Mad Honey: A Novel (32 page)

“Okay,” calls Asher.

The rope ladder is harder to climb than I expected, but between my fencing muscles and my absolute eagerness to reach him, I climb
up the rungs in seconds. My head pops into an old wooden chamber, with a window in each wall. Light slants through the window that faces the fields. Asher reaches over and helps me up. Then he pulls up the ladder and closes the trapdoor.

The tree house is filled with romantic touches—a soft knitted blanket on the floor, a half dozen flickering candles all around, a yellow lantern hanging from a beam overhead. There’s a little platter of chocolates. There’s a cooler and two wine goblets. There’s a pillow with a yellow silk pillowcase. There is soft music playing from a boom box in one corner—it’s the Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott album
Songs from the Arc of Life.

It’s the music that most touches me, because it shows me once again that Asher
knows
me. “Wow,” I say, at a loss for words. “Look at what you did.”

Asher puts his arms around me, and it begins, so slowly that I never have the sense of moving from the time before sex to the time while it is happening. It is like the quiet part of Aaron Copland’s
Appalachian Spring,
all those strings just hovering so softly and sweetly that it’s almost impossible to know when the music has stopped, and when it is just a memory of itself. We spend a long time just holding each other in the yellow light, kissing each other on the neck, kissing each other on the lips, kissing each other on the ears. His hands cup my breasts and he looks down at me with amazement, like I am a goddess risen out of the sea, and the love in his eyes makes me think,
Well, the hell yes, that’s exactly what I am.
I unbutton his flannel shirt, carefully, thoughtfully, taking in each new wonderful revealed inch of him—that athlete’s chest, the tight muscles across his stomach. He lowers his arms and his shirt falls to the floor, and I raise mine, and he pulls my shirt off over my head and he reaches around back and my bra comes undone and then I reach down for his pants. I touch him and he feels wonderful in my hand, like something raw and living that has just forced its young head above the wet earth.

Then he takes a step back, and says, “Careful,” and I know he’s telling me he wants this to last. We lie down upon the blanket on the floor, and I rest my head on the pillow, and Asher reaches over with
one hand and grabs the little plate of dark chocolates. They’re Ghirardelli squares, made in San Francisco, and I smile because I remember passing the Ghirardelli factory on the way to Dr. Powers’s last year. For a moment I wonder if the memory of California is going to sweep me out of this moment, but instead it just rises toward the ceiling like smoke and dissipates and I eat that chocolate square and it is so incredibly good and dark and sweet.

Asher eats one, too, and now he has a little melted chocolate on the corner of his mouth. I kiss it off. “You melted a little,” I tell him.

“You did, too,” says Asher, drinking me in. “You got a little down here.” He puts his hands on my nipples and he lowers his face to my breasts and licks me gently and I can feel the stubble on his chin brushing against me. “Look at that,” he says. “There’s a little more down here.” His lips move slowly and softly down my rib cage, kissing me as he goes, until after what seems like a couple of centuries he arrives between my legs and he parts me like the petals of an orchid and I can feel each exhalation of his warm breath upon me.

“I’m the luckiest person who ever lived,” he says, looking up at me, “to be with you.”

He doesn’t say a whole lot more, but he keeps kissing me and I keep feeling his breath and I feel so close to him, so much a part of him I can’t quite tell where he stops and I begin. The thing that I was afraid of was that I’d be standing outside of myself while we were making love, that I’d float above myself and view the whole experience as if it was happening to someone else. But instead I feel the opposite, like I am now something more than myself, like Asher and I have become a single being whose only purpose is to feel the love we feel. I’m wet as a harbor seal now, and Dr. Powers’s distant promise to me echoes deep in my memory: you’ll be
sensate, mucosal, orgasmic.

