Buzzkill (Pecan Bayou Series) (7 page)

BOOK: Buzzkill (Pecan Bayou Series)
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His eyes
squinted at me as he assessed whether or not he thought I was telling the
truth. I recognized a flowered jar of the church batch of calamine lotion from
the Christmas bazaar in his hand. He was rubbing the lotion into an angry rash
on his arm. Mr. Andre came out from behind him.  He pulled his arms close to
his body to avoid  Lenny, and  then briefly looked down on him and shook his
head.  He turned to me.

“Betsy, dear.
Glad you could make it,” he said. “I’ve been here for almost fifteen minutes.
Mr. Stokes and I have been discussing your flowers. Can I speak to you alone
for just a minute?”

“Yes,” I said.

Mr. Stokes
started to head inside, but Charlotte stopped him. “Would you mind if I looked
at the flowers in your greenhouse?”

“They’re over
there,” was his gruff response. My mother went down the porch ahead of us and
into one of the two domed greenhouses. Mr. Stokes followed her, set the jar of
lotion down on the porch railing and continued scratching his rash along the
way. Mr. Andre pulled me off the porch and we walked around the corner of the
house.

“After talking
with Farmer Sam here, I’ve decided his quality is not up to my standards. His
roses are limp. The petals and leaves are not firm, and the bloom diameter is
much too small.”

Like I cared
that much about flowers. Still, I didn’t want to let Martha down if I could
help it. “Well, it’s early in the year,” I said. “The flowers have some growing
to do before the wedding.”

“And you want to
gamble on this yeehaw?”

I thought about
Martha and the desperate way she had approached me in the supermarket.

“I was hoping
to,” I said weakly.

“Well, put your
trust in me,” Andre said. “I am the professional, after all. This isn’t my
first Rodeo Drive.”

Aunt Maggie
pulled up in her car, and seeing me and Mr. Andre around the corner, she got
out of the car and headed toward us.

“Sorry, I’m
late, Betsy,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind, I needed to bring Danny along.
He didn’t feel like going to his workshop today.”

Danny trudged up
behind Maggie. “Hi Betsy,” he said. He looked over at Mr. Andre and stepped up
to shake his hand. “Hi.” He shook Mr. Andre’s hand a little too hard. “I like
your shiny shirt.”

“No problem,
Aunt Maggie,” I said. “Mr. Andre and I were just discussing Mr. Stokes. He
doesn’t want to use him.”

Martha Stokes
came running around the corner, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. She had an
apron on top of a floral blouse. “Oh, dear. Lenny just told me you were here. I
hope he was polite. I’m so sorry. My husband has a way of making people angry.
I do hope you’ll come look at our flowers.” She gestured toward the
greenhouses.

Mr. Andre
snapped together his clipboard and started down the steps. “While I can already
see that you are a much nicer person than your husband, ma’am, I’m afraid we’ll
have to pass on this one. I have a long-standing relationship with Baskets of
Bluebonnets, and we’ll be going there. Let’s go, Betsy.”

“Uh, wait I need
to get …” I started to round the corner of the house and ran into Charlotte
coming from the other direction.

Maggie clasped
her throat. “Charlotte!”

Upon seeing
Maggie, Charlotte stood frozen to the ground.

Danny, not
remembering the decades-old feud, ran to Charlotte and grabbed her in a bear
hug. “Aunt Charlotte!” he said, burying his head in her shoulder.

Stiffening at
the hug, Charlotte regained her senses and acknowledged my aunt with a
perfunctory nod. “Maggie.”

Maggie stepped
up and planted her hands on her hips. “Why are you here, Charlotte? The broom
factory close down?”

Charlotte
responded quickly, surprising me. “I guess your last order was too big.”

“Ladies!” Andre
cut in. “We are not here to settle old scores.”

After seeing the
tension between the mother I always wanted and the woman who was like a mother
to me, I began wondering if the Elvis Chapel in Vegas might be available in the
next twenty-four hours.

“Really, Betsy,”
Martha said. “You have to come see what we are working on here. You at least
promised that.”

“Betsy, do you
truly want to order flowers from … Stokes here?” Mr. Andre demanded.

“I don’t know,”
I squeaked out. “Mrs. Stokes asked me to come out, and well, she sounded like
they really needed the business.” I saw Lenny Stokes bristle.

