The Bumblebee Flies Anyway (17 page)

She shuddered and Barney, stunned at her words, listened raptly, afraid to breathe, afraid to distract her and stop the flow of words.

“Papa came around the car and helped me. The light dazzled my eyes. My head whirled. And then, suddenly, nothing. As if all the clocks in the world had stopped. And my heart along with them. And then the Thing ended as abruptly as it had started. Bingo. Everything normal again. Sun shining, heart beating, stomach bulging with all that food and the taste of the fries in my mouth again. That was the first time.…”

“And the second?” Barney said, barely knowing that he was speaking the words but knowing the question was exactly right.

“The second was pain. Unbearable. Never knew such pain. What I called my first migraine, although I knew it wasn’t a migraine. The doctor knew it wasn’t either. But he couldn’t tell what it was. Doctor Langley, our family doctor. He did all sorts of tests. Sent me off to a clinic in Boston. Brain scan, all that stuff. But they found nothing. Like an old joke: They X-rayed my head and found nothing in it … but the pain was in it. It hit me like lightning, my head almost spinning off my body. God, it hurt. So much that I guess I must have screamed and Papa came running. Rushed me to the hospital. And then it subsided, became not so bad. But it stuck around for quite a while.…”

She fell silent then. And Barney waited. He had never seen her like this before, never heard her talk like this before. She had arrived early for the visit, was waiting for him in the reception room when he came ambling along the corridor. She seemed tired, eyes shining almost with fever, said she hadn’t been sleeping well, worrying about Alberto all the time. Instead of sitting across from him as usual, she paced the room, like a trapped thing looking for a means of escape but not sure whether escape was the answer.
He gave his usual report about Mazzo, watching her closely as she paced up and down nodding her head. Finally she collapsed in the chair, blowing air out of the corner of her mouth with the little-girl aspect she displayed on occasion.

“Anything I can do?” Barney asked. “You look so …” He groped for the word. Unhappy? Hurting? Another migraine?

She supplied the word. “Rotten,” she said. “I feel rotten and look rotten.”

She could never look rotten, of course. Tired sometimes, face drawn, as if she hadn’t been sleeping well. But always lovely, even when the loveliness was tattered. Like at this moment.

“Poor Barney Snow,” she said, looking at him with the tenderness that melted his bones and muscles. “Heaping you with my burdens.”

“You haven’t heaped me with anything,” he said. Gathering his thoughts, not wanting to say too much, scare her away. “I look forward to these meetings with you.”

Her appraising eyes measured him. “It must be this place, Barney Snow, and what it does to me. I tell you things I’ve never told anybody.”

Thrilled, he hugged his silence.

“Like the migraines you’re always asking about,” she said. “They’re not migraines at all.”

“What are they then?”

“The Thing.”

“What thing?”

“I didn’t know myself for a long time. That’s why I called it the Thing. For want of a better name.”

And that was when she began her recitation, her history of the Thing that had haunted her through the years. Made
her a prisoner of phantom aches and pains and depressions that no doctor could trace or diagnose.

“I’m quite a case, right, Barney?” she asked, smiling ruefully. “I should probably be in this place instead of all you guys.” She closed her eyes for a moment, her head resting now on the back of the chair. “And yet … and yet …”

She told him then that she was grateful for the Thing, after all. It had led her to the Hacienda, made her realize there was more to life than the clothes you wore or the food you ate or wanting nice things. Something beyond all that.

Barney felt the chill of dread as she spoke. Cassie locked up in a convent, dressed in the nun’s costume of black and white? All that brightness shut away, the blond hidden under a veil.

“Ever hear of stigmata, Barney?” she asked.

The word was vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn’t pin down its meaning.

“It’s a manifestation. I looked it up. The wounds of Christ or the saints appear on people’s bodies. Along with the pain.”

