Bee Season (24 page)

Today, the girl tells a story from India.

“Every holy day,” the girl says, “an old woman followed behind the temple elephants, cleaning up their dung as they circled the temple grounds with the temple deities on their backs. The devotees, concerned with their struggle to be reborn into a higher life, did not notice her. Still, every holy day she was there at the temple with a shovel and a basket. One day a guru visited the temple and noticed the old woman. ‘This woman,’ he said, ‘has been serving Kṛṣṇa  with no thought of her own reward, and will go straight from this life to Godhead.’ And, when the woman died, she left earth, passed through the heavenly planets, and went straight to Godhead where she is now at Kṛṣṇa’s side.”

Aaron knows, deep in his heart, that he is meant to marry the guru’s daughter. This girl is the one with whom he is meant to create a new life for Kṛṣṇa. They will be married with their guru’s blessing and then, a few months later, they will approach him with their wish. The guru will smile as he grants permission. They will stand side by side as they announce their plans to the temple, their faces glowing with joy. Preceding the special meal, they will chant for six extra hours to insure they are spiritually clean enough to merit a child with a pure soul. Then they will perform the sacred act. Aaron has only pictured the girl’s body in dreams he doesn’t remember, prides himself on the fact that in his waking fantasies he pictures only the girl’s smiling face and a baby with her eyes. After a few weeks of this fantasy, he realizes he has been erroneously picturing a white baby, retouches his imaginary infant’s skin until it is a shade closer to that of his imaginary bride’s. With a flush of pride, he realizes how far he has come from his father’s study and the Stacey Liebermans of the world.

Filled with visions of dark babies, Aaron participates in
kirtan
for the first time, dancing and chanting with the others until he is no longer aware of his arms and legs. Before, he had been terrified he might be recognized by someone and his secret revealed. He stuck to the temple’s corners while the others danced and chanted. Today, when Aaron walks to the room’s center and joins the others, he can see the pride in Chali’s face, a smile that affects him like an outstretched palm, pulling him into the dance. Currents of incense brush Aaron’s face, the air set in motion by the twirling robes of the dancers. The sweet, spicy smell encompasses him, claiming him as its own.

For the first time, Aaron doesn’t think to watch the door. Sub-merged in the energy of the
kirtan,
he leaves the thoughts and concerns of his old life, his
maya
life, behind. His new life is the movement of his arms and legs, the sound of
Hare Kṛṣṇa
coming from his mouth. Without knowing how it got there, he finds a tambourine in his hands, then looks at the girl and realizes it is from her. He raises the tambourine above his head, filling the air with its sound. The girl smiles. A tremor passes through him so strong his entire body shudders. He panics with the pleasure of it, prepared to make a quick exit à la math class to the bathroom. But he isn’t wet. The pleasure he felt was entirely pure, uncompromised by his
maya
body. He begins to shout God’s name, his intensity affecting the others like a wave, who begin to shout with him. The room resounds with their voices.

Miriam has never been drawn to a neighborhood this close to home before and it makes her nervous. She has circled the block twice now in her car, deliberately focusing on the road ahead and not the homes on either side. Each time she has felt the house’s presence as she passed, its pull unmistakable. She parks three blocks away and begins a casual walk toward her destination. The neighborhood is more humble than her own, but not by much. The houses are a little smaller, a little less well kept up, but not so bad that she can’t imagine having moved here if she and Saul hadn’t done as well as they had for themselves. There are gardens, the occasional small boat. Wooden signs beside doorways announce O’Connolls and Waverlys.

Miriam is half a block from her objective when she hears a voice behind her.

“Miriam Naumann?”

Miriam whirls around, the blood having drained from her head. She does not know who she expected, but it is not this smiling stranger. The shock of hearing her name has made Miriam dizzy. She sits on the curb.

“Are you okay?” The woman is at Miriam’s side. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Madge Turner. Our boys were in Scouts together. I thought I recognized that curly hair of yours. We’re not neighbors, are we? Why, I’d feel so silly if this whole time we had been living a few blocks away from each other.”

