Beehive Read online

  She fell into silence herself now. I didn’t know what to say. She’d scrunched herself against the door, knees up, arms crossed against her chest. I put my hand out to her, patted her shoulder. “You’ll work it out. I know you will.” I smiled at her. “I have faith.”

  She took a deep breath and sat up. As we crossed the Potomac on the bridge near the Jefferson Memorial, I saw her come out of herself. Elizabeth is so small, really, but her presence enlarges her. Her brains, her beauty, her poise, they just come together to make her a much bigger force that your glance would credit her. On a football field, it’s size or speed that matter. Excluding luck, you can figure out the winner on the track and in the weight room before the game. But in the games of the world, you can’t just add up the parts. You have to put them together right. As I drove, Elizabeth assembled herself, and I felt like getting up and cheering for her. She’d handle whatever emergency came across our phone lines.

  “Elizabeth,” I said pulling through the gate, “can you tell me what happened?”

  She sniffed once. I thought I detected a growing rumble inside her, like I heard in her father. She felt so big beside me, whatever news she told me came straight from heaven. “I guess it will be in the papers soon enough. The General went in to negotiate with one of the Muslim families, but he didn’t come out.”

  “They kept him?” My voice felt like an animal noise in my throat, like a bleat or a squeal. “Hostage?”

  “No,” she said, opening the door. “They killed him.”

  24.

  The news didn’t reach the papers until Monday, but the press made up for their silence with screaming headlines then. I saw on the newsstand a New York tabloid screeching, “DOUBLE-CROSSED!” with a picture of some masked Lebanese gunmen. The more sedate papers, like the Post and the Times, covered the news on the front page, but saved their editorializing for the smudgy middle.

  Of course, everyone released the same basic story. We offered Beirut secret negotiations aimed at establishing a large U.S. base on their territory, thereby introducing a handy force for peace in the Middle East. Elizabeth got no mention in this, of course; but neither did hashish, gangsterism or what amounted to our invasion of Lebanon. The General, leading the negotiations, went to the country estate of Lebanon’s former president. The entourage reported gunfire. The General did not come out.

  Only the better papers reported there was no proof — no film, no message, no body — that the General had died. The evidence of ambush overwhelmed proof.

  The press called for stern action against Lebanon.

  The Secretary of State met with the President and the Joint Chiefs. He announced Wednesday afternoon that he asked “all hands to study all the alternatives. We will not let this outrage go unheeded.”

  Friday, a plane crash pushed Lebanon off the front page. Nearly a hundred people killed when a plane missed the runway. I checked the list of passengers, but my father wasn’t among them.

  25.

  I hardly noticed I had worked that week. Friday, we had our monthly division meeting of Housing Characteristics, and I kept myself characteristically quiet. My office compiles figures on types of new housing: how many units of what type in how many buildings. Very little new happens. People seldom create new categories of buildings; the hardest part of our job is keeping track of conversions. Say if a small town in Massachusetts allows its old mill to go from light industrial to unrestricted zoning, and someone spends a bit of money fixing the old place up for loft living, we like to know. So we review zoning and bank records from all over, not only to include new construction in our statistical description of how we live, but also to look for hints that someone in Oregon has insulated their garage to rent as a studio to a student, or that houses in the small towns of Appalachia stand empty.

  Most weeks, I notice work. My department must perform well or the census flounders. The census takers need accurate addresses — not names, just housing units — or they can’t produce accurate population figures. Most people don’t know that computer technology started in the Census Bureau. So much information: what’s the use of it if you can’t compile it, line it up on matrices, look at it another way.

  Human social organization has never been so complex that we can’t program a computer to sort it out. Not in my department, of course. We just do our small part. The Census Bureau uses computers, invents computers almost, but to the rest of the government we are a computer, a storehouse of information to be called up at will. My department is one chip in the hardware, and I’m the solder wiring it to the whole.

  “Stutzer, anything to report from New Housing? I didn’t get your report for the month.”

  Mr. Bienenkorb, my boss, chief of Housing Characteristics, never seems certain he’s awake, as though maybe he dreamed up the Census Bureau and everyone inside it and at any moment the scene might switch to something else. “We’ve had a number of people out on sick-day these past two weeks, sir,” I said. “I’m afraid we’ve dropped behind. The report is in a draft on my desk, but my secretary has been out.”

  “Well, I’m sure you would have said something if anything important happened this month.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His heavy eyes searched me for a moment. I felt strange, alien. I was the youngest person in the room, except for Mr. Bienenkorb’s secretary, Nancy, who I think was his niece. Everyone else used these meetings to lobby for more funds for their department, more computer time, more importance in the hierarchy. My mind couldn’t handle what it had. I wanted to know what Elizabeth knew; I wanted to be beside her, inside her. I wanted to feed and groom her.

  “Next month,” my boss said, “find something important. Otherwise we’ll suspect you’re getting satisfied.”

  “Yes, sir.” He sighed and looked to the next name on his staff list.

  26.

  “Are you coming home tonight?”

