I went to the shed and put my gardening gloves and trowel up. I pulled the kerchief from my hair and shook out my curls. I remembered when the bees had swallowed me. I didn’t know if it had been real, but it had seemed real. It had always seemed that they meant to protect me, and soon they’d hibernate. Maybe by the time they returned in the spring, I would be free.
I went to the kitchen and washed my hands. Zelda got on her step stool and washed hers. She said, “All clean.”
“Are you ever going to take off that dress?” I asked.
“Maybe when I get a kitten.”
“Funny.”
“I know.”
“But what about when you take a bath?”
“Maybe then.”
She followed me upstairs. “It’s time to read to Oscar,” she said. The dog ran after her.
I pulled my red suitcase out from under the bed and popped the silver latch. The lining was a silky beige fabric decorated with red rain boots. It smelled like the Hotel Chelsea, like I’d boxed my time there. It was like Pandora’s box now unleashed in Greeley. I was going to live how Sheff had said we’d live, just how we pleased. I was going to be with Betty. I was going to stop walking on eggshells. I could do this: Uncle Eddie knew I could do it. My parents knew. Sheff knew. I packed my underwear, clothes (I didn’t have much), and my copy of The Catcher in the Rye in my suitcase. I admired the blue dress Betty had bought me. Then, I smiled, imagining waking up to Betty every morning. I opened my cardboard jewelry box, the kind with the ballerina who dances, and pulled out the Madame Zelda handbill I’d found at the Jersey Shore. I stuffed it down beside the dress. Tomorrow, I’d pack Zelda’s things. As long as she had her fancy dress, nothing else really mattered. I latched the suitcase just as Zelda and Oscar bounded into the room.
“Are we going on a trip? Are we flying on an airplane?”
“Nope. We’re not going anywhere.” I slid the suitcase back under the bed.
She said, “When the Berenstain Bears went on a trip, they packed a brown suitcase.”
I heard the kitchen door open. “Gloria!”
“I’m upstairs.”
“What’s for dinner?”
Zelda ran downstairs. “Mommy has a red suitcase. The Berenstain Bears have a brown one.” I followed after her.
“What do you want for dinner?” I asked.
“What suitcase?” Jacob asked.
“Mommy has a red suitcase.”
Jacob tromped upstairs. Zelda ran after and I followed. “I can make anything for dinner. What do you feel like? Do you want sloppy joes?”
Jacob scanned the bedroom. “Are you going somewhere?”
I closed my eyes for a second. Very softly, I said, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Where’s your suitcase?” Jacob crouched down and looked under the bed.
“Right where it always is,” I said.
He pulled it out, lifting it onto the bed. “Except it doesn’t feel empty.”
“Sometimes, I just store stuff in there.”
He unlatched it. “Strange. You packed the same clothes you always wear, including this stupid dress. Where are you ever going to wear this?” He threw it on the floor. “And you packed your stupid book.” He flung it to the dresser. He rubbed his chin like Rodin’s The Thinker. “So where are you going?”
Zelda said, “She’s not going anywhere.”
Jacob said, “Go play in your room. Daddy needs to talk to Mommy alone. And you’re exactly right. She’s not going anywhere.”
Zelda was still in her fancy dress. She shook her head. “I’m staying with Mommy.”
He said, “Go! Now!”
She burst into tears.
“Don’t yell at Zelda,” I said.
Jacob pulled the rest of my clothes from the suitcase and threw them on the floor.
I knelt, gathering them in my arms.
“I thought you weren’t going anywhere.”
This wasn’t ever going to be quiet or easy—the leaving. No matter how I left, sneaking out while he was at work, leaving a note, calling him on the telephone, he’d come after me. Very gently, I said, “We’re leaving.”
He laughed, his eyes sharklike. “You actually think that that’s going to happen.”
“I can’t be here anymore. I can’t do this anymore.”
“For better or for worse, Gloria.” He turned to Zelda. “Go to your room!” When she didn’t move, he picked her up, toting her down the hall. She kicked her feet, her boots striking his thighs. “Goddamn it!”
“Put Zelda down.”
She flailed in his grasp.
