Please. Tell him.
“Who?” The three of them turned to look expectantly at the house. Oliver jumped up and ran to the top of the stairs to watch someone, an older boy, emerge from the thick fog that was the house. “Tell who what? Oliver?”
She was back on the cliff, in the dark, in the rain. The wind blew and lightning slashed the sky. She searched for the gazebo; caught sight of it, weathered and empty among the trees again.
Help me. Oliver’s voice reverberated in her head as lightning crashed, once and then again, in rapid progression along the slope of land in front of her. She wobbled backward, slipped, started to fall . . . then simply leaned back into a sunny field of blue and white and pink wildflowers. Help me.
Her eyes drifted open slowly—warmth from the sun cooling on her cheeks, the scent of rich earth and sweet flowers still in her nostrils. It sure beat waking in panic from an endless fall into darkness but . . . what did it all mean? If dreams meant anything at all, that is.
She slipped her palms under her head and stared at the ceiling with tired eyes.
Maybe her subconscious was working out the kinks in the Patty Ann story. What if her ghost needed help with something ? Patty Ann was an obliging sort of girl most of the time, but . . . what could he possibly need help with? Well, it wasn’t like he was a real ghost, right? Another youngster in a ghost costume—perhaps his sheet is caught on something or his bag of Halloween candy is too heavy to carry. Nah. But he could be lost. He might have wandered too far from home and can’t recall how to get back. That could work—lots of safety lessons to be taught there....
Clearly the story had to have a Halloween theme. Why hadn’t she noted as much on the storyboard and saved herself the confusion and needless anxiety? If she could ignore the fact that she’d drawn it in her sleep, of course.
Still, it was a start, she decided, rolling over and wiggling into a comfortable position with a sleepy but satisfied smile.
Finally, she slept, deep and dreamless.
FIVE
“I knew it. Once the valerian root kicked in and you started to relax, I knew your imagination would break through the block. Like a detox cleanse for your mind.” She chuckled at her own cleverness. “A big brain flush.”
Ivy glanced at the trash compacter where she’d tossed the herb tea when she suspected it of causing the sleep-working incident. Or what her mother was now calling her short blackout.
Four hours was not a short amount of time to be doing things she was unaware of—it wasn’t. In four hours she could have driven into town, robbed a bank, and shot the security guard. In four hours she could have baked a cake, eaten the entire thing, and cleaned up the mess. However, in her four hours of unconsciousness she had completed a five-page storyboard—a task she couldn’t have accomplished if she were conscious, not on the best of days.
Ivy believed most of her mother’s herbs and concoctions were, in general, harmless. However, some could be as poisonous as others could be helpful. Her mother had been studying them for years and was fanatically cautious when it came to mixing and dosing with them. But mistakes are made....
“Mm. Big brain flush. Good one, Mom. But maybe you shouldn’t recommend the valerian root to any of your friends until you’ve had a chance to do a more complete check into its potential side effects. I mean—”
“Oh my! A twofer. A brain and body cleanse. But that’s—”
“Mom! It didn’t give me diarrhea. Just don’t give it to your friends. There’s no way of telling who’s going to be . . . ultrasensitive to it, and I know you have lots of other things you can suggest for relaxation and sleep.”
“Honey, it’s been used for centuries. Hippocrates described its—”
“Mom?” She waited a beat for her mother’s attention. “Please. Rip that page out of your book.”
“No,” she said after a moment. “But I will look into it further. I’m sorry it made you ill, sweetie. As you say, you might be ultrasensitive to it or allergic, or it might even have been cured improperly, there’s no telling. Just toss it.”
“Okay.”
A few minutes later, her backpack dangled from her right hand as she took long-legged strides across the lawn toward the cliffs and the path that would take her to the gazebo. It had rained during the night but at present the sky was big and bright and empty, save for a few gulls that preferred the ledges—both natural and man-made—along the cliff face for their nests.
Though the grass was still damp, the pebbles and rocks on the cliff path were as dry as cornmeal and her steps were quick and sure.
Stepping off the path and around a few trees into the clearing, she stopped and marveled at the quiet, peaceful, homeagain sensation that washed over her. What was it about this particular wedding canopy that attracted her so? In light of the strange happening during her last visit, she ought to be terrified, but she wasn’t—only glad and lighthearted.
She worked well for the next two hours. The sketches shifted easily from her head to the paper, which for her was the hardest part. Not the effort of drawing itself but the telling of the story via pictures rather than with words. It could be tricky sometimes, and it was important to her that a young person who hadn’t yet learned to read could understand the tale as well as a slightly older person who had. Later, the details in the pictures and the expressions on the characters’ faces would appeal to adults, making it “a book for children of all ages,” as one reviewer described Patty Ann Pettigrew Picks a Peck of Peaches.
