The Great Unexpected

by Sharon Creech

  “You never did deserve the name of Finn, you wretch. All along you were a Paddy.”

  “Aw, Syb—”

  “I’ll tell ye what, Paddy McCoul,” Mrs. Kavanagh said. “I am bound to be rid of ye and so ye can carry off that trunk in due time. Not now, but in due time.”

  Pilpenny nudged the kindling into place. “You are looking pale, Sybil. I’ll start a fire and get us some sherry, mm?” Pilpenny watched as the fire took hold. “Mm, Sybil? Some sherry? Then perhaps a murder, mm? Do you want a Poirot tonight or Miss Marple?” She turned to Mrs. Kavanagh. “Sybil? Sybil?”

  CHAPTER 41

  NEWS

  One morning, shortly after Nula and I had finished breakfast, we heard the chickens squawking outside, announcing a visitor.

  A man’s voice called, “Hello? Hello? Anyone about?”

  From the window, I could see the man. “It’s that Dingle Dangle man,” I whispered. “Are we home?”

  “Let’s hide,” Nula said.

  But the man was persistent. “Hello?” He rapped at the front door. “Anyone home?”

  “Ah well,” Nula whispered. “Go on, you can skittle out the back if you want.”

  “You sure you don’t want me to stick around?”

  “I’m sure. I think I can handle a dapper man.”

  I stood by the back door long enough to hear the man say, “I’m Solicitor Dingle, ma’am,” and then I slipped across the fields and over the meadow and down to the creek to dig for clay. I was surprised that Finn did not appear, but it was good to be there by myself. Near silence: with only the sounds of the birds, the water, and skittering squirrels. The squish of clay between my fingers. I fashioned two crows from the clay and perched them on a boulder to dry in the sun.

  Nula was waiting for me on the porch.

  “Naomi, lass, I have some news for you. You had better come in and sit down. It is unexpected news, curious news.” She pulled me into the kitchen. “Let’s have tea.”

  “Tell me, Nula.”

  “Where to start? Okay, first: the Dingle man was here, remember?”

  “Sure.”

  “No, maybe I should start with—”

  “Nula, please!”

  “Yes, yes, so here it is: my sister Sybil is dead.”

  “I thought you knew that.”

  “I was wrong before, but now she really is dead.”

  “I’m sorry, Nula.”

  “I didn’t think I’d cry at such news, but …”

  I got her some tissues and patted her back.

  “That Dingle man told you? How did he know?”

  “Seems he knows a lot about us, Naomi.”

  I couldn’t imagine what there was to know about us that would be of any interest to anyone else.

  “I suppose we have to go,” Nula said.

  “Go where?”

  “Ireland, didn’t I say? We’ve been summoned.”

  “Ireland? As in Ireland-Ireland? The country? Why?”

  “Like I said, we’ve been summoned to Sybil’s funeral. The Dingle man has arranged everything.”

  “But the house here—the barn—the chickens—”

  “That, too. The Dingle man will take care of everything—and he will not say where the money is coming from. Certainly not from Sybil, I’m sure.”

  I knew of no other Ireland than the Ireland of Nula’s and Mr. Canner’s stories. It was full of fairies and elves that could lure you down deep, dark holes. There were ogres who chopped off the heads of a dozen men in a single stroke, and giants who caught thunderbolts.

  “Naomi, I hate to admit this, what with Sybil being newly dead and all, but I would love to see the soil of Ireland and the trees of Duffayn again.”

  “Then I guess you should go.”

  “We, Naomi. We would both go.”

  “Ireland? The real Ireland? I wonder what Lizzie is going to say.”

  Nula gasped. “Tch! I forgot to tell you about Lizzie! I can’t believe I forgot—it’s all too much, Naomi. How could I forget to tell you that?”

  CHAPTER 42

  LAR-DE-DAR

  Before Nula could explain about Lizzie, we heard her coming.

  “Lar-de-dar, lar-de-dar, lar-de-DAR! Naomi, Naomi!”

  Nula’s fingers pressed against her cheeks. “I do wish I’d had a chance to tell you first.”

  “Tell me what? What?”