“Lily,” Asher murmurs. “Are you ready?” All I can do is nod. He reaches somewhere for a condom. Asher moves on top of me and slowly and gently he slides into me and just like that he is something that has always been part of me. He is looking into my eyes and I am looking back into his and I think, distantly,
I’m not only me, now. I’m also Asher. That’s why I can feel all his faith in me.

When I come it’s like being tumbled onto a beach by a monster wave, and I cry out in a voice I hardly recognize. Asher, hearing me, finally lets himself go. A minute or two later, he collapses on top of me with his face resting on my chest, and I know he is lying there listening to the sound of my heart pounding like the kettle drums in the
molto vivace
movement of Beethoven’s Ninth.

Molto vivace
means
very lively.

Then he raises his head and snuggles up next to me, holding me in his arms. “You all right?” Asher asks, quietly. I want to say
Fuck yes I’m okay,
but I still can’t quite talk, and I realize that tears are rolling down my face. So instead I just nod.

His hand skates over my shoulder, down my spine. “I love you,” he says.

Looking over at the window I notice the light that was slanting at such a sharp angle when we first arrived is now falling closer to a straight line. It makes me wonder how long we’ve been up here, and what has been happening in the world while we’ve been in the tree house. I would not be surprised to crawl back down the rope ladder and find that twenty years have passed.

“That was”—I whisper—“my first time.”

Asher’s arms tighten around me. “I thought it might be. You’re—okay?”

I smile against his neck. “I feel like I just fell out of an airplane.”

He thinks this over. “You mean—in a good way?”

“I mean in a good way,” I tell him. “Was I—” I know I shouldn’t ask him, but I have to know. Did he notice anything? He couldn’t tell, right? “Was I okay, too?”

“Oh my God,” he says. “You’re perfect.”

Asher gets up and takes a bottle of wine out of the cooler. He stands with his back to me, and the sight of his lovely ass and the muscles in his back is breathtaking. I hear a crack as he twists the top off the wine bottle. Then there’s a soft
glug glug glug
as he pours the wine into the plastic goblets.

When he turns to face me, I almost gasp at the sight of him. He is everything.

“This,” I tell him, “is
some fucking tree house.
” I glance around. “I like the ship’s wheel. I can see you standing there as a kid. Sailing your ship across the ocean.”

He sips his wine. “You can sail it, too. We’ll go everywhere and never come home.”

“I wish,” I say quietly.

“Me, too.” He kisses the top of my head. “Instead of having to go back out into the world and all its bullshit. I don’t ever have to pretend with you.”

I choke on my wine a little bit, and Asher looks at me, worried. “Are you okay?”

That statement,
I don’t ever have to pretend with you,
is a sharp slap. Because it reminds me of everything I
haven’t
shared with Asher. I’m naked in every way but the most important one.

“Hey,” he says. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say.

I want to tell him everything because it shouldn’t matter. It
doesn’t
matter. What possible difference does it make?

But if it doesn’t make any difference, why am I so afraid to tell him?

The sad truth is that I’ve seen what people do when they know. Jonah told me he loved me, too, not so long ago. Jonah, who held my hand and kissed me as we stood by the ocean watching the sea lions. Jonah, who not long after, tore my dress in two, and left me lying in a parking lot.

At this moment I remember something from the dance that I had buried deep. After the attack, as everyone headed back into the gym, Jonah was the last one to go
. Did you think this was real?
he asked. He looked down at me, bleeding on the pavement, and laughed. He said,
That’s what you get.

That’s what you get. That’s what you get. That’s what you—

“I have to go,” I say, suddenly, standing up.

“Wait, what—?”

“I just…I have to go.”

Asher frowns. “Did I say something wrong?”

“This was a mistake,” I say, and Asher reels back like I’ve punched him.

I pull on my clothes as fast as I can, and I open the trapdoor and throw down the rope ladder.

“Lily, please,” he calls, scrambling down behind me. He isn’t even wearing a shirt. “Talk to me.”

