She felt her butterflies start break-dancing in her stomach again and fought the urge to flatten them.
What if she let herself love Theo and he didn’t love her back the right way, like Grady? She’d survived that, but only by going out of her way to make sure it never happened again. She didn’t know if she could expose her heart to that again. She wasn’t even sure she knew how to.
What she did know was that for the first time since Grady she was sitting with a man who made her pulse race, her cheeks color, her palms sweat and her head spin.
If love was a roller coaster, she was already on it.
George was right. She had to get on with the future. The worst that could happen was that Ruby would get help, Nate would get a better job, the Crankles would stop being cranky, and more than one person a week in this particular corner of the great big beautiful city of New York might be able to buy a balloon.
“I was engaged once but I ran away from my own wedding,” she said. “I humiliated my fiancé, I disgraced my family, I abandoned my friends, I left my whole life and I have not been home ever since.”
Theo took this in his stride. He had anticipated worse. “So you’re on the lam?”
“On a limb more than a lam.”
“Well, that was bad for you and your former fiancé and your family and your friends, and no doubt the wedding planner and all right, probably the caterer too, but it’s not bad for me, Sugar. It got you here, didn’t it?”
“I was only twenty,” Sugar said wondering what it was about sympathy that made a person feel worse rather than better for getting it. “And I have to confess I really loved him, Theo, but he turned out to have different ideas when it came to loving me back and I turned out to have a mind of my own even though I didn’t particularly see it that way at the time.”
“I can be a real jessie,” said Theo. “But I already love your mind the way it is.”
“I heard that about you being a jessie,” Sugar said. “But I’m not even sure what one is.”
“It’s like a big girl’s blouse,” Theo said.
“Well, that hardly helps!” Sugar said. “I’m in real trouble here, Theo. I don’t like feeling the way I feel about you. My equilibrium is all over the place and it has been ever since I met you. And you ran out on me, Theo, and I understand that now, because of being allergic and all but I don’t want to feel like that ever again. And those bees mean everything to me, which is why I’m so rattled that I can’t get them to stick when they’ve stuck with me through all sorts. I just can’t believe they would up and leave me for someone who’s allergic.”
“I’ve got the super-duper pen from Sweden, remember? And maybe they’re not leaving you. Maybe they’re coming to me.”
“They came to Grady too and that did not turn out so well for anyone.”
“Grady?”
“The last man I nearly married, not that I’m saying that I’m nearly marrying you. It was Queen Elizabeth the First who told me not to go through with it. At least I think it was her. And I think that’s what she was saying. You know what? It’s kind of complicated.”
“So, your bees stopped you from getting married?”
“I believe so.”
“And you listened to them? You believed in them?”
“Of course. I’m a beekeeper. That’s what we do.”
“All right then.” Theo stood up and held out his hand. “Let’s go up right now and see what the bees have to say about me.”
“I will do no such thing, Theo. Grady wasn’t allergic. The bees only riled him—a lot, mind you—but they could actually kill you. And that is just not a good foundation for a relationship.”
“People deal with worse problems every day,” Theo said, pulling her to her feet, regardless. “It’s not like you love Celine Dion or anything.”
“Why, of course I love Celine Dion. Who doesn’t? There’s nothing not to love: she’s perfectly nice. Only a monster would not love Celine Dion. It’s not like not loving the guy who bites the head off defenseless little birds.”
“I like that guy!”
“Well, you see, Theo, we are not compatible at all. It’s just hormones or pheromones or what are those other things that you get when you’re running a marathon?”
“Endorphins,” said Theo, as he guided her up the stairs and out onto his rooftop. “And anyway, we’re communicating, aren’t we? Communication is the key to any successful relationship, everyone knows that. Compatibility with insects never even gets a mention.”
Holding tight to Sugar’s hand, he pulled her right over to the sculpture, whose generous bust was crawling with Elizabeth the Sixth and her subjects.
“Please, Theo,” Sugar begged, trying to pull him back. “Don’t.”
“Sugar Wallace, you need to know that I am more sure about you than anything else I have ever been sure about in all my life and I can’t think of a better way to demonstrate it.”
He got down on one knee then, his head perilously close to the sculpture’s moving bee brassiere and, as he did, to Sugar’s horror, Elizabeth the Sixth rose from the other bee bodies and hovered above them, until one by one hundred by one thousand they all lifted off the Fernando Botero and formed a thick black ribbon in the air behind him.
“Get up, Theo, please,” Sugar pleaded. “Let’s go inside. We can talk about it there.”
But Theo stayed where he was as Elizabeth the Sixth led the moving band of her subjects in a circular banner above his head, like a hologram halo. “No,” he said, sweating slightly but firm. “I will not go inside. You think these bees are what stand between you and me and our future happiness but I am here to show you that this is not the case.”
“Do you even have your pen thing?” Sugar asked. “What should I do? If you get stung—what should I do?”
“I will not get stung,” said Theo; and indeed the queen and her cohorts did not appear to be getting any closer to him. “I will not get stung any more than I already have been, Sugar. But even if I do—you know what? We all get stung one way or the other. We can’t hide away for fear of the same thing happening again.”
“We can! That’s exactly what we should do! You especially! Please, Theo—get up.”
“I will not get up until you say you will marry me.”
“I don’t even know you!”
“I could make you happy.”
Kneeling awkwardly next to a rooftop nude, surrounded by bees that could kill him, he seemed like the person least in charge of anyone’s happiness. Yet she could see in those blue, blue eyes of his that unswerving certainty, the tenderness that rattled her bones, the desire that echoed in her shivers.
“Theo, I’m really scared.”
“I know you are. But if you agree to marry me I will not be stung to death right here in front of all your friends watching from outside your apartment and you will not have to carry that guilty burden to your grave.”
Sugar turned to see her friends waving at her from her own rooftop.
“What is this—International Blackmail Day?”
“It’s not blackmail if you really want to say yes but are just too polite.”
“I’m not too polite. I’m the right amount. Theo, please. The bees are not themselves; I can’t speak for their actions.”
“So you do want to say yes?”
“No! I most definitely don’t, Theo, but maybe . . .”
“But maybe?”
“But maybe, OK, just hang on a moment here. Maybe if you agree never to ask me to marry you again, I will go out for dinner with you.”
“Do you promise?”
“Do you?”
“I do.”
“Then yes, I do too.”
As she uttered the words, Elizabeth the Sixth swept her faithful followers up high into the air above both of them, away from Theo, away from his rooftop, up over toward the treetops of Tompkins Square Park and then back on a victory lap, swirling them eventually back down onto the sculpture and settling them in th
e crotch of the Fernando Botero.
On the neighboring rooftop, Mrs. Keschl, Mr. McNally, Nate, Ruby, George, Lola and even Ethan cheered.
37TH
Thanks 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.
38TH
Theo 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 The
o 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.”