Queen Bee

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “Ew! Gross,” Tyler said.

  “It is?” Hunter said. “It looks fine to me.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “It needs some love.”

  I rolled a half dozen paper towels out for each boy and then for myself. Then I sprayed the seats and seat backs with the cleaner.

  “Gentlemen? Let’s show this thing who’s boss!”

  They descended on the golf cart like vultures on roadkill, and it was as clean as a whistle in no time at all.

  “Now we need the broom and to get this baby on the charger!” I said.

  “I’ll get the broom!” Hunter said and took off like a shot.

  Tyler plugged the charger into a wall socket and the other end into the cart. We checked the charger, which we should’ve done first, and, happily, it was working.

  “We’re going to have new wheels!” I said.

  “Can I drive it?” Tyler said.

  “Are you sixteen years of age and in possession of a driver’s permit or a valid license?”

  “Guess not, huh?”

  “Guess not,” I said.

  Hunter returned with the broom and I swept all the sand from the floor of the golf cart in the front and in the back, while Tyler and Hunter wiped down everything else and disposed of the used paper towels. We stood back to admire the fine work we had done.

  “Good job, boys! There’s a playground in your immediate future!”

  Just as we had the day before and as we would for every day it wasn’t raining, we walked to the playground, the boys sprinting the last half block or so, and I watched them while they used the swings and sliding board and chased each other all over the place. Someone came with a basketball and of course they began to shoot baskets.

  This, I thought, just establishing this simple routine was a big step toward recovering a wounded childhood. We were making it the best it could be.

  Archie called later that night. Sharon was out of the hospital and recovering nicely. Her experience had frightened her very badly, he said.

  “I’m sure it did!” I said.

  “She’s driving everyone in the restaurants crazy, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She wants to know where everything on her plate is grown before she’ll take a bite of anything.”

  “Well, in a way it’s understandable.”

  “I don’t think she’s having such a great time,” he said.

  Too bad, I thought.

  “Well, don’t they have carriage tours like we do in Charleston? Take her into Hamilton. There’s supposed to be great shopping.”

  “Yeah, maybe we’ll do that. So how are the boys? I should’ve called earlier so I could talk to them, but we were at dinner. Have they driven you insane yet?”

  “Not a chance. The boys are great. The house is fine. Everything is just as you’d hope. So y’all just have fun and enjoy your time together.”

  “Well, it’s only a few more days,” he said. “Are you sure you’re holding up okay?”

  “Are you kidding? I haven’t had this much fun since I don’t even know when!”

  We hung up, and I thought he sounded very glum for a man whose new wife told half the world that all she wanted to do was make him happy. It was awfully soon for the bloom to be off the rose, like they say, but now that she had the ring, maybe this was who Sharon really was.

  “You know, honey bees can’t survive without strong lines of communication, and the queen substance is super important,” I said.

  “What’s in it?” Tyler asked.

  “Pheromones,” I said. “Like a smell. It tells all the bees in the hive that everything is all right. Or it sends an alarm.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Bee Ware

  When Archie and Sharon returned from Bermuda it was like a rigid and formal changing of the guard. The boys, of course, flew past me screaming “Dad!” He dropped his suitcases, picked the boys up, and swung them over and over. Sharon politely said hello and went into the house, which, for the record, was exactly as they had left it. She would not be able to find any fault with my housekeeping.

  “Did y’all have fun in spite of the hospital? You’ve both got a nice tan!”

  “We did,” Archie said. “Bermuda is so beautiful, all that aqua water and the cottages all painted in pastels.”

  “I’ll get there eventually,” I said. “How about you, Sharon?”

  “I wouldn’t go back there if you gave me a billion dollars!” she said.

  “Why not?” Tyler asked.

  “Because I nearly died there! What’s the matter with you? Didn’t anyone tell you?”

  “Sorry,” Tyler said, crestfallen. “I’ll just be in my room.”

  He quietly left the kitchen.

  Hunter whispered to Archie, unfortunately too loudly, “See? You should’ve taken us instead.”

  “Little boy!” Sharon said in a huff. “Archie! Do something!”

  Hunter shrugged his shoulders and ran to his room. I was just standing there, so awfully out of place.

  “What would you like me to do, Sharon? Cane them? They’re just kids.”

  “I should go,” I said, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

  “Wait,” she said. “Tell me something, Holly. Were the boys this horribly behaved for you?”

  I didn’t know what to say, and I sure didn’t want to get drawn into a family dispute.

  “This really isn’t my business, but I think it might help if you tried to understand that children don’t always pick up the nuances of adult conversation. They just don’t. Tyler probably already forgot that you were so sick. Last week seems like a really long time ago to him, but it’s like five minutes to you,” I said. “And Hunter still can’t understand why he and his brother didn’t get to go on the trip to Bermuda. He was actually very disappointed. He thought the whole family should celebrate together.”

  “I agree with Holly,” Archie said. “Try not to have such a short fuse, babe. Kids just aren’t wired like adults. They have a different worldview. It’s not personal. It’s just juvenile.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Look, I never had kids! What do you expect from me?”

