by Mary Rickert
***
She runs down the little hill, remembering how easily she used to run to her special place, while now her feet hit the ground with a shock. When she stops in front of Mavis and Howard, they are both frowning. “This isn’t how it looks,” Howard says from his position among the ruin.
For some reason Bay feels like crying. She can’t imagine any good reason for Howard to be in the midst of this destruction, but having so often suffered cruel conclusions based on incomplete evidence, she decides to give him the benefit of a doubt.
“It isn’t how it looks,” she tells Mavis.
“Why don’t you go back inside, Basil? I need to talk to Harvey.”
“She can stay,” Howard says, casting a wary look at Mavis.
“Your nightie is bunched around your hip,” Mavis says.
Howard pulls at the gown, which, ruched high on his thigh, reveals the tiny hairs there, golden and pretty as saffron. In this light, the bruise on his cheek looks pronounced; Bay wonders if he is the sort of boy who always gets in trouble.
“Aren’t you a little old for this sort of game, Basil?” Mavis asks. “You have Nan fooled, with your tricks, but I am well aware that you are the culprit here.”
“Me?” Bay thinks it is bad enough to see the beautiful garden destroyed, the entire backyard a mess, all these flowers dying, all the pretty shoes her Nana so lovingly restored thrown about like trash. How many nights has Bay looked out her bedroom window at the fireflies blinking over these flowers? How many times has she leaned close to the screen to inhale the scent of home? It’s bad enough that this terrible thing happened, without being accused of doing it.
“I didn’t,” Bay says. “Why would I?”
“It’s obvious you’re an angry child,” Mavis says. “Maybe you’ve been given too much to deal with, Nan being the way she is.”
Bay makes a sound, a strange, abrupt noise somewhere between laugh and bark. Yes, Nan being the way she is has been a challenge. But that’s not really Mavis’s business, is it? Or Howard’s. Bay realizes they are watching her as though she might do something terrible, which gives her a confused thrill. Like I’m one of the mean girls, like I have power. It is almost funny, as is the look on Mavis’s face, her frown deepening until it morphs into a coughing fit that goes on so long Bay reluctantly steps closer to pat her on the back until the cough subsides.
“Are you all right?” Howard asks.
“No. I am not. I think that’s obvious. I want to talk to you,” she says, pointing a bony finger at him, but the cough returns.
Mavis shakes her head at Bay when she raises her hand for further back-patting, which she appreciates. Her palm burns for some reason. Probably just another one of the freaky things about me, Bay thinks.
“I need to go back inside, but I don’t want you to leave until we have our conversation,” Mavis rasps to Howard in that way she has of making it seem like no isn’t even an option. She turns to wag her finger at Bay. “Don’t you break Nan’s heart, young lady. Do you hear me?”
Bay is tempted to think really mean things about Mavis, with her clown hair and drawn eyebrows, but she resists. Bay isn’t one of those mean girls, and she determined, some time ago, that she wouldn’t let all the meanness in the world make her so.
“Of course I won’t break my Nana’s heart.”
Mavis nods abruptly, turning to address Howard. “There’s pancakes for breakfast,” she says before lumbering across the yard toward the house, a green vine trailing from the heel of her dirty foot.
Bay kneels to the ground, trying to decide what to save in the damage around her. She didn’t realize how brittle she felt until she softens at the sight of Howard tenderly handling a white phlox. She had been right about him, after all. This would be a happy thought if it didn’t arrive with the unpleasant conclusion that some unknown person caused this damage. Remembering all the smashed pumpkins of her life, Bay wonders if this is going to become something seasonal. She reaches for a red lily, torn from its stem; already dying, it can’t possibly be saved.
“I would never hurt my Nana’s flowers,” she says softly, holding her breath until Howard answers, which seems to take a long time.
“I know. Hand me that sneaker, will you?”
Bay’s hand, gold with lily dust (a flower’s kiss, her Nana used to say) hovers above the dirt-streaked shoe when she realizes. Karl! Of course! This is one of the pair she left out for him. She picks up the shoe and hands it to Howard.
