The Holiday Trap, page 20
Veronica positioned the frame over a metal bucket and slid the instrument along the wood, slicing off the wax cap. Golden honey glistened underneath, shining in the morning sun.
“Wow,” Greta breathed.
“Taste it,” Veronica said. She ran a finger over the fresh honey and brought it to her mouth. With closed eyes, she savored the honey. “It’s my favorite taste in the world.”
Greta scooped a fingerful of honey off the comb and tasted it. A flavor more complex than the honey she was used to burst on her tongue. It was sweet and floral and herbaceous and fresh. It tasted like nature. Alive.
“Damn.”
“Right?”
“I knew how honey is made, but there’s something wild about seeing how it’s made.”
Veronica nodded. “When I started, I did all this research. My grandpa had kept bees when I was little, but I never knew how to do it. I looked up everything, thinking I wouldn’t do it right. But then when I started, it was like I didn’t really need to do anything. The bees do it all. They know what to do and when and how, and I just needed to not fuck up collecting what they made.”
“Nature! It’s so magical,” Greta crowed, overwhelmed with elation. “That’s how it should be. So I’m really into plants—all plants, but I love carnivorous plants. And in nature, they know just what to do. Then my dumb ass has to live in Maine, where no carnivorous plant would ever want to grow because it’s winter for, like, half the year.”
Veronica shuddered at the idea and made a face Greta wholeheartedly agreed with.
“I know. I hate it. So I have to do all these things to try and mimic nature, basically, to just keep them alive. But like, if a Venus flytrap were growing right here, it would thrive. I wouldn’t have to do anything, because it would be in the place it was meant to be, and…yeah.”
“Girl, just move here,” Veronica said.
“I wish it were that easy.”
“It is that easy, if you let it be. You know moving somewhere doesn’t mean you have to cut all ties, right? You can still talk to your family, still visit.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So what’s the deal? And if it’s that you don’t wanna freak Carys out, do not worry. She’s learned better than anyone that shit ain’t about her.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, you try growing up with a narcissist mother who blames you for everything. She’s done some deep work.”
Greta was torn between wanting to ask a hundred follow-up questions and not wanting to seem like she was pumping Veronica for information. She decided that no matter how much she wanted to know more about Carys, it was Carys she wanted to hear it from.
“It’s not that. Not really. My parents moved to Maine when they got married. Neither of them got along very well with their parents. We’re the only Jewish family on Owl Island. Key word, island. And it’s not like people were openly anti-Semitic, mostly. We’re not really religious or anything—well, I’m not at all—but when I was little, it was all Christmas this and Santa that as the default. Growing up, anytime there was a holiday, everyone else celebrated it and we never did, and vice versa. One of the first times I remember realizing my family was different was when my older sister Sadie started school and came home really sad because everyone exchanged Christmas cards and she realized no one was going to mention Chanukah.”
She remembered Sadie’s face. She’d been so little, but she had set her shoulders and said maybe she should make Chanukah cards for everyone instead so she could teach them about it. Their parents had told her she certainly could do that if she wanted, and Sadie, ever stubborn, had. She’d come home crying two days later because her classmates hadn’t wanted the cards or the explanation that went along with them.
By the time Greta’d gotten to school, she’d expected it and hadn’t bothered correcting anyone. Who cared what her classmates thought anyway? But Sadie had been angry with her, accused her of erasing her identity. Of course, what Sadie hadn’t known—what even Greta hadn’t understood at that time—was that there were pieces of her identity more fundamental that weren’t out in the open yet either.
“I don’t mean to make it a bigger deal than it was, but there were all these times when it was just us—every Easter, every Christmas, blah, blah, blah. We just were always the only ones who knew what that was like. We were our own little group. And it happened naturally, so I never thought about it until I was older. I don’t know if that’s how it started or what. But we’re all really used to being together, to having each other’s backs. Only now, it’s like… I didn’t really choose it, and it’s grown into something that feels stifling instead of supportive.”
Veronica nodded. “When you’re part of a minority, you wanna find the people who are like you and can understand your experience. Thing is, if that’s only a couple of people and they’re not the ones you want to spend your time with, you get group identity, but you lose your own. So you gotta be somewhere that has enough people like you to find the ones that get you but also that you wanna be with.”
Veronica uncapped frame after frame as she talked and slid them into the plastic barrel.
“When I was first coming out as trans, I hung out with the few trans people I met. But I realized pretty quickly that it was only being trans that we had in common. So then I started finding people who were also politically radical, and Black, and queer, et cetera. And the more kinds of people I met as my authentic self, the more I felt like I could be that and still have my people around me. My hive.”
She winked and Greta grinned.
“Are you the queen?”
“Obviously. Okay, you ready for some honey?”
“What is this?”
“A centrifuge. You spin it and the honey flies out of the comb. Then we collect it.”
“You made a centrifuge?”
“Well, it’s really an old rain barrel I found, but yeah, I put a crank on top so it can spin and made little things to fasten the combs in there. You wanna spin it?”
“Okay.”
Veronica fastened the top on the barrel and showed Greta how to spin it. They checked every minute or so until Veronica deemed the honey extracted.
