Bee Season (21 page)

Aaron goes into the house, returns with a butter knife. He uses the edge to work the melted plastic off the cement, flinching at the dental scraping sound it makes. He works until the knife is worn hot and smooth. Then he blasts the debris with the hose, sending pieces of melted gym suit scuttling into the grass. A dark burn remains at the epicenter of a larger problem, water and ash having stained the concrete gray. Aaron’s joy at having witnessed the gym suit’s destruction is replaced by abject fear. He retrieves a bottle of bleach and pours it on the stain. This yields the opposite effect: a blanched spot lighter than the surrounding, stained concrete.

Aaron decides the only solution is to color the entire patio an even whitish brown. He unearths portions of lawn and rubs dirt evenly across the cement. He is giving the patio one last rinse with the hose when Saul appears at the screen door.

“What are you doing?”

Aaron drops the hose. From behind the screen his father’s shape is dark and indistinct, conforming to the shape of Aaron’s growing fear. From behind the screen and inside the darkened house, small mercy, Aaron cannot make out his father’s eyes.

Aaron is close to tears. He hasn’t cried in front of anyone since elementary school. The thought of doing so now is as mortifying as the idea of peeing his pants. He swallows his initial urge to tell all in favor of reviewing possible alternatives.

It is not immediately apparent that he has been setting things on fire. The matches are in his pocket, the object of inflammation safely hidden in the grass. There is nothing technically wrong with standing on the patio with the hose, spreading dirt and water with his shoes. These thoughts flash through Aaron’s brain with such incredible speed that the pause between Saul’s question and his answer is barely unnaturally long.

“I was … playing.”

Aaron immediately regrets his unbelievably lame response. He is certain Saul can see the lie as easily as if it is emblazoned across his forehead. The only thing worse than setting a fire is lying about it. Lying, as far as Saul is concerned, is the worst offense because it compromises the most important virtue, which is trust.
People make mistakes,
his father’s voice reverberates in Aaron’s head.
Mistakes are a part of life. Don’t compound your errors by lying about them. I will always support you the best I can as long as you are honest with me.
Aaron realizes he fears the unmasking of his lie more than the discovery of what he has done.

Aaron has no idea how much time passes. He stands utterly still, afraid to regard his father’s face, certain if he does he’ll see the bulging eyes blazing from behind the screen door. He braces himself for the ear-popping descent to a new level of fatherly disappointment. He cannot see, from his vantage point, the bemused expression on Saul’s face.

“Okay.” Saul shrugs. The dark shape retreats. The study door closes. Aaron collapses onto the lawn.

Saul is clearly puzzled when Miriam follows him up to their room and into their bed hours before she usually goes to sleep.

“Are you feeling okay?” he asks. “Is something wrong?” He wonders if he should lock the bedroom door — Miriam only ever has sex if the bedroom door is locked — but then worries that while he is doing so she will change her mind. It has been a very long time.

Miriam can see the mixture of confusion and hope in her husband’s eyes. She places his hand against her breast, saying nothing. How can she tell him that she needs him inside her or she fears she will float away? That she is fighting something she must struggle to want to fight? She looks at the scab left behind by the splinter with fondness. Even the sight of a ketchup bottle fills her with longing, the house’s repellence eclipsed by the glory of another missing piece recovered.

Miriam tries to focus on the feeling of Saul’s hands on her breasts, his tongue on her skin.
This is what people do,
she tells herself. Perhaps if she thinks of Saul as a house she can channel her passion into him, can search his rooms for something to reclaim. But it is all too familiar. She knows his chest, the hair thicker than you’d expect, the nipples laughably large. Years ago, they’d actually joked about the evolutionary absurdity of nipples on men. Years ago, she could talk with him about bodies. The memory exposes the degree to which they have changed, attesting to a time when their lives were not nonintersecting lines. She cannot pretend he is a house because she already claimed what he had to offer.

Hours into the night, Eliza is heading back to her bed from the bathroom. At first she thinks the house is settling in the wind, but the creaks are too loud and regular. She freezes in the hallway. She knows what the sounds are.

“Do you think our parents do it?” Aaron had asked, years before Eliza knew what he was talking about. He sounded puzzled and a little sad as he explained. “They’re supposed to do it a lot. That’s what being married is, but I never hear them, even when I listen at their door.”

