I wore a Santa Claus hat and stood in front of the Piggly Wiggly, ringing my bell. People averted their eyes as they neared. “Tightwads!” I shouted, and rang my bell even harder.
My eyes flew open and I discovered I was not at the grocery store but tangled up in the covers of my bed. The digital clock blazed red with the godforsaken time of three a.m., and the phone on my bedside table was ringing so loudly that it jarred loose my remaining brain cells. I fought my way out of the sheets, knocked over a glass of water, and grabbed the phone.
“Did I wake you?” Mary Bennett said.
“It’s okay—had to get up to answer the phone anyway.” I searched for the lamp switch and in the process, turned over everything. The lamp broke into what sounded like a hundred different pieces. Mary Bennett didn’t even comment.
“Daddy’s gone. Would you mind coming over?”
“Oh, hunny—I’ll be right there.”
Mary Bennett’s house blazed with light when I pulled up into the drive. As I stood on the porch waiting for her to answer the door, I noticed my pajama top was misbuttoned and I was wearing an aerobics shoe on one foot and a running shoe on the other. I hadn’t bothered to brush my hair, so my shadow looked like Medusa’s. The only thing I’d done before leaving my house was squirt toothpaste on my finger, and I used it as a toothbrush while driving over.
“Hey,” Mary Bennett said, surveying me as she opened the door. “I hope you didn’t get all gussied up just for me.”
Mary Bennett’s hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail, her khakis were sharply creased, and her face shone as if she’d taken a scrubbing brush to it.
“I don’t know why I called,” Mary Bennett said, motioning me inside. “Everything’s taken care of. The funeral home picked him up a couple of hours ago. The maid washed and changed his sheets. I knew this was coming, so everything’s been done.”
I followed her into the kitchen, where Patsy and Gerald were slumped over cups of coffee. A puffy-eyed Patsy grunted a greeting. Gerald, his cheeks prickled with whiskers, acknowledged me by pushing out the chair beside him with his foot. Suffice to say, except for Mary Bennett, the Queens weren’t morning people.
The table held a huge tray filled with an assortment of pastries and croissants. I poured a cup of black coffee to yank myself out of my predawn fog.
“When a person dies, you’re supposed to call somebody besides the coroner,” Mary Bennett said, leaning against the kitchen counter.
“You did the right thing calling us—we’re family. We want to be with you for this,” Patsy said. The coffee was already working its magic. She was sitting upright in her chair, and the pillows underneath her eyes were beginning to flatten out.
“That’s just it,” Mary Bennett said. “I’m not upset. I was such a Daddy’s girl when I was real little, but I didn’t have much of a relationship with him after Mama died—he was just absent, whether he was here or away. We were closer at the end, but that wasn’t the Daddy I remembered. That was just the shell of him after the tumor took its toll.”
“Maybe we could help call relatives or friends,” Patsy offered in a drowsy voice.
“There’s nobody really,” Mary Bennett said. “Just a string of women who likely wished him dead over the years. Daddy didn’t have any friends, just acquaintances and business associates, and I’m sure they’ll come out in droves once they read the obituary. Nothing brings out Southerners like a funeral.”
“There has to be something we can do to help,” I said, warming my hands around the coffee cup.
“No. But there’s something I want to share with y’all.” She left the kitchen.
“I’m glad to see you came, Gerald,” I said with a smile.
“Mary Bennett asked me to be here,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t know why. My presence is completely unnecessary.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Mary Bennett said it herself,” Gerald said derisively. “Everything’s under control. She doesn’t need us. Her daddy’s death hasn’t affected her the least bit. It’s always ‘easy come, easy go’ with Mary Bennett. I don’t think she has a sentimental bone in her body.”
“You’re not being fair,” Patsy said. “She wasn’t close to her father.”
“She’s not close to anyone,” Gerald said with a snort. “It’s all on the surface with her. You don’t know her like I do. She has about as much depth and sensitivity as Formica.”
“You keep saying that, Gerald, like you know something about Mary Bennett that we don’t,” I said. “It’s fuckin’ time to clear the air. I think you’re wrong about Mary Bennett. She has plenty of feelings. She just keeps things locked up inside her—” I clammed up when I heard Mary Bennett’s feet on the stairs.
