“It’s going to be tonight,” he says. He shudders. There’s a pillow under his head, and he pulls it up and over his face.
“How do you know?” I say. I may as well be asking a toddler how the spaghetti sauce got all over the walls, but I have to try.
“I can feel it,” Aaron says, voice thin through the pillow. “It’s here.”
“How does it happen?” I say.
Aaron is quiet so long, I nudge him just to make sure he hasn’t smothered himself. When he jumps, I realize I’ve woken him. He throws the pillow across the room. It hits the TV and falls to the floor.
Aaron pulls the remote from his pocket and turns the TV on. According to the news, there’s been a strike in Pakistan. Something to do with American missiles. Something to do with the threat of nuclear armament. The anchors theorize. Which countries have the bomb? Which don’t? Tune in at ten to find out—that sort of thing. It’s nothing you don’t see every few days, but it’s all the evidence Aaron needs.
“If there’s a detonation, even a hundred miles away, the fallout alone will keep us underground for ten years,” Aaron says.
That’s a lot of bottled water, I want to say. Instead, I tell him that it’s all right, that no bombs are falling, that I’m here.
I don’t know where Aaron gets his information. Maybe he makes stuff up. Maybe he’s trying to scare me, or maybe he believes what he says. Some of it he gets online. I know from his laptop’s browser history, which is war and death and almost never porn.
“I love you,” I say.
Aaron changes the channel. More Middle East, more death.
The pill bottle is on the dresser by the bed. I uncap it. The next part, I have to be careful.
“How about some medicine, sweetie,” I say, and Aaron knocks the bottle from my hand.
I’m on my hands and knees, picking up the little white pills, when Aaron says the country’s started testing new poisons on its own people. “They drive them out to New Mexico and gas them,” he says.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” I say.
The first pill’s the hardest, but it’s only the beginning. They’re antipsychotics, not miracle drugs, and sometimes it’s a week before they kick in. Even if I can get this one into him, I have a long road ahead of me.
“It’s totally true,” Aaron says. “I saw footage.”
I let it go. I pick up the last pill.
“I’ll make it worth your while,” I say.
I stand and pull off my shirt.
“We just did that,” he says, and I point out that we didn’t do everything.
Aaron pops the pill, and I go down on him.
Do I feel bad? Bad for using my wiles to get a pill into Aaron’s gut? I do not.
He groans. He’s just been inside me, and I don’t even want to think about what I’m tasting, and, before I know it, it’s over.
There’s no basement bathroom, so I brush my teeth over the kitchen sink. When I move back to the bed, Aaron’s asleep.
. . .
It’s almost midnight when he wakes. I’m watching a TV movie, and Aaron puts his hand between my legs.
“Not now, sweetie,” I say. I’m tired. I’m worried. I turn the TV off.
“For me?” he says.
I tell him to take another pill and we’ll talk. He takes the pill and pulls down his pants.
“Not until you wash it,” I say.
He sighs and moves to the kitchen. I laugh, watching him from the bed, his little butt flexing as he stands on tiptoes, trying to get himself stretched out over the sink. He gives up, goes upstairs, and, when he comes back down, he’s already hard.
I’m in no mood, but a deal’s a deal.
I get to work, he comes, I clean up, then I roll onto my side.
“I love you,” he says, and I hear him move to the pantry, hear the honey jar lid come unscrewed followed by a quiet, occasional slurping.
“Wake me up for the end of the world,” I say, and Aaron says, “Don’t worry, I will,” no trace of irony, sarcasm, any of it.
He’ll laugh when I tell him. When he’s well, we’ll have dinner someplace nice. We’ll celebrate another episode overcome. I’ll repeat the things he said, and he’ll shake his head, embarrassed, but also amazed.
“I don’t know,” he’ll say. “I don’t know what gets into me.” And he’ll reach across the table and take my hand and squeeze.
The TV comes on and Aaron turns the volume down low. I feel a hand on the back of my head, and I hope it’s not the one covered in honey. He smooths my hair, and I think how this is maybe going to be an easy one. In March, Aaron and I spent an afternoon under the bed. In May, he stayed in the basement, lights off, for a week. I’d leave for work and come home to cups brimming with piss. At the end of the week, it took a day’s worth of laxatives to empty him out.
