by Maryl Jo Fox
Out of the night comes a buzzing sound—not a swarm, but a single loud buzzing. “What’s that?” he asks. Before she can answer, she gets stung—twice—on her arm and the back of her neck. She shrieks in pain, dropping her purse and bag. A sting virgin all her life until a few weeks ago, now she has four! The unhealed stings above her eyebrows vibrate in sympathetic pain. The angry buzz gets louder.
“Get away!” she shouts. She and Haskell try to beat away the flying attacker. Its buzz is deep, more like a big yellow jacket or bumble bee. But bees don’t fly at night. They have to sleep just like everyone else. Haskell and Clara know this. The throaty buzz fades into the night sky. Whatever it was, it was a one-time guerilla attack.
She shudders. It’s as if the yellow jacket tried to stop her from entering the house. But there’s no house anymore—just ash and litter. Hastily she picks up her purse and Lenore’s bag, shooing Haskell up onto the flatbed before her.
Lenore whimpered when the yellow jacket attacked, but now she’s quiet in her bag. Clara doesn’t want to look at her. She’s still angry about the wedding invasion. She sits down heavily at the kitchen table. Haskell plops down across from her. They sit in darkness.
“What was all that about?”
“I don’t know. I better look after these bites.” Except she can’t. Someone has carted off the refrigerator where she kept the baking soda. The stove is gone too. She gets a flashlight and a couple of aspirin from her purse, mashes them in a bottle cap, adds bottled water, and smears this paste on her arm and neck. The pain eases.
“I’d like to take a look around.” He gingerly steps into the living room, outlined by scorched timbers.
Clara sits alone at the kitchen table with her flashlight on. She just saw six wasps perched on the remaining kitchen counter. Not twelve, but six. And all purple.
At her squeal of delight, they assume the air and land on her head. The first one seeks her bare scalp where a cowlick creates a whorl. She fears the wasp will sting her, but it just tickles. The writhing insects form a little waspian tower, swaying back and forth on her head. Amazed, she watches them with the flashlight and a mirror from her purse.
“Look!” Delighted, she points to her head as Haskell finishes his inspection. He steps closer in surprise. The wasps are flipping end over end in a group cartwheel. They both see this. Her face is alight. “They’re doing a Slinky number, Haskell. Remember that old children’s toy? You’d flip a Slinky over at the top of the stairs and it would come flipping down the stairs on its own.” She does an impromptu dance step and puts her arms out to dance with him. “They’re performing for us, Haskell. They’re saying hello.”
He recoils. He does not want to dance with a woman who has wasps on her head.
This situation is stranger than anything he could have anticipated. “These aren’t normal wasps, Clara. Where did they come from?”
“Eugene. Sixteen of them. They nested in my eaves. But they’ve changed. In Eugene they were normal. Only one was purple. Now they’re all purple, and it looks like we’re down to six.”
“Purple! They aren’t purple. They’re just wasps—dark, with stripes.”
“Maybe you’re color blind. Maybe you’ll see them in daylight. They’re purple.”
“I’m not going to argue about what color they are, Clara. None of this makes any sense. Cartwheeling wasps that may or may not be purple? What’s going on here?” He flops heavily onto a chair, sending up a plume of dust that makes him cough. He jumps up and swats off his behind.
Still dancing around the kitchen with the wasps on her head, she ignores him. “I knew they’d come back. This is their home.”
He frowns. Does she really think wasps are loyal? On par with dogs maybe? To him, it’s as natural as day that the creatures flew away from the fire. It is unnatural these few have returned. And this is their home? Now? What’s she talking about?
He wonders if she’s actually batty. Maybe the woman he’s given his heart to has slid down the chute of no return. Maybe she’s like one of those snake handlers they have in the South who handle poisonous snakes and don’t get bitten. He considers this. But those snake handlers get in a trance and say the snakes get them closer to the Holy Spirit. Clara’s not in any trance. She’s never talked about any Holy Spirit. She’s just dancing, looking happy to have her pets back. And the wasps, doing cartwheels there on her head, look happy too.
