Sucking Up Yellow Jackets

by Jeanne Denault

  Fortunately he didn’t know much about viral incubation times. He scooted his chair back as far away from me as he could and tried to talk without inhaling. “We do have three people out sick. I hope you’re going to be all right.”

  “Thanks. Me too.” I managed a brave smile and bounded out as quickly as I could without breaking into a run. I figured he wasn’t going to offer to walk me out. He was probably in the men’s room scrubbing his hands raw before I got to the front door.

  Max ran around the corner of the building. He was clutching a bulging paper bag. “The lady said I could have as many as I could pick. She said they’re apricots.”

  “Great. Let’s get out of here. I’ll tell you why as soon as we’re out of sight.” I started up so fast I spun gravel. Not easy with a VW bus with a 35 horse-power engine.

  As soon as the plant disappeared in the rear-view window, I told Max why it was hard on me when I took him someplace where it was important for him to behave and he didn’t do that. I could hear my voice shifting from reasonable to strident. I forced myself to stop railing at him. I had to constantly remind myself he could be hurt by my criticism even though it never changed what he did. I was stupid to bring him with me. Expecting him to stay put and wait patiently was as reasonable as staking out a terrier and assuming it wouldn’t bark. It didn’t do any good and it just left us both feeling frustrated and wronged. I took a deep breath. “How did you know which room I was in?”

  “I just started at one end of the building and checked each window. Why do people with big windows always sit facing the door?”

  “Do they all do that?” I was hopeful. Maybe no one saw him.

  “All but the lady who told me about the apricots. She had her window open and came over and talked to me. She asked what I was doing. When I said I was trying to find you, she told me where she thought you would be then asked if you make jam. She’s nice. She asked me to pick all the apricots I could reach so they didn’t go to waste. She said she was glad someone still made jam. She gave me the bag.”

  He turned to me. “How come you kept frowning at me when I was trying to get your attention while you were talking to that man?”

  “I was trying to signal you to stop jumping up at the window.”

  “Why? I wasn’t hurting anything.”

  “No. You weren’t. It’s because the guy I did the work for would be freaked if he saw you.”

  “That’s dumb. What difference would it make?”

  I sighed. My impassioned explanation of exactly what he did wrong and why had slid right by him. I sometimes wished I could look inside his head and figure out how he processed what I said. “It’s called being unprofessional. If I have the temerity to have kids and work, I’m supposed to keep them invisible.” I had to explain what temerity meant.

  He mulled this over for a few seconds then said, “That’s dumb. Ladies are supposed to have kids.”

  “Not if they want to work in my business.”

  When I pitted the apricots I discovered some of them had small apricot-colored worms in them. Max offered to help pit the fruit. I showed him the worms. “Watch for these and pick them off.” His face twisted with revulsion. He hated bugs. Seth was sitting next to him and noted the reaction. He pitted an apricot, took out the worm, held it up so he had Max’s full attention then very deliberately put it into his mouth, swallowed it and stared at Max with his eyebrows raised in an unspoken challenge.

  Max gulped, shuddered, pitted the small fruit until he found a worm, put it into his mouth and swallowed it. His face went pale. Involuntary tears filled his eyes. He gagged but kept himself from vomiting with sheer power of will.

  Seth looked surprised. He pitted apricots until he found another worm and swallowed it. Max looked sick. He was sitting on a stool with no back. I hoped he didn’t faint and crack his head on the radiator behind him. His hands were shaking. He found a worm and swallowed it.

  Seth knew he had an advantage. Eating worms wasn’t his idea of fun but he had a strong stomach. Fascinated, I watched the merciless duel. How would it end? There were a lot of apricots. They finally quit.

  Seth gracefully allowed Max the last worm then said, “This is boring. I’m going over to Kevin’s house.”

  Neither boy ate the apricot jam I made.

