Chapter 4

Tina’s turn:

It usually starts just like this – an informal gathering. On this particular morning it was me, Beck, Mizz Lee and Mizz Patel sitting around having coffee together.

“I appreciate your invitation,” Mizz Patel said.

“We think you’re due the honor, Aneeta,” Mizz Lee returned. “Your efforts have been the gateway for many in this community, including the last two.”

“I fear I am enamored of these bright minds,” Mizz Aneeta returned. “We make provision for the world to recognize their abilities.”

I smiled. Abilities. Like my Terri. “I’m thinking we need to have a commemorative event.”

Mizz Lee looked at me, then surveyed the gang. “Excellent idea. This is a milestone. Of course, Auburn will confer official diplomas in the spring, so Terri and Rachel can receive their diplomas in front of the assembled students, but this is about us.”

“Yes,” Mizz Aneeta said. “I think that you – us – I’m part of this now, WE need to do this for our community.”

Johanna laid the bomb on the table. “Okay, listen up. We have socials all the time here. This bunch gets together to celebrate a particularly adept splinter removal. This, though, is momentous. How about...”

“Formal,” Mizz Lee said. “Social graces. Set the table. See what we can do to bring a little of a formal setting. Our girls need that as well as the math and the technology.”

Mizz Aneeta’s face lit up. “Brilliant. Mizz Lee, revered teacher,” she said, echoing a title that the Munchkins used, “you bring us something that is getting lost.”

“There used to be ‘finishing schools’ for young ladies wherein they were taught the social graces,” Mizz Lee continued. “We have brilliant, no, PAST brilliant young ladies, but we need to prepare them to live in a world where manners coexist with intelligence.”

I sighed. “I feel a class coming on.”

Beck doubled down. “And NOT just for our two prima donnas. All the munchkins.”

“Agreed,” I said as lights started going off in my head. “And maybe not just the Munchkins ... But who teaches?”

“I may not be ready for the banquet hall at Buckingham, but I think I could get through the basics with them. Formal setting, manners. Our girls HAVE manners. It’s part of their upbringing. We have to keep them in check because they do get exuberant.”

Johanna giggled. “Okay, Mizz Lee. You’ve gone and done it again. You’ll get the BIG classroom, because I think you’ll need it when word gets out...”

Mizz Lee sighed, a hint of smile there. “All I wanted was grammar and Shakespeare...”

“Mizz Lee,” I said softly, “You said this was your last and greatest class. You’re still here, you’re still THE teacher among us. We’d love it if...”

“I’ll do it.”

More conversation took place. We discussed the venue. Yes, the pavilion would survive white tablecloths and formal settings. Yes, between Henry’s wife and Grandma Desai, we think we could do a formal meal in a formal setting.

I giggled. “I guess Susan ‘n’ Jason’s barbecued ribs aren’t on the menu...”

Mizz Patel’s eyes twinkled. “I love the ribs, but no, we’d best do multiple courses. No finger foods. Maybe next time we can do a North African feast – a whole roast sheep with cous-cous.” She smiled. “I’ve done one of those with my husband in Tunisia. All fingers, all the time.”

“Here we go,” Johanna said. “Scope creep. For this one, though, the standard upscale American/British models.”

“Could be a college course,” Mizz Aneeta inserted. “Manners used to be expected. Now they’re quite rare.”

“We see that every day,” I sighed. “Manners went the same place as common sense. Our bunch, though...”

“One of the reasons I am here,” Mizz Lee said.

“And we deeply appreciate it.”

So the dinner’s a thing. It’s blocked out on our schedule, resources are being marshaled.

“Tina,” Mizz Carmela tagged me, “we’re going to spend a fortune getting formal settings.”

“Oh, Carmela,” I said, “how about calling Susan’s dad. He’s in the rental business. Maybe he can help.”

“Good idea,” she said. “I don’t know where I would store finger bowls and oyster forks.” She gave me her wry grin. Carmela’s Henry’s wife. She RUNS our pavilion’s food and drink and everything else. We didn’t give that position to her just because she was with Henry.

“We’re not gonna get ‘oyster fork’ deep into this, anyway.”

She smiled. “Those people at the country club did. I laugh. Tractor salesman, worried about which fork to use...”

“That’s it,” I said. “Mizz Lee’s going to ask YOU to help with teaching about table settings.”

“Me? with those girls?”

“And Derek.”

“Poor Derek. He is the long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.” She smiled. She knows a bit about Derek. Her husband Henry tells her about Derek’s research into lawn mowing. “I will help in any way you wish.”

