The Death of Bees: A Novel

by Lisa O'Donnell

  “Who the fuck cares what that queer has on the table,” he says. “I’m your grandfather. You can’t keep staying at his place, you know. He’s not family.”

  There were a lot of orders in his assertions, a lot of commands and I didn’t rightly appreciate them, especially when my phone started to ring and he grabbed it like he owned it.

  “Gimme that!” I yelled.

  “It’s Lennie,” he says, looking at the screen and as calm as you like.

  Then he hands the phone back like he hadn’t done anything nuts and goes, “Why don’t you invite him along?” and a lot more pleasantly than when he was going mental over me going to Lennie’s for my tea.

  “Naw,” I say because I can’t deal with the oppressive weather and Gramps’s uncanny ability to possess the emotions of a drill sergeant while it pisses from the heavens.

  He then says, “Fine. Do what you want. I’m done,” and walks away. Doesn’t run. Marches. Still no hands in the pockets. Couldn’t believe it. Don’t normal people run in the rain? Even abnormal people, most of them anyway, the only people I can think of who walk in the rain are tree huggers, bag ladies, and total psychos. I’ve also seen David Bowie in the rain but that was for a music video and it probably wasn’t even real rain, also Kate Winslet in a bonnet but she earns millions of pounds so she can walk where the fuck she likes. For a minute I wondered should I chase the old guy but then I get a text from Kirkland and decide not to. Gramps totally weirded me out anyway and to be honest I’m getting the feeling Kim might be right; there is “something” about Gramps.

  Nelly

  I am at my wit’s end. Marnie told me to hold my horses on an invite from Gramps. He wants to take us for the weekend to his house and Marnie feels we must exercise more caution when we’re around him, if you can imagine such a thing. She’s suddenly of the opinion there’s something strange about a man who buys her lovely clothes and takes us nice places, who buys me Harry Potter figurines and at great expense I might add.

  What’s wrong with everyone? Must we mistrust every single person who crosses our path? Her complaint was pathetic. She said he wore inappropriate rain attire and that he’s “a wee bit creepy.” Lennie was delighted, which shocked me beyond belief. I thought Gramps and Lennie were getting on famously, shows you how two-faced Lennie can actually be. I’m dumbfounded. A man doesn’t have a mac and suddenly he’s a good-for-nothing blighter worthy of suspicion. Damn them both.

  Gramps has obviously been sent to us by a heavenly angel to care for us. Why does Marnie never want the same things I do? I can’t be with him without her, she knows that. I can’t be anywhere without my sister. I shall plead with her. I shall plead with every ounce of my breath.

  Marnie

  Don’t know how she talked me into it, a weekend away from Kirkland, but I didn’t like the idea of her hanging with “Gramps” until I’d gotten to know him a little better. He’d certainly funked me out the other day grabbing at my phone and generally creeping me out in the rain and I really didn’t appreciate the slagging he gave Lennie. Lennie’s been good to us. We love him. He’s been the only family we’ve known in a long time. Don’t get me wrong, I know the same is true of “Gramps,” but he’s going to have to find a way to accept Lennie as an important part of our lives. Thing is, “Gramps” thinks Izzy and Gene are coming back and he’s getting rid of Lennie in some way. But he’s not. It’s Lennie all the way for us and I am pretty sure when he accepts Izzy isn’t returning to her two wee cherubs a nationwide search for his daughter will ensue. He’s already raising his eyebrows at us, as if we know her whereabouts, like Lennie used to. He thinks she’s in the country because Mick found the passports and he secretly thinks we know where. I suppose we do.

  To be honest Izzy’s delinquent parenting has been a fantastic excuse and I know it sounds sick but right now we need all the deflection we can find, it’s not easy hiding decomposing parents in your backyard.