Miriam forces a smile. When Aaron was a Scout, she had attended the troop’s annual holiday pageant, generally a nativity play with a Chanukah song tacked on at the end. Aaron and the two other Jewish boys were invariably cast as barnyard animals. Saul was delighted when Aaron decided to quit.

“The holiday play?” Miriam asks.

Madge Turner beams. “I can’t believe you remembered! I made the costumes. I always thought Aaron made the cutest little piglet. You know, I was so glad to have Aaron in the play. Jesus
was
Jewish, after all.”

Miriam nods, mind numb. She can see the house from where she is standing. It takes supreme effort to keep from running toward it and pretending that she never stopped for this stranger named Madge Turner, who has gone on to describe her son’s Christian youth group.

“… and, you know, it really is for young people of
all
denominations. The main purpose of the group is to encourage spiritualism and clean living, which is important for young people no matter
what
their religious background.”

“Mrs. Turner — ”

“Oh, please, Miriam, call me Madge. After all, we’re neighbors.”

“Madge, could you please help me? I’ve gotten horribly lost. I was meaning to take a short cut to Route 73, but I must have taken a wrong turn and I was just walking down the street looking for a house where someone might be able to give me directions.”

“Route 73? But it’s not even near here! You must have gotten
really
turned around.”

Miriam laughs weakly. She can’t tell whether Madge believes the lie. “I’m afraid I must have.”

“Well, it’s all for the good because it’s allowed us to find each other again. Let’s exchange phone numbers so that Matthew can tell Aaron about the next Young Life meeting.”

Miriam takes the number, gives a slightly altered version of her own, and listens to Madge’s directions on how to reach a road she has no intention of finding. She does her best to walk back to her car without looking as if she is desperate to escape. Driving past the house on her way out, Miriam can feel a small part inside herself shrivel at the manifestation of her failure.

The school year ends. Eliza’s final report card overflows onto its back with glowing comments penned in Bergermeyer’s careful hand. Bergermeyer calls Eliza her “little star,” and waxes prosaic over the “lovely surprise she gave us all this year.” Eliza’s spelling A becomes an A+ and is joined by unprecedented A’s in History, Work Habits, and Reading, bumping her up to Honor Roll for the first time in her academic career. Saul celebrates by baking a cake whose emergence from the oven only he and Eliza witness, Miriam working late and Aaron gone to an end-of-school pizza and movie with Charlie. If either of them notices that dinners for two have become the norm, they don’t mention it. Eliza is too excited by the idea of spending entire summer days with her father ensconced in words and letters. Saul, for his part, has been waiting for summer’s beginning to progress to the next stage of their studies. It’s time for Eliza to meet Abraham Abulafia.

Once the cake has been sliced, Saul lifts his plate above the table.

“A toast,” he says. “To the end of a wonderful school year and the beginning of a very exciting summer.”

Eliza giggles, lifting her plate so that father and daughter may clink dishes.

After the first slice Eliza expects Saul to tell her she has had enough, but when she looks up from her plate she finds him deep into seconds, eating with the abandon of an unmonitored child at a birthday party. Eliza eats four more slices, each topped with a candy flower of the coveted
oneg
variety, solely because she can. For fifteen minutes, vigorous chewing and occasional giggles fill the room. When the sounds subside the cake, which had been easily large enough for four, has been reduced to crumbs.

Eliza and Saul stare at the empty plate, amazed. Saul looks up at his daughter with stricken eyes.

“We ate the
whole thing,
” he whispers.

In the slight crinkles around her father’s eyes, where before Eliza only saw age and authority, she now perceives youth. She can envision softer versions of those same lines in a younger face marveling at a colony of thumbnail-sized baby frogs or the blueness of a swimming pool. Now permanently reflected in her father’s features, Eliza sees the boy he once was, a child whom Eliza considers a friend.

“Aaron will be mad he didn’t get any,” Eliza says.

“Let’s not tell him,” Saul stage whispers. “Or your mom.”

Eliza giggles and nods. “We’ll clean up the evidence.”

“They would never understand, anyway,” Saul says, no longer whispering, looking into Eliza’s eyes.

Eliza knows he’s right.

