Telling the Bees (7 page)

“I see,” said the detective, making it plain from the tone of his voice that he did not see at all and was not likely to let the matter of the Straussmans’ tangled relations go until he did.

The last of the pictures on the table that Detective Grayson asked me to examine were simple snapshots of Hilda and Claire, posed together at various odd places and stages in their lives.

There was one of Claire and Hilda at the seashore. They weren’t much older than toddlers. They were wearing billowy shorts and tiny sun tops, smiling and scooping sand into piles, while ocean waves crashed behind them. Their father must have taken this snapshot. I believe he used to take them to the beach on the Red Car, the electric trolley line that used to run from Anaheim to Huntington Beach. I don’t believe Mrs. Straussman ever went in much for beach excursions, even before she lost her health.

There were a few other snapshots that the detective and I examined at some length. I can’t say I fully understood his interest in this fishing expedition, as he called it, but mine was surely kindled by the fond memories they recalled. My favorite image of the lot had been taken in one of those old-fashioned amusement park photo booths. In their adolescence, Claire and her sister used to take the Red Car by themselves out to what was known as the Fun Zone, a small seaside attraction near Newport Beach. Claire often urged me to accompany them, but I always found some reason to decline.

“Come on, you silly goose!” Claire would wheedle. “You can see for miles from on top of the Ferris wheel.”

Though I have lived my entire life within five miles of the Pacific Ocean, as the crow flies, I have yet to see it firsthand. Looking back now, I think I might have enjoyed the view. That and the pure scent of the sea, which Claire used to say was even saltier up close than what I am able to perceive on the ocean breeze that carries inland most evenings.

Another photograph showed Claire and Hilda well into their middle years, their arms looped at the elbows and standing in front of their father’s old humpbacked Buick, which must have been half again as old as they were. I’m guessing they inherited the car from their father when he died, and he’d probably bought it twenty years before that. I think the Rambler station wagon was the only car they bought on their own. The Straussmans were nothing if not frugal.

The most recent of the photographs had to have been taken not more than two or three years before Claire and Hilda died. It pictured them seated on their front porch behind a small table stacked with beeswax candles and jars of honey for sale.

The detective wondered aloud who could have taken it.

“It certainly wasn’t me,” I assured him. “Perhaps one of their honey customers.”

“Anyone in particular come to mind?” the detective prodded.

“Oh, I wouldn’t know,” I replied. “There were a few who seemed to stop by fairly regularly, but I don’t know any of them by name. I couldn’t even tell you if they were from round here or just passing through.”

While once a quiet country road, the street that fronted our houses at that time had become the main thoroughfare from the city’s west end to the freeway, effectively cutting us off from the city’s original downtown to the east and with it any real sense of community that once existed here.

Hearkening back in my mind to those earlier days, I lingered a moment longer on the last photograph the detective handed to me. It showed Claire, still in her teens, with her hair swept up in the thick ponytail she took to wearing during that time of her life. She had been in one of her playful moods, sticking her tongue out at the camera bold as you please, while poor Hilda, trying her best to keep her composure, looked as though she had just swallowed a lemon. There was an intimacy in the tilt of Claire’s head toward Hilda’s I’d not noticed before.

“You know, Mr. Honig, you were right about one thing,” Detective Grayson said as he gathered the photographs up and slipped them back into the envelope. “That Claire sure was a looker when she was young.”

Nine

D
RIFTING OF BEES:
The failure of honeybees to return to their own hive in apiaries comprised of many hives. Young bees tend to drift more than old ones, and bees from dwindling colonies tend to drift to larger ones.

T
hat Claire had been an intriguing child who had grown into a lovely, vibrant young woman was beyond dispute, as far as I was concerned. That she had formed an obvious attachment to her cousin, Margaret, who to my eye came off every bit as drab as Hilda, had always been a mystery in the same way that butterflies and moths are zoologically linked simply because both species share a common, four-winged structure and both undergo a series of transformations, from egg to larva to pupa, emerging re-formed, from a self-constructed chrysalis to an airborne imago.