“We don’t need
nothin’, and my wife needs to keep her meddling to her own affairs,” he said.
“Watch out for them good Christian women, they’ll get you every time.”

Martha stared at
the floor. Her husband hadn’t known she was out begging for business. From the
exhausted look of the house and farm, she had to be desperate.

The crowd turned
to me as I uttered something unintelligible. Mr. Andre chortled, and Lenny
Stokes stepped up.

“What you
laughing at, boy? I’ve heard about you and your prissy weddings. I’m not so
hard up I’ve got to do my business with the likes of you. Now get the hell off
my place.”

Mr. Andre, in
shock, stepped back from the porch. He raised his hand in the air and
stuttered, “In all of my experience I have never met anyone so … awful.” He
turned to me, the satin in his shirt sagging slightly. “It’s up to you to make
this decision, Betsy, but I advise highly against it!”

Aunt Maggie
stepped closer to me and took hold of my hand. “Whatever you decide will be
fine, darlin’.”

Charlotte
grabbed my other hand and nodded.

“Mr. Andre,” I
began, “you’ve given me good advice so far, so I’m going to trust your judgment
on this one.”

Martha crossed
her arms and shook her head. Lenny went back in the house with a slam of the
screen door.

“Good luck
trying to get in over there is all I have to say,” Martha said, following him.

Mr. Andre
crossed his arms and then waved off Lenny Stokes. “Then it’s a big fat ‘no’ to
Mr. Stokes,” he said. “Betsy, are there any other local tradesman I need to be
aware of? Any other Neanderthals you have hired for your most important day?”

I shifted from
one foot to the other.

“Think, girl –
food, flowers, pictures, venue, entertainment? That’s a wedding.”

Realizing I was
totally being talked down to, yet feeling like Mr. Andre knew best, I answered
his condescending tone. “The photographer. You’d better check him out.”

“Did you look at
my list of approved photographers?”

“Yes, but Zach
really liked this guy and wanted me to use him.”

“What ‘guy’ is
this, and who, pray tell, is Zach?”

“Zach is my
grandson,” Charlotte piped in before Maggie could claim her nephew.

“I see,” said
Andre, “And how much experience has he had with our photographer?”

“He’s had his
picture taken at least twice a year for the last five years,” I said.

“Really? Why
does your son need a portrait done twice a year?”

“Well,” Aunt
Maggie said, “there’s baseball, and then there’s soccer.

Danny cut in,
scratching his head in thought, “And then there was that one year when he did
the pee wee football …”

 

******

 

After leaving
the Stokes Farm, I took Mr. Andre directly to the photographer I had chosen. As
we walked into his tiny storefront photography studio, I was reminded of the
little photo booth at SuperWally.

Bernard Price
came out of the back room wearing his trademark Hawaiian shirt. His glasses,
dwarfing his eyes, were a little larger than what was currently in style.
Bernard’s hair had thinned in most places on the top of his head, except for
the very center where he had a small fountain of foliage. With his roundness in
the middle, he reminded me of an old-fashioned Kewpie doll.

“Hello there,
Betsy,” he said. “Are you here to set up your big day?”

Mr. Andre and
Aunt Maggie entered the store behind Charlotte.

“And who is this
lovely lady?” Bernard asked, eying my mother.

“Um, this is …
this is Charlotte.”

My mother
stepped in front of me. She reached out to Bernard. “How do you do,” she said,
placing her hand in his chubby fingers.

“Charmed,”
Bernard said.

Mr. Andre
stepped up and extended his hand as well, causing Bernard to drop my mother’s
hand abruptly.

“Good morning,”
Andre said. “I don’t suppose you can you show us your wedding book?”

“Wedding book?”
said Bernard.

“Yes, your
portfolio of wedding images for other occasions you’ve worked on.”

Bernard nodded
in understanding. “Well, that could be a problem, seeing as I don’t really have
anything in a notebook for you. I mostly get calls to take kids’ pictures, you
know. I’m a regular over at Buzz Aldrin Elementary. I can show you some of
those.”

Mr. Andre sighed
in disgust. “Do you even know how to take wedding pictures?”

“To be honest
with you, no, I’ve never taken any wedding photos before,” Bernard admitted.
“You’ll be my first, and I hope for a start in a brand-new direction in my
photographic career. Are you the … groom?”

