Queen Bee Read online

  “Oh, I’m so sorry! Is she all right?”

  “Andy, the queen is always all right. You wait here, and I’ll be right back.”

  I hurried to the gardening shed where I kept the jars of honey lined up on shelves. It was also where I kept the equipment that I used to spin the honey from the combs and jar it, too. It could be a very messy and sticky situation if I tried to do it in the house, so a few years ago I just took our old potting shed, painted it in pastels to match the hives, and sort of converted it to suit my needs. It wasn’t like anyone else would set foot in there anyway. I grabbed a few, dropped them in a canvas tote bag, and returned to Andy, who stood waiting patiently on the concrete walkway to our front steps. I thought, Someday I might dig out all that awful cracked cement and put in a pretty path of bricks in a herringbone pattern. I’d seen that done in Southern Living magazine and just loved it. Maybe Andy would like to help? That made me giggle to myself.

  I handed him some honey over pecans, which was just that. Pecans I shelled and covered in honey.

  “Here you go! It’s good on everything,” I said. “Yogurt, ice cream, or a spoon.”

  “Well, thank you so much! That’s so nice of you!” Smiling, he turned to go.

  He had a very nice smile.

  “Happy to share!” I said and went to the porch to put the packages inside and to get my purse.

  I picked up two small boxes from the porch rocker. What had Momma bought now? More tunics? She had so many, she’d never live long enough to get her money’s worth out of them. That was for sure. Well, never mind economy. How she spent her money was none of my beeswax, either.

  I locked the house, drove over to the hospital, parked in visitor parking, and made my way to Momma’s room. I was feeling pretty relaxed and happy until I got there. There stood several doctors with seriously chiseled expressions, like totem poles. I had obviously walked in on something critical.

  “Oh, don’t pay her no never mind,” Momma said. “That’s just Holly, my daughter.”

  “Hello,” each one said, and of course I said hello back.

  “How are you, Momma?”

  “Not so hot. It seems I have a tiny little thing on my liver and something else in my pancreas the size of an M&M. Neither one of these things is good news.”

  She said it as though she was merely reporting the weather and without a trifling thought about how it might impact me, but then, sensitivity wasn’t her thing. But I was so startled that I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly.

  “What?” I said. “Tell me this again?” Suddenly, I was dizzy, and I had to sit down.

  “Relax yourself. I’m not dying tomorrow,” she said. “These nice doctors want to watch my tumors for a while to see if they change size or if anything pops up somewhere else.”

  One of the doctors turned to me and explained that the location of the tumors made them inoperable, but they also appeared to be benign. For now.

  “What if they’re not?” I asked.

  “Then we will see changes in their composition pretty quickly. If that’s the case, we can radiate them. There’s a new protocol for targeted chemo, too. Much less invasive, less downtime.”

  “My God,” I said.

  The world changed in that moment. I looked at my mother, lying in her hospital bed, and realized she might be facing something nasty that was going to eventually take her life even if she treated it. It was like a conditional death sentence. She glanced over to me and bit her bottom lip, something she did when she tried to hold back tears. I felt terribly sorry for her then. She seemed as vulnerable as the day Daddy ran off with his physical therapist eleven years ago. Leslie and I didn’t blame him. After all, life with the QB was difficult. He had all but vanished from our lives.

  I didn’t remember the doctors leaving, but I found myself alone with her. I should’ve asked them for their names and telephone numbers and for a copy of the reports, but I had been so shocked by the news, I had not. She was very quiet, which was completely unnerving. Finally, after a long while, she spoke. She had meditated herself into a ninety-miles-an-hour tither.

  “I feel fine,” she said in a manic voice. “In fact, I don’t feel sick at all. Let’s get out of here.”

  She started to get out of bed.

  “Hold on there, Momma,” I said quickly trying to maneuver her back under the covers. “I don’t think that’s how this works.”

  “What do you mean? They can’t force me to stay here! I’m not a prisoner!”

