Telling the Bees Read online

  The entire operation took less than two hours from start to finish, but we were so engrossed that neither my father, Claire, nor myself took note of the dwindling light that played out as we at last capped the hive. Still feeling the exhilaration of a job well done, we made the leisurely stroll from the far end of our property back to the honey shed to return our tools to their proper shelves.

  “A place for everything and everything in its place,” my father intoned from habit.

  Emerging from the shed into the dusky shadows of the oncoming evening, Claire uttered a tiny gasp not unlike the one that had issued from her lips earlier that day.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Half past six or thereabouts,” my father replied after a quick glance at the sky above.

  “Are you hungry? I am sure Mrs. Honig would love for you to join us for supper,” my father uttered in a practically unheard-of glut of verbiage.

  “Oh no. I have to go,” she said, but she made no move to leave at first. Claire looked to me and then to my father as if to speak, but no words came. Instead, she stared a moment or two longer at the setting sun and then turned and made a mad dash for home.

  Thirteen

  BEE SPACE: Measuring between one-quarter to three-eighths of an inch, it is the space around which modern, movable-frame hives are designed as it is large enough to permit comfortable passage by worker bees but too small to encourage comb building and too large to induce propolizing activities.

  Claire stopped coming around our house the very next day. Though I thought to ask her when I ran into her at school from time to time over the next few days, she seemed reluctant to stop and talk whenever I approached.

  Which was just as well, I suppose, as I learned later that my mother had gone next door one morning shortly after Claire’s daily visits had ceased to inquire after her health only to be told in no uncertain terms by Mrs. Straussman that Claire was just fine, thank you, and furthermore that she would not be coming around to dally with our bees or any other such nonsense in the future.

  I learned of my mother’s visit to the Straussmans’ house when I overheard her telling my father what had occurred that same evening as I sat on the front porch swing after dinner silently observing the constellations overhead.

  Eloise had already retired to her bedroom to work on her homework, and my mother and father sat in our parlor—he in his overstuffed chair and she in her wooden rocker—discussing the day’s events, as was their after-dinner habit.

  “I realize a family has a right to conduct their own business as they see fit,” my mother said, a trace of indignation tainting her usually sunny voice. “But there is just no call for that sort of rudeness between neighbors. The very idea, calling me ‘meddlesome,’ Walter. I was simply worried about the girl. I thought she might have taken ill, after all.”

  I heard the rustle of paper, and even as I stared at the handle of the Big Dipper, counting and recounting the number of stars from tip to tip, I could visualize the deliberate way my father had of opening the newspaper wide and giving it a shake before turning the page, shaking it once more, and folding it back to readable proportions.

  “I worry about her, Walter,” my mother said, and then she lowered her voice so that I could barely hear her whisper. “We still don’t know what happened to that boy.”

  “That’s right. You don’t know what happened,” my father said. “And no good can come of stirring that hornet’s nest up again, Elizabeth. There’s already been enough ill will to last a lifetime.”

  I heard the newspaper rustle again and then my mother’s voice. It was louder, more insistent, than before.

  “Now, you know I believe what the Good Book says about judging not lest ye be judged, but, Walter, I swear to you, there’s something not right about that family. You’ve seen that poor girl’s mother as I have, sitting on her front porch, shaking her cane at everyone who passes by like they’ve no right at all to stroll along a perfectly lovely public street. I’ve seen her frighten the living daylights out of innocent schoolchildren who’ve done no more harm than to step an inch or two onto her precious front lawn. Why she holds it so dear, dry and neglected as it is, I’ll never know. Even you must admit I’ve always held my tongue when it has come to that woman until this very moment. But really, Walter, there’s just no call for it. No call for it at all.”

  It was true that most of the neighborhood children, myself included, were loath to walk past the Straussman house for fear of incurring Mrs. Straussman’s considerable wrath. It was also true that as time wore on and her tetchy reputation seemed to grow right along with her girth, quite a few of these same children took to spreading tales, especially around Halloween, about seeing Mrs. Straussman—dressed all in black, as was her habit—hunkered over an enormous iron cauldron when the moon was full. It was said that she could be seen stirring all manner of ghoulish ingredients. Some even said they’d seen little children tossed, kicking and screaming, into the pot as she chanted mysterious incantations that made one’s hair curl. I’d even heard some of the older children say that they’d heard from their own parents that the Straussman family had stolen a baby years ago to replace the one they’d lost, while others insisted they’d used it for far darker purposes.

  I myself refrained from such fanciful slander, but I cannot say I spoke out on her behalf either. Perhaps it was because I, through my family home’s proximity to hers, had been one of the more frequent recipients of her increasingly vitriolic confrontations.

  This is what had made the experience of sipping tea from golden cups with Mrs. Straussman all the more disquieting. It had somehow singled me out from the rest of my schoolmates, at least in my own mind.

  Though I had told none of them of my experience, I had begun to nurture an unaccustomed sense of superiority over them, as though I alone had entered the belly of the beast and, having returned unscathed, I alone need not fear the specter of their childish fantasies.

