Of Bees and Mist (25 page)

Malin had refused to enter her father’s room during the final stages of his decrepitude. She was horrified by the stench, she said, by the sharp bones that stuck from his skin and the bedsores that never healed. Citing a hectic newlywed’s schedule, she seldom came to visit, and when she did, she acted as if she was performing a penance. But on that fateful morning when Eva summoned her, she did not enter the house with her usual arrogance. There was a quiver in her voice, so habitually armored with distaste it was perceptible only to those who had known her all her life. She took one look at her father, blanched, and withdrew downstairs to her old room, refusing to say good-bye.

A moment later, Daniel arrived accompanied by Noah and Meridia. They were halfway up the stairs when a stricken Permony ran down to meet them.

“Tell me he’s not going,” she pleaded, her face worn with anguish. The silence that followed confirmed her worst fear, and she burst out sobbing.

Meridia made a sign to Daniel, who understood and took Noah upstairs with him. Holding Permony in her arms, she let the girl sob to her heart’s content.

“He told me he was sorry.” Permony choked on her words. “For throwing you out of the house that day. All these years he didn’t know how to make it up to you.”

“It’s in the past,” said Meridia gently. “Heaven knows he’s made it up to us.”

“It broke him, you know, what he did to Noah. He couldn’t look at that scar without falling apart at the seams. He called himself a monster, saying it was in his nature to harm those he loved most.”

Meridia tightened her clasp on the girl. “It wasn’t his fault,” she said. “Noah forgave him a long time ago.”

Nodding like a person in a trance, Permony made her way down the stairs. Meridia watched her glide to the terrace, sit in her father’s rocking chair, fold her head to her chest, and cry without sound.

Meridia was turning to climb the stairs when a low strangled noise arrested her. Alarmed, she went back down and followed the noise to the girls’ room. The door was half open. When she pushed it, she saw Malin kneeling at the foot of the orange bed, rocking to and fro with her hands cradling her stomach. Seeing Meridia, she stopped crying at once. “Don’t tell anyone,” she warned, her haughty eyes red with tears. Meridia nodded and went back out. She understood then that Malin was with child. The girl had not kept away from her father out of callousness, but to protect her baby from the mark of death.

Upstairs, Meridia joined Noah and Daniel by the bed. Elias’s body had begun to rot. Daniel shivered as he watched his father’s
chest rise and fall, the childlike smile odd yet stubborn, and in that second Meridia realized how these men had loved each other without ever saying a word, their needs sacrificed to please the woman who provoked every mutation in their souls with her slippery tongue and inscrutable desires.

Without being told, Noah stepped forward and kissed his grandfather good-bye. He did not shrink from the ghastly sores, did not look away from the greenish skin. Elias stirred at the boy’s kiss and opened his eyes. For a second they burned directly into Meridia’s. Then his smile faded and his breath departed.

A shadow closed in fast from behind, and before they knew it, Eva had pushed them away from the bed. Ravaged by anger, grief, and disbelief, she stared hard at her husband’s remains and shook her head, looking at once weak and invincible. “Come back, you fool!” she wailed in a voice jagged with loss. Silent and profuse, the tears fell. Daniel put his arms around her, but she shook him off.

“If you could arrange the coffin, Malin will take care of the service,” she said, wiping her tears roughly. “Gabilan! Run to the mortuary and fetch the undertaker. Permony! Get your father’s blue suit from the closet and send it to the cleaners. I will deal with the florist myself. That man has been known to swindle highly emotional widows. Hah! Let’s see him try putting one over on me!”

Meridia scarcely heeded this outburst. In the second when Elias’s eyes met hers, she thought his lips had mouthed a plea.
Save her
. Save whom? And from what? Meridia leaned closer to the dead body, willing it to give up one more clue or confirmation, but nothing moved. She shuddered when she thought that she had misread the last and final commandment of his life.

I
n the third month of Malin’s pregnancy, Eva commissioned a fortune-teller to eliminate every imaginable catastrophe. The man’s surefire methods included burning incense for seven days, chanting, strangling a chicken, and brewing a papaya-based potion against miscarriage. Following weeks of frenzied supernatural activities, a silver banner was mounted on the roof of 27 Orchard Road, signaling to the town that all the universal elements had been realigned for a favorable delivery.

