A Recipe for Bees (30 page)

“We’ve got a daughter.”

Joe grinned. “Really?”

“I thought you’d be mad.”

“How could I be mad at a thing like that?”

“She’s seventeen and asking questions. Why she doesn’t look like Karl and so on. There was some talk—there was a
lot
of talk—and I guess she heard it. I told her Karl’s her father and I think she believed me, but I thought it was time I told you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I tried phoning once. And I came here. For a while I kept thinking I’d see you on the streets.”

“Chickened out, eh?”

“It would’ve complicated things, wouldn’t it? If I told you? Would you really want to know?”

“What’s her name?”

“Joy.”

“Pretty name. She’s seventeen? It’s been
that
long?” Augusta nodded. He shook his head. “I suppose I should give you some money, shouldn’t I? To help things along. Is she going to college?”

“Then I’d have to explain where the money came from.”

“You could say you found work in Kamloops. Then maybe we could get together sometimes, here.”

“I’ve already gone through the gossip once. I’m not going through it again. You don’t know how it was. Besides that, taking money from you would change everything.”

“You going to tell her about me?”

“You want me to?”

“I don’t know how I’d explain some kid turning up on my doorstep.”

“That’s just it, isn’t it?”

“And wouldn’t the boy have a hard time with it?”

“I guess. I think Karl likely heard along the way. His father did. But I don’t want to dredge it all up again.”

They sat in silence for a long time. Then Joe said, “Best to let it lie, then.”

“Yes.”

“You got a picture of her?”

“Yes, of course. Here. That’s this year’s school picture.”

“Ah, look at her.”

“I should have brought more photos. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“What is she like? Does she have hobbies? Is she good at school?”

“She does pretty well at everything. No A’s this year, but she’s not working hard either. She used to do a lot of
horseback riding, but she seems to have given up on that now. She’s not much for baking or canning or any of that sort of thing, and Karl can’t get her to help out with chores. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what her interests are now. She just seems to hang around with her friends. She has a lot of boyfriends. When she comes home she locks herself in her room and listens to music. She likes to shop for clothes.”

“Sounds like a regular teenaged girl to me.”

“I suppose. We fight a lot.”

“I came looking for you too, you know.”

“Not the days I came.”

“Right after you said we should stop, I came to this café every day. I figured you’d change your mind and turn up. But you didn’t. Then I sort of gave up. I didn’t come after that. But that’s all water under the bridge now, isn’t it?” He took both her hands in his. “So tell me, how’ve you been?” Augusta pulled her hands from him and glanced around the café. “Sorry,” he said.

“We moved back onto my home farm. I’ve got my own honey business. Here, I brought you a jar.” She took the small jar of honeycomb from her purse. “Sales are pretty good. I meet a lot of people that way.”

“Look at that.”

“One day I heard you outside the house. I thought for sure you’d turned up and Karl would catch you there. I ran to find you, I was so sure.”

“What was I saying?”

“You were swearing. Like you’d hurt yourself.”

“Could have been any number of days. I’m always whacking my thumb, bumping into things.”

“I can’t stay. It’s a long drive back and Joy will be home soon. I told Karl I’d be there to make supper.”

“I understand. Can we get together again sometime? Just for coffee?”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Are you happy with the boy now? Has he been good to you?”

Augusta nodded. “I think so. He’s a good man. He tries so hard. And I love him.”

“Yes, of course.”

The waitress came by with more coffee, and after she was gone they both stared in opposite directions for a while. “I should be going,” said Augusta, finally.

“Are you sure we couldn’t have a coffee now and again, as friends?”

“I’m not willing to risk everything I’ve built. Not any more.”

“Then I guess you better be on your way.”

Augusta stood and put on her coat. “Are you staying?”

“Yes. I’ll buy.”

“We’re agreed, then? I won’t tell Joy?” Joe nodded and squeezed her hand before she left the café.

Augusta never did tell Joy about Joe. She thought she’d set her mind at ease, convinced her Karl was her father. As she so rarely spoke her mind openly and she was hardly ever home, Augusta was never quite sure what she was thinking. On graduating Joy took jobs, any job she could find. Babysitting, housekeeping. She even waitressed at Yep Num’s café, though now it was called the Chase Café and was filled with loggers and layabouts. Yep Num had long since
returned to China, and the café had passed through the hands of many owners. Joy was good at waitressing; she seemed to find a smile when tips were at stake. Or perhaps it was only for Augusta that she couldn’t find one. Augusta hated to think so. For all their difficulties, Augusta was proud of her. She was self-reliant in a way Augusta had rarely been. Yet Joy had no specific plans. There had been no talk of college. Boys came and went, picking her up and depositing her. The bit of time Joy spent at home, she spent closeted in her room.

Then Augusta found the piggy bank, a large ceramic pig with a slot in the top that Augusta had bought and painted herself. Joy had seemed to like it. She had kept it on the nightstand by her bed. But one day Augusta found it broken open and lying on the ground around back of the barn. In the midst of the cracked pieces she found a penny. It was a shock, that was all. She’d put so much patience and effort into painting that pig, and here it was all bashed apart. It hurt. She went into the barn and told Karl about it. “Maybe she dropped it,” he said. “By accident.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. It was deliberate.”

