and so does Mr. McNally, so you don't want to celebrate your birthday in either of their apartments and poor Mr. Nate would probably have a heart attack if we all turned up at his place.”

“You have a point,” said Sugar. “And as it happens I like to entertain but I'm going to have to do it outside on the terrace so you'll need to sit out there if you don't want to be in my boudoir. What say I give you a job to take your mind off the whole height thing? You could set the table. I have these beeswax candles that we could sit on top of my silk magnolia blooms. What do you think?”

“I think New York looks like a different place up here,” admitted George. “Sure is one fine-looking city from this angle. And you have such a beautiful garden, Miss Sugar. It's not like being up at the top of something at all.”

“You're not on a pole, George. It's an apartment. Just like on the ground but higher. You were at Theo's, remember?”

“His rooftop was so big. I felt like it was harder to fall off it.”

“Well, there it is right there. Look across at it.”

“Across is good,” said George, looking. “Down is bad, but I like across.”

Indeed, he was getting a good view of Princess, who was currently romping around Theo's rooftop.

“So how are your bees today, Miss Sugar?”

“They're still here,” she said, coming out with the table settings and following George's gaze. “That poor dog. Princess? He's going to have gender issues all his life.”

“I'm no expert on dogs,” George said, “being more of a parakeet person myself, but he seems pretty happy.”

Princess proved this point by jumping in the air, barking and changing direction as though being chased by an imaginary friend.

Sugar ignored him and welcomed Nate, who was first to arrive and who came through the door bearing a mouthwateringly scrumptious-looking dessert sitting on an elaborate cake stand.

“Happy birthday, Sugar,” he said, placing it carefully on the table in between the candles.

It was a giant, round, flat-topped meringue, finished with billows of thick glossy cream, topped with raspberries, fresh mint and shavings of dark chocolate.

“Oh my,” Sugar and George said at the same time, as Nate beamed with pride.

“It's called a pavlova,” he said.

“It looks like a beret,” Ruby said, appearing behind Sugar, as pale as a ghost, bearing another cake box from Poseidon filled with baklava and finikia. “I think the Crankles are behind me.”

“Would you ever get off my back about ironing my feckin' shirts?” they heard Mr. McNally roar.

“Would you get off your wrinkled old behind and iron them?” retorted Mrs. Keschl.

“Is fecking a curse word?” Sugar asked. Nate and Ruby shrugged but George said that even if it hadn't started out that way, it certainly seemed like it was now.

“Many happy returns,” Mrs. Keschl said, handing Sugar an inexpertly wrapped package. “It's a crystal honey pot. My sister-in-law gave it to me forty-nine years ago. Made in Slovenia.”

“Why thank you, Mrs. Keschl, that's so sweet of you and I love that it's recycled.”

“Recycled?” Mr. McNally fumed, passing over four tins of canned tuna and a jar of mayonnaise as he badgered Mrs. Keschl. “You're recycling something Maura gave you forty-nine years ago?”

“Maura never liked me, you know that,” said Mrs. Keschl.

“Maura never liked anyone,” answered Mr. McNally.

“Hold on there a minute,” Sugar said as the pair sat at opposite ends of the table with George, Nate and Ruby in between them. She looked at Mr. McNally. “You know Mrs. Keschl's sister-in-law?”

“Maura? Of course I know her. She ruined the first eighteen years of my life.”

“May I ask in what capacity?”

“In the capacity of being the screaming banshee that is my mother's firstborn while I had the misfortune to be the fourth.”

George was the first to work out what this meant. “Maura's your sister, Mr. McNally?”

“Unfortunately for me, yes.”

“And your sister-in-law?” George asked Mrs. Keschl.

“Also unfortunately for me, yes.”

“Does that mean,” continued George, “that you two used to be married?”

Mr. McNally and Mrs. Keschl raised eyebrows and shoulders in identical shrugs.

“To each other?” Sugar was incredulous.

“At the same time?” Nate was agog.

“No shit!” Ruby added. “Sorry, Sugar.”

“He used to be much taller,” Mrs. Keschl said, by way of an explanation.

“She used to be much nicer,” said Mr. McNally.

Into the ensuing stunned silence stepped Lola and Ethan. The little boy held out his chubby arms and wiggled his fingers first in the direction of Mrs. Keschl and then at Mr. McNally, who changed seats to sit next to his ex-wife so they could both play with him.

“Did someone just fart?” Lola asked. “There's a very strange vibe out here. I made cupcakes but they didn't turn out the way I thought.”

Purple cupcakes rarely did, was what everyone around the table thought, but Sugar was so touched that she had even attempted them that she knew she personally would find them delicious. “Mr. McNally was just telling us how he used to be married to Mrs. Keschl,” she said.

“Yeah, right,” said Lola, helping Sugar unload the uneven cupcakes from her plastic container and put them on a polka-dot platter, which improved their presentation enormously. “That certainly explains why they hate each other's guts.”

“I'm not entirely sure what it explains,” Sugar said. “Do you mind if I ask why you two still live so close to each other?”

The two old people looked at each other across Ethan's feathery blond head.

“I like it here. Why should I move?” Mr. McNally answered.

“Moving was never his strong point,” Mrs. Keschl added. “And besides, why should I move? I own the building just as much as he does.”

Little surprised George at his advanced stage in life but his jaw dropped perceptibly at this revelation.

“You two?” Lola laughed. “And I'm the Queen of Sheba.”

