by Barry Rachin
“Howie buys a bee suit, calfskin gloves, a smoker… al the glitzy paraphernalia plus a fifteen-thousand-strong plywood box of Italian honeybees.” As Becky explained it, the bees were energetic and spirited. Every day they left the nest to forage for nectar in nearby fields and by late June filled the hive with ten frames of golden syrup.
“Howie removed a couple of frames from the hive,” Becky continued. “He claimed that the bees had more than enough honey to suit their needs and that if we didn’t take preventative measures, the colony might be inclined to swarm.”
Bending over, she cleared a handful of weeds obstructing the mouth of the hive. “He carried the frames into the kitchen, mashed the wax into a soggy lump and ran it through a mesh strainer.”
“So you had plenty of honey that first season?” Ralph noted.
“Enough to last six months or more,” Becky confirmed. “But Howie was obsessed. All summer long, he kept pilfering from the hive, so by Labor Day, the bees were lucky if they had twenty, lousy pounds of honey to last through a New England winter.”
“How much would they normally need?”
“Ninety minimum.” “Did I mention that, from when they first arrived, the honeybees were an utterly contented lot? Becky made a wry face. “Once they caught on that my husband was playing fast and loose with their honey stores, their blissful mood changed. Bamboozled, flimflammed, conned out of their hard labor, they sensed that the gathering season was too-far gone to recoup the losses and became frantic… desperate.”
“Their fate was sealed.” Ralph anticipated her thoughts. As Becky explained things, by mid-August Howie was persona no grata. If the stocky man with the salt and pepper goatee ventured within fifty feet of the hive, the vindictive bees chased him off with homicidal rage.
The winter that Howie became a beekeeper was particularly harsh with several nor’easters back to back and a protracted icy cold spell that petered out in early May. The bees starved then froze. “When we removed the top cover the day after Mother’s Day, it was not a pretty sight. A mountain of moldy carcasses… that’s what we found.”
“Howie blustered, ‘I’ll spruce things up, replace the damaged frames and order a new box of bees.’” “In all fairness, he did clean things up a bit but never got around to ordering the bees.”
“He didn’t replenish the hive?”
“No,” Becky confirmed. “His interest in beekeeping never extended beyond his first failed effort.”
Ralph gestured at the insects flitting about the entrance to the hive. “I don’t understand.”
“Seven years the hive remained empty. Year after year, nothing. The day Howie dropped dead, a swarm of feral bees found its way here. Given how he had mistreated both his business clients and the honeybees, I viewed their arrival as a cosmic joke.”
“Or an omen,” Ralph quipped. He gestured at the twin boxes stacked together. “How much honey have the feral bees gathered?”
“I never took a drop… not a single frame, so they should have more than enough.” Becky made a disagreeable face. “But it won’t make a bit of difference because, when the bank officials walk the property next week and discovers the hive, they’ll call an exterminator.”
“Hadn’t thought of that.” Ralph shook his head in disgust.
“Sometimes in the late afternoon I come out here and watch the bees… their comings and goings.” Becky spoke in a matter-of-fact, unruffled tone, directing her remarks at the shaggy hemlock trees on the far side of the lawn. “Honeybees are very community-minded. The welfare of the colony trumps all other considerations. They don’t know from hedge funds or sub-prime realty.”
* * * * *
With a flick of her head, Becky indicated a copper urn nestled on the fireplace mantle. “Meet my former spouse.”
“Howie would have preferred a cemetery plot, but prematurely cashed in his life insurance policy.” As though a constraining presence had to be dispensed with, Becky relocated her husband’s ashes to a cardboard box labeled ‘cutlery and dining room furnishings’.
She did not immediately return to where Ralph was standing. Rather, the woman studied the crumpled box with an opaque smile. Dropping down on her haunches, she undid the flaps and removed the urn. Uncapping the metal lid, she held the contents under his nose. “What do you see?” The sardonic smile deepened.
“Chalky dust,” Ralph replied.