  Chapter 35

  Later that summer, Pete came home with three bags of candy and a bag of licorice sticks. He got three large bowls out of the cupboard, filled one with jelly beans, one with cellophane-wrapped sour balls and one with wrapped peppermint kisses. He picked through the glasses until he found a heavy one and stood the licorice sticks in it.

  Bemused, I said, “Are we having company?”

  “Nope. I like having candy around the house. I just decided the kids are old enough to leave it alone.”

  “What made you think that?”

  “When I was their age we had candy out in bowls.”

  “There is no their age. Linda is fourteen, Max twelve, Seth ten and Andrea is three. You can’t keep candy out and expect all of them to leave it alone.”

  “Why are you always so damn negative? If I tell them to leave the candy alone, they will. Normal families keep candy out.”

  “Their dentist is going to love you.”

  Pete put the candy in the living room and family room then helped himself to a handful of jelly beans and went in search of the children so he could explain the candy rules. One by one the kids appeared in the kitchen and asked me why their father suddenly decided to leave candy out on the tables.

  “He likes having candy around.”

  A few minutes later Linda came into the kitchen with something large in her mouth. When she talked around it I realized she was sucking on a red sour ball. “How come Dad bought spice jelly beans? Fruit ones are better.” The pockets of her shorts bulged.

  Andrea brought me a peppermint kiss and asked me to unwrap it for her. I took it away from her. “You can’t have these or the sour balls Andrea. You might choke on them.” I took a small box of raisins out of the cupboard over the refrigerator and gave that to her.

  She thanked me but looked disgusted. “Which of the candies can I eat?”

  “What did your dad say?”

  “He said just have a little bit of candy after we eat our dinner. I ate everything on my plate. Why can’t I have candy instead of raisins?”

  “Because raisins are good for you. Candy isn’t.”

  “If it’s not good for us, why did Dad buy it then?”

  “He wants us to be normal.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The best of all possible worlds.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  I put the bowls of sour balls and peppermint kisses up too high for Andrea to reach.

  When Pete got home from work the following day, except for a few purple jelly beans, the candy bowls were empty. He stacked the bowls and brought them into the kitchen. “Why didn’t you refill the bowls? The only way we’re going to teach the kids to eat reasonable amounts of candy is to have it available all the time so they don’t think it’s something special.”

  “I didn’t refill them because I still don’t think it’s a good idea to keep candy around all the time.”

  “Just because you grew up in a weird house where no one ate candy doesn’t mean your kids shouldn’t eat it.”

  “What makes you think we didn’t eat candy? Dad loved it. He used to make fudge when he was in the mood and he always kept bags of peanut butter kisses and jelly beans around. When I was in high school he started buying M&Ms.”

  “You don’t like M&Ms.”

  “I liked the chocolate part. I just didn’t like the covering. And it was too much trouble to soak the covering off and dry them. It was easier to walk down to the corner and buy a Hershey almond bar when I wanted chocolate candy.”

  Pete frowned at me. I think he was trying to decide if I were joking or not but decided he didn’t want to know. I wasn’t but I only tried it once and
found the funky taste of the coating stuck to the little chocolate insides.

  Pete brought home bags of candy for the next few weeks. By then the house was infested with tiny sugar ants. Not trusting the sudden surfeit of free candy, Max and Seth had been stashing candy in their rooms. The wrapped candy didn’t attract ants but Pete kept buying the spice jelly beans. The kids didn’t like them but they kept putting them in their mouths just long enough to be certain they really didn’t like them then taking them out of their mouths and putting them into their pockets, onto the closest piece of furniture, or into the nearest wastebasket. The candy company should have sold their flavorings to the outfits that made ant traps. They would have had a winner. I think we were attracting ants from every suburb on the north shore of Chicago.

  Without comment, Pete stopped buying candy. I felt sorry for him. He had all these mental images of what normal families did but he couldn’t seem to grasp that this mythical perfect family existed only in his dreams. His ideas of what made a happy household were irritating but so lame they were oddly touching.