She came back into the kitchen carrying a bulging shoe box.
“Y’all, I have to tell you, the most amazing thing happened with Daddy—this morning—right at the end. I thought at first he was having a flashback, but then I realized he was totally lucid for the first time in days. I had fallen asleep in my chair with my head on the side of the bed. I was dreaming that I was a little girl—and Daddy had come in to wake me up from my nap. He called me Monkey. That was his nickname for me when I was little. I hadn’t heard the name in years, but I’d never forgotten it. He was stroking my face, saying, ‘Wake up, Monkey—your Daddy loves you so.’ And I woke up—and he was stroking my face and saying those words and he was looking at me as clear-eyed as he ever did in this life and I looked right back at him and said, ‘Oh, Daddy, your Monkey loves you so!’ And he squeezed my hand and was gone. I don’t know—somehow it just fixed something in my heart.”
After the group sob subsided a bit, somebody asked her about the shoe box.
“I found these in the attic,” she said. “There are dozens of them filled with letters.” Mary Bennett opened the box and withdrew a letter. “Here,” she said, handing it to me. “This one says it best, I think.”
“Dear Toots,” I started to read aloud. “Another year without you, and the pain doesn’t get a bit easier, no matter how many drinks I take or how many women I sleep with. Monkey can’t understand why I act the way I do, or why I can’t bear to be around her. She’s a young lady now and she reminds me too much of you. I’m a weak man. Forgive me my failings.” I folded the letter and gave it back to her. “Your daddy wrote this?”
“Yes.” Mary Bennett nodded. “Hundreds of them. A few within the last few months. All to my mother after she died. He never got over her. Toots was his nickname for her. I didn’t even know that.”
“Did you have any idea how much he grieved for her?” Patsy asked.
“Not a clue. He never talked about her,” Mary Bennett. “The way he behaved with all those women, I just assumed he didn’t miss her.”
“Why did you want us to read that letter?” I said gently.
She fixed her eyes on Gerald. “You’re the main reason. When I read all those letters to my mama, I realized that I’m more like my daddy than I ever wanted to admit. They were a real eye opener.”
“Go on,” Gerald said.
“I know you don’t think I missed Brian. My way of showing I ‘miss’ someone is just like my daddy’s. It started in high school when I chased after every boy in sight just to forget that my daddy never paid any attention to me and to hide how much it hurt.”
“You missed Brian?” Gerald said. His tone was extremely skeptical.
She bit her lower lip so hard it drew a spot of blood. “Very much.”
“Quit acting, Mary Bennett,” he said coldly. “This isn’t a fuckin’ TV show. Jill said we should finally clear the air, and I agree.”
Mary Bennett winced. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“If you won’t tell them, I will,” he said coldly. “Mary Bennett lo-o-o-oved Brian so MUCH that she gave him up for her career.”
“What?” Mary Bennett said, drawing back.
“Oh, please. Don’t play innocent,” Gerald said. “Brian called me. It was the night before Valentine’s Day, about two in the morning, before our first St. Paddy’s parade. Brian said that you were up for a huge part. He said you’d have to choose, him or the role, because the studio didn’t want their star to be married to anybody—not as much fodder for the tabloids, they like to have the press following their stars around, speculating on who’s doing what with whom. They might have been amenable to a big-deal real estate tycoon or a famous plastic surgeon, but they really saw no media value in her being married to a down-and-out actor (which Brian was at the time). ‘What will she do?’ he asked me. I said, ‘I know Mary Bennett, she’ll choose you.’” He shook his head. “Boy, was I ever wrong. Next thing I heard, you were cast as Electra and Brian was history.”
“No!” Mary Bennett cried. Her complexion was completely drained of color. “This is the first I’ve heard of this.”
“What do you mean?” Gerald asked.
Mary Bennett’s face was twisted with distress. She took a moment to compose herself. “The night before Valentine’s Day, Brian and I were invited to a party at a director’s house. I knew I was in the running for the part of Electra, and I assumed the party was a way to check me out one last time. In the middle of the party Brian started drinking heavily, and he continued after we got home. I ended up going to bed without him. The next morning, Brian told me he didn’t love me anymore and he wanted me to move out. I begged him for an explanation but he refused. He never said one word about the studio.”
