The Death of Bees: A Novel

by Lisa O'Donnell

  “Could take you anywhere,” he says.

  Marnie is to be kept in a locked room for twenty-four hours or until she sees sense. I hope it’s soon. I should go and speak to her.

  Marnie

  When the door was finally opened Nelly makes me a cup of tea and some toast. While I am eating he opens his bible and reads: “I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ.”

  I have no fucking idea what he’s talking about but he doesn’t care, he just stares into my eyes like the psycho he is and says, “I’ll have no more of this, you understand?”

  I nod because it’s easier than having to listen to him go on. He knows this and shakes his head because in his mind I am a lost cause anyway. Fuck him, I think.

  The other night I dare to leave my room for a glass of water and I hear him wandering about downstairs. I sneak to the top of the landing and see him reach into a cupboard and fish out a bottle of whiskey. He guzzles it like it’s water. No glass. I go back to my room afraid, because people like Robert T. Macdonald carrying righteousness like a handbag are dangerous and I never considered him dangerous before and now that I do I am scared.

  Every night he makes us get down on our knees and pray in the hallway outside our room.

  “Dear Father, hear and bless

  Thy beasts and singing birds

  And guard with tenderness

  Small things that have no words.”

  And we don’t, not anymore.

  Nelly

  I take a walk in the park and meet a ghost, a vampire, and a witch. It is Halloween and I wish for a costume of my own. I remember how Mother loved this particular holiday and always in fishnet stockings. She was a cat one year, a nurse the next, and before she died an oversize schoolgirl. When we were little she always took us with her, but as we aged the celebrations and parties were mostly for her.

  “You’re too old to go trick-or-treating,” she told us.

  Marnie was ten and I was seven.

  “Please,” begged Marnie.

  “No,” she snapped.

  For the rest of the evening we were tormented by revelers rapping on our door looking for treats. We turned the lights off and went to bed.

  When I get to the house I find Gramps dressed as a clown. He treats children to toffee apples and sweets. He is kind and he is generous. I like this man and I think everything is going to be okay until a boy shows up with a pillowcase over his head. It is splattered with red ink, which I presume to be blood.

  “What are you supposed to be?” asks Gramps.

  “I’m a headless ghost,” says the boy.

  “I don’t think so,” says Gramps, closing the door.

  “What about my sister?” asks the boy. At his feet stands a little fairy.

  “Okay, one for her, but your costume is rubbish. How old are you anyway?”

  “I’m ten.”

  “Ten,” squawks Gramps. “You’re too old to go trick-or-treating,” he says. “Away you go.”

  The little girl takes her brother’s hand and they leave without the toffee apple.

  I go to my room and turn off the lights.

  Winter

  Marnie

  When Robert T. Macdonald drops us at school I tell Nelly I have somewhere to go. She begs me to stay but I can’t and since I’m not sure if I can trust her anymore, I don’t tell her about the bag.

  “He’ll be so angry,” she reminds me.

  “So what,” I say.

  “He is unbearable when he’s angry with you,” she says.

  “I take it by unbearable you mean a big fat psycho.”

  “Why can’t you just try?” she screams.

  “Try what?” I yell.

  “Try to make this work. It’s a home, isn’t it?”

  “He’s mental. Don’t you see that? We can’t stay there. I can’t.”

  “Well I have to. You think he’ll let me see you if you leave?” she cries. “He’s not so bad, Marnie.”

  “Oh my God. You think you’re getting on with him when really you’re just managing him. It was the same with Gene. You thought you could keep him away by being you and then you couldn’t, neither of us could.”

  “Don’t talk of such things.”

  “I’ll talk about what I like.”

  She slaps me and I can’t believe it. I think of slapping her back but I don’t. I’m too shocked and I’m hurt. I’m so hurt.

  “You fret too much,” she whispers.

  “Fuck you and your ‘fret,’” I say. I turn to leave and she pulls me back.

  “Please stay in school. If you would just try to do as he wishes.”

  “That’s the thing, Nelly, what Robert T. Macdonald wishes is a little unclear to me right now and I’m not hanging around for it to be clarified.”

  I break away and leave her crying. I don’t cry, but I know I wanted to.

  Nelly

  He follows her every move. I can see him. I do what I can to distract him but I am running out of music. He doesn’t want her, I can feel it and I can’t bear to think of a life without her for he will surely forbid any contact with her beyond her seventeenth year. Last week she played truant from school and a demon was unleashed, now he won’t let her out of his sight and it is a miserable state of affairs. He kept her on her knees for at least two hours and how they bruised. I didn’t know what to do for her and so I waited for him to go to the shops for his blasted lottery ticket and went straight to her room. I found her listening to her confounded pop music, her head bobbing around like a ball on water. She wouldn’t talk to me and I had to get through to her. I didn’t know the song she was listening to at all, but it had a bizarre kind of energy and so I let my head dance with her head and before I knew it we were jumping on top of her bed. It was so much fun. We held hands and laughed, though I did feel badly for her knees. I didn’t even hear him come in and he wasn’t best pleased.

  “Get off the bed,” he snarled.

  Marnie turned the music down.

  “Go to your room,” he said to me.