  “Well, for one thing, you’ve got an IV in your arm.” I touched her shoulder, encouraging her to lean back against her pillows.

  She started to pull it out.

  “You watch. In five minutes, they’ll march back in here and say they want to do even more tests on me like I’m their personal guinea pig. I’m not going to have it. Plain and simple. Now, Holly, either you take me home or I’ll call a taxi.”

  “Momma, I . . .”

  “Don’t ‘Momma’ me. Pull this tape off and be quick about it.”

  There was no use in fighting her, but I sure hated it when her manic side got the better of her. On the other hand, she wasn’t wrong, really. She didn’t have a temperature. There was no visible sign of any real illness. And she was mighty determined. Besides, it did no good to argue with Katherine Jensen when she, pardon the expression, got a bee in her bonnet. I pulled the tape off; she pulled the needle out and put pressure on the puncture point.

  “Get me a tissue,” she said.

  I handed her one and she held it over the wound.

  “Now see if you can salvage a piece of that tape to hold this in place.”

  “Oh, Momma,” I said.

  Lord, she was difficult. There was no please or thank you to be had. I gave her a piece of tape; she secured it.

  “Now, I’m getting dressed,” she said. “Do you think I might have some privacy?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll be right outside if you need me.”

  I stood in the hall outside her door and thought, Good Lord, her doctors are not going to like this. A moment later I heard a thud. I knew that thud. Momma was on the floor. Just to make the situation a little more interesting, when I tried to push her door open, her body was blocking it. I managed to push my head through.

  “You okay?”

  “Obviously not. My plan isn’t working out as I’d hoped.”

  “I’ll get help,” I said.

  “Damn it,” she said.

  I hurried along to the nurse’s station thinking to myself that it would be so nice if my mother knew how to behave herself. She was always right. She always had to have the last word. But this time, there was clearly something wrong. All this falling business had to have a cause behind it. And normally, whatever our definition of normal was, she enjoyed the hospital. She got lots of attention and she didn’t have to lift a finger. Maybe she was afraid. Maybe the doctors had given her really bad news before I got there, and her first impulse had been to run.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “My mother is Katherine Jensen, in room 311. Well, I’m afraid she’s had a fall . . .”

  The nurse all but sprinted from her desk toward my mother’s room, grabbing two others along the way to help her. I got there just as the thinnest health care worker in the world was inching herself inside through the available space.

  “Now, just what’s going on here?” one of them said.

  They pressed the call button and asked for two orderlies to come help. Inside of a few minutes they had Momma back in bed.

  “Does anything hurt, Mrs. Jensen?” the head nurse said.

  “I’m fine and I’d like to go home, if that’s all right with everyone,” she said.

  “Well, Mrs. Jensen, we have to get the doctor’s okay for that. He’s got to sign papers to release you.”

  “We’ll see about that,” she said.

  The nurse looked at her square in the face and said, “Now, Mrs. Jensen. You gonna be trouble for me? My shift ends
at five o’clock. Why don’t you be trouble for the next shift and I’ll bring you all the chocolate pudding you can eat? How ’bout it? Deal?”

  My mother, who needed an all-you-can-eat deal like she needed another hole in her head, considered endless chocolate pudding and said sheepishly, “Oh, all right, but only because you asked me so nicely.”

  The nurse nodded to another nurse, who hurried along to bring my mother the reward for her bad behavior.

  “Now, let’s get your IV back in place,” the nurse said.

  Momma held out her hand as though she was offering the nurse an opportunity to kiss the ring of Saint Peter.

  The nurse looked at me and said, “She’s something else, your momma is.”

  “You’re telling me?” I said.

  “You can run along now, Holly,” Momma said. “I’m in good hands here.”

  Peace was restored. I went home to call Leslie.

  “I’ve got another great bee quote for you,” Archie said. “ ‘Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.’ ”

  “Hmmm,” I said. “Who said it?”

  “Robert Green Ingersoll, known as the Great Agnostic. Born 1833, died in 1899.”