Karl’s face closed and he went back to shovelling, and Augusta knew that Joy was there behind her, listening. She turned to her. “I saved nearly two hundred dollars,” Joy said. Augusta said nothing. Stupidly she found her eyes watering. Joy would only think her sulky. “It was
my
piggy bank,” Joy said.

“I don’t see why you had to break it.”

“It had no hole in it, to take the money out.”

“Well, you should have thought of that before you put the money in!”

Augusta knew even then that they weren’t just arguing over the piggy bank, but some other thing, some larger thing. Joy was readying herself to leave, and that was what hurt and angered her mother.

“You control everything I do!” Joy screamed. “I can’t turn around but you’re on me, nagging me! Telling me what to do! You never shut up!”

Augusta closed her eyes. Joy knew she couldn’t bear being thought of as a nag. And here was Karl shovelling behind them, hearing every word. She and Joy listened for a moment to the chunk of the shovel in the packed manure. Then Joy said, “I’m leaving!” and stormed off into the house.

Joy packed her few things and marched off into some boy’s car—a friend, she said, just a friend—for a ride to the bus depot. She’d got herself a waitressing job and an apartment to share with a girl in Kelowna. Not so very far away. But she was already distant getting in that car. Crying, Augusta tried to hug her goodbye, but after giving Karl a kiss on the cheek Joy gave Augusta only a shoulder and pulled away. She was steely-faced, closed as a banker’s door.

It was nearly harvest when Joy left home. The corn stalks were blushing crimson and the base leaves were curling brown. Augusta and Karl herded lambs through the corn to graze on the weeds growing between the rows. That day was so hot that the crows had given up flying and instead paced in the dirt with their mouths open, panting like dogs. Augusta was irritable, mean with the heat. The huge leaves of the corn prickled and scraped against her face and arms;
they made a rasping sound as she moved through them. The whole world was corn, a great golden-green sea of it with tassels like the tips of waves pointing to heaven, and beneath them the fluid roll of deep, shining green betraying the lay of the land. Augusta’s honeybees were everywhere, flying from tassel to tassel collecting pollen. There was nothing beyond but blue sky and shimmering air and the sun on their heads. She was glazed with sweat; Karl was drowning in it. Halfway down the field he took off home for some relief. “I’m getting some water,” he said. But when he came back he carried no jug or even a tin cup for her, only his red handkerchief wound in a knot.
Look at that
, she thought.
He gets himself water and brings me nothing. I could die of thirst and heatstroke for all he cares
.

But when Karl reached her he took her wrist and turned it, exposing the tender underside, and placed his water-soaked handkerchief on her hot skin. It was ice-cold; he’d tucked bits of ice into his handkerchief to cool her. She pulled her hand away. She said, “What are you doing?” It was a shock, cold on skin that hot. But Karl took her other hand anyway, and bathed this wrist in cold. She gritted her teeth and let him, not understanding at first, not letting the cool soak into her. She watched his face slip from red into pink and then into no shade of embarrassment at all. His shyness melted away in all that heat. Wondering at this, Augusta found her own body relaxing, easing under his touch. She closed her eyes and felt the wet cloth on her face, wiping away the meanness, smoothing away the maddening heat. She bowed her neck and let him wash the sweat from her shoulders. With her eyes closed she still saw the sun and the corn before it, rows and rows of corn,
silks streaming. She would become silk, she would bow in the breeze like tassels. She would lie in the sweet earth of the furrows between these rows and sleep.

All at once she realized that he was undoing the buttons of her dress. She opened her eyes to watch him. The redness was back in his face, but so was determination. Where had he found the courage? He looked once full into her face, and then back at his hands at work on the buttons. She wanted to say,
What are you doing? Not here!
And to take his hands and make them stop. But they were sheltered by corn, and there was no one to see but the bees, and the cool air he let flow on her breasts was a blessed relief. She let him slip the dress off her shoulders and down to the furrow at her feet. She let him unhook her brassiere and slide her panties down her thighs. And when this was done she let him bathe her. He wiped the sweat from her cleavage and then lifted each breast and wiped the sweat from beneath it. He wiped the shine off her belly and cooled her thighs and relieved the hot places behind her knees. He bathed her, there in the heat in the cornfield, with his old red handkerchief, and when he was done he left her, just left her standing there, eyes closed and naked, and kept on walking the lambs down the rows. The shock of his leaving was worse than his first cold touch. She wanted more and he knew it. There was a hint of triumph in the set of his shoulders. It was so unlike him, not a thing she could imagine Karl doing. Had he planned this, Augusta now wondered, or was it something he had happened on, like a shell-less egg in a hen’s hidden nest? Had it taken him too by surprise?

T
HAT ONE SUMMER
was all Augusta and Karl needed to practise their dance; the time it took for corn to sprout and turn crimson was long enough for them to get back into rhythm. Long enough that Karl gave Augusta a new engagement ring to replace the one lost to dishwater, a diamond this time, and a gold wedding band to match it. He presented the rings to her wrapped in a series of boxes, one inside another, so at first she thought he was giving her a vacuum cleaner. But then, as soon as they weren’t bumping into each other in the kitchen or grouching at each other over the don’t-matter-much things, old habits put to the side during this second courtship slipped back into their days; not all the old habits, but most.