Hour of the Bees (19 page)

Home.

I snooze through most of the drive home, and when I wake, we’re snaking off the freeway. It stops smelling like wide-open spaces and starts smelling like a city: exhaust, hot asphalt, flower delivery trucks, steam from metropolis buses.

The smell is everything I love about home. So many people feel tiny in such a huge city, just one of millions. I’ve always felt the opposite in it — huge by association.

Today I don’t feel larger than life. These buildings used to be the tallest, shiniest things in my life. But every time we drive past one, I think of the mesas at the ranch, how they’re so much taller.

I roll down the window to get some air; instead I inhale a blast of car exhaust and cough for three straight minutes. How could I ever have thought I could breathe here?

We get stuck at a red light for ages, only to drive forward and hit another red light.

It’s loud. Not just the traffic, but the city itself. A million people talking at the same time, no one listening. A million televisions on full blast, no one watching. The humming and buzzing of the bees has been replaced with the sound of electricity . . . It’s deafening.

Noise clutter.

Dad’s on the other side of the city, getting Grandpa settled in the Seville. The Seville: a place without a porch, without the ridge, or sheep, or air.

There’s no air in this city. Not anymore.

I dig the last slivers of the porch railing out of my hand as we pull into our neighborhood. I thought I’d left my tantrum back in the desert, but it’s right here, bubbling in my throat. The ranch, gone. Grandpa, gone. And I didn’t even get to hear the end of the story. Does Sergio ever leave? Does Raúl have to stay forever?

Alta drives in the lane next to us, pouting her lips like a supermodel, pretending she’s alone in the world. Once upon a time, I would have tried to copy her, but now I just laugh. Oh, Alta, always wanting to be the black sheep, romanticizing what it’s like to be the outsider. The truth is she fits in perfectly with the rest of my family. I’m the one who doesn’t fit. I’m the one who would rather be back on the ranch, listening to Serge’s bewitching stories. I’m the one who feels like she will never be the same.

Being the black sheep is lonely. I don’t think my sister knows that.

Our house is still here: cheerful yellow siding, white shutters, surrounded by a manicured yard lined with chrysanthemums. I step out of the moving van and into the green grass, so spongy my feet sink into it. Nothing wild grows — no weeds, no cactus. This air . . . I fill my lungs, but it’s not real air, not like out in the desert.

If the air of the wide-open desert is Mom’s delicious homemade Mexican meals, this city air is from a box. It’s Hamburger Helper.

Has our yard always been this teeny? Our street is a row of birdhouses, all of us boxed into our own yards by identical picket fences.

“Everything looks smaller,” I tell Mom.

She smiles. “Maybe you’re just bigger.”

Alta parks her new car and carries her things into the house with one hand, her other hand scrolling on her phone’s touch screen.

“Your purse is falling,” I say. She tucks it under her arm without a word to me, then disappears into her bedroom.

My own room is a palace compared to Dad’s old bedroom at the ranch. I crash-land on my bed, my clean, sweetly scented bed. A luxury after the sleeping bag on the floor. I lie on my stomach, face squished into the mattress, shoes still on . . . My phone vibrates.

GABBY: Are you home yet?

ME: Yes, just barely
.

GABBY: Coming to the pool party tonight?

ME: Maybe. I’m really tired
.

GABBY: I miss you!

ME: I miss you, too
.

I don’t tell her the truth, that I have no intention of going to the pool party. I do miss my friends, but I’m wrecked. All I want is to spend the evening lying in front of the air conditioner.

Mom orders pizza right away, clearly grateful to be back within delivery range.

Dad comes home from the Seville just after the pizza gets here, massaging his neck, and I roll my eyes, Alta style, at his dramatics. Did he drop off Grandpa, or slay a dragon?

“How’d that go?” Mom asks.

He sits on the couch, a slice of pizza in his hand. “As good as these things can go, I guess.”

I picture Grandpa, alone in the Seville, so far from the endless desert, his beloved stars . . .

“Can Grandpa have visitors?” I say.

