His eyes widened. He said, “It begins with bees.”
And he traced the process, from nectar to comb to collection. “The workers are sterile females,” he said. “The males are largely useless. Their only function is to mate with the queen. They live for a few months, and then they die.” His mouth moved stiffly around the word “die,” as if it were from an unfamiliar language. Then he described the way bees dance when they return to the hive: he used his hands to loop and waggle, and his voice made it all sound too beautiful to be real.
When he got to the part about beekeepers, he went to a bookshelf and came back with a volume of the encyclopedia. He showed me an illustration of a man wearing a large-brimmed hat, a veil masking his face, holding a device with a nozzle to smoke out the hives.
Now I had an image of my mother: a woman wearing thick gloves, draped in a long veil. But I didn’t mention that to my father, or ask him about “our lavender honey.” He never answered questions about my mother. Usually he changed the subject. Once he said such questions made him sad.
I wondered what lavender honey might taste like. The only honey I’d eaten came from clover, according to the label on the jar, and it conjured the green flavor of summer meadows. Lavender, I thought, would have a stronger, sharper taste, floral with perhaps a hint of smoke in it. It would taste violet blue — the color of a twilight sky.
In my father’s world, time had no meaning. I don’t think he looked once at the grandfather clock in the library. Yet he kept a regular schedule — largely, I suspect, for my sake. Every evening at six he sat with me while I had the supper that Mrs. McG (I’m tired of writing out her name, and that’s what I called her, anyway) always left in the warming oven: macaroni and cheese, or tofu casserole, or vegetarian chili. It all tasted undercooked at the bottom and burnt at the top, bland and wholesome. After I’d finished, my father ran my bath.
Once I’d turned seven, he left me alone to bathe. He asked me if, as a big girl, I still wanted him to read to me before I fell asleep, and of course I said yes. His voice had texture like velvet. When I was six he’d read me Plutarch and Plato, but Dennis must have said something to him, because after that he read Black Beauty and Heidi and The Princess and the Goblin.
I’d asked my father why he didn’t dine with me, and he said he preferred to eat downstairs at a later hour. There was a second kitchen (I called it the night kitchen) in the basement, along with two enormous furnaces, a laboratory where my father worked with Dennis, and three bedrooms originally intended for servants. I rarely visited the basement; it wasn’t explicitly forbidden me, but sometimes the upstairs kitchen door to the basement was locked, and even if it wasn’t, I knew I wasn’t wanted there. In any case, I didn’t like the smells: chemicals from the laboratory, gamey cooking from the night kitchen, mixed with the odor of hot metal from the furnaces. Yes, I preferred the smell of starch. My father’s cook and all-purpose assistant, the loathsome Mary Ellis Root, ruled the basement domain, and she always looked at me with eyes that radiated hostility.
“How did you like it?” Mrs. McG hovered over the breakfast table, twisting a towel in her hands. Her face was shiny and her glasses needed cleaning, but her spotless red and green plaid housedress, belted at the waist, had been ironed, and its skirt fell in crisp folds.
She was asking about the honey cake. “Very good,” I said — almost truthfully. The cake, a slice of which I’d eaten for dessert the previous evening, had a wonderful dense richness; if it had been baked a bit less, and if the pan had been greased more liberally, it might truly have been delicious.
“If I’d made it at home, I’d have used lard,” she said. “But your father is such a strict vegetarian.”
A moment later Mary Ellis Root slammed open the door that led to the basement and stormed in.
“What did you tell the courier service?” she said to Mrs. McG. Her voice sounded hoarse and low.
Mrs. McG and I stared blankly at her. It was unlike her to set foot upstairs, and never this early. Her black hair bristled with static, and her eyes blazed, yet she never made eye contact with either of us. On her chin three long dark hairs grew from a bumpy mole; they quivered when she spoke. Sometimes I imagined yanking them out, but the thought of touching her made me nauseous. She wore an enormous black, greasy-looking dress that smelled of metal and strained to contain her, and she paced the room like a beetle — impervious to anything but its insect agenda — pausing only to slam her fat fist on the table.
