GABBY: Are you home yet?
ME: Yes, just barely.
GABBY: Coming to the pool party tonight?
ME: Maybe. I’m really tired.
GABBY: I miss you!
ME: I miss you, too.
I don’t tell her the truth, that I have no intention of going to the pool party. I do miss my friends, but I’m wrecked. All I want is to spend the evening lying in front of the air conditioner.
Mom orders pizza right away, clearly grateful to be back within delivery range.
Dad comes home from the Seville just after the pizza gets here, massaging his neck, and I roll my eyes, Alta style, at his dramatics. Did he drop off Grandpa, or slay a dragon?
“How’d that go?” Mom asks.
He sits on the couch, a slice of pizza in his hand. “As good as these things can go, I guess.”
I picture Grandpa, alone in the Seville, so far from the endless desert, his beloved stars …
“Can Grandpa have visitors?” I say.
My family turns their heads.
“Sure,” Dad answers. “We’ll go see him soon. Great idea.”
“Tomorrow?” I say.
Alta rips into her pizza like a wolf tearing a carcass, eyes boring craters into me. She wants me to shut up; she doesn’t want to be forced to visit her silly old step-grandfather with her pesky, meddling little sister. Oh, wait, pesky, meddling little half sister.
I say it again. “We could go tomorrow, right? Shouldn’t we make sure he’s okay?”
“Not tomorrow,” Dad says. “Give Grandpa some time to adjust. We’ll try for Sunday.”
I nibble my pizza, disappointed. Grandpa will have to spend a whole day by himself. “Fine. Sunday,” I say.
“That’s the day before school starts,” Alta complains.
“It’ll be good to do something as a family,” Mom says.
“We just did a whole summer as a family,” Alta mumbles.
“Hey,” Mom warns, and we stop talking and eat.
The next day is Saturday. Lu sleeps in, which means Mom is able to sleep in, so she lets everyone sleep in. Only my body is still on ranch time; it rises with the sun, even though my curtains block the light.
When I make plans to go shopping with my friends, I’m genuinely excited.
Mom slips something into my hands on my way out the door. “This is for watching Lu all summer.”
It’s a twenty-dollar bill.
“And this is for your help watching Grandpa.”
Another twenty-dollar bill.
I try to hand the money back, but Mom won’t take it. So I leave, swimming up to my neck in guilt.
“Backpacks are out,” Manny says at the mall. Alta was saying this very thing a few weeks ago at the ranch. Is there some sort of club where popular girls meet and vote on what’s trendy and what’s not?
My friends each buy a messenger bag, so I fork over my forty bucks so I can coordinate with them. When we pose in the mirror, our bags all slung over our left shoulders, I think of the sheep at the ranch, how they would stand so close together they blurred into a single pulsating puffball. If one of them stood just a little taller, his head would poke out of the collective wool. Then anyone could see him. A coyote. A hawk.
Dare to poke your head up, dare to stand out from the crowd, and you risk being gobbled up.
Sunday: Seville day. We pile into the minivan, Alta huffing because Mom and Dad won’t let her drive her own car there. My parents act nervous, clenching hands, just like that first day at the ranch. “Don’t let it break your heart,” they tell me, “if he’s not ready to see us yet.”
The Seville’s complex spreads over half a block of prime New Mexican property. There’re tennis courts and a swimming pool, and the main house is a mansion, with white Ionic columns and gilded trim.
“This is way nicer than a hotel!” Alta says when we pull in. “Why was Serge complaining so much?”
Some people prefer ranches, I think.
We head to the sliding doors. Dad looks at something on his phone and punches a code in the number pad: 1412.
“This place needs codes for the doors?” I ask as we march into the maroon-and-gold lobby. “Who would want to break in here? Do the old people really need that much security?”
“It’s not to keep people out,” Mom explains, adjusting Lu in her arms. “It’s to keep residents in.” She explains that you have to punch the code to exit, too. I ponder this with mild horror. What if Grandpa wants to take a walk? Get some air? See the blue sky? He can’t even walk through the front door without permission? Even if he had the code, he has dementia — he’d never remember it, anyway.