It was much less difficult for Detective Grayson to establish the comprehensive familial links between Claire and her cousin, whose full married name was Margaret Louise Lennox. Perhaps it was the bulldoggedness of the detective’s impersonal curiosity that suited him so well to his vocation, while the personal affinity I feel for my bees fundamentally inclines me to mine.

“She’s buried alongside her husband, Ralph, in a family plot in Hillsborough Cemetery, just outside of Detroit,” Detective Grayson informed me only three days after our previous conversation. He came by my house at noontime and knocked on my front door just as I was sitting down to a lunch of bread, honey, and sliced oranges that I’d picked only moments before.

“Mind if I come in?” he said.

“Please,” I said.

The detective followed me back through the hall that connects my parlor and dining room to the kitchen, and once we were comfortably seated at the dinette he informed me that since we knew that Margaret had been related to the Straussman sisters on their father’s side, it had been a fairly simple matter for him to sift through the Wayne County Hall of Records marriage licenses to locate one for a Margaret Straussman who wed Ralph Lennox in 1949. He told me he found Margaret’s and Ralph’s respective death certificates, and all their children’s birth certificates besides.

“They’ve got three kids, and eight grandkids so far,” Detective Grayson said. “Most of the family’s still living in the same neighborhood they grew up in, in case you’re wondering.”

To be honest, I had not given poor Margaret so much as a passing thought since Detective Grayson slipped her photograph back into the envelope with all the rest, but I certainly did not say so. I invited the detective to join me in my meal, which, to my surprise, he accepted.

“Just a slice of bread, Mr. Honig. And maybe some more of that lemonade, if you have any,” he said.

I poured a glass for him and another for myself, and then prepared a slice of bread and honey for him as he withdrew his notebook and pen from his jacket pocket and quickly thumbed to a page midway through the tablet.

“Margaret died about five years ago, from lung cancer,” he told me, reading from his notes. “She smoked like a chimney, according to her kids. Three packs a day. Lucky Strikes. I had a real nice chat with her oldest daughter, Susan, on the phone yesterday. She said her mother picked up the habit when she joined the army back during the war—World War Two. Susan said they all tried to get their mother to quit smoking for years, but the old lady was stubborn as a donkey. Told them she’d been smoking since before they were born and that she darn well intended to keep on smoking until the day she died, which is exactly what she did.”

It seemed to me I detected a hint of admiration in the detective’s voice and I told him so.

“Well, it just sounds like old Margaret was a real character,” he said, continuing to scan his notes. “Traveled round a bit after the war, then came back to Detroit and got a job in one of the big auto plants. GM, I think. She worked right on the assembly line with the men and even got herself elected shop steward.

“Margaret was in her early thirties when she met Ralph. Apparently he was some kind of union bigwig. After she got married, Margaret quit her job, and Ralph and her bought a house out in the suburbs and started raising a family. Susan—she’s a real nice lady, by the way, you should give her a call sometime.”

“Perhaps I will,” I said. We both knew I never would, but it seemed the thing to say. The detective stared for a moment longer at his notes, then set the notebook back down on the table, leaned back in his chair, and linked his thick fingers across his expansive belly. I noticed his fingers were freckled. It occurred to me that his hair might have skewed red in his younger years and that he might have made a fine, lusty English lord in another life, though perhaps more reflective, more conflicted, than most. I did not see in him a need for power so much as a sense of duty to move others to do the right thing, whatever he perceived that to be.

“Susan said she never met Claire or Hilda. But her mother used to talk about them from time to time. Claire especially. Seemed like Margaret and Claire were pretty tight when they were younger.”

The detective told me that Claire had even moved up to Detroit for a few months, that she’d roomed with Margaret and had held a job selling lingerie in a department store downtown.