  He sulked all through dinner and could barely look at me. I asked if he’d like me to play and he reluctantly agreed. I chose a religious piece and it brightened him in no time.

  “You’ll always have a family in God, Nelly, and don’t you forget it.”

  Marnie looked miserable. She hardly ate a thing. Her appetite is waning of late, which is a dreadful shame, for Lennie spent a great deal of time fattening her up.

  Gramps has obviously forgotten I have a family in Marnie and I wonder then if my sister has also forgotten. I think perhaps she has. Lennie said she’d always need reminding. He told me a lot of things in the end, but one thing in particular and I mustn’t forget it.

  Marnie

  Nelly was pissed off with me but what could I do? I had to get the bag. It’s our only way out of here. He obviously went nuts but I didn’t care. I’m too desperate to care. I’m not staying here and he’s not taking my sister from me. He’s already forbidden contact with my friends and when he says friends he means Kim.

  His regime is a prison for me. Every day before school he makes me empty my pockets for fags and other contraband. He actually searches me like one of those people at airports looking for bombs in your handbag. Of course Kim has all my contraband. He takes us to school in his sad little Peugeot around 8:15 and we get there around 8:30, but then he makes us sit with him until the bell rings at nine. He watches as we enter the school gates and calls three times a day to ensure I am sitting in maths or English. He won’t leave me alone.

  I have barely said two words to Nelly in weeks. I feel so betrayed by her compliance.

  At breakfast this morning he had us sing from hymn sheets, but Nelly wouldn’t play. She said her neck hurt.

  “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide,

  The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.

  When other helpers fail and comforts flee,<
br />
  Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

  “Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day,

  Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away,

  Change and decay in all around I see,

  O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

  “Come not in terrors, as the King of kings,

  But kind and good, with healing in Thy wings …”

  We have to get out of here.

  Nelly

  He slapped me. He waited until she wasn’t looking and slapped me.

  “When I ask you to play then that’s exactly what I expect from you. You have a gift but it is God’s gift and you are obliged to share it.”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  He kisses my forehead and I don’t cry.

  When we drive to school everything is wet and gray. We pass tower blocks and cross motorways, nothing is warm. I watch him drive, his nose red and dripping from the rain, I watch Marnie fixated on her hair. I wonder about the vanished; about Mother and Father, about Grammy and Lennie. I try not to cry for them, I won’t cry for them and so I reach for my book and read, I can’t help it.

  Marnie

  I find her sulking in the cafeteria, gurgling milk like a little kid.

  “All right?” I ask.

  “What do you care?” she mumbles.

  “I care a lot as a matter of fact.”

  “What do you want?” she says and then plays with her sandwich.

  “I can’t stay at his house,” I tell her.

  “I know,” she says.

  “So what do you think?” I ask.

  “About what?” she says.

  “About getting the fuck out of here,” I say.

  I expect resistance and fear. I expect excuses and reasons, what I don’t expect are keys.

  “Lennie’s place in Firemore,” she says. “You should leave as soon as you can.”

  “How long have you had these?”

  “Lennie gave them to me.”

  “We could have left ages ago, Nelly.”

  “I want to stay. Give it a chance. Know some semblance of a family. I’m tired, Marnie. I’m so tired. I don’t want to run.”

  She started to cry. I put my arm around her.

  “You have a family. I’m your family.”

  “I thought you’d forgotten,” she says.

  “I won’t let anything happen to you. I swear. I’d kill him first.”

  This certainly rattles her cage.

  “Let’s hope you don’t have to.”

  I hope the same, but only a little bit.

  Nelly

  All she has is a set of keys. It’s ruddy ridiculous. However will we survive without money? I don’t think Marnie has thought this through at all. I held them back for this very reason, but there has been much in our lives Marnie has not thought through and oh my, the trouble we have known on account of it, it beggars belief.

  I wonder if I can live without school and libraries. I wonder what I can take with me. She says the clothes on my back. I wonder if there are cornflakes and Coke. There is so much one needs, especially when embracing new environments. How I love the cottage, but does she expect us to live on fish and grass? She is sixteen in one month and assures me we will know all kinds of freedoms.

  “I’m legally able to take care of us, Nelly. It’ll be okay,” she says. “Trust me.”

  No one is to know of our whereabouts, not even Kim.

  “I don’t need threads so you’re not to talk to anyone. Do you understand?”

  I can’t imagine who she’d think I’d talk to, given I have no friends to speak of. I only have Marnie.

  Marnie

  This morning I shared a sneaky fag with Kim, it was to be our last and for a long time to come.

  “You must be going mad in that fucker’s house,” she says.

  “I am,” I say.

  She sighs for me.

  “I couldn’t do it, but I respect you can.”

  But I can’t, Kim, is what I want to say. I’m leaving and won’t be back for a while and I’m going to miss you like crazy, you mad bitch.

  I say nothing and stub out my fag with the toe of my shoe. It’s like a dance I do. Kim follows suit and we say our good-byes for the day. I want to pull her back and hug her, I want to tell her I love her, but I can’t. It would make no sense and she’d know something was up. I decide to walk her to the bus stop, knowing I’ll be late for Robert T. Macdonald but I don’t care. When Kim gets on the bus she makes a face through the window and I give her the finger. That was our good-bye. Kim licking a windowpane and me pissing my hole laughing at her.