“What?” Gerald said, not looking nearly so sure of himself.
“Brian’s phone call to Gerald doesn’t make any sense. If I was ever offered a choice between getting the part of Electra and being with Brian, there’d be no contest,” Mary Bennett said with vehemence. “I loved Brian more than anyone in this world. Much more than any stupid part.”
A thought occurred to me. “Was Brian ever alone with your director that night?”
“Sure,” Mary Bennett said. “He took him on a tour of the grounds. Why?”
“That’s your answer,” I said.
“Wait a second. Do you mean to say—?”
“Yeah. I think your director told Brian he was standing in the way of your getting the part,” I said. “You never knew about the choice, because Brian decided for you.”
“Oh my God,” Mary Bennett said, her shoulders heaving. “Oh my God! I can’t believe…all these years…I never guessed.” Her eyes welled up, and she collapsed into tears. It was the first time any of us had ever seen Mary Bennett cry.
“Mary Bennett.” Gerald’s face crumpled with shame. “Can you ever forgive me?”
Her answer was to throw her arms around him and weep loudly into his chest. Patsy and I hung back. Gerald and Mary Bennett were locked in an embrace for a very long time, well after she’d stopped crying. They were making up for seven years.
Mary Bennett’s dining room table groaned with so many casseroles it threatened to turn into a pile of splinters.
“I swear, is there anything better than funeral food?” I said, scarfing my fifth deviled egg.
“Nope,” Gerald said as he put away his second hunk of Miss Mildred’s famous banana upside-down cake. “Miss Mildred has outdone herself this time—this cake is KILLIN’ ME.”
“Too bad someone actually has to die for us to get it. Miss Mildred only bakes for funerals these days,” Patsy said. There was a smidgen of chicken salad on her upper lip.
“We should open a place called the Rest in Peace Restaurant and only serve funeral food,” I said. “We’d make a fortune, is all I’m saying.”
“We’d be waddling all the way to the bank,” Gerald said, filling his plate yet again. “In a bit, let’s lounge by the fire and plan the menu for the Rest in Peace, and the outfits for the wait-staff—perfect relaxation exercise, talkin’ ’bout clothes and food.”
“Thank y’all for coming! Keep in touch!” Mary Bennett was at the front door, seeing off the last guests from the funeral.
Her pumps clip-clopped on the glossy hardwood as she entered the dining room. She wore a black wool dress and gold earrings, looking every bit as chic as Jackie Kennedy.
Earlier, Mary Bennett had delivered such a beautiful eulogy, everyone in the church thought Charles Manning had been the most doting father in the history of the world, living or dead. She’d seemed at peace with herself afterward, and looked ten years younger. Who knew forgiveness could be just as flattering to a woman’s face as having a little work done?
During a rare quiet moment before the funeral, I asked her what, if anything, she was planning to do about Brian. She said she didn’t know yet. Between her daddy’s death and healing her rift with Gerald, she was trying to corral her thoughts and emotions.
“I hope there’s some goddamn fried chicken left,” Mary Bennett said, and I knew all was mostly right with the world.
“Lord’s name in vain?!” Gerald cried, covering his ears.
“Sor-ry,” Mary Bennett said. “I hope there’s some fucking fried chicken left.”
Both Patsy and I were so glad to see Mary Bennett and Gerald acting like their old selves, we smiled until our faces hurt.
“You know what’s missing?” I said.
“I sure as hell do,” Mary Bennett said. “Red Jell-O with those tiny, mini marshmallows. It’s not a proper funeral spread without it.”
“I was thinking of Tammy,” I said. “All the Queens are living back in Jackson except for her.”
“I have been studying on that very thing,” Mary Bennett said, snapping a napkin open. “Do you know how long it’s been since the Queens have been out of pocket?”
I’d almost forgotten that expression. Back in high school, whenever we went on a road trip in the Tammymobile, we’d called it being “out of pocket.”
“It’s high time for us to take a vacation,” Mary Bennett said. “We could go to England and pay Tammy a surprise visit.”