  He didn’t grow up with a good teacher. Pete’s father was a remote man, the age of most children’s grandparents when Pete was born. I only met him once before he died. Hospitalized, he had suffered a series of mini-strokes so his mental capacity was altered but he appeared to be fully cognizant when I met him. Old and frail, he was still a handsome man with a shock of thick white hair, a sharp nose and still vividly blue, assessing eyes. Pete’s eyes.

  The youngest of nine children, Pete’s dad barely knew his own father. A sea captain/ cargo ship owner on the China to Province-town run, the man was never home for more than six months at a time. Much of that time was spent in Boston offloading the China goods and getting cargo for the next trip. I gather he brought his children hard candies from Boston. So Pete’s father did the same thing with his children. This was Pete’s happiest memory of his father and he wanted to pass on the pleasure he had enjoyed.

  Chapter 36

  I heard the front door close. Then footsteps on the stairs. It was dark. The clock next to the bed said 1:12. I pulled on a robe and opened my bedroom door. Max and Seth were creeping up the stairs jostling each other, breathing hard and trying not to laugh. There was just enough ambient light to see they were naked except for their white underwear and sneakers. My bedroom was on a separate hall. I closed the door behind me then waited for them. They were so absorbed in whatever they had done they didn’t notice me in the dark hall. I followed them into their room and flicked on their bedroom light. Seth gave a startled squeak when he saw me. Max jumped at the sudden light but looked pleased. Seth looked embarrassed.

  “So, where have you been in your skivvies?”

  They looked at each other, their faces equally guilty then Max straightened and assumed the challenging bravado stare I was seeing more and more. “Out.”

  I knew I had to be careful here. “Did anyone see you?”

  “No. We were quiet.”

  Seth didn’t contradict Max but was clearly worried.

  I looked at him. “Did any lights come on? Or dogs bark?”

  Seth flicked a nervous glance at Max then said, “Yeah. The lady on Eighth Street turned on her bedroom light and looked out when her dog started barking. I think she called the cops. A patrol car drove down the street a couple minutes later. We heard it coming so we hid in a basement stairwell in the house near the other end of the alley. After the cop went back to the lady’s house I wanted to go home but the bet was…”

  “This was a bet?”

  Max did his macho look again. “We each bet our allowances. I said we could walk around the whole block in our underwear without getting caught. Seth bet his allowance we couldn’t. I won.”

  “How about the lady calling the cop? Wasn’t that sort of getting caught?”

  Max looked indignant. “No way. The cop never saw us.”

  “But the lady’s dog heard you and she looked out. Are you sure she didn’t see you? She wouldn’t bother to call the cops just because the dog barked. That dog barks if a squirrel walks by.”

  Seth was looking hopeful. Max was uneasy but defiant. “Even if the cop saw us, it was no big deal. We weren’t doing anything wrong. People wear bathing suits out in public that cover them a lot less than underwear. ”

  “True but they wear bathing suits at the beach. People expect to see them there. They don’t expect to see boys wearing underwear in their backyard. Then it might feel scary. And you might have been trespassing on a lot of people’s property. You were definitely disturbing the peace if the lady was upset enough to call the police. That’s three things. How did you get out without me hearing you?”

  “Out the window. We climbed on that little roof over the front door then held on to the roof braces.” Max looked proud. “I do it all the time.”

  I decided not to acknowledge this comment. “The bet was all the way around the block? Right?” Both boys nodded. “So you made it halfway without being caught?” Max was looking angry. Seth was looking hopeful. “Okay. So you each half-won. What was the penalty if you didn’t make it all the way?”

  Max glared. “I give him my allowance.”

  “So you both won and both lost. How about we call it a draw? Seth gives you half of his allowance and you give him half of yours.”

  “That’s not fair. Then he’ll end up with some of my money. My allowance is more than his.” He was flapping his arms with frustration as though he wanted to hit someone but couldn’t decide whom to hit first.

