Flight Patterns

by Karen White

  She walked over to the table and kissed Birdie on the cheek before sliding a tube of lipstick from the pocket of her skirt. “I bought this for you today. It’s a new color for spring and I thought you might like it.”

  Birdie blinked at the gold tube but showed no other reaction. One day Maisy would stop making peace offerings. Would stop wishing her mother would look up and thank her.

  “Did you have a good day?” Maisy asked, giving Birdie one more chance.

  “I’m not so sure,” said Georgia, bending down to open the oven door and take out a baking sheet full of fluffy golden biscuits. “She’s been singing ‘What I Did for Love’ from A Chorus Line all day. She stopped when she heard you come through the door.”

  Maisy looked at her sister in surprise, their eyes meeting in mutual understanding. That song had meant Birdie was in an unsettled mood, because she’d sing or hum it over and over until they’d be forced to stuff cotton in their ears. It was the only warning they’d have before she slid books off a bookshelf onto the floor or yanked draperies from a window.

  Maisy turned her head as she heard the telltale buzzing around her ear. She jerked back and retreated to the doorjamb and the flyswatter. She grabbed it and held it aloft. “Is that a bee?”

  “Yes, Mama,” Becky said. “D-don’t kill it—you know it’s b-bad luck to kill a b-bee.”

  Maisy hesitated, trying not to think of all the bees she’d swatted at in her past. Georgia walked to the kitchen door and opened it wide, then picked up a newspaper from the counter before approaching the insect as it perched on the back of an empty chair.

  “Come on, little bee,” Georgia said calmly. “Thanks for coming to visit, but it’s time for you to go now.” The bee almost seemed to be listening to her as it sat unmoving on the chair. Georgia opened up the paper to create a kind of barrier, and took a step toward the small insect. “Come on now. There’s the door, and right outside are all your sisters.” With a gentle flick of the paper, she brushed against the chair, shoving the bee toward the door. It buzzed out as if that had been its intention all along, and Georgia slowly shut the door.

  “Why is killing a bee bad luck?” James asked.

  “A bee in the house means there’s going to be a visitor,” Becky said with reverence, her stutter gone as she spoke with confidence about a subject she loved. “But if you kill it, the visitor will bring you bad luck.” She looked pointedly at Maisy, reminding her mother about the bee she’d killed the day Georgia had called to say she was coming home.

  Georgia placed the newspaper back on the counter and went back to the biscuits. “Well, James is already here, so I guess the bees are a little confused because of Florence taking some of the hives.”

  Standing by the freshly baked biscuits, Georgia pinched a corner off one of them and put it in her mouth. She chewed slowly for a moment with her eyes closed. James walked over and leaned against the counter. “Is it good?” he asked. “Because you’re torturing us by making us watch.”

  She grinned, and it was the old grin that Maisy remembered from her childhood, the smile that always let her know that she and her sister were on the same team.

  “Maisy—come here. I think something’s missing.”

  Not sure what to expect, Maisy stepped forward and took a pinch from the same biscuit and put it in her mouth. It was light and fluffy and wonderful. Just like their grandmother used to make them. Except there was something else, too. Something different and delicious and unexpected.

  “I added a pinch of cinnamon,” Georgia said tentatively. “I know I could never improve on Grandma’s biscuits, but I thought I could make them a little different.”

  She waited expectantly for Maisy to say something. Maisy swallowed, weighing her words. “I think you need more salt.”

  Georgia’s smile dimmed. “You don’t like them?”

  Maisy had a flash of memory of the day Georgia carried her out of the apiary on her back, away from the angry bees that were stinging them both. “They’re delicious. I like the cinnamon.”

  She took the basket and brought it to the table, then placed one on Birdie’s plate and another on James’s. “Come sit down and put some of this tupelo honey on your biscuit while it’s still warm. I promise you that you’ve never tasted anything better.”

  James did as he was told, rubbing his flat stomach. “I’ll make sure I run an extra mile tomorrow.” He eyed the basket. “Maybe two.”

  Becky sat down next to him and Maisy gave her one, too, then watched as they poured honey on their biscuits. Birdie pinched off a crumb with her fingers, looking away at the offered honey. Georgia came to stand next to Maisy as they watched James take his first bite.

  “Wow,” he said after he swallowed. “That’s pretty amazing. And you’re right. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything quite as good.”

  Georgia’s cheeks pinkened, softening the haunted look that she now wore with the same dedication some people chose to wear team hats. It also made her look devastatingly beautiful, and Maisy saw with some amusement James seeming to notice it for the first time.

  Maisy pulled out a chair and sat down across from Birdie. “I think I found something that could help your pattern search.” She looked up to make sure she had Georgia’s attention. “During lunch I sat down with a history teacher at the school, Carmen Daniels—you remember her; she graduated the same year as you. Anyway, I was telling her about trying to identify a china pattern that dated back to the late nineteenth century.”

  Maisy paused, noticing as Becky reached over for her third biscuit, and pretended not to see. “She said she always told her students that a good place to start was newspaper articles either about their exact subject or the same time period. The media center has access to lots of online newspaper archives all over the world going back a few hundred years, even, so I asked her to do a search.”

