Of Bees and Mist (37 page)

Despite Meridia’s insistence, the midwife refused to take more than her due. Nodding gratefully, Meridia turned back to the cot and stood in silence for a few minutes. When she finally moved to the door, her wet eyes were flashing metal and stone. The midwife stepped back and let her pass.

MERIDIA CUT ACROSS THE
square and walked twelve blocks east to Magnolia Avenue. It was a little past nine when she heard again the idle strain of laughter and music. This time she headed straight for the door. In the center of the shop, four women were sitting around a table, drinking tea and playing a game of tiles. Meridia advanced toward them and flipped the table over.

“Get out,” she said in a near whisper, fixing her eyes on the youngest of them.

One woman shrieked, another gasped. Porcelain cups and ivory tiles smashed against the floor. The youngest, Sylva, jumped from her chair and clutched her mouth. With a sweep of the arm, Meridia sent her crashing to the door.

“Watch where you wrap your thighs,” she said as if she were scolding a child. “Next time, I won’t be so gentle.”

Eva, finding her tongue, rose with such suddenness that her chair toppled over.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Meridia ignored her and glared at the other two women; like mice they scurried to the door. Sylva, having turned deathly white, was shaking from head to toe. She did not dare look at Meridia, but quietly sobbed and followed her companions to the street.

“How dare you walk in here and terrorize my guests!” shouted Eva. “Do you think my son’s house is a boarding place that you can leave and enter whenever you please?”

Meridia did not even glance at her as she darted up the stairs. Hand gripping the banister for support, Eva followed, neither as quick nor nimble.

“Have you no shame left? Daniel does not want you or need you or desire you!”

Meridia did not pause or stoop to insults. She swept down the hallway to her bedroom and threw the door open.

It was just as she had expected. Ceiling, floor, walls were coated in bees. The infernal insects swarmed the bed, chairs, lamps, blocking all sound and light from the window. As soon as the door opened, they flew at Meridia with their thousand deafening cries. Far from panicking, Meridia did exactly what Ravenna had done during Noah’s birth—she seized a chair, ran to the window, smashed the pane to pieces. The bees shrieked as the sun exploded into the room. The fast ones managed to escape, but most caught fire and burned on the spot. Their remains rained down and covered the floor with ashes.

“I knew you would come.”

Weak, from the bed, came Daniel’s voice. Until then the bees had covered every inch of him.

“Stay where you are,” said Meridia sharply. “Be quiet and listen to me.”

At this point Eva burst in, huffing and red in the face. “You just can’t wait to finish him off, can you!” she exclaimed. “Barging in here and disturbing a sick man after you abandoned him in cold blood!”

Only then did Meridia turn and confront her mother-in-law. A white-hot fury burned in her veins, and she wanted to tear every nerve and fiber that gave the woman’s face its perfidious look. How much it cost her, to remain where she stood and say what she must say clearly, she would never know.

“Permony died during labor this morning,” she said. “Not long after you threw her out. Malin found her in the cemetery. Before she died, she said that the shock of having her own mother turn her away in her hour of need was too much for her to bear.”

Eva blinked, and then opened her eyes wide. “What are you talking about?”

“She died from a broken heart. Permony, your daughter—do you remember her? Drowning in her own blood when Malin found her.”

“Permony? Dead? Are you out of your mind? She was well when she went home last night!”

“She never made it, not in her condition. But it didn’t matter to you, did it?
You
forced her to return to Ahab, after all the monstrous things she told you about him. How did it feel to toss your pregnant daughter into the night, to reject your own flesh and blood when she needed your help? How could you return to bed and
sleep
after you slammed the door in her face?”

“What’s going on, Mama?” demanded Daniel, rising from the bed. He started to fumble blindly forward, but again Meridia stopped him.

“Sit down,” she said with a touch of razor. “You’ll need all your strength to hear what your mother has done.”

Eva’s face had become a colorless mask, one hand over her throat and the other sealed over her heart. Without taking her eyes off her, Meridia began recounting to Daniel Permony’s discovery of the beast, her flight to Orchard Road, and Eva’s subsequent dismissal. She told him about the graveyard encounter between the sisters, how Malin took Permony to the midwife, heard her last words, and watched her die before her child was born. Meridia’s voice grew hoarse as she talked, but not once, not even for a fraction of a second, did her stare waver from Eva.

For a long time nobody spoke or moved. And then Daniel said, “Did the baby survive?”

Meridia nodded. “A boy who takes after Permony. Malin has decided to raise him as her own.”

