Bee Season (14 page)

A man with jowls and shiny black shoes says something to Saul about a viewing. For a moment Aaron thinks they’re going to see a movie that will explain everything about his mysterious dead grandfather, but then it is just him and Saul and the shiny-shoes man walking down a hallway and Aaron gets a bad feeling in his stomach that has nothing to do with the fact that he really, really has to pee.

“Dad,” he whispers, because this seems like the kind of place where only whispering is allowed, “where are we going?”

Saul answers in a strange, tight voice that Aaron has never heard before. “We’re going to say goodbye to your grandfather.”

Aaron does not like this idea. He does not like the idea of saying goodbye to a dead person, especially one to whom he has never even said hello. He pictures a big room with a chair and his dead grandfather sitting in it. He pictures having to shake his dead grandfather’s hand.

“Dad, why do we have to say goodbye?” and now Saul’s lips are pressed together so hard all the red has gone out of them.

“Because — ” Saul says and then stops. The man in the shoes guides them into a small, silent room with a curtain at its front. When Saul squeezes Aaron’s hand again, Aaron squeezes back. Saul looks down at Aaron with teary eyes. Aaron realizes that the whole reason he has been brought to Cleveland is to help his dad in this room. He wants to tell his father that it’s okay. Together they will shake the dead man’s hand. But by the time Aaron starts to try to say these things, they are already walking toward the curtain.

As soon as Aaron sees his grandfather in the coffin he feels stupid for thinking he’d be sitting in a chair because of course a dead person would be in a coffin. The skin of his grandfather’s face looks loose, as though it is made of slightly melted wax. Aaron briefly wonders if it’s fake.

But Aaron knows it can’t be fake because his dead grandfather looks exactly like his dad as an old dead person, which is much scarier than the idea of his dead grandfather sitting in a chair. Aaron’s dead grandfather has Saul’s nose and eyebrows and lips and maybe even eyes but the eyes are closed, thank goodness, so there’s no way to know. But now Aaron is clearly picturing his dead grandfather opening his eyes and revealing Dad eyes in a dead grandfather face. So that when Saul leans over the coffin Aaron is positive that it will be his grandfather
and
his father who are dead and he starts peeing.

He is crying and he is peeing and he is pulling on his father’s hand, but he is not making a sound because this is a funeral home. He doesn’t want to make his dad any madder than he is sure to be already since Aaron was brought here to help and he isn’t helping at all. But when Saul turns and sees what has happened, his face looks grateful. Just for a second. Maybe so fast that Saul doesn’t even know it himself. But Aaron does. Faster than Aaron thought possible, they are out of the room with the coffin and in a bathroom to clean up. The man with the shiny shoes lends Aaron a pair of pants that smell a little funny but fit just fine. And when they go back to the room, the curtain is open and the coffin is closed and the men in their uncomfortable suits are there and neither Aaron nor his dad ever sees his dead grandfather again.

Even though it’s days before she’s due to get on the plane, Eliza is packing. She’s got every piece of clothing she owns on her bed but keeps returning to her drawers for the perfect shirt. She doesn’t know what she wants the shirt to look like, whether it’s supposed to make her look pretty or smart or cool. She just knows she doesn’t have it. So far, she’s managed to pack underwear and socks and the dress she’ll wear for the actual competition. It’s not a great dress, but it’s the only one she has that she doesn’t feel stupid in. She would much rather wear her velour pants, but the spelling bee rules specify that girls are to wear dresses during the competition. Which is why it’s even more important that she have the perfect shirt, so that she can wear it with her velour pants when she’s not wearing the dress to show what she’s really like.

“Mom?”

Miriam is filing her nails in the bedroom while sorting laundry into light and dark loads with her feet. The television is tuned to “Jeopardy,” but Miriam doesn’t notice that the horizontal hold isn’t right, is only listening to the sound.

“Elly, Saul said he’d do the laundry — What is the French Revolu-tion? — when he got back from class, so why don’t you bring your hamper in here and add your clothes to these baskets?”

“Sure, Mom. Um, would it be okay if we went shopping for a shirt — ”

“Who is Stanford White?”

“ — before Dad and I go to D.C.? I don’t really have anything to go with my black pants.”

