Gavin Calls

Colony

Chapter 16: Gavin Calls

The phone rang at seven-forty in the evening on a Wednesday in July, and the phone ringing at seven-forty in the evening was not unusual because phones rang, phones rang at all hours, phones rang with the pollination clients calling to schedule placement and the feed store calling about a backordered shipment and Diane calling to say she had left a six-pack on Meg's porch and did Meg want to come to dinner on Saturday, and Meg answered the phone the way she answered every phone call, which was by looking at the screen first, the looking being the assessment, the caller ID being the beekeeper's first inspection of the incoming, the quick read that told her whether to engage or to let the thing pass, and the screen said Gavin, and the name on the screen stopped her hand for a moment, the moment being the pause, the pause being the held breath before the opening of the hive, the moment in which the beekeeper decided whether to proceed.

She had not spoken to Gavin in four months. Four months was the longest silence since he had left, the silence that had accumulated the way propolis accumulated in the corners of the hive body, slowly, without intention, the silence building from a day to a week to a month to four months, each day of not-calling adding to the mass of the not-calling until the not-calling had its own weight, its own density, its own structural presence in the relationship the way propolis had its own structural presence in the hive, the resinous seal that filled the gaps and that the bees applied not to close but to regulate, to control the airflow, to manage the space, and the silence between Meg and Gavin had become a kind of propolis, a sealant, a regulation of the space between them that controlled what passed and what did not.

She answered. She pressed the green button and brought the phone to her ear and the answering was the act, was the opening, was the decision to open the hive rather than to leave it closed, the decision made in the moment, made by the hand before the mind had fully decided, the hand pressing the button the way the hand pressed the smoker bellows, by reflex, by the muscle memory of a person who had answered this phone number for eighteen years and whose hand knew the motion even though the mind was not certain the motion was wise.

"Meg," Gavin said.

"Gavin," Meg said.

The names. The exchange of names that was the greeting, that was the identification, that was the two people confirming to each other that they were who the caller ID said they were, the confirmation that was unnecessary and was essential, the names being the bridge, the first planks laid across the silence, the planks that said: I know who you are, you know who I am, we are speaking.

The silence after the names. The silence that lasted two seconds or three, the silence that in a phone conversation between two people who had been married for eighteen years and separated for two and who had not spoken in four months was not empty but was full, was the two or three seconds during which both people searched for the next sentence the way a forager searched for the next flower, the searching being the work, the work of finding the right word to follow the name, the word that would set the tone for the conversation the way the first puff of smoke set the tone for the inspection, the word that would say: this is what kind of conversation this will be.

"How are you," Gavin said.

The question was not a question. The question was the conventional bridge, the polite span between the greeting and the purpose, the sentence that American English required between hello and the point, the sentence that asked for information it did not expect to receive and that offered an opening it did not expect to be used, the question that was the social equivalent of the inner cover, the layer between the outside and the inside that was not the outside and was not the inside but was the transition, the thing you passed through on the way to the thing.

"I'm fine," Meg said. "Busy. It's July."

She said July as if the month were an explanation, and it was an explanation, because July in the beekeeping calendar was the beginning of the pivot, the month when the flow was peaking and beginning its taper, the month when the supers were heavy and the mite counts were rising and the beekeeper's work shifted from expansion to assessment, from the building of the season to the evaluation of the season, the month that required the beekeeper to be in the apiaries every day, checking the supers, monitoring the mite loads, assessing whether the flow would hold through the month or whether it would end early, the assessment that determined the harvest timing, the timing that determined the honey crop, the crop that determined the year's income, and July was the explanation, was the shorthand for: I am doing the thing I do, the thing you know I do, the thing that was the reason you married me and the reason you left me, the thing that has not changed.

"Right," Gavin said. "July."

He knew. He had lived in the house for eighteen years. He had lived with the beekeeping calendar, had learned its rhythms the way a non-musician spouse learns the rhythms of a musician's practice schedule, not by participation but by proximity, by the second-hand knowledge that came from sharing a house with a person whose work had a calendar and whose calendar had a rhythm and whose rhythm filled the house with its particular sounds and smells and absences -- the predawn alarm in pollination season, the smell of smoke in the bee suit hanging in the mudroom, the empty evenings when Meg was in the apiaries until dark, the full weekends of extraction in August, the kitchen table covered in composition notebooks and mite count charts and pollination contracts -- and Gavin had known the rhythms because the rhythms were Meg's and Meg was his and the knowing was the intimacy, the form of intimacy that was not touch and was not conversation but was the awareness of the other person's patterns, the awareness that constituted a form of love or a form of habit or the form of love-that-had-become-habit that was what most long marriages became.

"I'm calling about the paperwork," Gavin said.