  Elizabeth didn’t answer at first. I stayed late Friday night to write the monthly report I lied about at the meeting. Here it was six-thirty, light still exploding in the DC sky, and the office, city and phone lines quiet as a winter hive.

  I said, “It’s OK, Elizabeth. You don’t have to. Do you feel you have to be there?”

  “No, no. I’ve been here overnight most of the week and nothing has happened. It’s Friday here and Sabbath there and nothing will happen.” The phone hissed with our breathing. “I’ll be home before eleven.”

  “Is there anything I can get you?”

  “Sleeping pills,” she said, though her voice lulled like night-talking. “A very big bottle.”

  “That’s no way to talk.”

  “A joke, Ron.”

  I know, I wanted to say, but the words stuck; I could never bring myself to slight her, even to defend myself. “Any closer to a solution?”

  “We’ll talk later. There is no solution. There’s only goals and means. We don’t even know what the goals are now.”

  “So you’ll be home by eleven. I’ll have a pizza sent around then.”

  “No pepperoni.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t sleep after pepperoni.”

  27.

  I got home just after nine and the phone was ringing. It was Jim.

  “I expected your machine. I wasn’t sure any people lived there anymore.”

  “You might be right.”

  “Been working?”

  “Yeah. Elizabeth will actually come home tonight.”

  “That why you haven’t called me back?”

  He had left two messages that week. The weekend before I had screened calls down to Elizabeth, her work and my family. Even Jim I couldn’t deal with. “I can’t tell you what kind of week it’s been.”

  “Her work getting the better of you?”

  “Me and her. Been in all the papers.”

  “I never read news,
you know that. Are we invading Mexico?”

  “Mexico? No! Why?” I was afraid I’d said too much.

  “I got a postcard from Amy, remember the Oberlin girl two years b-b-back? She’s thumbing around Mexico. I would hate for something to happen to her.”

  “What’s new with the Tower?”

  “You don’t care about Amy?”

  “Jim, you don’t care about Amy. I’m supposed to?”

  “I still don’t want us to invade Mexico,” he laughed. “The swarm cells have come back.”

  “You busting ‘em?”

  “Nope. I don’t really have the time, with the spinach and peas coming in now. Do you want me to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They’re going to go.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “Where’s your head? Two weeks Sunday.”

  We stole a week from the queen. Jim released her Monday, his first message that week. Then it takes twenty-one days to raise a queen, another week for her nuptial flight. Second week of June before they go. “How’s the queen laying?”

  “Like her life depended on it. Her bees been testy, so maybe it does.”

  “They’re going to get sick if they don’t spread out.”

  “Bee plague, might spread to the other hives.”

  “Can you rig up some supers around the property? Maybe they’ll swarm into our own hives.”

  “I did that already. I told you.” The second message.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “You all right? Everything OK with Lizzie?”

  “It’s crazy here. Can’t tell you why yet. Can I call next week?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “I know.”

  “After nine. I’m in after nine.”

  28.

  Elizabeth came home right when the pizza arrived. I had had a couple of hours to plan how I was going to put the brakes on. I couldn’t do anything about my father. I couldn’t do anything about the bees. But at least I could find out what was happening with Elizabeth. I figured we’d eat the pizza, drink a beer or two, and I’d draw her a bath. Then while she soaked, she’d tell me. She loves when I shampoo her. So I’ll wash her hair and ask: What’s going on?

  But her first step in the door she says, “You won’t believe what’s been happening.”

  “What?”

  “Today I met with the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State and the deputy director of the CIA.”

  “Are you sure you can tell me this?”

  “What did you get?”

  The pizza. “Olives, onions and peppers.” I followed her into the bedroom. “Elizabeth, are you sure it’s all right to tell me about this?”

  “Is there someone else you would rather I tell?” she chirped. “I’m going to take a quick shower. Why don’t you put the pizza in the oven and come sit in the bathroom so I can tell you what’s been going on.”

  I know Elizabeth did not just walk in the door and assess my intentions. She’s brilliant, more brilliant than I can understand, but she can’t read my mind. She hardly even looked at me; her day, her week, her work filled her mind. Maybe she’s right about instinct. My desire to know and her desire to tell erupted together, independently. I put the pizza in the oven, journeyed into the steamy bathroom and perched on the sink.

  “I’m here.”

  She poked her head from behind the dusty-rose curtain. Suds dragged her reddish brown waves straight, but her green eyes sparkled underneath. They might have looked brighter because of the dark shadows under her eyes, part mascara, part exhaustion. She wrinkled her nose and pursed out a kiss.

  I said, “So the two Secretaries and a spook.”

  “See? That’s why I can tell you. You don’t really care.”

  “About you I do.”

  “Thanks” bubbled from under the stream. “It wasn’t just me, of course. The three of them met at Defense with military intelligence and the General’s aide. They had been meeting for a while before they called me in.”

  She shut off the spigot. I handed her her towel as she pushed back the curtain. I always feel unspeakable pride when I see her like this, naked and glistening. She wrapped the first towel round her head and held her hand out for the second.

