The Honey Bus

by Meredith May

  Grandpa cut the motor with the last rays of the sun, and even after the bus shuddered to stillness, my ears continued to ring. My arms ached and my throat was dry. We had slight wax sheens on our hair and skin, and we smelled of butter and sage. I had never worked so hard that my body felt asleep before bedtime. Grandpa lifted the gate at the bottom of the holding tank, held an old mayonnaise jar under the spout, and filled it with honey. He reached for a roll of square white labels with red lettering and slapped one on the jar:

  WILDFLOWER HONEY

  U.S. Choice

  From the Big Sur Apiaries

  E. F. Peace

  “Here you go,” he said, handing me the jar. “You made that.”

  The honey glowed in my hands, like a living, breathing thing. It was warm, and I loved it because it made sense when nothing else did. It was a pure example of what Grandpa had been trying to explain inside the bus—that beautiful things don’t come to those who simply wish for them. You have to work hard and take risks to be rewarded.

  But he wasn’t exactly correct when he said I alone made the honey. Both of us harvested it, but the bees made it. They’d collected nectar from millions of flowers to make this one small pound of honey in my hands.

  All of us, humans and insects, in our separate ways, had traveled far, navigated dangers and labored to exhaustion for a shared obsession.

  We made this honey because we believed we could.

  9

  Unaccompanied Minor

  1977

  The summer after I turned seven, a letter appeared in the mailbox addressed to me. Granny read it first before handing it over.

  “Your father wants you to visit him and his new wife,” she said. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

  I hadn’t heard from Dad since we said goodbye in the driveway two years ago. I unfolded the crisp pages and held them to my chest, tracing the imprints where Dad had pressed the pen to paper, as if to convince myself that his hand had really made the marks, and that he had written these words specifically for me. It was physical proof that Dad did love me after all. Granny and Mom almost had me believing that Dad was gone for good, but now I had evidence showing they were 100 percent wrong. I believed my luck had finally changed, and now good things were finally going to start happening to me. Not only was I finally going to see Dad again; now I had a second mom. Grandpa had explained that step meant you got two of something. Could it be, that like the bees, I was getting a new queen to replace the one who was failing?

  “I want to go,” I said. “Matthew, too?”

  “He’s too young to fly alone. Airline rules.”

  Granny frowned as she stuffed the letter back in the envelope, and I couldn’t tell if I had permission to go or not. She sat there for a moment, tapping the corner of the letter into her palm, thinking all this over.

  “Let’s talk to your mother,” she said.

  Mom sat up in bed, scanned the letter with a blank expression, and then let it drop from her fingers and flutter to the floor. She picked up her paperback murder mystery and resumed reading, as if Granny and I weren’t in the room. A few seconds passed, and she lowered her book and peered at us over the top.

  “You two can go now,” she said in monotone.

  “Sally...” Granny said in the soothing voice she reserved for calming elementary school students. She took a few steps toward the bed.

  “I SAID GET OUT!”

  Granny jumped back and put her hand over her heart, then shooed me out of the room, softly closing the door behind her with a click. I could hear Mom’s muffled sobbing, and knew that my trip planning was indefinitely postponed. I retreated to the living room, cranked the TV and disappeared into the canned laughter of a sitcom, slamming my senses with forced cheerfulness. I was determined to see my father, no matter how much Mom cried about it, and I refused to let my visit get lost in her sadness. Mom’s mood could suck all the energy out of the room, leaving everyone around her weary and hopeless. Now that Dad was reaching for me, I couldn’t let Mom ruin it.

  Eventually it was decided that I could go. There was no direct discussion with me about it; just one day Granny let me know she had written to my father to make arrangements for me to visit for one week. In the days leading up to my trip, Mom became increasingly anxious. She tossed and sighed in her sleep, her mind racing with a growing list of things she wanted me to retrieve from Dad’s house.

  “Hey, hey, you awake?” she’d whisper in the middle of the night.

  I would try to fake-snore, but then she’d shake my shoulder, just a little.