The paperwork. The word arrived and the word was the reason, was the purpose that the "how are you" had bridged to, the word that meant the divorce papers, the dissolution documents that Gavin's lawyer in Bend had been preparing and that Gavin had mentioned in the last phone call four months ago, the call in March when the mention had been brief -- "my lawyer is drafting the paperwork, you'll receive it when it's ready" -- and the mention had been the seed, the egg deposited in the cell, the thing that would develop during the silence of the intervening months and that was now emerging, hatching, the paperwork becoming the conversation, the thing moving from the anticipated to the actual.

"The papers should arrive this week," Gavin said. "My lawyer sent them Monday. Certified mail."

"All right," Meg said.

The "all right" was the acknowledgment, was the receiving of the information, was the beekeeper's notation -- data received, entered in the log. The "all right" was not approval or disapproval. The "all right" was the neutral, was the level surface on which the information was placed, the surface that did not tilt toward acceptance or resistance but that held the information horizontally, evenly, the way the hive stand held the hive, level, stable, the information neither welcomed nor rejected but set down.

"It's straightforward," Gavin said. "The terms. You keep the property, the house, the equipment, the business. I keep the accounts. No alimony either direction. It's clean."

Clean. Gavin had always valued clean. Gavin was a landscape architect, a person whose profession was the arrangement of outdoor spaces into ordered systems, the conversion of the given landscape into the designed landscape, and the designs were clean, were the word Gavin used for designs that achieved their purpose without excess, without the unnecessary hedge or the redundant pathway, the clean design being the design that did what it needed to do and nothing more, and Gavin had brought this value to the marriage and to the leaving and now to the dissolution, the clean departure, the clean papers, the clean division of the shared life into its separately owned components, the cleanliness that was the efficiency, the efficiency that was the avoidance of mess, and Meg understood the value because Meg valued a similar thing in her own work -- the efficient hive inspection, the minimal disturbance, the in-and-out that disrupted the colony as little as possible -- but she also understood that the cleanliness was a kind of reduction, a kind of simplification that the thing being simplified did not support, the marriage not being a landscape that could be redesigned or a hive that could be closed, the marriage being the thing that resisted the clean because the clean required the removal of the complicated and the complicated was the thing, was the eighteen years, was the mornings and the evenings and the silences and the conversations and the bed and the table and the two chairs and the porch light and the bee suit on the hook and the dog buried under the maple and the garden that went to seed, the complicated that could not be reduced to terms on a page, that could not be made clean, that was inherently, irreducibly, the mess.

But Meg did not say this. Meg said, "All right."

"You can have your own lawyer review them if you want," Gavin said. "There's no hurry."

No hurry. The phrase sat in the conversation the way a drone sat in the hive -- present but peripheral, tolerated but unnecessary, the drone's function being mating and the drone's season being spring and the drone being, in July, a consumer of resources without a corresponding contribution, the drone tolerated because the colony tolerated drones and because the expulsion would come later, in fall, when the workers would drag the drones to the entrance and push them out into the cold and the drones would die on the landing board because they could not feed themselves and had never needed to. "No hurry" sat in the conversation like a drone in July -- tolerated, unnecessary, its expulsion inevitable because the conversation would end and the papers would arrive and the signing would happen, with hurry or without.

"I'll look them over," Meg said.

"Good."

The conversation had reached its functional conclusion. The purpose had been stated, the information delivered, the response given. The conversation could have ended here, at the "good," at the moment of completed transaction, the way a pollination contract ended when the bees had been placed and the check had been written and the handshake had been shaken, the transaction complete, the parties separating to their separate concerns. But the conversation did not end. The conversation continued because Gavin did not hang up and Meg did not hang up and the not-hanging-up was the thing that happened when two people who had been married for eighteen years and who still knew each other's rhythms and patterns and silences arrived at the end of the business and found that the business had not filled the space, that the space between the beginning of the call and the end of the call was larger than the business required, and the leftover space was the space in which the other things existed, the things that were not the paperwork, the things that did not have terms or clauses or signature lines.

"How are the bees," Gavin said.

He asked. The asking was the thing that surprised Meg, not because the question was surprising -- Gavin had always asked about the bees, had asked about the bees every evening for eighteen years when she came in from the apiaries, the question "how are the bees" having been Gavin's version of "how was your day," the translation from the conventional to the specific, the question that showed he knew what her day consisted of and that her day was the bees and that asking about the bees was asking about her -- the asking was surprising because Gavin was still asking, was still translating, was still using the language of the marriage even though the marriage was ending, the language persisting the way the queen's pheromone persisted in the hive after the queen was removed, the chemical signal fading slowly, the colony still smelling the queen for hours after she was gone, the ghost of the signal lingering in the wax and the wood and the bodies of the workers who had passed the pheromone between them hand to hand to hand.

"The bees are good," Meg said. "It's been a good season."

