Flight Patterns

by Karen White

  The toe of her shoe kicked something, and Maisy recognized the curved side of the teapot, saw the honeycomb of cracks that spread over it. The colorful bees winged their way around the base, their flight abruptly ended with a large break in the porcelain. She could picture her grandfather smashing the teapot, trying to hide all the evidence of what had happened in this very kitchen. One last effort to protect the wife and daughter he loved too much.

  Maisy raced toward the back door. In that brief moment, she considered waking Lyle, then just as quickly dismissed the idea. Maybe Georgia was right. Maybe there was no right or wrong to this story. Just tragedy. Their grandfather had raised them, loved them, taken care of them as best he could, and they owed him now at least the chance to tell his side of the story. Maybe they had it wrong. Maisy loved Lyle, but she could never forget that he was a policeman.

  Maisy burst through the back door, feeling the weight of her EpiPen in her skirt pocket, remembering to walk instead of run when there were bees present. Her grandfather had taught her that, along with the adage that bees sting only to protect their hive and queen. She hesitated briefly, aware that the air in the backyard was alive with the high-pitched bee song of hundreds of pairs of wings rapidly flapping. The backyard reeked with the overwhelming stench of gasoline.

  Georgia heard her approach and turned, her face red and tear-streaked. “Go away, Maisy—he’s stirring up the bees and you shouldn’t be here. I can handle this.”

  Maisy threw up her hands. “Oh, yeah—I can see how well you’re handling things. What is going on?”

  “He was in the kitchen when I went to check on him. I told him what Birdie had told us and he smashed the teapot. He said he needed to talk to his bees, so I let him leave, thinking he needed to be alone, and I went upstairs. I heard the thumping, and that’s why I opened the window and discovered what he was doing.” She moved her hand over her face, deflecting a bee. “Now go inside.”

  A loud groan forced Maisy and Georgia to turn toward Grandpa, watching as he nearly tripped over the can, saw the contents slowly creeping toward the rest of the hives. He fell down on one knee, but managed to stagger to standing, slapping at the back of his neck as another bee found its mark.

  He dropped the smoker, lifted the lid, and pulled out a strip of half-burned cardboard. His hand shook as he held it near the lighter, his fingers plucking at the ignition switch. He groaned in frustration, now using his body in an attempt to remove the top boxes from the hive. They were full of frames, heavy with honey and bees, his face sweating with the exertion and an unhealthy dark red, his eyes nearly bulging from his face. Still clutching the cardboard and lighter, he picked up the frame again and began to swing it at the boxes in a desperate attempt to dislodge them.

  “Go get Lyle!” Georgia screamed.

  Maisy’s shoes slipped on the damp grass, her body landing hard as her knees and the heels of her hands skidded across the sandy soil. She grasped at grass for a foothold, aware of Georgia bolting down the row of hives. It took Maisy only a split second to realize why. He’d managed to ignite the lighter. Grandpa was attempting to light the cardboard with it when Georgia reached him, knocking the lighter from his hand, his other still clutching the lit cardboard.

  “Let me do this,” he shouted, his voice high-pitched and strident, a wounded animal in a trap. “I need to protect my family.”

  “Grandma’s dead. And Birdie remembers everything. There’s nobody left to protect.”

  A groan of pain and grief erupted from him, the sound sinking into Maisy’s bones like a bruise. Grandpa picked up the frame and swung it back, ready to strike the hive box again, the hard wooden corner striking Georgia in the side of the head. She dropped silently, as if someone had suddenly taken away her legs, Grandpa unaware of what he’d just done. A scarlet circle spread wide in her bright blond hair.

  “Stop!” Maisy screamed, aware of the bees that filled the air now, blocking her path to Georgia. She turned toward the house, remembering the open window, then screamed Lyle’s name, hoping he’d hear.

  Grandpa didn’t acknowledge her, as if he had retreated to his own world where only he knew the rules. He tossed the ineffective frame on the ground, then held up the lit cardboard as he searched for the smoker that he’d dropped. His foot found the gas can again and he stumbled, dropping the flaming cardboard.

