Bee Season (11 page)

They study for five hours each weekday and seven hours on weekends. It is not about rote memorization. Saul wants Elly to understand these words: their origins, their roots, their prefixes and suffixes. He presents the dictionary as a book worthy of commentary and discussion, a Torah of language.

When Eliza studies, she travels through space and time. In
COUSCOUS
, she can sense desert and sand-smoothed stone. In
CYPRESS
, she tastes salt and wind. She visits Africa, Greece, and France. Each word has a story: a Viking birth, a journey across the sea, the exchange from mouth to mouth, from border to border, until
æpli
is
apfel
is
appel
is
APPLE
, crisp and sweet on Eliza’s tongue. When it is night and their studying complete, these are the words she rides into sleep. The voice of the dictionary is the voice of her dreams.

Miriam does not remember this, the first time she steals. She is exactly eight years and six months old. She has been brought to Berman Toys by Miss Vanderhooven to choose her half-birthday present. The Dutch nanny precedes a Swiss and follows a French, part of Melvin and Ruth’s attempts to add an international flavor (No Germans need apply, so what if Hitler is dead?) to Miriam’s continuing education. Miriam walks down the aisles as if in a trance, the sight of untouched toys filling her with profound well-being. If she could, she would spend every moment surrounded by the brand new. She loves to run her fingers down the surface of an unopened game, stroke the cellophane skin of a prepackaged baby doll. She loves the smell of freshly minted rubber and plastic, the factory cleanliness, the machine-bred sterility. When she chooses a three-story dollhouse with electric lights and an enclosed front porch it is not to pretend at future housewifery, but to arrange and rearrange the Happy Porter Family and their to-scale furniture into varying patterns of orderliness until she arrives at Perfectimundo.

Since the propitious hopscotch game and the revelation of the kaleidoscope, Perfectimundo has been Miriam’s favorite word, state, and pastime. The toy store, in its factory-fresh pristinity, is Perfectimundo. Miriam’s room — when she has aligned every last building block, squared every spine of every book, and evenly spaced every garment in her closet — is Perfectimundo. The front lawn covered in untrampled snow is Perfectimundo. Miriam cannot go to sleep until she is Perfectimundo, her body centered on the mattress, her head centered on the pillow, her sheets centered on the bed. Sometimes it takes Miriam a very long time to determine this to be the case.

Miss Vanderhooven is having the dollhouse rung up at the front desk when Miriam wanders into an aisle lined with buckets of nickel and dime toys: jacks and plastic soldiers, yo-yos and baby doll brushes. Miriam is drawn to a bin of Spalding rubber balls, bubblegum pink and large as her palm. One in particular beckons to her, is particularly Perfectimundo, lying as it is atop the others, illuminated by the overhead lights. Suddenly the truth becomes clear, as irrefutable as arithmetic: the ball is a part of her from which she was senselessly separated. Luck and instinct have combined to bring her to this aisle on just the day when her missing piece could make itself known.

She easily has enough change in her pocket to purchase the ball. If she wanted to, she could keep her pennies and give it to Miss Vanderhooven to buy and bag with the dollhouse. But the idea of having to pay for something already hers is much too silly to consider. Miriam’s hand reaching out and slipping the ball into her pocket is as much a given as her beating heart. The ball tingles against her palm; she is filled with the same warmth as the moment of that first, perfectly thrown stone. And then, as quickly and intensely as the moment is born, it ends. When the ball enters her pocket, it exits her thoughts.

Later, when Miriam finds the ball in her pocket, she is genuinely surprised. Then she remembers. Even as Mr. Berman wished them a nice day, the ball was hiding in her dress. No one had said a thing. The memory confirms that the ball is important, a manifested sign of her special place in the world. Miriam puts the ball in a shoebox she lines with shelf paper. She places the box on the floor beneath her bed exactly below where her head rests on her pillow. Sometimes in dreams Miriam sees the ball grown large as a house, rolling over green hills or through fields of rustling wheat. Sometimes the ball takes the place of the sun, shining on her with a special pink light. Sometimes the ball intones her name,
Miriam Grossman,
over and over with a voice like a bell that shakes the world and tickles her insides.