“That’s why we chose the Seville,” Mom says. “It’ll keep Grandpa safe.”
Right, because what’s safer than a prison, I think.
“This place must cost a fortune,” Alta whispers to Mom. “I thought Serge was supposed to be a poor sheep farmer.”
“Alta.” Mom tsks at my sister’s bluntness, then answers, “Why do you think Grandpa sold the ranch?”
My stomach coils. Grandpa sold his ranch to pay for his own birdcage.
“This way.” Dad leads us down a corridor that, though carpeted, still stinks like a hospital: bubble-gum soap and mop water.
In the Seville pamphlet, photos show these same halls filled with old people so happy, they look one denture-y smile away from flying up to heaven. There are pictures of old people playing cards, soaking in hot tubs, having a movie night with vintage red-and-white popcorn buckets. But I don’t see anything like that here. It’s as empty as the desert.
“Where is everyone?” I say to Mom.
“Everyone who?” she says.
“All the old people.”
“How many grandparents are you visiting today?” Mom asks, trying to be funny.
I don’t laugh. This place is too eerily quiet, like they’re getting the residents used to the endless quiet of cemeteries.
Dad knocks on door 104. “Hola,” he says, and walks into the room. We tiptoe in behind him.
Like my first day at the ranch, I’m not prepared for how different Grandpa looks.
No one else has eyes that blue, but it’s all I recognize of my grandpa. The person lying in the bed is bloated like a fish with infected gills, chalk-faced, drooling.
“Buenas tardes, Papá,” Dad says.
“Mmmm,” Grandpa says.
Dad brings a cup of water to his lips, and Grandpa sips through a straw, then collapses on the pillow, as if exhausted by that simple chore.
“What’s wrong with him?” I don’t even bother to keep my voice down. I’m so shocked, I’m beyond being polite or proper.
Mom shoots me a look. “Shh. Not now.”
But I’m thirsty for an answer now, right now. “Dad, what’s wrong with Grandpa?”
Dad doesn’t seem fazed. “Grandpa is still adjusting to his new medicine.”
“There is no medicine for dementia,” I say. “Mom told me there was no cure.”
“There is no cure,” Dad says. “He’s on a mild sedative while he gets used to things here. The doctor just wants him to be comfortable.”
This is the opposite of comfortable. The TV flickers, barely audible. Grandpa’s eyelids flutter — not asleep, but not awake. “Mmmm,” he moans again.
“He can’t even talk!” I say.
Why am I the only one who’s horrified? The Seville is supposed to be a vacation for his rusty, broken-down mind — instead, this place has turned my grandpa into a zombie.
“So they just … leave him in here, like this?” I say. “What if something happens to him?” I picture him having a stroke, or a heart attack, or simply dying, with no one here to help.
“Nurses do checks every two hours, like clockwork,” Dad says, as if that explanation justifies why my grandfather should be parked in a bed, barely distinguishable from the pillows that surround him.
“Hey, Grandpa,” I say, walking up to the bed. “How about you t
ell me the end of the story?”
Grandpa blinks, his eyelashes mostly crusted together.
“Carol,” my dad warns.
“I just want to hear the end. Can you do that for me? Come on, once upon a time …”
“Mmmm.” Grandpa closes his eyes, asleep or close to it.
“No,” I say, touching his shoulder. “No, wake up! I’ve got to hear the end of the story!”
“Carol!” Dad barks. “Enough!”
Lu whimpers, disturbed by our tense words. Dad drags me into the hall. “What is wrong with you?”
I slump against the wall. “It’s just … I never got to hear the end of the story.” And Serge looks an inch from death, I add silently, and I can’t bear it if the ending dies with him.
Dad pinches the bridge of his nose. “The one about the village that chopped the tree down?”
“How did you know?” I say, amazed.
He laughs. “What, you think you’re the first one to hear it? Papá told it to me every night when I was a kid. The tree, and the bees, and the lake …”
I’m dumbfounded. “I thought … Maybe his dementia …”
“Dementia has done a lot of damage,” Dad says, “but he’s always spun a good yarn.”
