The Hornback Alligator Belt Read online

  * * * * *

  At the coffee shop Ralph learned that Becky’s father passed away eight years earlier. Mr. Shapiro had mercifully been spared the humiliation of his daughter’s precipitous fall from grace. A younger brother, Joel, showed no aptitude for kosher foods, retail or much of anything else. Ralph vaguely remembered Joel as pampered and indulged - the ben ha’bachoor, Jewish first-born son, who stood to inherit the family fortunes, but as Becky explained over a cup of mocha latte cappuccino, the ben ha’bachoor proved a feckless ne’er-do-well who flitted aimlessly from one ill-suited job to the next. So much for the Shapiro family dynasty.

  “Before we go indoors there’s something I want to show you,” Becky announced when they arrived back at the house. The late afternoon light had faded to murky gray as she led the way to the back yard. The November weather had turned unseasonably warm with temperatures hovering in the low sixties. Behind a stand of diminutive box elders that resembled a mishmash of shrubs rather than bona fide trees a rickety Langstroth beehive was propped up on cinder blocks.

  Originally painted eggshell white, the rectangular boxes, which were peeling profusely, exuded an aura of profound neglect. A handful of bees milled about the landing strip. “Eight years ago Howie comes home from work one day and tells me that a broker at the firm is an avid beekeeper. The guy manages upwards of a hundred hives. In addition to collecting honey he rents the bees out each spring to local cranberry bog farmers, who need crops pollinated.”

  “Howie buys a bee suit, calfskin gloves, a smoker… al the glitzy paraphernalia plus a thirty-thousand-strong plywood box of Italian honeybees.” As Becky explained it, the bees seemed gentle enough, energetic and spirited. Every day they abandoned the nest to forage for nectar in nearby fields and by late June filled the hive with ten frames of golden syrup.

  “Howie pulled a couple of frames from the hive,” Becky continued. “He claimed that the bees had more than enough honey to suit their needs and that if we didn’t take preventative measures, the colony might be inclined to swarm.” Bending over, she cleared a handful of weeds obstructing the mouth of the hive. “He carried the frames into the kitchen, mashed the wax into a soggy lump and ran it through a mesh strainer.”

  “So you had plenty of honey that first season?” Ralph noted.

  “Enough to last six months or more,” Becky confirmed. “But Howie was obsessed. All summer long, he kept pilfering from the hive. By Labor Day, the bees were lucky if they had twenty, lousy pounds of honey to last through a New England winter.”

  “How much would they normally need?”

  “Ninety minimum.” “Did I mention that, from when they first arrived, the bees were an utterly contented lot? Becky made a wry face. “Once they caught on that my husband was playing fast and loose with their honey stores, their blissful mood changed. Bamboozled, flimflammed, conned out of their hard labor, they sensed that the gathering season was too far gone to recoup the loss and became wickedly hostile.”

  “Their fate was sealed.” Ralph anticipated her thoughts. As Becky explained things, by mid-August Howie was persona no grata. If the stocky man with the salt and pepper goatee ventured within fifty feet of the hive, the vindictive bees chased him off with homicidal rage.

  The winter that Howie became a beekeeper was particularly harsh with several nor’easters back to back and a protracted icy cold spell that petered out in early May. The bees starved and then froze. “When we removed the top cover the day after Mother’s Day, it was not a pretty sight. A mountain of moldy carcasses… that’s what we found.”

  “Howie blustered, ‘I’ll spruce things up, replace the damaged frames and order a new box of bees.’” “He did clean things up a bit but never got around to ordering bees.”

  “He didn’t replenish the hive?”

  “No,” Becky confirmed. “His interest in beekeeping never extended beyond the first failed effort.”

  Ralph gestured at the insects flitting about the entrance to the hive. “I don’t understand.”

  “Seven years the hive remained empty. Year after year nothing. The day Howie dropped dead, a swarm of feral bees found its way here. Given how he had mistreated both his clients and the honeybees, I viewed their arrival as a cosmic joke.”

  “Or an omen,” Ralph quipped. He gestured at the twin boxes stacked together. “How much honey have the feral bees gathered?”

  “I never took a drop, not a single frame, so they should have more than enough.” Becky made a disagreeable face. “But it won’t make a bit of difference because, when the bank officials walk the property next week and discovers the hive, they’ll call an exterminator.”

  “Hadn’t thought of that.” Ralph shook his head in disgust.

  “Sometimes in the late afternoon I would come out here and watch the bees… their comings and goings.” Becky spoke in a matter-of-fact, unruffled tone. The middle-aged woman didn’t bother to look at Ralph, directing her remarks at the shaggy hemlock trees on the far side of the lawn. “Honeybees are very community-minded. The welfare of the colony trumps all other considerations. They don’t know from hedge funds or sub-prime realty.”