  Lizzie burst in through the door. “Naomi, Naomi! It’s like a miracle! It’s like a dream!” She grabbed my shoulders and spun me around. “Do you believe it? I couldn’t hardly believe my ears. At first, of course, I was scared to death—the things that ran through my head—how could they possibly do this to me? And I said, ‘No, no, no, never!’ but then when they explained everything, I thought I must be in dreamland or hallucinating because things like this never happen to me, as you well know—”

  Nula’s fingers were now pressed against her lips. She glanced from me to Lizzie to the ceiling and back to me again.

  “—and, Naomi, I still am not entirely certain it was not a dream. Tell me it isn’t a dream. Tell me.”

  “Tell you what isn’t a dream?”

  “You silly, don’t tease me like that. I was feeling so terribly sorrowful, what with the Cupwrights saying they couldn’t adopt me and all, and I was one inch from being a completely homeless person sleeping in a cardboard box with not even a pillow or a blanket and maybe only a can of beans for dinner or maybe not even that, maybe a little cat food left in a can in the trash, and—”

  Nula was tapping her foot, looking at the ceiling.

  “—I know I am talking too much, but I am so excited I can hardly contain myself, and I knew you would be excited, too, and—”

  “Lizzie, stop. Stop talking. Now. Tell me why you are so excited.”

  Lizzie squinted at me. She turned to Nula and back to me. “Can I talk now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you are acting a little odd, Naomi. I thought surely you would be excited, what with the news and all.”

  “Which news, Lizzie?”

  “Naomi, you goof. You goof of goofness. Okay, I will play your game. I am excited for the most obvious of reasons: that we’re going to Ireland! Ireland!”

  A thousand thunderbolts slammed to earth. A little voice came out of my mouth.

  “We? We’re going …?”

  CHAPTER 43

  ACROSS THE OCEAN: IRELAND

  The first sight of Ireland was from the airplane window. Below lay rolling green land, pieces stitched together with seams of rock walls and hedges. As we floated down, down from the sky, the land rose up.

  A driver had been sent to meet us. He was gray-haired, short, and nimble and introduced himself. “I am Patrick and so is every fourth man in Ireland, and the ones in between are named Sean or Mick or Finn, and I’ll be driving you.”

  At least that is what I think he said because he spoke so fast and in such a way that Lizzie and I could barely understand him. We must have said “Pardon?” nine thousand times. Nula, however, had no trouble at all, and when she talked with Patrick she sounded more like him than like us.

  For three hours, we careened along narrow, curved roads—on the wrong side. There were no giants or ogres or elves in sight. Sheep grazed on hilly green land and in flat pastures; silvery lakes rose up around winding curves. Soon the hum of the car, the calm of the passing landscape, and the monotonous dribbling of Lizzie’s chatter lulled me to sleep.

  I dreamed a vivid dream. Finn was on the far side of a meadow, waving to me, calling me to join him. I started across the field, but soon my feet were weighted with mud, and Lizzie was pushing at me.

  “Don’t push,” I said. “You’ll make me go in deeper.”

  “Naomi, I’m trying to wake you up. We are here! Wake up, you dozey goof. You are not going to believe your eyeballs!”

  We were stopped at the end of a gravel drive between two stone gateposts.

  “Ah, no, Patrick, this is not the place,�
�� Nula said.

  “Ma’am?”

  Nula rustled in her purse. “Here, it says, let me find it—here—here it is: Rooks Orchard is where we’re supposed to be. Rooks Orchard. I expect it’s a little cottagey place, Patrick.”

  Patrick shook his head. “Beg’r pardon, Ma’am, this is the place you’re to be delivered.” He indicated a wrought iron sign above the stone pillars. “See there?”

  We all craned to see. The sign, in bold back letters, read:

  ROOKS ORCHARD

  On top of each of the pillars was a tall black bird.

  I nudged Lizzie. “Crows. See there?”

  “Rooks, we call ’em,” said Patrick.

  I felt as if a marble were bouncing around in my head. Rooks Orchard?

  Nula was wiping her forehead with a handkerchief. She studied the sign and peered down the drive. “Ah,” she said at last. “There—see that little cottage to one side—over there—see? I bet that’s where we’re going. Drive on over to that cottage, Patrick, please.”