“See, there’s just pollen left.” She pointed to some yellow residue on the wax. “It’s got carbohydrates in it, so they’ll eat that if we put it back in the hive.”
She slid the frames back into the hive one by one. They had only extracted honey from about a third of them. Veronica explained that they couldn’t do them all at once because the bees needed something to be working on.
At the bottom of the barrel, honey gleamed.
“That is amazing,” Greta said for the one thousandth time since they’d arrived.
Veronica grinned. “Well, aren’t you delightfully easy to impress.”
“What? No! This is legitimately amazing!”
“I agree.” Veronica pulled a large glass jar from her bag. “Hold that steady for me, will you?” She upended the plastic barrel, and honey poured into the jar. “Now we can take this home and strain it. I used to do all of it out here, but someone kept stealing my strainer. Grab that bucket?”
Greta picked up the bucket with the wax from uncapping and followed Veronica out of the garden.
“Some people think that bees have healing properties,” Veronica told her as they walked back. “That spending a lot of time around them improves your health. Their buzzing creates a frequency that heals.”
“I’ve heard that about cats’ purring.”
“Yeah, me too. Apparently some people with asthma can be treated by breathing beehive air too. I dunno, but I believe it. I always feel better after I’ve been with the bees.”
“That’s how I feel about my plants,” Greta agreed. “I miss them. Is that weird?”
“Not to me.”
As they approached Veronica’s street, Greta wondered if she should warn Carys that she was going to be there. Was it intrusive to just be in her house, even though she was there with Veronica? Then again, Carys knew she was going to the garden with Veronica this morning, so…
“Carys isn’t home,” Veronica said.
“Stop reading my mind,” Greta grumbled.
“Then stop being an open book,” Veronica teased, nudging Greta’s shoulder with her own.
“Am I really that obvious?” Greta asked miserably.
“Yeah. Really, really obvious.”
Greta groaned.
“It’s a good thing, Greta. You’re just genuine. It’s nice.”
“Genuinely a huge dork,” Greta muttered.
“Yeah, well. There are way worse things to be. Anyway, she’s on campus, so you don’t have to stress-slash-hope she’ll walk in every second.”
“Thanks.”
Greta’s embarrassment was forgotten when they got into the kitchen.
“So you can use heat to filter honey. That makes it more liquid, which makes it easier to get the little bits out. But I don’t like to because the heat kills all the good, nutritious antibacterial stuff. I use two different sized filters and just let gravity do the work. First I run it through the larger one, then the finer one.”
Veronica showed her, and they poured the honey first through the larger filter and left it to drain.
“Honestly, if there’s a small amount of pollen that doesn’t get filtered out, that’s fine by me,” Veronica said. “It’s good for you.”
She turned to the bucket of wax capping.
“Now this shit? Is delicious. Here, you can chew it like gum. But don’t swallow the wax.”
She gave Greta a small piece of wax. When Greta bit down, honey oozed from the wax and coated her tongue.
“Holy crap. It really does feel like chewing gum!”
“Yep. Nature’s candy. Fuck, good job, bees.”
“Good job, bees!” Greta crowed, filled suddenly with an elation that came from experiencing this amazing process, hanging out with a new friend, and the mysterious sense of possibility rushing through her.
Veronica grinned.
“Okay, so now we put some water in here and then heat the bucket to separate and melt the wax.”
The water slowly came to a boil, and the wax began to melt.
The sound of the front door opening shot Greta to attention. Was it Carys, home from campus?
“Dude, it smells like heaven in here,” Helen called from the front room. “Will I ruin the bee vibe if I smoke some weed? Oh, hey, Greta! Awesome.”
Helen was pulling off a purple polo shirt and khaki pants as they walked into the kitchen. In black boxer briefs and a white A-shirt, they stuck a finger into the filtering honey and ate it with relish.
“Get your dirty-ass, fried green tomato fingers out of my honey, you absolute ferret!”
“I washed my hands before I left the restaurant!” Helen insisted, sounding offended, then wrinkled their nose. “But actually, my tip money is filthier than the deep fryer.”
They washed their hands, then slumped into a kitchen chair and pulled a pipe and a bag of weed from the space between two cookbooks in the corner of the retro kitchen table.
“How was work, dear?” Veronica trilled.
“Terrible as always, darling. How are the bees?”
“Wonderful. And Greta didn’t even scream or run away when she met them.”
Greta’s stomach fell. “Did you think I would?”
Veronica snorted.
“No. That’s what I did,” Helen confessed. “I didn’t scream, thank you. I might have cried out, but I am not in the habit of being swarmed.”
“First of all, that’s not what Jenna’s sex party friends tell me, and second of all, you were decidedly not swarmed. Three bees flew toward you and you ran like…like some member of the Saints whose job it is to run really fast.”
Greta had the vague idea that the Saints were a football team but wasn’t entirely sure.
“An-y-ways,” Helen said, “I’m glad we have honey, and do you want?” They held up the freshly packed pipe.
“Sure.” Greta took it from her.
