Hour of the Bees (3 page)

I want to be mad at my baby brother for scaring me, but when I bend over and peek at him, he squeals and laughs. I shake my head and smile at Mom. An angle of sunset caresses her face. Her hair escapes from its braid in soft wisps, and her eyes glitter like black diamonds as she smiles back at me.

Mom was married once before, when she was younger. They got divorced, then she met Dad, and it’s no wonder he snatched her up. Even with the beginnings of wrinkles on her forehead, she could be in a magazine.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. It’s a message from Gabby.

I made my friends promise to text me every five minutes, since they get to stay in Albuquerque and hang out while I’m stuck here for the summer. It’s been five hours since I last heard from them — I was starting to think they’d forgotten about me.

We’re going to Manny’s end-of-the-year volleyball party!
Gabby’s message says.
How’s the ranch? Awful?

Before I can text her back, a hair-raising sound comes from under the porch.

A sound like maracas.

My eyes meet Mom’s. I’ve never heard this sound before, but growing up in New Mexico, I’ve listened to enough stories from hikers and farmers to place it.

“Rattler?” I whisper. Mom crouches, peering into the darkness. The dog growls from the grass.

Dad comes up behind us. “What, Patricia?” he asks quietly, catching our tension like a fever.

“R-rattlesnake,” I tell him. I can barely get the word out, I’m shaking so much. It was only half an hour ago, wasn’t it, that we were safely driving on the highway? Half an hour ago that summer hadn’t started yet?

Dad cheeks fade, seashell pale. “Get out of the way.”

He tries to shove in next to Mom, but she hushes him. “I’ve almost . . . got him.” She stretches her arms beneath the steps. “Come on, Lu, nice and easy.”

“I told you,
chiquita
,” Serge says. “Drought makes the snakes braver.
Locas
.”

The rattler hisses again, and I hold my breath.
No, no, no, please don’t jab Lu
, I think, in case the snake reads human minds.
He’s only a baby, please don’t bite him
.

In a smooth, gliding movement, Mom yanks Lu out, like pulling a turkey from a piping-hot oven. A spiral of dust twirls around my brother, who’s giggling and clapping, unaware of the trouble he’s causing.

Mom passes Lu to me while she shakily stands, and I plant a hurried kiss on his dark hair.

Dad runs into the house and reappears with a shovel and a dingy pillowcase. “Move,” he commands. Mom and I shuffle backward.

Serge leans over the porch railing, drool dangling from his mouth like fishing line. “Where’s your snake-stomping boots, Raúl?”

“Not now,
Papá
,” Dad growls. He kneels in the dirt and pokes the shovel under the porch. The snake rattles its tail, an eerie percussion solo.

“Dad knows what he’s doing, right?” I ask, but Mom doesn’t answer. Words keep falling out of my nervous mouth. “He grew up here, so he knows what he’s doing, right?”

No answer.

When Dad pulls the snake out by its tail, the ugly thing doesn’t bite, but kindly lets Dad coil it into the pillowcase. He dusts off his pants and puts the bagged snake in the back of the truck.

“Are you going to kill it?” I say.

Dad gets into his pickup. “It’s illegal to kill rattlers,” he says. “I’ll take it up to the ridge.”

“What if it slithers back?” I say, but he’s already driving off.

“No bees in a drought,” Serge says. He reaches into the tub and grabs the wet blanket, successfully this time. Mom joins him on the porch and helps him wring the wool out and drape it over the railing. “If you see a bee,” he says to her, “tell me. The bees will bring the rain.”

Word salad again. I watch for Mom’s reaction. Maybe Serge is sicker than we thought. Maybe the Christmas lights in his brain have all popped.

But Mom flashes him one of her warm, sparkling smiles — a smile that could put the sun out — and Serge melts. Even I feel the last of my snaky jitters go away; Mom’s smiles are legendary. “If we see any bees, we’ll let you know. Right, Carol?” She winks, then whispers to me, “How long has he been talking about bees?”

One of Mom’s jobs this summer is to keep a mental catalog of Serge’s dementia symptoms, especially what she calls “slips,” when he slips out of the present moment and out of reality. Bee talk, filed away.

“The whole time,” I say. “He’s got a real thing about them. Mom?”

