The Death of Bees (15 page)
Authors: Lisa O'Donnell
I feel a terrible grief when I think of passing on, and fear, so much fear, but it's best not to think of such things I suppose. I could still live a long time, doctor says it happens, although he didn't look too optimistic when I asked him, he still smiled at me, albeit a paltry smile, but still, it lends a little comfort.
I have much to organize now. Affairs to get in order and a life to tidy away. Doesn't seem real all of this. Doesn't feel real at all, but then something taps at me and shows me the truth, I'll fall over or break a cup and then it all comes swimming back to me, the doctors, the tumor, and the weak smiles.
I hope to die in my sleep, Joseph, not knowing, just closing my eyes and forgetting the things I am leaving behind. I don't want to die with my heart breaking. I don't want to die at all.
I
t was a gorgeous morning and I was in the garden. I don't smell them so much anymore or maybe I'm used to it or my senses are pretending it's something else, maybe I am.
Nelly was over at Lennie's so I could mellow with a CD Kirkland made, have a fag, and text my boyfriend.
That's when I heard it. Noise, coming from inside the house, barging into my Sunday. I thought I was imagining it at first but then I heard a voice, an angry voice. I wanted to go over to Lennie's, skip over the fence, but he'd have called the police and that's the last thing I needed, not with two dead bodies in the garden. I wondered if it was a burglar or a junkie looking for something random to steal, a lot of it about round here. Then I got scared it was a rapist and I'm searching frantically for an exit but there wasn't one, I couldn't go to Lennie's and I couldn't scale the walls surrounding our house. I was stuck with nowhere to go and I really didn't want to get raped, so I hid in the shed.
It was freezing in the shed and of course it made me think of Izzy hanging from the rafters and I felt kind of ill, sort of sick in my stomach. I felt her then and for the first time in a long time, as if she was standing right next to me, but she wasn't. I heard footsteps, there was someone in the garden and they were making strides toward the shed, I was like a rat in a cage and my heart was ready to explode and my teeth ready to bite. I grabbed a hammer and got ready to defend, I closed my eyes, I was afraid of what I'd see and then the door opened and it was Mick, not a rapist or a burglar, just Mick looking confused and a bit scared of the hammer.
“What you doing in here?” he says in a curious inquiry kind of way.
“Fuck, Mick. I thought you were a rapist or something. You scared the shit out of me.” I push him hard in the chest. “How did you get in anyway?” I says.
“You left the front door open. What's that fucking smell by the way?” he says, sniffing at the air.
“Sewers.” I tremble. “They're fucked.”
“Naw, that's not it. S'like a hospital smell. Disinfectant over shite.”
I shove past him, into the house.
“Where you going?” he asks.
“I'm not going anywhere, you are. I want you out of my house.”
“Is that right?” He laughs.
He follows me into the living room.
“What you doing here anyway?” I says.
“Looking for Gene. What do you think?”
“I told you, he's with Izzy. They're in Turkey.”
“Then what's this?”
He waves Gene's passport in the air. Izzy's passport.
“Where did you get that?” I try not to shake. I try not to vomit.
“Shoe box in the airing cupboard.”
I'm shivering now and not from cold.
“Look,” he says, “I'm not going to hurt you, okay? I just want to know where they are and you're going to tell me, Marnie, 'cause I'm not leaving this house till you do.”
I had a feeling he'd say that.
S
he came out of the shed with a hammer in her hand. I rather hoped she'd smack him with it. No such intelligence. They had a wee chat and then they went inside, but she didn't look that happy about it. Poor lassie, doesn't know her arse from her elbow and you want to help her but you know she'll lock the doors if you try and I need them open to comfort her when she's had enough, when she's too tired to pretend anymore. She's obviously looking for a father figure, and love perhaps; she just looks in the wrong place and almost on purpose. That's probably why she turned to him in the first place, seeking pain and feeding the loathing within. It makes me frightened for her, it's like there's wood rot inside her eating away at her soul and nibbling at all the things she could become; fortunately for her I'm a bit of a handyman in this respect and this particular wood rot is very treatable. In the right hands of course.
