Descent into Madness
In Bee Season (Doubleday, New York, 2000), Myla Goldberg describes the slow disintegration of a dysfunctional family and the brave attempt of one little girl to keep it together. It is a coming-of-age novel entangled in the cobwebs of an obsessive compulsive mother coming apart.
The mother’s obsession with The Perfect leads her to collect items – thousands of items – that call out to her. That these items do not belong to her is of secondary importance. The unfortunate means - stealing - creates a fantastic end: a kaleidoscopic wonder in an abandoned warehouse, bits and pieces painstakingly reassembled by a dissembled brain. The result is an overwhelming cacophony of color, a profusion of patterns and shapes that leads to ocular overload.
“A spiral of shoes of decreasing heel heights cycles from brown to orange as it winds its way to a center of earrings whose shapes and colors form a pattern of stripes and circles in sparkling metal and rhinestone…”
“The perimeter is composed of glasses lying lengthwise on the floor, but with the aid of marbles, beads and shot glasses, the line arches upward in a graceful curve to join a column of stacked wineglasses, brandy snifters and champagne flutes…”
“A hedge of books expands into a miniature labyrinth. Books give way to picture frames, each containing its own mosaic of small objects. Beads and earrings, cuff links and stickpins create their own immaculate order…”
“Hats of felt and straw and cotton and crepe alternate with dinner, dessert and salad dishes to form a study of circles…”
“Gloves and scarves become an ocean of texture and color…”
“Suspended from a web of delicate threads hang silverware, hatpins, and peacock feathers, silk cravats, plastic figurines, and artificial flowers. They are strung individually and in groups, arranged to interact with each other as well as to capitalize upon the slightest wind current…innumerable objects twisting and twirling …”
So perfect is the room in its genius that visitors become absorbed in Daliesque fashion into the design itself.
“This space is not a passive object to be observed and left behind. It is interactive. Every person who steps inside becomes an object in its perfect order, associating with it in infinite, beautifully balanced ways.”
While the mother is not the book’s central character, she may just be the most compelling, the most disturbing, the most memorable. She is a side show, as most of our disordered generally become. But she remains in the mind’s fringes long after the book is put away.
Why? Because the reader, watching her slow descent into uncommon craziness, coming upon her oversized kaleidoscopic creation, suddenly…finally…understands. Somehow, the mother’s irretrievable madness makes perfect – absolutely perfect – sense.
