Queen Bee (Lowcountry Tales #12)(103)

“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 chateaus, 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, there were very few crimes ever committed on the island anyway. The occasional speeding ticket. The occasional DUI. But robberies? Nope. I heard about somebody stealing tomatoes from their neighbor’s bushes, but that was probably kids, doing something stupid on a bet. I mean, Momma didn’t need to hide the silver like they did during the Civil War. Honestly.

I went in her closet, which had not been cleaned in a dozen or more years, and located the suitcase. Inside, just as she said, was a felt-lined box of silver flatware and serving pieces. It was blue with tarnish.

“Good Lord,” I said.

I didn’t have the time to polish it all by hand. And then I had a thought. There had to be a fast way to clean silver. I went online and found a solution that seemed too good to be true. But since I had nothing to lose, I tried it.

I took Momma’s biggest pot and filled it with water. Then I put it on to boil. Next, I crumpled aluminum foil—shiny side out—and dropped a few balls of it into the pot. Then I added about half a box of baking soda. When the water came to a boil, I carefully lowered in the silver and let it boil and bubble for about five minutes. I must say, the fragrance was that of rotten eggs, but if it worked, who cared? Momma, Leslie, and Suzanne stood there the whole time like a Greek chorus telling me this would never work. That the only way to polish silver was elbow grease.

“What’s that horrible smell?”

“You need that expensive pink stuff and a whole afternoon,” Momma said.

I removed each piece with tongs, and voilà, it was all as good as new.

“Really?” I said. “Apparently not.”

I laid it all out on dish towels and began drying it and buffing it with a soft cloth.

“I’ll be damned,” Suzanne said.

“Would you look at that?” Leslie said and picked up a cloth to help me.

Now the dining room tablecloth had something else to make it sparkle. And of course, Momma had wedding china that had not been used since her wedding, just sitting in the china cabinet, all stacked up, collecting dust. There was nothing wrong with it a little soap and water couldn’t cure. And besides, I only needed six place settings. That simple task took fifteen minutes with Leslie’s help.