  “And?” Georgia prompted. She’d never been patient, and Maisy had to admit it was fun making her wait. It wasn’t often that she had the upper hand.

  Maisy took a biscuit from the basket and placed it on the plate in front of her before answering. “She found an article from 1901 from the New York Times about an exhibit of French china at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There was a large section of Limoges from several of the American Haviland companies, with the focus being on the designs. And their artists.” Maisy took her time spreading honey on a biscuit and then taking a bite while Georgia drummed her fingers on the table and James chuckled softly to himself.

  “Mama—would you just go ahead and tell us?” Becky demanded.

  “Well, there were lists of the various company artists—did you know the designs were all done by hand?”

  “Maisy . . .” Georgia said her name with gritted teeth.

  “And at the bottom of the list were two names of French artists who both designed patterns for Haviland and Co. in the late nineteenth century. What set these two artists apart was the fact that instead of painting the usual flowers or leaves or any of the other popular motifs of the day, these two chose to paint icons from the natural world. Like birds, ladybugs, butterflies.” She lifted her gaze to James, and then to her sister.

  “And bees,” she and Georgia said in unison.

  Maisy grinned. “There was actually a photo of a plate with a bee pattern on it, but it didn’t appear to be ours. The photos aren’t great.”

  “Did you make a copy?” Georgia asked, leaning over the table like a policeman during an interrogation.

  “Of course. I’m a teacher. I live to make copies of interesting articles. I made three—one for each of us. They’re in my bag.”

  Georgia straightened as if aware that she’d been hovering. And then, very slowly, she smiled. “Nice work, Maisy. This could be the break we need.”

  James stood and shook her hand. “Very good work. I think you might have saved my eyesight.”
>
  The sound of something being slid with force across the wood surface of the table made them turn their heads just in time to see the flower vase, honey, and basket of biscuits crash to the floor. Becky leaped up, then ran from the room crying when she spotted her beautiful flowers splayed on the tile floor. Birdie stared at a spot in front of her, her heavy breathing from the exertion of swiping everything within her reach off the table the only indication that she was aware something had just happened.

  Before any of them could react, Birdie pressed her head into her hands and began to sob, words easing out between her fingers in a half song, half moan. It was unintelligible, like the babbling gibberish of a baby, but as Maisy put her arms around her mother’s shoulders and helped her stand, she thought she heard a name. Adeline. And when she looked up at Georgia, Maisy knew that she’d heard it, too.

  Their eyes met and it was almost as if they were the young girls they’d once been, sharing secrets. And for that short moment, right before Maisy looked away, they were sisters again, allies in their unconventional lives. Oysters from the same bed, clinging together despite the vagaries of the tides.

  Maisy began to lead their mother away. She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see that Georgia had her arm around their mother, too.

  “I’ve got her,” Georgia said. “You go see about Becky.”

  Maisy nodded gratefully as she relinquished her hold on Birdie. She stayed where she was for a moment, watching as Georgia led their mother back to her room in the turret of the old house, the name Adeline slipping through her lips like a chant.

  chapter 16

  As queen honeybees age, their egg-laying abilities decrease. When an old queen begins to falter in performing such responsibilities, workers will induce her replacement. The aging queen is killed after the new queen emerges.

  —NED BLOODWORTH’S BEEKEEPER’S JOURNAL

  Birdie

  It was the smell of baking that brought it all back to me. Another kitchen in another house. A thousand years ago. I saw the plates, and the faces around the table, and the wood grain of its surface, and it was all so familiar. Yet so different. The people were talking yet I couldn’t translate what they were saying, alien words tumbling from their mouths without meaning. I sat mute, listening to the odd cadences of the voices, wondering where I was and what language they were speaking.

  The crumbs I placed in my mouth were like dry sand because I’d expected something else, fresh bread with butter. I looked down and the floor was wrong, too.

  I glanced across the table at the young girl with the beautiful blond hair and I knew her name but could not form it. And when I looked at her again it was as if I were looking past her, through unrelenting years to that elusive time when I was happy.

  I saw myself with my father, outside with the bees. There was a low murmur somewhere, not the buzzing from the bees but something else. Something not right. Something that made my father hold his breath.

  He dropped my hand as we reached the edge of the field where the hives stuck out from the ground like scarecrows. I’d once told my father that and he’d laughed and that had made me smile because he never seemed to laugh anymore. Like all the joy in him had been leached from his skin, absorbed into the air like the light at dusk.

  He placed his broad hand on my chest, indicating that I should stay back, then walked toward the hive, its red paint faded by the sun. Hundreds of bees clustered around the bottom entrance, hanging on to one another like stunt divers, their dark buzzing bodies forming what looked like a beard on the ledge of the hive.

  “They’re swarming,” my father said. “Stay back.”

  I wasn’t afraid of the bees, but I did as my father told me. I was an obedient child, never one to cause trouble or make a fuss.

  “Why?” I asked, mesmerized by the moving mass of insects that rippled and waved like a person crawling through a field of wheat.