“Well, are you going to answer me? It’s almost ten and no one has come.”
The silver courier van stopped at our house two or three times a week, bringing supplies for my father’s research and taking away flat white cartons labeled SERADRONE. On the van’s doors and sides were the company name and logo: GREEN CROSS.
Mrs. McG said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nonetheless, her left eyebrow and right hand twitched.
Mary Ellis Root made a low-pitched sound, a kind of growl, and slammed her way back to the basement, trailed by a lingering odor of metal.
“I never talk to the Green Cross man,” Mrs. McG said.
The deliveries always came to the back door that opened into the basement. Mrs. McG’s face said that her day had been ruined in the space of a minute.
I left my chair. I took my mother’s cookbook down from its shelf and leafed through it. “Look,” I said, to distract her. “She put four stars next to this one.”
It was a recipe for cheese bread made with honey. Mrs. McG peered over my shoulder at the recipe, her face doubtful. I leaned back slightly to feel the warmth of her body, without touching her. I felt that this was as close to a mother as I was likely to come.
Being home-schooled had some advantages, I suppose. I didn’t have to worry about what to wear to school or how to make friends. Periodically I had to take a state-mandated examination, and every time I answered all the questions correctly. My father had stuffed my brain with knowledge of history and mathematics and literature; I could read Latin and some Greek and French and Spanish, and my English vocabulary was so advanced that I sometimes had to define for Mrs. McG the words I used. Occasionally Dennis taught me science; he’d been a medical student at one time, he said, but switched to biology, which he taught part-time at the college not far away. Because of his training, Dennis served as our family doctor and dentist, except when I was very ill, as I was two or three times; then Dr. Wilson was called in. But Dennis gave my father and me vaccinations and annual checkups. Luckily, I had strong teeth.
Dennis taught me how to swim, using the college pool, and he was my friend as well. He was the only person in our house who liked to laugh and to make me laugh. (Mrs. McG was too nervous to do more than smile, and even then it was a nervous smile.) Dennis had dark red wavy hair that he had cut every month or so; in between it grew almost to his shoulders. His freckled nose curved like a hawk’s beak. Like my father, he was tall, around six foot three, but Dennis was stockier. He had a temper, too; he never hesitated to tell off Root when she was particularly rude or abrasive, and that made him a hero to me.
One late winter day when I was twelve, Dennis told me “the facts of life.” He blushed when I asked him questions, but he answered every one. He patted me on the head when I couldn’t think of any more questions. After he’d gone back downstairs, I went to the bathroom mirror and looked at myself. Dark hair like my father’s, blue eyes, pale skin. Something stubborn in my face.
Later that same afternoon I sat and watched the icicles that hung like awnings outside the living room windows slowly drip drip drip. For months the days had been one color: gray. Now I listened to the coming of a new season.
Outside, my father stood in the driveway. He seemed to be talking to himself. From time to time I’d see him there, oblivious to the weather, deep in conversation with no one.
Mrs. McG asked me once if I was lonely, and I had no idea what to answer. I knew from books that people had friends, children had playmates. But I had my fa
ther and Dennis and Mrs. McG (and Mary Ellis Root, alas), and I had all the books I wanted. So after a few seconds I replied that no, I wasn’t lonely.
Mrs. McG apparently wasn’t convinced. I heard her talking to Dennis about my “need to get out of the house.” She went on, “I know how much he loves her, but overprotection can’t be good.”
And soon after that, I found myself in Mrs. McG’s car one rainy afternoon. The idea was that I’d come to dinner at her house, meet her family, then be driven home well before my ten p.m. bedtime.
It was raining so hard that the windshield filmed with water immediately after the pass of the wiper blades. I remember Mrs. McG’s hands clutching the steering wheel. And I remember the calm when the car drove beneath an underpass — I marveled at how suddenly things could change from one state to another, then revert.
