The Honey Bus

by Meredith May

  I grew so addicted to being the center of attention that soon I started forgetting my manners. Each time I asked Dad or D’Ann for something and got it, I was emboldened to push for more. There was a danger of becoming spoiled, but I couldn’t resist experimenting with their devotion, testing its strength and durability. Each time the results came back positive, it was like a little hit of dopamine, a squiggle of joy at hearing the loveliness of that word yes. I encouraged them to dote on me because it pushed away my rising dread that this was all going to end, and soon I would return to a world that did not revolve around me.

  One night, as the three of us watched a movie in bed together, Dad got up and asked if we wanted anything from the kitchen.

  “English muffins! With butter!” I commanded, not taking my eyes off the TV.

  D’Ann nudged me and pointed at Dad, who was in the doorway with his hands on his hips. “Shouldn’t there be a please in that sentence somewhere?” he said.

  I was mortified. I had forgotten who I really was. I had become an insatiable baby bird; no matter how many worms Dad put in my mouth, I kept squawking for more. It wasn’t even food I wanted; I was hungry to find out how far he’d go to indulge me. But I’d finally found his limit.

  “Please,” I croaked.

  He nodded, and I sunk back into bed and pulled the covers over my head, hiding from his disapproval. I had almost lost Dad over some toast. I vowed to be more polite, to go back to the girl who kept her thoughts to herself.

  I found Dad the next morning glugging down a tall glass of milk. He was wearing shorts and salt-cracked leather Top-Siders, and D’Ann was packing sandwiches into a cooler. It was one of those New England summer mornings when the air already felt milkshake thick; every piece of furniture I sat on stuck to my legs. Dad downed the milk and then put the glass in the sink. I wasn’t sure if I was still on his bad side, so I waited for him to speak first.

  “Let’s go find a breeze,” he said.

  That’s how I knew that everything had been forgiven.

  The beach was the perfect place to spend my last day with Dad and D’Ann. It always seemed like time moved more slowly at the shore, away from clocks and telephones and schedules. I wanted to stretch our last hours, dreading the thought of having to say goodbye to my father yet again. I had an oversensitive reaction to letting go of him, because it reminded me of all the times we’d been torn apart against our will. I was afraid of that feeling I always got when we parted, a clawing feeling on the inside, like fingernails raking a line from behind my collarbone and through my insides, all the way down to my belly button. I was afraid of getting back on the plane without him. I didn’t know if I was strong enough to handle it.

  I pushed these thoughts aside as the blue of the ocean came into view. Someone must have called ahead and reserved the beach just for us—the parking area was empty save for the gulls circling overhead and the few lone surfers peeling themselves out of their wet suits. We walked along a boardwalk, passing a snack shop where a machine spun a cotton-candy web, and above it on a second story a riderless carousel whirred to old-timey piano music. We crested a dune, and spread before us was a glittering blue crescent, with steady curlers of foam rolling toward shore.

  Dad reached the water first and splashed out to his knees, and I followed behind in his wake, squealing as if ice needles were piercing my skin. The water foamed around our legs, hissing as the undertow sucked the sand from underneath my feet. Dad clasped his hands above his head and arrowed himself through the belly of an oncoming wave, ducking under it and popping up on the other side to float on his back, his arms out in a T-shape for balance and his long feet cutting the water like shark fins. He made it look effortless, as if his body was made of Styrofoam. He lifted his head to address me.

  “Now you!” he hollered.

  I mimicked his entry and launched myself directly under the next rolling barrel of water. I blinked in the stinging salt water, and although it was murky, I could see phosphorescent bits of something floating all around me, like gold dust in the water. I kicked toward the light, and when I broke the surface, I felt arms encircle me from behind, and all of a sudden I was sitting in a throne made from Dad’s bent knee and chest as he braced me from the next wave with his back.