  It seemed to float in slow motion, the bright flames dancing in its descent. “No!” Maisy wasn’t sure whether she screamed the word or if it just reverberated in her mind. All she could think of was getting to him before the flames reached the gasoline-soaked ground. She knew she was running, was giving it all she could, yet her feet felt like lead, her legs slogging through water.

  She was aware of bees stinging her on her exposed arms and legs and face, could almost feel the poison seeping into her bloodstream like the gasoline across the grass. The grass exploded into flames just as she reached Georgia, the heat wicking her ankles as she lifted her sister and half carried, half dragged her toward the house, away from the bees and the flames that had begun to consume one another.

  Maisy stopped at the bottom of the back porch, unable to go any farther, her throat too tight to allow in any air. Her vision began to blur around the edges, like the moment between wakefulness and dreaming. She thought then of her daughter asleep upstairs, and how she didn’t want to leave her, not now. Not ever. And of Lyle, and how she didn’t want to die without telling him she loved him. And of Georgia, because too many things remained unsaid but no longer seemed important. But sometimes life didn’t offer choices.

  With her last burst of energy, she looked for her grandfather. He was on his knees in front of the hive, his hand grasping his chest. She tried to call his name, but no sound came. Her head sank into the grass next to her sister, who lay too still, the red blood dripping into her ear. Maisy felt the dew cool the welts on her neck and arms and legs as she stared into a bright blue sky that dimmed as she watched, the view from inside a box with a closing lid.

  “Maisy!”

  Lyle.

  “Maisy—open your eyes. I’m here. Open your eyes!”

  The effort was too much, the darkness descending too fast. She felt a pulling on her skirt, and then a jab on the side of her thigh.

  “Maisy—breathe! Can you breathe?”

  She took a deep gulp of air, feeling as if she’d been held under the water for too long and had just been allowed to surface.

  “Thank God,” Lyle said, cradling her head in his lap for a moment. She felt his kiss on her lips before he gently slid her back to the grass. “I’ve got to see to Georgia right now—help’s on its way. I told Becky to call nine-one-one and run to the neighbor’s.”

  Maisy nodded, the words unable to get past her throat. She felt Lyle leave her side, and heard the sound of approaching sirens. She stared up at the sky and saw her grandfather’s face not as she’d last seen it, but how she remembered him: sitting in his chair under the old magnolia and watching his beloved bees. Closing her eyes, she thought of the teapot, its broken pieces reassembled, the cracks sealed and hidden, and the bees flying around its circumference in a never-ending flight.

  chapter 40

  When there are too many bees for a hive to support, the old queen takes off with part of the colony to establish a new nest—commonly known as swarming. Before leaving their original colony, all of the bees will fill themselves up on nectar—except for the queen, who is deprived of food so she is light enough to fly.

  —NED BLOODWORTH’S BEEKEEPER’S JOURNAL

  Georgia

  I sat on the back porch in a chaise longue with my feet up, James on the steps in front of me. Maisy sat next to me, her arms crossed over her chest, staring silently over the bay. I wanted to ask her whether she was thinking about how she’d saved my life and almost lost her own. And whether she regretted taking such a risk for me. I didn’t, mostly because I wa
sn’t sure of the answer.

  A breeze billowed up from across the bay, bringing with it the scent of salt air and the lingering scent of smoke. We all looked toward the apiary, roped off now with yellow tape, the remaining hives draped with black. I wondered whether Lyle had done that in a nod to beekeeper tradition, to tell the bees when a beekeeper died. Not that any bees were left. The ones that hadn’t died the night of the fire had gone, flying away to parts unknown.

  A lone figure in a wheelchair sat under an umbrella on the dock, Birdie’s head bent over the singed remains of Grandpa’s beekeeper’s journal, his first volume that started when he was a teenager and chronicled his travels through Europe, and ended in 1953. The final entry had not been written by him, the handwriting delicate and feminine, familiar to those of us who knew our grandmother. It had been a letter addressed to Birdie, unread and hidden away for sixty-two years.