In the morning, I’ll call Arby’s. Aaron’s boss knows the drill and, to date, has been surprisingly accommodating. Aaron has five days paid vacation left for the year, but I’m hoping to get him back to work in a day, hoping one of these years, by the end of the year, Aaron will have some days left and we’ll go somewhere the way people go places when they’re young and in love.
“Aaron,” I say. “I need you to take your medicine.”
“I will,” he says, but his hand stops smoothing my hair.
“Promise,” I say. “Promise me that in twelve hours you’ll take another pill.”
“I promise,” he says.
Here’s what I know: I know that, one of these times, it’s not going to be so easy. One of these days, no matter what I do, I won’t be able to get Aaron back on his meds. What I don’t know is what comes next. This is my fear, the fear of the unknown.
And, in this way, maybe Aaron and I aren’t so different—two people afraid of things beyond our control. Except that, in the end, I have a pretty good idea whose nightmare is destined to come true.
The mercury’s rising, ice caps flattening into the sea. We’ve got dams collapsing and power plants blowing sky-high, plus enough bombs to make the earth’s surface match the surface of the moon.
The end of the world? It could happen. No one’s denying that.
But it’s the end of Aaron that scares me.
. . .
I wake. I turn to put my arm around Aaron, but all I get is pillow. The TV’s off, the room dark. It’s still dark outside. I check under the bed. I check the cabinet below the kitchen sink. I check upstairs, then I go back to bed.
But I can’t sleep. Aaron doesn’t leave the basement, not when he’s like this. This is new, and new is scary, and, after a few minutes, I rise and turn on the lights. I move to his side of the bed. There’s a sock on his dresser, weirdly out of place. Beneath the sock, I find the pills, chalky, deformed, and I wonder how long each stayed tucked under his tongue before I looked away. This worries me, but not as much as what I see next, which is the honey jar empty, licked clean.
I tell myself no way could he be where I think he is, but, nights like this, I know better than to underestimate Aaron, and I don’t even bother to tie my shoes.
I’m up the stairs in seconds, out the door and running through the yard in a T-shirt and panties. My laces strike my ankles like the tongues of snakes. There’s a half-moon, and it slicks the driveway in a wet, ivory shine. The garage door is up and the lawnmower’s been pulled out. Gardening tools scatter the driveway like a tornado came and hit just the garage. I run faster, into the neighbor’s yard.
I’ve never seen her backyard, only the bees that rise from it. The perimeter is a fence of wood planks too high to climb, but an open gate tells me which way Aaron went. I pass through the gate and a floodlight flicks on.
And there, in the lamplight, is Aaron. And there is the hive. It’s just a white box, a white, wooden box half a coffin in length.
I don’t see any bees.
No, what I see is Aaron with a rake in his hands. He’s standing as far back from the box as he can, reaching with
the rake in what I can only guess is an attempt to pry open the lid. The rake quivers in his hands and the wide metal fan combs the hive.
Also, he’s got an EpiPen in each leg. They bob from his thighs like banderillas from the back of a bull.
I don’t know what a jarful of honey and two shots of adrenaline do to a man, but Aaron doesn’t look good. He shakes, almost convulsing, back heaving with every breath.
I could call 911. I could run back to the house and pick up the phone, but by then it would be too late.
“Aaron,” I say, and he jumps.
“Stay back!” he says. “It’s not safe!” He turns, and his face glistens, soaked, like ten years’ worth of tears just poured out of his eyes.
I’m a few yards away, and I take a step closer. I don’t want to scare him. I don’t want him making any sudden moves.
“I wanted to surprise you,” he says.
“I’m surprised,” I say. “Please, sweetie. Come back to bed.”
“I’m not tired,” he says.
His arms tremble and the rake scrapes the box. From somewhere, a bee rises and swims, lazy, in the air around us.
“Aaron,” I say. “I want you to put the rake down. Now.”