  “It’s too crowded inside the hive.” It sounded as if he were making up stories for me, the way he did at bedtime. “All the worker bees are clustered around the queen to guard her, while scouts look for another hive. A new queen will be born so the existing hive won’t be without one.”

  I blinked up at my father. “Do they mind?”

  “Mind what?” he asked, and I could tell he was only listening to me a little bit. I was getting used to it. I was very young, but he’d always paid attention to me. Always made sure he understood my childish gibberish, repeating the words to make sure he got it right. Until the knocks on the door after I was in bed at night. That was when he’d changed.

  “Do the bees mind leaving their home and finding somewhere else to live?”

  He looked down at me and saw me, really saw me, for the first time in a long while. He knelt down in front of me and took my small hands in his. “Some of them might. But the smart ones will see that this is an opportunity for them. Many of them would die if they remained, and this is a chance to survive.” He looked past me to the swarming bees and he seemed suddenly sad. “It is astonishing to realize what God’s creatures are willing to do to survive.”

  He stood and I knew he wasn’t talking to me anymore.

  The memory was so strong and so real that it took me a few minutes to realize where I was, in which kitchen and at what table. I think it was Maisy’s voice, her teasing note that I hadn’t heard for years. It tugged on me the way her small fingers had once tugged on my hem, and I was floating through time, remembering my girls as they’d been when I’d returned from the hospital that first time and had been so happy to see them.

  It was the mention of the china that brought me hurtling back into real time. The china. Adeline setting the table, carefully placing each dish onto the wood surface, then washing each piece by hand. Her long, tapered fingers as elegant as the painted design. It made me think of her soothing voice as she sang, and the way she brushed and plaited my hair. I remembered her kindness, and how she was the only one who could comfort me when the nightmares came.

  Like an unexpected wave, the memory pushed against its boundaries, a wall of water breaching the dam, a steady stream spewing from a jagged crack. The flickering light in my mind threw out a bright swath of white light, illuminating all I did not want to see. All that came after. Adeline. And the swarming bees. Always the bees. And the murmur of something else in the background. Something unholy and man-made.

  I wanted it to stop, needed it to stop. I reached out my arm, desperate to grab hold of the image of Adeline, to bring the happiness back to me, and instead felt the hard wood of the table beneath my arm. Only the shocked silence of the kitchen made me aware of what I’d just done.

  chapter 17

  “How doth the little busy bee

  Improve each shining hour,

  And gather honey all the day

  From every opening flower.”

  Isaac Watts

  —NED BLOODWORTH’S BEEKEEPER’S JOURNAL

  Georgia

  I walked down the hall to Marlene’s kitchen, trailed by the wagging tails and clicking paws of four dogs. In the nearly two weeks since I’d been home, Marlene’s four-legged shadows had glommed onto me, as if they thought I was in need of companionship. Each night they followed me into my old bedroom and lined themselves up along the foot of the bed, their expressions telling me that I wouldn’t be able to get them to leave.

  The slow drip of rain against the metal roof at least meant that the rain that had pelted the house all night and most of the previous two days was finally slowing. I was thinking how nice it would be to work out on the dock when I reached the kitchen and stopped abruptly in the doorway. James and Becky sat at the kitchen table eating eggs and bacon, a plate of biscuits on the table between them, the ubiquitous jar of tupelo honey next to it. Marlene stood at the counter pouring three glasses of orange juice. She sent me a grin over her shoulder.

  “At
last, Sleeping Beauty emerges from her lair.”

  “Very funny,” I said, glancing at the round kitchen clock over the stove. “It’s nine o’clock—a very respectable time for a Saturday morning.”

  “Not really,” groaned Becky, her usually quiet voice louder and more confident in Marlene’s kitchen, as if she found strength and acceptance here just as I had all those years ago. “You know, Aunt Georgia, cell phones now have alarm clocks on them. So you’d know when to wake up. We’ve been waiting for forever.”

  I hid my smile. “Sorry—I didn’t know anybody was waiting for me.”

  “You said you didn’t have a bathing suit, and then James said he didn’t either and you could go shopping with him.” She glanced at my tie-dyed romper with the fringe hem. “I thought I could help.”

  “I was thinking that with all this rain we’ve been having I should hold off on purchasing a bathing suit. Today I planned to head over to the library to see if they were able to find anything about those artists your mother discovered. I called my contact at the Haviland archives at the University of Iowa library, but I haven’t heard back from her, so I figured I’d better start looking elsewhere while I wait. And then I need to take Grandpa for a walk.”

  “You can do all that after we shop,” Becky said matter-of-factly, as if everything had been decided. “And the sun is shining now.” She sounded so much like Maisy—the “little general,” as Grandpa had called her. I guessed she’d been the one to coordinate this morning with James, her face earnest and serious as she manipulated everyone’s schedule.

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “Does your mother know you’re here?”

  James nodded. “I called her to make sure it was all right. She said it was fine as long as Becky wasn’t late for her tennis lesson. She brought her racket just in case, and we can drop her off at the courts on the old Marshall Square on Fourteenth Street by eleven.”