“What is the cotton gin?”

Since the kaleidoscope incident Miriam has kept her distance. She is embarrassed both by what she had imagined was possible between herself and her daughter and her quick rejection of that possibility. As consolation, Miriam has been telling herself that Eliza is more Saul’s than hers, focusing on Eliza’s straight hair and long fingers for proof. She knows that Saul has done a wonderful job helping prepare Eliza for the nationals, displaying a selflessness Miriam knows she lacks, but she cannot help wondering how it might have been different. Miriam briefly pictured herself and Eliza poring over word sheets together, matching expressions of deep concentration on their faces. In these imaginings, Miriam focused on the shared slope of their noses, the common curves of their mouths.

“You want something special for the trip?” Miriam asks.

Alex Trebek informs America that he’ll be right back after this commercial break and Miriam unconsciously nods in response. Miriam is situated between Eliza and the TV, her head framed by the glowing screen. Things with her mother have seemed different lately. Eliza can’t help but feel it has something to do with the kaleidoscope. She knows she messed that up. She should have been more excited, even if it only was a little kid’s toy. Thinking back on it, Eliza is pretty sure that it’s the only time she’s ever seen her mother look disappointed, which makes Eliza feel even worse about the whole thing.

“You should be a contestant,” Eliza says.

Miriam shakes her head. “I can only answer the academic questions.”

“But you get all of those right. Besides, if you sneak me on with you, I could help you with the other ones. I could hide behind the podium thing and whisper answers.”

“Elly” — which really grabs Eliza’s attention because Miriam never calls her that — “when you’re trying to think of a spelling word, what happens?”

Eliza stays silent for so long that Miriam thinks her daughter didn’t hear her, but that isn’t it. Eliza is quiet because she wants to get this right, wants to make sure that, this time, she gives her mother what she wants.

“It’s kind of hard to explain,” says Eliza and Miriam nods, ignoring the $600 Constitution question in favor of her daughter’s voice. “I start out hearing the word in my head in the voice of whoever said it to me. Then the voice changes into something that’s not their voice or my voice. And I know when that happens it’s the word’s voice, that the word is talking to me. Everything else becomes quiet. Even if there’s other noise, I don’t hear it, which is one of the reasons I keep my eyes closed, because otherwise it’s too weird seeing things around me and not hearing them. But the main reason I keep my eyes closed is so that I can see the word in my head. When I start hearing the word’s voice, the letters start arranging themselves. Sometimes it takes awhile for them to look right, but when they do, they stop moving and I know that that’s the right spelling. So then I just say what I’m seeing and that’s it.”

Eliza looks at her mother, bracing herself once again for her mother’s disappointment. But instead Miriam is looking like what Eliza said is exactly right.

“You know,” Miriam says, “I have a box of clothes from when I was about your size in the attic. I can’t remember what’s up there, but there might be something you’d like.”

Eliza’s face lights up.

Miriam forgoes Final Jeopardy to climb into the attic with Eliza where, inside a steamer trunk, amid the scents of mothballs and dust, Eliza finds a shirt with big green buttons and her mother’s name sewn into the collar. In the privacy of her room, Eliza dons the shirt, pressing the collar into her neck until she is sure she can feel each individual letter of her mother’s name upon her skin.

For dinner, Saul makes noodles shaped like letters and Aaron has to struggle to keep his appetite. Eliza spends the meal spelling out increasingly longer words, for which Saul lets her dig through the pasta bowl to find what she needs. When necessary she improvises, biting off the curve of a P to form an F, turning an N sideways to form a Z.

Aaron’s legs hurt from an hour of trying to assume the lotus position. He finally gave up and settled for Indian style, very aware of the fact that his robe was unable to cover his crossed legs and that if someone were to enter his room they would get an eyeful of him sitting on his floor with his pubic hair, which no one in his family has yet seen and which Aaron would like to keep that way. This recurring thought was not helpful in his efforts at meditation.

According to Buddhism, Aaron’s pubic concerns are illusory, but it’s difficult for him to get such thoughts to act as insubstantial as Buddhism claims them to be. Not that he wouldn’t prefer it. Aaron can think of nothing more attractive than merging with a spiritual continuum by sloughing off his corporeal self. Aaron pictures himself under a huge bristle brush. There is no pain, only a feeling of release as his skin, muscle, and bones are worn away to reveal a shining light like a small sun.