“Sounds great.” I grimaced. “Too bad I gotta earn a livin’.”
“I’m not sure this is a good time for me to be away from the Pink Panthers—those bitches are plotting something behind my back. I just know it’s some kind of big drag show,” Gerald said, twitching his nose. “Here I’m trying to make a serious impact on the AIDS crisis in Mississippi and if I left for five minutes, I’d come back to find all of them prancing around in ball gowns, boas, and tiaras.”
“I’m way behind on my work,” Patsy said. “I could never get away.”
“None of y’all are so fucking busy that you can’t spare a week to go on a free vacation to Great Britain!” Mary Bennett said, waving her fork. “Think of this! Four-star hotels and meals. Gorgeous scenery! Fabulous nightlife. And best of all, I did say ‘free,’ right? This is my gift to you. I am footing the en-tire bill.”
“Well, if you put it that way,” I said. “I suppose I could do a little rearranging of my schedule.”
“Have y’all forgotten my fund-raiser?” Gerald asked.
“Of course we haven’t,” Mary Bennett said. “We’ll be back in plenty of time. This trip will give us some excellent rebonding time. Knowing your proclivity for groups with acronym names, I am proposing that we form a group in our own honor, and this trip to reclaim Tammy as our own, Q.U.E.E.R.—Queens United for the Evolution of Everlasting Relationships,” she said with a flourish. “I’ve already had the T-shirts made. Give it up—you’re going.”
Gerald’s face lit up at the mention of the T-shirts—the man clearly loved an acronym. “Well, I suppose an inaugural out-of-pocket trip is in order for the charter members of Q.U.E.E.R. I love it!”
“I’d have to find a babysitter for Mack, and I’d be too far behind in work when I got back,” Patsy said. “Besides, I’m seeing this guy named Earl, and he and I—”
“Don’t make me play the dead daddy card, Swiss Miss,” Mary Bennett said, pointing a chicken wing at her.
“Well, I’ve always dreamed of going to London,” Patsy said, knowing it was pointless to argue further. “And of course, I’d love to see Tammy again.”
“It’s settled then,” Mary Bennett said. “I’ll just give my travel agent a ‘ringy-dingy,’ or whatever it is that they say over there.”
Two days later we were at thirty-five thousand feet on a 747 bound for London.
“Do you see Big Ben yet?” Patsy asked, a few minutes after our pilot announced our descent into Heathrow. This was also my first trip to London.
“I can’t see a thing,” I said, my nose smooshed against the window. The city below looked intricate and unusual, like the inside of a transistor radio. As the jet descended, things became intelligible. A series of tiny colorful squares became a full parking lot. A moving red blip turned into a double-decker bus.
The cabin came alive with the rustles and stirrings of the passengers in anticipation of landing.
“We’re here!” Mary Bennett said as we jounced along the runway. I glanced out the window. This particular view of England didn’t look altogether jolly. It seemed pretty wet and mostly gray.
Once we cleared customs, we picked up our rental car. Gerald had spent a little time in London so he volunteered to drive.
“Land’s sakes alive,” Patsy said, opening the door to a blue Peugeot. “Someone has goofed up big time at the auto factory. This car is defective.”
Gerald chuckled. “That’s not a mistake. In London they drive on the left side of the road, so the steering wheel is on the right.”
“That’s four-plus crazy,” Patsy said, shaking her head. “I thought the only difference between England and America is England is run by a queen.”
“Which we approve of mightily,” added Mary Bennett.
“There’s more differences than you would expect,” Gerald said. He opened the trunk and started tossing our suitcases inside. “The trunk is called a boot, and the hood is a bonnet. The British call gas petrol and they sell it by the liter, not the gallon.”
“What are these called?” Mary Bennett said, pointing to the wheels.
“Tires,” Gerald said, wiping his hands together. “Not everything’s different.”
We arrived at our hotel just as the dining room closed for lunch.
“There’s a pub ’round the corner, if you’re feeling peckish,” the desk clerk said.
“We ain’t peckish,” Patsy said. “We’re starvin’.”
After we’d settled in our rooms and freshened up, we all met in the lobby and strolled to a pub called The Frisky Friar.