Wheels went into motion. We pushed the date a couple of weeks out because we had to marshal a lot of resources and clear calendars.

And shopping. This group doesn’t fall into that tired old stereotype of a bunch of female shopaholics. That doesn’t mean that we’re poorly dressed, it’s just that shopping usually means having a specific list of needs in hand and locations pre-researched as to the best establishments likely to supply them, balancing accessibility, quality and price.

We need to shop. Special event.

Nikki’s turn:

Shopping. This dinner, it’s going to be a celebratory event. Not quite ‘state dinner at the White House’ formal, but a couple of orders of magnitude more formal than anything we’ve pulled since we’ve been a community.

Mizz Lee quickly passed the torch for planning to a little company that does ‘events’. Money changed hands.

“Don’t give it a second thought,” Alan told her. “We make a living like that – providing a lot of services people COULD do themselves, but it’s just easier to write a check. You relax, let those people DO it.”

“A sizable sum,” Mizz Lee sighed.

“We make sizable sums every day. It’s not every day that we put together an event that celebrates my daughter’s college graduation,” he continued. “We need YOUR sense of propriety and gentility to keep this on track, to help us learn. And you have enough to do, teaching us the niceties without fretting over the details of logistics.”

“I am willing to try ... the whole event.”

“You still are doing the whole event, we’re just giving you some tools to help.”

“Thank you,” she told him. “This place is special because the people are special, and my girls – well, actually my friends – I want to give them something memorable.”

So we WILL be memorable, okay?

And KA-CHUNK – the venue moved from our pavilion to a hall suitable for this growing event.

Invitations. The western bunch. And the (we hope) soon-to-be Western bunch, so that means Lotte the Pilatus makes a trip to southwest Louisiana with ALL her seats in place.

Rather than a mass migration somewhere to do the shopping, we chose the approach Yamamoto tried using to capture Midway Island in World War II. I told Cindy and Dana this as we flew off toward Atlanta.

“You need to get with Haley Simon at our western office,” she giggled. “She’s got a thing about history.”

“I just hope we’re more successful with OUR version than the Japanese were,” I laughed.

Cindy gets – you guessed it – a forest green sheath of a thing. Dana, honey-headed lovely, chose a tawny golden thing, a tittering sales-lady cooing as she held it up. I nodded. The look just clicked. Me? I ended up with something halfway between pink and magenta.

We got back. Susan’s sticking with a light blue. Damn that blonde hair of hers. She looks good in it, a little softer, a little bit more rounded, mommy-ish, like her own mom. Tina’s doing royal blue.

Big meeting after the shopping weekend. Tina sticking with a matronly brown. Kim’s going with that taupe thing she loves.

Let’s see – Mizz Donna –her big ol’ Bill demanded that she wear a red dress. Aunt Jenn and Laci chose blues just diverged a noticeable bit from one another. We’re almost a rainbow.

Rachel picked a medium grey.

Carlita from Louisiana did a forest green two shades darker than Cindy. Her brunette ‘sister’ Brindy was in a pretty maroon thing. Our other two Louisiana girls, Haley and Deena, wore identical dresses that I found out later they’d bought for Haley’s wedding, choosing the same dress in two separate shopping events, strictly by accident.

And heaven help us (and more specifically, Jerry Stengall) but Terri did basic black. The dreaded Little Black Dress. You’d expect a young teen to not look quite right. You’d be horribly wrong. Or completely right. Depends on your state of mind. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Infectious smile, and something that communicates outside the normal energy spectrum. She looked perfect.

And then the day is upon us.

Mizz Lee had THREE photographers on hand.

It’s a smiling crowd that files into the banquet hall this evening. The place is glittering – white table linens, glittering silverware, our places marked by calligraphed place tags.

Alan emceed the thing. “Ladies and gentlemen, let us begin this celebration. I have asked Judge Charlie Peebles, jurist emeritus of the State of Alabama, to deliver for us a blessing.”

Charlie Peebles’ turn:

I’m pushing ninety too hard some days but I’m invited to a dinner by my adopted granddaughter. Thankfully, this time Cindy and Dan flew down to get us in a bigger plane, two engines, a much easier thing for me to ease into and out of. I still marvel at the accomplishments of Cindy. She just seems to be on top of the world. Seeing her relinquish the pilot’s seat to her husband, she sat in back with us, bringing us up to date on the goings on, up to and including a new baby brother.