The Bee People

My mother’s death was neither shocking nor terribly sad. The cirrhosis had been a slow but ravenous thing, devouring the strength from her body the way a vulture might strip a deer carcass to bone. My mother too had been a skeleton by the end, a cloudy-eyed rib cage lying listlessly in hospice. The grief of losing her had been all but eaten away by the time the nurse called to deliver the news. It felt like mercy. It was June. 

We left for Nott’s Lake early. The late morning sun filtered through the trees in flashes of shadow and gold, and as we drove I imagined the carousel lamp she had bought for me as a child, the warm incandescent animals circulating my bedroom walls, projected through the paper shade. I looked over at Dan, the shifting sunlight dappling the side of his face. He caught my eye and stroked his thumb over my knee where he rested his hand. “You’re gonna be ok,” he said. 

“I know.” I inhaled deeply and nodded, looking back out the window. “Yeah, I know. I’m just tired.” 

“It’s ok to be sad, Andy.” 

I shrugged. “I was sad watching her drink herself to death. And then I was sad when she got sick, and I was sad when she got sicker, and I was sad when she stopped taking her meds… I’ve been sad.” Lions in the trees. Elephants of leaves and light, trunks raised. “The whole thing is just so fucking sad, and I’m just—I’m just tired.” 

“Well,” he said, which is what Dan says when he doesn't know what else to say. Dan, who loved my mother just as much as I did, and who often liked her more; who sat with her in bed during our final visits, his arm around her tiny shoulders as he coaxed her into calling out the answers to Jeopardy! while I snuck away to talk to her nurse: 

"You’re sure there’s nothing else we can do?"

"Not if she won’t take her medication." 

"What about a transplant?"

"She already said doesn’t want one." 

"But what if we could find a donor? "

"Some people prefer to take things on their own terms, honey. Some people are just ready for it to end." 

………

“Can we stay at a motel tonight?” I asked. “I don’t want to go to the house.” “If we can find one, sure.” 

I laughed humorlessly. “Expecting a rush?” 

“I mean there could be tourists or something,” he said with a shrug. 

“Tourists go to Lake Placid.” 

“I mean. There’s backpackers and stuff.” 

I reached over and ran my fingers over the short blond stubble on his cheek. “Nobody’s going to Nott’s Lake but us, babe.” 

“And the bee people,” he reminded me. 

“And the bee people,” I said. “Them too.”

……… 

The motel was a wooden building, the red paint faded to rust from the sun. The lobby windows were thrust open to let in the breeze, sticky with the perfume of flowers. Gardenia and bergamot. Everywhere, the hum of insects, millions strong, buzzing and chirping and crying in the trees. 

We pulled open the warped screen door and a bell just above the frame signaled our arrival to the bored teenager at the front desk. She rested her chin on her knees, which were drawn all the way up to her chest and over which she had pulled an oversized high school football sweatshirt despite the heat. She scrolled absently through her phone, tucked inside a cotton cocoon. 

“If you’re here for the baptism we’re all booked,” she said blandly without so much as a glance in our direction. 

“We’re, uh, not here for a baptism,” I said and looked out at the parking lot, which was empty except Dan’s silver Corolla, now coated in dust from the road. 

“Oh,” said the girl. Her eyes flicked up towards us and she looked us up and down. “Is there somewhere we can try next?” Dan says. “We’ve already been driving for hours and we’re kind of exhausted.” 

“Don’t worry about it, we got rooms open.” She unfolded herself and hopped down from the chair. Satisfied that we had passed some sort of test, she gave us a gap-toothed smile. “Sorry. We just uh. Y’know. We get a lot of weirdos,” she said apologetically. 

“For a baptism?” he asked. 

The girl hesitated. “You guys are from out of town, right?” 

“Kind of,” I said. “We’re here a lot. To see my mom. I grew up here.” 

“Oh. Then you already know about the bee people.” She waved her hand dismissively and went to pull down a key from the wall behind her. “My boss doesn’t want us to say nothing about them. He thinks it’ll scare guests away.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway.” 

“So, what, they’re having a baptism now? What does that even mean?” he asked. 

“I think technically it’s like, a lot of baptisms?” she said. “A bunch of them just go and walk into the lake and like, sing, I guess. It’s a whole thing.” 

“Jesus,” I said. 

“Honestly I’m surprised your mom never said nothing about it,” she said. “They’ve been doing them a couple times a year now. People’ve been freaking out about it.” And then she said, “It’s fifty-five for the night.” 

“Yeah, well. My mom’s not much of a people person. She doesn’t stay up on that stuff I guess.” I pulled the cash out of my wallet and handed it to her. It was easier to pretend to this teenager that my mother was still alive, rather than handing over my loss with a handful of crumpled twenties. Easier to portray her as she was in life, avoiding neighbors in the grocery store, smoking a cigarette discontentedly on the front porch. I saw Dan looking at me from the corner of my eye, but he didn’t say anything. I tried not to make eye contact. 

The girl shrugged and handed me my change from the register. “Honestly I don’t get why they don’t want us to say anything. I think it’d be good for business.” 

“What makes you say that?”

The girl scoffed and settled back into her chair. “I mean, you watch TV, right?” she said. “Everybody loves a cult.”