Perhaps they’re sleeping, I think. Perhaps, at night, the bees go to bed and don’t fly and don’t sting. God, I want to believe it.
I take another step forward, and Aaron shrieks.
“Stop!” he says.
I hold up my hands like a bank teller on the wrong end of a gun.
“I just want to help you, Aaron,” I say.
Somewhere in the beekeeper’s house, a light comes on.
“I ate all the honey,” he says, fresh tears fattening his cheeks.
“I don’t care about that.”
“No,” he says. “It’s not fair. You didn’t get any.”
“I did,” I say. “Remember the pear? I had some. I’m fine. The rest was for you.” I take another step. “I don’t even like honey all that much.”
The rake slaps the hive and rattles the lid.
“Don’t lie to me. You love honey. I know it.”
A bee lands on the rake, then lifts back into the sky. Another circles Aaron’s head.
I take another step. I’m close. If I lunged, I could grab the rake, but I don’t know about Aaron. He’s little, and I’m thinking I could take him down, but I worry what it will mean if I’m wrong.
A window opens above us and a head pokes out.
“You kids crazy?” the woman calls. “Get away from there! Get away from there right now!”
A hum has started up in the box, and that can’t be good. It sounds the way a button sounds when it’s come loose from your shirt in the dryer, only multiplied by, like, a thousand.
“Call 911!” I yell, and the window slams shut.
“Aaron,” I say. “Aaron, I want you to put the rake down and come inside.”
He’s looking right at me, but it’s like he can’t hear me, can’t hear past the grim determination to do the thing he set out to do.
He looks at the hive, and a bee lands on his shoulder.
My own tears are coming now. I’m no crier, but I can’t help it. Because it’s my fault. Because I shouldn’t have slept except when he slept. Because, finding him missing, I can’t believe I went back to bed. Those five minutes, I think. In those five minutes, I might have found him, stopped him before he left the garage.
“Once the bombs fall, there won’t be any honey,” Aaron says, his voice garbled and faraway-seeming. There are bees in his hair, bees covering the lid of the box, a patina of bees with fat abdomens and bright wings. Their wings shine like diamonds in the security lights, and I give up the hope that Aaron hasn’t been stung.
When we were kids, our moms took us to play at a park with monkey bars and swings and a slide. On one side of the playground, a red pipe rose like a snorkel from the earth. It connected belowground to another pipe that rose from the other end of the park. Each pipe was fitted with a megaphone the shape and size of a showerhead and perforated by the same tiny, black holes. I’d stand at one end and Aaron would stand at the other, and, across the playground, we would throw our voices at each other. Our words came out cavernous, like shouts from behind closed doors. We giggled. We practiced cursing. We told dirty jokes. And, one day, Aaron said, “I love you.” I laughed, and Aaron said, “I do, Grace. I love you.” We were ten years old, and we’ve said it ever since.
“It’s for you,” he says now, and his voice arrives like an echo, like it used to when he told me he loved me before either of us knew what loving the other meant or what it would mean.
The first sting is in my side. I see the bee caught in my shirt. It wriggles, trying to get free.
“All of the honey,” he says. “For you.”
I leap. I knock Aaron to the ground and pry the rake from his hands. I fling it like a javelin across the yard, far from the hive, and I sit on Aaron’s chest, hands pinning his wrists to the lawn.
A door opens, and a storm trooper steps out. Or that’s what she looks like, our neighbor dressed in white, some kind of beekeeper’s suit and what looks like a watering can at her side.
Her face is hidden behind something like a mask made for fencing, but, when she speaks, her words pierce the mask, clear and unfiltered.
“I don’t know what you kids are up to,” she says, “but, for the love of God, please don’t move.”
They say that, with enough adrenaline, you can do anything. You hear stories of men wrestling torn arms back from alligators and mothers lifting cars off their kids. I’m on top of Aaron, but I see too late that the weight of my body is nothing compared to what courses through his veins, and I see that I’ve failed him again.