She did not elaborate. She did not tell him about the swarm in May or the mite counts in June or the honey supers stacking three-high on the strongest colonies. She did not tell him about Luz. She did not tell him about the partnership that was forming, the apprenticeship that was becoming something else, the something else that she could not yet name because the naming would be premature the way opening a queen cell was premature, the thing inside still developing, still taking its shape in the dark of the cell, the naming an intrusion on the process that the process did not require.

"Good," Gavin said. "That's good."

The repetition. The "good" and the "that's good" that was the echo, the diminishing return of a word used twice in succession, the word losing its meaning through repetition the way a bee's alarm pheromone lost its urgency through repeated exposure, the signal becoming noise, the word becoming filler, the "good" not meaning good but meaning: I have heard you, I acknowledge what you have said, and I do not know what to say next.

Meg waited. She stood in the kitchen, the phone to her ear, the evening light coming through the window, the July light that was long and golden and that illuminated the kitchen with the particular quality of summer evening light in the Willamette Valley, the light that made the room warm and that made the dust motes visible in the air above the table and that fell on the surface of the table where the composition notebook lay open and where Meg had been recording the day's inspection notes before the phone rang -- Morrison apiary, hive 14, queen cells on bottom bar, possible swarm prep, added super, will check Thursday -- the notes that were the record of the day that Gavin had interrupted by calling, the day that was the bees, the bees that were the day.

"Are you still using the Bingham?" Gavin said.

The smoker. He was asking about the smoker. He was asking about her grandmother's brass smoker, the smoker that Meg had carried for twenty-two years and that Gavin had seen her carry every morning of their eighteen years together, the smoker that Gavin had watched her light at five a.m. with pine needles and newspaper, the smoker whose brass patina Gavin had seen darken over the years, whose bellows Gavin had watched Meg patch with leather and shoe-repair adhesive on the kitchen table one evening in 2018, the smoker that was not just a tool but was Ruth, was the grandmother, was the inheritance, was the thing that Meg carried from the house to the truck to the apiary and back, the thing that connected the present to the past, the object that was the practice made physical, and Gavin was asking about it because Gavin knew what it was, knew what it meant, knew that asking about the smoker was asking about the thing at the center.

"Yes," Meg said.

"Good," Gavin said. And this "good" was not the filler "good," was not the echo. This "good" was the real word, the word that meant what it said, the word that carried the weight of a man who had left this house and this woman and these bees two years ago and who was calling to discuss the paperwork that would formalize the leaving and who, at the end of the transaction, in the space that the business had not filled, was asking about the smoker and was glad that the smoker was still being used, was glad that the brass and the bellows and the pine needles and the newspaper were still performing their function, the function of approach, the thing that let you enter the space of another creature, and the gladness was the residue, was the part of the marriage that the papers could not dissolve, the part that existed below the legal, below the contractual, in the place where the eighteen years lived, the place where the accumulated knowledge of another person's patterns and objects and essential tools was stored, the place that the dissolution could not reach because the dissolution was a legal instrument and the knowledge was not legal but was personal, was intimate, was the knowing that came from proximity, from years of proximity, and the knowing did not dissolve when the proximity ended, the knowing persisted, the knowing was the pheromone that lingered.

"Gavin," Meg said.

"Yes."

She did not know what she was going to say. She had said his name and the name had come out before the sentence had formed, the name being the impulse, the reaching for the person that the name represented, the reaching that was the habit of eighteen years, the reflex of a person who had said this name in this kitchen ten thousand times and whose mouth formed the syllables without the mind's permission, the way the hand reached for the hive tool without looking, the tool always in the same place, the hand knowing where the thing was before the eyes confirmed it.

"Nothing," she said. "Never mind."

The nothing that was not nothing. The never mind that meant: I have something to say and I cannot say it and the cannot is not about the words, the words exist, the words are available, the words are somewhere in the place where the things she did not say were stored, the place that was full, that was overfull, that was the super crammed with frames of capped honey that needed pulling, that needed extracting, that needed the opening and the spinning and the pouring, the extraction that would release the stored substance and convert it from the sealed to the liquid, from the private to the expressed, and Meg could not extract, could not open, could not spin, could not pour, not now, not on the phone, not at seven-forty on a Wednesday in July with the paperwork arriving this week and the "how are the bees" still hanging in the air and the Bingham smoker on the shelf in the bee shed where it had always been.

