The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin

by Stephanie Knipper

“I don’t think Seth is lost,” Antoinette’s mother said. She inserted a white daffodil into the watering can and tucked moss around its stem. “A little too serious, maybe. But not lost.”

  Antoinette stretched up on her toes and walked to her mother’s side. She opened her fingers and placed her palm against the old steel can. The metal was so cold it made her teeth hurt. It felt like Christmas and icicles and knee-deep snow.

  “Maybe ‘lost’ isn’t the right word,” Teelia said. She paused. “ ‘Agitated.’ That boy is agitated. He looks like he’s searching for something.”

  Standing this close, Antoinette saw her mother’s pulse beating below her jawline. It wasn’t a steady thump-thump. It was more a thump-pause-pause-thump.

  Antoinette reached for her. She wanted to hear her mother’s song, but her mother walked across the booth to Lily.

  Antoinette balled her hands and stamped her feet. Lily needed to go away.

  “You know Seth,” her mother said. “He’s probably pondering the meaning of life. Besides, it’s spring. Opening the farm is a lot of work. If he’s more bothered than usual, that’s why.”

  Her mother was wrong. The last two nights, Antoinette had looked out of her bedroom window. She expected to see deer at the edge of the woods. Instead, she’d seen Seth coming in from the drying barn, carrying his violin. He only played in the barn when he was upset.

  “I’ve known that boy since he was six years old, running around covered in bruises from his father,” Teelia said. She pointed at Lily. “The only time he had any peace was when he was with you. He hasn’t been himself since y’all broke up.”

  Lily pressed her thumb against her index finger and then moved it to her middle finger, her ring finger, her pinky. With each touch, she whispered a number. “That wasn’t my doing,” she finally said.

  “The garden show’s in less than two weeks,” Antoinette’s mother said to Teelia. “Are you ready?”

  “Almost,” Teelia said. “I want to do a spinning demonstration this year. Do you think Seth could come over and pick up the enclosure for Frank and a few crates of yarn? I’m getting too old to haul everything around myself.”

  “I’m sure he won’t mind,” Antoinette’s mother said.

  “Maybe Lily could come with him and help out.” Teelia winked at Lily, and at the same time Frank resumed humming. Antoinette swayed along with him.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Lily said. “Things aren’t the same as they used to be. We’re not”—she waved her hand from side to side—“together. Besides, I only got home yesterday, and he seems fine without me.”

  “Haven’t you learned yet?” Teelia asked. “Just because a man seems fine doesn’t mean he is fine. Trust me, even if he doesn’t know it yet, that boy needs you.”

  Frank’s humming had grown steadily louder. He wagged his head back and forth. It looked like fun. Antoinette dropped her chin to her chest to imitate him. When she did, she lost her balance and pitched forward.

  Right into her aunt.

  Lily grabbed Antoinette’s shoulders. “You okay?” she asked.

  Antoinette bared her teeth and growled. Don’t touch me! Her arms twitched and flew up over her head.

  Lily let go and backed away. “What did I do?”

  Antoinette’s mother sighed. “Nothing. She just doesn’t know you yet.”

  That wasn’t it. Antoinette could have known Lily her entire life, and she still wouldn’t like her. She growled. The few customers in the booth stared.

  “I’d better get back,” Teelia said. She took Lily’s hands. “Your parents would be proud of you for helping out.” Then she headed back to her booth.

  The man in the Go Green! T-shirt came up to the cash register and set three pots of lavender on the counter in front of Lily. “I’ve never seen lavender bloom this early,” he said.

  “Neither have I,” Lily said. She brushed the gray foliage. “Would you like to pick out another one? I plant mine in groups of four.”

  “I’ve only got enough room for three.” He held out a bill.

  Lily didn’t take the money. Again, she touched the plants, counting as she did. Her behavior was strange. Antoinette cocked her head to the side and watched.

  Lily said, “Three.” Then she recounted, as if she would come up with a different number this time. “You could plant two in the garden and two in containers in your kitchen. I do that. Then when I make lavender bread or lavender cookies, it’s easy to snip off some flowers.”

