A Recipe for Bees Read Free Page B

Augusta.
    “Come on, Mom.” Augusta knew Joy didn’t like Rose, or more to the point she didn’t like the way Rose was always hanging around. One day after Rose had visitedwith the four of them, Joy said just that to Augusta.
    “Rose? She has no family left, and no kids of her own. She’s my friend.”
    “She’s always here, even Christmas and Thanksgiving. She gives me the creeps.”
    “Joy!”
    “She does. I don’t think she likes men.” Augusta repeated that last bit to Rose and they’d had a good laugh over it. After all, Rose had been married for thirty years.
    So Augusta took the train down to be with Gabe and Joy. She went by herself. Karl didn’t like travelling, but he would have gone and helped her with the frustrations of travel if it hadn’t been for those cats. Seven of them. A young couple from church had taken in a stray cat and fattened her and then the cat had been killed on the road outside their house. It wasn’t until a day later that they realized she’d dropped a batch of kittens in the attic. Augusta took the kittens on, even though Rose, as manager of the place, reminded her that she was not supposed to have pets in her apartment. “I’ll find homes for them,” she said. “But somebody’s got to care for them now, or they’ll die.”
    She fed them milk and canned catfood by spoon, twice a day, because if she put the bowl on the floor they walked through the food and tracked it across the carpet. When she was standing, they crawled up her pantleg, mewing and scrambling, knocking each other out of the way in a race to eat. The kittens pretty much set the schedule for the day, so when Joy phoned with the news about Gabe, Karl and Augusta decided that Karl would stay home. Someone had to take care of those kittens, and Rose wasn’t going to do it.
    Augusta spent her days sitting in a chair beside Gabe’s bed with Joy, and every night she went home and cooked Joy and herself a late-night meal. She spent almost every minute at Joy’s side, except the hour or so she slipped off to give Karl or Rose an update on the phone. One would have thought a daughter would appreciate all that help and want her mother around at a time like this, but not Joy. She had sent her mother packing today. That was why Rose had to drive all the way down to Parksville this morning, to pick up Augusta. Augusta had got off the train there to use the washroom—she couldn’t manoeuvre in the one on the train—and the conductor must have thought that Parksville was her stop because the train had left for Courtenay without her. Why he didn’t listen to Esther when she told him to wait, Augusta could only guess at. Just before Duncan, the conductor had opened the door to the train car and yelled, “Drunken Duncan!” The three young men seated ahead of Augusta had laughed. There was a large Indian population in Duncan. The town was built, in part, on reserve land. The train station at Duncan was like all the others, but several totem poles stood beside it. A sign proclaimed it
The City of Totems
.
    There was only one passenger train service on Vancouver Island, up island in the morning, down island in the afternoon. Augusta no longer drove; Karl’s eyesight had failed to the point that he wasn’t allowed to. Rose was indeed their chauffeur, among other things.
    “I don’t understand Joy,” said Rose, taking the cup of tea Augusta offered her. “Why would she send you home today of all days?”
    “We had a bit of a fight yesterday.”
    “A fight?”
    “A disagreement.”
    “Over what?”
    “It doesn’t matter.” Although it did. She felt foolish now, and ashamed of herself. They had been downtown, as Joy wanted to spend some time away from the hospital, to try to calm down, and at Augusta’s urging they had gone to Munro’s bookstore. The bookstore was one huge room with a high vaulted ceiling and elaborate quilted hangings on the walls. It was a magnificent bookstore, a cathedral devoted to