Fearful now for his own sanity, he squelches any thoughts of snake handlers. He draws a line on the dusty table. Maybe he should have paid closer attention to her strange behavior the past few weeks—jiggling her canvas bag when nothing was in it (and what was that shadowy thing?), not telling him why holes were cut in the bag, making loud comments to an empty room, scrunching to one side of the lawn chair when she was the only one in it.
They were so close in Lamoille Canyon. He was almost ready to sign on the dotted line. He never dreamed anything like this would come between them. Grimacing, he watches her dance with the wasps. Maybe he’ll be next, do still weirder things—attract not-yet-imagined creatures to his bidding. Maybe this is a preview of the precipitous decline that awaits us all. Maybe Stella put something in that champagne they had tonight. He shakes his head as if to drive out a nest of insects lurking in his own cranium.
“Shall we retire to the Winnebago? I’m bushed,” he says.
“What?” she says, still prancing around the kitchen.
“I don’t want to sleep with a bunch of wasps, Clara, if that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t want them in my vehicle.” He speaks like a man who’s had his fill of nonsense. His voice is low, definite.
Steadily she looks at him. “I never said you had to.”
Never show weakness. She’d learned that lesson well—her mother always cowered right before her father started to beat on her. And then he’d beat her more. So when he came after Clara in the barn, her steely child’s glance and the powerful wasps that churned the air around her drove her father away. She gives that same hard glance to Haskell, who only looks away.
She says, “They’re not going to sting us. They know you’re with me.” The wasps have stopped gyrating and crawl willy-nilly over her hair. She looks deep in thought. “What would you do if they stung you or landed on you? Would you try to kill them?”
He’s momentarily flustered. “Well, for God’s sake, I haven’t had time to think of what I’d do. Come on, Clara, this is silly.” He’s angry now. “Do you really need to have these insects around? Does being with you mean I have to live with these creatures?” He’s pacing around the kitchen. “Let’s be reasonable here. We’ve got a chance at a new life together. You know we do. And I thought we both wanted a fairly peaceful life. I don’t want to live with wasps. I mean not really. Not like this.” He points to her hair, still full of insects. He rolls his eyes. “What next? Are you going to replace the ones you lost? Take them to New York?”
Something deep flares in her. He has no way of knowing the wasps are wordless sentries that have protected her very life and sanity over the years. His sensible comments make her crazy. His own life and sanity have probably never been threatened. She covers her eyes to block the image that rises despite her furious policing—her daughter’s lithe form cooling on the street.
A sudden fear makes her stomach clutch. Of course! Lenore is tearing down her Brain Rooms! That’s why things are getting so bad. The purple wasp became a hybrid freak so she could expose everything about Clara’s past. Clara has allowed a stick of dynamite into her life.
She lashes out. “That’s just fine then. I know the wasps won’t hurt you. I thought you trusted me. Living things can sense the needs of other living things. Trees know when nearby trees are sick. They’ve done studies. But you only see what’s right in front of you—physical things—and you think that’s all there is. Don’t you know that the things you can’t see—atoms, quarks, trust, love—are the backbone of everything?”
Deeply tired, she gestures broad
ly. “We have too many differences, Haskell.” She gropes for an example. “You have granite countertops in your RV, for God’s sake. How sensible is that? My countertop”—she fist-thumps the tired linoleum counter on the one remaining wall—“is—was—just something to put food on.” She pauses. “I lay my cards with simple things and the invisible world, Haskell. Always have, always will. And yes, I might be talking nonsense. But I don’t think so.”
Head throbbing, she rubs her eyes in despair, a gesture he mistakes for tears. He moves toward her, and she backs away. She can’t tolerate any paternal approach just now. Something’s ready to snap in her, and she’s not sure what or why. Finally she speaks in a dull, sober voice. “I’ve been thinking about this, Haskell. We’ve been going way too fast. All these changes for me after thirty years? I just can’t take it. We’ve got to slow things down. It scares me, if you want to know the truth.” He stares at her, not comprehending. After a moment, she looks at him. “I really need some time alone. I think it’s best that I go to New York by myself.”