“Don’t you like pancakes?” she asks. “Ruthie makes the best ever.”
“I do,” Howard says, pouring dirt into the high-top and making a hole for the sad phlox.
“This’ll take all day,” Bay says. “You should go eat. Find out what Mavis wants to talk to you about.”
The phlox droops across the dirty shoelace like it’s depressed, Bay thinks.
“I do kind of have a headache,” Howard says. “But you can’t do this all by yourself.”
Bay shrugs. “I’m just going to see what I can get done before it gets too hot.”
“Is there maple syrup?” he asks.
“Of course.”
“Real maple syrup?”
Bay nods solemnly. This is a matter her Nana takes quite seriously, buying it by the gallon from that guy with the big mustache at the farmers’ market. “There is no other kind,” she says.
In spite of everything, when Howard smiles, Bay does too. It’s as if our happiness is connected, she thinks.
“Well, then.” Howard rises awkwardly, still adjusting to the nightgown. “If my dad could see me now,” he says, turning toward the house.
Bay watches him walk the whole way, until he has gone up the back stairs and steps into the house, before she starts calling for Karl—not so loud that those inside can hear, only loud enough that he will come, if he dares.
POPPY The poppy, a symbol of fertility, is known as “the flower of forgetfulness” because of its association with sleep and death. The seeds are used as a source of cooking oil, in baking cakes and breads, and as bird food. The smoke of poppy seeds has been used in divination.
“Here she is at camp. She’s wet in almost all these pictures, isn’t she? Eve loved to swim, you know.” Ruthie leans across the dining room table to hand one photograph to Stella and the other to Howard. Nan sits stiffly in her chair, peering down her nose at the black-and-white photos spread across the table like a game of “Go Fish.” She feels a little bit like a ghost herself, looking at the young woman she was, so different from the old woman she’s become. There they are, the four of them in the last great summer of their lives. Well, she assumes. What does she know, after all, of the summers Ruthie and Mavis spent during the years apart? And what, really, did she ever know of Eve? Nan’s fingers hover above the photographs, as if a firm grasp would be too intimate.
Why, look at Eve smiling in picture after picture, flattened in framed space, captured forever like an anesthetized butterfly. Only now does Nan consider how the constancy of Eve’s smile was, in fact, a clue. Who can be so happy all the time? Who thinks she has to be? They were so young! They had not yet learned about false smiles and desperate lives.
“That’s funny,” Stella says. “Everyone always tells me I’m just like her, but I don’t like to swim at all.”
“Hilarious,” Mavis says as she walks into the dining room, clutching her package of cigarettes.
“Oh, Eve loved the water,” Ruthie says. “She swam every chance she got. She swam before breakfast and after lunch. She even swam in the middle of the night! Did I ever tell you girls? Once I woke up and Eve was gone. Well, naturally I assumed she had nature’s call. I wasn’t worried. We didn’t worry so much in those days, we were…well, we were young, and it wasn’t like it is now, everyone expecting something terrible to happen to pretty girls, but when she didn’t come back after a while, I wonder
ed what she was up to. I didn’t even need a flashlight. The moon cast everything with a silver glow. I remember thinking how it was enchanting, walking through the forest like that.
“When she wasn’t at the outhouse, well, then I would say I was concerned, but I thought of the lake right away, and James. That was before…well, sure enough, there she was. Swimming. All by herself. I didn’t disturb her. I assumed if she wanted company she would have had it, though now I…”
Nan can’t believe how dangerous Ruthie is. She seems so sweet and simple, and yet here they are, everyone struck still, as though turned to salt in the old story of Lot’s wife, for daring to look back. Nan should say something, anything to break the spell, but she can’t think of anything other than Eve swimming alone in the dark.