“I heard the weather in London was gloomy,” I said, shivering as we stood in the entryway of the cozy building, “but I’m frozen. I can’t feel my toes.”
A waiter, holding aloft a tray of gold-hued ales, smiled at me. “Keep your pecker up,” he said brightly. “This beastly weather is supposed to take a turn for the better.”
Mary Bennett made a face and I shrugged.
We settled in a comfortable booth near a crackling fire and were offered menus.
“You know,” Patsy said, as she perused hers, “when I was looking at guidebooks, there was not a single mention of the English’s obvious obsession with penises. First someone asks if we’re peckish, then the waiter tells us to keep our peckers up, and now they’re serving spotted dick on the menu.” She tossed it aside. “I do believe I am losing my appetite.”
“What in the world’s a toad in the hole?” I said with a frown. “I have a powerful hankering for a big wad of bacon, but I don’t see it here.”
“Bacon is called rashers and French fries are called chips,” Gerald said with amusement. He almost seemed like his old self.
“I don’t understand why these Brits don’t speak American English,” Patsy said, shaking her head. “We whupped their butts in the war, after all.”
“Try to keep that keen observation to yourself,” Mary Bennett said drily as the waitress returned with pints for everybody.
“So what’s the plan of action?” I asked.
“I’d like to stay in London for a couple of days, then drive to the Cotswolds to Belmont Manor and pop in on Tammy,” Mary Bennett said.
“I hope to hell she and James aren’t off jet-setting somewhere,” I said. “It would suck not to see her.”
“She has to be around,” Patsy said. “We’ve come all this way.”
The next two days we toured London. We visited Harrods and found it to be far grander than Macy’s ever thought about being. We took in a Mary Cassatt exhibit at the National Gallery, and saw the crown jewels at the Tower of London. While Gerald gathered info on the local gay activist groups, the girls had high tea at our hotel, where we discovered that the tea was Earl Grey instead of Luzianne and the biscuits definitely weren’t the kind you served with flour gravy. Buckingham Palace wasn’t open to the public because it was winter (we were hoping for a glimpse of Di or, at the very least, Fergie), but we did walk around Kensington Gardens.
On the third day, with Gerald at the wheel, we made our way to the Cotswolds region.
“It’s like a postcard around here,” I mused, as we passed through scores of tiny villages filled with stone cottages, cobbled courtyards, and tidy gardens.
“We’re looking for a town called Upper Slaughter,” Gerald said to Mary Bennett, who had the map unfolded on her lap.
“Better Upper Slaughter than lower, I suppose,” Mary Bennett said with a smirk.
We took a wrong turn, so Gerald stopped at a petrol station to find our bearings. I spotted a telephone and said, “I’m going to try Tammy one more time. Maybe we’ll have better luck now that we’re in her neck of the woods.”
I got out of the car and slipped some coins into the phone. After a few rings, there was a click, and to my delight, Tammy answered.
“Tammy!” I said, excitedly. “This is Jill. It’s so good to hear your voice.”
“Jill? Oh my goodness! It’s been so long. I know I haven’t been very good about writing lately. I’m been so incredibly busy.”
“I’ve tried calling, too. This is the first time I’ve been able to get through to you.”
“Yes,” Tammy said with a sigh. “We’re in a very small village, and the phones aren’t always reliable.”
“You aren’t going to believe this! The Queens and I are HERE—we’ve been in London and right this minute, we’re only about an hour away from you. We hadn’t heard from you in so long, we decided to just track your ass down and surprise you!”
There was a long silence on the other end, and I wondered if I’d lost the connection.
“Tammy, are you there?”
“I’m here,” she said in a faint voice. “I’m afraid you’ve picked a dreadfully inconvenient time to come. James and I were just on our way out the door to visit Lord and Lady Amherst in Derbyshire. They’re having several couples in. We’ve planned it for weeks.”
My heart sank. “We’ve flown all this way just to see you. Couldn’t you put off your trip for a couple of hours?”
“I can’t. James would be in a snit, and we’re supposed to ride with friends because our Bentley is on the blink,” Tammy said, with a little bit of an English accent.
I was so stunned and so deeply disappointed I could scarcely speak.