Was I excited? Frightened, more likely. I left the house rarely, only to be shepherded to periodic examinations at a local public school. Today I had no idea what to expect. My father had told me that I had a weak immune system, that he himself had one, that it was better for us to stay away from crowds. I’d been a small, fragile-looking child, but now that I was twelve I seemed to myself sturdier, and my curiosity about the world had grown stronger, too.
Not to say that I wasn’t “worldly.” I’d read widely; I knew “the facts of life.” But nothing had prepared me for Mrs. McG’s house.
She lived on the south side of Saratoga Springs. The house was painted white — or had been, some time ago. Winters had worn away paint, and the house looked a little shabby.
Inside, a barrage of sounds, colors, and smells made me dizzy. This house smelled like people. Piles of shoes and boots of all sizes lay near the door, surrounded by puddles of melted snow. Damp coats and snowsuits hung from hooks, and the scents of sweat and wet wool mingled with those of hot chocolate and toast and something I couldn’t identify, which turned out to be wet dog.
Mrs. McG led me down a corridor into the kitchen. There, up and down a battered table, sprawled her children. A boy about six years old paused in the act of spitting at one of his sisters to say, “We got company!”
The others stared at me. A large yellow dog walked over and stuck his wet nose against my leg.
“Hi.” It was one of the older boys, dark-haired, wearing a plaid shirt.
“Who are you?” A small girl with green eyes looked up at me.
A taller girl flipped her long reddish braid over her shoulder and stood up. She smiled. “This is Ari,” she said to the others. “I’m Kathleen,” she said to me. “Mom said you were coming.”
“Sit here.” The girl with green eyes pulled another chair to the table next to her.
I sat. There were ten of them, altogether. They had bright eyes and flushed cheeks, and they watched me curiously. The dog curled up under the table at my feet.
Kathleen set before me a mug of cocoa with a large marshmallow melting in it. Someone else gave me a plate of toast splotched with cinnamon and butter. I took a sip and a bite. “It’s delicious,” I said, and they looked pleased.
“Take your time and settle in,” Mrs. McG said. “Later you can try to learn their names. You’ll never remember so many.”
“Even Mom can’t remember sometimes,” Kathleen said. “She calls us ‘girl’ or ‘boy.’”
“Do you like sledding?” another dark-haired boy asked.
“I’ve never tried it,” I said. I licked marshmallow foam from my lips.
“Never tried sledding?” His voice was skeptical.
“Miss Ari hasn’t spent much time outdoors,” Mrs. McG said. “She’s not a ruffian like you all are.”
“I’m not a ruffian,” the girl with green eyes said. She had a tiny nose with two freckles on it. “I’m too petite to be a ruffian.”
“Petite!” Some of the others repeated the word in mocking voices.
“Bridget’s plump, not petite. Plump as a piglet,” said the older boy. “My name is Michael,” he said, while Bridget protested.
“When Michael goes to bed at night, he sleeps like a soldier,” Kathleen said. She stood up straight and rigid, hands at her sides. “Like that he sleeps. Never moves all night long.”
“Not like Kathleen,” Michael said. “She tosses all the covers off and then wakes up shivering.”
They seemed endlessly fascinated by each other. New voices chimed in, talking about how this one woke up before dawn, and that one talked in his sleep. I ate my toast and drank my cocoa, listening to them as if they were faraway birds.
“You all right?” It was Kathleen’s voice, close to my ear.
“I’m fine.”
“We’re a noisy bunch. Mom says we’re worse than monkeys.” Kathleen flipped her braid back again. It had a way of creeping back over her shoulder, no matter how hard she flipped it. She had a small face, rather plain, but it dimpled when she smiled. “Are you thirteen?”
“Twelve,” I said. “Thirteen this summer.”
“When’s your birthday?”
Gradually the others left the room, and finally, only Kathleen and I were left at the table. She talked about pets and clothes and television shows, things that I knew little about — if anything, only from books.
“Do you always dress like that?” She said it without malice.
I gazed at my plain starched white-cotton shirt and loose-fitting starched dark pants. “Yes.” I felt like adding, Blame your mother. She buys my clothes.