  “Kindness,” Archie said. “Kindness and understanding.”

  “Um, I left y’all a pot roast with roasted potatoes and carrots on the stove. I’ll see y’all later.”

  I started walking out, and Archie followed me to the door.

  “Holly, thank you for everything. Sharon is just overwhelmed. And wait, I have to give you money. Do you have receipts?”

  “Forget it, Archie. Call it a wedding gift. Let me know if I can do anything, okay?”

  I left and closed the door quietly behind me. I didn’t even make eye contact with him. My intention was to leave them alone until they came to me. There was no more reason for me to cook for them or to do much else for the boys unless asked. And I felt like they probably needed some time alone to adjust to living together. It sure didn’t look like they were off to a great start.

  Well, it didn’t take twenty-four hours for the boys to come banging on our door. They must’ve just come home from school.

  “Hi guys! What’s up?”

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Tyler said.

  “Yeah, you’re not going to believe this,” Hunter said.

  “Well, come on in and tell me what I’m not going to believe,” I said. “There’s a lot in this world that’s hard to believe.”

  They followed me to, where else, the kitchen.

  “Anybody want cookies?”

  “Sure!” they said. “Thanks!”

  I poured two glasses of milk without asking and put a half dozen Oreos on the table.

  “You have permission to dunk, sirs,” I said and gave them a little salute.

  “So,” Tyler said, “last night I was taking a shower.”

  “We’re taking showers now?” I said. “No more baths?”

  “Sharon says baths are for babies,” Hunte
r said.

  “Oh? She does?”

  “Yeah, she says that they’re not sanitary because you sit in your own filth,” Tyler said.

  “Well, you could rinse off at the end, but what do I know?” I said.

  “Exactly!” Tyler said and Hunter bobbed his head in agreement. “So, I’m in the dumb shower and she sticks her hand in the bathroom and turns off the light! She says something like, ‘You’ve been in there long enough! You’re wasting all the hot water!’ I was like, are you kidding me?”

  “Seems excessive to me,” I said. “Did you tell your daddy?”

  “Of course! You know what he said? He said, ‘If Sharon says you’ve been in there too long, you probably were.’ ”

  “Well, parents are supposed to support each other when it comes to the kids,” I said.

  Momma came into the room.

  “What’s new, boys?”

  They repeated the story for her. I must say, she was filled with disgust.

  She said, “What did I tell you? She’s taking over.” She poured herself a glass of tea and sat down at the table with us. “But turning off the lights when someone’s in the shower doesn’t seem like a nice thing to do. What if you fell? You could really get hurt!”

  My ears perked up. Nice thing to do? Suddenly, Momma was concerned with niceness?

  “Look,” I said, “you see how Hunter has dissolved his whole cookie in his milk?”

  The boys giggled.

  “Well,” I continued, “that’s kind of an odd way to eat a cookie. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Yeah,” Tyler said. “It’s disgusting.”

  “Okay,” I said, bringing this argument to a close, “you’ve got your deal with cookies and she’s got a thing about showers. I’ll admit, it’s an odd battle to pick. But who knows? Maybe she never had enough hot water when she was a kid or something like that.”

  “Yeah, maybe it’s something like that,” Tyler said.

  “She did it to me, too,” Hunter said.

  “Well, so now you know one more thing about her,” Momma said. “Just don’t stay in the shower so long.”

  “If it happens again, ask her to set the kitchen timer for you to what she thinks is a fair amount of time,” I said.

  “You don’t understand,” Tyler said. “This isn’t about water. This is because she doesn’t like us.”

  “Come on, now,” Momma said. “Didn’t y’all promise to try really hard to give her a chance?”

  “I guess so. Anyway, we’ve got homework. She’s coming home early to help us, so I guess we’d better go.”

  “She is the cat’s mother,” Momma said.

  “Huh?” Hunter said.

  “You shouldn’t call her ‘she.’ By the way, what are you calling her?”

  “Oh! Listen to this! Did we tell you she said we should call her ‘Mother’?”

  “Yes, I was standing there. Remember?” I said.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Hunter said, looking to Momma to explain. “I said we couldn’t call her that because she wasn’t our mother, that our mother was in heaven with the angels. She went nuts on us!”

  “Yeah,” Tyler said. “She did.”

  “It was awkward,” I said.

  “Oh, dear,” Momma said. “I think it’s going to take her a little more time to feel comfortable.”

  “I agree with Momma,” I said, thinking I’d agreed with her once again and was this becoming a trend? “She needs time.”

  “So what are you going to call her?” Momma said.

  “I don’t know. Probably Sharon. She’s not ever going to be a momma to us,” Tyler said.

  “Give it time, sweetheart. Come on, I’ll walk y’all home and stay until she gets there,” I said.

  I walked the boys home and as soon as I opened the door, Sharon’s cats appeared and started meowing and meowing and meowing.

  “What the heck is the matter with these two?”

  “They’re hungry,” Tyler said.

  “Well, then, let’s feed the little devils,” I said.

