Agatha of Little Neon

by Claire Luchette

  At the door, I heard them first: the drone like a quivering siren, a maddening thrum. And then the apiarist opened the door and I stared: bees. Hundreds of them. They clouded the air, diving and climbing with ease around the front room. They looked like they were floating, and seemed almost beautiful, until I remembered I was afraid.

  From a metal jug, the apiarist—there he was in front of me, bald and gaunt and wearing an undershirt—shot smoke in the air, and the bees slowed as if in obeisance. A few drifted past me through the open doorway and I jerked with fright.

  His little arms were so pale they looked gray, and thick chest hair poked up from the neck of his yellow shirt. As he spoke, I watched a bee hover and lower itself onto his nose. “It’s not every day I get a visit from a bride of Christ,” he said. He seemed delighted by my habit and veil. He smiled dopily, displaying only a half mouthful of teeth, and stepped aside to let me in. “These weren’t raised to be God-fearing bees, I’m afraid.”

  The room was floored in linoleum, walled with slats of dark imitation wood, and empty except for a low-hanging light bulb and a white wooden beehive, uncovered. And, of course, except for the bees. They made the air seem foggy, almost viscous. Crowds of them danced over the surface of the hive. Others rose and sank and came to rest on the wooden frames bordering the windows, or on the apiarist’s shoulders and head. The rest were set on soaring. They approached me with interest and I shut my mouth. I dug my nails into my own forearm.

  The apiarist asked what he could do for me.

  “I called earlier,” I said. “About the Carniolans.”

  He nodded and gestured for me to follow him to the back of the house, where the bare hallway gave way to a wide room with a narrow striped mattress, a brown blood spot in its center. He must have slept among these bees, dozed to their thrum.

  With his back turned, he rifled in a dark closet, and he couldn’t see me standing frozen, trying to appear inanimate so the bees might pass me by. It was beyond my understanding, that Tim Gary might find this a pleasant way to spend his time.

  Crouching low, the apiarist assembled a cardboard box. With his bare hands he lowered a hunk of comb, bees clinging fast, into the box. I watched him slowly tip the box up over itself so it lay flat on a white sheet, and then he propped up a corner with a two-by-four. “Now they’ll tell their friends how nice it is inside the box,” he said. I watched the bees wander in and out, as if making up their minds. “In, oh, half an hour or so, we’ll have a good four pounds of bees in there.”

  I nodded. I didn’t ask: How many bees to the pound?

  In the kitchen he served me a bottle of cola. He offered me pickle spears fingered from a wide-neck jar. I shook my head.

  The apiarist ate his pickles with loud snaps. Through the back door a dog came panting—a rib-thin, bear-faced dog. His walk seemed to hurt him, but he delighted in the presence of water in his bowl, in the hands of the apiarist digging through his ratty fur.

  “Freddie boy,” the apiarist cooed, crouching to kiss the dog’s wet nose. “That’s my Freddie.” He turned to me. “You can pet him, if you like.”

  I knelt down to meet the dog’s face, and he breathed at me, hot and hard. Bees latched to the dog’s tucked belly and greasy ears, but Freddie never stopped to swat or shake them free.

  “He likes you,” the apiarist said.

  I smiled.

  “Are you looking at his balls?” he said. I wasn’t, but then I saw them and could not ignore them. Bulbous, fat. The healthiest part of him.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” the apiarist said. He scratched his nose with a wet finger. “‘Balls’ is a swear, isn’t it?”

  “No, no, don’t worry,” I said. I sat on the floor at Freddie’s flank and watched him lick freely at the water in his bowl, though several dead bees floated on the surface. He was the kind of trusting dog who seemed not to know how bad things were.

  When I stood back up, I saw that a bee had drowned in my cola and come to rest on the surface. I poured the pop down the sink and picked the bee from the drain.

  The apiarist sighed and pointed to the trash can. He told me things had been lousy for him and his bees that winter. His population had been cut in half. Lately, his queens were laying fewer eggs. “One thing about queens,” he said, “they don’t like to be helped along. They like it to be their idea, if you know what I mean.”

