The Bee Teller

Natalia looked out into the grey-Dr.-Zhivago dawn and squinted through the angry snow, trying to find that invisible white circle formerly known as the sun. She scanned the horizon above the frozen lake, but the frenetic flakes assaulted her eyes so furiously that she was barely able to open them. She quickly wiped them on the sleeve of the itchiest Irish fisherman sweater known to man, and ran back into the cabin, slamming the door behind her.

“That good, huh?” Dean asked as he watched her stomp the snow off her boots, an involuntary shiver seizing her thin, fragile body.

“Ugh,” she said, pulling off her wet sweater and searching for the Cornell sweatshirt she’d left on the couch. “I don’t know how those Aran-Islanders survive the icy waters of the Atlantic in these things. I’m friggin’ freezing.”

“Well,” he said, shaking his head and looking at the blank screen on the Mac in front of him, “the only thing those guys had to deal with is dead fish. Not a dead Internet.”

“Oh no!” she said in genuine horror. “When did that happen?”

“Same time the power went out—about three minutes ago.”

“Shit!” she said, going over to the screen to see for herself. “and you with your Anne Reinking GMA interview in 25 minutes!” She furiously tried to reboot it, but it was no use.

“I knew we should’ve gone for the big-bucks generator last summer,” she said, giving up on the laptop and searching for her iPhone under the couch cushions. 

“Woulda, coulda, shoulda…” Dean said, heaving a hefty sigh. Then he closed his MacBook Pro and turned to face her. “Honestly, babe. It’s no big deal.”

Natalia found the phone and then stood up to face him. Even in this moment, when most men would be livid at the storm, the inconvenience, and the woman in front of them (not necessarily in that order), Dean was peaceful to the point of serene. He smiled his craggy, Harrison-Ford-pushing-80 grin that was as irresistible as it was when it was his Harrison-Ford-pushing-60 grin. It was hard to believe that they’d been together that long. It still felt so new.

Natalia smiled back. “I’ll text the segment producer and tell him we’re having technical difficulties,” she said, sending off the text even before she even finished the sentence.

Dean nodded. “Make it convincing, or else they’ll think they have a scoop: ‘Dean Gibson, Tony-and-Emmy-Winning choreographer, dead just moments before GMA interview!’”

“Dean—that’s awful!” Natalia said, laughing. 

It was gallows humor, to be sure. But they both knew it wasn’t a lie. That’s because death was very much in that room with them. Soon enough, it would settle in and show itself. Perhaps not right at this moment. But not in the unforeseeable future.

The fire was crackling away as their unspoken fears filled the room.

Natalia quickly broke the mood with her best, sexy-starlet smile and an upbeat suggestion: “Hey! Since we’re both up early with nothing to do, let me make breakfast the way your mother never did.”

“Or…” Dean added, matching her smile with his own Indiana-Jones-smirk, “we could do something else my mother never did…”

Natalia laughed. “We can do that after, if you’re up to it. So to speak.”

“C’mere, you,” he said, pulling her down next to him.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, feigning pearl-clutching surprise, “is this the famous ‘casting couch’ I hear so much about…?”

“Only if you’re auditioning,” he answered, pulling her close and kissing her seductively.

“You know me,” she said, playing along, “I’m always auditioning.”

She kissed him back, and, in short order, breakfast was quickly forgotten.

A half hour later, they cocooned beneath an old quilt, chilling out by the lingering warmth of the dying fire. She entwined her fingers with his, and brought them to her lips. Theirs was a deathless intimacy—every touch, the unstated expression of one soul connecting to its mate. An immutable bond they desperately hoped would defy time and place. 

“Love may be eternal,” she used to say when they were first married, “but time is short.”

She couldn’t remember exactly when she stopped saying that. She only knew she didn’t say it anymore.

Dean’s gentle brown eyes studied her. Hers was a face that was easy to read. And her thoughts were dark, indeed.

 Time to change the subject.

“How’re the bees?” he asked. 

Natalia loved her apiary. She and her dad used to have one when she was growing up, and she spoke about it so often that Dean surprised her with her own beehive years ago. It was the best gift she ever got.

She was devoted to her bees and frequently went out to talk to them. Even in the winter when they were hibernating. It was a custom her father had taught her when she was a small child. “Respect the bees,” he’d say. “Tell them everything, because they’re the link between this world and the next. If someone dies, let them know so they can watch over them. Respect them, and they will flourish. Ignore them, and everything dies.” 

It was an old Celtic superstition, but she honored it, because she felt it in her core. “Talk to the bees,” her dad would say, “because they’re listening. And they care.”