There's a number on his van. I remember.
MAKE YOUR DAY SPECIAL. CALL MICK
.
Time to call his wife I think. Make her day special.
I
n the middle of what was a beautiful duet Lennie is distracted by something outside. It is the first time in a long time Lennie has been able to play from beginning to end and in tempo, I am utterly thrilled and then heartily disappointed when I find he has stopped to look out the window into our nasty old garden. When I look over his shoulder, however, I see what he must see. Bobby. A limb in his mouth. Without the slightest hesitation Lennie immediately finds the telephone and I am quite panicked. I wonder in vain why Marnie and her friend can't see what I am seeing. We will be captured I am sure of it. I must pack our bags immediately for we must run.
H
e ripped the house apart, feathers everywhere. Tore the back of the sofa with a pocket knife and turned every cupboard and every mattress in the house upside down, except Izzy and Gene's, which we had disposed of already.
“Whir's their fucking mattress?” he yelled.
“Gene got rid of it,” I say.
“Why?”
“It had shit on it. All the way through.”
“Filthy bastard,” he says and then continues on his rampage.
Eventually he came across the bleach in the cupboard under the stairs. We have liters of the stuff.
“You expecting the plague or something?” he says.
Then he goes to the side of the house where we buried Izzy. I got really scared then and I was sure he was going to find her but then I receive a blow to the head and I'm on the floor with someone behind me, yelling, “Fuck monster!” I covered my skull with both hands, like I'm expecting a bomb to explode and for about a minute I don't know what the fuck's going on, someone's kicking at me, calling me a slag and telling Mick he's a bastard. And he is.
“Julie, stop! For fuck's sake!” Mick screams. He was doing everything he could to get her off me but she was raging and her anger made her strong.
“I'm going to kill her. I'm going to fucking kill her.”
More kicking.
“For gawd's sake. Let her go.”
The kicking stops and she turns her attention to Mick. Starts slapping him, screaming, throwing anything she can get her hands on, crap things mostly, but heavy, a snow globe with the Loch Ness Monster inside, a dictionary and a couple of candlesticks, a toaster and a pot, some pans and cutlery, the place is a tip and I'm curled up in the corner terrified and crying. That's when Robert T. Macdonald turns up.
“What's going on?” he yells.
Mick is hiding behind the sofa, Julie's ready to pap a frying pan at him.
“Who the fuck are you?” snaps Julie.
“I'm Marnie's grandfather. Who are you?”
“Well your granddaughter's a whore.
A. Whore
.”
Robert T. Macdonald scans the room and sees Mick skulking in the background, he looks right at me and stunned he goes, “This guy?”
I nod.
“For gawd's sake, lassie,” he says in this disapproving tone and that pisses me off, it's not like he's earned it yet. I want to tell him to fuck off, I want to tell him it's got nothing to do with him, but I need him to stop everything, I need him to help me 'cause there isn't anyone else.
I nod and hear myself say, “Sorry.”
“It's not what you think,” says Mick.
“And what do I think, Mister?” says Robert T. Macdonald.
“I'm just looking for Gene.”
“He's in Turkey with Isabel.”
“And how did they get there? With a raft?” says Mick and produces the passports. Robert T. Macdonald grabs them, opens them, and examines them, and then he stares at me, looking guilty as fuck.
“I don't know where they are,” I whisper.
“She's still a whore!” yells Julie.
“Leave,” commands Robert T. Macdonald.
“He's got my money. Gene, he's got it,” says Mick.
“Then you shouldn't have given it to him, should you?”
“I'm not leaving here till I know where he is,” says Mick.
“Lassie says she doesn't know.”
“Well somebody knows.”
“Out of here,” says Robert T. Macdonald.
Mick feels brave now. “And who's going to make me?”