The question he wanted to ask was in his eyes, because she laughed a bit, shaking her head. “No. I didn’t have stigmata. Although I thought I did. It’s a long story.…”

It wasn’t really a long story, and anyway, he could have listened forever to this strange and lovely girl with the blues-singer voice who had entered his life at a time when he was empty, barren, his emotions as blank as his lost sense of taste. She had filled the emptiness with her visits here to this room. He wanted to keep her talking, keep her here as long as possible. And he concentrated furiously on
what she was saying, absorbing her words into his being, so that they’d become a part of him when she wasn’t there.

“… so I looked down at my leg, just under my knee, and saw this stain spreading on my skin, just below the surface. The pain was fierce, a burning pain, and as I looked I saw the stain become deeper, an angry red, an oozing kind of pain as if blood was actually flowing from a wound. Crazy, right? What wound? I’d been sitting in the den, doing my homework, being a good little high-school student, when it happened. I watched the stain grow deeper and winced as the pain grew worse. The stain was about four inches long, jagged, the shape of a crocodile. I limped upstairs, slipped into bed, felt safe there, hoped no one would come in and find me, although Alberto was away at Stanley Prep and Papa was on one of his business trips and my mother was at the monthly meeting of some club or other. I prayed. Prayed for the first time in a long time. Not like the going-through-the-motions prayers of Sunday school. Really prayed. And as I prayed I thought, crazily, stigmata.” She laughed, the laughter a small whoop of self-mockery. “It wasn’t stigmata. People like me don’t get stigmata. The saints do. But those prayers I said, they opened doors for me. I’d never done any praying like that before. I’d always prayed the way you recite lessons in class. But not that time. I really felt as though I’d … communicated. With something, someone. Anyway, when I heard about the Hacienda a few weeks later, I talked Papa and Mother into letting me enroll. Even though I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. And still don’t.…”

Silence in the room then, and Barney let it gather, afraid to say or do anything to break the spell. He had been allowed to enter Cassie’s private world for a little while, and
although he was dismayed by the pain she had endured—was the whole world sick, was there no safe place on earth?—he cherished the intimacy they had shared.

“I talk too much,” she said, breaking the silence. “It’s this place, I think.”

He plunged, letting his curiosity get the upper hand. Not curiosity but concern for her. “Did you ever find out what the Thing was?”

“No,” she said. But too quick and too loud in her response. Then settling back in the chair. “It doesn’t bother me as much anymore. Mostly small headaches now. I can live with that.”

He didn’t know whether to believe her or not. Had no choice, really. Had to believe her.

“Hey, Barney,” she said, bright now, eyes glowing again. “Don’t look so glum. It’s not that bad.”

“But you looked so sad.”

She scoffed, shaking her head in that way she had. “Okay, it gets me down once in a while. But that’s life, isn’t it? Don’t be sad for me.” Her voice husky and vibrant, her chin tilted challengingly. “Let’s not talk about it anymore. How about you? Tell me about you.…”

But there was nothing he wanted to say, nothing he could say. He was afraid that if he began talking he would tell her about the car and his grand design. And it might sound crazy to her. She might laugh. And he would be unable to bear being laughed at by her.

Angrily she kicked at the accelerator, sent the wheels of the car spinning, spitting gravel onto the pavement. Angry at herself. For letting down before that poor kid, Barney Snow, telling him about the Thing, for God’s sake. She’d always feared something like that happening during one of
her visits, feared that a visit would coincide with one of her vulnerable moments, when she was defenseless, without any protection at all.

Damn it: She had not wanted that to happen. She had hidden the Thing and its ravages from dozens of people—including Papa and her mother and Alberto, as well as all the doctors, and now she had confessed it all to that boy, responding maybe to that hopeless helpless adoration in his eyes. She was sorry that she had begun those visits to the clinic. She’d found no comfort in them, only corroboration. And corroboration was the last thing she wanted.

The street stretched before her like a tunnel, old maple and oak trees forming an arch, and she slackened the speed of the car. She was reluctant to return home, needed some time to prepare herself for her mother, to calm down a bit. Like an actress preparing for a role. Had to be light and bright, cheerful, hopeful. Had to hide the panic that came upon her at odd moments when her guard was down.

I will not let it get me down, she vowed. I will fight it to the end. This thing that threatened everything.