  “Meredith.”

  “Hmmmm?”

  “Make sure you get my Bobby Darrin records. And the Kingston Trio. Those are mine, not his.”

  I was drowsy, but I knew she’d remind me many more times, so I didn’t answer. She poked me again. “Did you hear what I said? Repeat it back to me.”

  “Bobby and King Tree,” I mumbled.

  In a flash, she reached under the blankets and flipped me around to face her. A cymbal crash of adrenaline woke me, and when my vision registered, her face was just inches from mine. She seized my shoulders and spoke slowly, pronouncing each syllable.

  “Bob-by Darr-in. King-ston Tri-o.”

  Her grip was strong, too strong, and the desperation I could feel in it gave me the willies. I repeated the names just so she’d release me. She let go, and I wriggled to the opposite edge of the bed out of her reach. But her voice still found me in the dark.

  “Don’t forget the gold baby bracelets. Now listen—there were two. One is yours and one is Matthew’s. Your names are inscribed in them. I know he has them. If he says he doesn’t, he’s lying.”

  I said I would, only to appease her. I didn’t care about any of this stuff, and I didn’t want to ask Dad for it, and I resented her for taking my trip and turning it into hers. But I knew there would be hell to pay if I didn’t follow her instructions. Each night, her list grew. She wanted the pearl necklace and matching teardrop earrings she wore on her wedding day. The framed Sears baby portraits of Matthew and me. A wool coat that had belonged to her grandmother. She hovered as Granny helped me pack, pulling some of my clothes back out of the white suitcase to ensure there was enough room for her things. Worried I wouldn’t remember everything, she wrote a list of her possessions and pinned it to the orange lining of the suitcase.

  When my plane ticket arrived in the mail, Granny ripped open the envelope and examined it closely for the price. “If he can afford this, the cheapskate can pay more child support.”

  She settled before her writing desk, opened a drawer, and whisked out a thick piece of cream-colored stationery. I heard her sentences scratch out in a prosecutorial fury. Occasionally she held the letter up and examined her prose, reflected for a moment, then slapped the paper down to strengthen her arguments. Once she was satisfied, she licked the envelope and added the letter to my suitcase.

  I didn’t let myself get visibly upset by all the errands Mom and Granny were giving me. And once I was above the clouds on my fourth free 7-Up, it was incredibly easy to forget all about their notes in my suitcase. On my right shoulder I wore a required sticker that read, “Unaccompanied Minor,” which I quickly figured out meant that I was lavished with attention from stewardesses bearing snacks and toys. The pretty ladies checked on me constantly, wanting to know if I wanted pillows or more crayons or if I’d like a pair of silver wings pinned to my denim jacket. I was the only kid alone on the plane, and that made me interesting to the other passengers, who asked me a lot of questions about where I was traveling. I was so excited to see Dad that I eagerly explained, but I didn’t always get the response I expected. Some of the adults were delighted when I told them I was on my way to see my father; but others gave me a pained smile and changed the subject.

  When the plane touched down, a stewardess instructed me
to wait until everyone exited before I could get out of my seat. Those were the rules for children flying alone, but it was terrible torture. Time seemed to go backward as people fussed with their coats and bags while I bounced in my chair, silently pushing them down the aisle with an imaginary snowplow. Finally, my keeper materialized, took my hand and led me off the airplane. The airport was teeming with people, so many arms and legs blocking my view that I couldn’t look for Dad. I clutched the stewardess’s hand, afraid I’d get lost in the throng.

  “What does your father look like?”

  “He has black hair and he’s tall,” I managed, which didn’t narrow things down much. It had been so long since I’d seen him, I wasn’t exactly sure if I could pick him out in a crowd. She pointed to a stranger standing near a window with brown hair, and another chubby man sitting in a chair who was reading a newspaper. I shook my head no to both. She walked me toward the seated man anyway.

  “Sir, is this your daughter?”