My family turns their heads.

“Sure,” Dad answers. “We’ll go see him soon. Great idea.”

“Tomorrow?” I say.

Alta rips into her pizza like a wolf tearing a carcass, eyes boring craters into me. She wants me to shut up; she doesn’t want to be forced to visit her silly old step-grandfather with her pesky, meddling little sister. Oh, wait, pesky, meddling little
half
sister.

I say it again. “We could go tomorrow, right? Shouldn’t we make sure he’s okay?”

“Not tomorrow,” Dad says. “Give Grandpa some time to adjust. We’ll try for Sunday.”

I nibble my pizza, disappointed. Grandpa will have to spend a whole day by himself. “Fine. Sunday,” I say.

“That’s the day before school starts,” Alta complains.

“It’ll be good to do something as a family,” Mom says.

“We just did a whole summer as a family,” Alta mumbles.

“Hey,” Mom warns, and we stop talking and eat.

The next day is Saturday. Lu sleeps in, which means Mom is able to sleep in, so she lets everyone sleep in. Only my body is still on ranch time; it rises with the sun, even though my curtains block the light.

When I make plans to go shopping with my friends, I’m genuinely excited.

Mom slips something into my hands on my way out the door. “This is for watching Lu all summer.”

It’s a twenty-dollar bill.

“And this is for your help watching Grandpa.”

Another twenty-dollar bill.

I try to hand the money back, but Mom won’t take it. So I leave, swimming up to my neck in guilt.

“Backpacks are out,” Manny says at the mall. Alta was saying this very thing a few weeks ago at the ranch. Is there some sort of club where popular girls meet and vote on what’s trendy and what’s not?

My friends each buy a messenger bag, so I fork over my forty bucks so I can coordinate with them. When we pose in the mirror, our bags all slung over our left shoulders, I think of the sheep at the ranch, how they would stand so close together they blurred into a single pulsating puffball. If one of them stood just a little taller, his head would poke out of the collective wool. Then anyone could see him. A coyote. A hawk.

Dare to poke your head up, dare to stand out from the crowd, and you risk being gobbled up.

Sunday: Seville day. We pile into the minivan, Alta huffing because Mom and Dad won’t let her drive her own car there. My parents act nervous, clenching hands, just like that first day at the ranch. “Don’t let it break your heart,” they tell me, “if he’s not ready to see us yet.”

The Seville’s complex spreads over half a block of prime New Mexican property. There’re tennis courts and a swimming pool, and the main house is a mansion, with white Ionic columns and gilded trim.

“This is way nicer than a hotel!” Alta says when we pull in. “Why was Serge complaining so much?”

Some people prefer ranches
, I think.

We head to the sliding doors. Dad looks at something on his phone and punches a code in the number pad: 1412.

“This place needs codes for the doors?” I ask as we march into the maroon-and-gold lobby. “Who would want to break in here? Do the old people really need that much security?”

“It’s not to keep people out,” Mom explains, adjusting Lu in her arms. “It’s to keep residents in.” She explains that you have to punch the code to exit, too. I ponder this with mild horror. What if Grandpa wants to take a walk? Get some air? See the blue sky? He can’t even walk through the front door without permission? Even if he had the code, he has dementia — he’d never remember it, anyway.

“That’s why we chose the Seville,” Mom says. “It’ll keep Grandpa safe.”

Right, because what’s safer than a prison
, I think.

“This place must cost a fortune,” Alta whispers to Mom. “I thought Serge was supposed to be a poor sheep farmer.”

“Alta.” Mom
tsk
s at my sister’s bluntness, then answers, “Why do you think Grandpa sold the ranch?”

My stomach coils. Grandpa sold his ranch to pay for his own birdcage.

“This way.” Dad leads us down a corridor that, though carpeted, still stinks like a hospital: bubble-gum soap and mop water.

In the Seville pamphlet, photos show these same halls filled with old people so happy, they look one denture-y smile away from flying up to heaven. There are pictures of old people playing cards, soaking in hot tubs, having a movie night with vintage red-and-white popcorn buckets. But I don’t see anything like that here. It’s as empty as the desert.