  I set my bottle on the counter—a tiny clink.

  “Say, Sister,” the apiarist said. “How about you help me with something in the garage?”

  His garage was detached from the house, with a wide square-faced pull-down door gaping a foot. He unlocked the side door, and Freddie rushed in first.

  There was no car or truck, only amassed disorder. Eight feet of an artificial Christmas garland, studded with imitation pinecones. Towers of thick, glossy science fiction novels. A tower of canned beans and corn. A woodworking bench and low table saw, an upended electric keyboard, a dozen empty tissue boxes, a microwave.

  I waded in. Freddie’s tail upset a crate of empty amber prescription bottles, and they went flying. But the apiarist ignored him. He perched a foot on the arm of a rusted lawn chair, stretched back so I could see the bulge of his groin. He said, “This is my little hideout. My little sanctuary.” When I didn’t say anything, he looked hard at my face, then grinned. “Well. It beats me why a pretty girl like you would be interested in the clergy.”

  I spoke, my voice unsteady. “You said you needed my help?”

  “See, I’m having trouble with that old door. It won’t go down the whole way. And I get a draft. Then little critters come in at night. Damn mice that come and nest in my easy chair.” He gestured to an armchair that had been busted, its fluff ripped free.

  I looked at the gaping door, the foot of liminal space, the threshold for escape.

  “I’m sure I won’t be much use,” I said, arms crossed. “I’m no stronger than you.”

  The apiarist walked over and tugged on the strap hanging from the door. “It just won’t give! I don’t know. It’s jammed, maybe, or rusted stuck.”

  By then Freddie was sniffing my leg, and I thought the apiarist wouldn’t see me slip a piece of graham cracker from my purse. I thought, from where he stood, he couldn’t see me let Freddie lick the crumbs off my palm. But Freddie ate with loud smacks of his tongue, and the apiarist flung around and stared hard at my outstretched hand.

  He raised his voice then, rage swelling in his face. “You. Do. Not. Feed my dog. Without. My. Permission.”

  “I—I was just—”

  The apiarist’s eyes went wild. For a second it seemed he would come at me. I was done for, I thought. This was it. I could see it all unfold: the violent lunge, my futile attempt to run. My body tied up and the story on the nightly news. But instead he called Freddie over to his side and stuck his hand inside the dog’s mouth. He scraped gummy bits of cracker from his teeth and pink tongue. Freddie’s eyes went shut, and he whined from somewhere deep within. I watched the man rake the dog’s throat with one hand and hold his head with the other. Later, I’d recall the look on his face: there was, for a moment, unprecedented tenderness, as if his dog was owed every last store of his love.

  Maybe I’d only imagined the danger of being in a small space with this strange man; maybe he had no wicked intentions. But right then I permitted myself the right to see my fear as proof enough. I collected myself, and then, while the man’s hand was still between the jaws of the dog, I fled. I rushed out the side door.

  In the van, I hurried the engine awake and punched the gas and leapt the curb and started to soar. And even without the bees, I was feeling good, so good—feeling all sorts of brave and a variety of stupid and a certain kind of lucky, the kind that comes after you circumscribe danger with your own will and good sense. The wind welcomed me to newfound speed. I smiled out the windows at fields of erect trees.

  I didn’t want to go home. I drove down every street I could. I went over the bridge and then turned aroun
d and drove back the other way. Past the wind turbines and the movie theater and the strip club with the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. I kept reminding myself that I would eventually have to turn the van toward home, but then when it was time to make the next turn, I would forget. Or maybe it was more willful than that. It was so easy to keep turning down the wrong streets.

  When I finally did return home, Therese was mad: I forgot to pick up milk.

  66.

  The third weekend of March, Therese organized the opening of a swap store in downtown Woonsocket, in the old shoe repair shop. The swap store was intended to be a store without money, just things. Above and beyond capitalism. People were welcome to bring goods and trade, or bring nothing and take. It was all Therese’s idea—help people get rid of their old junk, and help other people find stuff they might need. The others worked with her to spread the word and make sure no one tried to trade anything illegal.

