Of Bees and Mist (24 page)

“Where’s the bird?” she said, overwhelmed by the silence.

“It flew away,” he replied. “The cage door was open when I woke up.”

He did not break into a rash when she hugged him. Asked even if he could have eggs for breakfast.

“Of course,” she said. She bolted the cage door shut and went back to the hallway.

Stepping out of the bathroom, Daniel greeted her brightly. “Up already? It’s just as the doctor said—seven days for the virus to clear.”

Meridia did not trouble to correct him.

That afternoon when Eva came, Noah marched to his room and shut the door in her face. Angry and confused, the grandmother retreated downstairs with her bribe macaroons untouched. Two days later, a neighbor’s dog dug up the remains of a bird from a rain gutter. The neck was wrung; cats or rats had gotten to the wings. Noah displayed no reaction when he heard the news.

M
alin’s wedding took place eight days after Meridia’s twenty-fourth birthday. In keeping with the bride’s favorite color, the groom’s father had a massive orange tent erected in the middle of Cinema Garden. Swaddling the canvas walls were twenty layers of orange silk. Draping the conical ceiling like waterfalls at sunset was sheer orange organza. A constellation of candles floated above the two hundred guests, reflecting beads and shimmering spangles on their merry faces. Each table was equipped with a towering bouquet, crystal flutes, gold-plated china, and silver candlesticks. The bride and groom sat at a table raised in the center of the tent. Surrounding them were seven pairs of groomsmen and bridesmaids. The latter were made up so identically in bright violet dresses it took the guests a while to realize the bride’s sister was not among them.

For months in advance, Eva had been trumpeting her daughter’s good fortune. To the butchers and fruit-sellers she enumerated the virtues of young Jonathan: his wealth and upbringing, education, social position, gentlemanly manner, and devotion to Malin. To the florists and wreath-makers she professed her adoration for his
family, snapping her purse shut before the carnation vendor developed any ideas. “The father listens to reason, never scowls or condescends, and is not in the habit of keeping mistresses at the outskirts of town. The mother is a delightful woman who has no violent bone in her body. I’m sure she has never scolded a cabbage in her life either. Do you know that they are providing the couple with a mansion on Museum Avenue?”

Courtesy of Leah, a tireless seeker and cataloger of news, Meridia got wind of these words two hours after they were uttered. Instead of flaring with anger, she merely laughed and continued playing with Leah’s little boy in the stroller. Three months previously, she and Daniel had purchased the building next door and combined the two units together. After weeks of renovation, the shop had reopened with a splendid new look: ethereal blue walls, taupe carpeting, gilded ceilings, warm mahogany cases. Gracious wingback chairs and carved tables re-created the splendor of an old-fashioned drawing room; it was Meridia’s idea to serve complimentary tea and pastries while customers shopped. Business instantly boomed. The partners, headed by Samuel, were ecstatic. To keep up with the expansion, Daniel hired a clerk and a live-in maid. In light of this success, it was easy to imagine Eva’s envy getting the better of her.

Although Meridia guessed right, she failed to calculate the price imposed on Permony. Unable to wound her daughter-in-law, Eva turned on her youngest with all the force of her acrimony. “It’s a pity you’re nothing like your sister. Just look at you. Plain and silly, with no grace or curves to save your life. How will you find a man half as clever or handsome as Jonathan? Those evil-colored eyes alone are a guarantee you’ll end up grim and unwanted. Let me spare you some embarrassment. How about letting another girl take your place as a bridesmaid? One who will live up to the beautiful dress your sister has selected? Once you’re up there with all those pretty girls, you’ll be sure to feel awful about yourself. Don’t you agree, Malin?”

The bride-to-be, whose cruelty toward her sister had cooled into mild disdain in the ardor of Jonathan’s courtship, shrugged her shoulders.

As became her nature since Patina’s disappearance, Permony took this stoically. If she bled inside, no one could tell. In his chair, Elias pondered his hands and did not object, so deep was his gloom he could not rescue his darling daughter.

On the day of the wedding, a tangle of clouds obstructed the sun and threw shadows over Cinema Garden. Thick fog shrouded the jasmine blossoms, burnished the air with a chilly hue. The guests arrived in their coats, hair rumpled by wind, fearing it would rain before they returned home. Once inside the cavernous tent, however, they were astonished to find sunlight and palm trees. The parents received the guests at the entrance, all proud and beaming except for Elias, who could barely stand to mutter his greetings. The mayor came with his brother the judge, the general with his wife and four colonels. Renowned bankers and merchants took their seats—all good friends of Jonathan’s father. Everyone noticed that neither Gabriel nor his wife was present.

