Jewelweed Read online

  “When can you leave here?” he asked. “Is your car outside? I have some fruit for you. It’s so good to see you, Bee. I have so much to tell you. Where are you living? Do you remember a man in Iowa near Mason City—an older fellow with a beard? You’ll never believe this, but I was there. I stood under the tree. Can you believe it? And the old man, he walked through the rows of corn carrying a meal you’d taught him to make when the timing chain blew in your car. You sent the recipe. I was there. I ate the lunch. See, I pulled off the road because the corn grew so flat and uniform and straight for miles and miles. It seemed like it would never end, and I couldn’t remember ever being young and I thought—”

  “Slow down, Natie.”

  “It’s so good to see you, Bee. Do you remember me?”

  “Of course I do, dummy. What do you think?”

  “When can you get out of here?”

  “I’ve got another ten minutes before I close up.”

  “Is your car outside?”

  “I don’t need to drive. I’ve got feet, you know.” As evidence, she lifted one behind her and looked over her shoulder at it. Again the dimple winked at him, an almost-flirtatious beckoning, the come-hither nod of a gatekeeper opening the door, the effortless charm his older cousin had always wielded, subduing him without effort, comforting him with the protective wing of her approval.

  Nate couldn’t look away. He rediscovered the old Bee in every part of her, rushing from one view to the next like someone returning to the place they had once lived and hurrying from room to room. Yes, I see what you’ve done with it, and I also remember when the table used to sit against the wall over there, and the back door rattled when the wind blew. . . .

  “Then I’ll drive.”

  “I can’t go anywhere, Natie. I’ve got to get supper for Mom.”

  “Yes, of course, of course you do. How is Aunt Nadine?”

  “About the same as she’s been for several years—since her stroke. If I don’t sit with her she won’t eat.”

  “She lives with you?”

  “Of course she does, Natie. What did you think? Mom had a stroke.”

  “I thought Rufus might be looking after her.”

  Bee horse-snorted at this suggestion, puffing air out of her nostrils in a time-honored, species-jumping expression of scorn. “Rufus can’t take care of his electric bill, let alone anyone else.”

  Bee had always illustrated her feelings with physical expressions borrowed from the animal world. When Nate was young, he was a little frightened by this uncanny ability, but he had learned to accept it. Now he cherished it. For some reason creaturely mannerisms seemed to be more available to her than they were to most other people, and he felt a glimmer of childlike awe in the presence of her clearly superior skills.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No you won’t. Mom gets mixed up about when she’s living—now or then. Having you there would tip her off-center. I’ll need a lot of time to prepare her.”

  “I’m in no hurry,” he lied, and Bee knew it.

  “Look, Natie, go outside. I’ll come as soon as I finish a few things.”

  Then she put a berry in her mouth, bit into it, chewed thoughtfully, and took another.

  “Hmmmm. Where did you get these?”

  “Michigan.”

  She took a third and handed the basket to Nate. “Take these with you,” she said, looking out of the corners of her eyes in comic mimicry of a wary animal. “If Gladys comes in there won’t be any left. You can’t find good raspberries anymore. Go on now. Go on.”

  Nate walked out. Too pleased with himself to get into the pickup, he walked around the parking lot and inspected a cement mixer in need of a registration sticker, then considered a green refuse bin next to the warehouse. A shallow pool of water lay between, an oil-film rainbow greasing one end. Nate walked around it three times and went back to his truck.

  When Bee came out, she sat next to him in his pickup. While she ate raspberries, he drove the eight blocks to her gray bungalow with green trim and parked on the road in front. The small house was patrolled on all sides by an army of lawn ornaments, and Nate remembered how his aunt Nadine’s yard had always looked like that. She was a collector, and everywhere she went she found something to go nicely with something she already had. She never tired of stopping and looking, and as a result no one ever wanted to go anywhere with her.

  He glanced quickly at his cousin. A fondly remembered shame threatened to make him blush. “Take the berries,” he said. “I’ll go over to the tavern and come back after an hour or so. Could we go somewhere together then?”

  “Which tavern?”

  “The closest one. Can I at least carry the peaches up to the porch for you?”

  “No. Mom might see you. She usually goes to bed right after supper. You can bring them then, though I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all of them. They don’t last very long, Natie. What were you thinking? A whole case?” Again the dimple winked at him from her chin.

  Nate watched Bee get out of the truck. She hurried through the lawn ornaments and he observed the way she walked—a unique uplift in her step, a midstride bounce, almost a gambol. Everything about her possessed an unanticipated exuberance.

  At the mostly empty tavern, Nate drank a dark beer and contemplated his own eagerness for time to pass. Fifteen minutes later he bought another beer, and the man behind the counter asked, “Is your last name Bookchester?”

  Nate nodded.

  “I thought I remembered you.”

  Nate said nothing, so the man continued. “You made deliveries years back. And you’ve got a son named Blake—”

  “He’s in prison,” said Nate, completing the thought for him.

  “Bad luck, that. Good kid. He used to live around here—he and the Workhouse girl.”