  I went with Tim Gary that first weekend. He wanted to get there before the good stuff was claimed. In the swap store, Frances had hoped to find a twelve-quart Crock-Pot for beef stew. Tim Gary wanted a new belt, an extension cord, a reading lamp.

  The shop was crowded, and it smelled like dust and rot, like things forgotten, even though everything had just been unpacked. The room was no bigger than a two-car garage, lit by a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. People were set on finding treasures. They rifled through DVDs and sank their hands into bins of costume jewelry. They flipped through tapes labeled ADULT. They made the dishes clink. They raked hanging frocks and blouses along the rack. There was a disproportionate number of hammers. Whole buckets of them. A table was stacked with abandoned toiletries: half-empty bottles of shampoo and lotion, pumps poised like the necks of hungry birds. Pots and pans still barnacled with grime. Near the front there was a whole table full of religious paraphernalia: porcelain cross-shaped keepsake boxes, little baptismal gowns and First Communion dresses, and Bibles. Tons and tons of Bibles.

  Piled on top of each other, these things didn’t seem so desirable, but still people paced, picking up pieces of junk and turning them around in the air.

  Then I turned to see Lawnmower Jill among the free weights in the front corner.

  We smiled at each other. I asked her if she was trying to get buff, and she said she was. She looked at her watch and told me she was also sixty-one hours sober. She’d been kicked out of Getchell House a couple of months back, and now was living in public housing across the river. She had a job, making submarine sandwiches. She was trying to be good.

  “Good,” I said.

  But Lawnmower Jill heard a question. “Yeah, good—you know. Clean, well-behaved. A real upright citizen. Yada yada yada.”

  She did look clean. Her parka was still missing squares of fill, but it looked recently laundered. Her hair was washed and stuffed in a braid, her fingernails trimmed close.

  I told her I was proud of her. I asked her what she’d been leaning on to help her keep upright.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Most days, myself.”

  I nodded. We were quiet for a moment. “And how is Horse?” I said.

  She got this sad look, as if her face was too heavy for her head. “Locked up. County.” She got picked up stealing a microwave hamburger from a gas station, and she had enough heroin on her, Lawnmower Jill said, “to sink an oil rig.”

  I said I’d be sure to write Horse a letter. And I did write Horse a letter, telling her I missed her, and I included the funnies from the paper. But then I couldn’t remember what her real name was, when I went to address the envelope. I had to call Abbess Paracleta: it’s Eleanor.

  Lawnmower Jill said, “I always liked you, Agatha.” She studied my face. “You’re not like the other sisters.”

  I would think about that comment for years.

  67.

  That week I taught my students the Pythagorean theorem, but I spent the most time talking about what I’d learned online, when I’d searched “Pythagorean theorem please help.” According to legend, after Pythagoras discovered his famous theorem, he was so high on his own genius, he killed one hundred oxen in celebration. There was a word for sacrificing a hundred oxen: it was called a hecatomb. “Say it with me,” I said, to my students. “Hecatomb. Hecatomb. Hecatomb.”

  * * *

  When I came home from school, there was newspaper spread over the kitchen floor, swaths of my sisters’ hair atop it.

  “We had a slow afternoon,” Mary Lucille said, and pulled off her veil to show me. “Therese cut mine. Do you like it? See how she angled the bangs?” She studied my face. “I can cut yours, too, if you want.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. I felt useless, and pathetic, and I hated both these feelings, and then I hated myself for feeling them.

  * * *

  Father Steve gave me pamphlets to distribute to my students about religious life. He’d designed them himself, he said. The front read “Vocation: All I Ever Wanted!” and there was a photo of a few nuns laughing. What was so funny, I wanted to know.

  Inside, the text was very small and squished onto both sides of the paper. I read it alone at my desk. “How do I know if I’m being called? Your journey starts with discernment. Very few people regret listening to God’s call. You only have one life—why not give yours to God?”