  I was still basking in my clandestine glory on a blustery morning nearly six weeks after “my little tea party,” which is how I’d come to think of my semiprivate audience with Mrs. Straussman. I had just come out of my house to join a group of my classmates who were walking to school together when a sudden gust of wind whipped some homework papers right out of Mary McMasters’s hands. The next thing we all knew, Mary was gasping in horror, and her homework was skittering across the lawn and up onto the Straussmans’ front porch. Though Mrs. Straussman’s porch seat was vacant, even the possibility that she might open the door at any moment was enough to prevent any of the other assembled children from venturing onto the forbidden lawn to retrieve Mary’s errant papers.

  “Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once,” I solemnly intoned as if I’d coined the words myself, confident none of my school chums had read William Shakespeare, another of the cherished poets whose verses my mother had helped me memorize. Then with what I fancied a gallant nod to Mary McMasters, I dashed across the lawn and up the porch steps after the fluttering papers, which by this time were plastered against the Straussmans’ front door. With a triumphant flourish, I snatched the papers up and returned slowly—more slowly, in fact, than I knew even the bravest among the gathering before me would have dared.

  “Here you are,” I said simply, straightening the papers and handing them to Mary, who stood dumbstruck by the side of the road.

  “Thank you, Albert,” she said, making the statement sound more like a question than a declaration.

  “You’re welcome,” I said with only the slightest hint of a bow before I turned and began walking to school with an unfamiliar spring in my step.

  I did not tell Mary McMasters, or any in the cluster of awestruck children around her, that only the afternoon before Claire had mentioned to me that their family doctor had prescribed twenty-four hours’ bed rest for her mother after a flare-up of gout and high blood pressure and so I was fairly certain she would not
interrupt my heroics with a sudden looming appearance at her front door.

  Seldom recognized outside my home for anything other than my taller-than-average frame and disproportionate shyness, I did not consider beforehand how my simple rescue of a classmate’s homework assignment would become the talk of the school that day or how many times Claire or Hilda Straussman would overhear the tale. Nor did I anticipate that the story would grow ever more exaggerated with each retelling until, by day’s end, I was said to have stood bold as you please on the Straussmans’ front porch, thumbs cocked to my ears as I waggled my hands up and down and dared the old witch—for sadly that is what my classmates said I had called Mrs. Straussman, though I swear I said no such thing—to come out and get me.

  “I dare you! I dare you, you old hag!” I was said to have shouted one last time before turning on my heels and strutting down her porch stairs and all the way to school, my newfound admirers trailing behind me.

  And so it went all day long. After school, I was stopped on the dirt road in front of the schoolhouse by yet another group of classmates, who were clapping me on the back and urging me to tell the tale again, when I spied Claire and Hilda cutting across the school lawn so as to avoid having to pass by us. Breaking away from my admirers with hurried apologies, I walked slowly around the corner after them before sprinting to Claire’s and Hilda’s sides. Wordlessly, the sisters quickened their pace.

  “Wait up, Claire,” I beseeched. “Let me explain.”

  “What’s to explain?” Claire replied without turning her head.

  “I just retrieved Mary McMasters’s homework,” I said. “It blew out of her hands and got stuck up against your front door. I just ran and got it back.”

  Claire said nothing, but she stopped, as did Hilda. Slowly they turned around, and then Claire lifted her eyes to mine and held them there. Hilda, silent as always, seemed to fade like watercolors into the background.

  “I didn’t do what they said I did. I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Then why did you let them say you did?” Claire asked at last.

  I shrugged. I did not want to admit it to Claire, but it had felt good—if only for a moment—to feel like a hero. And it had all seemed harmless enough.

  “I thought you were my friend,” Claire said as if everything that has a beginning must also have an end. “You’re the one who’s always preaching to me about the truth.”

  “I didn’t lie. I didn’t start the stories. That was Robert Hooker and his brother Ellis. But once all the stories got started, I didn’t know how to stop them,” I said, knowing even as I uttered the words how full of smoke and mirrors they were. Claire continued to hold her eyes on mine. Another of my mother’s scrapbook quotes came to mind, this one from Mark Twain: “When in doubt, tell the truth.”

  It was as simple and as complicated as that, and it was, I knew, exactly what I should have done all along.

  “I am truly sorry, Claire,” I said, and I truly meant what I said. But for Claire, it was never enough.

  “You know, Albert, for all your fancy words, you’re not always so good at living up to them,” Claire said.

  I started to protest, but just then a group of schoolmates rounded the bend and shouted their greetings to me. I turned my head to wave, and when I turned back around Claire and Hilda had resumed their brisk walk home.

  Claire continued to avoid me for the rest of the week after the homework incident. The week after that, school let out for the summer, and I did not speak to her again until after Labor Day. I wish that I had.