  “I guess he did at that.”

  Nate carried his beer to a booth by the window, where he sat down and watched the evening cast shadows along the street. When Bee walked by, he went out to meet her. She’d changed into a sweatshirt, faded jeans, and tennis shoes.

  “That didn’t take long,” he said.

  “I already had supper made, just heated it up. Mom ate a couple bites, then went to bed and fell asleep. It’s one of the things she does well, dear thing. Look, Natie, maybe you could help me put up those peaches. I worry about leaving Mom home alone at night. We’ll have to be quiet, but the jars are already clean and I have all the lids we need.”

  “Nothing I’d rather do,” said Nate, grinning like a jack-o’-lantern.

  They walked back to the bungalow, and Nate carried the fruit through the menagerie of ceramic gnomes, dwarves, cherubs, bears, rabbits, squirrels, wizards, giant mice, and red rhinoceroses. “I didn’t want all these dumb things in my yard,” said Bee. “But they came anyway.”

  Inside, Bee reminded Nate that they had to be very quiet in order to keep from waking her mother. Then she rustled through the cupboards, looking for pans: an old black-and-white-speckled canning kettle with thin sides, a smaller midnight-blue baked-enamel dual-handled pot for blanching, a stainless-steel pot with a long handle for the sugar syrup and lemon juice, and a saucepan for the jar lids. Climbing onto the counter to reach above the cabinets, she handed down twelve blue-sealers, quart-sized. Nate set them on the counter and they cluttered together in antique conformity, shining, bulging, their round mouths gaping open.

  Nate sharpened paring knives on the stone. Bee said they didn’t need sharp knives for peaches. Dull ones worked better. Much better. Nate shook his head, disagreeing.

  They half-filled the speckled canning kettle with tap water, centered it over the hottest back burner, and put the lid on. Nate slid a stack of yellow-gold canning lids with red rubber rings into several inches of water in the saucepan, and put it on the other small back burner. Bee took down a sack of sugar from the cupboard, and Nate found a fresh lemon in the refrigerator. He cut it in half, testing the edge of the knife. Bee mashed the pulp
against the ribbed nose cone in a glass juicer. Like a struck match, the pungent citrus smell came alive in the air between them. She poured the juice into a measuring cup.

  “You don’t need to measure it,” whispered Nate. “It’s just to keep the color.”

  “I’m older than you and I know what it’s for,” whispered Bee. “And I always measure.”

  They poured four inches of water into the smaller pot and set it on the front burner. Nate set the crate of peaches on the counter and they inspected them for rot and bruises. Their skins were fuzzy, firm, and fragrant—a little larger than tennis balls. Bee bit into one and a stream of peach juice ran down her chin. She stopped the drip with the back of her hand and handed the peach to Nate. He bit into it, felt his teeth scrape against the pit, and his mouth filled with flavor. He bit off another piece and fed the last dripping piece to Bee.

  Then they rinsed off their hands under the faucet and went back to inspecting the rest of the peaches in the crate.

  They talked in muted voices about relatives and places in their memories, circling each other in ever-narrowing spirals until they found the courage to speak of the real things near the bottom of the reservoir, moth-souls circling the Holy Flame.

  “After your wife ran off, you stopped coming around, Natie. No one ever heard from you,” said Bee, peering into the scalding water.

  “I know it.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nate. He stepped onto the back porch to open a noisy tray of ice and dump the cubes, clattering, into a red plastic bowl. Looking through the screen, he noticed the squadron of lawn ornaments again. A barred owl cried wildly from a nearby tree, adding more insanity to the scene.

  “Did you think I gave a hell-hello whether your marriage worked out?” asked Bee when he came back inside.

  “I hoped not, but you didn’t come to the wedding.”

  “I know it,” said Bee, turning away from him.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I just didn’t.” Silence. “All I could ever think about was you out there driving in that old truck of yours. I never knew where you were or how you were doing,” she said.

  “The water’s ready,” said Nate, staring into the scalding pan. He had read somewhere that when water came to a boil there was a transitional state between liquid and gas in which the binding energy of water molecules was released in the form of light, causing the steam just above the water to appear slightly luminescent. Since then he’d always watched for it, and tonight in Bee’s kitchen he was sure he could see it. He tried to get his cousin to see it as well.

  “Red rubbish,” she whispered. “If that were true, I would have noticed it a long time ago.”

  They lowered two peaches into the boiling water, where they jiggled around on the bottom of the pot, bumping into each other. Streams of air bubbles rose around them. After one minute they scooped the peaches out with a slotted spoon and placed them in the bowl of ice water. Then they peeled the skins off, leaving the peach meat round and slippery. The kitchen filled with a humid fruity smell.

  In the saucepan on the back burner, the yellow-gold lids rattled like a confined earthquake.

  The kitchen grew warmer and warmer. Nate and Bee took off their sweatshirts. Bee’s arms were round and firm, pale near the shoulder. Perspiration dotted her forehead. Nate could smell her and a cherished shame darkened inside him again. His heart beat so fast it began to cloud his vision. He came up behind her and stood close. He knew he shouldn’t, but he placed his hands on either side of her waist.