  The man startled and lowered his newspaper. He shook his head and hid himself behind it again. I strained harder to see through the knot of people, but I couldn’t locate Dad. We walked through the crowd once, twice, and doubled back for a third pass as my anticipation hardened into a stone in my throat. He forgot to come. Or worse, he remembered, but still didn’t make it. He had changed his mind and decided he didn’t want me after all. I braced myself for the moment when the stewardess would walk me back onto the plane to fly back to California. Granny was right. Dad was no-good.

  I could feel the stewardess pick up her pace. The crowd was thinning, and she was running out of options. I wondered whether she could take me to her house. As my escort guided me toward a help desk, a man with a bowl haircut and a bushy mustache started walking toward us. The stewardess pointed.

  “That him?”

  The man was wearing what looked like a disco shirt with a wide collar. The fabric looked slippery, and had a print of black spirals bouncing over a maroon-and-green background. His tan corduroy pants flared at the bottom. My dad was the opposite—he had short hair and a shave, and always wore plain button-down work shirts tucked into straight slacks. This person was shaggy, more like a hitchhiker. Or one of the Monkees.

  “No,” I said.

  “Hey, kiddo.”

  The deep voice stopped me cold, and I instantly let go of the pretty lady’s hand. The hitchhiker man tossed his bangs out of his eyes and grinned. “You must’ve walked right by me. I was standing here the whole time,” he said.

  I looked up and saw the sharp V of his widow’s peak and knew it was Dad. I jumped into his arms and buried my face in his neck, inhaling a familiar scent of WD-40 and Old Spice. When I looked up again, the stewardess was gone. Dad kissed my forehead, tickling me with his mustache.

  “You look different,” I said.

  “What, this?” he said, tugging on his mustache.

  “Yeah, it’s scratchy.”

  He set me down, and then stretched my arms out to either side to assess my wingspan. “I wasn’t looking for a girl so tall.”

  I detected pride in his voice, and felt as if I had accomplished something incredibly grand, simply by growing. I was brilliant, I was miraculous and I was perfect beneath his approving gaze. As he led me through a labyrinth of bustling corridors, I sensed something inside me click back into place, a feeling of becoming whole again.

  Dad drove a two-door Ford Mercury Monarch he called “The Beltway Banana.” It was yellow inside and out, from the paint job to the upholstery, the steering wheel and even the seat belts. Its exuberant color amplified my already giddy mood. On the drive, Dad explained how to pronounce my stepmother’s name: “Dee-ann.” It sounded glamorous to me, a name belonging to a stewardess, most definitely. D’Ann had a big Italian family, Dad explained, with lots of brothers and sisters and cousins, and I was going to meet them all. Twenty or so relatives would feast at a long table in the middle of Nana Stella’s kitchen, he said, eating spaghetti and cannoli until our bellies burst.

  “And,” Dad said, pausing for dramatic effect, “Stella always makes three desserts.”

  I had no idea Dad was having this much fun. I had been so busy missing him that I hadn’t really considered what he was doing in Rhode Island. Now I could see that he had been rebuilding a family. But were these new people my family, too? I wasn’t quite sure how it all worked.

  “Did you get my letters?” Dad asked.

  I told him I got the one with the plane ticket.

  “What about all the others?”

  “Others?”

  Dad clenched his jaw and muttered what sounded like a curse word under his breath. I told him I didn’t get any other letters from him.

  “They must be throwing them out,” he said.

  Each day Granny drove down Via Contenta to the post office at the end of the block, opened a small door with the number 23 on it and pulled out the mail. She brought home bills and news magazines and letters from relatives and friends. If there were letters from Dad, I never saw them. Granny liked to say Dad was untrustworthy; but this made Granny downright dastardly. I looked down at the denim jumper and matching jacket I wore—a gift from Granny for the plane ride. I couldn’t understand how the same person who took me shopping for a new outfit could also steal the most precious thing from me. My mind spun trying to find a logical explanation. Maybe the post office lost his letters. Maybe Dad made a mistake and sent them to the wrong address. Maybe Granny was just saving the letters for when I got older. Did Dad really write to me, or just say he did? Or maybe there were just too many secrets and lies flying back and forth for me to sort anything out.