“Have a good time,” I managed to choke out. “We really have to keep in better contact. All of the Queens miss you so much.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Jill,” she said, curtly. “But I really have to ring off now.”
I hung up the phone and trudged back to the car, where the Queens had the map spread out, plotting their route to Upper Slaughter.
“Might as well forget the whole thing. Tammy won’t be there,” I said as I got back into the car.
“What’s going on?” Mary Bennett said, craning her neck from the front seat.
“She’s flitting off to some party with a bunch of lords and ladies. She didn’t seem the least bit pleased we were here,” I said. “The only reason she hasn’t been answering our letters is because she’s been too busy social climbing. I was worrying for nothin’.”
“Are you sure?” Patsy said, practically in tears. “I can’t believe she wouldn’t want to see us.”
“Tammy always wanted to be one of the beautiful people,” I said, pierced through the heart by her dismissal of us. “Now that she’s finally gotten it, she doesn’t need us anymore.”
I tucked the gift I’d brought her under the front seat so I didn’t have to look at it. It was a photograph album filled with the pictures of the Queens I’d collected over the years.
“I’m with Swiss Miss on this one,” Mary Bennett said. “That just doesn’t sound like Tammy. Maybe we pissed her off.”
I didn’t want to believe it either. I’d spent more time with Tammy than any of the other Queens. I’d saved her life when she’d taken sleeping pills, and she’d stopped me from losing all my money to Ross. I’d ridden out all her affairs over the years. I’d assumed the bond between us was invincible, but apparently I was wrong.
“She was so cold on the phone, I’m surprised the receiver didn’t sprout icicles,” I said. “We might as well head back to London.”
“We don’t have reservations in London,” Gerald said in a dejected voice. “Why don’t we stay the night in Upper Slaughter like we planned? We’ll just have a nice time without Tammy. It’s supposed to be a quaint village.”
“Whatever,” I said, staring out the window and wiping away tears. What I really wanted to do was to head straight back to Jackson.
The drive was quiet. All the Queens were brooding about Tammy. I alternated between fury and despair.
As soon as we got to Upper Slaughter, a bit of sunlight peeped through my pall of darkness. I couldn’t help but smile at the string of honey-colored, ivy-patched cottages, and the sleepy stream that wound its way through the village like a silver ribbon. It was as if we’d been transported to a fairy-tale land. I half expected it to be populated with elves, gnomes, and hobbits.
The other Queens seemed similarly enchanted. They tumbled out of the car as soon as it stopped at our hotel. We were staying at the Horse and Hound Inn, a homey structure with a slate roof and dormer windows.
My eyes eagerly cataloged the details around me. A man on an ancient creaking bicycle clattered across the cobblestones, his red wool scarf trailing in the wind. A woolly sheep ba-a-ahed from behind a hedgerow.
“This really feels like England!” I said. London, as different as it was from Jackson, still had many familiar aspects of a city. Upper Slaughter, on the other hand, was like stepping into a completely different universe.
We checked in and then settled into the restaurant for a late lunch of Scottish eggs and some beer.
Afterward, Patsy and Gerald opted for a nap underneath their feather-bed duvets, and Mary Bennett and I bundled up in down coats and mittens and took a hike around the village.
“Now I understand why people love to travel,” Mary Bennett said, as we paused to study some crumbling remains of a medieval castle. “New sights and smells wash your mind clean for a while. Lifts you from the old ruts.”
I had to agree. In the car I’d been twisted up with thoughts of Tammy, but for these moments I felt completely removed from her.
“It’s happening with Gerald,” Mary Bennett said. “He’s letting go of some of his rage. He seemed almost happy when he came in from that last gay-guy meeting. I’ve been wanting to have a talk with him, and I think the time may finally be right.”
“What do you want to talk to him about?”
“I’m thinking differently, too,” Mary Bennett said, ignoring my question. “I just called Brian and left a message on his machine. I told him he could reach me tonight in the Cotswolds, or tomorrow night in London.”
“What did you say?”
“Just that I had been thinking about him.” She paused for a minute. “I also might have thrown in a little something about how I never stopped loving him.”
“I hope he calls you back,” I said.
“Me, too,” Mary Bennett said. “I’ve never been so nervous about anything in my life.”