"Okay," Gavin said. And the okay was the acceptance, was the letting-go of the thing she had almost said, the acceptance that was the kindness of a person who had been married to Meg for eighteen years and who knew that Meg did not say the things and who had learned, over the years, to accept the not-saying the way the colony accepted the conditions it was given -- the weather, the forage, the space, the queen -- the acceptance that was not resignation but was the practical response to a reality that could not be changed, the reality being Meg, the reality being the Hollis women and their exoskeletons and their not-crying and their not-saying, the reality that Gavin had married and lived with and eventually left, the leaving being, in part, the response to the not-saying, the leaving being the thing that happened when a person who needed the saying was married to a person who could not say, and the could-not was the wall, and the wall was the propolis, and the propolis sealed the gap through which the air might have passed, through which the words might have traveled, and the gap was sealed, and the words stayed inside, and the inside was where the words lived, unsaid, unextracted, the honey that was never pulled.

"Take care, Meg," Gavin said.

"You too," Meg said.

The phone call ended. The screen went dark. The kitchen was quiet. The evening light still came through the window and the evening light fell on the table and on the notebook and on the pen and on Meg's hands that held the phone that was no longer connected to Gavin's phone, the connection severed, the call ended, the conversation over, and the over was the condition, was the state of the thing, was the phone call that had lasted four minutes and thirty-seven seconds -- she saw the duration on the screen before the screen went dark -- four minutes and thirty-seven seconds being the length of the call that had covered the paperwork and the bees and the smoker and the nothing and the goodbye, four minutes and thirty-seven seconds being approximately the time it took a forager bee to perform a waggle dance on the surface of the comb, the dance that communicated the direction and the distance and the quality of a food source to the other foragers in the hive, the dance that was the most information-dense four minutes in the natural world, the dance that said everything that needed to be said about where the thing was and how far the thing was and whether the thing was worth the trip, and Meg's four minutes and thirty-seven seconds had been the human version, the telephone dance, the communication that had said what it could say about where the thing was -- the paperwork arriving, the terms clean, the bees good, the smoker still in use -- and how far the thing was -- Bend, two hundred miles, two years, four months of silence -- and whether the thing was worth the trip, and the answer to whether the thing was worth the trip was the thing she had not said, was the nothing, was the never mind, was the word or the sentence or the feeling that she had reached for when she said his name and that she had pulled back from when she said nothing, the pulling-back being the decision, the decision being the not-saying, the not-saying being the seal.

She put the phone on the table. She sat down. She looked at the notebook. Morrison apiary, hive 14, queen cells on bottom bar. She picked up the pen. She did not write. She held the pen above the page the way she held the hive tool above the queen when she was about to mark her, the tool hovering, the mark not yet made, the moment before the moment, the held breath.

She thought about the smoker. She thought about Gavin asking about the smoker. She thought about the fact that Gavin, in the conversation about the dissolution of their marriage, had asked about the brass smoker that her grandmother had given her, the smoker that was the tool of approach, the thing that let you get close, and Gavin had asked because Gavin knew what the smoker was and what the smoker meant and because asking about the smoker was the closest Gavin could come to asking the other thing, the thing beneath the thing, the question that was not about the smoker but was about Meg, about whether Meg was approaching or not approaching, about whether Meg was using the tool that let her enter the space of another creature or whether Meg was standing outside the hive with the smoker unlit and the hive closed and the inspection not performed.

She was using the smoker. She was approaching. She was entering the hives every day, was pulling frames and reading brood patterns and finding queens and counting mites and adding supers and catching swarms and teaching Luz and doing the work, the work that was the practice, the practice that was the approaching. She was approaching the bees. She was approaching every day.

It was the other approaching she was not doing. The approaching that the smoker could not help with. The approaching that required not the tool of approach but the willingness to approach without the tool, to enter the space of another person without the mediation of smoke, without the calming of the alarm pheromone, without the false alarm that made the other creature gorge and become docile, the approaching that was the bare-handed approach, the approach without protection, the approach that risked the sting.

She picked up the pen. She wrote in the notebook: Gavin called. Paperwork this week. She closed the notebook. She went to the window. The apiary was visible in the last light, the hives in their row, the supers stacked, the bees settling for the night, the foragers returning, the traffic at the entrances slowing, the colonies drawing in, the day ending, the season at its peak and beginning its turn, the July evening that was the hinge, the point at which the year swung from the building to the harvesting, from the accumulating to the extracting, and Meg stood at the window and watched the hives and the light fell across her face and the light was golden and the light was July and July was the season and the season was the work and the work was the bees and the bees were the thing and the thing continued, as it always continued, regardless of the phone call, regardless of the paperwork, regardless of the four minutes and thirty-seven seconds that had connected Bend to McMinnville and Gavin to Meg and the past to the present, the thing continued because the thing was not the marriage, the thing was the practice, and the practice did not dissolve, the practice was not subject to terms, the practice was not a contract that could be ended by the signing of papers, the practice was the smoker and the hive tool and the frame in the hands and the queen on the comb and the honey in the cells and the work in the body, and the body continued, and the bees continued, and the evening came, and Meg stood at the window and watched the bees settle and the light fade and the season turn, and the turning was the thing, and the thing was the thing, and the thing was always bees.