Becky clapped the lip down with an irreverent thud. “The third time I caught him cheating, I threatened divorce. Howie begged me not to leave. The other woman… she was nothing more than an aberration, a momentary lapse of good judgment.”
“We went for counseling. After six months, the therapist took me aside. He says, ‘Your husband’s a phallic character disorder. People like Howie are narcissistic, opportunistic, self-indulgent… Hope for the best but plan for the worse.’”
“There’s no therapy… medication?”
“The psychologist,” Becky continued, “explained that the condition was structural.”
“Strange choice of words,” Ralph interjected.
“Structural,” she elaborated, “like a cornerstone or load bearing wall in a thirty-story high rise.” She cradled the urn in both hands. Becky smiled bleakly, a sad, disheartened broken expression of her current circumstances. “When I married Howie, he seemed such a swell guy.” Retracing her steps, she sealed her husband’s remains away in the cardboard box, running several beads of masking tape over the top for good measure.
Ralph placed a hand on her shoulder. "Come spend a week with me for old-time sake. We can wipe the slate clean… a new beginning. If nothing comes of it, go live with your daughter in California. No one need know."
Becky took a deep breath and let the air out sharply. “You want Romeo and Juliette?” The tone was more acerbic now. “We’re too old for that adolescent mush.”
The single bulb drenched the room in a dreary pall. Covered by a moss green comforter, a Steinway, baby grand piano rested near the bay window. "Still play?"
"Not in years."
Ralph recalled a rather eccentric interpretation of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, the melody in the right hand overpowered by booming arpeggios that transformed the lilting, gossamer tune into a bombastic riot that had more in common with roaring twenties ragtime than classical music. “You still wear those outlandish belts?”
“Which belts?”
“The ones fashioned from alligator skin.”
Becky’s features dissolved in an impish grin. “Not in years. They’re passé. I’ve moved on to other, equally garish accessories.” She said nothing else for the better part of a minute. "I treated you badly, always putting myself first, and now you’re willing to settle for the dribs and drabs of a squandered life."
"I don’t see it that way."
She lowered her eyes. In the hallway a Kieninger grandfather clock recessed in a quarter-sawn, white oak cabinet stroked the hour. Edging closer, Becky placed three fingers on his chest, maintaining a safe but manageable distance. "A week for old-time sake?” she repeated the earlier offer. “How about a package deal?” Her fingers finally came to rest flat on his flannel shirt.
“I don’t follow you.”
“I need a safe haven… a sanctuary for the feral bees, either your place or someplace where no one will cause them harm.”
Ralph’s brain, which had temporarily shut down with the offbeat ultimatum, kicked into overdrive. He turned away, went and stood in front of the clock. “The mouth of the hive could be sealed shut with sheets of crumpled newspaper.” He directed his words at the oak paneling. “Other than the front entrance, are there any other openings?”
“No, just the one.”
His mind shifted back and forth in rhythm with the brass pendulum. “The best time to move a beehive is…” He left the sentence dangling.
“At night… once the temperature drops, they retreat to the interior and cluster together for warmth.”
“Yes, but
it’s not that cold out,” he countered, “and the insects are still active. What about the drive?”
After a brief silence, Becky replied, “Bees are cold-blooded Turn on the air conditioner and let the car cool down. They won’t be able to fly.”
“Or sting,” Ralph added rounding off her thought.” He returned to where she was standing and placed his lips alongside her ear. “I’ll block off the hive entrance and then back the car up alongside the box elders. In the meanwhile, why don’t you grab a toothbrush and pack an overnight case.
Becky’s nostrils gently flared. The eyelids drooped to half-mast. “I won’t be long locking things up.”
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Synchronicity
"Haaaaah!" Marie Brewster, let out a brief whimper like a mortally injured animal before slumping to the ground unconscious. When she came to, a rotund, bearded man with pebbly teeth and a bald spot on the back of his head was bent over the middle-aged woman fanning her with a fully-illustrated Kaufman’s Field Guide for Birds of North America.