Natalia glanced out at the window at the dormant hive.

“Sleeping,” she replied.

“Alone?” he asked, chuckling at his own lame joke.

“No—” she answered in all earnestness. “They all huddle around the queen so the center’s always warm. Then all the workers rotate from the outside to the inside, just to make sure no one gets cold. The colder the weather, the tighter the cluster.”

“Smart bees,” Dean observed.

“Incredibly so,” she said.

“That queen’s a pretty important bee,” he said. “So what happens if she dies?” 

Natalia sighed. “Either they replace her or the hive dies. No queen, no hive.”

Dean looked out the window and was lost in thought.

“I understand that,” he finally said. “In my world, there is no hive without you.”

Natalia shook her head. “Who are you kidding?? You’d get a new queen in a heartbeat.”

“No, Natalia,” he said seriously. “For some men, there is only one.”

Natalia scoffed. “Said the man with four wives…”

Dean laughed. “Well, at least I didn’t have them all at once.”

“Ahh…you serial monogamists are always the most dangerous…” she said, mocking him. He kissed her lightly, but—despite the light-hearted jab—her eyes were serious and sad.

“So— when’s the last time you dropped in on the honey-combers?” he said, glibly trying to change the vibe

Natalia took a beat before answering.

“This morning,” she said.

Both of them were quiet. Neither one wanted to pursue it.

“Hey— I do believe I was promised a breakfast like no other…” Dean finally said.

“On it!” Natalia said, happy to have something other than death to occupy her mind.

She went to the tiny kitchen and started to prepare some country biscuits—Dean’s favorite. He immersed himself in a book. She loved looking at him read. Actually, she just loved looking at him, and she dreaded the day when that would no longer be possible.

As she made a fresh pot of coffee, she thought back to the first time she’d met him. It was a warm June-morning, open-call for the touring company of “Chicago” at the 8th Avenue Ripley-Grier Studios 

She was a very nervous dancer. He was a very cryptic auditioner. 

She was 28 then—in her dancing prime. He was 58—well past his dancing prime, but revered as a choreographer who worked with Fosse, back-in-their-mutual-day. The magnetism between them was immediate. Her eyes never left him; nor his, hers.

 She knew, in that moment, that they would be together to the end. It was just that strong.

Of course, she got the part. As “Annie” in “Cell Block Tango,” she wowed the audience onstage every night, and Dean offstage almost as often. Within six months, they were married. It was her first, and only. It was his fourth, and last.

Sounds like a happy ending, but not according to his three children (one from each previous union). “Yeah,” he’d admit to Natalia whenever the topic of “the kids” popped up in their conversation, “I was a really shitty dad. I admit that. Maybe some guys just shouldn’t have ‘em, you know? But that’s not what’s pissing them off. They’re ticked because you’re listed first in the will. Hell—they’re all in their 40’s and 50’s—hardly dependent on a broken-down old alcoholic choreographer. Enough is enough.” 

Right from the start, his family had badmouthed Natalia to anyone within earshot as a gold-digging, money-grubbing, fortune-hunting whore who was just waiting to vamp him out of any bounty that was rightfully theirs. 

“He’s practically dead, now,” his eldest, Gwenn, said as she downed Stingers with her two brothers at a Soho bar a few weeks earlier. “Guess, after he croaks, we’ll just have to keep her in the courts for the rest of her natural life,” she added with a nasty laugh. 

Her brothers, Bob and Michael, gave a weak laugh in agreement but—truth told—they never felt as churlish as their sister. And, since both their respective mothers had passed on, it seemed such an empty, futile battle—Dean was all they had. Even if he was practically dancing on his own grave.

Besides, they honestly missed him.

“Wouldn’t you want to see him one last time?” Bob asked tentatively.

“Hah! Why would I do that?” Gwenn demanded. “What did he ever do for me?”

“He was absent, sure, but he always provided for us,” Michael rationalized. “I mean, how much time does he have left? That cirrhosis is rapidly taking him over…”

“Oh! Cry me a river, for Chrissake! It can’t come soon enough for me!”

“You don’t mean that…”

“Oh, don’t I? That’s how much you know.”

Both men suddenly shut up. They shot each other a sympathetic look, and said no more.

Unbeknownst to their sister, they had already reached out to their dad, but to no avail. They didn’t want his money. And they liked Natalia. To their collective mind, she’d proved herself to be a good wife and a good person. They harbored no ill will toward either of them. 