I hit the ground and start running through the woods. I don’t know where I’m going exactly, because I can’t get back to my house on foot. But I don’t care. I can’t believe how stupid I was. I can’t believe how stupid I am.

Asher is running after me. He’s faster than I am. I feel him getting closer, and closer, and then he grabs my right wrist, the one with the scars. I didn’t wear the cuff bracelet today. I didn’t think I had to.

“Jesus…what is going on?”

“Let me go,” I yell at him.

“Whatever it is, we can figure it out,” he says. “If you feel like we moved too fast, we’ll go slower. I’ll do whatever you want.”

“I want to go
home,
” I say, but he doesn’t let me go.

“I can’t read your mind,” Asher presses. “Talk to me, or I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” I shout at him. “You’ll give me another bruise? You’ll smack me around like your father?”

With this, his jaw drops open, and he lets go of my arm, and I turn my back on him and run through the woods. He doesn’t follow me. I keep on going until I get to a small clearing. All around me the arms of the trees are twisted, bony-fingered, accusing.

I pull out my cellphone. Maya answers on the first ring.

“It’s me.” My voice breaks, and I start crying. It occurs to me I don’t really know where I am. I’m lost, so lost. It’s amazing that I ever dreamed for one second that I might be found.

“Stay where you are,” says Maya. “I’m on my way.”

THE MORNING MOM
drove me to Dr. Powers to finally have my surgery, I knew it wasn’t the defining moment of my life—I’d had so many defining moments before that. But I did believe that at long
last, I’d soon see in the mirror the person I had always,
always
known myself to be.

Surgery was early; we’d left Point Reyes before dawn to be at the hospital on time, and by the time we got to San Francisco, the city was coming alive. I saw the tourists down on Fisherman’s Wharf. I saw the sea lions gathered on Pier 39. I saw Treasure Island off in the distance, beneath the Bay Bridge, and I thought about how all the years we lived in Point Reyes, I’d never been there.

Later that morning, I was wheeled into the OR. The walls of the room were green tiles. I saw Dr. Powers behind her surgical mask and her glasses, her smiling eyes reassuring me that everything was going to be okay. Her nurses and residents and fellows swarmed around her, and there was an anesthesiologist, too.

“And how are you feeling today?” asked Dr. Powers.

“I feel
alive,
” I told her. “I feel happy.”

She nodded. “We’re going to take good care of you,” she said, and then she glanced up at the anesthesiologist, who was threading an IV feeder port through a vein on top of my right hand.

“Hi, Lily,” he said. He was a dark-haired man with strong arms. He was wearing blue scrubs. “I’m Dr. Strauss.”

“The Waltz King!” I said, thinking, of course, of Johann Strauss, who wrote “The Blue Danube” and “Tales from the Vienna Woods,” and all those corny old songs in three-four time.

If he knew what I was talking about, though, he didn’t let on. “I’m going to give you the anesthetic now,” he said. “Can you count backward from one hundred for me?”

“Okay,” I said. I took a deep breath. “
Einhundert, neunundneunzig, achtundneunzig—
”

“German?” said Dr. Powers. Her eyes twinkled.

“I thought I’d count it…,” I said, but I could feel the drug welling up in me, turning everything into saltwater taffy. “Like they did in old Vienna…”

“English is fine,” said Dr. Strauss. “Just relax. Put yourself in our hands.”

From the corner a machine beeped, and it occurred to me that
what it was measuring, and what I was hearing, was the sound of my own heartbeat.
How wonderful it has been to have been alive,
I thought.
How wonderful, and how sad.

When I wake up,
I thought,
the world will be different.
In that new world, I would never be sad again.

“A hundred,” I said. Everything was so slow, so soft, so tender.

“Ninety-nine.”

I thought about Jonah, and I tried to forgive him. A little.

“Ninety-eight.”

I thought about my mother, and how much I loved her, and how lucky I was to be loved by her. I thought about the day we had descended the long stairs to the lighthouse together.

“Ninety-seven.”

