The Secret Hum of a Daisy

by Tracy Holczer

  That got my eyes up. “You are spying on me!”

  “Nonsense. I was in the side garden this morning and saw you two in the front pasture.”

  I had decided not to talk to her for the rest of breakfast. But then I couldn’t help myself. “Is she going to have a baby?”

  “Soon, I believe.”

  I picked at my oatmeal.

  “You’re still not eating.”

  “I’m not hungry. Plus I don’t like oatmeal. Did you ever have horses?”

  Grandma’s newspaper crinkled. “We never did. Dogs, but no horses. Why didn’t you tell me before about the oatmeal?” She got up and popped a piece of bread in the toaster, fussing with crumbs on the counter.

  “Did you have a golden retriever?”

  She stopped fussing and looked at me. “You’ve been in my room.”

  Double drat. I had to think more before I talked. “No. I just saw the painting through the open door.”

  Grandma sat down. “The door is never open. You like toast, I presume.”

  “Fine. I snooped in your room. Did you really think I wouldn’t?”

  She smiled and I could see Mama. “I suppose not. All kids are snoops. Me too. I’ve been out in your grandfather’s woodshop.”

  I was immediately furious again and then realized how silly that was. Of course she snooped.

  “So then why did you ask to read my writing when you obviously have already?”

  “I didn’t read your notebooks. Some things are private.”

  Mama had always said that people give clues about themselves in everything they do and say and that it was a good idea to keep track so you knew if someone’s feet went in the same direction as their flapping lips, which was a fancy way of saying their actions matched their words. So far, Grandma hadn’t said all that many words, but most of her actions were kind. Like respecting the privacy of my notebooks and buying me new clothes. If I didn’t know she’d sent Mama on a bus to Texas, I would have figured her for a nice person.

  “The golden retriever from the painting? His name was Willie Mays,” Grandma said.

  “You named your dog Willie Mays?” I got up and buttered my own toast. She sat back down.

  “Yes, we named our dog Willie Mays. Your grandpa was a San Francisco Giants fan. Willie would moon for hours whenever your mama and grandpa went birding.” She gestured down the hall toward the front windows. “He used to sit there and wait for them to come home.”

  A stillness came over her then, as though she might have said too much. I recognized it from my own efforts to stay clammed up.

  “What are you going to do after you talk to Lacey?” Grandma said, changing the subject.

  “Just my homework. It’s, um, a seriously time-consuming project. It’s going to take me a very long time. So long, in fact, I might just miss the whole manure extravaganza.”

  Grandma looked over the tops of her half-glasses. “What subject?”

  Flailing around for the first project to cross my mind, I said, “Art. Um . . . I’m helping Jo with her documentary.”

  “Jo from next door?” She smiled as though that made her happy.

  The idea blossomed in fabulous colors. “Yes! I’m supposed to meet her at Spoons to help!”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake, why didn’t you say so before?”

  “I . . . forgot.”

  The grandfather clock in the front room clanged the hour. It was ten o’clock. Time for my call to Lacey.

  “Go ahead,” Grandma said.

  I ran into Grandpa’s office, shutting the door carefully, thinking how Grandma and I had an entire conversation and it didn’t actually kill me. I sat down and pulled the old green phone toward me. Then I dialed Lacey and Mrs. Greene, bouncy in Grandpa’s big leather chair.

  After four rings, I got their answering machine. After five more tries, I realized they weren’t home. After another half hour of calling every few minutes, I realized they must have forgotten about me already.

  I was on my own.

  12

  The Great

  Beyond

  After I pulled myself together, I came out of the office and walked down the hall.

  “Everything okay?” Grandma called.

  “They weren’t home,” I said. “I left a message.”

  Grandma got up to stand in the kitchen doorway. “Does Mrs. Greene have a cell phone you could try?”

  “I did.”

  “Oh. I’m sure they must have a good reason.”

  I reached the front door.

  “I’ll give you a ride into town.”

  “I’d rather ride my bike.”

  “Can I at least pick you up? It’s looking like it might rain.”

  “I’ve got a coat.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes! Just leave me alone!” I slammed out the door.

  Walking back to the shed, I worried there’d been an accident. I pictured Mrs. Greene and Lacey lying beneath matching flowered sheets, the same kind of sheet I’d taken off the bed to cover Mama after I’d found her. I shook my head and cleared those thoughts away.

  • • •

  It took me ten minutes to get down the trail on my bike. Main Street consisted of two blocks of buildings, some painted in pastels, others weathered redbrick with white block lettering, everything faded, like the whole town had been washed and dried too many times. An old two-story hotel sat on the corner opposite the Spoons Souperie, built during the gold rush, or so the plaque claimed. The hotel was all that was left of fancier times. Everything else was more practical. Lafollette’s Market. Cakery Bakery. Threads.

  I stopped outside Margery’s storefront, where there was a display of four mannequins, two wearing sheer nighties alongside two in flannel nightgowns—all four in hideous wigs. A spring scene with stuffed bunnies, Easter basket grass, and the kind of colored plastic eggs that snap open so they can be filled with sugary candies lay at their slippered feet. I leaned my bike against the brick wall and looked past the window display into the store beyond.