“I sat on that rock. You know the one, right, girls? It was a boulder, really. I sat and watched her swim. I don’t know why. It seems like such a strange thing to do, now that I think about it. You know how we were back then. We were all a little strange, weren’t we? Eve especially. I didn’t think she’d want company, yet I felt compelled to find her. And I remember how I could feel the moon on my skin. What do they call it? The glow, just like the sun, only cooler?”
“Moon glow,” Mavis says through clenched teeth.
“Well, of course! Why couldn’t I remember such a simple thing? The moon glow. The lake was black, but it had that silvery light all over it, like a web. That’s the way everything was, the trees, the sky, and Eve, swimming like she thought if she swam long enough she could swim away from there, though naturally she was surrounded by shoreline on all sides.”
Howard frowns at the photographs littered across the table. “You all look so young.”
“Hard to fathom the ravage of time, isn’t it?” Mavis rasps.
“Here’s a picture from the dance,” Ruthie says. “You can’t tell, ’cause it’s in black and white, but that dress was the most amazing shade of orange, like nothing Eve had ever worn before. Though it would look good on you too, Stella. The color was, well, what was it like? I wish I could think of—”
“Poppy,” says Nan, remembering Eve wearing that orange flame, her lips painted red.
“Well, yes, of course! Poppy.” Ruthie shakes her head. “Pity not to have it in color. It was quite striking, really. I wonder whatever became of that dress?”
“What’s in her hair?” Stella asks.
Ruthie shakes her head as she frowns at the photograph.
“Carnations,” says Nan. “They were on the tables at the dance, and she took three for her hair.”
“Do you have any pictures of her with James?” Stella asks.
“There was no James,” Ruthie sighs.
Nan closes her eyes.
“That night,” Mavis says, “he didn’t show up. He was a cad in the end.”
“Oh. She must have been upset.”
“She wasn’t very,” Ruthie says.
“Really?” Stella frowns at the photograph. “I didn’t realize how beautiful she was.”
“But if she were still alive, she’d be a dinosaur, just like us.”
“Mavis, could you help me in the kitchen?”
Nan knows that only half an hour ago she looked as bad as Mavis does, but now that she, Ruthie, and Howard have made themselves presentable, Mavis, with her wild hair and dirty nightgown, looks like the crazy woman from the attic. Instead of getting the hint and following Nan into the kitchen, however, Mavis just stands there scowling and scratching her backside.
“Are you coming?”
“Yes, Nan, I’m coming to help you in the kitchen,” Mavis says in an overly loud, dramatic voice. Mavis was always interested in the theater, and while certainly no Meryl Streep, she’s a better actress than she’s being now, making a point of letting everyone know it’s a ruse. Nan doesn’t need her help, but is summoning her, and frankly, Nan resents it. This is her house, these are her guests, and strange as the circumstances are, she means for people to be comfortable, even Stella the spy, and Howard, who told Nan earlier that he planned to stay to “keep an eye on things” because of the garden vandal, which is what Nan tells Mavis when she walks into the kitchen, clutching her cigarettes, her spiked hair giving her the look of a recent electrocution.
“What possible good can come of her presence? Don’t think I believe, for one minute, that she just miraculously showed up this weekend,” Mavis says. “And what does Howard think he can do about some hoodlum that we can’t do ourselves?”
“Obviously, Howard is unhappy at home. I think that’s clear. I don’t mind offering a little shelter. As to Stella in there, how many times do I have to say it? I did not invite her. I didn’t even know of her existence. But we will only arouse her suspicions if we act guilty. We need to behave as though there’s nothing to hide. Think, Mavis. Be reasonable.”
“Are you accusing me of being unreasonable?”
“Of course not. There is no accusation intended at all. Can’t you forgive me for not being precise? I’m just saying that all of us—well you and me, that is, I don’t think we should bring Ruthie in on this—we have to stay focused. Of course we don’t need Howard’s help, but I do believe he might need ours. Besides, it can’t hurt to have him hanging about. Stella showing up like this is disturbing, but we don’t have any idea how much she knows.”