I followed him into her room, where he tossed her on her bed and grabbed my arm. “Come with me.” He pulled Zelda’s door shut. From the hallway, I heard her crying.
“Let me go.” I was going to get my daughter and call Betty to come get us, take Jacob’s stupid truck, or leave on foot. I tried to pry his hand off my arm. He flung me into the wall. “Just let us go,” I said. He pressed my face to the wall, pinning my arm behind me. “We’re leaving.”
“But you’re not,” he said. “I know that everything’s been all fucked up because I haven’t been around. I know that I haven’t been a good husband, but that’s going to change. I had some shit I had to deal with.” I thought of Darlene. I’d heard the rumors, but as far as I’d been concerned, Darlene was doing us a favor. He said, “I’m going to start taking care of you again.” I felt his breath on my neck. He spun me around, pressing his lips to mine, and I bit him.
“Fuck you, Gloria!” He flung me harder against the wall before grabbing me around the waist. “You want to play rough? Is that how you want to do this? You’ve been running wild like an untamed horse.”
“I want to go.”
I heard Zelda’s door open. Jacob pinned both arms to my side, forcing me down the hall. Zelda grabbed hold of his thigh. “Put Mommy down.”
“Please stop, Jacob.” I tried to speak calmly. Then, Oscar started barking. He showed Jacob his teeth. Zelda screamed, and Jacob kicked Oscar in the ribs. “Please.” I writhed, kicking my legs, my feet braced against the wall.
He said, “Why do you have to do this shit to me, to make me look like the bad guy? You’re the bad guy, Gloria.” Zelda was still screaming. Jacob forced me into the bathroom. He screamed at Zelda. “Go to your room!”
I said, “Please listen to Daddy.” I didn’t want her to see whatever was about to happen.
“But, Mommy …”
“Mommy’s okay. Go on now.”
Jacob said, “That’s more like it.”
As Zelda left, I heard Oscar follow. I said to Jacob, “Can we please just start over?”
He set me down. “That’s all I want. All I want is for everything to be good with us.”
I ventured, “Maybe we just need a little time apart.”
“That’s the last fucking thing we need. That’s how we’ve been living. Don’t think I take my wedding vows lightly. You love me. You’re my wife. Take off your fucking clothes.”
“I don’t want to do that.”
“I don’t give a shit, Gloria.”
I tried to rush past him, but he caught me at the waist and flung me back. My calves struck the bathtub while the rest of me kept going, my head smacking the wall before I dropped in a heap. He said, “You’re not going to leave me. I’m going to give you what you’ve been missing.” He grabbed me by my hair and slugged my jaw. The left side of my face was numb. I smelled the beer on his breath. He dragged me along the floor so that my head was between the sink base and the commode. Then, he started unbuttoning my pants. He was breathing heavily. “I’m the man of the house!” I tried to get up, but he knocked my head against the floor. “Goddamn it, Gloria.”
I heard the door open. Zelda. “Stop it, Daddy! Leave Mommy alone!”
“Go to your room, goddamn it.”
“Daddy, stop it!” She was crying hard, and there was nothing I could do. I fought, but the harder I fought, the ha
rder he gripped my throat, his thumb pressing against my windpipe. Then, I heard them. Before I saw them, I heard them. They swarmed into the bathroom, gathering where the plaster hung in sheets from the ceiling. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to unhinge Jacob’s grip, but he was too strong. He was bearing down, his thighs like a vise at my waist. I knew Zelda was there. She could see. Please don’t see. Please make it stop. Please. He slammed the back of my head into the bathroom tile. I heard the bees’ hum grow louder. Zelda screaming, “Get off, Mommy!” Oscar barking. I was going to die. I searched with my hands for something to use as a weapon. I dug at the grout until a piece of old tile broke loose. I used everything I had to shoot it up into his neck.
“Why do you … ? Why … ?” he said, and then his voice gurgled, the bees descending, a yellow and black swirling mass, blood pouring warm from Jacob’s neck. The bees covered his face, their stingers punctured his skin. They fell like yellow and black rain to my face and chest, and I was falling too, through the cracked floor into blackness, when I heard a familiar voice, Sheff’s: “I’ve got you, Gloria. I’ve always got you.”