  The journal had been found inside the bottom box of the hive at the back of the apiary, emptied of frames and never moved, a mausoleum to a secret. Lyle had found it next to Grandpa’s body after the fire had been extinguished. Even though the coroner said he’d died of a heart attack and not from the fire, we all knew that he’d died of a broken heart, trying to protect the memory of the woman he’d loved.

  “Have you shown her the photograph?” James asked.

  I shook my head, then wished I hadn’t. My head still hurt under the white bandage that itched so badly at night I couldn’t sleep. I remembered my grandmother telling me that when an injury itched it meant it was getting better. If only grief could be as easily gauged—weighed and measured in a finite quantity. I wished she were still alive so I could ask her when the grieving would go away. I knew she’d have an answer. Yet it was still so hard to reconcile the loving person who’d been my grandmother with the woman who could be driven to kill a man.

  “Not yet,” I said, staring into his warm, blue eyes. I didn’t know why he’d chosen to stay here, but I was grateful that he had. While I’d been in the hospital and both Maisy and I were still reeling from everything that had happened, he’d taken charge and worked with Lyle and Marlene to get the funeral plans started for Grandpa and all the details involved with clearing the apiary and converting Grandpa’s makeshift downstairs room to be ready for Birdie when she came home from the hospital. He said that Caroline had helped via phone, and had even threatened to come down herself and take charge, but I knew he’d done most of it on his own.

  It was more than gratitude I felt, too. Maybe it had started that night on the dock when he’d dared to tell me the truth about myself. And when he’d told me that I wasn’t ordinary. Or maybe it was when he’d come back to Apalachicola with me for no other reason than that he thought I might need him. And I had. I smiled at him, unable to put my thoughts into words. But with James, we both knew that I didn’t need to.

  I picked up the folded piece of copier paper and my phone and stood, waiting a moment for my head to clear. “Now is as good a time as any, I guess.”

  I’d walked halfway to the dock when Maisy ran to catch up with me. “She’s my mother, too.”

  I nodded, but didn’t look at her. There was still so much unsettled business between us, reminding me of a game with sticks and marbles we’d played as children. Neither one of us wanted to draw out a stick and let loose the marbles, upsetting the unsteady equilibrium we’d clung to for so long.

  “Birdie?”

  She turned her head toward us and smiled. Despite what she’d gone through, she still managed to look like Grace Kelly on the Riviera, with the addition of a cast on her leg. Her face, still mostly unlined, seemed almost serene, her brown eyes clear and focused on us. It was surreal, as if we were meeting our mother for the first time. And maybe, in a way, we were.

  We both kissed her cheek, then pulled up the two Adirondack chairs next to her.

  “How are you feeling?” Maisy asked, always the caregiver.

  “Except for the broken leg, I’m fine.”

  Maisy and I exchanged a glance, wondering whether our mother had just made a joke.

  “I wanted to show you something,” I said, unfolding the piece of paper. “James’s sister Caroline e-mailed it to him, and Maisy printed it so we could see it better.”

  She held out her hand, slender and pale, but the blue veins and knobby knuckles indicated her true age. I handed her the piece of paper and she flattened it on her lap on top of the journal.

  “The photo quality isn’t great,” I said. “Caroline took a picture of an old photo on her phone. It’s a photograph of their grandmother, Ida, and Ida’s husband, parents, and siblings when they arrived in New York in May 1947.”

  Birdie drew in a breath as I leaned closer. “Is this your Adeline?” I asked, pointing to the beautiful young woman standing in the back and a little to the side. A fair-haired man, just a little taller than she was, had his arm protectively around her shoulder. She was taller than her parents and siblings, her features carefully etched. Even though her hair and eyes were dark, both Caroline and James looked just like her.

  “Yes,” she said, her bony finger gently brushing the image of the woman. “My Adeline. So good and kind. I wish I hadn’t forgotten her. I would have been a better mother if I’d remembered her, and what she taught me.”