  His house was big and brand-new with an undeniable smell of nicotine. He smoked and pretended not to. The lie made me laugh, but only a little, he was obviously a hypocrite, but he’s also a Christian and it’s kind of the same thing. The windows were shiny with plastic frames, the floorboards blond. There was a skylight in the kitchen and there were three bedrooms, but one was for guests. Our room was unbelievable. It had hand-carved bunk beds with stars sculpted into the headboards. The walls were pink and painted with cartoon characters. There was a ballerina music box. A rocking chair with cushions to match the walls. Shelves full of books for kids, matching bedspreads, and a desk for me. Oak. Polished. Not pink. He clearly intended for us to stay with him one day and not just for the weekend. I wondered if the spare room was for Izzy. I felt bad for him then.

  Later we watched a Bette Davis movie about this woman who’s minging and then gets gorgeous for a boat trip. Then she meets the love of her life and they never get together. It was totally depressing but Nelly loved it. He got us tons of sweets. Pick and mix. Mars bars and Coke. Everything that’s bad for you. Everyone went to bed around eleven after a depressing chat about Izzy’s childhood, a world we know little of. It sort of hurt us to hear of it. The things she’d done as a kid and the places she’d been. He had a ton of memories and I think he thought they were cute, but they just made us sad. He talked about how smart Izzy was and how she was reading at three and counting at four. He told us about Izzy walking into doors because she had issues with her eyes. He told us of the time Izzy called some old man Santa because he was fat and had a beard. He told us about Izzy stealing her mum’s wedding ring because she wanted to be married to her daddy. He said she buried it in the garden and it took them days to find it. There was another story about Izzy kicking the dentist when she came out of an anesthetic and another one when she ran away and was found under her bed with a packet of jelly babies.

  “She hadn’t gone anywhere.” He laughed. “What do you think of that?” he bellowed.

  His stories made me feel uncomfortable because he forgot to mention what Izzy might have been doing while he was getting drunk and smacking her.

  Nelly on the other hand got emotional and started to cry. We had our own stories about Izzy and none of them were cute. We had stories about an addict who neglected her children and hated herself, mostly on account of the man who sat opposite us now, telling us stories about an adorable three-year-old who had confused an old man with Santa and lost a wedding ring in a garden. I wondered if it was fair to tell him who Izzy really was and then I didn’t care. The fantasy had to end. Izzy had been a dreadful mother and wasn’t coming back and he deserved to know that. After I was done with my version of Izzy and unleashed what was a demonic truth I lift my eyes to an old man with his head in his hands, but not crying or anything, just silent and mulling it all over. I told him as much as I could remember and it still wasn’t enough for me. I could have spent a lifetime telling him what it was like to live with Izzy and Gene, but he wouldn’t let me.

  “Enough,” he begged and rubbed his face in anguish.

  “She’s not coming back,” I told him. “Her and Gene have Mick’s money. They can’t come back.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” he threatened and it was a threat, like don’t say what I secretly know.

  “Marnie’s right,” whispered Nelly. “Mother told me. She said she loved us, but couldn’t stay. She said we could take care of ourselves because we were good girls, strong girls. She left on a Sunday morning.”

  These words were not lies. I knew that from looking at her. These were the words spoken to Nelly by Izzy when she left for the garden shed and words Nelly had kept secret from me.

  “What does Lennie know?” he asked.

  “Everything, old fellow,” said Nelly.

  “Stop talking like that!” he yelled.

  “She cannae help it!” I raged.

  He bit the corner of a nail and spat it on the floor. His face was red, he hadn’t meant to hurt Nelly, he just hated that Lennie knew something he di
dn’t.

  And that’s how we ended up in bed, with him sulking downstairs and pacing the carpet.

  Later that night I crept out to the landing and watched him sitting alone in the living room. He was in a chair and wringing his hands. He was drinking whiskey and smoking a cigarette. He was being all the things we’d never seen before and it made me nervous. If only he’d stayed sober and been a father to Izzy she might have been a different person, but she wasn’t a different person. She was Izzy and there was nothing to be done about it.

  Nelly

  Marnie took the bottom bunk; it was wider, condemning me to a night of ruddy turmoil on the top.