I thought about my father taking me to the circus. How the man with the star on his chest rose into the air on a puff of white smoke. How he sailed, unchained, toward the heavens.

“Ninety-six.”

OLIVIA
7

MAY 7–8, 2019

Five months after

My dream is so real. When Asher sits down on the edge of my bed, I roll to my side, the mattress dipping. He’s wearing a suit that used to belong to my father, and he is barefoot. His mouth has been sewn shut with red thread.

He wants to tell me something, but he can’t, and he grows increasingly frustrated. Then there’s a flash in his eyes, as he figures something out. He pulls a piece of paper from his breast pocket. It is an index card, a yellow one, the kind my mother used to write her recipes on. There is a list on it with three names: my father, Lily, Asher. The first two are crossed out.

I wake up bathed in sweat, fighting for air. Through my window the horizon is a ribbon of blood. This time of year, the chatter of blue jays and chickadees usually wakes me at dawn, but it’s earlier than that, the quiet seam between night and daytime. I push my hair back and stagger into the bathroom, washing my face and pulling on a robe before I slip downstairs.

I put the water on for coffee, then toe on my sneakers so that I can walk to the end of the driveway to get the morning paper. I am afraid to see what it says, after yesterday’s bombshell in court. It’s already old news—the 11:00
p.m.
local television broadcast covered it—but that doesn’t mean it will hurt any less to see it in black and white.

I don’t make it to the end of the driveway, though.

The second I step outside, I see the wide wall of the barn where I process my honey. On the weathered boards, someone has written in vivid red paint a single word:
murderer
.

Inside the house, the teakettle whistles. It sounds like a scream.

A HALF HOUR
LATER,
when the sun is still pouting and bleary-eyed, I stand in front of the barn beside Mike Newcomb. I’ve put on jeans and a tee and long cardigan, but the detective is already suited up for work. His trousers are pressed, badge clipped to his belt. His shirt is starched, the pocket still glued against a layer of fabric. I remember how, when Braden got dressed, I’d slip my hand inside his dry-cleaned shirt pocket for the sheer satisfaction of feeling it peel back.

Although our shoulders are nearly touching, there is a distance between us.

Mike runs his hand through his hair, still damp from a shower. I wonder if he usually goes to the station this early or if—as the only detective in this town—he is subject to calls at all hours of the day and night. The two policemen who came to the house first have already left, photographs in hand. But there wasn’t a smoking gun—or in this case, a spray can. Whoever did the damage is long gone. “I don’t know, Olivia,” he says. “It
could
be the same kids who vandalized your honey. But…”

He lets his voice trail off because I know the rest of the sentence: I have a lot more enemies, now that Asher’s officially on trial.

“We’ll do what we can,” Mike says. “I’ll check the hardware stores nearby to see if anyone bought red spray paint recently. Maybe we’ll get lucky. But don’t get your hopes up. A lot of times, with defacement of property like this—the perps are long gone.”

I nod and fold my arms. “I better go. Court starts—”

“At nine. I know,” Mike finishes. He jerks his head in a tight nod and starts down the driveway to his car. I turn and walk up the porch steps.

I am about to open the front door when he calls my name.

He’s standing in front of his car, hands fisted at his sides. He hesitates, but then he meets my gaze. “I’m sorry,” he says. “About this. About…all of it.” He scuffs his boot at the gravel of the driveway. “You don’t deserve it.”

I watch as he drives away. If he was so sorry, I think uncharitably, he shouldn’t have testified against my son. But at the same time, I know he was doing his job. Just like I’m doing mine—protecting Asher.

I think back to my conversation with Elizabeth yesterday at the river.
Am
I protecting him? Or am I trying to convince myself Asher needs protection?

When I go back into the house, Jordan is in the kitchen cooking an egg. He slides his eyes toward me, and then clenches his jaw and flips it over easy.

“You’re still mad at me?” I ask.