Every night before bedtime, Miriam checks the box to assure herself that the ball is still there. After confirming this, she whispers her favorite P-word five times. From across the room, to someone like Miss Vanderhooven who entertains thoughts of introducing the lonely girl to Jesus’ love (a notion that will get her fired when she presents Miriam with a rosary on her actual birthday), this looks like prayer.

If Aaron wants to pinpoint the moment things began to change he’s got to look back, before the Sunday Saul brought newspapers to the breakfast table, to the day he gave Eliza a ride to the district bee. That is when suspicion first seeded itself, when he found himself secretly scrutinizing his sister at stoplights. He has never had reason to view her as a rival. Even the clamping of her baby fingers between his six-year-old jaws at the beginning of their acquaintance was more experiment than confrontation, an early attempt to understand what little sisters are made of. Though he can remember shared games in the den and imaginary journeys in the backyard, the six years since then have expanded significantly, making their mutual past feel twice as distant. From within his father’s study, Eliza has been as much a nonentity as the rest of the world on the other side of the door.

Lately, that has begun to change. Since Eliza came home with the area trophy, Aaron has sensed her presence even from within the sanctuary of the study’s walls. This has been less due to him than to Saul, who has started playing softer than usual to make sure their guitar music doesn’t disturb Elly’s studying. Sometimes Saul interrupts a song to ask Aaron how he thinks a certain word is spelled, refraining from playing again until he has consulted a dictionary.

So that when the piles of paper start to diminish in one corner, when a table and chairs appear where no table and chairs have been before, Aaron can’t help but feel a creeping sense of doom. He had hoped he was overreacting, but since Monday there has been no guitar. For days, Aaron has been arriving at Saul’s study at the appointed hour, guitar case in hand, but the door has been closed. If Aaron stays by the door long enough, he can hear them studying. Sometimes he stands there a long time.

On Thursday, Aaron decides he’s just going to knock. Saul can get caught up in things, he can forget the time, for example the alarm clock every day to cue him to start dinner. His father just needs to be reminded. It’s silly, really, the way Aaron has blown this out of proportion. It’s his turn, that’s all. Elly can understand that. Aaron practices what he’s going to say.

“I just thought I’d remind you …”
No. It’s like I’m blaming him.
“Hey, did you want to practice guitar today?”
Yeah.
Grabbing the guitar case and heading downstairs feels a lot like walking to the park knowing he’ll be the eleventh man at the basketball game.

The door is the same as it ever was. For a few seconds Aaron just stands outside it, the sweat from his palm making the case handle slippery. He can hear Dad and Elly inside. He sets the guitar down and wipes his hand on his shirt. His smaller, younger self is yelling at him not to do it, not to knock unless it’s an emergency ’cause that’s what
Abba
says.
Abba,
Aaron’s first Hebrew word,
Ima
never bringing a smile to Miriam’s face the way
Abba
brought a smile to Saul’s. Aaron swallows the saliva that’s been flooding his mouth, brings his hand to the door.

It’s an old rule, the no knocking rule. It was for when he was a kid and didn’t know any better. This is not a big deal. It’s about time he knocked on this door, it has been sixteen years already. Aaron can hear Saul’s voice on the other side. Aaron knocks. The voice stops. The sound of a chair scraping and quick steps. Saul yanks the door open.

“What’s wrong? What’s happened?” Saul’s face is flushed, his eyes wide with concern and Aaron knows that he has made a mistake.

“Uh,
Abba
?”
That sounds stupid.
“Dad. I was just wondering …” Aaron’s voice trails off. He holds up the guitar case.

Saul is in emergency mode. He looks for blood or a broken bone, sniffs the air for signs of smoke. The flush fades, his eyes grow puzzled. “You’re okay?”

Aaron nods vigorously, trying to convince himself. “Oh, yeah. I’m fine. I just, you know. We haven’t played in a while.” Aaron’s voice is high, as though puberty never happened. The sense of entitlement that filled him upstairs in his room now trickles out in a thin, feeble stream.

Saul is confused. “Aaron, you know about the door. Elly and I — ” He opens the door wider.