“Please,” I say, and then I’m in the air. I’m flying. I’m falling. I’m tumbling, and I hit something, hard. The hive comes apart, the buzz turns to roar, and the moon, like magic, goes out of the sky.
I hear grunting and turn to see Aaron dragging himself toward me on his elbows. He’s like a soldier passing beneath barbed wire. The woman in the bee suit stands over him, pumping a thin fog from her can into the air.
I feel a sting, then another. My legs are lightning, and, soon, I can’t even look at Aaron, who’s no longer crawling, but rolling, a man on fire.
I look up, into the night, into the heart of the pulsing, vibrating ceiling above.
And then the swarm descends, looking, for all the world, like the end of the world.
Refund
The evening began in argument. Luke’s first-grade teacher had called a parent-teacher conference, and Joy and I were expected that night at school. This was not the standard midyear check-in. For months, we’d been getting notes. Luke wasn’t finishing his schoolwork. Luke didn’t play well with others. Luke wasn’t paying attention in class.
Dinner was over, the table cleared of everything but a cup, a fork, and my son’s plate. On the plate sat a sad mound of boiled-to-death broccoli.
“No cookies,” Joy said. “No dessert until dinner’s done.”
Luke had never been big on vegetables. Even as a baby, he’d spit out anything green.
“Broccoli’s good for you,” my wife said.
“Not like this,” Luke said. “Boiled vegetables have no nutritional value. That’s what turns the water green, the vitamins and minerals. What’s left is fiber. And fiber just makes you poop.”
My son, six years old.
Joy sighed and shot me a glance. “C’mon, Sam, back me up on this.”
In the pantry, the Oreos waited, their torn cellophane and the stale ones I always skipped on my way down the row to the cookies that still snapped when halved. I said nothing. A limp stalk hung from Luke’s fork, wet and terrible, and all I could think was how I hadn’t eaten mine.
Luke didn’t whimper. He didn’t whine or cry. He was a quiet kid. If he had complaints, he kept them mostly to himself. His fork rose, pushed the pale, little tree past his lips and into his m
outh. He chewed, eyes closed, hating it.
“Let the kid have an Oreo,” I said.
Joy’s look let me know that, once again, I’d fucked up. We were supposed to be a team, to put up a unified front. But we both knew who was Abbott in this marriage and who was Costello, who looked like the idiot and who called the shots. And, even if I got the boy’s laughs, it was Joy who got the last good-night kiss, the first hug home from school.
Luke shoveled what was left on his plate into his mouth, chewed, and chased the broccoli down with milk from a coffee cup, the blue one with the steam engine circling the side.
“Very good,” Joy said. She pulled the Oreos from the pantry. Our rule was two, but, because he’d been such a good boy, Joy gave him three. Luke beamed and squeezed her arm. That I had been his Oreo advocate had, it seemed, slipped his mind.
Joy was always doing this, stealing the moment. Just that morning, I’d surprised the family with breakfast, only for Joy—Luke stumbling, sleepy, into the kitchen—to cry, “Look, honey, pancakes. We made you pancakes!”
There was no we about it as Luke pushed his face into Joy’s hip, hugged her leg. Then she got to sit with him, butter his cakes, and ladle warm syrup to his liking while I was stuck, sweating, behind the griddle. My fear was that she would leave me, and, that morning, it was as if I was out of the picture already, pushed past the mat, past the frame.
Luke was now on Oreo number three.
A man shouldn’t marry someone smarter than him. He does, and he’ll spend the rest of his life feeling like something less than a man. Joy was smart. She’d gone to college, graduated debt-free on her parents’ dime. I’d done college too, but Joy was crazy-smart. And, any argument she couldn’t win with logic, she’d win by riling me up.
“I’m going for a walk,” I said.
“Hmmm?” Joy said, ignoring me and . . . something else. Was she? She was! Slipping Luke Oreo number four. Motherfucker!
“I said I’m taking a walk.”
“In this weather?” Joy said.
I slipped on my jacket, my hat and shoes.
“Well, hurry,” she said. “We have to meet Luke’s teacher in an hour.”
The Heaven of Animals: Stories Page 8