  “That looks just like Becky,” I said, pointing to a young girl with bright blond hair standing in front of Ida, Ida’s hands on her shoulders.

  “No,” Maisy said. “I think it looks more like you, Georgia. But we both have that nose.”

  “That’s Colette,” Birdie said. “The girl I was and then forgot.” Her brows knitted together. “And now all these years later I wake up and remember her, except I’m an old woman and I have no time to make any more mistakes.”

  The tears in her voice reflected my own, the truth of what we were looking at more of a corroboration than a surprise, but just as wounding. It was hard to reconcile in my mind that this little girl, Colette, was Birdie. The enigmatic mother whose presence in our lives we tolerated and survived. The beautiful woman who floated on our periphery like a brilliantly colored scarf.

  Birdie folded the photo into one hand, then smoothed her other hand across the cover of the journal. “My father tried to destroy this, but I’m glad he didn’t. I read what my mother wrote to me, and what my father spent a lifetime trying to hide. She made him promise that he wouldn’t tell me until I was ready to hear it. But I suppose I was so good at pretending to forget what had happened that he decided to pretend along with me. All he ever wanted to do was to protect her. Love is funny that way, isn’t it?”

  The buzz of a motorboat skipped across the waves toward us, but none of us looked away from the journal and its faint smell of smoke. “She asked for my forgiveness,” she said quietly. “But it was not my forgiveness she needed.” She faced Maisy and me. “A mother’s wounds are deep and permanent. I know this now. I hope in time you can forgive me, as I’ve forgiven her. It’s not too late to start over.”

  Maisy looked away. She’d always found it hardest to understand Birdie. Probably because all she’d ever wanted was to please her and she’d always come out wanting. I simply hadn’t cared enough to be disappointed. But I continued to stare at our mother, realizing with a start something I’d been wrong about. She hadn’t been broken all those years. She’d been strong enough to keep her head down until she was ready to face the wind. My return home had been the change she’d needed. The change we’d all needed. And all because of a teacup and saucer that had sat in an old lady’s china cabinet for decades.

  “I want to try,” I said, not needing to tell her about scarred childhoods. She already knew all about that. But maybe we’d built up enough scar tissue to lay a firm foundation to start again.

  Maisy faced us, her eyes wet. “I feel so angry, but I can’t even decide who to be angry with.”

  “Then don’t be angry,”
Birdie said softly. “I have decided not to be. We have a choice. We can count the years we have lost, or we can count the years we still have ahead of us.” She placed her hand on Maisy’s arm as if to soften the blow of her words. “You’ve always been so easy to take offense, Maisy. And I take the blame for that. I had two perfect daughters, but I always felt that I needed to interfere, to make them who I wanted them to be. And I’m sorry for that.”

  Maisy wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “Do you remember Giles? And your life in France?”

  Birdie was silent for a moment. “Just small flashes. I was very small, but I remember the kitchen in our farmhouse. The black-and-white floor. I remember his hand, and how it felt when he held my hand in his.” She looked down at her fingers, which clutched the black-and-white photo of a girl she no longer recalled. “I remember being happy.”

  “How did you know where the teapot was?” I asked, finally pinpointing one loose piece of the puzzle.

  “I asked him—that night. He wanted me to think it had been destroyed, but I knew it hadn’t. George had shown me that little room in his house years ago, and I knew my father stored his tupelo honey in there when he had a big harvest and he ran out of room. You’d already searched everywhere else, and when I asked him if that’s where it was, all he did was write something down on his notepad.”

  “‘Is it a sin to love too much?’” Maisy said quietly.

  “Yes, that’s what he wrote,” Birdie said. “But is it?”

  I shook my head, wishing I could make it hurt even more so I couldn’t think. So I couldn’t feel the desperation of a father trying to save his child. Or the desperate measures of another father and a mother believing they were doing the same thing. Or of a little girl caught in the middle of events she couldn’t understand. I thought of how this all could have ended differently. Giles was a dying man, after all. It was a tragedy with too many participants to decidedly point the finger of blame.