Master plans require finesse, elegance, allowances for contingencies, and just for fun, the element of surprise. During my tenure as mischief maker numero uno at my various boarding schools, I developed quite a facility for masterminding the most demanding plans. However, unlike those, Operation Return to Magnolia was about making things go right. Not wrong. Right. At a public event. With oh, say, a thousand people in attendance. The stakes were as high as that poker game in Casino Royale, the one with superhottie Mr. Daniel Craig. Every step of the plan had to come off without a hitch. In the hours following the unexpected solidification of our friendship, Ashley and I designed the foolproof plan, and it went something like this:
Step one: the makeups after the breakups. We piled into Ashley’s Escalade and swung by Mallory’s so that the healing could begin. Mallory burst into tears when she answered the door and saw Ashley. She blubbered on and on about how sorry she was and she didn’t mean it about Ashley being such a difficult person and would she ever forgive her? Ashley countered, “No, you’re right, I was a bitch.” That dried Mallory’s tears in like a millisecond. You should have seen the way she looked at Ashley, as if she had suddenly been inhabited by aliens. “Really? You… agree with me?” Ashley admitted that we both had decided to turn over a new leaf. We outlined our master plan and, in a fit of hysterical delight, Mallory got on board.
Step two: My making up with Zara, was a lot more complicated. We piled back into the Escalade, and drove out to the country club where Zara’s cousin Chinay let us in and told us we’d find her out by the tennis court. Zara was out there banging the crap out of tennis balls flying at her at eighty mph, courtesy of the latest in tennis-ball-serving technology. To say she was stunned to see the three of us parade onto her court would be putting it mildly. Five tennis balls in a row whizzed by her head, hitting the wall behind her before she gathered herself up and resumed lobbing the balls back across the net. I have to hand it to Zara. She’s no Williams sister but she could hit that ball for sure. Ashley and Mallory shot the breeze with her for a few minutes, commenting on how lovely her home was and how lucky she was to have a tennis court, she must just love that. Zara grunted out polite comments in between hits, but it was clear she wasn’t really thrilled to have us there. Me, I stood watching each ball shoot out of the machine, vaguely listening to this conversation go down until Ashley announced we were here on a mission.
“Go ahead, Jane,” said Ashley. “Tell her.”
“Tell me what?” Zara didn’t even glance my way.
I cleared my throat. “Well. Um. I’ve been thinking about what you said. And you’re right. I’m the one who pushed things so that we got in trouble. And if I had kept my mouth shut, we would have gone home and gone to bed and slept like little angels.”
Zara slammed another ball over the net. Was it my imagination or was she banging on those balls even harder than when we arrived?
“And?” prompted Ashley.
“And that even though I am often convinced that I am the all-knowing mistress of the universe, I should respect your feelings about how to handle situations that apply to you.”
“And?”
“And I’m going to try to keep my mouth a little more closed and try to be a little more civil in my approach to discord.”
“And?”
Oh shoot. Here came the hard part. I became riveted by the top of the tennis net blowing in Bienville’s perky summer wind.
“Jane?” Ashley prompted.
I sighed. “Fine. I’m sorry.”
Zara stopped hitting the ball. Put down her racket. Turned off the machine. “Okay, I accept. And thank you. But why did it take all three of you to come over here for one of you to apologize?” So we told her our master plan, she agreed it was genius, and we quickly bundled ourselves back into the Escalade.
Next step: Caroline.
Mizz Upton nearly had a fit when she saw us all on her front porch. “I am as delighted I can be that you girls are finally getting along! Isn’t it wonderful? And are we electing a queen today?”
“No, not today,” said Ashley.
“But soon,” I added.
Mizz Upton sent us upstairs looking for Caroline. Really, all we wanted was Caroline’s stamp of approval before we went any further. We were pretty sure she’d give it to us, but no one expected her to burst into tears of joy. She cried and cried and thanked us profusely then hopped in the car and off we went in pursuit of step four: Brandi Lyn.
I called Brandi Lyn’s house, and her mother told us that she was working but she sure would love for us to visit! So we all drove out to the Bienville Causeway, that long thin strip of land that traverses the Bienville Bay. It’s a survivor, that strip of land. Like Brandi Lyn. It’s lived through so many hurricanes and tropical storms, people say it’s blessed. Well, except for the hollow shells of a dozen former motels and restaurants that were beaten into submission by 150 mph winds and thirty-foot waves. But not Karl’s! The original Karl (I think it’s Karl IV who runs the place now) opened up a fried seafood stand back in the forties, then added a dining room off one side here, another off that side there, as the place grew more popular with each passing decade. When the hurricanes got bad, one of the Karls hired a couple of cranes and lifted the whole ramshackle sprawl of a place up on stilts not one, not two, but three stories high. You’ve got a great view—almost out to the Gulf of Mexico—once you take a seat at your table, but it is a major pain in the butt to get up there just to get your eat on. Believe it or not, there’s no elevator.
Brandi Lyn went into hysterics when she saw us. “I cannot believe that y’all have taken the time to come and see me! It is so sweet! I’ve been missing you all week and here you are! Come and sit! Here! Have the best picnic table in the joint! And a basket of Karl’s World Famous Puppies and Poppers—a delicious combination of hush puppies and jalapeño poppers (they’re hot but not toooooooo hot)—on me!”
As we dove into Puppies and Poppers and brown plastic tumblers of Diet Coke, I got down to business. “Brandi Lyn,” I said, “we need you. And we have decided, as a group, that we are not letting you quit.”
“Oh, y’all are so cute! I am such a lucky girl! But you know I can’t afford it.”
“Yes you can.” And I laid out the next stages of the master plan.
When I was done, Brandi Lyn chewed on her lip. “I don’t know, Jane. That’s still a thousand dollars, easy, I bet!”
Ashley shrugged. “We’re going to pay for it.”
“You are?” Brandi Lyn couldn’t hide her surprise.
“I know I fought against you,” Ashley said. “But you’re an asset to the Magnolia Maid community and we need you.”
We all nodded our agreement.
“But it’s too much!” Brandi Lyn protested. “I can’t ask that of y’all!”
“I’d withdraw a thousand dollars of my own money right this very second if I didn’t have to be a Magnolia Maid,” Caroline said, nodding vigorously.
Brandi Lyn burst into tears of joy. Sweet Willows a-Weeping, we were a crying bunch today. Brandi Lyn got another waitress to cover the rest of her shift, and we headed off into the hot, hot humidity to activate steps five through five thousand of the master plan.
It was going to be an action-packed couple of days.
It almost worked. The flurry of activity and excitement I had generated by figuring out the answer to the question, “What would Cecilia do?” had almost gotten my mind off Luke.
Almost.
But not quite.
Every so often—okay, every five seconds or so—my encounters with Luke would pop into my head. And I’m not sure which was more harrowing, reliving the “he has a girlfriend” moment that made things suck, the “saving the bird” moment when things seemed awesome, or the ancient “busted by Cosmo” moment that served as the beginning of the end. All I knew was that I was NOT looking forward to seeing him again.
Unless it involved him crawling back to me with a dozen roses in his mouth, apologizing and begging me to forgive him.
As if there were a snowball’s chance in high humidity of that.