Still angry, angry as much at the Thing as her confession to Barney Snow, she pressed down on the accelerator again and grinned as the car surged forward. Cassie Mazzofono, demon driver. Outracing the moon above and the sun tomorrow. How she wished she could outrace the Thing.

H
E
looked at the car, resplendent in its crimson beauty but grotesque in its fakery, and felt defeated before he began. The screwdriver was in his hand and the hammer in his back pocket. But the whole plan struck him now as ludicrous and impossible.

For instance:

Take this thing apart, carefully, screw by screw, piece by piece, get it back somehow to the Complex, assemble it in the cellar, and then arrange for Mazzo’s ride.

Impossible.

Disconsolate, he stood there, hands thrust into his pockets, knowing that Billy the Kidney and Allie Roon were in the Complex, standing guard, riding shotgun, expecting great doings, miracles. And here he was in this terrible junkyard contemplating this fakery of a car.

Sounds reached his ears. Noise, movement. From the front of the junkyard.

Just his luck. Someone invading this distant section where he’d never seen anybody before.

Standing on tiptoe, craning his neck, looking toward the front of the place, where all the action usually went on.
Everything seemed secure and serene. No more sounds. No movement.

And then he giggled.

Giggled out of the aftermaths, and the funny feeling of being tipsy. Giddy and giggling—Barney Snow, of all people, actually giggling—he smiled at the world of busted vehicles and drew the hammer out of his pocket.

But before beginning, he surveyed the object of his intention.

Had to count the parts. The parts that must be separated and then joined together. Let’s count the parts.

Two front fenders: check. Hood: check. Two back fenders: check. Trunk:

He looked at the trunk, then lifted the cover and found a hollow space within. Okay, check. Trunk cover, no trunk.

Two doors: check.

Craning his neck now, looking into the car.

Front seat: check. Instrument dashboard: check. Steering wheel: check. Floorboards: check.

Okay, now add up the sections.

Wait a minute. The wheels.

Bending down, still a bit dizzy, he counted the wheels.

Four of them.

Didn’t all cars have four wheels?

Giggled. So. Now. Count the parts. Add them up.

Forget addition. He knew what he had to do. Get to work with the screwdriver and take the car apart. Sneak the sections into the Complex and put it back together again. A simple procedure, with Billy the Kidney and Allie Roon as watchdogs.

Now he paused before beginning the job, stood for a moment without moving there in the junkyard, surrounded by all the junk. Felt like saying a prayer for some
reason. He thought of Cassie and how troubled she had seemed during her last visit. Maybe he should have told her about this great adventure, make her somehow a part of it. Ah, but she was a part of it, anyway, even if she didn’t know it.

“Let’s go,” he said aloud.

He tossed the screwdriver into the air, watched it tumbling and turning and falling, caught it with a hand that was marvelously ready and waiting.

And he began to take the car apart.

The car reminded him of that old song—the hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone and the thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone—and the song sang in him as he worked out in the sunshine, coasting nicely in the light-headedness that made everything sort of unreal, as if this was happening in a dream.

Despite the wooziness his hands were steady, wielding the screwdriver expertly for the most part, dropping it once in a while, but then he had never been very clever with his hands. The wood was soft, balsa, like the kind used in making model airplanes, and it yielded the screws easily most of the time. Once in a while a screw was stubborn, refusing to come loose, and Barney closed his eyes and concentrated all his strength on getting it out. And laughed in triumph when the screw gave way.

Occasionally there was activity at the front of the junkyard, sounds of motors and men yelling to each other. But no one approached the area Barney worked in. The vehicles here were especially dilapidated, probably no longer contained usable parts. The air was pleasant, a sparkling spring day, and it was nice working on the car, feeling useful,
the breeze bringing the smell of freshness to his nostrils.

He dismantled the front fender and the door on the driver’s side first, and when he removed them the remainder of the car sagged dangerously. Barney feared that it might simply fall apart, screws torn from wood, the car splintered and damaged beyond repair. But that didn’t happen. The car merely tilted a bit, listing as a foundering ship might list but with no ocean to sink into.