  “He was an idiot. Any beekeeper will tell you there’s a God.”

  Chapter Four

  Now What?

  I left Momma in the hospital and was driving back toward the island. She was a funny bird, cutting a deal with the promise of good behavior for the reward of chocolate pudding. But the doctors still had to get to the bottom of her issues. Then I remembered one of the nurses asking her how much exercise she got.

  Momma looked at her and proudly said, “None.”

  The nurse said, “Well, you know, a little exercise is good for you. If you just sit around all day, your muscles atrophy and your mobility becomes really compromised.”

  Someone else suggested she give herself a couple of daily tasks, like going to get the mail, taking out garbage, or picking up the newspaper. “You know, start slowly.”

  Momma rolled her eyes heavenward and harrumphed loudly. She was having no part of exercise, if I knew her. And also, it would be a bitter cold day in hell before Katherine Jensen took advice from anyone. But the nurse had offered a point to consider. Maybe balance was the devil behind her falling. That would be considerably better than a brain tumor, which was what I had been thinking she had. Then, in a moment of optimism, I had a thought that maybe her other tumors didn’t mean anything. Maybe she’d been born with them. I had heard of that happening. And I wondered how she was feeling about her diagnosis. If it had been me, I’d be terrified to know there was something growing inside of me that would most assuredly kill me eventually unless something else got there first. If I was possibly facing radiation or chemo or surgery I’d be terrified. Cancer was very scary stuff. But perhaps this terrible news would make her realize she wasn’t really living her life. If she would begin moving herself even in the smallest ways, it could lead to getting out of the house to go places besides the hospital. Like, maybe she’d like to go to Gwynn’s or to Croghan’s Jewel Box just to have her diamond washed. Maybe she’d like to go to church, which would be my first stop if a doctor told me I had the smallest tumor of any kind.

  Traffic on the way home was miserable. All through Mount Pleasant, it was bumper to bumper, and I caught every single red light. I decided to stop at the Publix to buy something to make for supper, and on a lark, I took the plunge and filled out a job application. Something told me there was a job waiting for me and that I should seize the moment. I was like the scout bees, seeing what was out there within range of the hive. Sure enough, Publix was hiring and I was given a part-time position in the bakery. Should I take this job? Why not? I thought that it was the fastest interview in history. The pay was only minimum wage, but there were other advantages, like flexible hours. But first and foremost, it was going to save my sanity. Second, I could add the money to my Maserati fund. I had a pipe dream about someday owning a gorgeous sports car.

  “You’ll be reporting to Andrea Blatt. She’s been here forever,” Barbara Hagerty from Human Resources said. “I hope you like decorating cakes. We sell a lot of birthday cakes.”

  “Who doesn’t like decorating cakes?” I said, knowing I’d never decorated a cake with anything other than canned frosting and press-on candies that you had to peel off a piece of cardboard that was so stiff that it cracked the decorations. I was so excited, you’d have thought they just made me a network anchor on the six o’clock national news. And I was excited to take a shot at something creative.

  “Great! Can you come in tomorrow?” she said.

  “Sure! Why not?” I said. “And Barbara?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Let’s see if you’re still grateful in six weeks!” She laughed and stood, indicating the interview was over.

  “I’m going to go and buy supper now,” I said and left her office to forage.

  In the produce aisle I was filling a bag with apples and I put them in the wrong cart. Then I walked that cart the whole way up the aisle. Just as I was about to add lemons, I realized it wasn’t my cart. I looked up into the face of an old classmate from high school.

  “Ted?”

  “Holly?”

  “Yeah! Wow.” Ted’s appearance was vastly improved over the years. No acne, for one. “What are you doing here?”

  “Manhandling the cantaloupes and rescuing my cart. You?”

  No wedding ring.

  “Buying groceries?”

  “Okay, well, nice to see you,” he said and handed me my bag of apples.

  “Yeah, you too.”

  Wow, he got cute, I thought.