That's when Robert T. Macdonald leaps across the table and takes him by the throat, squeezes his neck like it's a tube of toothpaste. Mick's mouth widens and his eyes water and it looks like Robert T. Macdonald's going to kill him, but then Julie smacks him with the frying pan, knocking him unconscious to the floor. Thinking they've killed him, Julie and Mick take off in Mick's ice cream van. Next thing Lennie arrives on the scene and thinks we need to get Robert T. Macdonald to a doctor, but Robert T. Macdonald comes to and says he'll go himself. Lennie makes him tea and tries to tidy up, but there's no point, everything's broken or torn and there's no mending to be done, just damage, everywhere you look.
“Where are they?” demands Robert T. Macdonald.
“They took off in Mick's van,” I say.
“Not those fools, where is Izzy? Where is Gene?”
And I want to tell him everything. I want to tell Lennie everything. I want to tell him Gene and Izzy are buried in the garden. I want to tell him I've been selling ice creams and drugs and shagging a married man. I want to tell him how tired I am and how I wish I was the one buried in the garden and let it all go, but as soon as I open my mouth Nelly turns up and goes, “Whose child is this?”
Mick and Julie forgot their baby.
Half an hour later Julie hurls herself through the front door and grabs her child gurgling in his car seat and then flips us all the finger.
“How unladylike,” says Nelly.
“Fuck you,” says Julie. “Fuck all of you.”
A
s always, Marnie was fast to explain their absence, although not fast enough for Robert T. Macdonald.
“They've just gone,” said Marnie. “I don't know where.”
“But you knew about the money,” said Robert T. Macdonald.
“Mick told me.”
“S'drug money, isn't it?” he said.
She nods.
“You get about, don't you?” spat Robert T. Macdonald.
“What fucking business is it of yours?” screamed Marnie.
“Like it or not, young lady, I am your grandfather and this lying won't stand, the company you keep won't stand, and living here in this guy's house won't stand either. Where are they?”
“I don't know.”
“I could go to the authorities,” he said.
“You'll get Izzy done if you do that. Is that what you want? She could go to jail.”
“How could she just leave you like that?” There was hurt in his voice, disappointment.
“You can talk,” spat Marnie.
“I left her with her mother. S'not the same.”
“Her mother died. She was completely alone in the world. No wonder she dived into Gene's arms. S'all your fault this.”
Marnie was close to tears. The day's events had been too much for her I could tell and I can't pretend I didn't enjoy the attack on Robert T. Macdonald.
“Come come, Marnie, too late to be throwing stones now,” says Nelly from the quietest corner of the room and holding a suitcase.
“They'll be back. They always come back. Chin up, old girl,” she assures her.
Marnie looked incredulous and as stunned as I was by Nelly's impromptu bravado.
“I say we all sit down, have a nice piece of cake, a cup of tea perhaps. Would you oblige us, Lennie?”
“Of course,” I said. “It would be my pleasure,” but it was no such thing.
I
didn't know what to do with myself or my suitcase.
There was Bobby, bringing what looked like a knee into Lennie's front room and my sister selling confectionery to the dismay of an unbalanced spouse.
I was a nervous wreck, surely I was. Retrieving the bone and burying it again was no easy feat. I didn't even know which grave he'd pulled it from.
Thank goodness for Lennie's tea and cake. It certainly took the edge off what had been a horrific day for us all. Marnie eventually simmered down and Robert T. Macdonald requested we spend more time with him until Izzy returns. Since Marnie knows this will mean a lifetime she was somewhat reluctant to agree, but I was more enthused in this respect. He had saved the day after all. It couldn't hurt anyone to spend a leisurely afternoon taking a walk for example and our breakfast together had been a great success and so we made arrangements. Marnie made her excuses of course and I was very disappointed. He'd stood up for and protected her, heaven help us all if he hadn't.
Marnie is not the strength she has been in my life; in fact she is failing me in too many ways. I hardly see her around these days. I can't imagine what occupies her, not when there is work to be done, secrets to be kept, and people to account for. Grandfather is evidently a liability, and if his daughter doesn't show up soon then we'll all be in hot water. Piping hot!