“What about Ahab?”

“He won’t ask for his son. Malin took care of him.”

A hard and severe expression settled on Daniel’s face. Narrowing his blind eyes, he turned to Eva and said, “Is it true, Mama? Did you throw Permony out of the house? Mama, answer me!”

A scream escaped from Eva’s mouth, followed by a spasm that shook her violently. All at once her right hand sliced at the air, her left still clutching her throat, her eyes wild with the look of a trapped beast.

“I certainly did not! When your sister came to me in distress, I told her straightaway she must leave Ahab. ‘Stay here, don’t come
back. I’m worried for your safety.’ We talked for a long time, and it was she who said that she still loved him and wanted to go back. I told her absolutely not, but she was stubborn and determined. ‘Then let me walk you home,’ I said. ‘No, Mama,’ she said. ‘I want to be alone to clear my head. You go on to bed now. I’m sorry to have woken you.’ I kept protesting but she wouldn’t hear of it. She seemed strong enough so I never thought, not for once…Oh, my dear girl! I’m your mother, son. Do you think I have it in me to turn my back on my daughter? Your wife can say whatever she wants, but you know me better. I’d rather take my own life than put my children in danger!”

She broke into a loud sob and rushed to Daniel with outstretched arms. Swift as lightning, Meridia planted herself between them. The force of her fury pushed Eva back against the door.

“How long will you lie? Your daughter is dead, and yet still you mock her memory. You knew all along that Ahab wasn’t the man he pretended to be. Admit it! You dangled Permony in front of him, dressed her up, shoved her right into his lap, knowing exactly what kind of beast he was. Don’t deny it, Malin told me everything. Permony would be alive today if it wasn’t for your greed!”

“No, I didn’t know!” cried Eva. “Ahab deceived me just as he deceived all of you. Had I known, I would never have consented to the marriage. Speak in my defense, son! I consulted you on multiple occasions, and didn’t you say that Ahab was the best possible husband for Permony? Didn’t you agree with me that he was as upright and blameless as the best of them?”

“I did, Mama,” said Daniel gravely. “But it was you who convinced me we had nothing to worry about. When I wanted to look into his background, you said it was unnecessary. Meridia warned me about him, but I refused to listen to her. I believed
you
and so I agreed to let him have Permony. Mama, do you realize what we’ve done? What you’ve done?”

Outraged, Eva wept louder. “How could you pin this on me now? We always see eye to eye—why don’t you believe me when I say I’m
innocent? Don’t you see what your wife is doing? She’s trying to divide us, make us turn on each other—she’s been doing this from the day you married her! I swear, son, I’ve never kept anything hidden from you!”

This was what Meridia had been waiting for. Without missing a beat, without even noticing the tears running down Eva’s cheeks, she sprang on her like a lioness.

“That’s a lie. You’ve been playing us like a fiddle. What did you do with the letter Daniel wrote for Noah? You never delivered it to him.”

Eva jerked her head up. The hatred pinching the corners of her mouth was fit to slay a horse.

“My letter? Noah never received my letter? But Mama, you told me—”

“That
I
tore up the letter before Noah could read it?” Meridia was unstoppable now. “That’s not all she’s done. She never told me you were sick. She came to see me once, but only to say you wanted nothing more to do with me. She threatened to take Noah from me, by crook or by force, and she put that—that
whore
—downstairs in the shop where everyone could see her and made her pretend she was mistress of this house. If you only knew! If you only knew!”

Her voice broke as she dragged the last phrase through her teeth. Jamming her hand into her pocket, she clung to something there as if her life depended on it.

“But Mama—Mama said you refused to see me,” stammered Daniel. “She said you only shrugged when she told you I was ill, and you wouldn’t allow Noah to come no matter how much she begged you…I—I thought you hated me so much you no longer cared for me…I never asked her to take Noah from you, and Syl—she—she was nothing—” Suddenly he bit off his words. A nerve on his forehead stood out and trembled angrily. “Why, Mama, why? When I was lying here sick to my soul!”

Eva shook her head with all her vigor. “You got it all wrong, son!
I was only trying to protect you. I thought it was best if you—if you moved on…I can explain everything. Please don’t turn away from me…Please!”

Stumbling toward his wife, Daniel did not heed his mother.

“Don’t come any closer,” Meridia said, stopping him. “It’s finished between us. You’ve used up all the love I had for you.”

She yanked her hand from her pocket and threw something at his feet. It slid with a hiss across the floor and stirred up all the ashes in its path. Without waiting for Daniel’s response, she pushed Eva aside and ran out of the room.