  Margery was behind the counter. The dim light from the overcast day barely reached where she sat with her nose buried in paperwork. She wore a muumuu with a mix of frantic colors that would give anyone a headache if they stared too long, and the same straw cowboy hat she’d worn at Mama’s funeral. Even from this distance, I could see her silver-and-turquoise rings, one on each finger.

  Hanging on the high brick wall behind her was a sign made from found objects. The T in Threads was an extra-large gardening trowel and a rough piece of reclaimed wood. It looked like something Mama would have made.

  Margery noticed me gawking and waved for me to come inside.

  The cold came inside with me and then died at my feet. There was a wood stove going in the corner. Where I expected lavender, or some other panty-drawer kind of scent, it smelled like the freshly ground coffee beans and baked goods from the bakery next door. My stomach rumbled, the first time I’d noticed I had a stomach in forever.

  “About time you got your skinny butt in here,” Margery said.

  I nodded toward the sign behind her. “Did Mama make that?”

  “Well, hello to you too,” Margery said. She swiveled toward the wall and looked up. “Nope. Your father did.”

  “My . . . father?”

  She motioned to a large antique bureau, drawers partway open, with bras and panties stacked neatly on display. On top were silver framed photos. At least twenty. I picked up one of the heavy frames. Mama and Daddy in the daisy meadow. I couldn’t believe it. It was exactly the same as mine. I wanted to ask about a million questions but I had no idea where to start.

  “Good heavens. Do your underthings look as horrid as your outer things?”

  As I looked down at my sweatshirt and jeans under the open peacoat, I consider
ed feeling insulted, but she was right. It had been a while since I’d had new clothes.

  Margery scurried about the rows of bras and picked three. They were delicate, with a bit of lace edging at the bottom. Nothing you’d ever find at the dollar store.

  “Try these,” she commanded.

  I stood there holding the bras in one hand, the picture in the other, not sure what to do first: ask questions or try on the bras. Finally, I figured I could do both so I hurried behind a red velvet curtain that closed off a changing area and choked something out. “How did you know him . . . my father?”

  “He lived in the little guesthouse out back of my property.”

  I took off Mama’s peacoat and laid it on an overstuffed leopard-print chair, setting the picture carefully on top. Turning my back to the mirror, I lifted my sweatshirt over my head. I hooked the bra as quickly as I could, feeling self-conscious under the soft yellow light. I turned around.

  Instead of seeing the bra, I saw bags under my eyes, the points of both hip bones above my jeans, and every single rib. I looked like the zombie I’d tried to be for Mrs. Greene and didn’t recognize myself.

  Mama and Daddy peered up at me from the frame. They probably didn’t recognize me either.

  “Fit?” Margery asked. “What am I saying? Of course it does. I’m never wrong about the fit. Hand me the other two.”

  I looked at the price tags. Thirty dollars each!

  “Um . . . I don’t have any money . . .”

  “Of course you don’t,” Margery said. “Consider them a very late baby gift.”

  I dressed quickly and came out, holding the picture tight to my chest. “Are you sure? Because I could work them off.” Mama didn’t like taking charity.

  “You come in here and talk to me. That will be payment enough.”

  I surprised myself by smiling, then laid the picture on the counter as I sat on a nearby stool. “What was he like?” I said.

  “Didn’t your mama tell you about him?”

  I shook my head. “She didn’t like to talk about things that made her sad.”

  “Of course she didn’t. But a girl has a right to know her daddy.” Margery gestured toward the bureau. “Second drawer from the left.”

  I went where she pointed and pulled out a stack of multicolored flyers—blue, green, yellow—wrinkled, dog-eared, and smudged with dirt. They advertised the grand opening of the Bear River Park.

  “Your dad helped me here,” Margery said.

  “Here?”

  “Well, he didn’t fold bras if that’s what you’re thinking. He oiled the hinges on the door, built shelves. He put up the baseboards and painted for me. That sort of thing. If you explained what you wanted, he could draw you a picture and then build it.”

  “How long did he live on your property?”

  “Two years. He came to town when he was sixteen after his parents died in a house fire. I was a family friend.”

  There were times I’d looked at the picture of Daddy and Mama and think about what he might have been like. He had a soothing voice and a big vocabulary, and even though he was quite a chef and could make anything with a French name, he liked hamburgers and onion rings most of all. He would wear denim work shirts and carry a paintbrush in his back pocket. He would have a silly nickname for me like Snub or Shorty. I’d made him up from top to bottom and it was weird to hear Margery explain this entirely different person. A stranger.

  She went on to tell me that he and Mama had run smack into each other right in front of the shop his second day in town, knocking themselves into a heap. Mama had been carrying the load of Bear River Park flyers, which took off for the heavens on what had been a blustery day. Margery said those flyers floated about town for weeks, and each time Scott found one, he stuffed it in the drawer, falling more and more in love with her each time. Margery never had the heart to toss them out.