He’d heard the commotion of the police car arriving, and came outside in a robe to find me talking to the officers. Quickly sizing up what had happened, he pulled me aside. “Why did you call them instead of waking me up?” he had asked.

“I’m sorry, did I miss the part where you went to police training?”

Pissed, he had stormed into the house again. Now, I lean against the counter, watching him cook. “Was I supposed to just let this go?” I ask him. “Maybe if I get lucky, they’ll
burn
down the barn tonight.”

“Had you bothered to ask me, I would have told you not to involve the police. Your detective isn’t going to find whoever did this.”

“He’s not my detective,” I say. “And last time I checked, Jordan, this house still belonged to me. If someone vandalizes it, I’m not just going to pretend it didn’t happen.”

He bangs the spatula down on the stove. “Well you should,” he snaps. “There is nothing you can do, Olivia. And there’s nothing the police can do. It’s part of the process.”

“
What
is?”

“Being tried in the court of public opinion.” He stares at me. “Even if Asher’s acquitted, that doesn’t mean people won’t whisper behind his back for the rest of his life. And behind
yours
.”

Suddenly I understand. Jordan isn’t mad because I involved the police. He’s mad because he couldn’t protect us from this.

“You don’t have to take care of me,” I say softly. “I’m a big girl, Jordan.”

He snorts, and I know what he’s thinking:
How’d that work out for you before?

Jordan turns back to the stove. “You should eat something. It could be a long day.”

“I will. I just want to make sure Asher’s up first.” I pause at the kitchen doorway. “Jordan?” I say, waiting till he turns around. “Thanks.”

As I head to the staircase, something catches my eye through the pane of a window. Across the strawberry field, Asher stands on a ladder, a bucket balanced on the top of its frame, a car sponge in his hand. I watch him scrub at the red paint, smearing the letters slowly and methodically. He muddies it into a broad dark stain, until it’s not an accusation but a slurry of shadow on the side of our barn, like a swarm of bees that cannot find a safe place to land.

BY THE TIME
we get to court, it feels like I’ve already lived an entire day. Today Ava Campanello will be the first witness called, and Jordan has already explained to me that she has to be treated with kid gloves by both the prosecutor and himself, because no one on that jury wants to see a grieving mother suffer even more.

I try to remember everything Asher has told me about Ava as I watch her being sworn in. She is a forest ranger, which as it turns out is less Smokey Bear and more scientific, involving tracking something—wildcats, maybe? I remember Asher glowing over the fact that Lily knew how to start a fire using flint and pine needles and that it was good to know if he was lost in the wilderness with her, he’d survive.

I can see Lily in her mother. The high cheekbones, the set of her shoulders, the dark pools of her eyes. As Ava settles herself, she focuses her gaze right on me, which is unnerving. It’s like Lily is peeking out; like I am trapped by the gaze of a ghost.

The reporters are silent, puppies who know that, at the slightest provocation, they will be banished from the table before they get a treat. Judge Byers has made it clear that she is not in the mood for any bullshit, which has only ratcheted up the already charged atmosphere in the courtroom. Yesterday, there were empty seats on either side of me; today both are occupied. I have no idea who these people are. They could be media, they could be Ava Campanello’s co-workers, they could be Lily’s cousins for all I know. I can feel them both staring at me when they think I’m not looking, but their curiosity is tangible. My hands reflexively curl around the Moleskine notebook sitting on my lap, and I focus my attention on Ava.

“Can you state your name for the record?” the prosecutor begins.

“Ava,” she says, but the word is rusty. She clears her throat, like running water through a pipe. “Ava Campanello.”

“And you are the mother of Lily Campanello, the murder victim in this case?”

“Yes.” She is already fighting tears.

Gina hands her a box of tissues. “Ms. Campanello, we know this is hard for you, and we appreciate your willingness to be here and to answer a few questions about your daughter. If you need to take a break at any time, please just let me know.” Her voice is soft, changing the landscape of her questions. “When did you and Lily move here?”