Unbeknown to Meridia, Eva had attempted to have her ejected from the table of honor at the last minute. “Jonathan’s great-aunt is coming after all,” she explained to Malin. “I’m sure your sister-in-law wouldn’t mind sitting away from your brother.” Malin, who had silently grown to respect Meridia over the years, took one look at her mother and said, “You don’t have to sit at my table but she does.” Eva gasped in disbelief, turned to Permony, and berated her soundly for wearing too little rouge.

All the guests agreed on one thing—there was no denying the groom’s love for his bride. Tall and bright-eyed, with lanky brown hair and a patient mouth, he followed her movement with a nearly sacramental devotion, which the bride accepted as if she had expected nothing less. At twenty, Malin had a kind of beauty that commanded worship as much as it resisted intimacy. Her visage was
stunning with its jet-black hair and delicate cheekbones, yet her impenetrable air of self-sufficiency discouraged her admirers from coming closer. A splendid white gown, a sparkling artillery of jewelry—these were no match for her eyes, which remained the boldest and most intimidating thing about her.

But beauty of a different nature rivaled Malin’s. Wearing a plain avocado dress Eva had grudgingly purchased at the last second, Permony managed to attract a fair share of attention. Many were drawn to her polite and disarming manners, took pleasure in speaking to her, and noted how her whole face glowed without the aid of a single diamond. One distinguished-looking foreigner with short yellow hair and a long mustache was visibly smitten. He could not stop glancing at her every few minutes.

“She’s glorious, isn’t she?” said Daniel as they sat down for dinner.

Meridia, watching the same yellow-haired foreigner steal yet another glance at Permony, nodded without asking which sister he was referring to.

“She is,” she said with a surge of affection. “I’ve never seen her look prettier.”

She turned to Noah on her other side and encouraged him with a nudge. “Go sit with your grandfather.”

Noah opened his mouth, closed it, then got to his feet. Meridia watched anxiously as the familiar scene repeated itself. At Noah’s approach, Elias emerged out of his gloom with a roar of laughter. But then just as suddenly his face darkened, the laughter stopped, and back he tumbled into the shadows. Despite Noah’s attempt to cheer him, he kept his eyes bent until the boy returned confused and defeated to his seat. Elias would not look at him, would not regard the scar his hand had branded.

It was Eva who performed the heavy lifting. In order to draw attention away from Elias, she stayed on her feet all night and graced every table with her invincible hostess’s smile. With skill she shrugged off his silence as “simple indigestion,” spread ripples of
laughter wherever she went, and urged the guests to eat and drink but “save plenty of room for the cake.” Her hair was showing white, a curious and maddening condition that no dye was able to camouflage, but her figure was solid and sprightly in a cascade of ruffles. In spite of herself, Meridia felt a tinge of admiration for the woman.

At a sign from the matchmaker, the conical ceiling parted to reveal glimmering stars. Fireworks exploded, then magically simmered into a hundred white doves. The guests erupted in cheers. The sheer organza fluttered like ribbons. As the birds soared into the night, eight matrons led by the groom’s mother leapt to their feet and charged toward the bride. Malin, somehow managing to retain her dignity, succumbed to the blindfold and the relentless tickling. In the midst of the commotion, Meridia noticed the strangest thing. Elias was looking at the distinguished-looking foreigner who had been stealing glances at Permony. His gaze seemed angry and troubled, as if he had placed the man’s face from somewhere but wished he had not.

ELIAS’S CONDITION DETERIORATED OVER
the next several months. First to go were words, slipping like sand from an uncurled hand. Then thoughts eroded, taking with them habits and memories. Every morning, Elias awoke to remember less, and his days regressed to those of an infant. If he was hungry, he fussed. If he wanted something, he drummed his fingers impatiently. Nothing upset him anymore. Everything erased in a stroke of mercy.

The doctors agreed there was nothing they could do. They said a blood vessel had ruptured in his brain, debilitating cell after cell quickly and unstoppably. One thing they could not agree on was numbers. Three, five, seven, nine. Weeks or months or years they could not say. After each prediction, Eva went out to the front lawn and wept among the roses.

Mobility was the last to go. Elias spent his final weeks in bed, eyes strapped to the ceiling in search of some impalpable firmament. He
had shrunk to half his size, his body a mere hanger for loose flesh and folded wrinkles. A child’s perennial smile lingered on his lips. Aided by Permony, Eva tended to him faithfully. Together they bathed him, scooped food into his mouth, wiped spittle from his lips. They held him steady in the bathroom as he went about his business.

