Plan Bee (2 page)

My mother came at me like the bulldog she is—jaw set and thrust forward, steady thunderous gait, slight tilt to her head, intense eyes. I stood my ground at the entryway to my grocery store, The Wild Clover, thinking she was about to ruin a perfectly good Saturday morning.

I put on my smiley face to go along with the August sun shining above, an expression that meant I was pretending to be positively happy, even if it killed me.

“Story Fischer,” Mom said, “I thought we had agreed.” She halted, almost nose to nose with me. “No live bee displays.”

For the record, we hadn’t been on that same communication wavelength at all. I simply hadn’t responded when she’d come up with yet another rule for me to follow.

Believe it or not, somebody had gone and made my mother head of the steering committee for this weekend’s Harmony Festival, an annual event in my hometown of Moraine, Wisconsin. Two months of intense planning, and
“harmony” had flown right out the door, flapping madly for cover. Mom and I were barely speaking to each other. Or at least, one of us was barely speaking. The other one was yakking plenty.

“So it’s true,” she said, hands on hips now. “Emily Nolan over at the library told me you went ahead with it anyway. Behind my back, I might add. Oh my gawd. Is that it?”

She glared at a table I’d tucked under the store’s awning to protect my honeybees from direct sunlight. The movable hive was framed in with cedar. Double-thick glass on both sides gave spectators a great view of the magical world of bees. Once the festival began at nine o’clock, my table would be a popular destination. I was sure of it. Especially with kids. Good thing the portable hive was screwed into the table to prevent it from tipping over. A brilliant idea, even if it wasn’t mine.

Stanley Peck had designed the observation hive, and he planned to stick around to explain the inside workings of a hive to those who stopped by. If they were lucky, folks might even get a view of the queen laying eggs.

Stanley is a sixtyish widower and a newbie beekeeper. He looks up to me regarding anything bee related even though I’ve only been at this about a year longer than he has, and I’ve sure had (and continue to have) my share of problems and mistakes. But Stanley’s smart. He’s letting me learn everything the hard way, while he takes copious notes on how to avoid the same close encounters and difficult issues. The learning curve in the bee business is challenging at times.

“It’s just an observation hive,” I said, determined to stay upbeat in the face of my mother’s gloom and doom. “And it’s perfectly safe. The bees are behind glass and can’t get out. Not that they would hurt anybody if they got loose. They’re honeybees, not wasps. Don’t worry.”

“Where’s Grant Spandle?” Mom said, clearly intent on
shutting me down. Her head swiveled, searching for the big boss to back her up.

How had this happened? I’d specifically told the so-called advisory group that my mother and I don’t work well together. As if anybody in this small town didn’t know that fact already. Lori Spandle, the town’s only real estate agent and my longtime nemesis, must have plotted behind the scenes, messing with me as usual. Her husband Grant is town chair. He’s the one who made the decision to appoint my mother. And Lori must’ve instigated it. I’d bet the store on it.

That woman has been a thorn in my side since the first day of kindergarten when she pushed me down the slide, then went crying to the teacher, claiming I was the one who’d pushed her. Lori hasn’t changed one bit in the twenty-nine years in between. I take that back—she’s even worse now.

Usually, I enjoy the closeness of our community—knowing everybody’s name and most of their personal affairs, sharing life’s little ups and downs with them while they shop at my store, walking down Main Street exchanging greetings and gardening tips. Sure, I have to put up with a few unpleasant people, but doesn’t everybody have neighbor problems? And family issues? And thorns from their past embedded in their flesh? It’s the cost of small-town living, a price I’m willing to pay for all the perks.

Although at the moment, while squaring off with my mother, the price was skyrocketing.

Before Mom could expound further on the future of the unwelcome hive, something exploded down the street. Since this was only the latest in a series of recent
kaboom
s, we knew exactly what it was and who was responsible: Stanley’s twelve-year-old grandson, Noel, who dreamed of a future in large-structure demolition. Every time he visits Moraine with his garage chemistry experiments, mixing hardware-store and under-the-kitchen-sink-type combos,
he rocks the town. Literally. The kid is a menace, but he’s brilliant in a crazy-eyed sort of way.

