The Wedding Bees (10 page)

She liked the strong independent woman she'd turned into over the years. She'd created that woman more or less from dust and had come to take it for granted that she would be that woman forever. She could not let a crazy person like Theo turn her back into anything else.

“I'm sorry, Theo,” she said. “Really, I am. But I think it would be better if we just skip to the part where we never see each other again. Thanks for coming by but I would be really grateful if you left the greenmarket alone on a Sunday from here on in. I don't mean to be rude and I'm sorry if it seems that way but I have to go now.” A new wave of hot and hungry customers swallowed the space between them and Theo melted back into the park.

He was not going to remind her that he never got his ginger crème supreme. But nor was he going to give up. And she might not want him at Tompkins Square on a Sunday but he would find a way to win her heart, even if he couldn't come back to the greenmarket.

 

G
inger crème supreme was Sugar's favorite flavor too, as it happened, but the longer she sat beside the beehive on her roof terrace and continued to plow her way through a whole pint of it, the more perplexed Elizabeth the Sixth became.

The queen knew Theo Fitzgerald was what she had been waiting for: that certainty had emerged from the twisted rods of her DNA as definitely as the instinct to survive. What she didn't know was what to do next. Her DNA was telling her diddly-squat about that. She had assumed, inasmuch as a queen bee could, that Sugar would now take over. But all Sugar was taking were large spoonfuls of full-fat dairy products with a strong whiff of ginger, which was good for fending off colds and easing constipation but not a great favorite with bees.

Something had to change, that was for sure, and as nothing but great waves of angst continued to emanate from Sugar, Elizabeth the Sixth decided that the something would have to be her. She backed her rear into the closest baby-making cell and stayed there.

Her go-slow had just turned into a tools-down.

Initially, her handmaidens panicked. A hive could not survive if its queen stopped laying. They started to clamber over her, desperate for guidance, fearful that she was weakening and that they needed to start feeding a new queen. But, to the contrary, the signals Elizabeth the Sixth was sending out were only getting stronger.

Trust me, she told them. And although they were bewildered, they trusted her.

18
TH

M
rs. Keschl arrived at Sugar's door the following afternoon asking for more candles. She'd been burning them all day every day since the brunch and had grown used to the smell of rose oil. “Usually my place smells of onions,” she told Sugar. “Usually I like the smell of onions. But now I like the smell of candles.”

“They're supposed to be uplifting, Mrs. Keschl. Have you felt uplifted?”

“You don't get uplifted at my age,” Mrs. Keschl said. “It's all downhill from about twenty years ago.”

She looked over Sugar's shoulder at the kaleidoscope of foliage blooming out on the terrace. “So. Green fingers,” she said, pushing past and stepping outside. “It's like the Garden of Eden up here. Good work. Coffee, if you're making it. Milk. Two sugars.”

Sugar obliged and went to make the coffee, watching Mrs. Keschl through the window as she gently lifted the moonflower to her nose to smell it, then closely inspected the magnolia.

Actually, she was happy to have the company. She'd had a terrible night's sleep and had woken with an uncustomary headache. Usually a cup of mint tea and a few quiet moments spent lingering on the skyline and she couldn't wait to get on with her day, but this morning had been different. She'd had to fight the urge to stay in bed and pull the sheets up over her head. Worse, she'd felt on the verge of tears ever since and it was not a verge she cared for.

“I have some lemon honey tarts,” she said, as she delivered the coffee. “Nate made the shells, and the bees and I did the rest. Speaking of which, are you OK to sit here while I do my hive check?”

“I'm OK to sit here till Thanksgiving if you keep bringing food,” Mrs. Keschl said.

“Have you lived on Flores Street long?” Sugar asked as she lifted the lid off the hive, then removed the top super, which was already filling with capped honey.

“Forever,” Mrs. Keschl said. “Although the neighborhood didn't always look like this. There used to be more dead people.”

“Dead people?” Sugar pulled out the most populated frame of bees to look for Elizabeth the Sixth.

“Junkies and hos and that,” explained Mrs. Keschl. “Then they made
The Godfather Part II
around the corner and the neighborhood started to come alive.”

“Well, that's strange,” said Sugar.

“I know. You would expect more dead people after a Mafia movie, not fewer, am I right?”

“No, I mean, yes, I mean what's strange is Elizabeth the Sixth, my queen. She doesn't seem to be laying.”

