Spirit Level

by Sarah N. Harvey

  I stand up and say, “Hi, I’m Harriet. I love your house. Craftsman, right? My mom loves them. Yours is gorgeous. And the garden is amazing.”

  As I babble, I reach out and shake their hands. First Angela’s dry, cool one, then Nori’s dirty one. Lucy says, “We’re having lemonade. You guys want some?”

  Nori and Angela look at each other, and I can practically see the thoughts arc between them. Best of a bad situation. Get to know this girl. Try not to be hostile. We don’t want to come off like assholes.

  “Sure, honey,” Angela says. “That would be lovely.” I bet she’s the softie and Nori is the enforcer. Nori shrugs, and the two moms sit down while Lucy runs into the kitchen for more glasses. I notice she’s put her fedora back on.

  “So, Harriet, do you live nearby?” Nori asks.

  “Not really. I was on the bus, going home from the animal shelter, and Lucy texted. I just invited myself over. Hope that’s okay.”

  Angela nods. “We like Lucy to have friends over. But I’m sure you can understand that we’re a bit”—she pauses—“a bit perplexed by recent events.”

  Nori snorts. “Perplexed doesn’t even begin to cover it! Have you seen her hair? She’s never had a haircut in her life. And now it’s all gone. And all because your sister”—she almost spits out the word—“made her cut it.”

  “She didn’t make me cut it.” Lucy has returned with the glasses, which she fills for Angela and Nori. “She was watching me put my hair in a bun for dance class and she asked me why I didn’t just cut it off. She used to dance, and her hair was long. She said it would be freeing.”

  “And is it?” Nori asks.

  Lucy sits down and sips her lemonade. Then she takes off her hat and runs her fingers over her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s weird to feel a breeze on my neck. And it’s lighter, for sure.”

  She sounds so hesitant that I pipe up, “I think it’s kinda cute. And it’ll grow, right?”

  Nori glares at me. “I cut my hair off when Lucy was a baby. I’ve always regretted it.” She undoes her ponytail and shakes her head. Her thick hair falls to her shoulders. Jet black streaked with gray.

  “It’s just hair, Nori,” Lucy says, but she doesn’t sound convinced. She looks like a baby bird—fuzzy and vulnerable. “Can we drop it?”

  Angela sighs. “We’re still concerned about, well, about the influence your sisters are having on you.” She looks over at me apologetically. “We need to get to know you, Harriet. You and Meredith. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I say. “My mom’s the same way.”

  “Overprotective?” Lucy glares at her parents.

  I laugh. “Yeah. You could say that. She knows too much about bad parents.”

  “Why is that?” Nori asks.

  No way I’m telling her that my mom ran away from her own parents when she was younger than me, so all I say is, “Her work. She’s a sociologist. She studies the lives of homeless girls, runaways. When she’s not lusting after Craftsman houses.”

  Nori and Angela laugh. Even Lucy cracks a smile.

  Nori stands up and says, “I’m going to have a shower. It was nice to meet you, Harriet. Sorry for the rough start.”

  “No problem,” I say. “And call me Harry. Everyone else does.”

  She nods and heads inside.

  “So now that you’ve met us,” Angela says, “do you think maybe you and your mom could come for dinner soon? We’ll invite Meredith and her friend Alex. Eat some great food, get to know each other.”

  “Sure,” I say. “That would be awesome.” Any opportunity to see Alex seems good to me.

  “Can Verna come too?” Lucy asks. “She’s kind of like Harry’s grandma. And she’s met Meredith and me already.”

  “Plus she could bring her famous tres leches cake,” I add. “It’s amazing.”

  “Verna’s awesome,” Lucy adds. “She runs this totally retro hair salon.”

  “More the merrier, I suppose,” Angela says. “Especially if there’s cake. But for the record, Lucy, we’re still not happy about your impulsive behavior. Or Meredith’s part in it. We’ll discuss it later.”

  Lucy grimaces, and I get up to leave. “Thanks for the lemonade,” I say. “I’d better get home before Mom starts to worry. And it’s my turn to make dinner.”