  “No, I don’t—”

  “Here.” Lily selected another plant. “We’re running a special. Buy three, get one free.”

  “I don’t want four.” The man sounded irritated.

  “Lily,” Antoinette’s mother said, “he doesn’t want it.”

  Lily put the four plants on a cardboard box lid and shoved it toward him. “Take it.”

  “You’re one weird lady,” the man said as he walked away.

  Antoinette giggled. She flapped her hands and turned in a circle. Weird Lily. Weird Lily. Weird, weird, weird. For once, she wasn’t the only strange one.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” Lily swept the remaining yellow pansies from the table. They fluttered down, creating spots of gold in the grass.

  Antoinette’s mother stepped back to look at her flower arrangement. She plucked out a flower that was too tall and trimmed its stem before reinserting it. “Do you remember the garden show before you left for college?”

  Lily’s cheeks turned bright red. “Of course I do.”

  Antoinette’s mother laughed. “I thought Mom was going to have a heart attack when she found you and Seth kissing in the drying barn.”

  Lily shook her head. “That was a long time ago.”

  Her mother sat down on the stool and brushed her hair back from her forehead. Her cheeks had a pink glow, but dark circles sat under her eyes. “You should talk to him. I know he missed you. He carries a picture of you in his wallet.”

  Go away, Lily, Antoinette thought. She slapped the table.

  Her mother glanced at her, then dunked a measuring cup in the bucket of water she kept under the table and drizzled it over her flower arrangement.

  “Is he okay?” Lily finally asked.

  “You know better than to listen to Teelia,” Antoinette’s mother said. “She exaggerates. If he’s troubled, it’s the stress of the show. It’s in a week and a half. Plus, he’s been taking on more responsibility around the farm as I’ve been slowing down.”

  When Lily spoke, her voice was soft and tentative. “Maybe you should cancel the show this year. Not just for Seth, but for everyone involved.”

  Antoinette’s mother shook her head and went back to work on her flower arrangement. “I want to keep everything the same for as long as possible.”

  That was exactly what Antoinette wanted. Which meant Lily needed to go home. She snapped her teeth shut. She might not be able to say I don’t like Lily, but there were ways to communicate without language. Her mother would know that when she chomped down on nothing but air, it meant I don’t like Lily.

  Sure enough, her mother glared at Antoinette. “Stop it, Antoinette. That’s not funny.”

  Antoinette stopped biting the air, but her mother was wrong. It was funny. She shrieked. Bite. Bite. Bite, she thought as she circled past shelves packed with flowers.

  A woman trailing a toddler placed two potted azaleas on the counter. “They like acidic soil,” Lily said as she rang up the plants. “Work coffee grounds around their base when you plant them.”

  That was true. Antoinette remembered pressing her fingers into the ground near the azaleas flanking the drying barn. The sharp taste of lemons always filled her mouth.

  Antoinette stretched up on her toes and walked to the edge of their tent. Frank saw her and hummed. No one was watching. She could slip away, pet Frank, and be back before her mother noticed she was gone.

  Antoinette felt light with anticipation. For once her body moved ea
sily. Her knees didn’t pop, and her arms didn’t fly skyward.

  She was halfway to Teelia’s when her mother looked up. “That’s too far, Antoinette.”

  From somewhere behind her, Antoinette heard her mother’s voice. “Lily,” she said. “Could you go bring her back?”

  Lily’s voice was soft. “How do I do that? Will she listen to me?”

  “Just pick her up and bring her back here.”

  Antoinette hurried. Lily was not picking her up. Antoinette would pet Frank, and then she would walk back to the booth by herself. She didn’t need Lily. She didn’t need anyone except her mother.

  She imagined running from Lily, and she moved so fast the wind tugged her hair back from her face. Two more steps and she’d bury her face in Frank’s neck. She stretched for him.

  Just before her fingertips touched his soft nose, Lily snatched her away.

  Antoinette arched her back and screamed. Don’t touch me! You’re not my mother!

  Lily tightened her arms around Antoinette’s waist and started counting. “One. Two. Three. Four.” Her voice shook.