  Later I sneak into the back of the theater where Susie is singing in the school play. I make sure no one can see me, especially Susie. I don’t go for the whole performance; I just want to see her and hear her sing one more time. I deserve a song from her, even if it wasn’t for me.

  Nelly

  There was no plan, we would simply leave in the night and catch a bus as far as Inverness. We were taking the dog. Marnie was reluctant but conceded it would have been Lennie’s final wish that his Bobby stay with his girls, as opposed to a raving lunatic with a penchant for whiskey (and no glass according to Marnie).

  I didn’t pack much in my rucksack. They had to be small enough to fit under our beds. It wasn’t a very big bag sadly and though I was able to squash a box of cornflakes into it and various undergarments, not to mention a few cans of Coke, Marnie was absolutely livid. She said they weren’t essentials but I closed my ears and shook my head and not wanting to upset me any further she permitted me to take my nourishments, though she didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day and complained of having to take extra things for me in her bag. What she didn’t know is that I was also wearing five T-shirts and two jerseys. I was boiling.

  Marnie

  And so the rabid chitchat begins again. She wouldn’t stop.

  “Where are we going? How will we get there? How much is a ticket? How long is the journey? What will we eat? Can you fish? Lennie said to stay away from the mushrooms. Do you know how to light a fire? How will we do laundry? What about electricity or is it gas he has? I can’t remember. Do we have milk?”

  I could have screamed, but not wanting to ruffle her feathers I find an answer for her every concern.

  She wanted to take everything including the pillow Izzy had suffocated Gene with. Sick. I said no and she let it go. She wanted to take her cornflakes, however, and cans of Coke for her ridiculous cereal. I hope to God they’d be easy to locate in Firemore. She’ll have a fit if all we have is porridge. It was a little bit of a setback the demand for cornflakes and Coke; I thought she was getting over these things. She seems to have slowed down in recent weeks, bordering on being normal to tell the truth, it must be the stress of running away fueling the nuttiness in her. Maybe it’s time to tell her about the money.

  Nelly

  Marnie has a bag of money, all of it tainted with misery and other people’s undoings. I don’t want to take it and urge her to leave it behind. She uses expletives and I am without words.

  “We won’t survive without cash. Hard cash.”

  “It’s not right, Marnie. It’s not right,” I tell her.

  “What’s not right?” she says.

  “You know very well.”

  “Yes I know, but what do you know?”

  “Nothing, nothing at all.”

  “You sure?” she says. “You can say it you know. Drug money. D-R-U-G-S.”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “You never want to know anything real, do you? And to think you were doing so well recently. Thought you were finally growing up.”

  “It’s not right,” I say.

  “You know what’s not right, starving. We have to take this money.”

  “I don’t want to,” I say.

  “Think of it this way. This is every penny and every pound Izzy and Gene stole from us to buy drugs. We’re just taking it back and w
ith a little bit of interest. It’s fair, Nelly.”

  “I’m not sure,” I say.

  “Think of what we can buy with this money. Safety and security. You want to send it back to the dealers to buy more drugs and hurt more people like you and me or do you want to take it and start a new life somewhere else?”

  When she put it like that there was no arguing with her. Morally it is wrong but ethically it is correct and so the money comes with us and I’ve never seen so much of it in my life.

  Marnie

  We’ve come a long way, Nelly and I, but sometimes I forget what a giant fanny my sister can be. She wanted to leave the money behind. She wants to go to Firemore and catch fish and eat leaves. She wants to grow cucumbers and tomatoes and in these climates. She is the world’s greatest plum. I want to slap her but I don’t. I need her focused on getting out of here and not afraid of her sister smacking her face in.

  Robert T. Macdonald continues to make my life hell and on our last weekend together he takes us to the cemetery where Izzy and Gene are buried. The tombstone is ready and he wants us to stand in front of it and cry. We are thinking of nothing except getting away. The tombstone is bullshit and implies Gene and Izzy were married. He even changes her name to Gene’s name. It’s so wrong. The marble tells the story of two people who are “Dearly missed,” who are “Beloved” and who have been “Taken but not forgotten.” I want to spit at it, just like they do in the movies. Nelly starts to cry but she’s hushed by Robert T. Macdonald.

  “No tears please. Just play something nice.”

  She doesn’t want to but she has to and gives us a little Bach, but he hates it and asks her to choose something more celestial and so she plays “Amazing Grace” as best she can. He is close to tears and I realize he likes to grieve. This is a place where he can actually be a father to Izzy because all he has to do is show up with flowers and twine and when people pass him by and see him digging around the grave they won’t know any difference. They’ll glance across the tomb and feel pity for a man who lost his daughter three times and they really shouldn’t.

  Nelly

  We crept slowly down the stairs and crossed the living room to the front door. Fortunately the stairs don’t creak and so we were spared the amplified noises one imagines when one is making a break for it. The only real noise was coming from the rain outside and how it rattled at the windows. I felt positively tormented.