  Angela nods approvingly. I don’t think she and Nori are going to be worrying about me leading Lucy astray. Anyone with half a brain can see I’m no threat. Time will tell about Meredith though.

  After a flurry of texts, our family dinner is set up for Wednesday, the night before I’m due to meet Alex again. Verna is on board with making a cake, and Mom buys wine. I am about to buy flowers for Angela and Nori when I remember Nori’s garden. Coals to Newcastle, Verna would say. Like giving a bottle of wine to a vintner. Or bread to a baker. But I think I should take something. Then I have a moment of inspiration. Last year, Verna and I picked strawberries and made jam. It’s delicious, and we’ve been kind of rationing it out. I was too depressed to go picking this year, and Verna didn’t want to go alone, so we didn’t replenish our stock, but maybe we have some left. I rummage around in the cupboard and find one solitary unopened jar. I don’t think Mom will mind if I take it. It’s for a good cause, after all. There’s a label on it—not a fancy one, just an office label—that says Strawbs 2014 in Verna’s scribbly handwriting. I find a red pen and decorate the label with drawings of tiny berries. Then I tie a scrap of red ribbon around the top of the jar, and voilà! The perfect hostess gift.

  SEVEN

  WHEN WE GET to Lucy’s house on Wednesday night, I am nervous. What if all the moms hate each other? What if I get into a fight with Meredith? What if Mom doesn’t like Alex? I keep telling myself that it’ll be fine—we’ll all be on our best behavior, after all—but I have to fight a desire to turn around and run away. Verna must sense my uneasiness; she rubs my back as we mount the stairs.

  “One may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,” she says as I reach up to bang the bee knocker against the door. She has an endless store of weird expressions—one for every occasion, it seems, although I can’t figure out how this one applies.

  Lucy opens the door, looking like a child bride in some New Age cult. Her ankle-length dress is white and lacy. Her sandals are silver Birkenstocks. She is wearing a garland of small white flowers in her hair (or what’s left of her hair). I introduce her to Mom, and she hugs us all, one after the other.

  “Everyone’s out back,” Lucy says. “Meredith and Alex are getting the garden tour. And Angela wants to give you the house tour, Ms.…”

  When she hesitates, Mom says, “Call me Della. And I’d love a tour.”

  “Della,” Lucy repeats. “That’s so pretty.”

  She leads us to the kitchen, where Angela is washing some salad greens at the sink. Verna puts the cake down on the counter, and Angela dries her hands for the next round of introductions, this time with more handshaking and less hugging.

  “Hope white is okay,” Mom says, holding up the bottle of wine.

  “And I brought you some jam,” I say. “Verna and I made it last summer.”

  I hand Angela the jam and she says, “This is lovely, Harry. So thoughtful.” She beams at me. “Strawberry is my favorite. Lucy’s too. And we’re having salmon, Della, so the wine is perfect. You’re not vegetarians, are you? Or vegan?”

  “God forbid,” Mom says, and Angela laughs.

  “These days you have to be so careful. No gluten, no dairy, nothing with a face.”

  “We eat everything,” Mom says. “Right, Harry?”

  “Pretty much. Except okra. We hate okra.”

  “Not on the menu,” Angela says. “Harry tells me you’re a Craftsman fan, Della. Let me show yo
u and Verna the house.”

  The three of them wander off to admire the wainscoting or something, and Lucy and I head toward the back deck, where the table is covered with a blue-and-white-striped tablecloth held in place by weights in the shape of silver bees. The water glasses are embossed with bees. The napkins that match the tablecloth are in bee-adorned napkin rings. I’m sensing a theme. There is a blue pottery jug in the middle of the table, full of beautiful flowers. There is a real bee buzzing around in the blooms, which makes me smile. Lucy tells me that Meredith brought the flowers, so maybe it is okay to bring coals to Newcastle after all.

  I can’t see Alex in the garden; maybe he is in the Zen sanctuary, meditating. I imagine sitting next to him, cross-legged on a tatami mat, eyes closed, the sound of our breathing punctuated by birdsong. Then I hear Meredith’s voice. “I just love delphiniums, don’t you?” and the mood is shattered. I wouldn’t know a delphinium if I fell into a bed of them.