  I watched her from my backyard gathering walnuts that long-ago summer. I even waved to her once or twice as I made my rounds between our front hives, but she turned her head without acknowledging me and walked quickly back into her house. It’s hard to say whether she stayed away because of her mother’s or her own accord or some combination of the two. I only know it was a long, lonely summer, and my bees and my books were my only small comfort.

  When we first met again at school the following September, Claire made a good show of ignoring me when I first attempted to greet her on the steps of the building.

  “My mother was worried when you stopped coming round,” I said after I pursued her down the hallway, hardly able to contain my sincere expression of joy at being able to speak to her after so long an absence. Indeed, I surprised myself with my exuberance. “Have you been well? My mother inquired after your health, you know.”

  I could see by the softening of the set of her jaw that Claire had been unaware of any such efforts on her behalf. So I told her that my mother had gone not once but twice to her house to inquire after her despite my father’s admonition to leave well enough alone. It had been Hilda who met my mother at the door the second time and it was she who had quietly but assuredly discouraged her from any further intervention on Claire’s account.

  “I missed you,” I said. Or at least that is what I intended to say, but the bell rang just after Claire whispered that she had missed me and she had already run off to class.

  I saw Claire later that morning, and despite the teasing I feared I would face when I returned to my desk after lunch I invited her to sit with me and eat. It wasn’t exactly like old times, as we’d hardly had time the preceding spring to sow anything but the most tenuous friendship, but I attempted to reseed the garden by turning the conversation back to our shared love of bees.

  “Remember the swarm you helped us capture?” I said in a voice barely above a whisper, and I was instantly rewarded with the ignition of a flinty spark in her sky blue eyes. I had forgotten how intensely that spark could shine. “Honestly, Claire, you should see how strong the hive has grown.”

  Fourteen

  KISSED BY BEES: When Plato was still a child in the cradle, bees were said to have settled on his mouth, which was taken as a sign, as Pliny wrote, “announcing the sweetness of his enchanting soul.” Similar stories were told of Socrates, Pindar, Saint Ambrose, and others. To be touched on the lips by bees, the ancients believed, was to be touched by the gift of eloquence.

  In her younger years, there was something about Claire that drew people to her. My mother clearly adored her, and while my father’s words toward her could appear abrupt or even harsh to those unfamiliar with his somewhat taciturn demeanor, I believe he held a grudging fondness for Claire that at times surpassed even that which he felt for his own daughter. Of course I do not mean to imply that my father did not love my sister, for indeed he did. But here is the difference: My sister had giggled uncontrollably the one time he had led her to a wild swarm and had asked her to repeat what for him was a sacred charm passed on from his father’s father to him.

  To her credit, Eloise had tried to hold a straight face as she’d knelt on the ground next to our new hive with my father and, following his lead, had scooped up a handful of dirt and flung it into the air. Unfortunately, she’d flung hers straight upward, covering both her hair and my father’s in a shower of soil and leaves that left them both sputtering and shaking their heads.

  “It’s all right,” my father said. “Just say the words.”

  “Oh, Papa,” Eloise replied, wiping the dirt and tears of laughter from her eyes, “I feel so silly.”

  “Against a swarm of bees, take earth, stumble with thy right hand under right foot,” my father had instructed Claire to say as they knelt beside the next wild swarm we’d captured. Unlike Eloise, Claire had not laughed when she’d been asked to scoop up a handful of dirt.

  “Now say,” my father solemnly said, and Claire had echoed his words, “I catch underfoot. Earth avails against all creatures whatever, and against envy, and against forgetfulness, and against the great tongue of man.”

  And with that, my father had tossed his handful of dirt on the stragglers from the swarm that crawled among the blades of grass where he and she had knelt as I watched.

  “There’s just something so spirited about her,” my mother so often said that my sister Eloise began to refer to her as “ghos
t girl” to everyone save my parents. Claire was thirteen years old then, and unlike her older sister, who even as a child foreshadowed her mother’s looming hulk that presumed to dwarf the sun itself, Claire was as light as a moonbeam.

  “I can’t imagine where she gets her spark. Certainly not from that woman,” I overheard my mother whisper one evening after dinner as she and my father sat together in the parlor discussing the day’s events. Earlier that afternoon Claire had popped up from behind the honeysuckle hedgerow separating our two families’ properties shouting an Indian war whoop that had nearly startled my father out of his bee suit. While my father had rightfully scolded her for making such a loud and sudden racket so near to the bees, even he had had to concede that most of the field workers had been away from the hive collecting honey at the time and so no real harm was done.

  “And forgive me for saying so, Walter, but I believe she frightened you more than she did the bees,” my mother gently chided, and when my father protested she laughed. “Why, you’d think you’d just been ambushed by Sitting Bull himself instead of that little slip of a girl.”

  “It just seems as if she’s always underfoot these days,” my father had replied. The uncharacteristic harshness of his words surprised me, for at the time I had begun to think he preferred her company not only over my sister but me.

  “Can’t you see that poor girl’s starved for attention?” my mother said, but she said nothing more, at least that I could hear above the steady click-click-click of her knitting needles.