  “That was the kind of kid he was. Saving every scrap of paper. Every little bit of nothing. That’s what losing everything can do if you let it.” Margery took off one cowboy boot and then the other, rubbing her toes through purple socks. I rested my elbows on the counter. “Your mother was just what he needed. Swimming in the river with snow on the ground. Climbing trees because the view was better. Raging at the sky when a deer got himself hit out on Ridge Road. She was one big beating heart, that girl, and it helped him open up again.”

  One big beating heart. That was Mama.

  “Was he strong?” I said. I’d always imagined a daddy who could lift me onto his shoulders.

  “He was wiry strong, not beefy strong.”

  “Did he like to give hugs?”

  “I don’t think he let go of your mom from the minute he met her.”

  “How did you know his family?”

  “Before I came up here and opened my shop, I lived in San Diego. I owned a little store on the water, sort of like this one, and your daddy’s parents owned the one next door. Rare and used books. Your daddy was a surfer and a bookworm all the days of his life. His favorite candies were these little butterscotches from a store on the same boardwalk, so I’d keep a bowl of them behind the counter just for him. When he was small, he’d zoom in, all bare feet and sunburned nose, covered in sand, and sneak behind my counter for the candy, embarrassed about the bras and underwear. When he got older, though, he’d walk in all cool and collected, sometimes putting on one of my frilliest bras over his own shirt and posing in the mirror. He was quite a character.”

  “I was born in San Diego,” I said. “Was my dad born there too?”

  “He was.”

  I let the heart of him sink in while at the same time trying not to be mad at Margery. She knew everything about him and I could only know things she saw fit to tell me. I wished I could zoom around her brain and pick up the knickknacks of his life, one at a time.

  But I supposed it wasn’t her fault. Besides, it was more than Mama had ever said. She didn’t even tell me she’d picked San Diego to have me because that was where my father had been born, if that was even the reason.

  As more questions flooded my mind, the front door opened and closed, ruffling the yellow feather boa hanging behind Margery.

  “Is she here?” Grandma’s voice. “I saw the bike . . .”

  “Miranda! It’s good to see you.”

  I turned around.

  Grandma’s face was gray as the sky outside. She reached for the arm of a zebra-print chair and sat down, out of breath, putting a hand to her silver cross. What in the world was she doing here?

  Margery looked from Grandma to me and back to Grandma again. She put her hands on her good-sized hips. “Good Lord, did you take off without telling your grandma where you were going?”

  “I ran into Mrs. Brannigan in the driveway,” Grandma said to me. “When I asked her how things were going with you and Jo at Spoons, she didn’t know what I was talking about.”

  Margery swept by and grabbed a crystal pitcher off the bureau, tsking at me, and poured Grandma a glass of water. “Of all the things you could have done.”

  Grandma took the water, and I felt bad for making her worry. She seemed so fragile sitting there, all pale and worked up. She was a person with feelings, I supposed. I studied my worn sneakers, the dirty and frayed shoelaces.

  “I got . . . sidetracked,” I said.

  Grandma stood up, brushing at a smudge of dirt on her pants. “I’ll wait outside.”

  There, she took my bike from where it was leaning against the wall and loaded it into the back of Granny Smith.

  “Your grandma might look like she’s made of wood, but she’s not.” Margery put my bras in a white bag covered in red kisses. “Try and keep that in mind the next time you think about going somewhere without telling her.”

  Margery had turned stiff, and I had to make it up to her. She was my only connection to Daddy, plu
s I had come for an important reason. I reached in my pocket and took out the postcard. “I found this in Mama’s things. Do you know what it might mean?”

  She looked it over and then read the back. “A Secret Meadow. Hmmmm. Could mean this place.” She pointed to the daisies in the picture of Mama and Daddy on the counter. “I don’t know where it is, though, sugar. The one with the answers is probably that lady standing right outside. You might want to start with her.”

  The picture of Mama and Daddy in the meadow. That was why it had seemed so familiar.

  Grandma knocked on the window and pointed to her watch. The thought of her beloved manure probably helped her get back some composure.

  “Are you and Grandma friends?”

  “For my part.” Margery seemed to soften again. “Listen, you come back and visit me. I’d like to know what you’ve been up to for the last twelve years. I’ve missed your mama.” She slipped the flyers Daddy had collected all those years ago into the bag. “There’s something to remember your daddy by. I’ll dig around and see what else I can find.”

  I thanked her and agreed to come back as soon as I could, then went outside and stood next to Grandma. We watched the sleet come down.

  “Spring in the foothills is always unpredictable this time of year,” Grandma said.

  “I’m hungry.”

  She looked at me like I’d figured something out. Brain surgery, maybe. Then she reached into her purse, pulled out an umbrella, and handed it to me. “Come on, then.”

  “What about your manure?”

  “There’ll be other days for manure.”

  I turned around and looked over my shoulder. Margery waved and then blew a kiss. I raised my hand in return, wanting to know so much more. I couldn’t wait to get back.

  Grandma hurried through the sleet and I caught up, holding the umbrella over us both, feeling the new bra under my sweatshirt like a secret.

  13

  Soup and

  Mummies

  The big spoon hanging overhead made me think of Mama’s birds again. She was always taking spoons from the diners she worked in or from flea markets and yard sales to use in her birds.