“Do you think Ruthie told her—”
“No, no, no. Ruthie certainly wouldn’t want her church folk learning about our history. We just need to be careful, that’s all I’m saying. We’ll send Stella on her way with a few of our old stories about Eve, and she’ll never be any the wiser. I don’t trust her either, Mavis. She might look like Eve, but she’s a liar.”
“Well…”
“Yes, well,” Nan says, “That was different, of course. Eve’s lies were…”
“What do you propose we do?”
Though the day has only just begun, Nan is tired. While she has developed an unexamined affection for Howard, and it has been wonderful to see Mavis and Ruthie too (in spite of her new, frightening beliefs) Nan wishes everyone would go home now. What she needs to do is take a nap to clear her head. She’d like to enjoy what she can of the rest of this time with her old friends before they all die, which, Nan knows, some would consider a morbid notion. The young would say so, but the old live with constant reminders of life’s morbidity, and after a while, one gets rather used to it.
“Let Ruthie entertain Stella and Howard. If she says something unfortunate about Eve, we can attribute it to her general confusion. Ruthie is our secret weapon,” Nan says. “She’s such a secret, she doesn’t even know it.”
Mavis stares at Nan. “When did you get like this?” she asks.
Nan blushes with the compliment, turning to look out the screen door just in time to see Bay walking up from the yard, her yellow dress streaked with dirt and grass, an unusually grim expression on her face.
“I told you she’s an angry young woman,” Mavis says.
“Shh.” Nan turns away from the door, almost walking into Mavis in the process. “It wasn’t her. She loves the garden.”
“Right. It was Eve’s ghost, or an elf, I suppose. Perhaps a trampling unicorn.”
Bay enters the kitchen, distracted, mumbling to herself, well into the room before she even notices them and smiles. But Nan suspects it is a false smile, which sets her heart to racing. Everything Nan has done, everything good and bad, has been so that Bay will never have to be a girl with a false smile. What happened out there? Nan trembles as she eases herself into the nearest chair.
“Nana? Nana?”
“Goodness, Bay, don’t shout.”
“I just said, are you expecting more company?”
“No, of course not. Where would I put anyone else? Everyone is here and then some. Why?”
Bay frowns at the large bowl filled with fruit
. Where did it come from? Ruthie is some kind of super homemaker, all the pancake mess cleaned, and a fruit bowl on the counter. “I just saw an old woman.” Bay picks up an apple and places it on the cutting board. She pulls open the silverware drawer and selects a knife.
The woman frightened Bay actually, suddenly arrived among the shoes and flowers, standing so still that for a moment Bay wondered if she was dreaming.
“She was really old. And she was dressed like it was the middle of winter.”
“What do you mean?” Nan asks.
“She had on a long black skirt and a little knit thing, like a sweater, and a big sun hat, only it was black too.”
This is just too much. Anyone would agree. Why does everything have to happen at once? “Well, she’s no one I invited,” Nan says, pleased with how normal she sounds.
“Was she anything else?” Mavis asks, her head slowly turning, as if it is the weight of a bowling ball. “Other than old?”
Bay sighs. How did her Nana, her sweet Nana, who doesn’t even realize when she’s being insulted half the time (Bay remembers how once they were at the grocery store and Nan called the bag boy a nice young man after he asked if she needed a broom; they were having a sale, he said), become friends with Mavis, who sees everything as an insult?
“I asked if she was looking for you, Nana, but she just walked into the forest. Remember when you used to make those apple dolls with cloves for eyes? That’s what she looked like.”
“Well, she must be someone from that subdivision,” Nan says, trying to assume a neutral expression, though Mavis is clearly suspicious. “Probably out hunting mushrooms.”
Bay picks up an apple slice. Why would her Nana say such a thing, as though lost people were always showing up around here, hunting mushrooms?
Nan breathes deeply, locating the apple’s sharp scent through the memory of smoke. She can do this. She can pretend everything is normal. Hasn’t she done so for most of her life?