The Probable Future

Come here no more, not in day, not in evening, not in rain, not in sunshine.

Jenny smiled at the doctor, pleased by how solemnly he considered the enchantment. “I looked it up in a book in the library corner in our parlor. It’s a verse that keeps the bees away. No garden can grow without them.”

“I didn’t know that.”

As the town’s only doctor, Brock Stewart was always amazed by the various ways people found to hurt each other, without even trying, it seemed. He was continually astounded by how fragile a human being was, yet how miraculously resilient; how it was possible to carry on through illness and hardship in the most unexpected ways.

“My father was the one who told me that bees dislike bad language,” Jenny went on, her tongue loosened. “What they hate most of all is when somebody in a household dies. They often take off when that happens.” Jenny’s knotted hair looked perfectly black against her overheated skin. She was a very precise girl who hated flowers, dirt, earthworms, and disorder. She had Scotch-taped a row of her tiny paintings to the walls, intricate monkey-puzzle watercolors in which things fit together perfectly: rug and table, house and sky, mother and daughter.

“I see.” Dr. Stewart wrote it all down. Children seemed to like when he did that, even the older ones; they could tell he was paying attention when he committed their comments to paper. “And is there a cure for this curse?”

“If someone dies or if the go-away verse is spoken aloud, the bees won’t come back until you offer them cake. Anything sweet will do. And you have to invite them to come back. Politely. Like you mean it. Like you care.”

Dr. Stewart phoned the pharmacy and asked them to deliver some antibiotics, then he patted Jenny’s feverish head and went out to the garden. Elinor Sparrow was on her hands and knees, weeding a bed in which every shrub had turned mottled and leafless. She barely took notice of people anymore. She was too twisted up by her own terrible fate, far too wounded to pay attention to much of anything other than her empty garden.

“I see nothing’s growing,” Brock Stewart called out.

“Congratulations on stating the obvious.” Elinor didn’t like most people, but at least she respected Brock, so she didn’t chase him off. Not right away. She had never once caught him in a lie, and that couldn’t be said for many folks in town. “Do I get a bill for that opinion or is it free?”

“You’ve been cursed,” Dr. Stewart informed his neighbor. “And you probably deserve it.”

Every time the doctor saw Elinor he was reminded of the way she had looked at him on that icy evening when he had to tell her about Saul’s accident. She had looked inside him then, as though searching for the truth. She was looking inside him now. Dr. Stewart was a tall man, and there were some children in town who were afraid of his height and his stern manner. But the ones who knew him well didn’t fear him at all. They asked him for lollipops; they told him about what mattered most to them, curses and bees and forgiveness.

“You’re overlooking all the important things, Elly. Just listen.”

They stared at each other over the garden gate. Elinor Sparrow could not believe this man had the nerve to call her Elly, but she let that pass. She listened carefully. White clouds moved across the sky and the light was especially clear, with the luminous, milky quality out-of-town visitors always noticed.

“I don’t hear anything.” Elinor brushed the dirt from her hands and knees, annoyed.

“Precisely. No bees.”

“No bees.” Elinor felt like an idiot. Why hadn’t she noticed before? The silence was so obvious, the problem so apparent. “Who would have put a curse like that on me?”

Dr. Stewart shrugged. After all these years of being the only doctor in a small town, he knew enough not to place blame, especially when it resided so close by.

“Now that you know what’s wrong, you can fix it. Here’s how: Feed ’em cake.” Dr. Stewart made this suggestion matter-of-factly, much as he would recommend aspirin for headaches or ginger ale and licorice syrup for stomachaches. “Then ask them to come back. And be polite when you do it. Their feelings have been hurt. And they’re not the only ones, if you really want to know.”

Elinor had gone directly to the kitchen once the doctor left. She searched the pantry until she found a week-old sponge cake, which she doused with brandy and cream. But before she could carry the platter outside, the doorbell rang. It was the delivery boy from the pharmacy, who dropped off Jenny’s antibiotics, then rushed back to his car, making a hasty U-turn before Elinor could approach and accuse him of trespassing.