Miriam decides it’s a simple matter of returning to the stores. Since her romance with houses began, what had once been an integral part of her life has faded unnoticed into obscurity. In contrast to her weeks with houses, her years with stores feel like a distant memory, a college friend from whom she has grown apart. She decides if she can wean herself off houses the previous patterns of her life will reassert themselves, overriding her unsuitable passion.

Returning to stores is more difficult than anticipated. Stepping into the car, Miriam’s body demands the fulfillment of its real desire and not this wishful placebo. Miriam can already feel the pull of unfamiliar roads upon her skin. Her limbs are already gearing up for the carefully casual stride to a stranger’s front door. Miriam feels literal pain when she wrenches her car into the mall parking lot, her denied craving a muscle that has been torn.

It feels all wrong from the moment she steps outside. The air feels stiff in her lungs, every breath a reminder that this is not where she is meant to be. Sights and sounds are perceived at an extreme remove. She feels she is observing her surroundings through reverse binoculars while listening to an ambient recording of suburban parking lot sounds. As she nears the mall, it is difficult to believe its doors are not part of an elaborate backdrop in the 2-D world created in the wake of her refusal to obey the houses.

She forces herself through the mall doors, past the clothing stores, gift booths, and eatery to a department store. She assures herself that once she enters she will be safe from the path she abandoned and the world will reinflate. As Miriam crosses the threshold to waxed floors and tinned music, she takes a deep breath, willing the familiar smells of perfume and air conditioning to welcome her back.

It doesn’t work. Even here, where she once sought her quarry with equanimity, the sense of pervasive wrongness doesn’t abate. The very aspects of department stores that used to comfort only recall her willful betrayal. The lights are too bright, the colors too sharp. For the first time Miriam feels conspicuous. Her eyes dart back and forth as if seeking escape. Her hands refuse to be still. She keeps turning, certain store detectives are lying in wait.

Miriam wanders from department to department, a sleepwalker. There is no beacon to follow, no sense of when or where to turn. She stares accusingly at each item she passes,
Are you the one?
knowing that if she has to ask, it won’t answer. She tries not to think about where she should really be: a worn carpet beneath her feet, her nose immersed in the smells of a stranger’s home. Here in this universe of fluorescence and packaging, it is a place as exotic and unreachable as a fairy tale.

It is hopeless, but Miriam is determined to leave with what she came for. She blindly grabs a shoe from the sale rack, not even glancing at her hands as she slips it into her purse. Sweating, she makes for the nearest exit, breaking two of her cardinal department store rules: Never leave immediately after taking what you’ve come for. Always go out the way you came in.

The shoe department exit deposits Miriam on the second level of a parking garage. To return to her car, she must either go back through the mall or walk across the lot and down a ramp not intended for pedestrians. She chooses the ramp. At every step, the shoe in her purse bangs into her hip, mocking her. Halfway down, there is a car and Miriam must press herself into the wall to avoid getting swiped by its side-view mirror.

By the time Miriam returns to her parking space, she feels she has been walking for miles and not minutes. Once inside the car she opens her purse. The shoe is a hideous thing, a monster in her womb. She must abort if she is to save her own life. Miriam lobs the shoe out the driver-side window. It skitters across the pavement, coming to rest under the front tire of a parked van. Wiping her palm repeatedly on her slacks doesn’t remove the sense of it in her hand. With a sick, excited feeling in her stomach, she realizes that her store days are over.

Eliza has no idea how much of each day is spent in her father’s study. The letters erase time with their presence. She allows her pen to slip from a word’s moorings, exploring every possible combination of its letters, the motion of her hand and the release of ink upon paper clearing her mind until there is nothing else.

Her father calls it permutation and describes it as a way to get to the essence of the letters themselves. Words are barriers, necessary gates beyond which lies the larger letter universe. Most people stop at the arrangement of letters a word presents:
EARTH
is earth and only earth. But within
EARTH
, there is
RATHE
and
THRAE
. Within
EARTH
, there is
HEART
. By departing from a given word order and exploring every possible combination, the true essence of the letters can be reached. E’s true identity can only be known once it has been experienced next to A and R as well as between them. Only by knowing E in all its states can E’s presence be sensed in
AERATE
as easily as in
CABOOSE
.