  He showed me how to float by filling my lungs with air and then holding my breath, and we bobbed like sea otters for so long that my fingers puckered into prunes, and eventually, growls of hunger emanated from my stomach. We rode the next wave in on our bellies, and joined D’Ann on the blanket for lunch.

  “I was about to call the Coast Guard, you were out there so long,” she teased. She handed us ham sandwiches, and tore open a bag of potato chips and set it in the middle of the blanket. Dad chomped his sandwich, consuming it in four bites. Then he stretched out on his back, propped his head up with a towel and placed a hill of potato chips on his stomach. He crunched loudly and let out a long, satisfied sigh.

  “Can’t believe I have to go back to work,” he announced to the bluebird sky, which I think was his way of saying he didn’t want the week to end, either.

  I dug at the sand with my toes.

  “Me, too,” I said.

  D’Ann reached out and silently rubbed small circles on my back. We finished our lunch in silence, chewing slowly, and I tried to not think about tomorrow.

  That night, Dad tucked me in as he had all week, but he sat with me longer than usual. He flicked off the light, and the bug zapper outside the window cast a purple glow into the room.

  “I wish you didn’t have to go,” he said, pulling the sheet up to my chin. He sat back down, and the springs squeaked under his weight. I could hear him scratching his scalp, a nervous tic.

  “So, do you like living in California?” he asked. In the darkness, his words sounded heavy and important.

  A big moth flew into the zapper and sizzled.

  “I mean,” he continued, “are you happy?”

  These were big questions that I’d never been asked, and I wasn’t sure what kind of answer he wanted. I had never considered my own happiness, so the question took me by surprise. I wasn’t happy like those kids who goofed around in music class, but I wasn’t sad like Mom, either. I was somewhere in the middle, but was that where I was supposed to be? I wasn’t sure, so instead of answering I pulled at a loose thread on the sheet.

  This was the serious conversation we’d been avoiding all week. Both of us had been reluctant to interrupt our vacation with reality. Now his words were ruining the spell, reminding me that this week as his full-time daughter had been nothing more than make-believe.

  Dad tried again.

  “Is your mother nice to you?”

  Nice wasn’t the right word. Mom was Mom. She wasn’t nice; she wasn’t mean. She wasn’t anything, really. I tried to come up with the right description, but I couldn’t figure out how to put her into words. He must have thought my silence meant I was hiding something. He lowered his voice to barely a whisper.

  “Does your mother ever...hit you?”

  I bolted upright in bed, suddenly not liking where this conversation was going. The question was preposterous. She would never do that. “What? No!”

  An uncomfortable silence stretched out between Dad and me. I still hadn’t told him about Mom’s list, or Granny’s letter, not because I was hiding them, but because I’d truly forgotten in the hurly-burly of our week of fun. He scratched his scalp again and said he was glad that everything seemed okay in California.

  “But you know you can always tell me anything, right?”

  It seemed like a good opening to bring out Mom’s list. I pulled the suitcase out from under the cot, found Granny’s letter inside and handed it to him.

  “From Granny. She wants more money.”

  He crumpled the envelope without opening it, and chucked it at the wastebasket next to his desk, missing it.

>   “Her letters are so nasty, I can’t even read them anymore.”

  I showed him Mom’s list of items to be returned. Dad set the paper down on the bed and cleared his throat.

  “Would you rather live here with me?”

  His offer shimmered in the dark like the tail of a comet. Pretty, yet out of reach. After a week of entertainment, my insides screamed yes, but talking secretly with Dad about leaving Carmel Valley seemed like I was being sneaky, somehow. I couldn’t leave Matthew behind. Grandpa wouldn’t have help with his bees. Daughters weren’t allowed to walk away from their mothers, were they? The idea felt sinful. Dad’s offer was tempting, but I felt I didn’t have the right, or the power, to switch parents. When bees make decisions about places to live, the whole group decides together. They spend days inspecting possible homes, and they vote by dancing, deciding together when to swarm and where to relocate. They discussed it first, listening to everyone’s input. I would get in trouble if I made this decision alone, wouldn’t I?