“Meridia!” He started after her, but a swarm of fireflies rose from the ashes and surrounded him. Instantly he recognized their furious flapping wings, the bright tiny bullets that had robbed him of sight. Eva screamed in horror. Daniel waved his arms frantically and fell to the floor. The fireflies closed in and plucked at his lids, shooting a terrible pain to the roots of his eyes. “Meridia!” he shouted in agony. “Meridia!”

He groped along the floor and found the object she had thrown at him. No sooner had he touched it than the pain subsided. The furious wings stopped beating, the tiny bright bullets ceased exploding his eyeballs. A thin yellow line danced at the edge of his vision, faint yet undeniable. It was his first ray of light since she left him.

Eva threw herself on the floor and put her arms around him. “What has she done to you? Do you doubt me now? She’s a demon! She summoned those creatures straight from hell!”

He struggled to his feet and broke away from her. More light flooded his eyes, and the darkness that for weeks had kept him captive began to crumble like a smashed wall. In wonder, his gaze traveled from the door to the broken window, from the upturned chair to the bed littered with burnt wings. Swaying like a drunk, he looked down on his palm and saw the coil of gold that had restored his vision. It was Gabriel’s necklace, once given to Pilar to save Patina’s life and redeemed by him as a token of his love.

“Drop it, son! She’s put a curse on it! Drop it!”

Daniel ignored this and brought the necklace to his heart. And then he turned to his mother and said, “Get out of my house and don’t come back, Mama. You are done talking. Don’t let me catch you saying another word.”

T
he wake was held three days later. In order to attend to last-minute details, Malin arrived early at the funeral home. With quiet efficiency she put out candles next to the flowers, straightened chairs, paid the funeral director, and confirmed that the caterers would arrive at noon with a hot lunch. At half past nine, two coffins were brought from the inner chambers and placed at the front of the hall. The baby’s casket, bearing the beggar woman’s child, was sealed. The men carrying Permony’s handled it with a reverence befitting a holy object. Malin requested a moment alone and approached the coffin.

Meridia had not exaggerated. Dressed in a royal jade tunic they had picked out the day before, Permony was the very picture of love and loveliness, as empty of pain as she was full of grace. Her veins glowed with the same phosphorescent flame that had kindled Patina’s in her last days, illuminating her honey brown skin to the point of transparency. Overcome by the miracle, Malin stood still. She had done her share in tormenting Permony, treating her abominably in order to earn Eva’s praise, and every meanness now came back like a knife to her heart. As children, they wasted so much time playing
pawns, each unwisely falling into their mother’s hands, and yet even after they caught on to her tricks, they never became close friends, so powerful was the divisive force Eva had wielded over them. It was now too late for forgiveness—only atonement. This, then, would be hers: to raise the child to the best of her ability, to love him as her own, and make him honor his mother to the end of his days. Malin sealed the oath by clasping the warm dead hand, and then for the first and last time, she placed a kiss on her sister’s cheek.

Afterward, she could not remember which happened first—the door opening or the wail piercing her eardrums. By the time she spun around on her heels, Eva was already in the room, wild-eyed and crumpled, as if she had not seen a comb or pillow in days.

“What’s happened to us, Malin? Your sister—my dear Permony!”

Quick as an arrow, Malin shot down the aisle to the door.

“You have no business being here. Leave before I throw you out.”

Eva stopped aghast in her tracks. There was dust and sweat on her face, streaked through by flowing tears.

“Be kind to me,” she pleaded, fingering the hem of her heavy crepe dress. “I have no one left in the world. Your brother is furious—he blamed me for everything and wouldn’t hear my side of the story. That hateful wife of his told him so many awful things about me, things she had so twisted and blown out of proportion my own son now thinks I’m a perfect monster—”

“Stop it, Mama! I’m not here to listen to your lies. Permony told me everything before she died. Now leave before you embarrass yourself further.”

Eva swallowed hard, the deep, dark rings tightening around her eyes. She blinked rapidly in an attempt to understand, yet the effort only increased her air of bewilderment.

“Be kind to me,” she repeated weakly. “I’m old and tired and unwell. Can’t you see how pale I am? I’ve walked and walked and I haven’t slept in three days. I kept tracing her route from the house to
the cemetery, and from there to Ahab’s and back again, and I don’t understand why she didn’t make it home. It’s such a short distance and she
was
well when she left me, she assured me so herself…Malin, I’ve always stood by you from the day you were born…Why won’t you believe me?”