  Antoinette flailed her arms and kicked her feet. She screamed until her throat burned. She flung her head back and raked her nails down Lily’s arms. Blood beaded up from the cuts she made, but Lily didn’t let go.

  Antoinette kept screaming. I hate you! She imagined yelling the words so loud all of Redbud would hear.

  They were back at the booth, but Lily didn’t set her down. Antoinette kicked her feet, aiming for Lily’s shins, but this time her body didn’t cooperate. She didn’t hit anything.

  “Antoinette, stop! You’re hurting Lily.” Her mother put her hands on Antoinette’s face, trying to hold her head still.

  Lily kept counting. “Ten. Eleven. Twelve.” Her arms trembled, but she didn’t let go.

  Leave us alone! Antoinette screamed until she was empty. Until her mother felt so far away that Antoinette couldn’t reach her, even when she stretched out her arms as far as they would go.

  Chapter Ten

  Any confidence Lily had in her ability to be Antoinette’s guardian evaporated as she carried the girl out of the farmers’ market. Her arms bled from multiple crescent-shaped gouges. Her muscles shook from the effort it had taken to hold on to the girl while she flailed. And now her hands were numb. She wiggled her fingers to get the blood circulating, but it didn’t help.

  When she realized she was counting, she shook her head and forced herself to stop. Instead, she focused on the spruce pines edging the parking lot. Three trees stood in front of their van. On all three, the needles along the lower branches were brown, most likely caused by a fungus. If the branches weren’t cut all the way back to the trunk, the fungus would spread and the trees would die. Even with immediate pruning, it might be too late.

  “I don’t know what got into her,” Rose said as she walked beside Lily.

  Antoinette sagged in Lily’s arms, heavy as a bag of wet potting soil. Her behavior wasn’t mysterious to Lily. The girl didn’t like her.

  “Let me take her,” Rose said. Her cheeks were pale, and though she tried to hide it her breathing was labored.

  Lily wanted to hand Antoinette over, climb in the van, and speed back to the farm. Instead, she hoisted the girl up to get a better grip, and said, “We’re fine.”

  Antoinette let her arms flop back and her head nod forward. Someone so small should not be this hard to carry, Lily thought.

  They were at the van when a white truck turned into the lot. The sound of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 7 poured through the windows. Seth. Rose had called him to take over the booth after Antoinette’s meltdown.

  Seeing Seth made Lily’s skin feel like it was on fire. She thought she had stuffed her feelings for him so far down that they had died, but the moment she saw him at the farmers’ market, everything came roaring back.

  If Teelia was right and he was troubled . . . Lily tried to suppress her concern but couldn’t. From the day Seth’s mother showed up at their back door, holding his violin, Lily and Seth had been inseparable. She could no more turn off her feelings for him than she could turn off her need to count.

  Lily had been eight years old the day Seth’s mother unexpectedly showed up at their house. She was sitting at the kitchen table with her mother, stringing green beans, when they heard a knock on the door.

  “Who could that be?” her mother said. She dropped the beans she had been holding into the bowl and went to the door.

  Lily shrugged and kept stringing beans. She loved snapping the tops then zipping the string free.

  Snap. Zip. Snap. Zip. It sounded like summer.

  “Margaret,” her mother said. “What a surprise.”

  Lily looked up. The only Margaret she knew was Seth’s mother, but that couldn’t be right. She never went outside. Lily got up from the table and went to the door. To her surprise, Seth’s mother stood on their porch.

  Lily stared at her. Margaret was nothing like Lily’s mother—she was darker and a head taller. Though she shared Seth’s dark eyes and angular face, she seemed insubstantial, as if the wind might blow her away. Once, Lily saw her standing on the front porch of the Hastings’ family farmhouse. When Margaret noticed Lily, she jumped like a startled jackrabbit and hurried back inside.

  Now Margaret stood in their kitchen, holding Seth’s violin case. “I can’t stay,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “Would you mind if Seth stored this in your drying barn? His father taught him to play several years ago, but now . . . well, his dad wasn’t feeling so good the other night. A little woozy, I guess. Anyway, he accidentally stepped on Seth’s first violin.”

