Was it an argument over cufflinks, that year she went back to teach at Smith? Sulking in the twilit park after her self-righteous departure; the slammed doors, the nonstarting car. Boys with flashlights were hunting for night crawlers in the tree shadows. Then Ted stormed by, looking for her, not seeing. She followed him tree to tree, hiding and waggling pine branches until he noticed. Rushing to keep their reservations, feeling foolish, feeling greedy, oysters on their peacock shells for dinner. Later, the passing cars of Northampton lit his face over hers in the dark, beaming fine, slivered rays through the drawn blinds.

Six years of marriage, six jars in the bat-black cellar.

In Court Green’s wine cellar, guarding her jars of honey. The fallout of her words settling irradiated on the dusty jam tops, on the forgotten bottles—ruby, garnet, jade. Its batteries nearly dead, the faltering flashlight under her armpit projected a cone of yellowed light toward the dank ceiling, half framing him as he turned away, a featureless black shadow, the negative of the man, to pack his things.

Weaned on royal jelly, on honey, still the queen’s life a self-determined purdah, lived within the sheath of the hive, invisible to all but her sisters. Six days a virgin—then the world known only by the sun washing through the milky wax of translucent cells, honey-drenched, the hexagonal walls illumined gold. Her world a gold thing, the art of her body priceless, and only that. Groomed, fed, fingering her silks, attended all her life. No wind, no dew, no bee’s-purple calyx. Magnae Deorum Matris.

The startled drone pinged away, stalling first in confusion, sputtering over the resigned geraniums, the crisp hydrangeas, and she watched it fly, amazed. Her father watched it too, grinning after it, his authority confirmed. In the direction of its flight, high meringue clouds levitated over the postcard Atlantic; from the other side, the screen door to the kitchen—the clack of sink-damp crockery. The Bienenkönig, the bee king, tugged one of her sun-pale plaits and stood up, his broad hand on his knee in counterweight. “Your mother needs to do something about these flowers,” he said, brushing sandy bits of grass from his trouser leg.

Ocelli and ommatidia, the clarities shifting.

Ted agonized, seated in the parlor with her manuscript. His shattered assent, and she holding her breath, the dagger in her hands.