In those weeks, Elias let his love for Permony show. As soon as the girl entered the room, he grinned foolishly like a simpleton. He would not sleep until he heard her voice, would not eat until her cool hand touched his cheek. When nightmares harassed him, it was Permony he hollered to see, all the while ignoring his wife, who fretted by his side. Like beads on a necklace Eva strung one snub after another, waiting for the right time to exact her payment from Permony.

It happened one day in the middle of autumn. Since Elias fell ill, it was Eva who had been running the shop on Lotus Blossom Lane. That afternoon, due to a lack of customers, she closed business early and went home. As she was making her way up the stairs, she heard strange, cricketlike noises issuing from her room. She crept toward the door and peered in. Elias was speaking in a peculiar language. Permony, sitting with her back to the door, was kneading her father’s nape with one hand. This display of intimacy sliced through Eva like a rusted blade. She shook with pain and anger, recognizing the sounds burbling from Elias’s lips as an outpouring of love.

“What is he saying?”

Permony jumped and turned to the door. Her lavender eyes were wet with tears.

“You scared me, Mama.”

“What is he saying?” repeated Eva. “Is he telling you what a terrible wife I am? Is he blaming me for his illness?”

Permony shook her head as tears spilled down her cheeks. “Papa’s telling me of beauty. Boundless, heavenly beauty. Immortal forest at dusk…eternal river…enchanted land where souls drift like fireflies…He said the air is pure there because there’s no rage, no shame, no guilt. Oh, isn’t it beautiful, Mama?”

Dread slithered up Eva’s spine. The thought that Elias had envisioned himself passing through death’s door—embraced it even—was more than she could bear. In defiance she threw him an angry look, damning those cricketlike noises he kept spitting at Permony. It hit her then, the pang of his rejection, his complete and absolute denial of her. At the end of his life, a hateful hand had knocked her right out of his consciousness. And she knew full well to whom the hand belonged.

“What is this nonsense?” she said, her voice exploding like a rifle. “Either you’re making it up or he’s gone insane.”

Permony lowered her eyes sadly. “He said you would say that. He said you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

The girl could not have put it worse. All at once Eva stiffened. Vivid and unerring it flashed before her, the scene that had first stoked her fury and preserved it over the years. She was lying on a damp bed with blood pouring from her womb—weak, used, forgotten. She did not want this one, she had told him; she was too old and tired, but he had insisted. “It will be all right,” he had said. “I’ll stand by you.” But he did not even look at her as she lay bleeding on that bed, absorbed as he was in the pale ugly thing he held in his arms. “This one is precious,” he said, laughing. “This one will be a comfort in my old age.” She knew he meant every word, because he had said nothing when he first held the other two. At the time, she had endured the humiliation by sobbing into her pillow. But now, eighteen years after the pale ugly thing stole her place in his affection, she would expose her for who she was.

“You’ve always been your father’s whore,” said Eva. “I’ve seen the way you look at him. Touch him like a lover. You think you can fool everyone with your innocent face and little-girl manners, but you can’t fool me! I’ve known for years there’s something going on between you two. Why do you think Malin kept away from you all these years? She guessed it, too, but wouldn’t say a word. Because even God has no forgiveness for what you’ve done.”

Permony stood still as if a thunderbolt had struck her.

“How could you say that, Mama?” She was gasping now, shaking uncontrollably. “How could you think such things of your own husband, your own daughter?”

She began to weep the way she used to as a little girl—soundlessly, head folded to chest, fingers digging into her eyes. Eva was unstoppable.

“I knew what you were from the day you were born. No mother is ever as unfortunate as I, to have carried an abomination in my womb and live to see it spite me!”

Permony protested in vain. Eva’s curse rained down like hail and drowned her. On the bed, Elias’s recounting of celestial valleys and mystical mountains continued. He smiled as he prophesied, a glob of spit wavering on the tip of his chin. The unseeing eyes he trained at the ceiling were glazed with contentment.

FOUR DAYS LATER, EARLY
in the morning, a heavy silence fell over 27 Orchard Road. All at once the marigolds ceased their clamor, Gabilan her scrubbing, Eva her fussing, Permony her weeping. In alarm, mother and daughter stared at the father’s white lips, hushed now with no more hiss of divination. Had it not been for the childlike glow of his smile, they would have taken him for dead. Immediately, Eva sent Gabilan to inform the family.