“Why do you think the rents are so cheap?” Mrs. Keschl asked. “This is Manhattan.”

“She'll only rent to people whose names she likes,” Mr. McNally said. “In a song.”

“Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl,” Mrs. Keschl demonstrated tunelessly.

“Goodbye Ruby Tuesday,” Mr. McNally added, not entirely the way the Rolling Stones might have imagined it.

“Sugar pie, honey bunch,” Mrs. Keschl continued, looking at George. “What? You don't think I can pull off a little Motown?”

George said nothing, but returned his jaw to its rightful position.

“What about Nate?” Ruby asked.

“I thought it was Nat,” Mrs. Keschl explained. “As in King Cole. But then when I saw he had red hair . . .”

“She's always had a thing for the red hair,” said Mr. McNally.

“It's true,” she said to Nate. “You have a beautiful head of hair. And looks to me like you've lost a few pounds. Now, how about we eat some of that big white hat?”

“First, please, if I could have your attention,” George said, standing and addressing the astonished group. “I would like to thank our hostess, Miss Sugar Wallace, for her generosity and hospitality on this, the occasion of her special celebration.”

“Hear, hear,” said Mr. McNally.

“Miss Sugar,” George continued, “I can only assume that it has been as much a pleasure for everyone else as it has been for me to have you enter into our lives. You have improved my health, increased my happiness and added to my good fortune, so I wish you all the very best for the next year and hope it brings all these things to you too.”

Her friends stood and raised their glasses to toast her and, despite her embarrassment at having them there on what amounted to false pretenses, Sugar realized that she felt better than she had in a long time. But no sooner had she thought that than happiness moved further out of her grasp—along with her bees, who chose that very moment to again rise in a thick menacing plume from out the front of their hive. From there they formed a neat round cloud above the brunchers' heads, where they hovered, as if to make a point, before stretching out and moving slowly but surely back to Theo's rooftop sculpture.

Sugar's guests watched, speechless, as Theo himself appeared on the rooftop just as the bees settled on the plump left breast of his Fernando Botero.

Princess went berserk, running in excitable circles, barking at the bees and at Theo, who looked up and saw them all staring at him.

“Is that Theo?” Ruby asked, leaning over the railing and waving.

“The guy who flipped out at your last party?” Lola asked.

“The cute one?” asked Mrs. Keschl.

“Cute is for chimpanzees,” said Mr. McNally. “Although to be fair I don't have the right glasses on.”

“Are the bees running away from home?” asked Lola. “Because that would be weird.”

“They're not running away from home,” Nate said. “They're absconding.”

Even George forgot his fear of heights long enough to move over to the railing and watch the spectacle. But it was he who first noticed that Sugar was not among them; rather she was sitting all alone at her table laden with lopsided cupcakes, cans of tuna, jars of honey and Nate's beret-like meringue.

Tears streamed silently down her face.

“Hey there, Miss Sugar,” he said, coming to stand behind her, placing both large, strong hands on her shoulders.

“What are you crying for?” Lola asked. “At least your business isn't going down the drain.”

“You think this birthday is bad?” said Mrs. Keschl. “Try turning sixty-eight.”

“It's not that,” Ruby said, slipping in next to Sugar and resting her small pale hand next to George's. “She doesn't care about that.”

“Shush now, Miss Sugar,” George said. “Everything's going to be all right.”

“She's crying because the bees absconded?” Lola asked.

“No,” said Nate, standing on the other side of George, wanting to help but not knowing how.

“It's where they absconded to,” said Ruby. “It's Theo.”

Sugar's face was in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

“Ah, well, now,” said Mr. McNally. “That's a different state of affairs all together.”

“Always with the comforting phrase,” Mrs. Keschl said, elbowing him so that he moved closer to Sugar, she moving closer with him.

“Cwying,” said Ethan, putting on his own sad face and reaching his wriggling fingers out toward Sugar. “Cwying.”

Sugar kept her face in her hands, the tears still falling.

“Please,” she said. “I don't mean to be rude but I think I'm indisposed. You should all come back another time.”

Ruby and Nate looked at each other, the arguing elderlies shrugged, Lola rolled her eyes and Ethan patted her leg.

“Miss Sugar,” said George. “We don't think you're rude, but I'm not sure that we're going anywhere either.”

Ruby leaned a little closer, and Nate awkwardly rubbed her back, just below her neck.

“I'm fine,” she wept. “Just fine. I need to be alone for a bit is all.” She took out her handkerchief and wiped at her face, although the tears would just not stop falling.

“You know helping other people is all very well,” George said tenderly, “but comes a point in life when you have to accept a little help for yourself.”

“I don't need help,” Sugar said. “There's nothing wrong. I'm good. Truly. Please, eat some of Nate's pavlova.”

Her friends looked from one to the other, at a loss, but George was unfazed.

“I would hate more than anything to risk embarrassing you when you have shown me nothing but kindness and respect,” he said. “But for that same reason I am going to tell you, right here in front of all these fine people who care about you so much, that you are not fine, Sugar. You're hurting, and you're hurting because you're closing yourself off from one of life's richest and most basic human experiences and you cannot do that and expect to be fine. It just doesn't work that way.”

“I have not closed myself off from anything,” Sugar said. “I know what you're talking about. And I have not closed myself off from that. I absolutely have not.”

“He's talking about love,” whispered Ruby.