“Susan seems to think it was right around the start of the war. Not too long before Margaret enlisted.”

I handed the detective his plate of honeyed bread, and orange slices, and sat down in front of the meal I’d already prepared for myself. I took a long sip of lemonade.

“Susan remembers her mother telling her that Claire was sharing an apartment with Margaret, happy as a clam, until Claire’s mother showed up one day at their doorstep. The way Susan tells it, old Mrs. Straussman barged right in and told Claire to get herself back home. Something about Claire’s sister taking sick.”

“Hilda was always a bit fragile,” I said, separating the peeled orange half on my plate into seven individual wedges. The detective took a bite of bread.

“Hey, this isn’t half bad, Mr. Honig. What kind of honey is this?”

“Just orange blossom,” I said. I raised the bread to my lips, and at that moment the sweet aroma of orange blossoms, the same orange blossoms that drew my parents south and infused my childhood with the mild sweet scent of spring, caressed my memory like the transportive aroma of a long-forgotten perfume in a passing crowd.

It was June 24, 1942. I remember the date because it was the evening after Claire’s twenty-second birthday. Claire’s parents didn’t believe in celebrating birthdays, and I had made a point, since we’d first become friends a decade before, to find a way to make her feel as cherished as my own dear parents had made my sister and I feel every year on the anniversaries of our own births. It wasn’t as though they spoiled us with extravagance. A simple dinner of our favorite foods, a home-baked cake, a small gift presented at the dinner table, had been enough to make our birthdays feel special. Claire had always seemed so appreciative of our secret celebrations. The evening of her twenty-second birthday had seemed especially sweet.

“This is absolutely delicious,” she had cooed as she sucked the honey from the comb she’d lifted dripping from the mason jar I’d wrapped in one of my father’s discarded newspapers. She licked the honey from her fingers before she reached for my hand. I don’t know why I drew mine back. Only that I did.

“Here,” I said. Reaching behind my back, I handed her another, smaller package. It was just another sheet of newsprint folded over a handful of roasted walnuts I’d asked my mother to help me prepare. Claire had opened the packet and this time gripped my hand before I could pull it back. She poured half the nuts into the palm of my hand and the other half into hers and, looking directly into my eyes, she’d urged me to do as she did as she slipped a roasted nut between her lips and began to chew. When the walnuts were gone, we’d sat quietly for a few moments more, simply enjoying the evening breeze. Then Claire reached out and took my hand in hers. There were so many things I wanted to say, but none of the words in my head made any sense. The moon was high in the sky when she rose at last to take her leave.

“Can we meet tomorrow evening?” she asked. An unaccustomed urgency had crept into her voice.

“If you’d like,” I said. “I’ll be out by our number fourteen hive after dinner. I believe we have a new queen on the way.”

“Promise me,” she said.

“I promise.”

The orange trees were in full bloom the following evening, and I had been so engrossed in the goings-on inside my hive that I had not heard her approach. Unaware of Claire’s intentions at the time, I touched my index finger to my lips when she started to speak, and then, stooping down to press my ear to the hive, I had urged her to do the same.

“Can you hear them?”

She stooped down, facing me, and leaned her ear against the hive. I watched her lips part with just the hint of a smile as the moonlight played off her upturned eyes, setting them to glisten like sapphires set in cool alabaster. Had I not known she was made of mortal flesh and blood, I would have sworn at that very moment the mythical goddess Artemis had descended from the night sky to kneel beside me in the dust. I found it hard to breathe. I was twenty years old. At that moment I was convinced we were both immortal.

“Yes!” she said, squeezing my hand and using it at the same time to boost herself upright. “The queen is ready to hatch.”

I felt the blood rush through my hand to hers.

“I wish I could be here with you to see your new queen,” Claire said. I noticed then that she was dressed in a white linen skirt and matching jacket that I had never seen her wear before. I saw also that she was clutching a pair of white gloves in one hand, and a small, battered suitcase was leaning against a tree a few yards away.