  Patrick took off his cap, smoothed his hair, and replaced the cap. What he replied sounded at first like “Mamegginardonbeetinsurrec—” but I think that what he said was actually this: “Ma’am, beggin’ your pardon, but my instructions clearly say to take you and the lasses to the main house, and so if you’ll bear with me a few minutes longer, I’ll run you up there and inquire on your behalf.”

  CHAPTER 44

  PILPENNY

  We stared up at the stone building, three stories high and as wide as five barns. A broad gravel drive curved up to the front entry with its tall double doors. Perfectly sculpted bushes lined the drive, and hundreds of rosebushes bloomed pink and white along a path leading from the main house to the small cottage.

  Near the car bloomed a vast expanse of purple flowers. “Lavender,” Nula whispered. “How I have missed lavender.” She turned to Patrick. “I suppose you have to obey your instructions, so you may pull on up to that main entrance, but I expect you will be told in no uncertain terms to take us around the back. Girls, stay put, don’t go jumping out of the car like a couple of jackrabbits.”

  As the car crunched up the drive, Nula said, “There is something vaguely familiar about this place. I don’t know what it is, but I feel as if I’ve seen it before, maybe in a dream or a photograph.”

  Patrick stopped the car in front of the main entrance, climbed the dozen stone steps to the veranda, and pulled a long bell cord beside the door.

  Nula said, “Girls, this is so embarrassing. I can’t even watch. What will their butler think, with us presuming to come to the door like this, unannounced.”

  One of the doors opened, revealing a trim, dark-haired woman who greeted Patrick. She nodded and then looked to the car where we sat, huddled like three stowaways. The woman clasped her hands together and walked toward us, neither smiling nor frowning.

  “So embarrassing,” Nula said.

  The woman tapped at the window. Nula rolled it down and said, “I’m so sorry we’ve troubled you—”

  The woman was peering around Nula, eyeing me and Lizzie. One of her slender fingers reached in and pointed at Lizzie. “You are Lizzie, am I correct?”

  Lizzie shrank back against me.

  The finger pointed to me. “And you must be Naomi, correct? And you”—now she tapped Nula’s shoulder—“you must be Nula, correct?”

  We three nodded dumbly.

  The woman beamed. “Marvelous!” she said. “And me, I am Miss Pilpenny.”

  “You?” Lizzie croaked.

  What I had learned on the day that Nula told me we’d been summoned to Ireland was that Lizzie had also been summoned, but by someone else. That someone else was her mother’s sister, a Miss Pilpenny, the woman that Lizzie used to refer to as her mother’s “crazy” sister.

  At first Lizzie had refused this surprise invitation. “Absolutely not,” she told Mr. Dingle. “I am not going across the ocean to see a crazy person.”

  Mr. Dingle assured Lizzie that Miss Pilpenny was not crazy at all, and that by an odd stroke of fate (which he’d helped along), Miss Pilpenny had been a companion to Nula’s sister, Sybil Kavanagh. Mr. Dingle also informed Lizzie that Nula and I would be traveling with Lizzie.

  “Is that true, really and truly true?” Lizzie said she’d replied to Mr. Dingle. “If that’s really and truly true, then of course I will go.”

  Nula tried to prepare us for the worst. “Accommodations in Ireland are not generally as grand as they are in America,” she said. “Things are smaller and older, very much older. The ceilings are low. The rooms are dark and damp.”

  By the time we got on the plane, I was expecting that we’d be staying in a root cellar, with hay for bedding.

  Now, on Irish soil, Miss Pilpenny stood outside the car and crossed her hands on her chest, exactly as Lizzie did sometimes. “Oh, my stars! I can hardly believe you’re here.”

  “You do look like my mother,” Lizzie said. “You even sound a little like her. You are Auntie Pilpenny?” I knew what Lizzie was thinking: You don’t look crazy!

  “Come, come,” Miss Pilpenny said, tugging at the door handle. “You must be tired from your travels.”

  Nula said, “But where should we go—?”

  “Here,” Miss Pilpenny said. “Here, of course. Come along. Patrick will bring your cases.”

  As we tentatively unfolded ourselves from the car, Lizzie and Miss Pilpenny studied each other.