  The boys and the cats went right to the kitchen and the boys started unpacking their backpacks. I dug around the cabinets, found a container of cat food, and looked around for their bowls. No bowls. No water bowls either.

  “Hey, boys, do you know where the cat bowls are?”

  The cats were walking in between and around my legs, and I found it unnerving. And annoying.

  “Dishwasher,” Hunter said.

  Dishwasher? I thought and pulled down the door. Well, there were the animal dishes with the family’s dishes, and I wondered if that could be sanitary. It didn’t seem like a good idea, but anyway, I just took them out and filled one with cool water and the other with cat food and put them on the floor. The cats jumped on the bowls like they hadn’t been fed in a month. I was relieved they weren’t all over my legs.

  The boys stacked up their worksheets and I looked at what they each had to do. Their assignments were light that day.

  “Piece of cake,” I said. “Let’s get started.”

  The work was quickly completed and just as the last math problem was solved, we heard a car door. The Cat’s Mother was home.

  “I’m home!” she called out as she came through the door. “Let’s get on that homework!”

  “We’re finished!” Hunter said.

  “Yep! All done!” Tyler said.

  She came into the room and saw me there.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “I didn’t think it was a good idea to send them into an empty house,” I said. What had I done wrong?

  “Oh, I see. So I canceled appointments for this afternoon to help the boys with homework and it’s already done. That’s just great.”

  I had unintentionally overstepped the boundary, just the thing I wanted to avoid.

  “I’m sorry, Sharon. You’re right. We should’ve waited for you. I apologize.”

  I got up to leave.

  “You know how to find the door, don’t you?” she said.

  Jesus, I thought.

  “Sure. See you boys later! By the way, I fed your cats.”

  I had tried to sound cheery, but I was mortified. I don’t know why their homework being done should have made her that angry. She could take the boys to the playground. She could play a game with them. There were a million things she could have done with them, but she decided to be mad instead. Get mad, make everyone uncomfortable—I mean, what’s the point of that?

  I stopped by my apiary to check the water pans and while I was there, I told the bees the story. I told them that something had to be done about Sharon and if they could think of something to let me know. The bees seemed to be gathering and returning to the pink hive. It was late afternoon and the better part of the day was long gone, but it seemed to be a bit early for them to call it quitting time. Maybe it was going to rain. Bees knew those things, and the inhabitants of the pink hive seemed to be more tuned in to the world than the others. Every hive had its own personality, just like families in their homes. Sometimes, you’d get a queen who was too aggressive, and then the hive followed suit. The only way to correct the problem was to replace the queen. Ideally, you wanted a queen who just laid her two thousand eggs a day and went peacefully and quietly into the night when it was time for the next queen. But the hive was like life everywhere. Imperfect and subject to change.

  We still had plenty of daylight left. The closer we got to summer, the longer the days. Winter on the island could be kind of dreary, so I was happy for the extended days.

  I went back into the house and reported what had happened with Sharon to Momma and to Leslie, who had just come back from seeing Charlie again.

  “She’s impossible,” Leslie said.

  We had all just settled down in the den to watch the evening news or whatever we could agree on. Leslie made cheeseburgers and oven fries for us, which was a change from our normal protein, starch, and vegetable fare. To change things even more, we wer
e eating dinner on TV tables that Momma got somewhere years ago. They folded up and hung on a rack. I’d seen all different kinds and these were easily the cheapest and most rickety, but they did the job. We were the kind of family that didn’t replace things that still worked.

  So, there we were, watching Jeopardy!, screaming the answers at the television. It was the one show we all liked. Suddenly, there was banging on our door. Not polite knocking. Banging.

  I went to answer it, suspecting it was something to do with Sharon.

  I opened the door and, what do you know, there stood Sharon, red-faced and stuttering.

  “Your goddamn bees!”

  “What about them?”

  “They shit all over my car. Not Archie’s. Not the golf cart. My car! Mine!”

  “I’m sorry, what? How do you know it was my bees?”

  “Because I saw them!” She was screaming at me. “I saw them fly over your fence. There must’ve been thousands of them!”

  I didn’t like her tone.

  “Would you like to stop screaming in my face?”

  I had had it with her.

  She stepped back and said at a more reasonable volume, “If this happens again, I’ll call the police!”

  “Go ahead. Honey bees don’t poop in the hive. They take cleansing flights. I’ve never heard of bees picking out one target. They drop their tiny poops indiscriminately.”

  “Then how do you explain this?”

  “Maybe you’re just getting special treatment, Sharon. How would I know? Why don’t you ask the bees?”

  “I’m taking my car to the car wash and I’m sending you the bill,” she said.

  “And I’m going to finish my supper,” I said.

  I closed the door in her face. What was I supposed to do? Go wash her car? Oh, Lord. Did my bees sense something about her? Wait! Did they understand the things I told them? I was unsure if I should really believe that or not. Was it possible? Was it possible for bees to step in like that and give the enemy a warning? I leaned against the back of our front door and gave it a few moments of thought. It didn’t matter if it was a coincidence or done in collaboration, it had occurred and that much was fact. Just like the bees had appeared at the wedding, disappeared, and then the seagulls stepped in.