Page 36 of Upstate

“What’s the matter, Hazel?”

“Nothing.” I pursed my lips for a kiss. “I love you, is all.”

“I know you do, baby.” You pillowed my head on your breast and yawned. “I know you do.”

I should have told you long ago what a true friend Lulu’s been to me—to us—all these years. She accepted us for who we were back when our lives depended on hiding what was in our hearts. I’m sorry now I kept that to myself.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, darling, love, Hazel

Chapter 18

“Here you go,” I say, handing Wren the latte that’s become our morning ritual over these past three weeks.

“Thanks, Audrey. So, what do you think?”

“I feel like I’m in a magazine.” I look around in wonder. “It’s even more beautiful in person than in the pictures you posted.”

Wren has used his skills as a set designer to transform my worn-out living room into a showcase. The pine floors have been scrubbed and waxed to a gorgeous pumpkin glow. The walls, crown molding, window casements, and mullions, too, have all been painted the same sophisticated shade of grayish white (“Ammonite,” Wren told me, “from Farrow & Ball.”) A barrister’s bookcase, wood polished and glass sparkling, holds an artful arrangement of old books, covers torn off to expose sewn spines. The Rookwood vase, now sprouting birch branches instead of paintbrushes, is centered atop the restored Quaker table. Shelves flanking the fireplace display a curated selection of art books and found objects alongside jars of golden comb honey, bottled syrup from my neighbor’s sugar bush, and black-glazed earthenware on commission from a local potter. Above the mantel, four framed botanical prints are hung in a perfect square. Two high-back Windsor chairs, their ebony spindles a sharp contrast to the white walls, are angled toward the hearth, in which antique bowling pins stand unexpectedly at attention.

“Thanks,” Wren says. With the window sashes raised and the length of the room between us, he drops his mask to savor the coffee. If anything, the bee stings did him good. His face is smoother than ever, his complexion enhanced by long days of hard work. “Let’s hope all our outreach generates some interest.”

While Wren was painting and scrubbing and polishing, Aisha has been growing the bookshop’s social media presence. She’s posted every day, highlighting unique books, sharing visitor selfies, and reaching out to her grandmother’s followers. Last night, she announced that today would be the official grand reopening of Red Barn Books. For his part, Wren contacted the editor of a lifestyle magazine out of Saratoga Springs and a writer at Albany’s Times Union who’s been putting out a column on Covid-safe things to do in the Hudson Valley.

“I’m sure it’ll be a success, Wren. What you’ve done is amazing. You’re amazing.”

“Aw, shucks, Audrey.”

For every piece of polished furniture Wren’s put on display, he’s got three more in the workshop ready to replace whatever is bought. The pop-up will close when there’s no more inventory to sell, at which point we’ll split the profits. Whether that’s one week from now or next month, I have no idea, but whenever it comes, the payday will be welcome.

My salary from the college still appears in my bank account every two weeks, allowing me to feel flush for about a minute until I start adding up expenses. The cost of Aisha’s internship credits. The utility bills and grocery shopping and inevitable trips to the hardware store. The two hundred and fifty dollars I paid an expert from Bees-R-Best to remove the insects in the barn loft and cut twenty pounds of honey-soaked comb from the rafters. The money I shelled out to the propane company for a new tank filled with gas so I could use the stove to boil the water to process the honey. The port-a-potty I’m renting so people spending time at Red Barn Books have somewhere to go. The credit card processing gizmo whose use triggers a 5 percent cut from every sale. The fifty dollars a week I’ve been leaving in the mailbox for Joe Sprague—along with passive-aggressive notes asking him not to spray the moss or mow down the wildflowers or run over snakes with his tractor. The pounds of coffee beans and varieties of milk I’ve stocked up on since taking Wren’s advice about offering customers cappuccinos and lattes. Then there’s the money I’m supposed to be setting aside to replace the hot water heater and cover next year’s property taxes and insurance bills. I throw whatever’s left at my credit card debt, barely budging the balance. I don’t let myself think about what will happen after my salary ceases at the end of August.

“Finished with that?” I ask, pointing to Wren’s mug.

“Oh, sure, thanks.” He brings it to me, then steps back, nodding approvingly at my outfit. “You look great today.”

Earlier that morning, I endured a freezing shower while shampooing and conditioning and shaving, too. I even blow dried my hair, which hasn’t been cut in months. Having finally visited the village laundromat, I had plenty of clothes to choose from. Channeling Wren’s discerning eye, I decided on a black sleeveless shift that I paired with strappy sandals and gold earrings that complement my claddagh ring.

“Thanks,” I say. “I figured it was about time I made an effort. After all, I have invited guests coming, too.”

“Oh really, like who?”

“Sandra Vance, the massage therapist, is bringing some people she knows, and Aisha’s grandmother is coming to stream a segment of the Cozy Cozy Lady from my barn. Joe’s wife, Nancy, promised me yet another pie. Rhonda posted a comment that she’ll be here, and so did Eric Anderson.”

“You invited Eric?” Wren’s tone is so exaggerated, I worry I’ve made some kind of mistake.

“Was that wrong?”

“No, of course not.” Wren combs back his silver hair with nervous fingers. “I just didn’t expect to see him today.”

In the foyer, I touch the velvet rope Wren tied across the front stairs as if my old house were a museum. Shutting the door to the dining room behind me, I set the mugs in the kitchen sink, then snake an extension cord through the window before lugging the espresso machine out to a table I put on the side porch. There’s a cooler out here, too, that I stock with bags of ice and bottles of water and quarts of milk: almond, oat, and cow. Worried I’ll be too busy to manage coffee orders today, I took Sandra’s suggestion and reached out to an unemployed barista from the village’s closed café who’s agreed to staff the espresso machine in exchange for cash tips.

With everything set at the house, I head out to open the shop, pausing as I cross the lawn to observe my bees. Though I banished the hive that remained in the loft, I’m glad, now, that the swarm settled in the oak where I can watch their comings and goings. At first, my presence would cause a phalanx of soldiers to investigate, buzzing loudly before deciding I wasn’t a threat. Now a single drone twirls above my head, recognizes me, and goes back to work. I’ve dragged the Adirondack chairs out of the way, but otherwise I’ve put up no barrier around the tree. The bees are out of reach and too intent on gathering pollen to care about stinging anyone. A person would have to throw a rock to divert them from their earnest industry.

The fictional story told in City of the Bees did, indeed, make for lovely bedtime reading. The novel has anthropomorphized the insects to such an extent that I’ve come to think of them as tiny members of my extended family—my only family, it seems, now that I’m a widow as well as an orphan. Contemplating them, I wonder what it’s like to exist not as an individual but as part of a whole. Does the queen get lonely as sole ruler of the hive, or is loneliness an alien concept when surrounded by thousands of servants and soldiers and nursemaids? Do they have individual minds or only a collective consciousness? I picture the swarm coalescing like an arrow and shooting itself toward the hollow oak. How did they choreograph that formation?

Unlike the bee commune, my nation feels chaotic and unstable. David is merely one of the hundred thousand people in America who’ve died of Covid so far. Two million more are infected. Tests are hard to come by. Promised vaccines will take months to develop, even at warp speed. Unemployment is at its highest since the Great Depression. Thousands march in protest of George Floyd’s murder, despite the risk of gathering in large numbers. I worry I’m being selfish hiding away upstate when the world around me is falling apart. I tell myself I’ve made my sacrifice. The virus has already taken the man to whom my life was wedded.

“Hey, Audrey!” Aisha lopes toward the barn, waving her phone. “Did you see? Someone bought that Willa Cather first edition you listed for five hundred dollars!”