Deena Goldstone - Tell Me One Thing

“Do you know what that is?” he asks her.

She shakes her head.

“Listen,” Max says. “Shhh … be very quiet.”

And they both stop talking and moving and there it is! In the hushed, dense air of the beach twilight Maggie hears a faint buzzing, and her face lights up. She turns to look up at Max and he’s grinning. “You hear it, don’t you? Those are the bees. Shall we open the hive and see what they’re doing?”

“Yes, please,” Maggie whispers and Max grins. He so hoped she’d be as entranced by the colony as he is.

“It’s awesome. You’ll see,” he whispers back at her. “Come with me, we have to prepare.”

He takes her hand again — and she’s so glad that he has — and they walk to a small garden shed. It’s made out of wood and looks a little like a playhouse with a short door in front that Max has to stoop to use, and a little window next to it. He comes out carrying a bunch of strange stuff — something that looks like the oil can that the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz carries, long leather gloves attached to sleeves, and two white hats that look like pith helmets with trailing white netting attached to the brim of each.

Max squats on the grass and Maggie follows suit. He puts what Maggie thought was the oil can in front of them. Now she sees that there are two parts — the part that is a round canister with a spout on top and the part that looks like a partially opened book. Max begins by stuffing newspaper into the metal can. Then he lights the paper with a match and quickly layers pine needles on top of the paper, and then, when those are burning, he puts in wood chips and closes the top. When he squeezes what he tells Maggie is the bellows, smoke comes out of the cone-shaped spout.

“The smoke quiets the bees,” Max tells her, and although Maggie isn’t sure what that means, she can’t wait to see what’s inside the white boxes.

The both stand up and Max fits one of the white helmets on his head and settles the netting over his neck and shoulders and chest. When Maggie puts her helmet on, the netting flows from her hat and pools at her feet.

“Perfect,” Max declares. “Now you’re safe from head to toe. Let’s go.” This time they reach for each other’s hand at the same time and walk to the hives.

The first thing Max does is remove the top box and place it on the ground. “That’s where the honey is being made,” he says, “but I want to show you something else.” He squeezes the bellows, which squirts puffs of smoke around the top, the bottom, and the sides of the middle box. Then he gently lifts the hinged lid, and immediately the buzzing gets much louder.

“Come a little closer,” he tells Maggie and she does. Then Max lifts out what looks like a drawer that’s been set on its side. And there are the bees! Hundreds of them, maybe thousands! And they’re very busy, moving around, bumping into each other, vibrating their wings.

“This is a brood frame,” Max tells Maggie as he points to the five-sided wax structure the bees have built across the wooden border. “All the way through it, there are baby bees in different stages of growing up. They start out as eggs.…” and Max points to some tiny white cylinders, no bigger than the eye of a needle, attached to the walls of some of the cells, one egg per cell.

“And then the eggs turn into larvae.” And here he points to some bigger creatures, translucent white and curved like a C . They are embryonic and grublike.

“Icky,” Maggie says.

“Yes, icky,” Max agrees.

Then Max points to some cells that have been sealed with wax caps. “And in there are the pupae.”

Maggie is fascinated. Max can see it on her face, and he’s glad he’s able to show her this. He knows from what Bernadette has told him that Lucia and Maggie have a hard road ahead of them.

“It’s called metamorphosis,” Max tells her. “That’s a big word, but what it means is to change.”

Gently he takes the tip of a knife and peels away the wax cap from a pupa cell. “Here,” he says, “take a look.” Maggie peers inside to see an organism, also very white, with an enormous dark eye and incipient tendril-like legs and antennae. “This pupa will come out of its cell only when it has changed into a beautiful bee. It has to do this — to change three times — until it’s finally where it’s supposed to be,” Max explains to her, and Maggie looks at him and nods. He has the uncanny feeling that she knows what he’s trying to tell her.

BECAUSE IT’S JUNE AND THE OFFICIAL start of summer isn’t far off, the days are long. Even though it’s after eight o’clock as Lucia and Maggie climb the stairs to their apartment, it’s not quite dark. There’s a breeze and the tangy smell of the ocean and a few stars poking out through the nighttime overcast that is as much a part of the beach communities as the bright, sunny afternoons.

Lucia opens the door to their new home, turns on the light, and deposits her purse and their two duffel bags at her feet. Maggie takes off her backpack, which contains Raymond, her stuffed dachshund, and five favorite books Lucia said she could bring. And then the two of them stand just inside the door and look at where they’ve landed. The living room is small and takes up the front of the apartment. From the many windows, Lucia can see Max’s backyard and the main house. Their kitchen is directly behind the living room and contains a tiny table, just big enough for the two of them.

Some of the furniture Lucia recognizes from Bernadette’s house in Riverside — the blue denim couch with yellow piping, the flowered area rug underneath the coffee table. Bernadette’s decorating is an extension of her gardening, primary colors and flowered patterns wherever possible. It’s not Lucia’s style, she much prefers a more neutral approach, but its exuberance makes her smile. It’s why she adores Bernadette so much — her willingness to always dive headfirst into anything at all.

Maybe this is an appropriate place for them to have landed, Lucia thinks, because here they are, she and Maggie, diving headlong into whatever comes.

“Shall we go see the bedroom?” And Lucia takes Maggie’s hand and they move down the narrow hallway and into the back of the apartment.

“Well,” Lucia says as they stand in the doorway surveying the small room. Like the living room, it has three good-size windows along the outside wall. “It faces west, so maybe we can see the ocean from here.”

They walk to the windows, but no luck — there are far too many buildings between where they stand and the Pacific Ocean for them to see it. Everything at the beach is so densely packed, each square foot of land so valuable, that they look out on a jumble of roofs and apartment buildings and telephone poles and wires and a few tall old palm trees that sway in the breeze, their fronds rustling in the night air like tiny mouse feet along a wooden floor.

A double bed takes up most of the space in the room. “We’re going to have to share a bed, sweetheart. Okay?”

Maggie’s face lights up — this part of the arrangements she likes. She can have her mother with her all night. And she manages to say softly, “We can cuddle.”

“Yes!” Lucia says, grateful that Maggie has seen some positive in this exile she’s arranged for them. “Every night.”

“Until our visit is over” is said even more softly, but Lucia has heard her. There’s a minute while she looks around the small room and decides what to say. Finally, she chooses the most comforting words she can honestly employ. “Yes,” Lucia says, “until our visit is over.”

RICHARD CALLS AGAIN. He’s been hitting redial every ten minutes from the moment he found Lucia’s note until now, more than two hours later. Suddenly, on the next try his call goes directly to voice mail. Lucia has turned off her phone. It’s clear she has seen his many messages and made the decision to turn it off. All right, he gets it; she doesn’t want to speak with him. So he’ll have to figure out another way to find her.