There was no fresh brood pattern, no change in the frame around Elizabeth the Sixth since Sugar had last checked the hive. But her queen was alive, she was being fed, she looked healthy.

She just wasn't working.

Sugar slid the frame back into the brood box and put the hive back together again.

“You look like you swallowed some of those bees,” said Mrs. Keschl. “Got any more little cakes?”

 

“It's never happened before,” Sugar told George out on the stoop the following day.

“It's not colony collapse disorder because the bees just disappear with that, and it's not the varroa mite because you can actually see varroa mites and my bees have never had them. And it can't be foulbrood either because that's obvious in the hive and yet there's no sign of it. It's none of those things, George.”

“Sorry to hear that, Miss Sugar,” he said.

He'd never seen her so agitated. She was missing her rosy glow, had dark rings under her eyes and her smile lacked its usual warmth.

In his weeks on the stoop of the orange brick building on Flores Street, he had closely observed all its inhabitants—that was a doorman's job—but he had paid particular attention to Sugar of whom he was of course especially fond. She was a rare thing in his opinion: a modern city dweller who put stock in caring for those around her. She was treating everyone in the building one way or another with her honey, and her time, and it did his heart a world of good to see.

Plus, 33 Flores Street clearly wasn't the first place where Sugar had worked her particular brand of magic. George had never known anyone to get so much mail from so many different corners of the country. She might get two dozen letters or cards in a single week—and that wasn't all. One day she might show him the copy of a report card some proud mom had sent her from California; the next it could be a needlework sampler hand stitched by a former landlady in Idaho; the day after she might be unwrapping a wonky clay pin-tray sent by some seven-year-old from Santa Fe.

But George worried that Sugar's caring was something of a one-way street. She put her heart and soul into helping fix up everyone else but didn't let anyone do the same for her. A person could only do that for so long.

“Oh, look at Lola's world,” she said, pointing at the sad balloon. “It's gotten so small. That's not a good advertisement at all.”

“You sure have to wonder about that woman's career advice,” George agreed. “Although Ethan seems to be doing better—you wouldn't have anything to do with that I suppose?”

“Ambrosia,” Sugar said, brightening. “I make it with honey, propolis and royal jelly and it works wonders.”

“Well, I couldn't guarantee it but I thought I saw his mama actually smile yesterday,” George said. “And what are you doing to Mrs. Keschl? She was singing last night and that woman has a much sweeter voice than you would ever imagine.”

“I'm keeping her stocked up with rose oil candles,” Sugar admitted. “Burning them is supposed to reduce irritation.”

“She certainly seems to have a plentiful supply of that.”

“I'm starting to gather quite a supply myself,” said Sugar. “I just don't understand why Elizabeth the Sixth would stop laying like that, George. I'm doing all I can to make her happy but it's like she's just choosing not to be and that's not like her at all.”

“You know, I have a place I go to when the problems of the world need my special attention. I don't suppose you would care to join me there, Miss Sugar, talk things through a little?”

“Is it a bar? Because I'm not a real big drinker at this time of the day.”

“I'm not a drinker at all, Miss Sugar. This is nature I'm talking about: that's why I know you will like it. And the best thing about being an honorary doorman is I don't need to ask my boss if I can leave my post because I don't have a boss. And look at that, it's near enough to lunchtime.”

He offered Sugar his arm and she took it.

Just a couple of blocks away, on a tiny slice of East Sixth Street, sandwiched between two apartment buildings, was an uninviting gate hanging half off its hinges in the middle of a rusted fence.

George led her through and, to Sugar's astonishment, they emerged into a thriving vibrant garden anchored at the rear by a giant oak and crammed with flowering shrubs and teenage trees beneath which nestled an eccentric collection of garden sculptures, chipped gnomes, lurking ceramic toads and moldy cherubs.

“Grace's Garden,” George said. “Been here since the seventies when the building on this site burned to the ground, and in those days nobody round here was in a hurry to build anything back up again. No one can remember who Grace was but the locals have been keeping the garden going all these years just so the likes of you and me and anyone else who cares to open the gate can come in and check out of the rat race for a while.”

“It's beautiful,” Sugar said. Brilliant blue hydrangeas posed like frosting on the plump greenery of their bushy bodies, crowding the base of the ivy-covered wall belonging to the apartment building next door. Quirky mismatching tables and chairs were scattered about the small space, as though waiting for an eccentric ladies' tea party to arrive, but George led her over to a pair of wooden benches hidden in the shrubbery. They looked onto a row of little red-and-white birdhouses perched on a piece of picket fencing planted on its own in the middle of a flower bed.

