what we’re going to do from now on. This family is going to act as a family. That’s how the bees survive, and that’s how we will, too.”
“One team, one dream?”
“Are we having another Hallmark moment?”
I smiled at her smiling face and said, “We are.”
Momma had brought back the tender side of her I’d rarely witnessed in all my days. But there it was. Suzanne had appeared and vanquished the crank.
That night, after Suzanne spent at least four hours scrubbing it, our old Weber grill was put into use. Dressed in khaki shorts and a blue polo and looking like most of the men on the island, Suzanne was going to grill steaks. She still had on bracelets and earrings, but she cleaned up good. I told her so.
“You look very nice tonight,” I said.
“There’s a store called M. Dumas right near Croghan’s. They fixed me up.”
“Well, they did a good job. I think it’s a good sort of compromise you’ve got going on there.”
“Well, now that I know I’m auditioning tonight for the possible role of father-in-law, I figured I’d better give it my best effort.”
Ted was coming for dinner. In a moment of near total insanity, Leslie invited Archie. The boys were at Maureen’s house. Against Momma’s complaints, I cleared off and set the dining room table. This was going to be a classy night if it killed me. I wanted us to show well to Ted. I cut flowers for the table, dahlias and roses mixed with rosemary and thyme, and they were so beautiful and fragrant, I could scarcely believe they were from our yard.
Leslie put potatoes in the oven to bake and I made a salad and a salad dressing with honey, remembering to shoot the bees a telepathic thanks. And Momma, deadly as she could be in the kitchen, blew the dust off her old copy of Charleston Receipts and very carefully followed the recipe for pickled shrimp.
“I think it’s important for Suzanne to think I can cook.”
“She’ll know better soon enough,” Leslie said, and we both giggled.
“She is the cat’s, um, wait . . . oh, forget it!”
Even the queen had a laugh.
“Don’t either of you bad girls tell her anything different, y’all hear me?”
We had wine to pour. Wine in bottles. Actually, good wine. I say this because Suzanne went to a real wine store and brought home six bottles. There were châteaus, not flip-flops, on the labels and I couldn’t pronounce the names, so it had to be pretty good stuff. And she brought a bottle of champagne that had to be for a toast, which was my clue that the ring would be on Momma’s finger that night and we would all be properly hydrated. This was not to be our normal dinner, to be sure.
“We should be drinking mead!” I said after two glasses of wine.
Everyone stared at me and told me it was a ridiculous idea, except Ted.
“I think it would be fun to ferment honey,” Ted said. “Let’s try it!”
That’s just one reason why I love him.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Bee Joyful
We were not party-hosting people. In fact, the last party I could remember that took place under my mother’s roof was the one when everyone got sick when I was a child. So Leslie and I were not well versed in the hospitable ways of normal southern women. In addition to a copy of Southern Living, I had my hands on a copy of Southern Lady I picked up at Publix, which seemed focused on dinner parties and brunches and how they should look.
After I ran the vacuum, dusted everything in sight with Lemon Pledge, and made a centerpiece for the dining room table, I went digging through Momma’s china cabinet and buffet drawers to see what I could find. In the top drawer, I found a tablecloth and eight napkins, still in their original cellophane wrapper, never used. I couldn’t remember where they came from, but they were going to have a debut that night.
“Momma? Didn’t we used to have silver flatware?”
She was in the kitchen peeling shrimp while the ceiling fan overhead moved the paltry air around.
“My mother’s. It’s in the bottom of my closet, inside the American Tourister red suitcase, under a blanket. Why?”
“I thought it might be nice to use it. Why is it buried in your bedroom closet?”
“To hide it from the robbers! Why else?”
Of course. Why else? Our house was the last house on the island that would entice robbers. And besides that,