I stare at Serge, who’s pouring fresh suds in the tub so he can rewash the blanket he just hung up to dry.

“Mom, has he always been this . . .” A thousand words flit through my mind.
Weird? Crazy?

Strangely magnetic?

Mom puts her arm around me. “His brain’s deteriorating, honey. I know it’s hard to watch. But remember, this is still your grandpa under all the sickness.”

But I don’t even know my grandpa
, I want to say.
How am I supposed to know where the dementia ends and Serge begins?

Mom takes Lu from me, leaving a toddler-shaped stamp of red dirt on the left side of my tank top. She’s about to head into the house when a pair of headlights spring above the curve of the main road. Someone’s turned off the highway, heading for the ranch.

I watch the car’s every twist around the mesa until it pulls into the driveway. It’s a powder-blue, bullet-shaped two-door convertible.

“Who’s that?” Mom asks, and I shrug. No one I know drives a fancy car like this. But when the driver opens the door, I know exactly who it is. The first thing I see is her leg, golden tan with a high platform wedge on her foot. Not exactly ideal shoes for a summer at a sheep ranch, but if anyone can make it work, my big sister, Alta, can.

“Hey,” she says, stepping out of the car with movie-star grace.

Dad’s returned from dumping the snake on the ridge. When he sees Alta, he makes the tiniest groan and shifts his feet, bracing himself for the onset of enemy fire. Alta has that effect.

Her wedges stomp down the crunchy, dry grass, flattening the blades. Her cobalt-blue purse is the color of the shadows beneath the ridge and looks as expensive as the new car. The dog leaps up, tail wagging, and greets Alta with more enthusiasm than I thought the old canine could muster.

I didn’t get a tail wag.

“Nice wheels,” Dad offers. Alta grins at him. She has the same heart-melting smile as Mom — only Alta’s has fangs.

I didn’t inherit the smile. I got Dad’s stitched-on, serious mouth instead, and my eyes are nothing like Mom’s shimmering black jewels; mine are more like dull black olives.

Mom crosses her arms. “You’re late.”

“Well, sorry. We were birthday shopping.” My sister turned seventeen last Sunday, but she’s dragged out the celebration for another five days, as only Alta can do.

Mom gestures to the car. “You and Gael? Shopping for this?”

Alta beams.

Gael is Alta’s dad, Mom’s ex-husband. Alta stays with him every other weekend, except this summer; Gael is going to Europe on business, and Alta wasn’t invited to tag along.

“How’s Grandpa?” Alta asks Dad, and I snicker at how blatantly she changes the subject. It’s a typical Alta move, acting like she volunteered to come here to help, out of the kindness of her heart. Really, Alta doesn’t care about Serge. Every time we bring him up, she’s quick to remind us that Serge isn’t even technically her grandfather.

I hate when she measures our family’s relationships like that, reducing it to who shares whose blood. But she loves keeping those details in her back pocket, so she can whip them out in the heat of an argument: “But
my
dad lets me have my laptop in my room at night! I don’t even belong here!”

She wants to be the black sheep of the family so badly, we all let her.

Mom’s not finished. “Gael bought you this?”

Alta tosses her hair, like the gorgeous specimen of a car behind her is No Big Deal. “I paid for part of it.”

I’m trying to decipher which version of Alta is here to visit. Some days she’s in a butterflies-and-rainbows mood. She paints my toenails, and lets me sit next to her at dinner, and talks to me in full sentences. She goes shopping with Mom and lets Dad help her with calculus.

But if it’s Moody Alta who’s arrived at the ranch, then she won’t stop brushing her hair, and she’ll look at me with cold eyes, like I’m a cockroach to her. She’ll swear at Dad and make Mom cry in five syllables or less, growled through her teeth.

It’s like having two older sisters instead of one.

“That’s just how teenagers act,” Mom explains when Alta lashes out. “You’ll do the same thing someday.” But I hate it when she excuses Alta’s behavior with something as silly as her age. Twelve isn’t easy, either.

I decide to test the waters: “How’s Marco?” I ask. Marco is Alta’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, so this is a risky question to ask.

But Alta smiles. “Good. I need to call him, actually. Do we even get reception here?”