  “Why don’t you call on the phone?” I asked.

  “I’ve tried. Your grandmother hangs up on me.”

  I felt stuck. Granny, Mom and Dad were locked in a war that was bigger and stronger than me. My family was the opposite of a beehive. Instead of working for one another, all they did was conspire to make each other miserable.

  Dad turned on the radio and a punchy jazz tune filled the car, the harmony gently blowing our bad mood away. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the beat, and then informed me the saxophonist was Charles Lloyd, who lives in Big Sur. Grandpa and I rarely saw any other people when we went to his hives, and it seemed strange to think anyone else lived there. Especially a famous person.

  “Does Frank still have his bees?”

  I told Dad that Grandpa was teaching me how to be a beekeeper.

  “I remember he took me inside that old bus once,” Dad said.

  “You’ve been in the honey bus?” I couldn’t believe these two separated parts of my life were once ever together.

  Dad got a faraway look and explained it was before I was born. “Your grandpa was always nice to me. Make sure you tell him hello from me.”

  I promised.

  Dad now lived on the opposite side of Narragansett Bay in Wickford, a tiny colonial town with a main street of eighteenth-century brick buildings. We passed a harbor of sailboats gently rocking side to side, and turned into a neighborhood of simple one-story New England–style homes with painted shutters and screened-in porches. Dad parked before a faded blue house, and as we got out of the car, the screen door swung open and a petite woman bounced toward us, her dark hair swept back in a long ponytail. She was put-together in stylish clothes and matching heels, and she wore makeup and her nails were painted, and I immediately thought of my convertible-driving Fantasy Mom.

  “I’ve heard so much about you,” she said, wrapping me in a Chanel Nº 5–scented embrace.

  D’Ann held my hand and twirled me around to get a good look at me.

  “You look just like your father,” she said. She didn’t pronounce her r’s, and the way she said “fah-thah” made me giggle nervously. But she laughed with me, like we were best friends sharing a private joke. “Who wants ice
cream?” she said.

  Just like that, she was approved.

  When I stepped inside Dad’s house, familiar objects triggered a dreamy sensation of walking back in time. I recognized bits of my old life, but in this new context I became uncertain of what I was remembering. There was the same black Naugahyde couch, but with an enormous black-and-white cat snoozing where Betty once sat and twirled my hair. A painted eagle on the headboard of a rocking chair looked familiar. Dad’s reel-to-reel music player was in the living room, but now it shared space with an upright player piano.

  D’Ann patted the space next to her on the piano bench, and I sat down. She folded back the music rack to expose the ivory keys, then slid open a door in the upper panel and inserted a scroll with perforated dots into the well. She put her feet on two pedals and pushed them one at a time, and the keys started moving all by themselves, banging out the Elvis tune “Hound Dog.” My mouth fell open as a ghost tore it up on the keyboard, and I asked her to do it again, and again, transfixed. D’Ann swapped scrolls and then “Great Balls of Fire” filled the air. She opened a nearby closet to show me the top shelf was filled to the ceiling with more scrolls.

  Thus began my week of living like a princess. I pretended that I was an only child with two happy parents who doted on me. I didn’t even have to share the limelight with Matthew—a wicked thought, but I couldn’t help myself. It gave me a rush to try on a different girl’s life, and I inhabited my role so completely that Mom faded from my mind. Dad and D’Ann had planned so many adventures over the next seven days that there simply wasn’t time to think about California. We had picnics on the beach, drove to the pick-your-own strawberry place and then stayed up all night making jam. D’Ann made a shirt for me on her sewing machine, and let me try on all her face creams. When the weekend came, D’Ann took us to her family home for a big Italian dinner. Her parents and siblings were boisterous, full of jokes and second helpings, filling my plate high, inviting me to foosball games in the basement, rides on the tandem bike and badminton matches. At the end of the night, my new aunts and uncles pressed folded five-dollar bills in my hand “for ice cream.”