We crossed a footbridge and passed a ruddy-cheeked Englishman. He tipped his herringbone touring cap to reveal a wavy head of glossy dark hair.
“God save the queen,” Mary Bennett whispered after he passed. “I wouldn’t toss him out of bed for eating kippers.”
“He looked shifty-eyed to me,” I said, wrinkling my nose.
“Some ruts, on the other hand, are deeper than others,” Mary Bennett said, giving me a sideways glance.
“I’m not in a rut,” I said quickly. “I’m being particular.”
The next morning was drab and gray, tempting me to linger in my cozy nest of linens. But thoughts of a steaming mug of hot coffee coaxed me out of bed. I dressed quickly, planning to shower later. The Queens were supposed to meet for breakfast in an hour to plan our next excursion. There was no point staying on in Upper Slaughter if Tammy wasn’t around.
I left my room and headed for the café. I heard the squeak of wheels behind me and a voice—a voice I knew as well as my own—calling out, “Miss, do you need any more towels?”
I abruptly turned around and there behind me, garbed in a peasant blouse and black skirt, was Tammy—wheeling a maid’s cart down the hall. When she recognized me, her body tensed and I expected her to bolt. I could almost see the gears of her mind turning, struggling to come up with an explanation. Her shoulders drooped in surrender when she realized the jig was up.
I, on the other hand, was so delighted to see her familiar pert nose, green eyes, and abundant red locks, I let out a whoop that was likely heard all the way over in Lower Slaughter.
“Tammy!” I said, tears pouring from my eyes as I opened my arms to her. “I’ve missed you so much.”
Over two years of carefully constructed artifice fell from her face.
“Oh Jill,” she said, receiving my embrace. “Thank God you’re here. Take me home, please.”
The Queens couldn’t stop talking or eating. We were tearing through a huge English breakfast of deviled kidneys, honey pancakes, kedgeree, coiled wild boar sausage, black pudding, farm-smoked bacon, bread rounds, freshly churned butter, fruit preserves, eggs, baked beans, sautéed field mushrooms, and grilled tomatoes. We didn’t know what half the stuff was, but we ate it with a vengeance anyway.
“I cried all night last night after we spoke,” Tammy said, wedged between Patsy and Gerald in a booth at the hotel’s restaurant. Gerald kept patting her hair and stroking her cheek as if he couldn’t believe she was real.
“I wanted so badly to see y’all, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to admit the truth about my life.”
The truth, as Tammy spilled it out in one long, tearful confession, was that everything had gone wrong since she’d set foot in Great Britain.
Although James was indeed a lord, he was nearly penniless. What money he did have was squandered on gambling and drinking. She didn’t actually live in Belmont Manor (it had been turned into a hotel twenty years ago, when James’s family fell on hard times) but instead resided in a drafty and crumbling gatehouse adjacent to the property. Phone service came and went because James frequently drank away the bill money.
“When the heat got turned off, and we practically froze the first winter, I decided to get a job at the Horse and Hound,” Tammy said.
James, with his nasty habits and surly attitude, was shunned by the British peerage and rarely invited anywhere. All the hobnobbing with royals Tammy had written about in her letters was pure fiction. People assumed she was as lowdown as James and as a consequence, she had few friends.
“I was never going to be Lady Tammy,” she said. “The only title I’ve ever had was ‘the wench who shags James.’”
“I don’t understand,” Mary Bennett said. “Why did you keep quiet about this? Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I wanted to, many times, but I’d already lied so much! I wasn’t sure you’d want to associate with me after all my bullshit,” Tammy said, her chin drooping to her chest. “I also felt like I deserved what I got. I’d left a wonderful man and the best friends anybody ever had in the world. For what? Selfishness, pure and simple. And the idea of being ‘somebody.’ She gazed across the table at me, her eyes shiny with tears. “But then I ran into Jill in the hall…and when she saw me, she seemed so glad to see me—just plain old ME. Just one look from her, and I knew it was possible that she might forgive everything. And I knew for the first time in my life that if I’m with y’all, that’s the best ‘somebody’ I could ever hope to be. I can’t believe y’all came all this way to find me—thank God you did!”