He’s dumbstruck. “You can’t mean that, Clara. Of course you’re going to New York with me. We’re both completely exhausted right now. We’re overtired from the drive and the wedding. This has been quite a day! Let’s talk in the morning when our heads are clear. We need peace and happiness, not all this wrangling.”
Braced against the counter, she speaks quietly. “Peace and happiness are the last things I’ve been able to get since half my family died. Peace and happiness aren’t possible anyway in this fallen world except in minutes here and there. And if peace and happiness means everything can be settled with a good dinner and a round of sex, why I just won’t have it, Haskell. Food and sex, food and sex. Really? Then we die? That’s a Band-Aid approach. Life has too much mystery and suffering for that to be all. Half the time it’s like I’m pinned underwater, struggling to the surface where very few can hear me anyway. So I play a simple woman because it makes things easier. I get through my days that way. Or did,” she mutters, looking down.
Hearing these revealing words, Lenore leaps ecstatically from behind the dried bean canister to straddle Clara’s neck and accidentally jabs her boot heels into Clara’s breasts. This really hurts. She hurls the creature to the floor. Blood spurts from a gash on Lenore’s forehead. She has blood like the rest of us! The creature jumps down from the flatbed and disappears into the night.
For his part, Haskell feels a disturbance in the air and steps backward, wondering how a sudden breeze came up on a calm night. Collecting himself, his voice is quiet.
“It’s not about having fancy or simple things. We’re arguing about whether I could have wasps in my house, and the answer is no. For Christ’s sake, Clara, objects don’t define who I am. You don’t understand that, do you?” He takes a step toward her. “I think you’re upset about something else, not just the wasps. I’ve thought that for a long time. And it’s making you overreact to other things.” He searches her eyes for confirmation. She backs away.
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
She keeps backing.
“I’m right.” He jumps off the flatbed and holds out his hand. “Come on, let’s go to the RV. I’ll make your favorite omelet in the morning, and we’ll talk.”
A long pause before she says, “Give me a while.”
“Sure thing.” He walks over to the RV, parked in the vacant lot, and goes inside.
It’s not just the wasps. Shining her flashlight, alone in her skeletal house, she opens the dishtowel drawer where the broken porcelain ballerina lies covered in dishtowels. The dancer’s blank eyes stare back at her. Quietly, she closes the drawer. She doesn’t want the statue anymore. It doesn’t help.
Gingerly she walks through the shattered house, the walls wispy or gone, dust everywhere, the spaces that used to be rooms now littered with shreds of unidentifiable things that were once a baggy couch, a bare oak rocker, a nicked coffee table, shabby bookcases, a twelve-inch TV, a Singer sewing machine, a broken window, a narrow bed, a double bed and the quilt she made for it, a dresser swamped with family pictures, Lillian’s painting facing her when she would lie in bed. Passing the bathroom, she remembers the faint smell of urine from the camp toilet that marked her last days here.
The house is broken, but she isn’t. She thought she needed refuge with Haskell, but now she’s not so sure. She doesn’t need a dad, but she does need a place to sleep tonight. Quietly she lets herself into his RV.
Lenore is still outside, curled under the RV. Haskell is already asleep in the bedroom. She hears his deep breathing. Wide awake, she takes off her shoes and lies down on the couch. This first real fight came on like a sudden summer thunderstorm. The beautiful day, the unexpected wedding, her words with Frank, seeing everyone—she’d felt a sense of closure. Peace and happiness were hers for a few hours. Until Lenore barged in, until the huge bee stung her, until this fight with Haskell erupted like a delayed reckoning of some kind. Is this thing with Haskell going to last?
It’s the wasps, she decides. She can’t imagine life without them. But then no one will want to live with her. It’s as simple as that. Does she care? She lies back down, trying to turn her thoughts off.
She’s almost dozing off when the bright colors in Lillian’s painting surge from her memory like an oncoming train. One day, when they were eighteen and free, she and Lillian simply took the Greyhound from Fargo to Eugene and never came back. It was so easy. Carsick and giggly, they seemed to fly across the country, avoiding beady-eyed men who stared and smiled at them while the girls stuffed packets of saltines into their purses at meal stops in case they had to run from those creeps and hide somewhere.
