Beeswax

The story revolves primarily around a pair of twin sisters — Jeannie, who has been paraplegic since youth and gets around in a wheelchair, and Lauren. (Same face, different bodies…) Jeannie co-owns a used & vintage clothing store with her semi-estranged friend Amanda, while Lauren is between jobs (picking up some days filling in with landscaper friends) and between boyfriends, considering going overseas to teach English. Tensions are mounting between Jeannie and Amanda, their management styles clashing and communication problems getting exacerbated. An e-mail from Amanda implying that their conflict will end in a lawsuit if necessary sends Jeannie into a mild panic — Amanda's lawyer father had written up all their agreements and Jeannie feels beleaguered and at a distinct disadvantage. She calls on an ex-boyfriend, Merrill (Alex Karpovsky), who has just graduated from law school and is studying for the bar, and after falling immediately into bed together, Merrill begins distracting himself from his own problems by trying to assist Jeannie. Various strategies for dealing with the Amanda crisis are discussed and pursued, though it remains infuriatingly unclear exactly how serious the crisis is—Amanda remains in the background and no one knows how idle her threat has been. (She claims that she has no interest in wasting time or energy on a lawsuit, and naturally this denial fuels Jeannie & Merrill's paranoia all the more.) When Lauren, at loose ends, gets roped into a familial obligation back home with her mother, her mother's partner, Sally, somewhat overreaching her step-motherly bounds, tries to involve herself in Jeannie's problems. Beeswax is a story about families, real and imagined, people taking care of each other when they want to, when they need to, when they ought to.