“That’s what you do for the people you care about,” I said softly. “You love ’em no matter how badly they screw up.”
“I’m afraid to ask,” Tammy said, stirring her coffee with a teaspoon, “but I have to know. What’s happened with Bob?”
“Are you sure you want to know this now?” Gerald said, stroking her back.
“Yes,” she said. “I really want to hear.”
“He’s married to a very sweet lady,” I said quietly. “He also has a baby girl, Hannah.”
Tammy didn’t speak for a moment, just nodded her head absorbing the news. “Good,” she said, after a moment. “I’m glad he’s happy.”
A tall woman in a maid’s uniform with braids crisscrossed atop her head approached the table. “What do you think you’re doing, love? This isn’t break time. Are you looking to get sacked?”
“I’m having a spot of breakfast with my family,” Tammy said with her faux English accent. “And no, I’m not looking to get sacked, because I quit. I am a Queen, and the Queen is returning to her Court!”
After breakfast, we drove to Tammy’s cottage and helped her pack up her meager belongings. A bloated and snoring James was passed out cold on a couch in the living room and didn’t stir once while we were there. Tammy scribbled a brief note saying she was leaving him and never coming back. She stuck it in the fridge near his beer so he wouldn’t miss it.
“If I never have another steak-and-kidney pie, I will die happy,” Tammy said in the car on the way back to London. “Soon as I saw that mess on a menu I shoulda known I’d fucked up.”
“It’s all about the food for you, isn’t it, Tammy?” Gerald said, smiling so wide his cheeks looked like twin cherry tomatoes.
“She ain’t the only one,” Mary Bennett said. “Hollywood was bad enough. Never again will I live anywhere with no grits and gravy.”
“One more night in London and we’ll be on our way back to God’s Country,” I said. “We need to have a kick-ass celebration tonight before we leave.”
“Well, I was going to go to a rally for a gay political candidate, but I suppose I could skip it,” Gerald mused.
“Did I hear correctly? Is our little gay guerrilla mellowing a bit?” Mary Bennett asked, smiling her signature shit-eating grin.
“Well, maybe,” Gerald said. “This will be the first full meeting of Q.U.E.E.R. I really shouldn’t miss that.”
“Okay, Gerald—it’s now or never for this. Now that we’re all together, I’ve got something to say to you. None of us has understood why you have been so pissed off since…”
“You know I don’t want to talk about that, Mary Bennett.” Gerald’s face once again flushed with that all-too-familiar fury.
“Well, we’re GOING to talk about it, so just shut the fuck up,” Mary Bennett commanded. “We couldn’t understand why William’s death has made you so…so MAD. And so I did a little digging.”
Mary Bennett found out that back in San Francisco, Gerald and William had been in a car wreck. Gerald was essentially unscathed, but William was nearly killed. He had to have a blood transfusion, and that’s how he contracted HIV.
“I believe that you felt guilty that he was hurt and you weren’t—he got AIDS and you didn’t, he died and you’re still here and you don’t think you deserve it—and it’s gotten all twisted up inside you and you’re just fucking pissed off at the world because of it. That’s what I think. Am I wrong?”
The tears flowed freely from all our eyes as we reached out to Gerald, who had begun leaking tears at the first mention of William’s name and was now heaving with great sobs.
“It’s time to let yourself grieve, hunny—and to be happy you’re alive,” Mary Bennett said with loving firmness. “We thank God every day we’ve still got you. And I believe there’s a way to do something positive—to make a difference in the world—without cutting off everybody’s heads and shittin’ down their neckholes!”
“Have I really been that bad?” Gerald asked, snuffling.
“WORSE!” we all shouted.
“All those hateful group names you make up—all that gay go-rilla stuff—you’re so mean to the Pink Panthers, I can’t believe they keep coming back,” Patsy said. “Pretty fucking scary shit, hunny.”
His grief finally allowed to vent, Gerald thanked Mary Bennett and all of us for loving him in spite of it all.
After all the tears were dried, the mood in the car was as sparkling as champagne. It felt grand to have all the mysteries solved and, more important, to finally have us all back together again. We were, in fact, Queens United for the Evolution of Everlasting Relationships.