  Thinly cut pork chops were on special, so I grabbed a family-sized pack of a dozen, a double box of Stove Top stuffing, a huge jar of applesauce, and a bag of frozen spinach and drove back to the island singing along with the radio. I had a job! And I was about to enjoy a perfect meal. I’d fry up some bacon and use that grease to sauté my pork chops. And I’d bought myself wine in a bottle. I was celebrating. A job! I’d been liberated!

  When I pulled into the driveway, Archie and his boys were getting out of his car with enormous backpacks that looked like they would topple the boys over from the weight of them.

  “Hey, Mith Holly!” Tyler called out.

  “Hey, Tyler!” I called back. “How was your day?”

  He gave me a thumbs-up. I started unloading my trunk to bring the groceries inside.

  “Do you need help?” Hunter yelled at the top of his little lungs.

  “Oh, no, I’m fine! But thank you, sweetheart.” He was so darling.

  “How’s your momma?” Archie said, coming over to the low hedge of pittosporum that edged his property. “I thought you might be bringing her home today.”

  “No, not yet,” I said, and somehow my voice sounded strange to me.

  “I’m sorry. Have you had bad news?”

  “No—well, yes. For the moment, she’s all right. But long term? It’s unclear.”

  I relayed the story to him as I knew it. There was no point in sugarcoating the news. In one way, I felt absolutely terrible about my mother’s possible illness, and in another way, the news of it and the retelling of it was strangely freeing. Naturally, there was a part of me, that young Catholic girl, that knew I should be ashamed of my black soul that delighted in any part of it. But I wasn’t ashamed one bit. I felt like this might be cosmic retribution for her thinking it was all right to steal my independence while she indulged herself in every way imaginable.

  “Well, I’m terribly sorry to hear the news. Please tell your mother I asked about her and that we’ll be thinking about her. And you know, Holly, if there’s anything I can do, or my boys, please tell us. You’ve been so great to us since, well, Carin, well, you know.”

  He still couldn’t even bring himself to say what had happened and it had been months and months. He really loved her.

 
“I know. It was so terrible. But I think we’re meant to help each other when life gets too difficult, don’t you?”

  “If we’re able to, yes. It’s one of the beautiful things about humanity. We actually can lift each other up. Ease someone’s burden. And it’s just, well, it’s just nice to help others. There’s a special joy to be found in service. You know, being useful. Like your hives.”

  “Yes. Yes, there is something very special about helping each other. Ask my bees. Your boys know that, too, which is sort of amazing, given their ages and all that.”

  “Thank you. I think they’ve learned a lot about empathy from you, too, and I’m very grateful. They’re good boys.”

  “They are wonderful boys,” I said. “Well, now I have to go and call my sister and drop this lovely bomb on her.”

  “That won’t be easy,” he said.

  I could see him then questioning whether I had the diplomatic finesse to deliver this kind of news in the right way. I looked at him as if to say, If you knew all the bullshit I’ve had to endure every day of my life, you’d never have a moment’s doubt about my capacity to deal with bad news.

  “I’ll be all right,” I said. “And Momma’s not even symptomatic of anything yet. But tumors are not a good thing.”

  I gave him a little wave and turned to go. In the background I could hear Tyler yelling at Hunter for eating the last Oreo. And then I heard Archie telling them to cut it out. All normalcy had not been lost for them. They were coping with their grief because they had each other to pull themselves through each day. But they still bickered, which in an odd way was a good sign.

  As I climbed the front steps my legs felt like they weighed a thousand pounds apiece. I realized then that I was exhausted. Of course, there was another package from UPS sitting on the rocking chair on the porch. I went inside, dropped my bag and the package on the dining room table, and took the groceries to the kitchen. I stood at the sink while I absentmindedly filled the kettle with water. Hot tea seemed like a good idea. Hot tea with honey. I wondered then if I should try to find our father and tell him about Momma. But in my guts, I knew he wouldn’t care. He wouldn’t.