  “I hope I do not appear too entirely strange to you, Lizzie.”

  For once, Lizzie was without words.

  We followed Pilpenny (Auntie Pilpenny) into a vast foyer tiled in white-and-black marble. A wide, winding staircase loomed to our right, a crystal chandelier the size of a hay bale hung from the ceiling, a wide hall continued on the far side of the foyer, and a high arch to our left opened into a vast parlor with floor-to-ceiling windows framed in acres of gold silk.

  “What first?” Pilpenny asked. “Do you want a spot of tea or to freshen up or to see your rooms or to roam the grounds for some fresh air?”

  Lizzie was still without words. I’d never seen her so quiet and thought maybe she was sick.

  I managed to squeak out, “Room, ma’am.” If we were going to be staying out in the barn, I wanted to know it sooner rather than later.

  We followed her up the winding staircase with a hundred or more steps and along a hallway lined with flowered wallpaper. Every fifteen or twenty feet were closed doors on either side of the hallway.

  Lizzie whispered to me, “It must be a hotel.”

  Never having been in a hotel, I couldn’t comment.

  Nula, Lizzie, and I had three adjoining rooms. Windows overlooked the back gardens and acres of green stretching toward a grove of fruit trees. My room had a fireplace; a tall cupboard that Pilpenny called a wardrobe; a cozy stuffed chair; and various tables and lamps. Cheery peach blossom wallpaper made the room feel like a sunny orchard.

  It was too much to absorb. I climbed up on the high bed and lay down. “I’ll just be here a few minutes,” I said as I deflated like a punctured balloon into the soft pillow and soft mattress. I woke once, later, in the darkened room, not knowing where I was, and only vaguely taking in the night table with its fresh flowers before sinking back into sleep again.

  I did not wake again until the next morning, when I felt something pecking at my shoulder. I opened my eyes, face-to-face with a black bird.

  “It’s not real,” Lizzie said. “I’ve tried just about everything to wake you up, Naomi. How are you feeling? I’ve been up for hours. Auntie Pilpenny will try to give you some awful oatmeal mush, but ask for toast and jam and you will have the most delicious plum jam ever in this world and it is straight from the plum trees in the orchard—”

  “Lizzie, stop.” I was so groggy, I couldn’t fathom where I was. Was I home in my bed? Had I been sick?

  “Are you all mixed up, too, Naomi? I didn’t half know where I was when I opened my eyes this morning. I tho
ught someone had kidnapped me or that I was in a dream, and then I finally realized I was in Ireland—”

  I looked closer at what Lizzie was holding. “Is that a crow?”

  “It’s a rook. Remember what Patrick said yesterday? That’s the name of this place, remember that? Rooks Orchard.”

  CHAPTER 45

  THE BRIDGE AND THE ORCHARD

  Like me, Nula had slept late that morning. “I’m a little disoriented,” she said at breakfast.

  “More plum jam?” Pilpenny asked.

  Lizzie said, “See if I have this straight. Nula and Mrs. Kavanagh—Sybil—were sisters, and Auntie Pilpenny and my mother were sisters.”

  That part was fairly simple.

  “So Pilpenny is my aunt, but Naomi’s not really related to anybody.”

  “Am, too,” I said. “I’m related to Joe and Nula.”

  Nula sat forward, then back, then forward again, as if she were about to speak.

  Lizzie jumped in first. “No, you’re not,” Lizzie persisted. “You’re not related by blood.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “I’m just saying—just getting things clear in my own head—that I am definitely related to someone who is alive—”

  “Sometimes,” I said, “you might want to keep your thoughts in your own head.”

  Nula and Pilpenny exchanged helpless looks, as if they could sense that war might break out at any moment.

  “How about some air?” Pilpenny said. “Let’s have a walkie, shall we?”

  Pilpenny, with Lizzie at her side, led the way along the wide stone path. This pair, who had so recently met, seemed so natural with each other, matching each other’s steps and gestures. I found myself altering my steps to be in rhythm with Nula and consciously mirroring the way her hands moved when she spoke.

  “Naomi, what on earth are you doing? Are you making fun of me?”

  “No, no. Sorry.”

  “Are you bothered that Lizzie has found a … relative?”