The prospect of fatherhood seemed to have knocked common sense out of Jonathan. Unable to guess the sex of his child, he turned two rooms in his house into nurseries: one painted deep blue for a boy, one pink for a girl. He placed orders all over the world for baby clothes and toys, blankets and shoes, and when they arrived, it took his servants days to classify them into the two nurseries. He summoned doctor after doctor to monitor his wife, always agreeing with one while repudiating another. From morning till night the house on Museum Avenue was packed with herbalists and acupuncturists, nutritionists and massage therapists, all tending to Malin as if she were the most fragile creature in existence. When Malin an
nounced that the baby was kicking for the first time, Jonathan went wild with joy and bought her the biggest piece of jewelry from Lotus Blossom Lane.

Eva attended to her daughter like a crazed disciple. With unrelenting eyes she oversaw the army of doctors and therapists, made sure Malin had plenty of rest and exercise, and served her all the delicacies with which she had accused Meridia of spoiling her uterus while pregnant. When the heat became unbearable, Eva tasked the servants to fan Malin with all their strength, and when they did just that, she blamed them for creating a hurricane in the room. To anyone who would listen, she detailed Malin’s struggle with morning sickness, her sore nipples, frequent urination, and impossibly hard bowel movements.

Malin herself was no longer the girl she had once been. As her due date neared, her patented sneer gave way to an uncommon tenderness. Gone were her tantrums, her endless irritations when her wishes were not met. To everyone’s surprise, she was able to develop a tolerance for Jonathan’s folly, humor for Eva’s meddling, and patience for the servants’ shortcomings. More amazing still, her contempt for Permony dissipated. For the first time in her life, Malin made efforts to befriend her sister, buying her dresses, inviting her to dinner, and even defending her against Eva. A shocked and grateful Permony responded by placing herself completely at her sister’s disposal.

Ignoring Eva’s protests, Malin also sought to improve relations with her sister-in-law. Ever since Meridia caught her crying in her old room on the morning of Elias’s death, a tacit understanding took place between the two, and Malin no longer hid the admiration she had felt for Meridia over the years. Twice a week now she went to Magnolia Avenue for tea, always bringing a gift for Noah and sweet rolls for Daniel. As she sat in her sister-in-law’s newly decorated living room, she peppered her with questions about Noah’s birth. What did the midwife do to keep her calm? Were there crystals present to clear the baby’s passage? Had the knife been rubbed with con
secrated oil, could the womb have been spared from destruction? Receptive to Malin’s conciliatory efforts, Meridia put the past behind them and answered thoughtfully. She became genuinely fond of Malin when she realized that the girl had found her calling as a mother.

One topic was off-limits to Malin—her father’s recent passing. Although she had a standing order with a florist to decorate Elias’s grave with gardenias every morning, she had yet to make an appearance at the Cemetery of Ashes. Whenever the subject came up, Malin clutched her belly and withdrew from the room. Bolstered by her faith in the fortune-teller, Eva tried to assure her that there was nothing to worry about. The expectant mother’s reply was short and to the point: “I’m not taking any chances, so back off.”

Malin’s water broke at the precise hour the fortune-teller had predicted. Despite a dire warning from Eva (“That woman will cause your womb to twist!”), the girl wasted no time in sending for her sister-in-law. As soon as Meridia entered the big house on Museum Avenue, she knew that Eva’s efforts to circumvent disaster had failed. Malin was screaming as if she were being hacked to pieces.

“Come! She’s waiting for you.”

Permony did not give Meridia time to take off her coat, but rushed her up the stairs and along the corridor where Jonathan was pacing. Drenched in sweat and panic, the young man jolted with every scream Malin hurled from behind the door. He lunged for Meridia the instant he saw her and seized both of her arms.

“You’ll try your best to help her, won’t you?”

“Don’t worry,” she told him while Permony pounded on the door. “It will all be over before you know it.”

There were three doctors in the room and two midwives, shouting instructions at one another in total pandemonium. The door had no sooner closed than Meridia recognized the mark of death looming over the bed. Everything reminded her of her own labor—the chaos and disorder, the pain, the confusion, the simultaneous yet
separate battles for mother and child. Only the bees were missing. In their place was the clicking of prayer beads—fast, unwieldy, desperate. It was the first time she saw Eva afraid.

Feeble, Malin’s voice called to her above the din.

“You’ve lived through this before. Tell me my baby will be safe.”

Fear had the girl in its grip. Her brave eyes and enormous belly aside, she looked deflated, as if all her hope was hanging by a thread. At Meridia’s approach, Eva left the corner where she had been praying and placed herself in the way.