32
I WOKE IN A WHITE room, white walls, white ceiling, white bedcovers, white window wide-open, fat bumblebees passing through; Betty in a white dress, a Florence Nightingale walking toward me.
“Where am I?”
“She’s talking.”
I reached for her hand. Then I dropped down through a green canopy of trees into a hollowed-out stump with a million yellow cells, sweet golden legs piling and packing nectar into hexagonal cells. I was a part of this: Honeybees protect themselves by stinging intruders.
I woke to the name Zelda: a woman with long fingers, bejeweled, picking, piling, sorting, dealing cards. She showed me her hand, a full house, three queens and a pair of aces, and then Betty was holding my hands. I heard the words head trauma and stay with me before I fell again, this time into the bathroom. Jacob’s hands at my throat. You’re my fucking wife.
I don’t want to be your wife. I want to go. I have to go. Golden dust fell from the ceiling. The dust turned to bees. “We’ve got you.” I heard my mother’s voice. “Why don’t you take Zelda to the snack machine?”
Betty said, “I’ll tell the nurse she’s awake.”
“I need you.” I reached for Zelda, but she was too far away. Zelda. I fell again, this time into a whiteness like salt. Don’t let Jacob take my baby. The salt thinned into light. It swallowed everything.
“Her pupils are responding.”
“You’re okay.” It was my mother’s voice.
“I think I’m dead.”
There was a woman with red hair holding a flashlight. “I’m Nurse Mary. How are you feeling today?”
I didn’t answer.
I saw my mother and reached for her. She didn’t disappear. I didn’t fall. I held on. She kissed my forehead. “You gave us a scare.”
“Where’s Sheff? He was with me.”
My mother smiled sympathetically. “She’s still disoriented.”
“It’ll pass. It’ll take time.”
“We were going to have the most beautiful children in the world.”
My mother said, “Can you get Zelda?” My father stood at the foot of the bed.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in the hospital.”
“Daddy.” He came closer, and I saw his one hand, the bones pointing in the wrong direction. I didn’t remember it looking so terrible. I said, “There’s something wrong with me.”
My father said, “You have a brain injury, Gloria, but you’re going to be all right.”
“Where’s Zelda?”
“I’ll get her.”
My father left and my mother sat at my side. “How long have I been here?”
“Three weeks.”
“Am I really going to be okay?”
“You are.” She kissed my forehead, and I reached up to feel my head. My hair was gone.
Then, Betty came in holding Zelda’s hand. Zelda charged the bed, climbing up. “My baby,” I said. “I missed you.” My mother moved my IV line out of her way.
“I’m careful,” Zelda said. She wore a bright pink dress and black tap shoes. “Pa Pa got me the shoes with the clickers that tap tap.” She climbed down to show me her dance routine just as a doctor came into the room. He showed me his nametag.
“I’m Dr. Fisher,” he said. “Good morning, Gloria. Do you know where you are this morning?”
“A hospital.”
“Who’s the president of the United States?”
“Jimmy Carter, the last I knew anyway.”
“Can you name the days of the week for me?”
I named them.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
I looked at Zelda. “I …”
“Daddy went to heaven with the angels,” Zelda said. “He’s happy there.”
Everyone looked at me. I nodded. I had nothing to add. The doctor finished his examination and said, “You look good today.”
“Thank you.”
He explained that I’d suffered an acute head trauma. It’d been touch and go for a while. He never knew how these things would play out. There’d been fluid on my brain and they’d had to drain it off, but as far as he could tell, I was out of the woods. They would keep me in the hospital for a while longer. See how I did. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, and then he was gone.
Later that evening, after Betty and Zelda had gone home, I sat with my parents. The television was on low, and it was dark outside my window. I whispered to my mother, “The beehive killed him. It was terrifying, and they died, all the bees died.”
My mother said, “What hive, sweetheart? There was no beehive. It was self-defense.”