It was raining hard in Eugene when they got there. Loretta was waiting in her pickup and took them to her house and fed them fried chicken and applesauce, and the girls thought they were in heaven. Their parents never looked for them. Not a word. Clara cried a few times in private. Then she decided it was all right. And this is her life now.
Her watch says it’s one thirty. Something is making her unbalanced these days. A devouring white light laps at her heels—when Lenore tries her beyond reason, as she did at the wedding, and just now, jumping on Clara’s shoulders and piercing her breasts. She holds her temples. These headaches. And this chest pain that comes and goes, confusing her. She should check with a doctor. Why aren’t those stings on her forehead healing? She turns onto her stomach and sneezes into the leather couch.
She’s buffaloed. She can’t deal with Haskell and the wasps at the same time. The issues are too big to be settled quickly. She can only work through one thing at a time. It’s always been like that for her. The truth is, she doesn’t want Haskell’s spicy omelet in the morning—or his excellent coffee. She wants to choose her own food.
She knows the actual family photos are gone. So are the real lilacs. But the celluloid lilacs that stippled the lousy paint jobs still call her in a siren song. As do the family photos. She must see the house as it once was before she can move ahead. Now that her son is married, nothing for now interests her more than these photos. The only way forward is to feel her own thoughts alone, be in her own airspace alone, go to New York alone. With that realization, she finally sleeps.
3 days left.
chapter 26
She wakes early. Haskell is still asleep. The sky is silver gray, the time of day she loves, when the new day has barely arrived and everything seems full of promise. She packs a small bag, aware of leaving behind many things in Haskell’s RV. She will call Frank later. He has a honeymoon to attend to.
She leaves a note for Haskell, creeps as quietly as she can out the door, stows a disgruntled Lenore in her bag, and walks over to Desert Dan’s. In the restaurant, she orders ham and eggs with orange juice and coffee, eats heartily. Lenore, sullen after her uncomfortable night outside, has a nasty bruise on her forehead. She picks at her toast, mopes on her side of the booth, doesn’t talk. That’s fine. Clara doesn’t want to talk to her either. But L
enore’s head is swollen. Clara’s eyes unexpectedly fill with tears.
The Greyhound pulls in at 6:30 sharp. She buys a ticket and sets her checked bag on the cement with the others for loading into the belly of the bus. She finds an aisle seat in the middle section, settles in, and looks around. The bus is more crowded than she’d have predicted for the barrens of Nevada.
Her thoughts circle back to Haskell. He’s right here. He listens and enjoys and learns new things—nature photography, for instance. He likes thunderstorms and meteor showers and is an inventive lover, though something still holds her back. Way back. He’s patient, worldly, a great cook. She’s got his cell phone number.
Her misery grows as the bus gets more crowded. She should get off right now. What’s she doing here? She knows this man’s sorrow, his sensuality, his possible sterility, his desire to make beauty, his fierce love for his family. He flings himself into the glorious mess of life. All this strikes her as very sexy, very human.
Maybe that’s what’s holding her back. He’s a lover. Lovers are at home in the world. She’s not. She’s a seeker more than a lover. Seekers search more than they find. She has the habit of holding back, of ruling out rather than ruling in. To a fault.
Can they fit? Does she want to? Need to?
Give it a break, she tells herself, already exhausted. Lenore has fallen asleep in her bag. Carefully she sets the bag under the seat in front of her.
The bus is full. Single mothers with straggly hair and multiple kids, old tired-looking cowboys, young people barely past high school with pasty faces and pierced noses. Seeing the desert go by, she’s vaguely carsick as the bus lumbers north to Twin Falls. A cranky baby cries across the aisle. The mother gets no help from her angry-looking husband, who just sits with his arms folded across his chest. The baby is maybe six months old. The mother jostles the baby, who still fusses. The bus is already warm. The driver apologizes for the faulty air conditioning; it will get fixed in Twin Falls. The baby is dressed too warmly in a long-sleeved terry sleeper. Droplets of sweat line its forehead. The mother offers her forefinger for the baby to suck. Did she not bring water? Clara is horrified. The baby’s huge brown eyes startle wide, no doubt from the taste of the salty finger.