“Blow the smoke away from the honey, please,” said Veronica.
Helen rolled their eyes at Greta but nodded.
By the time they finished the bowl, the beeswax was ready, and Veronica took a silicone mini muffin tin from the shelf.
“Hold this cheesecloth on here?” she asked, and Greta did.
The water had mostly boiled out, leaving Veronica pouring the melted beeswax through the cheesecloth, which caught a skin of impurities.
“I love this part,” Helen said.
With a practiced hand, Veronica poured the clean beeswax into the muffin cups. “Now, we just let it cool, and we have fresh beeswax,” she said triumphantly.
She had already moved the honey on to strain through the finer strainer, and now she poured it into two jars. One of the jars she slid into the cupboard next to the window. The other jar she wrote something on and handed to Greta.
“Huh?”
The lid said V’s Kick-Ass Honey and the date.
“You helped. You get honey.”
“Seriously?” Warmth suffused Greta like a hug. “That’s…wow. Thank you. I love it.”
She felt surprisingly overwhelmed, holding in her hand the precious distillation of the work of flowers and earth, sun and bees, Veronica and heat and knowledge.
“So what are we making with this batch of wax?” Helen asked, rescuing Greta.
“Dunno yet.”
“Dang, I wish I wrote letters. Then I could make cool seals out of beeswax and stamp them with my initials. It’d be awesome,” Helen mused.
“Well, write someone a letter then,” Veronica suggested.
“Ugh, no.” Helen looked horrified and Greta laughed.
“Do you put the king cakes in boxes?” Greta asked.
“Yeah, why?”
Greta shook her head. “It’s probably silly, I don’t know. I was just thinking about what you said about seals and how you were looking for something unique for the packaging that maybe wasn’t glitter. What if you closed the boxes with beeswax seals and imprinted them with the name of the business? You could make business cards for the lemonade too and put them in the boxes with the cakes. Or stick them into the seal? Then people would smell the beeswax every time they opened the box to eat the cake and be reminded.”
She trailed off because both Helen and Veronica were staring at her with wide eyes.
“Yes,” Helen said.
“Fuck yeah,” Veronica agreed. “This is correct. Because we’ve talked about wanting to sell that damn lemonade for two years but we haven’t done it yet. It’s sweetened with my honey, so that’s the connection. And I’ve been selling my beeswax to local chandlers, but I’d make way more money making the candles myself and selling them. They’re pretty easy to make, and wax is the biggest expense. Damn. Yup.”
“Too bad you don’t put candles in a king cake,” Helen said.
“What if you made king cake candles?” Greta offered. “I think it’s kinda gross, but people love those candles that smell sweet.”
“Oh, damn,” Helen said, nodding. “We could be like, ‘Do you wish you could get king cake all year round? Now you can!’”
“Write this shit down,” Veronica said to Helen, who was already scrambling for a pen.
“I wonder if there’s a way you could reuse honey jars to make candles in, or candle jars to put lemonade in,” Greta mused.
“Maybe we can,” said Helen. “I’m writing it down.”
“I could grow lavender and other herbs and flowers you could flavor the lemonade with or put in the candles,” Greta said dreamily.
She realized she must be pretty high, because the notion of moving to New Orleans and growing lavender for a business with two people she’d just met filled her with pure elation.
Chapter 17
Greta
Shortly before 7:00 a.m., Greta approached the gate of a lavish home in the Garden District, checking the address on her phone for the third time.
She was here as Muriel’s guest, but she didn’t see Muriel anywhere. In fact, the only people about were a few kids scampering for a school bus.
Just as she had decided to slink away unnoticed, Muriel strode elegantly down the street in a red wool cape and flowing teal pantsuit, a group of equally well-dressed seniors following in her wake.
“Greta, dear.” Muriel kissed her cheeks. “I’m so glad you could make it. I’ll introduce you to everyone inside. Come along.”
Then she swept through the gate and up to the front door, the rest of the flock following in a colorful vee.
Greta suddenly felt very underdressed in her black jeans, boots, and buffalo plaid flannel.
Muriel didn’t knock, simply stood quietly at the door, so Greta joined the back of the group. Precisely at seven, the door opened, revealing a grand entryway with gleaming pale pink marble floors, soft green walls edged in elaborate gold moldings, and a white marble table directly in the center that held the largest arrangement of flowers Greta had ever seen.
“Welcome, welcome,” boomed their host, a petite Black woman who appeared to be in her sixties or seventies and was wearing an equestrian-style outfit.
Muriel and the woman exchanged cheek kisses, and the greetings commenced. When their host had kissed the last cheek and murmured the final welcome, Muriel slid her elbow through Greta’s and walked her over.
“Camilla St. James, may I introduce my dear new friend, Greta Russakoff.”
“Welcome, dear. How do you do?”
“Hi, hello, thanks so much for having me, Ms. St. James. Um, sorry, I didn’t know this was a fancy occasion, so I didn’t dress up. Sorry. Your house is amazing.”
“Oh, it’s not fancy,” her host said with a rich laugh. “Just a few old friends getting together for some flower talk. And please, call me Camilla.”