I release a shaky breath. It’s Happy Alta, for now. “It’s pretty spotty. And there’s no Wi-Fi.”

“That’s okay. I’ve got a hotspot. Hey, baby brother.” Alta grabs Lu and tosses him into the air, sprinkling dust in my hair.

“Come help get dinner started,” Mom directs. “And we’re not done talking about that car.”

Alta rolls her eyes and carries Lu up the porch steps. I catch a whiff of her department-store body spritz. Three hours driving in that teensy car, and her shirt isn’t even rumpled.

“You mean
my
car,” she can’t help saying to Mom.

“We’ll see,” Mom says, her voice raspy with fatigue. She goes in the house, followed by Alta and Lu and the creaky dog.

“Dinnertime,
Papá
.” Dad tries to help Serge up, but Serge slaps Dad’s hands away.

“Don’t touch me! You’ve got snake stink on your fingers.”

“Aren’t you hungry?” Dad says. He’s being so patient with Serge, even though I can tell he’s exhausted. Less than an hour at the ranch, and he and Mom are already tapped out.

“Stinks like death.” Serge folds his arms, his ancient eyes glassy, staring at the horizon. “I’m staying here. Waiting for the bees.”

“Okay, okay. Fine. Whatever.” Dad stomps into the house a tad harder than necessary.

Mmmm, dinner
. Lunch was hours ago. I go up the porch steps but stop at the screen door.

There’s a sound, a droning. Another rattler? My stomach clenches.

But it’s a bee.

“No bees in a drought,” I whisper. It circles my head twice, then buzzes toward the pasture.

When I unfreeze and turn back to the door, Serge is next to me, steady on his feet. He puts his hand on my elbow.

“A bee, Rosa!” he says.

“Not Rosa,” I say quickly. “I’m Carol. Remember?”

“I never thought the bees would be back.” His eyes burn a hole in me.

Our number-one goal this summer: don’t do anything to upset Grandpa Serge. But would it be more upsetting for him to know that I saw it, too, or to think he’d just imagined it?

“No,” I whisper. “No, it must have been a trick of the light.” Up close, Serge’s eyes are less yellowed, more like rings of light blue and gold. Rings, like the inside of a tree trunk.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. Gabby’s message from earlier, still unanswered, demands attention:
How’s the ranch? Awful?

Yes, awful
, I write back.
Too hot
.

I look at Serge. He’s staring at the barn, its roof silhouetted in the last gulp of sunset light.

This is going to be a weird summer
, I finish, and send the text.

Then I go inside, and leave Serge alone on the porch.

I curl up on a futon next to Dad, who isn’t so much sitting as he is melting, the cushions molding around his limp-noodle body. Through slitted eyes, he watches the tiny discolored TV, which is tuned to a grainy cowboys-and-Indians Western, badly dubbed in Spanish.

Serge is perched in the corner recliner, his own eyelids drooping. The dog snoozes at his feet. Somewhere in the house, Alta lurks.

Mom and Dad were prepared for the house to be filthy, since people with dementia sometimes hoard junk, or refuse to vacuum, or simply forget to clean. But Serge’s house is surprisingly tidy. It’s old-fashioned, with tacky 1970s southwestern decor hanging on the wood-paneled walls: a flat lizard made of rainbow beads; a dusty straw sombrero, the kind tourists go for; a huge handwoven Navajo rug, with geometric shapes and stripes like sunrise — blues, indigos, yellows, reds . . .

There’s no clutter. Not even a fun attic full of forgotten treasures that I could have spent the summer rummaging through. The ranch’s boringness runs deep.

Beep, beep. Beeeeep
.

Dad’s phone is ringing. He unclips it from his belt loop and answers in a creaky voice, “Benny . . . Did the electrician get there? Then call him, not me. Yep. Okay.”

He hangs up, then digs his thumbs into his temples. His phone rings again, almost immediately.

“Silencio,”
Serge mutters, squeezing his withered hands into fists. A growl steeps in the dog’s throat.

“Just a quick work call,
Papá
. Sorry,” Dad says. Annoyance is written all over his face. He’s a contractor, and tried to leave behind projects that could run like clockwork with his crew members. Day one at the ranch and already his crew needs him.