“Earth to Aaron. Come in, Aaron.”

Aaron realizes he has been sitting at the table with his fork midway to his mouth.

“So, how about it?” Saul continues, smiling at his son’s abstraction. “You think you can survive a week without me and Elly?”

They leave for the nationals tomorrow. It will be the first time in over ten years that Saul hasn’t taught his weekly adult education class or led the Shabbat service.

“It won’t be that much different, really,” Aaron says, immediately wishing he hadn’t.

Eliza blushes.

“We’ll be back in no time,” Saul says as if he hasn’t heard.

Miriam is putting Eliza to bed, having interrupted her regularly scheduled magazine reading to do so. Eliza has asked for a glass of water and an extra blanket just to prolong the rare event. For the first time in her life, she wishes she had long hair so that she could ask her mother to brush it.

“Are you all packed?”

“Yes.” Under the covers, Eliza is sliding her legs back and forth to soak up the sheet’s coolness. A moss-green suitcase Saul retrieved from the attic stands packed beside the door. Eliza has checked her alarm clock three times. The suitcase is made of worn, soft leather that looks like it has traveled.

Miriam sits on Eliza’s bed, the edge of the mattress sloped with her weight. Eliza surreptitiously slides her leg over until her knee rests against her mother’s calf, only the bed sheet between them.

“I thought I recognized that suitcase,” Miriam says. “It’s part of a set my parents bought for me when I was starting boarding school. I didn’t know I still had it.”

Eliza looks at the suitcase with renewed interest. She tries to imagine Miriam at her age but can only manage her mother’s adult head on a ten-year-old’s body. Eliza assumed her mother had attended a public school like her. She realizes that everything she knows about her mother’s childhood — a kaleidoscope, a shirt with green buttons, and a suitcase — she has learned in the past few weeks.

“Were you scared?” Eliza asks, the question one of thousands filling Eliza’s brain.

“When?”

“At boarding school.”

Miriam looks at the suitcase for a long time. Eliza tells herself the longer she stays silent, the more worthy she is of receiving her mother’s answer. But when Miriam turns back toward Eliza, it is as if they have already moved on to another topic.

“This is what you do,” Miriam says. “When the plane takes off and the pressure starts building up in your ears, plug your nose and gently blow. Like this.” Miriam pinches her nose. “Until your ears pop. Then swallow. Gum keeps saliva in your mouth. Start chewing as soon as the plane starts down the runway. Swallow as often as you can. Swallowing might equalize the pressure on its own and you won’t even need to plug your nose. Landing is usually worse than taking off.” She reaches into her pocket. “Here.” She hands Elly a pack of cherry Bubble Yum.

Eliza resists the urge to put the gum under her pillow, puts it beside the alarm clock instead.

“I’m proud of you,” Miriam says. After moving the covers back and forth as if she’s trying to even them out, she tucks Elly in.

“I love you, Mom,” Elly says, soft, only after Miriam has turned out the light.

An electronic billboard fronting the hotel doors spells out
WELCOME
NATIONAL
SPELLING
BEE
CONTESTANTS
AND
THEIR
FAMILIES
in white lights, letter by letter. Saul has a porter take a picture of himself and Eliza standing beneath it. At the moment the shutter clicks,
W-E-L-C-O-M-E
N-A-T
-
blazes above their heads.

The hotel lobby is glass and faux marble, lined with trees containing live birds. One uniformed man strides back and forth with a moist cloth, removing bird shit from the lustrous surfaces upon which it lands. Light-studded glass elevators emerge from a blue-lit pond in which real fish swim beneath fake lily pads.

Only in the elevator does the realness of what is happening hit. Elly and Saul share the elevator with another child and his mother, the boy clutching the same welcome packet Elly was given at the reception desk.

“What’s your number?” the boy asks.

“I don’t know,” Eliza says. The hotel is huge. She feels like she’s in line for the twirly rides at the annual Boys and Girls Club carnival, knows what she has been eagerly anticipating will make her sick to her stomach now that it has arrived.