“Maybe they only do it when they know you’re not listening,” Eliza offered. Aaron had shrugged, his face reflecting his doubt. Over the years, Eliza has become pretty sure they don’t do it either, can’t imagine their secret parts touching when their unsecret parts rarely do.

So that now, when Eliza hears the creaks, she feels as if she has sighted a rare bird. She rejects the possibility of waking Aaron. Elly doesn’t know if the creaks from the bedroom are something her brother would even want to know about anymore, now that everything seems to make him uncomfortable. Eliza stands stone still, barely breathing, afraid to alert her parents to anything that might interrupt their sound-making. She knows there’s hair down there, imagines the creaks of bedsprings as crickets in the underbrush of two private forests whose tree branches are intertwining. She hears a sigh like a breeze through leaves and then it is quiet. Eliza tiptoes to bed.

Aaron wakes up nervous. He reads and rereads the pamphlets Chali gave him as if cramming for a test. For all he knows, there will be a test, only the correct answers granting entry to the temple. Aaron realizes that religion has become another team for which to be picked, another opportunity to be skipped over.

Aaron wills the day to go by quickly but only succeeds in becoming acutely aware of a minute’s breadth. To divert himself from the sluggish tic of his watch Aaron walks to the park, but realizes once there that he unconsciously expected to see Chali there. The park has shrunk in Chali’s wake. It is practically impossible for Aaron to distinguish the bench upon which they met, its ordinary wooden slats not nearly grand enough to signify the place where Aaron’s life was destined to be changed. Aaron leaves before the park’s drabness shrinks his resolve as well.

At home, Saul’s open door beckons. Since his father’s and sister’s return from D.C. there have been no spelling sessions. Aaron could easily walk into the study and resume the roles of guitar player and future rabbi as if they had never been lost to him. One look from Saul would erase the divergent path he has begun to forge. Aaron returns to his room to reread the pamphlets. He has come too far to be so easily derailed. He remains safely behind his bedroom door until it’s time to tell his parents he’s going to the movies.

Saul hears his son come in from outside. Aaron has been restless all day. Even at breakfast there was a nervous quality to his actions that Saul hadn’t seen before. Not that he has been paying much attention. Saul has been meaning to apologize to Aaron for the way he embarrassed him at the study door, but the time never seemed right and now such a long time has passed that it seems better to just let it be. After all, Aaron has become so sensitive lately.

Saul can hear the television from the next room. The sound prevents him from concentrating, but he wants to keep the study door open so that Eliza knows she has other possibilities. As much as he would like to sit Eliza down and convince her to continue their studies, he knows if they are to go any further it is she who must come to him. The places he wants to take her can only be reached by those who wish to go. Maybe in the meantime he should find Aaron and invite him to play a little guitar. It’s silly to keep waiting at his desk for Eliza like a wallflower hoping to get asked to dance. Perhaps he should spend a little quality time with his son.

Saul grabs his guitar and heads upstairs. Aaron will be surprised; in the past it’s always been Aaron who has come to him. Saul is certain his appearance will go a long way toward making amends, likes to think of himself as a man of action over words.

For some reason, Saul hadn’t been expecting a closed door. Aaron’s door presents difficulties in the light of their previous encounter. Saul can’t very well knock when he gave Aaron such a hard time for doing just that. He’s got to show Aaron the same respect he expects to be shown if he is to have any chance of being considered a cool dad under the unflinching light of adolescence. Saul descends the stairs with a grin. He’ll leave his study door open. When Aaron comes back down, he’ll call his son’s name.

On the outside it’s an innocuous brick building that could pass for the office of a tax preparer or dentist. Aaron doesn’t know what he was expecting, only that he feels disappointed.

He has to ring a buzzer. An Indian woman in a sari answers the door.

“Hari Bol.”

“Um, hi. Chali told me there was a service that I could, uh, come to.” Aaron feels like he’s come to the party of a friend of a friend who hasn’t arrived yet.

“Welcome. The temple is the first door on the left. You may leave your shoes in the hallway. I’ll tell Chali you are here.” She smiles at Aaron before disappearing up a set of stairs.