  He didn’t tell us to go to bed, it was Marnie who suggested we leave him alone to ponder the realities she had bestowed upon him and with no regard for how I might have felt about such confidences. Listening to Marnie’s truths and the ease with which they fell from her lips I knew only panic. How I wish the conversation had stayed with my mother as he knew her. His regrets were no doubt awash with shame, for he knew himself to be responsible for much of the suffering my mother had beaten herself with over the years and I felt jolly well sorry for the chap. He’ll stop looking for her now. I am sure of it. He’ll settle into a life with his grandchildren and together we’ll find happiness. Perhaps Lennie could give up his home on Hazelhurst. We could live together. I’d hate to be without Lennie. He means the world to me. I wonder if I should mention it to Gramps? He does have three bedrooms after all.

  Marnie

  I was thirsty and so I went to the kitchen for a glass of water. On the way back I saw the light had been left on in the third bedroom and I went in to turn it off, a habit born of half-full electricity cards.

  I noticed the drawer where the lamp sat hadn’t been closed properly and I could see pictures and some private papers, someone had been looking at them and forgot to close the drawer right. I couldn’t resist. It seemed Robert T. Macdonald had an entire life in there and wasn’t that life half mine? I zipped through them, checking the door every five seconds. I didn’t want to be caught snooping, though I was sure he was probably sound asleep.

  I was stunned. There were pictures of Izzy as a child, loads of them. She’d been a lovely little girl and it made me sadder than Nelly’s admission earlier in the evening. There was a picture of his wedding to my grandmother. How I wished for that dress and imagined it in a box in a dusty old attic carefully wrapped in tissue for my wedding day, but like everything else in our lives it had been lost in the hurricane that was our past, a past I’d never know, a past only hinted at in monochrome and nicotine-stained pictures. Mostly the pictures were of people I didn’t recognize with random scribbling on the back. Janet 1963. Mhari and Kip—Oban. Mum, Dad, and Wee Willie. A picture of a soldier. Another wedding picture.

  And then me.

  In color.

  With Izzy.

  With Nelly.

  The river rock wall. The climbing frame and there Nelly was pointing at something in the background.

  Suddenly a hand placed itself on my shoulder. I dropped every picture I was holding except the Kodak.

  “Love that picture,” he said.

  He looked hard.

  “What is this?” I ask and throw the snap at him.

  “You don’t remember?”

  I shook my head.

  “She was running from your dad, on drugs, drinking. Listen to me, Marnie.” He grabbed for my hand. I pulled it away. He looked angry.

  “You turned us away?” I whispered.

  He nodded.

  “I was embarrassed,” he says. “Ashamed. I was living in a wee town. I had a reputation; I was trying to start again. She was a reminder of things I just wasn’t ready to confront so I gave her a little bit of money and she left. Then I moved and …”

  “No forwarding address I suppose.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So what are you looking for now? You found Izzy already and then you let her go. You let us all go. Do you have any idea what we’ve been through? How you might have been able to help us? You abandoned her twice, how could you do that?”

  He looked anxious, started biting his nails again.

  “What do you want from us?” I asked.

  “To make amends.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s too late for that.”

  I never even noticed her, but then that’s how Nelly is. Quiet on her feet. Floating.

  “Let me see,” she demanded.

  I hand her the picture. Her face hardens.

  “What else is in there?” she asks.

  “Just pictures,” he said.

  “Let me see,” she says.

  He’s frozen. Can’t move. Knows exactly what she’ll find and he’s afraid.

  She rushes to the drawer, pulls out picture after picture and more than I had a chance to look at with him sneaking up on me. She finds photographs of a woman laughing and in a wedding dress.

  “Who are these people?” she asks.

  “That was my wife Brenda,” he whispered. “We’re broken up now. She wanted to open a bar and I’m not much of a drinker on account of God.”

  “And so you ran away,” she mocked.

  “I left.”

  “You’re a bugger,” she whispered. “A rotter, a cad, a good-for-nothing,” she cried.