  She smiled and gave a small laugh, but her lips were so tight they were colorless. “I . . . I didn’t want Seth to stop playing so I bought him this one myself.” She held out the violin she carried. “Sometimes his dad gets a little . . . clumsy. I’d hate for Seth to lose this one too.”

  Lily’s mother didn’t blink. “I’ve read that plants respond to music,” she said. She wiped her hands on the blue-and-white dishcloth hanging on the stove handle. “Maybe he could play for them? It would be better than just storing it. And he’d be helping us out. The harvest was low this year, music might boost production.”

  That was a lie. The harvest had been so big they had to hire high school students to help out.

  A look of gratitude flashed across Margaret’s face. “If it’s no bother—”

  “No trouble at all.” Lily’s mother took the violin. She paused a moment before adding, “Of course, he’d need to be over here more. He wouldn’t be home as much.”

  Lily didn’t know how it was possible to look pained and relieved at the same time, but Seth’s mother did. Her shoulders relaxed and color returned to her lips, but her eyes filled with tears as she whispered, “Thank you.”

  After that, Seth came to the farm every day. He played warm-up scales in the drying barn, then went out into the fields and played.

  Three weeks later Lily noticed Seth had a bruise. He was running scales in the drying barn while she sat on a straw bale, looking through her Victorian flower book. She stopped at a drawing of rose acacia with soft pink flowers. It meant friendship, but so did ivy. “Acacia or ivy?” she asked Seth without looking up. “Both mean friendship.”

  Seth didn’t stop playing. He was used to her calling out plant names. “I don’t know what acacia looks like,” he said as he climbed the scale.

  She got up and brought the book over to him. “Here’s a picture.”

  He flicked his eyes over to the book. “Pretty,” he said. “Use that one.” He played down the scale now. When he raised his arm to move the bow, his sleeve fell back. A green-and-yellow bruise encircled the top of his arm.

  “What’d you do? Walk into a wall?” she asked. She put the book down and pushed his sleeve up. “It looks like a handprint.” She touched his skin, trying to fit her fingers into the four long bruises that wrapped around the top of his arm.

  �
�It’s nothing,” he said, pulling away.

  Lily was only eight, but she knew a hand-shaped bruise wasn’t nothing. “Was it one of the boys at school?” They teased her for counting; maybe they bothered Seth too. But even as she asked, she realized the handprint was twice as big as her hand.

  “Oh, your da—” she started as understanding clicked into place. Her mother’s lie about the harvest. The fear in Margaret’s eyes.

  Seth snapped open his violin case. He put the instrument away without wiping it down. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” he said. His eyes were hard, and he held himself tall and rigid. He glared at her, as if daring her to let the tears stinging her eyes fall.

  Lily didn’t say anything. She grabbed his hand and led him to the straw bale where she had been sitting. When he sat down next to her, she opened her book to the page for ivy.

  Acacia was pretty, but ivy was permanent. The dark green leaves weren’t flashy, but ivy grabbed on to walls and fences and wouldn’t let go. Even if you cut it back, shoots popped up in unexpected places. It took years to root out ivy. “This one,” she said, pointing to the picture. “This is friendship. It lasts.”

  LILY WAS STILL thinking about Seth when they got back to the farm from the market. People hadn’t been as willing to report abuse back then, especially in Kentucky, where folks tended to mind their own business.

  Lily knew the instability in Seth’s childhood had created his need to understand why life was hard. They spent hours sitting in the rafters of the drying barn, pondering God’s existence. And if he did exist, why did he let bad things happen?

  They never found the answer to that question.

  Would things have been different for Seth if someone had reported his father? Maybe, but “different” might not be better. Most likely, Seth would have been carted off to a foster home and who knows what would have happened there.

  And despite the pain his father caused, Seth still loved him. Lily thought that was why Seth had never stopped playing the violin. It was one good thing they shared.

  “Earth to Lily,” Rose said when they parked. She waved her hand in front of Lily’s face. “You’ve been lost in thought the entire drive home.”