  The sting of reason

  The splash of tears

  The northern and the southern hemispheres

  Love emerges

  And it disappears…

  The nostalgic verse from a Paul Simon tune flickered through his mind as Becky led the way through the darkness back to the house.

  * * * * *

  “Meet my former spouse.” With a flick of her head, she indicated a copper urn nestled on the fireplace mantle. “Howie would have preferred a cemetery plot, but prematurely cashed in his life insurance policy.” As though a constraining presence had to be dispensed with, Becky relocated her husband’s ashes to a cardboard box labeled ‘cutlery and dining room furnishings’.

  She did not immediately return to where Ralph was standing. Rather, the woman studied the crumpled box with an opaque smile. Dropping down on her haunches, she undid the flaps and removed the urn. Uncapping the metal lid, she held the contents under his nose. “What do you see?” The sardonic smile deepened.

  “Chalky dust,” Ralph replied.

  Becky clapped the lip down with an irreverent thud. “The third time I caught him cheating, I threatened divorce. Howie begged me not to leave. The other woman… she was an aberration, a momentary lapse of good judgment.”

  “We went for counseling. After six months, the therapist took me aside. He says, ‘Your husband’s a phallic character disorder. People with phallic character disorders are narcissistic, opportunistic, self-indulgent… Hope for the best. Plan for the worse.’”

  “There’s no therapy… medication?”

  “The psychologist,” Becky continued, “explained that the condition was structural.”

  “Strange choice of words,” Ralph interjected.

  “Structural,” she elaborated, “like a cornerstone or load bearing wall in a thirty-story high rise.” She cradled the urn in both hands. Becky smiled bleakly, a sad, disheartened broken expression of her current circumstances. “When I married Howie, he seemed such a swell guy.” Retracing her steps, she sealed her husband’s remains away in the cardboard box, running several beads of masking tape over the top for good measure.

  Ralph placed a hand on her shoulder. "Come spend a week with me for old-time sake. We can wipe the slate clean… a new beginning. If nothing comes of it, go live with your daughter in California. No one need know."

  Becky took a deep breath and let the air out sharply. “You want Romeo and Juliette?” The tone was more acerbic now. “We’re too old for that adolescent mush.”

  The single bulb drenched the room in a dreary pall. Covered by a moss green comforter, a Steinway, baby grand piano rested near the bay window. "Still play?"

  "Not in years."

  Ralph recalled a rather eccentric interpretation of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, the melody in the right hand overpowered by boomi
ng arpeggios that transformed the lilting, gossamer tune into a bombastic riot that had more in common with roaring twenties ragtime than classical music. “You still wear those outlandish belts?”

  “Which belts?”

  “The ones fashioned from alligator skin.”

  Becky’s features dissolved in an impish grin. “Not in years. They’re passé. I’ve moved on to other, equally garish accessories.” She said nothing else for the better part of a minute. "I treated you badly, always putting myself first, and now you’re willing to settle for the dribs and drabs of a squandered life."

  "I don’t see it that way."

  She lowered her eyes. In the hallway a Kieninger grandfather clock recessed in a quarter-sawn, white oak cabinet stroked the hour. Edging closer, Becky placed three fingers on his chest, maintaining a safe but manageable distance. "A week for old-time sake?” she repeated the earlier offer. “How about a package deal?” Her fingers finally came to rest flat on his flannel shirt.

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “I need a safe haven… a sanctuary for the bees, either your place or someplace where no one will cause them harm.”

  Ralph’s brain, which had temporarily shut down with the offbeat ultimatum, kicked into overdrive. He turned away, went and stood in front of the clock. “The mouth of the hive could be sealed shut with sheets of crumpled newspaper.” He directed his words at the oak paneling. “Other than the front entrance, are there any other openings?”

  “No, just the one.”

  His mind shifted back and forth in rhythm with the brass pendulum. “The best time to move a beehive is…” He left the sentence dangling.

  “At night once the temperature drops, they retreat to the interior and cluster together for warmth.”

  “Yes, but it’s not cold out,” he countered, “and the insects are still active.”

  After a brief silence, Becky replied, “Bees are cold-blooded Turn on the air conditioner and let the car cool down. They won’t be able to fly.”

  “Or sting,” Ralph added rounding off her thought.” He returned to where she was standing and placed his lips alongside her ear. “I’ll block off the hive entrance, and then I’ll back the car up alongside the box elders. In the meanwhile, why don’t you grab a toothbrush and pack an overnight case.

  Becky’s nostrils gently flared. The eyelids drooped to half-mast. “I won’t be long locking things up.”