  “You don’t have to go back,” he said.

  Dad anxiously twirled his wristwatch as he waited for me to answer. I felt compressed by the enormity of the decision, as if I couldn’t get enough oxygen into my lungs. I knew that I could never tell anyone that Dad had made this offer. I worried it was a deceitful idea, yet if he asked again I would say yes. I feared what Granny and Mom would do if I didn’t come home. I struggled with the impossibility of what I wanted but couldn’t have—for all the adults in my life to get along. I was suffocating in indecision, and wanted Dad to make the decision for me.

  When our silence became unbearable, I whispered to Dad that I was okay.

  I said that I wanted to stay in California. I lied and said that everything back home was fine; that Mom was fine. It was what I knew best, so I chose it, even if it meant returning to Mom’s broken heart. But as soon as I chose, I regretted having made a decision at all.

  “Well, if you ever change your mind, you can live here with me, you know,” he said, kissing my forehead.

  He shut the door, and I stared at the purple patterns on the wall from the bug zapper, wondering if I had made a terrible mistake. When I finally fell asleep, I had a nightmare that a cackling witch was squeezing my waist with her long, bony fingers, breaking me in two.

  It was still dark when Dad shook me awake. D’Ann waved from the driveway as we pulled away from my seven days of some other girl’s life. Dad stopped at a doughnut shop, and I inhaled three glazed doughnuts in a row, not even really noticing how they tasted.

  “I’ll see you next summer. Matthew, too,” he said.

  “That’s a long ways away,” I said.

  We couldn’t think of anything else to say for the rest of the ride, already feeling our separation before it came. When it was time for me to get on the plane, Dad had to pry my arms from his neck. Another doll-like stewardess appeared out of nowhere and took my hand. I knew the drill by now, and let her place the sticker on my shirt and lead me away as I used all my willpower to not look back.

  She didn’t let go of my hand until I was buckled in my seat, and as soon as she was gone, I buried my head in my hands and keened. I was the kind of sad that didn’t care if other people were looking. I ached for my father even more than I thought possible, because now I knew what I was missing. But to be with him, I’d have to give up my life back home, and I didn’t want to do that, either. I wanted to stay with him, and I wanted to stay in California. I wanted both, but both wasn’t a choice. I didn’t know if I had made the right decision, and I wanted someone, anyone, to tell me what I should do. Trying to figure this out felt like being pulled apart down the middle, with Dad tugging on one arm and Mom on the other. I tried concentrating on the happy parts of my trip—the player piano and the bowls of spaghetti with my new Italian relatives—but knowing I could only borrow them made me cry even harder.

  The stewardess returned and knelt down in the aisle and handed me a tissue. She patted my arm and told me everything was going to be all right. I looked away from her stupid promises. She didn’t know me, and she didn’t know what was wrong, and she was just saying that because I was making the other passengers uncomfortable. I kept crying at full tilt, ignoring the coloring book, crayons and Cracker Jacks she placed in my lap. I wept until my nose was so stuffed up I couldn’t cry anymore. I leaned my head against the round window, closed my eyes and wished the heavens above would swallow me whole.

  I slept fitfully on the flight, cycling through a pattern of waking up, wondering where I was, remembering, and going numb all over again. By the time the plane touched down, I was cranky, hungry and a bit more skeptical of the us-versus-him family tree Mom and Granny had drawn for me.

  Granny was waiting for me at the airport gate, and to my surprise Mom was standing by her side. I took this as a sign that Mom must have missed me. I relaxed a bit; perhaps California was the right decision. We made small talk on our way to the car, me answering that the weather was nice and that the trip was good. Yes, it was “nice” to see my father.

  “That’s nice,” Granny said.

  We had a two-hour drive ahead of us, and I stretched out on the back seat, while Granny started the engine. Mom snapped on her seat belt in the passenger seat. Then she turned around to face me.

  “What does she look like?”