  “You know that all week we have been struggling to figure out what went wrong. It has been rough on me, in particular. The General’s aide came up to me Tuesday night, I was reviewing the game results on military exercises in the Middle East, the computer printouts. ‘What are you doing here?’ he says. ‘It’s almost midnight.’

  “‘I don’t want to take these out of the safe room,’ I told him.

  “‘Why are you bothering to look at them in the first place?’ he asked me. ‘Haven’t you done enough already?’”

  “He said that?”

  “He’s a solid creep. He sometimes thinks we’re on different sides. That’s the problem with military training; there always has to be an enemy. In international relations, the ‘enemy’ is just another point of view, a different set of priorities. I sometimes think I spend all my time telling soldiers to stop scratching their finger with the trigger.

  “That’s what jazzed me about this meeting. The first thing the Secretary of Defense tells me is, ‘We have nothing to gain by military intervention.’

  “Secretary of State says, ‘We pulled our men out from the roads and the ports.’

  “And the man from CIA says, ‘We have almost certain information the General is not dead.’”

  “He’s not? That’s great!”

  “It’s not exactly great. They still have him. We think.” She exchanged her towel for the kimono and led the way into the kitchen. “Do we have any beer?”

  “I picked up Pilsner Urquell. Seemed right for pizza.”

  “I want.” She sat on one of the stools at the counter. That’s where we have coffee in the morning and take-home leftovers. And pizza. The stools spin. Elizabeth pushed herself back and forth, stretching her bare feet into the spin. “So now we need another plan. Military solutions will prompt them to kill him. From their perspective, taking the General just evened the odds. If we threaten, they kill him. Now, if we want to negotiate, we both have fallback positions.”

  “Those people sound crazy.” I pulled the pizza out of the oven. The cardboard box had just begun to blacken at its edges. “The whole thing sounds crazy.”

  She looked at me like I tried to not understand. “But you see, at least they want to negotiate. This is good.”

  “I thought you told me last week they wanted to negotiate. And then they took him.”

  “They didn’t like the terms of the talks. Who can blame them?”

  “So what happens now?”

  “This is the great part. We need a military presence without the threat of one. Someone who can figure out firsthand what it would take to win what we thought we had won before. But it can’t be someone in a uniform, or even someone who looks like they belong in a uniform.”

  The pizza steamed as I separated one piece from the next. I slid the slice onto a glass plate. Elizabeth raised the plate above her head, so she could look at the pizza from below. I poured her beer into one of the uneven blue glasses she’d gotten in Mexico. I took a piece of pizza for myself. “Why no uniform?”

  “The way they think our government works, we have an army and we have civilians. Civilians negotiate, armies invade. They don’t want to negotiate with invaders.”

  “So now it’s out of your hands, right? Over at the State Department?”

  “Yes and no.” She edged the tip of the pizza over the rim of the plate and held the plate up to her mouth. “I’ve been temporarily assigned to the State Department. I’m going to Lebanon as a part of the delegation.”

  She took a bite from her pizza. I took a bite from my lip.
>
  29.

  Elizabeth didn’t leave until Monday, but we didn’t have the weekend to relax together. She needed to spend half of Saturday being briefed on State Department priorities and procedures and half of Sunday at a meeting to decide, as she told it to me, “why the hell we want to talk to those creeps anyway.” That was the first time I can remember not having to ask Elizabeth what she meant when she told me about her work.

  The remainder of the weekend we shopped. I had never shopped with Elizabeth, not really. Grocery store runs, sure, and once to a clothes store when she wanted me to perk up my wardrobe and we ended up with a few ties and shirts I wear to please her. That I make more than my father does pleases me, but I’m still a civil servant, and I can’t be spreading my money so thinly.

  I grant we didn’t have the time to comparison shop, but I don’t think Elizabeth would have even if she had nothing better to do. We went to a store which doesn’t advertise and which has no sign on it. Women less beautiful than Elizabeth modeled clothes for her. She didn’t look through racks, but through books of very recent 10 x 12 photographs. The older women who advised her brought us tea and cookies and called me Mister and her Miss. She ordered three dresses, with certain variations from what the photos showed; the store, salon, boutique — I don’t even know what to call it — had her measurements on file. The ladies qualmed a little, but finally agreed to deliver the dresses by Monday morning. To my eye, the clothes didn’t look much different from what hung on the discount racks Elizabeth disdained, clothes you pay a tenth the price for and walk out with that day.

  At least the shoe stores priced their wares where you could see. Elizabeth spent $500 there for three pairs, a flat sandal, a heeled one and black pumps. All I could think, carrying her bags through the familiar drugstore aisles as Elizabeth picked up stockings and Q-tips, was: That’s almost $100 a shoe! Doesn’t make sense, of course. Only unfortunates wear one shoe.

  We came home exhausted, but forced ourselves to study. I felt unutterably alien cuddled under the covers with Elizabeth. Not only was this woman jetting halfway around the world to perform tasks which made no sense to me, she would do it with luggage valued beyond what my mother made in a year at the job my father beat her for having. Was I alien because I had come so far from home? Or because I could not recognize home, even lying in its arms?