  I frowned. “Yes. That’s true.”

  Seth looked at me. He knew I had just dumped the issue in his court. He was smart. He had to share a room with Max. He shrugged. “That’s okay, Max. You can keep all your allowance. I had fun.”

  I knew I had to separate the boys. Max had a need to control Seth. Max did what he wanted to do without any indication that he had any understanding of the possible consequences of his actions. Seth did know the consequences, yet he not only followed Max’s lead and ended up involved in things that he knew were self-destructive, he sometimes taunted Max, knowing his brother would do anything to prove he was superior.

  I had an older brother who did his best to control me but by the time I started grade school, I had figured out I would never be able to fly and stopped leaping out of trees and jumping off porch roofs no matter what my brother said.

  Max was in eighth grade. Seth was in fifth. They were in different schools. If it weren’t for their competitive love/hate relationship, they would have had little to do with each other. Pete was as confused by their relationship as I was. He and his brother had the same age difference between them as our two boys did, had nothing in common and avoided each other, although the avoidance might have been mostly on Pete’s part.

  A friend of his told me the older Max made a point of intruding when a bunch of Pete’s friends were just hanging out laughing and trading jokes. The older Max had the ability to chill any cheerful gathering and made Pete and all of his friends feel stupid and gauche.

  I decided moving Max to his own room might help. The house in Wilmette had a full attic with a narrow stairway in the hall closet. It took me the better part of a year but I built two rooms in the attic with a knee wall and storage on both sides. The house was a classic Dutch colonial with a large wing on the back. I made full use of Pete’s tools and added a few of my own. I had to hire a plumber to put in radiators, a sheet rocker to hang the drywall and a man to put down carpeting, but I was able to do the rest of the work by myself. I ended up with a few more books on construction and knew all the men in the hardware store and lumber yard by name.

  Buying the steel circular stairway was entertaining. I had gotten specification sheets for pre-made circular stairs at the lumber yard and drawn up exact plans. The stairs were manufactured at a company located in an industrial section of South Chicago. I dressed the way I usually would to go into town, in a good suit, stockings, heels, perfume, the whole lady-goin
g-to-town rig. I should have shown up in overalls, work boots and poured sawdust over my head. A little BO might have helped.

  They made me sign an agreement saying I would accept the stairs without argument and I had to pay the full amount before they started making them. When I drove back down to pick up the stairs, I wore jeans and work boots but it didn’t help. There was a lot of head shaking. Everyone in the company, even the gray haired bookkeeper came out to the loading dock to watch the men fitting the pie-shaped pieces into my VW bus.

  Pete, Max and Seth helped me set up the stairs. It was like playing with a very heavy construction kit. The sections fit together perfectly. I was the only one not surprised.

  Between his job and the Boy Scouts, Pete was busy. On the rare evenings he was free, fortified by a few drinks, he would go up to the third floor and check out the progress. He never said much, yet he managed to make me feel like a not too bright kid. I imagine some of my reaction came from left-over feelings from my critical father who was good on disapproval and totally lacking in praise, but it wasn’t all my imagination.

  Pete sometimes repeated his weird saying about me squirting out around the edges each time he thought he had me under control. I found this creepy; it made me feel like a bug with a big thumb holding me down. If I asked him why he said it, he would look at me with a blank expression. I wasn’t sure if he realized what had just come out of his mouth.

  ***

  Max moved into the third-floor room. It didn’t occur to me to ask Seth if he wanted to move into the third floor bedroom or stay in the old one. To me, the large, well lit second floor room was clearly the better choice but Seth took it as another indication Max was the more loved child because he got the new room. The odd dynamics between the two brothers still popped up but less so. Seth had been in a lifelong war with Max to establish his own turf. His life was a little better but he still had to go to Kevin’s house if he wanted to play games or even just talk about subjects that interested him without Max interrupting him and telling him he was stupid.