Malin answered at once, “You’re wasting my time. I’m not interested in your melodrama or your make-believe. You gave Permony to Ahab knowing full well what he was. I know he asked you to name her price, and you did! Now Permony is dead. Nothing you say will bring her back. I shall never forgive you for it. From the very start you set me against her to satisfy your own vanity. It amused you, didn’t it, to see me going at her? You never loved her, or any of us—only yourself. I’ve had enough of you. From this point on, we’re finished being family.”

Eva gave a strangled cry. “
She
’s poisoned you, too! I’m your mother, Malin. Are you going to abandon me like your brother?”

“No, just like
you
abandoned Permony. I mean it. I never want to see you again. Now go before the mourners come and mistake you for someone who’s capable of grief.”

Sobbing and trembling, Eva watched her daughter with horrified eyes. She had the peculiar sensation of stepping back in time and looking into her own young face. She recognized that hardness of will, that defiant and merciless stare, and the denouncing words that crushed her spirit like a millstone. She had taken part in this scene before—had in fact carried it off to a triumphant finish—but back then it was she who had done the disowning, and Patina had been on the receiving end. Suddenly, as her memory blurred with the present, Eva felt a slab of gravestone leap out of the past and smash against her back. The impact buckled her knees and dropped her to the floor.

“Don’t do this to me”—she tugged at Malin’s skirt painfully—“I have every right to mourn my daughter.”

“Horseshit!” Malin retorted, jerking her skirt free. “You never mourn for anybody but yourself. You never consider anybody’s feel
ings but your own. You know what you are? You’re a vile, rotten, venomous bitch who’s hardly fit to mother a beast!”

Eva sank to her heels, wincing as if a large lump were obstructing her throat. Slowly she lifted her wet lashes and took in her daughter’s face.

“You’re being cruel,” she began again. “I’ve made my mistakes, and I’m paying for them dearly. But I have always loved you and there’s no reason why we can’t get on. I’m begging you, Malin, let me see my grandson. I’ll go if you say so, but let me hold him just once.”

To her surprise, her request was met with a smile. A flame of hope shot through Eva’s heart, and she clung to it like a drowning man clutches a drifting log.

“You want to hold him?” asked Malin softly. “Very well. I’ll show you where your grandson is.”

Eva pulled herself up with difficulty. Her legs were shaking so badly she could hardly stand. When she raised her eyes, Malin’s smile had vanished without a trace.

“Do you see that little casket next to Permony’s? There’s your grandson. Didn’t you hear? He didn’t make it after all…It happened so suddenly yesterday.”

Though Malin had not shouted, had in fact lowered her voice significantly, Eva felt she was going deaf from the words. She faltered backward, dividing her glance between Malin and the little casket as if she had no idea what she was looking at. When the cry came, she felt it surge from the depths of her bowels and tear out of her mouth like a primal living thing.

“No! He can’t be…Meridia told me he was well…No!”

Malin smiled more radiantly. “But you never believe what Meridia says, do you? Why should it be different now?”

Even before the questions flung their net about her, Eva knew she had been trapped. For a moment she could only shake her head and stare stupefied at her daughter. Malin’s smile was an unbroken taunt, a steel wall constructed from a lifetime of resentments. Eva’s
head swam. Try as she might, she could not find the laugh or gesture that would dispel the violence of the taunt.

“No,” she said. “That woman has never spoken a true word in her life.”

With her last strength Eva rallied herself and tottered to the door. A crippling pain from the gravestone slab shot up her back when she tried to straighten her shoulders. Later, Eva would discover that her spine had permanently bent out of shape. From where she stood, Malin watched her mother leave with arms crossed. Not once did she betray her wonder when she saw Eva’s feet drag across the floor with Patina’s old limp.

THE MAN HAD SPENT
three days and three nights outside the house. Noah had first spotted him from the living room window shortly after dinner, leaning against the street lamp with his head bare and his thin frame draped in a heavy overcoat. An hour later, while his aunt Malin was putting the baby to bed, Noah had glanced out the bedroom window and sighted the man again. This time he was standing on the stone steps, staring at him with a beseeching look. Noah went to bed at ten, but twice in the night he woke and stole to the window. The man was there both times, changing his posture and station but not the insistence of his gaze. After each peek, Noah would return to bed and tighten about him the words that fueled his private anger.

Go away. You have no business being here.

