The History of Bees

Chapter 33 GEORGE

We were in the motel room. The walls of the room were a pale yellow and the wall-to-wall carpeting was stained. We sat there immersed in the smell of mothballs and mildew.

Outside the window was a wall of water. Not the kind of light, cozy rain shower that left behind a sweet fragrance and twittering birds. No. This was rainy weather of biblical proportions, as it’s called. Even on the fifth day. I began to wonder whether there was somebody out there who had it in for me, if maybe I should be building an ark.

Tom was leaving the next day. He had his nose in a book, highlighting with a neon-yellow marker. The sound of the marker was the only sound in the room. Over and over. You’d think he needed to highlight every single word in the book.

There was nowhere to go. The room had seemed large when we got it, I’d asked for a suite, since both of us were staying here, but it had shrunk dramatically over the past few days. Just one window and a view of the back alley. The two queen-size beds took up way too much space. I sat on one of them, the one closest to the wall, the bedspread with a large floral pattern rolled up underneath me. I was already tired of looking at the two pictures on the wall, a field of flowers and a lady in one, a boat in the other, the glass not quite clean, plenty of fingerprints in the middle of the lady’s face. Tom had taken the group of chairs by the window. His books covered the entire table, and next to him was his bag full of things for school.

Come to think of it, he’d been sitting like that most of the time. Not that there was much of anything else to do, but still. There wasn’t a trace of interest. Not in the bees, not in the rain, either. He could have allowed himself to get worked up—get irritated, yell, but he just read. Read and highlighted with fat neon-colored markers. Pink, yellow, green. It seemed as if he had a kind of system, because the markers were lined up in a tidy row in front of him on the table and he alternated between them.

I jumped when the telephone rang. I stood up. Lee’s number lit up on the screen.

“Yes?”

“Anything new?”

“Not in the last half hour, no.”

“I checked another weather report,” Lee said. “They predicted good weather starting this afternoon.”

“And the other five you checked?”

“More rain.” His voice was flat.

“Guess there’s some things we can’t control,” I said.

“Is there… ?” He hesitated. “Is there any chance you could stay a few more days?”

We’d been through this before, but he’d never asked so directly.

“I’ve booked the cars for the way back already. And the crew.”

“Yes.”

He didn’t say anything else, knew that it wasn’t possible.

“It’ll let up soon,” I said, trying to sound like my mother.

“Yes.”

“And a day or two, give or take, won’t make a big difference.”

“No.”

We were silent. Just heard the rain tumbling down out there, and car tires splashing through the puddles.

“I think I’ll go out there now,” he said suddenly.

“Really?”

“Just to check.”

“I was out there this morning. They’re inside. Nothing’s happening.”

“No, but still.”

“Do as you like, they’re your bees.”

He laughed softly, but there wasn’t much joy to be heard in his laughter.

Then we hung up.

Tom looked up from his book.

“Why don’t you just tell it like it is?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s obvious that this will have an impact on his crop.”

“Yeah, well.”

“He’s an adult, he can handle hearing the truth.”

He put the cap on the marker with a decided click. The click, the way he did it, made me itch inside. And his words—he expressed himself like a fifty-year-old professor.

“I thought you were studying,” I said.

“I’m done now.”

“Like you weren’t listening to my phone calls.”

“Jesus, Dad. We’re ten feet away from each other.”

“And how come you have so many opinions all of a sudden?”

“Excuse me?”

The itch was horrible. I couldn’t sit still.

“Excuse me?” I mimicked. “After having loafed around for a week, you’re suddenly getting involved?”

He stood up. He was taller than me.

“I haven’t been loafing around. I’ve been working. Every time I’ve had the chance, I’ve been lifting and sweating more than you have. And you know it.”

“But you didn’t want to.”

I took a step towards him. He backed up automatically, but maybe he noticed it himself, because all of a sudden he stood up straight and placed his feet soundly on the floor.

“I never claimed to be very interested. You were the one who asked me to come with you, remember?”

“Kind of hard to forget.”

He fell silent. Just looked at me. A penny for his thoughts.

Then all of a sudden he came out with it: “Can you describe Jimmy and Rick for me, Dad?”

“Huh?”

“What are they like? Describe them for me.”

“Jimmy and Rick? When did you get so interested in them?”

“I’m not that interested in them. But if I ask you to describe them, you’d have a lot to say, right?”

I just looked at him.

“I know lots about them, too,” he continued. “Just because I’ve heard you talk about them. And about Lee, too. I know what they like, what they do in their free time, even what they’re afraid of. Because you’ve told me.” His voice was gentler now, softer. “That Rick doesn’t have a girlfriend, for instance. And Jimmy, I’ve heard enough about him to know that you actually wonder whether he’s playing for the other team.”

I was about to answer, say something about Jimmy, but didn’t know exactly what to say. Because strictly speaking this had nothing to do with either Jimmy or Rick. I understood that Tom was going somewhere with all of this, but I didn’t know where. It was as if he’d pushed my brain into a can and was shaking it hard.

“How would you describe me, then?” he asked.

“You?”

“Yes. What do I like? What am I good at? What am I afraid of?”

“You’re my son,” I said.

He sighed. Smiled, almost scornfully.

We just stood there looking at each other. The itchiness was getting intense.

Then his gaze broke away from mine. He walked towards the bag of books.

“If we’re not going to do anything anyway, I’ll get started on my history.”

He picked up a thick, dark blue book. I could just make out Big Ben on the cover.

Then he sat down, turning the chair around so that the back faced me.

I wished I had a really thick book to read myself. And a chair to turn around. Or most of all a really smart comeback at the ready. But he’d gotten me now. I was speechless.

An hour passed, maybe an hour and a half, before the rain let up. The sky cleared up into something that wasn’t exactly blue, but at least a little less intensely gray than what we’d seen the last few days. Lee’s seventh weather report had clearly been onto something.

Tom finally put his book down. Got up and pulled on a jacket. “I’m going out for a walk.”

“You can’t take the car.”

“No, that’s fine.”

“I might need it.”

“I know. I won’t take the car.”

“Fine.”

He was about to open the door when the telephone rang again. It was Lee. He asked us to come right away.