But that probably wouldn’t change a thing with Gwenn, so they kept it to themselves. Theirs was a do-or-die decision in the truest sense, because neither one of them wanted anything more from their father than the chance to be with him—even if it was for just one more time.

And both brothers were determined to make that happen—with or without Gwenn’s knowledge.

The snow had stopped by the time Natalia opened the oven door to take the hot biscuits out. As she did, the microwave unexpectedly beeped and the TV roared back on, signaling the end of the power outage.

“Well, that was well timed,” Dean said, chuckling. “Guess I should try to contact that poor Assistant Director at GMA. She probably lost her job over this…”

His words were still hanging in the air when, without warning, a thunderous clatter of plates and pans shattering to the floor stopped him mid-sentence.

“Natalia!” he screamed, jumping to his feet and rushing to the kitchen. There, sprawled out in a mess of broken crockery and buttermilk biscuits, lay the motionless body of the only person who made living worthwhile. 

“Natalia!!” he kept repeating, holding her tightly, rocking her back and forth while willing her back to consciousness. He didn’t even want to leave her long enough to call 911. He just wanted to hold her and suffuse life back into her. 

Then, after a short eternity, her eyelids fluttered and opened.

“I’m…s…sorry…” she whispered, each syllable a struggle to get out.

Her hand flew up to her head. “The t—t—tumor…”

“I know, babe, I know. Shhhhh! Don’t talk. You’ll be fine.”

But they both knew she wouldn’t. In addition to living in their own unique world, these two also shared a common truth: that both of them were racing toward their final day on earth—and that Natalia would get there before him. 

“Isn’t it ironic?’ Natalia once said to Dean after her stage 4 glioblastoma was diagnosed the year before. “Your kids think I’m the one waiting for you to die, when, in reality, it’s the other way around.”

Since then, they simply retreated into their own universe. They no longer indulged people or activities that were unworthy of their attention. They told no one about Natalia’s illness (as per her request), and that was fine with Dean—especially after the hurtful way his kids reacted to his own diagnosis.

It had been a year of surgery, headaches, seizures, radiation, chemotherapy, and targeted drug intervention. Finally, Natalia said, “Enough,” and they resolved to concentrate on living—not dying.

Now, in the solitude of that kitchen, still sitting on the kitchen floor with the TV blasting in the other room (proclaiming the benefits of “a good night’s sleep”), Natalia tried, with great difficulty, to sit up.

“The b-b—buzzing…” she struggled to enunciate. “H—hear it?”

Dean stopped and listened. There was no buzzing. At least, not in his brain.

“Let me call Dr. Nardi,” he said, leaning her against the cabinet and starting to get up. She reached out with whatever strength was left in her body and grabbed his arm.  

“N—No!” she said. 

“OK,” he said, appeasing her. “At least let me bring you to the hospital. Maybe this is nothing. We’ll just see.” He smiled warmly. She reflexively smiled back, and her body relaxed.

He helped her to her feet, put his sweater around her, and kept a tight grip on her bony shoulders as he opened the front door. But that’s when he stopped cold. Because, standing in front of him, ready to ring the bell, were Michael and Bob. 

He was so startled he nearly lost his grasp on Natalia.

Her eyes opened wide as she saw them and whispered, “D—Dean! Look!”

In that second the four of them stood in shocked silence.

“What are you two doing here?” Dean asked in astonishment.

Bob opened his mouth to answer, but Michael beat him to it.

“We were worried—” he said. “Bob was watching GMA this morning, and when they announced that your interview was cancelled…well, we knew we had to come…before it was too late.”

Dean’s face looked like he’d just won an Oscar he didn’t know he was nominated for. He had no words. Just joy.

“Let me help you,” Bob said as he flanked Natalia’s other side and bolstered her.

“Th—thank…” she tried to get out more, but her breathing was even more labored and speaking was difficult, if not impossible.

“Careful,” Michael said as she took a single step onto the frozen path, “it’s icy.”

As if on cue, a fierce snow squall whipped up around them, encasing the tiny tribe in a minor blizzard. 

“Oohhhhhh…it’s happening…” Natalia said, more in awe than alarm. Then her footing slipped and she fell back, causing the men around her to scramble, catching her right before she hit the ground.

She lay there, eyes open, the ends of her mouth turned up into the slightest hint of a smile. 

Her stare was fixed on something at the end of the path: The apiary.

The squall intensified as Dean followed her line of sight. At first, he was blinded by the near white-out, but then—for fraction of a second—he could make out the silhouette of a slender woman in an oversized Irish fisherman sweater. She was standing next to the hive, looking back at him.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, the squall disappeared.

And she was gone.