On the third night his aunt Malin, who was sharing his room with him, noticed his agitation and asked if there was anything the matter. Not wanting to tell her, he said he was having a bad dream. “But why do you keep looking outside?” she asked, going to the window to check for herself. After a pause, she said that she could not see anything. “You’re a little warm,” she said, coming up to the bed to feel his head. “Will you get some rest? The baby can’t be the only one who sleeps in this house.” He nodded, and she pulled the blanket over him
before resuming her post by the bassinet. From his mother’s room next door came the sound of pacing, which had increased in length and frequency over the past few nights. But he did not want to think about this either, especially with the man lurking outside the house, so he fastened his gaze on his aunt instead. Her rapturous look outshone the lamplight as she bent down and smiled at the baby.

The morning brought glorious sunshine but no respite from the man. He was now standing in the garden, his knees carelessly brushing the geraniums his mother had planted. Noah feared that any minute the man would ring the doorbell. He watched with apprehension when, at a quarter to eight, his aunt Malin excused herself to leave early for the wake. He watched her open the door and step out to the stone steps. He followed her from the window and saw the man wave his hand to catch her attention. Her stare was directly leveled at him, but she walked by without hearing or seeing him. Suddenly his mother darted out, and his heart dropped when he thought she was running toward the man. But she only came out to remind his aunt, from the safety of the porch, to confirm lunch with the caterers. The man, having shouted and gestured in vain, retreated again. It dawned on Noah then that he was the only one who could see him. He alone had the power to make the man visible, or condemn him unseen forever.

All morning long, he observed his mother as she went about her tasks. She seemed fitful and absentminded, paying the grocer’s boy without counting the bills, rinsing plates that were already clean, and spilling milk as she poured it into the baby’s bottle. He watched her as she sat in the front hall and fed the baby. He knew she had gone to see his father three days before, and she had come home looking immensely drained and dispirited. Now she looked even more tired, faded, as though all the light and bloom had been let out of her. The sound of her pacing echoed in his ear, and with it he noticed her nervous gestures and the pale depressions on her cheeks. He drew up and knelt by her chair. Without lifting his eyes, he asked, “Are you unhappy, Mama?”

She stopped rocking the baby, her fingers tight around the milk bottle. “Don’t be silly,” she said with a laugh. “How can I be unhappy when you’re with me?”

He did not reply but bent his head lower still. He knew that her eyes, no matter what her lips said, would hold the real answer.

After the baby finished feeding, she laid him down to sleep in the bassinet, which she had earlier placed in the front hall. Faintly, she smiled at the little creature, stroked the thick black hair that was so much like Aunt Permony’s, and then went to stand at the window. Noah crept over to the bassinet and pretended to play with his cousin. All the while his eyes were studying his mother.

She rested her head against the pane, pensive and aloof as her glance swept across the garden. At her sight, the man came bounding to the window and stopped directly in front of her. Noah held his breath. Only the pane stood between them now; the man pressed his palm against it, imploring her with sorrowful eyes, but her glance passed through him without seeing him. She did not seem to hear when he began rapping on the window, but moved to sit at the desk with her back to the room. The louder the man knocked, the less Noah could hear it. One by one, his mother produced her sketches from a drawer. From where he stood, her back was a pillar of stone.
She doesn’t need him,
he told himself in silence.
She’s capable of living without him.

Without a noise he left the baby and approached her. Although the pounding had receded to a patter, Noah did his best to avoid the man’s gaze. Going around the desk, he halted a few steps in front of his mother. He was about to speak when the words died on his lips. Her back had deceived him after all. Her face, suspended oddly over the sketches, was a sight he had not wanted or expected to see.

She was panting and frowning, biting her lip with furious devastation. Tears dampened her cheeks, turned her eyes into dark pools of blood. Her neck was bent as if it had been snapped. Noah shuddered in horror. There it was, bared before him, all the hunger that had sustained her pacing, so raw and excruciating it seemed a kind
of dying. At once his sharp intuition told him that she had reached the lowest depth of her loneliness, and he had neither the strength nor the means to lift her. Unless he gave her up, cast off the chains that bound them, she would not find her way to the surface.

Noah raised his head and slowly retreated from the desk. Through all this his mother had not noticed him. The pounding on the window became louder. Taking this as a sign, he dashed to the front door and tore it open.

“Papa!” he called to the man, and at last gave him substance.

THE TOUCH ON THE
nape came first. A slow, tender burn that spread to her face like a blush. For a second, she relished every drop of it, thought it the most wonderful feeling in the world, before all too quickly her mind leapt into action…She stood up in near violence and swung around to face him.

“Don’t!” She passed a hand over her face and backed away until she had put half the room between them.