“Where is everyone?” I say to Mom.

“Everyone who?” she says.

“All the old people.”

“How many grandparents are you visiting today?” Mom asks, trying to be funny.

I don’t laugh. This place is too eerily quiet, like they’re getting the residents used to the endless quiet of cemeteries.

Dad knocks on door 104.
“Hola,”
he says, and walks into the room. We tiptoe in behind him.

Like my first day at the ranch, I’m not prepared for how different Grandpa looks.

No one else has eyes that blue, but it’s all I recognize of my grandpa. The person lying in the bed is bloated like a fish with infected gills, chalk-faced, drooling.

“Buenas tardes, Papá,”
Dad says.

“Mmmm,” Grandpa says.

Dad brings a cup of water to his lips, and Grandpa sips through a straw, then collapses on the pillow, as if exhausted by that simple chore.

“What’s wrong with him?” I don’t even bother to keep my voice down. I’m so shocked, I’m beyond being polite or proper.

Mom shoots me a look. “Shh. Not now.”

But I’m thirsty for an answer now, right now. “Dad, what’s wrong with Grandpa?”

Dad doesn’t seem fazed. “Grandpa is still adjusting to his new medicine.”

“There is no medicine for dementia,” I say. “Mom told me there was no cure.”

“There is no cure,” Dad says. “He’s on a mild sedative while he gets used to things here. The doctor just wants him to be comfortable.”

This is the opposite of comfortable. The TV flickers, barely audible. Grandpa’s eyelids flutter — not asleep, but not awake. “Mmmm,” he moans again.

“He can’t even talk!” I say.

Why am I the only one who’s horrified? The Seville is supposed to be a vacation for his rusty, broken-down mind — instead, this place has turned my grandpa into a zombie.

“So they just . . . leave him in here, like this?” I say. “What if something happens to him?” I picture him having a stroke, or a heart attack, or simply dying, with no one here to help.

“Nurses do checks every two hours, like clockwork,” Dad says, as if that explanation justifies why my grandfather should be parked in a bed, barely distinguishable from the pillows that surround him.

“Hey, Grandpa,” I say, walking up to the bed. “How about you tell me the end of the story?”

Grandpa blinks, his eyelashes mostly crusted together.

“Carol,” my dad warns.

“I just want to hear the end. Can you do that for me? Come on, once upon a time . . .”

“Mmmm.” Grandpa closes his eyes, asleep or close to it.

“No,” I say, touching his shoulder. “No, wake up! I’ve got to hear the end of the story!”

“Carol!” Dad barks. “Enough!”

Lu whimpers, disturbed by our tense words. Dad drags me into the hall. “What is wrong with you?”

I slump against the wall. “It’s just . . . I never got to hear the end of the story.”
And Serge looks an inch from death
, I add silently,
and I can’t bear it if the ending dies with him
.

Dad pinches the bridge of his nose. “The one about the village that chopped the tree down?”

“How did you know?” I say, amazed.

He laughs. “What, you think you’re the first one to hear it?
Papá
told it to me every night when I was a kid. The tree, and the bees, and the lake . . .”

I’m dumbfounded. “I thought . . . Maybe his dementia . . .”

“Dementia has done a lot of damage,” Dad says, “but he’s always spun a good yarn.”

“I just wanted Grandpa to tell me the ending,” I say.

“I’ll tell you how it ends,” he says.

But I don’t want to hear the ending from Dad. I want to hear the ending from Grandpa. I straighten. “Would you tell me a different story?”

Dad raises his eyebrows.

“What happened between you and Grandpa?”

“Carol . . .” He takes a deep, cleansing breath, watching me the whole time. “Okay. It’s probably time you knew. When
Mamá
was —”

“No,” I say. “Once upon a time . . .”

He nods. “All right, all right. Once upon a time . . .”

“There was a tree,” I finish.

“A tree stump,” he corrects.