“Claire?” I said, releasing her hand.

“I have a train to catch tonight,” she replied, bending slightly at the waist to brush the dust from her knees and smooth her skirt. “I only just came here to say good-bye.”

“Where are you going?” I said.

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she said, laughing coquettishly.

I repeated my question, and Claire’s face lost its playful edge. She squeezed her eyes shut and ran her fingers through her hair.

“I can’t tell you that,” she said. When I asked her why, she sighed, and then she told me she didn’t want anyone to know her plans and that telling me was the surest way to broadcast them all over the neighborhood. When I assured her that I could keep her secret, she shook her head. Her dark curls rippled down her shoulders like a waterfall.

“I know you think you could,” she said. “But the problem with you is, you think of truth as an absolute.”

“Truth does not blush,” I said.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about, Albert. There are no shades of gray in your perfectly ordered world. If somebody happened to ask you where I’d gone, you’d tell them.”

“And why shouldn’t I?”

“What would life be without secrets?” she said.

“I don’t understand. I thought I was your friend.”

“You are, silly. Just not the kind to tell secrets to.”

“But why?”

“Because you’d never lie for me. It’s just not in your nature.”

“I swear to you, Claire,” I started to plead. She stopped me at once.

“Don’t, Albert. Don’t make a promise both of us know you can’t keep,” she said. “You’re just going to have to trust me when I say I have my reasons.”

“How can I trust you when you won’t trust me in return?”

“I trust your heart, Albert. It’s that darn head of yours,” she said softly, tapping my temple with her slender white finger. “You think too much. And you think you always have to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.”

“But Claire . . .”

She held up that impossibly perfect finger again and pressed it this time to my lips. “You know it’s true, Albert. You couldn’t tell a little white lie for me and say I’d gone off to New York or Paris or even Kathmandu even if I asked you pretty please with sugar on top. And God forbid I should ask you to simply say nothing. No, you couldn’t do that either. What’s that you call it? Sins of omission.”

Well, of course I had to ask her what was so wrong with telling the truth. But as soon as I’d uttered the words, I wished that I could call them back. Claire turned away from me to face the darkness beyond the grove, and I watched her shoulders droop ever so slightly as I listened to the slow exhale of her breath.

“Perhaps no one will even ask me where you’ve gone,” I said hopefully, but Claire only laughed one last time, softer and without mirth.

“Oh, Albert, you know they will,” she said. “Between you and me, let’s just say I’m going somewhere far, far away. And that I may never come back.”

“But why, Claire?” I said, trying as best I could to match the soft intonation of her voice if only to calm the flutter of panic beating in my chest. If I were as divorced from my feelings as Claire claimed, why could I not conjure up a single logical reason to convince her to stay? Why did I feel as if there wasn’t enough oxygen in all the world to fill my lungs?

Chewing her bottom lip, Claire picked at the lace cuff of one of her gloves for a moment or two. Then she extended her arms and began to hum a soft, piping melody. Shuffling delicately to a three-step cadence that seemed to stir her soul beneath the moonlight, she came to a stop in front of me.

“Albert,” she said at last, grasping my hand in hers, “haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like to go anywhere you liked, whenever and with whomever you wished, with no one to answer to but yourself?”

I shook my head and wondered instead how to explain to Claire that I did not feel in the least constrained by the boundaries of my life.

“My home, my family, and of course my bees, provide me with all I could want in the way of company and creature comforts,” I replied in all sincerity. “Honestly, Claire, I see no need to look beyond my own backyard to find whatever my heart might desire.”

“That’s nice enough for you and Dorothy Gale. But maybe my backyard isn’t all that swell,” Claire said, turning her face skyward. Her eyes glistened in the moonlight, which continued to work radiant magic on her finely chiseled features. I imagined a bow slung over her shoulder, a stag at her feet. “Haven’t you ever wanted to see the world, Albert?”