To be fair, Mrs. McG hadn’t always bought me drab clothing. When I was very young, perhaps two or three, she bought a bright paisley playsuit, its colors a swirl of red and green and blue. My father winced when he saw it and asked her to take it off me at once.
Kathleen wore tight jeans and a purple t-shirt. I wondered, why weren’t they starched?
“Mom said you need some color in your life.” Kathleen stood up. “Come and see my room.”
On the way to Kathleen’s room we passed a cluttered space with a television set along one wall. “That’s the big screen Dad bought us for Christmas,” Kathleen said.
McGarritts were stuffed into two sofas and assorted chairs, others lying on pillows on the carpet; all eyes were on the screen, which displayed moving images of an odd creature.
“What is it?” I asked her.
“Space alien,” she said. “Michael’s big on the Sci-Fi channel.”
I didn’t tell her that I’d never seen a TV before. I said, “Ray Bradbury writes about space aliens.”
“Never heard of him.” She was climbing stairs now, and I followed. She opened the door of a room slightly bigger than my bedroom closet. “Enter,” she said.
The room was crowded with things: a bunk bed, two small bureaus, a desk and chair, a fuzzy red carpet on the floor littered with shoes. It had no windows, and the walls were covered with posters and pictures cut out of magazines. A black box on top of a bureau boomed music; next to it were CD cases, but none I recognized; at home we had mostly classical music, symphonies and operas.
“What sort of music do you like?” I asked.
“Punk, pop, rock. This is the Cankers.” She gestured at a poster over the desk: a longhaired man dressed in black, his mouth open in a kind of snarl. “I love them. Don’t you?”
“I’ve never heard of them,” I said.
She looked at me for a second and said, “Oh, never mind. I guess it’s true what Mom said? That you’ve led a sheltered life?”
I said I thought the description fairly apt.
My first visit to the McGarritt house felt endless at times, but as we drove home it seemed to have lasted only minutes. I was overwhelmed by unfamiliarity. Mr. McGarritt, a large round man with a large bald head, had come home for supper; it was spaghetti, and Mrs. McG made a special nonmeat sauce for me, which tasted surprisingly good.
Everyone crowded around the long table, eating and talking and interrupting; the younger children talked about school and how a boy named Ford was bullying them; Michael vowed he w
ould take care of Ford; his mother said he would not do any such thing; his father said enough of that, and the yellow dog (they called him Wally, short for Wal-Mart, a store near where he’d been found) let out a howl. They all laughed, even Mr. and Mrs. McG.
“Is it true that you don’t go to school?” Bridget asked me. She’d finished her food before anyone else.
My mouth full, I nodded.
“Lucky,” Bridget said.
I swallowed. “Don’t you like school?”
She shook her head. “People make fun of us.”
The table fell quiet for a moment. I turned to Kathleen, who sat next to me, and whispered, “Is that so?”
Kathleen’s expression was hard to read; she seemed angry and embarrassed, and ashamed of her feelings, all at once. “Yes,” she said, her voice low. “We’re the only ones who don’t have computers and cell phones.” Then, in a clear voice, she said, “The rich ones make fun of all the scholarship kids. It’s not just us.”
Mrs. McG rose and began to clear plates, and everyone began to talk again.
It wasn’t anything like the way conversations proceeded at home; here, they interrupted and disagreed, and shouted and laughed loudly and talked while they ate, and no one seemed to mind. At home sentences were always finished; dialogues were logical, evenly paced, thoughtful; they progressed in undulating Hegelian spirals, considering all alternatives before reaching syntheses. There wasn’t much silliness at my house, I realized that night, as Mrs. McG drove me home.
After I had thanked her and come inside, I found my father reading in his chair near the fireplace, waiting for me. “How was your outing?” he asked. He sat back in his leather chair, his eyes invisible in the shadows.
I thought of all I’d seen and heard and wondered how I could possibly describe it all. “It was very nice,” I said cautiously.
My father flinched at the words. “Your face is flushed,” he said. “It’s time that you went to bed.”
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