“I just wanted Grandpa to tell me the ending,” I say.
“I’ll tell you how it ends,” he says.
But I don’t want to hear the ending from Dad. I want to hear the ending from Grandpa. I straighten. “Would you tell me a different story?”
Dad raises his eyebrows.
“What happened between you and Grandpa?”
“Carol …” He takes a deep, cleansing breath, watching me the whole time. “Okay. It’s probably time you knew. When Mamá was —”
“No,” I say. “Once upon a time …”
He nods. “All right, all right. Once upon a time …”
“There was a tree,” I finish.
“A tree stump,” he corrects.
Once upon a time, there was a tree stump. An old man sat on the stump with more wrinkles in his face than there were cracks in the dirt. He looked at the bleak land around him and sipped his water. It tasted like the metal barrels that now held the water. He was always dry in the drought. Even his bones were dried out like jerky.
He whittled a block of wood, eyes following the headlights that pulled in the driveway. A white car, with blue and red lights on the top: the police. Again.
A sheriff stepped out of the car, and the old man took his time crossing the pasture to reach him.
“Buenas noches, Sergio,” the sheriff said. “How’s the night out here in no-man’s-land?”
“Hot.” Sergio waited. The sheriff always asked about the weather, and Sergio always answered with the bare truth. Weather was hotter than hell. Always.
“Found something of yours trespassing in Sumpter’s Gulch.” The sheriff opened the back door of the car. “Come on out, Raúl. Time to face the music.”
A teenager in a flannel shirt climbed out and smoothed his black hair. “Thanks for the ride home, Sparky. Same time next week?”
The sheriff chomped his gum. “You pull this kind of stunt after next week, and I’ll be dropping your butt off at the jail, not home with Daddy. I know you have a birthday coming up. The big eighteen.”
The old man waited some more. This part was always the same, too. The sheriff coerced Raúl to confess the details of his misbehavior, then Raúl made some smart comment that stayed just on this side of appropriate. Finally, the sheriff peeled away, kicking dust all over the pasture.
It didn’t matter what Raúl had been doing. For the old man, these nights blended together in one word: disappointment.
“Help me with the sheep,” he said to his son, and tucked his whittling knife in his pocket.
“Sparky’s got a real power trip going.” Raúl ran to keep up with the old man, who headed toward the barn. “We weren’t doing anything illegal.”
“Trespassing is illegal.” The old man felt like he had said these lines a hundred times; he wearied of them before they even escaped his mouth.
“But we weren’t trespassing.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” his father asked, barely interested.
“Me. Jacob. Neil.”
The usual suspects, the old man thought. They were the last sort of boys he wanted his son hanging around.
“To trespass,” Raúl said, “you have to set foot on private property. Technically, we didn’t set foot in the gulch.”
Sergio coughed.
“Honest,” Raúl said. “We were in the tree the whole time. Above the gulch.” He smiled at his own cleverness. “Sparky’s trying to get us back for last week, when he thought we got into the school trash. We told him it was probably coyotes, but he doesn’t believe us.”
Sergio opened the barn doors, and sheep trudged out.
“You’re not saying anything,” Raúl said.
“What is there to say, Raúl?” Sergio sighed. “Every week you sneak away from the ranch. Every week a sheriff brings you home. You’re as predictable as the stars. Predictable as death.”
Raúl stared at the old man, at the mouth that always curved down, at the skin that was lumpy from bee stings that never healed properly, at the electric-blue eyes that looked straight through him. He hated this place, his dry, boring home. He hated his father, who looked so much older than his friends’ fathers. Or even their grandfathers.
Sergio was right. Raúl ran off every chance he got. Papá never let him leave. Not for public school, not for a minimum-wage teenager job, not for a date. Raúl’s friends could only scrape up enough gas money to pick him up once or twice a week.
He’d never been desperate enough to run all the way to civilization on foot, but tonight might be the night. He’d only been home five minutes, and he already couldn’t breathe.