  Meredith climbs the steps, her arms full of long-stemmed, intensely blue flowers the exact color of Alex’s eyes. Alex and Nori are standing at the bottom of the steps, deep in conversation. Meredith says, “Oh, hi, Harry,” as if she’s surprised—and not particularly pleased—to see me. “Lucy, can you show me where to find a vase for these?” Lucy follows her obediently into the house. Clearly I’m not Meredith’s favorite half-sister. And she’s not mine. I’m still not exactly sure why.

  “If the bees die, we die,” Nori is saying to Alex. “It’s that simple. No pollination, no plants. No plants, no life as we know it.”

  Alex nods and then looks up at me and smiles. “Hey, Harry,” he says. “You should see the garden.” He turns to Nori. “Can I show her around? While I still remember all the stuff you told us?”

  “Sure,” Nori says. “Shoes off in the sanctuary though.” She frowns at my flip-flops, as if they are stilettos.

  “We’ll be careful,” Alex says.

  Nori nods and heads into the house, leaving me alone with Alex.

  “So. Quite the place, hey?” he says.

  I nod and go down the stairs into the garden, where Alex is standing by a bush covered in small white blooms—obviously the source of Lucy’s garland.

  “Smell this,” he says, and I lean over and inhale. It’s incredible.

  “Mock orange,” he says, as I continue to breathe in the intoxicating citrus-y scent.

  “My mom wears perfume that smells like this,” I say. “I love it, even though most perfume makes me sneeze.”

  Alex laughs and heads down a path made of crushed white shells. “Nori collected these shells, and Angela crushed them in a walking meditation,” he tells me. “They’re from beaches all over the world. She’s been collecting them for years. Still does.”

  The shells crunch softly as we walk over them. “Won’t they eventually turn to dust or sand or something?” I ask.

  Alex shrugs. “Apparently she keeps adding shells to the paths, and Angela keeps crushing them. Friends collect them for her too. She says the path is a metaphor for life.”

  The shell path ends at a small wooden bridge that arches over an undulating stream of river rocks and leads to a tiny cedar hut set in a wide carpet of bright-green moss. There are stone benches outside the hut, one on each side of the open doorway. I slip off my flip-flops, and Alex slides his feet out of his deck shoes. His feet are narrow and tan, his nails trimmed. Guys’ feet can be gross; his are not. The hair on his legs is fine and golden. There is a large ugly scar above his left knee. Inside the hut, the floor is covered with straw mats, just as I had imagined. A low altar holds one white pillar candle, a statue of the Buddha and a single white orchid in a green pot. Two round red pillows face the altar. No glass in the windows; no door. It’s beautiful but kind of stark. I can’t imagine wanting to meditate out here during a Seattle winter. But then again, I can’t imagine wanting to meditate at all.

  As if reading my thoughts, Alex says, “Nori told me that Angela only uses this in good weather. She has another meditation space inside.”

  We go back across the bridge and Alex points out various plants as we wander through the garden: butterfly bush, lady’s-mantle, delphinium, phlox, lavender. It occurs to me that he may be trying to impress me, and since I don’t know much about plants, it kind of works. Eventually he stops playing botanist—I think he’s run out of plant names—but I don’t mind; the garden seems to welcome silence. I think about my mom, trying to meditate in her cluttered office. I wonder how she feels, if she’s jealous of Angela and Nori with their beautiful house and garden, their two incomes and two kids, their loving relationship. Does she have regrets? Does she wish this were her life?

  “Was your mom ever married?” Alex asks as we approach the house. It’s starting to freak me out a bit—the way he always seems to know what I’m thinking.

  “Nope,” I say. “Not her thing, I guess. She left home really young, and Verna took her in. She went to school for years and now she works super hard. Not much time for a relationship. At least, that’s what she tells me.”

  “Verna?”

  I’ve forgotten that Alex hasn’t met Verna, but I’m surprised Meredith hasn’t told him about coming to the salon.

  “She’s my grandmother. Not by blood—I’ve never met my real grandparents—but she helped raise me. She’s here for dinner too. It’s a regular family reunion.”

  “Or irregular,” Alex says.