There they sat, catching a complicated modern dance of sunlight through the leaves of the oak tree and a neighboring willow, as George pulled a wax-paper package out of his bag. He carefully unwrapped it and offered Sugar half of the bagel sitting inside.

“Norwegian smoked salmon with cream cheese, capers and onion from Russ & Daughters on East Houston,” he said. “I've been buying my bagels from them since 1969 and they just keep getting better and better, which is just as well because they sure ain't getting cheaper.”

“I couldn't, George! That's your lunch.”

“And have I ever turned down your honey, or your tea, or your ointment for my leg, or that cake you made that I ate four pieces of?”

“No, but—”

“No, but nothing, Miss Sugar.”

“I can't take your lunch, George. I just can't.”

George started wrapping it up again. “Well, I'm not sitting here eating it all by myself so either you take half or the birds get the whole thing. That's the deal.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“You're a tough customer.”

Reluctantly, she accepted half the bagel. “Thank you,” she said, taking a bite. “Oh, this is really good.”

“You see?” George said. “All you had to do was allow me to share it with you.”

Sugar stopped chewing. “I was just worried that you wouldn't get enough yourself,” she said.

“And here's me worrying the same thing about you.”

“I eat like a horse, George. You don't need to worry about me.”

“I'm not talking about food, Miss Sugar.”

“You're not?”

“I'm not.”

“Oh.” Sugar put the bagel down and wiped delicately at the corners of her mouth. “Then what are you talking about?”

“Since you asked,” George said, “I'm old, and getting older, Miss Sugar, and not much in the mood for wasting time, so if you don't mind, I'll just get on with it.”

“Oh!”

“There's something bothering you, I can see that, and you would probably prefer to keep it to yourself, because that's your way, but I happen to know that troubles disappear a heck of a lot quicker if you share them with someone who cares about you, which I do.”

“But it's my bees,” said Sugar. “I have shared that.”

“Your bees might be acting up, Miss Sugar, but I don't think they're at the heart of the matter. I think your heart is at the heart of the matter. And matters of the heart happen to be my specialty so if there's anything I can do to help, I'm sitting here waiting, just hoping I haven't offended you by being so forward, but like I said, I'm not getting any younger. And keep in mind that when you finally agreed to help me eat that bagel, it worked out pretty well.”

He was right about that: Sugar had already finished her half. But it was just a bagel. She felt sudden palpitations in her chest that didn't seem entirely bagel related. “Whatever makes you think my heart's got anything to do with anything, George?”

“Hearts are all that matter in the end, one way or another,” he said. “And you are just about the best-looking young woman in Alphabet City plus you are smart and kind and concerned for your fellow human beings and you seem to have everything a person could possibly wish for—except someone else to share all that with.”

“Well, goodness gracious me, not everybody needs someone to share it with. It's not a crime to be single! Some of us are just fine on our own, George. It's a perfectly respectable way to be these days. Better than being stuck in a terrible relationship with someone who doesn't love you.”

“Or the same, if it's just fear that's stopping you from moving on. Either way you're stuck.”

Sugar was stunned. “That is quite forward,” she said.

“I know, and I'm sorry. But it could be that what you're refusing is every bit as bad for the soul as refusing food is for poor little Miss Ruby. And I know you're doing everything you can to help her so now I am going to do everything I can to help you.”

“But why would you, George?”

“Because everybody needs an angel some time or other, Miss Sugar. You were mine and I guess I might be yours.”

A bluebird flew over the wooden fence from the backyard next door and perched on the platform outside one of the birdhouses, fixing Sugar with its gaze. She opened her mouth to protest, to politely fob George off, to laugh away the ridiculousness of his concerns but nothing came out. Instead she felt a peculiar sense of something approaching calm spread slowly through her, like syrup on a hotcake, starting from the top of her head and traveling south, chasing away her palpitations.

George was right. Of course he was right. Not about being an angel but about her heart.

It wasn't just Elizabeth the Sixth.

It was Theo.

He had shaken up something inside her that had long been buried and did not seem to want to stay that way, no matter how deep a hole she kept trying to dig for it. She was stuck. She was stuck because she was still running away from the sins of her past, scared of making the same mistake again. She didn't move towns every year because she was brave or adventurous or because her queen bee told her to. She moved because she was afraid of feeling about someone the way she currently felt about Theo.

“His name was Grady,” she said. “Grady Parkes.”