“The officer is right,” the old man said. “If you try these shenanigans after your birthday, you go right to jail. The world treats you like a man when you’re eighteen, even if you still act like a boy.”
“When does Mamá get home?” Raúl muttered.
“Who’s to say?” the old man said.
Raúl scoffed. “Then I’m going to Neil’s. Call me when she’s back.”
“You’re not going anywhere.” The old man’s face was a blank sheet of paper. “You’re grounded.”
“Grounded?” Raúl clenched and unclenched his jaw.
“You insist on acting like a child, so I’ll treat you like a child.” The old man could barely look at his son — too much of his wife peered out through Raúl’s eyes.
“You can’t ground me,” Raúl said. “I’ll be eighteen in a week.”
“Then you’re grounded for a week.”
Raúl kicked the barn wall. “You can’t trap me here forever.”
“Don’t talk to me about forever!” Sergio boomed. “You don’t know what forever means.”
“Oh, don’t even start with your weird tree stories.”
“Those stories are your heritage,” Sergio said. “Your roots, Raúl. You don’t remember. You’ve run away so many times, your memory’s lost in the desert.”
“They’re just stupid bedtime stories!” Raúl said. “I’m not a little kid anymore, Papá!”
He ran into the ranch house and threw his belongings into the suitcases Mamá had given him. If people’s yells had distinct flavors, Papá’s voice would taste like onions plucked before they were ripe, boiled in bitterness, and left in the refrigerator.
Mamá only yelled in excitement, never anger. Her yells would taste like stars and jelly beans, ones that wouldn’t stop jumping in your mouth. He adored his mom, even though she was always traveling. Mamá was warm like sunshine — no, she was the sun, and Raúl was happiest when he was orbiting around her.
But he couldn’t stay. Not a day longer. He’d miss Mamá, but no one would understand his need to leave better than her.
When the old man came in, he found his son latching h
is luggage, his drawers and closet empty. “Where are you going?”
“Anywhere,” Raúl spat, “that isn’t here.”
Silence, and an angry stare-down between father and son.
“What do you think is out there?” the old man asked. “You think life’s perfect everywhere else? You think it’s safe?”
Raúl knew what was out there. Books. Paintings. Girls. Fast cars. Birds other than eagles and vultures, animals other than sheep and rattlers. His shelves were lined with souvenirs from Mamá’s travels: Santiago, Madagascar, shiny New York City, snowy Alaska …
If he opened his mouth right now, horrible things would spill out, things he’d wanted to say to the old man for seventeen years. If he said those things, there would be a hole the size of the Grand Canyon between them.
“Everything,” he said. “Everything is out there.”
“You’re grounded,” the old man reminded his son.
“No! You can’t keep me here!” Raúl’s own yell tasted like rotten bell peppers and bleach. He pounded his fists into his suitcases, and he spoke the magic words: “You can’t even keep Mamá here for a full week! She’s too desperate to get away from here. To get away from you!” Those words had rolled around in his mind for years. He had been saving them up like coins, and they came out as bullets. Raúl didn’t care; he wanted them to hurt.
Sergio quivered. He could see the rolling, raging lake inside Raúl. All that passion and fire should have reminded Sergio of Rosa, but instead, Sergio looked at his son, and it was like staring into a mirror.
“You can’t keep Mom here, and you can’t keep me here, either.” Raúl grabbed all his bags at once, a bouquet of luggage.
Sergio tried to stand in the way, but Raúl laughed and dodged him easily; the old man moved like he was a thousand years old.
A door slammed, and Raúl ran into open, lonely desert, never looking back.
Once upon a time, Sergio let the quiet wash around him — how still the house was and, without Raúl here, how much bigger.
How much time passed? An hour, maybe? He refused to wear a watch, to measure time in that newfangled way.
Then he heard the engine of a car. She was home.
The old man walked outside, trying to set his face back to neutral. Rosa had no patience for his fights with Raúl. She thought her son should be free to come and go as he pleased. She had a selective memory, too. Had she forgotten about Carolina and the Father? Had she forgotten about death?
Hour of the Bees Page 16