“This past summer.”

“So Lily started high school in September?”

“Yes. Adams High,” Ava says.

“Was Lily involved in any extracurricular activities at school?”

“She plays in the orchestra.” A cloud crosses her face. “
Played
. She
played
in the orchestra. And she…was a fencer.”

“Fencing.” Gina’s brows rise. “For those of us who’ve never done it—like me—you mean the sport that involves swordplay, with a foil. What did that require from Lily in terms of physical conditioning and athleticism?”

“You have to be light on your feet, have good fitness, and good balance.”

“So was Lily a strong, coordinated teen…or would you define her as clumsy?”

“You have to be
really
coordinated to fence. And attentive. You have to always be planning your next move. Lily…was one of the best on the team.”

“And regarding the staircase in your house…would it be fair to say Lily had gone up and down it hundreds of times since your move?”

“Yes.”

“Is it fair to say she navigated the stairs hundreds of times without incident?”

“Absolutely,” Ava says.

The prosecutor pauses, and I realize that all of these questions have been the easy ones, the breadcrumbs leading Ava off the main trail onto a darker, thornier path. “Ms. Campanello,” Gina says, “we’ve heard the medical examiner, Dr. McBride, testify that Lily was transgender. Can you tell us a little about Lily’s transition?”

Color heats Ava’s cheeks. I feel the two strangers bracketing me now blatantly staring at me, and I think that maybe I am just as flushed as Ava is.

“Lily was born biologically male,” Ava says. “I can’t really remember a time she seemed to feel comfortable being referred to as a boy. By the time she was three or four, she was identifying with little girls.”

“Wait, what do you mean by
identifying
?”

“Well, for example, the first time I took her to the ocean, her bathing suit was a pair of swim trunks, and she didn’t want to get out of the car. She said she was naked and needed a bikini top like the other girls.”

The first time I took Asher to the ocean, he was eight. In New Hampshire we have only a miser’s portion of it, so he had learned to swim in lakes instead. He stood at the edge, hands on his hips, and asked me where the letters were.
Atlantic ocean
, he explained. Like on the map.

“Tell us about Lily’s middle school experience,” Gina says.

“Lily was expressing her female identity more and more…and it really upset her father. As a result, he insisted on sending her to a private school that was all boys—where she had to wear a coat and tie every day.” My mind casts back, remembering how Asher had told the detective that he and Lily had fought about her dad. Was this why she was estranged from him?

“How did that go?”

Ava smiles a little. “She found ways to rebel. She grew her hair long and she wore nail polish—and got bullied for it. One day, after a particularly bad incident, Lily’s father told her he was going to make life easier for her.” She hesitates. “He buzzed her hair into a crew cut. By the time I got home from work, Lily was catatonic.”

I steal a glance at Asher. I want to know if this is news to him, or if Lily shared this pain in her past. But as Jordan requested, his face is stony and impassive. One fist is curled tight beneath the table, my only clue.

“What did you do?” Gina asks.

“I took her and left. In the middle of the night with a suitcase full of clothing. We drove to a cabin my family owns, near San Francisco. A few months later, when her hair grew back and she wasn’t quite as fragile, I enrolled her at a private school called Marin-Muir. After eighth grade she went to another school called Pointcrest. She was living as a girl. She dressed like one. She identified as one. To everyone but the school administration, she
was
one.”

“Had Lily had surgery by then?”

“No,” Ava says. “She asked, but I thought she was too young to have that conversation.”

“Did something happen to change your mind?”

“Yes. Lily’s father showed up unannounced, and outed her to her friends. At first, it seemed like they were accepting. But then she was assaulted and humiliated by them in a very public way.” Her lips flatten into a tight line. “Lily became suicidal,” Ava says quietly. “And I realized I’d rather have a live daughter than a dead one.” She wipes beneath her eyes with a finger.