And even though flames have been shooting and the air resonates with explosions, he hasn’t actually damaged anything. Yet.

“For cripes’ sake!” my mother yelled, about-facing and bulldogging away from my store to give somebody else a piece of her overactive mind.

I couldn’t help feeling grateful to Stanley and his grenade-lobbing grandson.

“I can’t believe Stanley won’t control that kid,” Carrie Ann Retzlaff said, coming out of the store where she worked for me part-time. “He’s going to blow up somebody.”

Carrie Ann’s not only my employee, she’s my cousin—and the last person who should talk about control, since she barely has any at all. Carrie Ann is attracted to addictions like honeybees are to clumps of blooming sunflowers. I’m pretty sure she currently has a social-networking problem, judging by how many times I’ve found her in the back room, checking in with her online friends or playing games involving farm animals, poker, and treasure hunts.

In my opinion though, her latest obsession is a giant step up from the bottom of the beer barrel, where she’s been plenty. And she has an ongoing battle with every bottle of vodka she comes across, though she did manage to permanently quit smoking. So I’ve looked the other way about the online stuff. Besides, in addition to being a relative, Carrie Ann is one of my oldest and dearest friends. Not letting our employer-employee relationship interfere with that can be dicey at times.

“I’m surprised he still has ten toes and fingers,” I said, spotting my mother down the street, where she was doing a pretty good pyro job herself, roasting the future physicist over the flames shooting from her mouth.

Noel is just a skinny, pimply, geeky sort of kid. And he
has good manners when he needs to show them. They were on display as he took his medicine from Mom with his head hanging. He would walk away exuding contrite acceptance. Until the next blast.

“Your mother put me on a committee,” Carrie Ann said, running her fingers through her short, spiked, yellow-as-corn hair. Since my cousin quit smoking, she’s gained a few pounds. They look good on her. “She didn’t even ask me if I wanted to volunteer,” she continued. “I’m on the crime wave committee.”

“Is this some kind of joke?” I wanted to know.

Carrie Ann shook her head. “She was serious.”

“What kind of crime wave problem is she worried about?”

“She said—and these are her words, not mine—that after the last fiasco, when you embarrassed the entire family by going head-to-head with the police chief and making the lead story on all of southeastern Wisconsin’s evening news channels, she’s sure your behavior will attract criminal elements and rabble-rousers to the festival.”

I rolled my eyeballs heavenward, catching the glint of morning sunlight as it struck the stained-glass etchings on the upper part of my store. It had been a church before the congregation outgrew it and built a larger space on the outskirts of town. I’d converted the building into a grocery store, specializing in local produces and products—cheeses, wines, bakery items, flowers, fresh fruits and vegetables, and a long list of seasonal items.

The exterior was exactly as it had been back then, except for the addition of a blue awning with The Wild Clover name imprinted on it and some colorful Adirondack chairs out front that I’d painted myself. It even had the old bell tower—not that we rang it these days—and a cemetery on the far side, where a whole lot of Lutherans rested in peace.

As to the confrontation with our police chief, Mom was sort of right. The physical fight with Johnny Jay had been
captured on film, and she wasn’t about to let me forget it. Ever. Not that the altercation was my fault in any way. Johnny Jay really dislikes me, and he doesn’t try to hide how he’s always gunning for me.

Believe me, the feeling is mutual. He was a big bully as a boy. Now he’s a big bully adult.

“There isn’t any crime wave committee,” I informed Carrie Ann. “Mom just made that up so you would tell me exactly what you just told me. Another shot across my bow.”

“I really believed her,” Carrie Ann said, heading toward our outdoor booth where she would sell honey products and other items from the store for the duration of the festival. “Don’t tell me your mother’s starting to make up stories, too?”