"Feeling better?" The hairy man eased the woman to a sitting position with her back supported against a white birch. The unfortunate incident happened this way. Marie had gone for a stroll at the Oak Knoll bird sanctuary a mile down the road from where she was visiting with her brother's family in Brandenburg. Meandering down the rock-strewn trail to an open area fronting on a lake peppered with patches of pastel-colored algae, Marie was admiring a chokeberry bush ripe with crimson fruit. Suddenly, a man's voice, gruff and menacing, called out, "Don't move!" The woman, who under the best of circumstances suffered from a myriad of insecurities, felt every molecule of breath crushed from her lungs as her legs turned rubbery and mind went blank.
"A Baltimore oriole," the man sputtered, "was perched on a branch no more than ten feet from where you were standing, and I was trying to focus my birding binoculars for a better view."
A Lhasa apso that scampered into the brush when the woman collapsed returned. Nestling in her lap the manicy pooch with the pushed in snout and pronounced overbite began licking the woman’s face. "No need to explain." Marie tentatively touched her scalp. The ebony comb holding her hair in place had listed to one side at a cockeyed angle. With the faintest hint of a double chin, the pudgy blonde had surely been a knockout in her youth. Now, in her middle years, she had become more matronly."Since childhood, I've always been prone to silly uncertainties and fainting spells."
Gabe helped the woman to her feet then glanced up into the topmost branches of a leafy polar. "They come up this way every spring to mate."
"Who does?"
"The orioles," he clarified. "The birds summer here, hatch their chicks and migrate south again to Florida and Central America for the winter. Don't suppose you caught a glimpse -”
Marie raised a hand fretfully, indicating that she had missed the sighting. "Fainting in a bird sanctuary… I'm so embarrassed!" An elderly couple with expensive-looking hiking gear and matching safari hats wandered down the trail. “He's over there now," Gabe observed.
Marie squinted uncertainly. From the outset they seemed to be communicating at cross purposes. "Who is?"
"The oriole. Here, see for yourself." Gabe handed her the binoculars. "Over there… in the topmost branch of the sugar maple.”
"How beauuuutiful!" Marie gushed. The bird’s sides and belly were drenched in tangerine hues, the sooty-black wings edged with distinctive, eggshell white markings. For a day that started out like a Greek tragedy things were getting noticeably better.
“I recognize you from somewhere,” Gabe replied, “but I’m not sure where.”
“Marie Brewster,” the woman replied extending a manicured hand. She had shifted to a rustic bench fashioned from a block of maple near the path. “That’s my stage name, when I’m performing with the Brandenburg Theater Troupe.”
“Yes, of course!” Gabe slid down on the bench next to her. The dog, which had curled up in her lap, growled briefly sending up a throaty protest but quickly lost interest. “I saw you in the Alice in Wonderland production several years ago. You played the White Queen.” His smile quickly faded. “I brought my wife. It was our last evening out together. She passed away a few months later.”
Reaching out she patted him on the forearm. “I’m so sorry.”
“A phantom limb,” he added as a bitter afterthought. “The mourning process… even on good days, that’s what it feels like.”
Marie breathed out heavily and her features darkened. “I, too, recently just lost a loved one.”
“Was it a prolong illness?”
“Infidelity... I caught her with another woman.” In response to Gabe’s bewildered expression, Marie added, “I’m gay.”
He paused just long enough to digest the information. “A lesbian thespian?”
“A rather droll choice of language but, yes, I suppose.” The blonde reached up and reset the hair comb. “Does my sexual affiliation bother you?”
“No, not particularly.”
“I only mention it because some people consider homosexuals freaks of nature.”
Gabe opened his mouth but could think of nothing to say.
The Lhasa suddenly bolted from her lap and began scooting on his hind quarter across the grass. The dog settled down but almost immediately tucked his hindquarters forward and began scooting with the front paws in a bizarre, compulsive ritual. “His scent glands are acting up,” Marie observed, as though it was the most ordinary detail to share with a complete stranger. “It happens every so often. When we get home, I’ll have to ‘express’ the excess fluid.”