33
Denouement
HOME WASN’T MARYVILLE, AND IT certainly wasn’t the house on Priddy Lane. Home was with my daughter and with the woman I loved in the two-bedroom apartment above her bakery. Home was the smell of fresh-baked bread and pungent cheese. Home was the sound of Zelda’s footie pajamas slapping the floor, her laughter. Home was the sound of Oscar’s nails on the steps, sliding across the parquet flooring as he chased down a tennis ball. Home was singing along to the Rolling Stones’ “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” and dancing to the music of Donna Summer. Home was the three of us squeezed into one bathroom, Zelda standing on the toilet as we brushed our teeth. Like a good cake, home had many layers. More than anything, home was not feeling guilty or afraid.
For Christmas, my mother bought me a typewriter. She said, “I remember that you used to like to write stories.”
For weeks, I eyed it on my dresser, afraid of what might come out when I finally put my fingers to the keys. Every night after Zelda and Betty were asleep, I talked to Sheff, telling him about my life. “I’m doing it. Really living. I’m happy and in love.” He came to me in dreams, but I was no longer running, being chased, or chasing after something unattainable. Sheff came and he went, and when he came, I welcomed him. He crouched in the darkest recesses of the Belmont ballroom, telling me that he was going to go to Chelsea to see Sal Mineo. I could meet him there. He sat on the Chelsea’s velveteen sofa, holding his copy of Howl, waiting for Allen Ginsberg to return. Next time, he’d find the words to talk to him. He rowed across Turtle Pond, bees flying out from his blond hair. I even saw him on a bus bound for California. He was in all the places we’d been and in the places where we were meant to go. Most often, I dreamed of him sitting in Madame Zelda’s tent on Coney Island. The mermaid woman was there too. So were the bees. He was still asking for that fortune.
On Saturday afternoons, Zelda and I went with Betty to the nursing home to see her mother, whose name was Victoria. Even when she didn’t remember who Betty was, she always seemed to know Zelda. She called her “my queen bee,” and it made me think that maybe Madame Zelda had been right about my Zelda. Maybe she did have some special sight. Maybe she was the queen bee.
In the spring,
Betty and I planted a flower and herb garden. The bees returned, building a hive in a hollowed-out stump, and we watched with wonder as they constructed their home. They flew flower to flower, collecting nectar and pollen and returning to the hive.
Sometimes Betty and I forgot that we weren’t supposed to show affection in public. We held hands or looked at each other lovingly. Once, we kissed in public. We heard the rumors that the two lesbians were raising a soon-to-be lesbian. “That’s what happens when those kind try to be parents. It’s unnatural.” Betty and I chose to ignore them. People still came to the bakery for bread and cakes. They came to the restaurant for breakfast and lunch. Seeing two lesbians living together was a much-needed addition to the Greeley gossip mill.
It was a sunny fall day before I finally summoned the courage to sit down at the typewritter, my fingers on the keys. His name was Sheffield Schoeffler. I met him in the fall of 1965 at the Belmont Institute. I loved him.
Acknowledgments
WHEN I WAS SIXTEEN, I met a group of boys on vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. One of them confessed to me and my friend that he was gay. He had just graduated from high school, he had a core group of best friends he’d known all his life, and none of them knew that he was gay. He said, “If they ever found out, they wouldn’t like me. They’d be afraid of me.” He told my friend and I that if he could be “straight,” he would be. He cried. He was the saddest boy I’d ever met, and he’s remained with me for all these years. I brought him back to life in Sheffield Schoeffler. I like to think that the boy from the beach went off to college and found the strength to live true to himself. I like to think that he told his friends about his sexuality, and that they were kinder and wiser than he knew, that they accepted him for who he was. This novel is for every boy like him. It’s for every child growing up in a world that doesn’t seem to want them.
Thank you to my readers: Maggie Bryson, Loretta Sanders, Lisa Sharp, Danny Stone, and Christopher Young-Stone. Thank you, Mom, for your unconditional love, the Catholic stories of your childhood, and for the stories about Mary Martin’s Peter Pan. I won’t grow up. Thank you to my friends and family for your support during the dark days, when the scenes and characters were overwhelming. Thank you to my dancing compadres at the Y for the freedom to cut loose off the page, and thank you to my agent of ten years, Michelle Brower, for your candor and wisdom.
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