I grimaced at the reference to the history behind my nickname. Melissa is my real name, but somewhere way back I became Story due to an innate ability to reshape the truth. Those days of tall tales are behind me, and most of my friends, family, and acquaintances have forgotten the “story” behind the nickname. Except one or two. Like Carrie Ann. And my mother.

Sometimes when I’m the most frustrated, I feel like my mother doesn’t have a single redeeming quality. But Mom has a lot of friends, so I have to imagine that she has a kind and generous side. Just one she hasn’t revealed to me. My younger sister Holly must see it, because she and Mom get along just fine. Though that might be because Holly doesn’t have a spine when it comes to dealing with Mom; she just lets Mom take control of whatever she wants.

One thing I will say about our mother—she isn’t into gossiping. She doesn’t start rumors, and she doesn’t spread them. And believe me, there’s plenty of muck going around in a town this small and intimate. But on the other hand, she believes most of the gossip she hears, no matter how salacious, especially when it pertains to me.

Just as I was about to duck inside the store, my grandmother
pulled up in her Cadillac Fleetwood, with Holly, looking terrified, in the passenger seat. Even though Grams is a hazard on the road, nobody is going to pry her out of the driver’s seat until she decides to leave this earth, which isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. At her last physical, the doctor said she’d be good until at least a hundred.

I moved closer to the building in case Grams jumped the curb.

She didn’t. But I heard the Caddy’s front bumper kiss the parked car in front of it.

“Back up a few inches,” I called out, and she did. Good thing there wasn’t a car behind her or that one would have been an innocent victim, too.

Holly slid out looking all sleek, with a new hairstyle that wrapped around her face à la Marilyn Monroe. My sister may dress just like the rest of us—in shorts, sandals, sleeveless summer tops—but she carries an air of wealth around with her that is only achievable with real bucks. That’s because she’s filthy rich, having married Max the Money Machine, and her clothes cost five times as much as mine or anybody else’s in Moraine.

But a hefty price came with her financial freedom—for me, that is. Holly’s husband is on the road all the time, so Holly compensates by involving herself in my store’s business, of which she is now co-owner after lending me the cold cash I needed to keep it running through some tough times. Holly also developed a serious text-speak problem and is seeing a therapist to correct it, thanks to Mom stepping in and declaring enough was enough—just when I’d finally learned how to text-speak back with a decent range of acronyms.

“How’d it go?” I asked, since Holly had just had a counseling session. I saw her glance nervously over at the bee table.

“Great, Ms. Passive Aggressive.” She hurried past, bolting for the store.

“What?” I sort of shouted in disbelief.

“You heard me,” she called from the interior.

“Aren’t you supposed to be working on yourself?” I shouted back.

“I am. But you’re part of my problem.”

With that shocking disclosure, she vanished inside. I couldn’t believe it. My own sister, the one I cherished as my best bud and the only person whom I thought understood me inside and out, upside and down, was dissing me?

What was this? Dump on Story day?

“Hi, sweetie.” My grandmother stepped onto the curb.

I bent down to give her a cheek kiss. “Hi, Grams.”

“You look bright-eyed and bushy-tailed today. Give me a great big smile.”

Grams, always camera-ready, snapped a picture of me with her point-and-shoot, then asked, “Where’s Helen?”

“Mom’s off patrolling the town,” I said, gazing at my grandmother with loving appreciation. Grams is the sweetest woman in the world, which makes me wonder what Mom would be capable of if only she’d lighten up some.

Grams wears her gray hair in a tight little bun, and likes to weave in whatever flower is blooming in her garden. Daisies are her favorite, but today she sported a silver tiara with sparkling rhinestones and crystals, since she’s this year’s Grand Marshal in the Harmony Festival parade.

“We’re supposed to be having a meeting about tomorrow’s parade,” Grams said. “Everybody’s at the library waiting on Helen.”

“Well, here she comes,” I said, seeing Mom spot us, my cue to duck and run for cover inside.