  His fingers and palms fit against her as if they had been sculpted from the same material. A compelling hollow space between her hips and spine made him feel as if he were grafted onto her. Every contour beckoned him to follow. He drew her back toward him and pressed his face into her neck. The taste of her skin leaped up inside him. She gently pulled his hands away and they stood for a moment like birds drying their wings.

  “If we open that door now there’s no telling what might come out,” said Bee. She stepped to the sink and placed her hands in the soapy water.

  “I’m sorry,” said Nate, her taste still living inside him.

  “Don’t be.”

  Nate stepped closer. His passion made it hard to think, hard to be sure he understood what she meant, hard to know what she wanted, and impossible to know what he should do. He’d carried this same desire inside him most of his life. And now he was unsure if he really wanted to act on it. He feared falling out of balance with himself, of losing the Bee he knew. He wanted more of her, yes, but there was danger in that as well. He also felt somehow complete in his yearning, grateful for the moment, loyal to the present scene, needing nothing yet filled to bursting with his dark longing.

  “People say Blake is getting out of prison soon,” she said without turning around.

  “He’ll be out in two weeks,” said Nate, moving to the counter and cutting up the peeled peaches. “But I’ll believe it when I see it. So far, they’ve done everything they can to keep him inside.”

  “Where’s he going to live?”

  “With me.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “Good. I feel good about that.”

  “I can only imagine what this has been like for you, Natie.”

  “Everything will work out, as long as he stays away from that Workhouse girl.”

  “Dart?”

  “If it wasn’t for her he never would have been in trouble, and he wouldn’t be in prison.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She’s from a rotten family. It was her fault.”

  “You might be wrong about her, Natie. I worked with her for several years at the plant.”

  “I’m not wrong,” said Nate. “I know I’m not. God, I missed you, Bee.”

  “Slice those thinner, Natie. What are you thinking?”

  “Why didn’t you get married, Bee?”

  “I guess no one ever asked,” she laughed, drawing two more peaches out of the scalding water with the slotted spoon and placing them in the ice water.

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Well, those who did weren’t the right ones. I always knew I’d never marry.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m just strange.” As if to demonstrate, Bee stepped out of one of her shoes and danced, pivoting around on her left foot, kicking up her right leg behind her.

  Nate joined in, dancing in the opposite direction, twirling his paring knife in the air. To his surprise, he knew the steps, understood the dance. Then they stopped, laughing self-consciously, looking into each other’s eyes like two suns in the same solar system.

  “We’d better get those jars cooking,” said Nate.

  “Here,” said Bee, “measure out the sugar. And try not to spill. I despise ants.”

  “I never spill,” said Nate.

  “Right,” scoffed Bee. “You used to spread your peanut butter with a fork.”

  One by one, she lowered the canning jars into the boiling pot on the stove.

  “What’s going on out here, Beulah?” asked her mother, following her aluminum walker into the kitchen.

  “Mom, I thought you were asleep.”

  “I heard someone,” she said, scowling, staring at Bee’s bare foot. “Natie, what are you doing here? Does your mother know you’re over here? You’re always hanging around Beulah. It’s late and she has work to do. Go home now.”

  Nate turned toward a shriveled face he’d recognize anywhere. She looked like his father before he died.

  “He’s helping me can peaches, Mom.”

  “Stop making excuses for him, Beulah. No one said anything about this to me. I’ll call his mother. You two are always up to something.”

  “Here, let’s get you back to bed.”

  “As soon as I turn my back you two start up something. What a mess this kitchen is. Your father will be furious when he gets home.”

  “Not too likely
, Mom.”

  “What’s Natie going to do when that wife of his takes off? Because she will, I can feel it. She’s not the sticking-around kind. Her whole family is cut from the wrong cloth.”

  “Mother.”

  “And it wouldn’t surprise me if that boy of Nate’s ends up in the slammer, either. Not the way he’s going. That boy’s going bad, I tell you.”

  “Mom, this is embarrassing.”

  “I’ll show you embarrassing, young lady. Where’s your other shoe? Put it on right now.”

  “Mom!”

  “Natie, what are you doing over here? Do you know what time it is?”

  “I’ll be going soon, Aunt Nadine,” said Nate.

  “Well, the sooner the better,” said Nadine, as Bee led her into the other room.

  By the time Bee came back, Nate had filled the sterilized jars with sliced peaches. They poured in the sugar-honey-lemon syrup, wiped the mouths down, and fastened on lids. Then they lowered the jars back into the cooker.

  “Sorry about that,” said Bee. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  “She reminds me so much of Dad in his last years—an old guard dog keeping the moon out of the yard.”

  Finally, they ate all the peaches and syrup that wouldn’t fit into jars, with ice cream. Nate watched Bee guiding her spoon into her mouth, listened to the purled sound of her swallowing. When the timer went off, they took the sealers out of the cooker and set them on the counter.

  After the first lid snapped, Nate stood up and said he should leave.