  I laugh, and we climb the stairs to the deck just as Lucy comes out of the house with Meredith.

  “Our moms are bonding like crazy,” Lucy says. “Turns out your mom teaches with one of Angela’s friends. It’s like old home week in there, isn’t it, Meredith? Verna and Nori are setting up the Scrabble board for after dinner. Angela hates games. She wouldn’t even play Uno with us when we were little. She claims games encourage a negative spirit of competitiveness. Nori disagrees.”

  “Verna’s a pretty cutthroat Scrabble player,” I say. “She may look like a sweet old lady, but she will block your triple word score in a heartbeat.”

  Alex laughs, and Meredith’s thin lips stretch over her little teeth. Tonight she’s wearing a pink-and-white-checked shirtdress with a wide pink belt. Demure but not dowdy. Her hair is more gamine than spiky tonight. What is it about her that rubs me the wrong way, apart from the fact that she always seems to be wearing a costume? Retro movie star. Girl next door. It all seems so calculated. Or maybe she’s just more interested in fashion than I am. Almost everyone is.

  By the time we’ve finished the salmon and new potatoes and salad, I’ve figured out another thing that bugs me: Meredith is an expert on everything we talk about. She danced professionally, she volunteered at a shelter for at-risk youth, she worked on an organic farm one summer, she writes poetry, she won a competition for young chefs. She even took woodworking in high school because home ec was so lame. She built bookcases for the school library and did fundraising for a school in Africa. I get tired just listening to her, but I can’t exactly compete, although I do agree about home ec. And everyone else seems impressed.

  When Mom asks her where the shelter was, Meredith says, “Boise.”

  “Oh, you must have been at Your Place,” Mom says. “A friend of mine’s the director. I didn’t think they had peer volunteers.”

  “It’s a new program,” Meredith says, and before Mom can ask her anything else, Angela brings in Verna’s cake, which is so delicious that all conversation stops for a while. Meredith doesn’t eat much cake—she asks for “just a sliver”—but I can see her darting glances at Mom. Her expression is odd—not exactly fearful but certainly wary, which is weird. Mom’s tough but hardly threatening. At the first opportunity, Meredith excuses herself from the table and goes inside. When she comes back, she sits at the top of the stairs, her back to the rest of us, gazing into the garden. Mom look
s thoughtful, as if she’s working through an interesting problem.

  When Verna and Nori go inside to play Scrabble, Angela starts to clear the table. Meredith jumps up to help, but Angela is firm—Lucy can help, but guests cannot.

  Mom wanders out into the garden, leaving Meredith, Alex and me on the deck.

  “This is the most peaceful place I’ve ever been,” Meredith says. “Lucy is so lucky.”

  I nod. I want to ask her what her home in Montana was like, but she is already talking to Alex about getting a community-garden plot and growing all their own vegetables.

  “Do you have a garden?” she asks me.

  “Not like this one,” I say. “Tiny front lawn with a few flower beds. Brick patio in the back. A few planters. Gardening’s not really Mom’s thing.”

  “Maybe you could garden in Harry’s front yard,” Alex says to Meredith.

  I can’t tell whether he’s joking. I hope so. I don’t know what to say, so I ask him if we’re still on for a dog walk the next day. Meredith glares at Alex when he says yes.

  “We should get going,” she says to him.

  “We can drive you home,” I say. “Mom won’t mind. Unless you live in Edmonds or something. But we’ll have to wait for Nori and Verna to finish their game.”

  “We’ll take the bus,” Meredith says. “We have to work tomorrow. Let’s go, Alex.”

  Alex says, “I’d like to stay awhile,” and Meredith looks as if she’s been slapped. Her face reddens.

  “Suit yourself,” she says. “I’m leaving.”

  She get up and stalks into the house; Alex follows her. I stay behind on the deck. When Mom comes in from the garden, she raises her eyebrows and asks, “Where is everybody?”

  “Nori and Verna are playing Scrabble, Angela and Lucy are doing the dishes, and Meredith and Alex are arguing over whether to take the bus or wait for a ride.”

  “I’m happy to give them a ride home,” she says. “Unless they live in Edmonds.”