  It took me a second to figure out whom she meant.

  “I don’t know. She has dark hair.”

  “What do you mean, ‘you don’t know’? Is she prettier than me?”

  I picked at my fingernails rather than tell the truth.

  “How old is she?”

  I told Mom that I hadn’t asked.

  “Well, would you say she looks younger or older than me?”

  I turned my head away and stared at the ceiling.

  “Meredith! Did you hear me?”

  I tried to say I was tired. I tried to fall asleep. Granny drove in silence as Mom interrogated. I tuned her out until her words were a blur, and I transported my body back to Stella’s house, with the marinara sauce bubbling on the stove and Grandpa Duke cracking open a beer and talking about his golf game as Dad pretended to be interested in the sport. Uncle Roland was in the driveway, patching a hole in his canoe. Uncle Jeff was pushing me in the tire swing. A football game was on in the background.

  Mom wanted to know if I had retrieved everything on her list.

  Granny kept her eyes on the road. “Answer your mother,” she ordered.

  I mumbled that I only had the baby pictures. Mom wrinkled her face as if she had just sniffed a carton of expired milk.

  “Meredith, dammit! I told you! One simple thing. You can’t even do one simple thing!”

  Mom and Granny argued back and forth over whether I should call Dad when we got home and demand he mail the missing items, or if Granny should write him another letter. Mom wanted me to call immediately and let her listen in. Granny talked her back down, and they finally agreed to try a letter first. Their side conversation gave me fifteen minutes in peace. Then Mom turned her attention back to me.

  She asked me about Dad’s new house. How big it was. What kind of cars they drove. Did D’Ann cook? What did she cook? I gave one-word answers, which only angered her more. She threw up her hands.

  “What did you do, sleep the whole time?”

  I told her we went to church on Sunday. Mom snorted in disgust.

  “She’s Catholic, isn’t she? What does her family think about all this? Divorced Catholics aren’t allowed to remarry, you know!”

  I lost my patience and kicked Mom’s seat from behind. “I don’t know!”

  Granny finally intervened. “Meredith, you do NOT talk to your mother that way!”

  I kicked Granny’s chair, too. “Dad says you threw out his letters!”

  Now all of us were screeching like monkeys in a cage.

  �
�I have done no such thing!” Granny said. “How dare he say that!”

  Somebody wasn’t telling the truth, but I didn’t care anymore. I was exhausted from trying to figure out what to do with my life, and I just wanted to go to sleep. Mom continued questioning me all the way to Carmel Valley, asking the same questions different ways, trying to trick me into answering. But when we reached the house, she got to the question she really wanted to ask. Her voice became suddenly soft and small, like a young child’s.

  “Did your father ask about me?”

  I hesitated, and finally said, “No.”

  She sank into the passenger seat, defeated.

  I stepped out of the station wagon and noticed that the door to Grandpa’s office, on the left side of the carport, was open. I found him at his desk, the papers pushed to one side, hunched over his handmade redwood jig, assembling new wooden frames for the hive and spooling wire through them. The horizontal wires acted as a brace to hold paper-thin sheets of wax that were stamped with hexagons to give the bees a foundation from which to build new honeycomb. He heated the wires using a contraption he’d fashioned from a disassembled light bulb socket, then pressed the thin sheets of wax onto the hot wires to fuse them in place.

  “You’re back!” he said. “Good. Gimme a hand here,” he said, handing me a pair of wire cutters. “Snip that wire right there for me, would ya?”

  Grandpa’s office smelled of hot beeswax, dust and aftershave. I inhaled and suddenly felt calm again. I didn’t realize until that moment how much I had missed him. I missed the bees and our trips to Big Sur.

  He handed me a finished frame, the signal to give him an empty one, which he placed on the jig and continued stringing wire. He asked me if I had had a good time, and I told him about the beach, my stepmom, about all the ice cream I ate. I mentioned that Dad said hello. I told him everything that I didn’t say in the car ride home.