Gabe didn’t particularly care to know what that process entailed, but before he could conjure up a neutral topic Marie blurted, “There are these two, pea-shaped glands at four and eight o’clock just inside the anus. You insert a lubricated pinkie finger and squeeze to manually remove the oily, brownish fluid. It relieves pressure and helps protect against infection.”
Marie hadn’t mentioned anything about wearing latex gloves. “Sounds like a barrel of fun.” “Last month,” Gabe noted, deflecting the conversation to a more neutral topic, “my company closed down for a week to upgrade inventory. Figured I’d hike a small section of the Appalachian Trail in northern New England, maybe even climb Mount Katahdin in central Maine. I did it once before and it proved a spectacular trip.”
“So what happened?”
Gabe shrugged. “Don’t know. Without my wife it just wasn’t the same.”
She shrugged. “Ever think of remarrying?”
“No, not at my age.” He was seldom this candid, even among close friends. But because the garrulous woman had no use for men, at least not in the romantic sense, Gabe didn’t mind baring his soul. Nothing would come of their clandestine tēte-á-tēte. It was like making small talk with a cloistered nun or younger sibling.
Marie swept the dog back up in her arms and began rubbing his furry scalp with her generous chin. “Synchronicity… are you familiar with the concept?” He shook his head from side to side. The woman had the weirdest habit of leapfrogging about from one random topic to the next. “Synchronicity,” Marie continued, “suggests that life isn’t just a series of random events but an expression of deeper order in the universe.” “There’s a scene in Through the Looking-Glass where the White Queen says to Alice: ‘It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards’"
“Yes,” Gabe confirmed. “I vaguely remember that line from the play.”
“The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday but never jam today.” The blonde woman slipped effortlessly into a reprise of her role with the theater troupe. 'It must come sometimes to jam today,' Alice objects, but the Queen insists, ‘No, it can’t. It's jam every OTHER day: today isn't any OTHER day, you know.'”
After the gush of unsolicited drama, Marie suddenly fell silent as she paused to collect her thoughts. All the giddy theatrics - the posturing and gesticulations – had fallen away, replaced by a muted gravitas. “Synchron
icity… maybe that’s what drew us together on this bench today… this utterly random moment in time and space.”
“A gay actress and middle-aged widower,” Gabe observed. “We make for strange bedfellows.” Before she could reply, he reached out and tapped her forearm. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
Without further explanation, Gabe sauntered off down the path to a small pond that was the centerpiece in the idyllic sanctuary. Behind a scrubby box elder tree no taller than his belt buckle he dropped his fly to half mast and peed on the tiny tree. When he was finished relieving himself, Gabe wandered down to the pond and stared out across the placid water.
The temperature hovered in the mid-seventies under a radiant blue, cloudless sky. In a boggy nook no more than twenty feet away, a painted turtle stuck its black snout out of the water. The turtle submerged leaving a ripple of silvery water eddying toward shore and, a minute later, reemerged in the middle of an oblong shaped bed of lily pads. If Gabe counted off several dozen additional sightings, the loquacious lesbian would probably have gone off elsewhere, leaving him free to continue his bird watching.
Synchronicity… are you familiar with the concept?
What was he to read in the woman’s cockamamie pronouncements? The amateur actress possessed a dry sense of humor, a precocious wit. But what good was it to him? Since his wife’s passing Gabe hadn’t felt an affinity for another woman, until this ditsy female collapsed in fright on the trail. A gravelly rumbling welled up in his throat, an irksome mix of desolation and futility. The painted turtle had resurfaced a dozen times already, but Gabe felt no great sense of urgency.
Synchronicity – they were both alone, beleaguered and loveless, but nothing could ever come of their serendipitous meeting. The event resembled some cosmic joke – as though a divine presence was thumbing its sadistic nose at their human predicament. Gabe scratched his beard languidly and watched as the turtle finally tired of the water, climbing up on a rock to sun itself. Only then did he finally shuffle back to the bench, where the woman was still sitting.
“I thought you’d abandoned me.”