  “Don’t say that,” he begged.

  “I’ll say what I jolly well please. Come, Marnie. We’re leaving.” Nelly wept.

  “Not tonight. You can leave in the morning.”

  “I want to leave now,” she said.

  “And I said in the morning!” he sniped.

  “Marnie. We have bags to pack.” And she wasn’t joking. She really packed those bags, including mine. I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t sleep a wink and neither did she and as soon as the sun rose we were out the door. He offered us a lift but we refused.

  “I never want to set eyes on you again,” she told him and marched herself to the train station. I followed suit.

  Nelly

  Jolly early it was, around seven in the morning, but wasn’t he glad to see us. He looked tired, like he hadn’t really been asleep at all and he took a long time to answer the doorbell. He’d been sleeping on the sofa and with the television on, which is very bad for his back. I shall mention it later. I didn’t expect him to weep on our arrival, but I did expect shortbread and a nice cup of tea.

  “Fetch us a brew, old man,” I said.

  “Coming right up, my love,” and then we hugged. How glad I was to be home. How glad Marnie was.

  Marnie

  When I saw Gene walk out the door he had his back to me. Izzy was on the sofa crying and drinking. I didn’t ask why. I had things to do and I didn’t care. She was always crying and drinking. Gene had his music strapped to his ears. He was wearing aftershave, it smelled like gin. He finished off a can of beer and left it next to the telephone, then he grabbed a brown paper bag of vodka to drink on the road. He opened the door and left, and that was that. I didn’t even say good-bye, neither did he. No reason. We just never said it in our house. People just left, except Nelly, she’s the kind to say good-bye, would say it to her shadow. “Farewell,” she’d have said or “Toodle-oo.” Always made us laugh. He wouldn’t even have heard her.

  Feels like he’s just disappeared and not dead at all although I did see him dead, wrapped in a stained blanket, being pushed into a shallow grave, his face disappearing as I threw gravel upon his eyes still open and still staring. Except they weren’t, Izzy had closed them, this is just how I remember it.

  I wish I had said good-bye to him. I wish I’d said good-bye to Kirkland, but I didn’t get a chance. He let her scream at me and he let her blame me.

  “How dare you come to my home?”

  “I’ve come to see Kirkland, what’s the matter?” I ask.

  “Drugs is the matter. He’s up to his nipples in temazepam, you little bitch.”

  “S’not my fault,” I whimpered.


  “Really? So you didn’t know?”

  I reddened, maybe it was my fault.

  “Kirkland, tell her.”

  He appeared from behind her in a cloud of misery and wouldn’t even look at me.

  “There’s no point, Marnie. Just go.”

  “She can’t tell us what to do.”

  “I think you’ll find I can. You come round here again, madam, and I’m calling the police. Understand?”

  “Fuck you!” I screamed at her.

  “Don’t, Marnie. She’s right. I can’t see you anymore. I need to get better. We can’t be hanging anymore. Just go.”

  She slammed the door, leaving me alone in bad weather and crying on his doorstep. When I looked up at the house I looked for him to appear at the window, to give me some indication everything had been for her benefit and we were going to be okay, but Kirkland was closing the curtains. It was over and he didn’t even care.

  I still have his iPod and his music, his compilations and his stupid love songs, his want songs and fuck songs. I should bin them and hate them, but I can’t. I want to hear them and cry with them, I want to remember with them. It’s too hard to forget.

  Lennie

  A tall dark stranger, just like the fortune-tellers tell you. His name is Vlado and he had a soaking wet teenager in his arms. Marnie had a boyfriend it seems and they’d broken up. She won’t go into any details but was found by Vlado while he was jogging in Kelvinside Park, practically catatonic she was. Nelly’s been tending to her ever since. She’s a regular wee nurse and very interested in everything Vlado knows. He’s a tutor of the sciences and he has been helping Marnie with her studies. Poor Marnie, she seems without hope at the moment, stares into nowhere and no smoking or drinking, and no eating. Very worrying.