  I put the pamphlets in a low desk drawer. If girls came to me and asked for advice about becoming a sister, I’d have something to give them. But they never did.

  68.

  Easter was cold and gray. On the kitchen table we left chocolate bunnies for Tim Gary and Baby and Pete and Eileen, and then we spent the day the way we spend every Easter: solemnly. From dawn to dusk we sat in metal folding chairs in the parish, thumbing rosary beads, praying the glorious mysteries again and again.

  There were times when I did not stop at Amen. I could make the Beatitudes go on and on. There was never enough time to list all the blessed. Blessed are my students, I said, and blessed be their friends; blessed are the quitters; blessed are the nervous; blessed are those who hide; blessed are the messy; blessed are the ones who say “Oh, that’s over my head”; blessed are the late bloomers, and blessed are the foolish; blessed are those who lisp; blessed are the birthday party clowns; blessed are the waitresses; blessed are the awkward; blessed are those who burn the roofs of their mouths because they cannot stand to wait; and blessed are the heartbroken, the ones who haven’t arrived at the other side of their pain. Thank you very much. Amen, amen, amen.

  * * *

  For as long as I could remember, Easter had never been happy. Easter was when there was blood on the rug. Easter was when I was sent next door to be with the neighbor while my mother was driven to the hospital to die.

  My father told me how it happened. He said it had to do with her womb. My mother had had a difficult time delivering me—thirty hours of labor and then a C-section—and after I was born, she asked a doctor to place one of those copper devices in her uterus so another baby wouldn’t be conceived.

  For years, she sat in the confession box and listed sins: she’d raised her voice to my father, parked illegally, envied the women in magazines, missed credit card payments, drank too many glasses of wine. She’d honked her horn, picked the neighbor’s forsythia for herself, muttered swears when she nicked herself shaving, cursed God when she shrank a sweater in the wash. She prayed a dozen prayers, doubled her penance, but it wasn’t enough: still she suspected it was wrong to have the copper inside her.

  And a priest told her she was right: it was a sin to keep a baby from being made, from being born.

  She conceived my brother a month after the device was removed. I was eleven, and witnessed crying jags that lasted hours. I remember her vomit. Her swollen ankles. There were afternoons I’d watch her stand at the mailbox and look down the street for what seemed ages, or sit in her parked car awhile before she came in the house.

  My baby brother was born two months early to a mother who hemorrhaged in the bath on Holy
Saturday. I remember the siren, and sitting for hours in the next-door neighbor’s TV room while she smoked in the kitchen. And I’ve tried to forget, but I can picture so clearly, still, the way my father’s face looked when he came home on Easter with a baby and no mother.

  * * *

  For Easter dinner, Mary Lucille planned to make lamb like Mother Roberta taught her. The Easter before, she had cooked a rack of lamb studded with peppercorns and served with mint jelly. And so in Woonsocket Mary Lucille went and bought a heavy hunk of meat, wrapped in white paper. But she forgot to pick up mint jelly, so when we left the church together after our last rosary, I told the others I’d stop by the Price Rite and meet them at home. The humidity had lifted, and I walked along Hamlet Avenue feeling light.

  Woonsocket’s water used to be kept in a tower on Hamlet, one of those great steel orbs standing on four legs in the sky. It was stationed between the church and town, rusted over and empty. Back in the seventies, they put a light up top so planes wouldn’t nick the orb and flood the town.

  The light also made it so that I could see Tim Gary climbing up the water tower’s caged ladder. I knew him by his tiny frame and the shape of his hair from the back.

  That night I never did pick up a package of Sure-Jell or a bunch of mint leaves. I came home a couple of hours later, with Tim Gary, empty-handed and hungry. The others had cooked the lamb and the leftovers had cooled, and they were indignant, hands on their hips—where had we been? And why was I covered in mud?

  I fell, I said, and I had: I slipped twice, running to him across wet grass, and there was mud all down my front. By the time I got to the bottom of the ladder, he was thirty feet up, ascending at a steady clip.