The entryway smells of incense. From down a hallway comes the muted sound of voices. Alone in this strange place, the determination that powered Aaron to this moment leaves him. He pictures Saul storming through the door, demanding an explanation. Aaron pictures the Hari Bol woman — her brown skin, her kind eyes, her saffron robe — and can think of nothing they have in common. He has made a mistake. There is no way he will ever belong here. It will be easier for everyone if he just leaves now, before Chali has a chance to realize his misjudgment in extending an invitation. Aaron is about to back out the door and return home when Chali appears at the stairwell in a light yellow robe. Aaron’s surprise at Chali’s shaved head is eclipsed by the expression on Chali’s face. Aaron can’t remember the last time anyone looked happier to see him.

“You made it! Wonderful. I had a feeling you would. A lot of people say they’ll come and then I never see them again, but I could tell you were a man of your word.”

Chali’s handshake fills Aaron like a hug.

Chali is smiling. “So, this is it. It’s not much, but you should see the ones in Detroit and New York City. The best, of course, are in India. One day I hope to see them myself. But for now my place is here. Let me show you around.”

Chali leads Aaron down the hall, toward the voices. Outside a set of double doors, Aaron adds his sneakers to a collection of sandals, feels grateful that his feet will at least look like everyone else’s.

As soon as the door opens, Aaron hears the singing. The plainness of the hallway is forgotten, another country left far behind. Aaron is in the temple.

It is a large, open space filled with light, its wood floor highly polished. Instead of a place of worship, Aaron thinks of a ballroom, imagines sari-clad women swirling in the arms of lustrous-haired men. Beth Amicha seems dull by comparison, St. Patrick Church a gloomy cave. Ten people in robes, mostly men, face an ornate dais featuring a dark-eyed, dark-haired statue, adorned in gilded clothes and holding a flute to his lips. Beside him stands the statue of a woman in a vibrant gown of red and gold. The statues’ necks are draped in garlands of fresh flowers that reflect the colors of the carved wooden peacocks in the wood panel behind them. An old Indian man with a face like a bullfrog sits on a platform opposite the dais. It takes a moment for Aaron to realize that the man isn’t moving.

“He isn’t real, is he?”

Chali smiles. “Pretty convincing, huh? The first time I came here, I thought he was alive too. That’s Srila Prabhupada, our Founder-Acarya.”

Aaron watches as Chali prostrates himself before the wax statue, lying flat on his stomach with his face to the floor before rising and tossing flowers at the old man’s head and chest. It looks like something Aaron might see on
PBS
, narrated by a modulated voice with a British accent.

“Do you … worship him?” He knows that if Chali says yes he will have to go, knows he will never be able to bow before a wax frog-man.

Chali laughs. “Oh, no. We worship only God. To Prabhupada we give thanks and show our respect. I’m sure it looks strange to you, but don’t worry. As you learn why we do what we do, you’ll see for yourself how much sense everything makes. In the meantime, don’t feel like you need to do or say anything you don’t want to. Everyone comes to Kṛṣṇa  at their own pace and on their own terms.”

“Krishna?” Aaron tries to say as politely as possible. He can’t believe he didn’t think of this before. The orange robe. The shaved head. “As in Hare Krishna?”

Chali nods. “Kṛṣṇa is our word for God. Hare Krishna is the name given us by strangers for the words in our prayer, but it isn’t what we call ourselves. I can see you’ve heard of us?”

Aaron nods warily.

“After you learn more, I’ll be interested in hearing whether your personal knowledge matches up with your original, third-hand impressions. I have a feeling that you’re going to be pleasantly surprised. Though we call God Kṛṣṇa, the name is immaterial. Kṛṣṇa, Jesus, Adonai, these different names all refer to the same Supreme force.
ISKCON
, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, works in harmony with the world’s established religions. Our goal is to advance our understanding and to improve our relationship with God, thus improving ourselves. But it isn’t my intention to convince you of this. Let’s go to my office so I can give you what you’ll need to reach your own decisions.”

Chali and Aaron return to the entryway and mount the stairs. Inside a small room is a desk, bookshelves, a cabinet. Aaron feels himself relax. He is in familiar territory again, no wax statues or deities to contend with. From a cupboard, Chali withdraws two books.