“Yes, tell her,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and abnormally dismal. “Tell her nothing will go wrong.”

Then Eva did something unprecedented—she stepped aside and let Meridia pass.

At once the noise cleared. For a moment there was only Malin and the two heartbeats inside her. Meridia had scarcely time to grasp the girl’s damp hand when a certainty flashed through her brain: Malin would live, but the baby would not. The same premonition must have also occurred to Eva, which then explained the hysterical clicking of her beads. Repressing a shudder, Meridia smiled and affected something of Ravenna.

“Nobody is dying today. Not on my watch.”

Relief surged through Malin. For the next six hours, the girl fought as if she were taking on the heavens. Finding the doctors and midwives at odds with one another, she threw out all but two from the room. She clenched her teeth like an animal at war, bold and determined through all the blood and pain. Every fifteen minutes, Jonathan lifted his knuckles to the door, only to receive the same discouraging answer. Permony waited on her sister with absolute devotion, impressing even Eva, who alternated between rallying her daughter and praying in the corner. In those hours Meridia did not let go of Malin’s hand, her strong grasp somehow giving flesh to the confidence she did not feel.

Eva’s scream was the signal they had all been waiting for. Permony gnashed her teeth. Meridia grabbed Malin’s shoulders and
blocked her view. The midwife whisked the dead thing away…too late. Roused by her mother’s scream, Malin demanded to see it.

“No!” said Eva. “It won’t do you the slightest good.”

Weak and exhausted, Malin began to scream.

“It’s my baby! You can’t stop me from saying good-bye!”

Eva pleaded with her, and they bickered back and forth. The effort on Malin’s part caused blood to erupt from the womb, rapidly emptying color from her skin. The doctor was barking orders no one followed as he tried in vain to stanch the flow. Meridia, realizing this, made a quick decision.

“Show her the baby,” she told the midwife. “She’s strong enough to handle it.”

The force of her command stunned Eva for a moment, long enough for the midwife to approach the bed. In her arms lay what looked like a crumpled slab of stone, moldy with black pieces of meat wedged in for eyes. A network of clots covered the limbs and the genital area, from which they gathered it was a boy. Permony started sobbing. Malin took one look and closed her eyes.

“Take him away,” she said.

Recovering herself, Eva turned on Meridia savagely.

“Are you out of your mind? I know you’re mean and arrogant, but I never take you to be this cruel and thoughtless!”

Meridia did not dignify this. She gave Malin’s hand to Permony and hurried to the midwife.

“Don’t show it to the father,” she said. “He’s not as strong as his wife.”

Dodging Eva’s bees, which had suddenly filled the room with profanities, Meridia went out to the corridor. Flanked by his parents, Jonathan rushed toward her. As soon as he saw the look on her face, he realized that the bottom had fallen out of his world. He shook and staggered and crumbled on the spot. “There will be another, son,” said his mother. “You are both still young.” He tore from her angrily and folded in upon himself, the light swaying and then dimming on his private universe.

THREE DAYS LATER, EARTH
rained on the baby’s coffin. The following morning, Malin took her place in the town’s annals as the 622nd mother to haunt the Cemetery of Ashes. The graveyard sweeper declared that she always appeared no later than dawn, and the flowers she carried—orange butterfly weed—set her apart from the other ghosts. Cloaked in a heavy robe the color of fall, she trudged up the hill without looking left or right, sliced through the bitter smoke that guarded the cemetery, and paused at her father’s grave long enough before heading to the smaller tomb in the back. Carefully she would replace the flowers that were still fresh from the last dawn, wipe the urn with the hem of her robe, and caress all the letters on the headstone as though they contained a message from another world.

The townspeople claimed that a completely different woman now lived inside Malin. Her dressmaker said she no longer had a taste for fashion, had stopped placing orders even though all her dresses hung loose on her. This observation was echoed by her hairdresser, who said that Malin had not been to the shop in weeks and could not be bothered about her hair. The maids from the big house on Museum Avenue added that their mistress no longer showed interest in her furniture, her figurines, her husband, or the rest of her family. The mother did not know what to do, the sister was beside herself with sorrow. The husband, suffering alone and intensely, alternated his nights between the two nurseries, pacing, sighing, hoping that her door would open to admit him.

“Is it true? But they look so lovely together!”

Having relayed all this to Meridia, Leah awaited her answer with the hungry look of a compassionate gossip. Meridia looked away, did not confirm one way or the other.