“Hardly.” Mr.
Andre looked around the room at pictures of children in various poses holding
bats and soccer balls. I glanced around and saw a gigantic cockroach come
scurrying out of the wall and head toward Charlotte. I started to raise my hand
to tell Bernard about the bug when Charlotte looked down and quickly smashed
her foot on the unsuspecting roach. A crunching noise could be heard across the
room, and when she lifted her foot, the insect was flattened. She had not only
smashed the bug, she had obliterated it. She was nonplussed by the creature.

“Oh my,” said
Mr. Andre, covering a smile with his hand.

Bernard grinned,
revealing a slight overbite. “You sure do know how to handle a bug.”

Charlotte
flushed and put her hand against her neck. Maggie stepped forward. “Yes, she’s
very good at crushing innocent things that cross her path.”

“My dear, would
you have a tissue?” Charlotte asked Bernard, ignoring Maggie’s comment.

Bernard scurried
to the back of the store to find something to put the bug into. He returned
shortly and handed a wad of tissue to Charlotte. She neatly wiped off the
bottom of her shoe.

“Oh my, that
didn’t get it all. Maybe just one more,” she said, her voice still in a high
friendly tone. She handed the soiled tissues to Bernard, who ran to the back
once again, grabbed another tissue and hustled to the front. She cleaned up the
bug remains and handed it back to him. I shifted my gaze from Charlotte to
Bernard and noticed he was taken with her. His eyes were glued to her, and he
responded to every little nuance. It was a little disgusting.

She then turned
to me and tapped the notebook I had been holding closely during the exchange.

“He seems like a
lovely man. Why not try him?”

Aunt Maggie and
I both registered surprise. Now that we were here, even I could see he was not
the right kind of photographer for our wedding.

Mr. Andre
stepped forward. “No, he won’t do. Unless we want to have Betsy and Leo posing
in a human pyramid with the maid of honor and the best man. This man’s
abilities are not up to par for a Mr. Andre wedding. I have my own
photographer, Betsy. We will use him.”

“Sorry, Mr.
Price,” I said. “You should know that we also had to cancel out on Lenny Stokes
the florist, too. So don’t feel too bad.”

“I can see
firing that old goat,” he replied, “but I think I at least deserve a chance at
a wedding.”

“Send me your
information and some photos of something other than a ten-year-old with a
baseball bat. Maybe I’ll be in touch for future weddings,” said Mr. Andre as he
walked out the door.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER NINE

 

Two days later,
I stepped out of the dressing room looking like the top of a wedding cake. I
heard my mother gasp as I ascended onto the white platform in front of two
large mirrors. Aunt Maggie stood with her arms crossed, smiling. Moisture was
rimming her eyes.

Charlotte
stepped forward, her hands clasped together as if in prayer. “Oh Betsy, you
look beautiful. I can remember when I was a happy bride … of course, that was
before I married your father.”

I had decided to
wait to tell Leo about Charlotte. Leo was at a conference for a few days, so I
had left him a simple text about a surprise.

“Do you like
it?” I said.

“It’s lovely,
dear.”

“Mr. Andre might
know about everything else, but you picked a beaut of a dress,” Aunt Maggie
said.

I’d bought my
dress before Christmas and paid for it and the alterations on sale. It seems
there is a good time and a bad time to buy a wedding dress. I was pleased to
get it for half the price it would be selling for in the months of April
through July.

“Too bad Mr.
Andre was busy with another wedding today,” Charlotte said as she approached
me. Her eyes narrowed. “There is just one thing, if I might bring it up.”

Lavonne Rogers,
the seamstress who had been circling around me fluffing out the soft satin hem,
looked up at my mother over the black-framed glasses perched on the end of her
nose. She steeled herself for yet another mother-of-the-bride helpful opinion,
her lips pressed into a thin line around a straight pin.

“I just think
you might want to take it in just a little bit in the bust and give it more
support,” Charlotte said.

“I think the
bust fits exactly right,” Lavonne said as she put both of her hands under my
arms to pinch in the seams. I looked at my breasts in the mirror. Were they
really starting to sag? They had seemed okay to me yesterday, but I have to
admit I didn’t spend much time examining them. Lavonne’s fingers clenched
material between them as she pulled the bodice in tight. I was beginning to
feel like Scarlett O’Hara being laced into a corset before the barbecue.

BOOK: Buzzkill (Pecan Bayou Series)
10.88Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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