Eliza watches her brother come into view. Unlike Saul, she has been fully aware of the hour. On the first day, when it was time for guitar practice, she had gotten out of her chair, certain that their study session was over. Saul asked her what she was doing. Eliza heard steps outside the door, knew Aaron was waiting on the other side. “Just stretching,” she had replied, guilt and glee competing for space in her heart. It wasn’t as though Aaron couldn’t practice by himself, she told herself, feeling like a thief.

So that now, when Aaron looks at her, it is very difficult for Eliza to look back.

“Aaron, you know how little time I have to prepare Elly for the nationals. This is a fantastic opportunity for her. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you respect this door, do you?”

Aaron shakes his head. All the extra height from his growth spurt disappears. He is the size of a shoe.

Miriam enters stores two ways. When shopping, she leads with her upper body, all purpose and direction. She doesn’t linger long enough to attract perfume spritzing. She looks straight ahead, as if her goal is perpetually in sight. She’s the kind of shopper salespeople call a homing pigeon, from whom the only commission will be from whatever it is she came for, generally an item so inconsequential that they might as well leave her for the cashier.

All that changes when Miriam is a thief. She luxuriates in the store’s atmosphere, lingering over a blue silk scarf, admiring a garnet stickpin. She stands still as prayer as she is anointed by the day’s sample fragrance, drawing the floral scent in deep, reverential breaths. When a thief, Miriam is often mistaken for the ideal customer. Salespeople fight among themselves for the chance to ply her with a flattering smile and a honeyed “Can I help you?” Miriam is patient, tiring their enthusiasm by feigning slight interest in everything, committing to nothing. Eventually the salespeople demote her to the rank of window shopper, one among a legion of bored suburban housewives who comb the aisles daily, fantasizing about what will be theirs once their husbands start making more money.

Miriam sometimes spends hours combing through floor after floor, intent as a pig sniffing truffle. She’s seeking what she is meant to find, the singular item waiting for her swift hand. She and this object are intimately joined, its discovery a matter of attuning herself to her body, sensing the size and shape of the internal gap meant to be filled. Miriam treasures this inevitable moment of communion. Nothing is as certain as the instant the object reveals itself. She can practically feel the click as the internal dislocation is corrected.

Miriam has learned not to anticipate what she is meant to find. She once browsed a store for hours to discover that her intended was a set of ceramic corn cob holders. She has reclaimed a faux eelskin belt, a pair of plastic baby shoes, and a silk shirt, size 18. The very unpredictability of her quarry, its existence outside the confines of aesthetic and monetary value, confirms the nobility of her search. She is no petty thief. She is compelled by a force far superior to material gain.

The incident at the study door goes so utterly unremarked upon that if it weren’t for the guilt-ridden look Eliza gives Aaron every dinner, it would almost be possible for Aaron to believe nothing happened. Aaron’s first instinct is to work toward this erasure, striving toward a future that more closely resembles his past. But as Aaron puts increasing distance between himself and his fateful knock, he realizes something that makes this impossible. He no longer enjoys the guitar.

When Aaron first sits down to play post-study door, he has no reason to think it will be any different. He has often practiced for hours alone, past the endurable blister phase to the unendurable blister-bursting phase in an attempt to get a song right. In the past, he has loved getting lost in the music, going beyond time and the pain in his fingers to a world that is the sound of his guitar. But now, with the sound of Elly and his father rising through the air vents to his room, he can’t keep his mind on the music. He finds himself thinking about the hangnail on his pinky, about the ambiguous color of his bedroom carpet. As Aaron’s fingers struggle through a song, Aaron realizes that he hates bar chords, has never been able to do them properly. His father’s assurance that inflexible fingers pose no impediment to playing is, if not an outright lie, the idealism of a man who has never dealt with inflexible fingers himself. Saul’s fingers are ridiculously long and agile. They are fingers that Aaron realized Eliza inherited when he recently saw her fiddling with her dinner fork in an attempt to avoid looking at him. Aaron puts down the guitar. He tells himself he’ll play later when he’s in the mood. He never seems to be in the mood.

Approaching the synagogue doors the following Friday, Saul squeezes Aaron’s shoulder as if nothing is different. Aaron wonders if Saul is ignoring the fact that he hasn’t been playing or if his father actually hasn’t noticed that the house has been guitar-free for an entire week. Neither option appeals.