And still another hour passed, and she was oblivious to everything but Patty Ann and Oliver—now in her mind as a towheaded scamp with gray eyes and freckles. She was contemplating making Oliver one of Patty Ann’s permanent, recurring friends when the bushes behind her rustled and Craig emerged from the woods where the path connected the two properties—picnic basket in hand.
He smiled when he saw her, and the lurch in her abdomen was not unpleasant, she noted with interest . . . very not unpleasant.
“I’m sort of jumping the gun on Friday night, but Gus said you were down here working, so I thought I’d take a chance on it being time for a break. Are you hungry?”
“Famished.” She closed up her sketch pad and set it aside. “Please don’t tell me Gus was down here and I didn’t see him. I get a little absorbed. My mom came over once, did my dishes, cooked me dinner, and left it under a cover on my counter. I thought I had elves.”
He chuckled as he reached the bottom of the stairs, barely hesitated, and then stepped inside. “By the end of the summer you’ll realize that even though you might not see him, Gus is everywhere, sees everything, and knows all. It’s spinechilling.”
“He’s been with you a long time.” It wasn’t a question.
“All my life. And if he wasn’t ratting me out to my dad, he was secretly helping me out of one giant jam or another, so I guess you could say he helped raise me.”
“And you love him,” she said, leaning forward on the edge of the chair and pushing the stool out for him.
He looked put on the spot for a second, then nodded as he sat. “Yeah, I do.”
Setting the basket on the floor between them near the little table, he swiveled his head from side to side, looking around, mixing memories with the sad reality of the condition of the canopy. His eyes gravitated back to her; he grinned and rubbed his palms together. “So, how’s the story going?”
“Great. Finally. I love working here. Thank you for letting me.”
He dropped his gaze to the picnic basket and shrugged. “No problem.” He reached in and brought out two neatly wrapped sandwiches. “Turkey or tuna?”
“I like both, you choose.”
He looked torn. “Me, too. Let’s go fifty-fifty.”
“Deal.”
His expression was calculating. “Wanna eat dessert first?”
She gasped, shocked and delighted by the devil inside him. “What is it?”
“Wanda’s tapioca pudding. Left over from dinner last
night.” Without waiting for an answer, he gave her a spoon, handle first, and then dove into the basket for the custard cups. “It’s one of my favorites, so she makes it pretty often. It’s the only reason I keep her around.”
“Now, why don’t I believe that?” She yanked off the plastic wrap.
“It’s true. She’s the bossiest woman I’ve ever met. And she always gets her way. Even my ex-wife couldn’t stand up to her.”
“Well”—she paused to get every molecule off her spoon before scooping up more—“you could put up with a lot for a dessert like this.”
“Tell me about it.”
They hummed and groaned and wiped the bowls clean with their index fingers, feeling no embarrassment because they both knew there was tapioca pudding and then there was tapioca pudding. He waited patiently for her to take her last lick, then gently took the cup from her fingers.
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
“After sharing your pudding with me? Of course.”
“Do you have children?”
“No.”
“Then why didn’t you go back to your maiden name and just use Bonner as a pseudonym? I mean, would you have, if you hadn’t started writing the Patty Ann stories as Ivy Bonner?”
“God, no. Changing my last name was always a huge incentive for marriage . . . to anyone.” She chose water when he offered it or bottled sweet tea to drink.
“How bad was it?”
She took a sip of water. “When my dad’s father came here from Sweden, through Ellis Island, someone misread his surname Garde as Gardner. Being new and not wanting to rock the boat, he didn’t say or do anything about it. Unfortunately, he gave his oldest son a very traditional Scandinavian name: Leif.”
The corners of Craig’s lips twitched. “Leif Gardner.”
She nodded gravely. “Leif fell in love with my mother . . . Rose.”
He put his elbow on his knee and his fist in front of his mouth before he muttered, “Rose Gardner.”
“Mm. Now my mother doesn’t believe in suffering in silence . . . or suffering alone. So when she had a daughter—me—she wanted to name me Daisy or Petunia or Orchid or Lily or—get this one—Mum.”
He sucked air in between his teeth like something hurt, but his eyes were dancing with merriment.
“My dad talked her out of those and they compromised on Ivy, which is almost tolerable if you think of the alternatives.”
“The other night you said you had a brother.”
“Jay.” He looked first confused, then disappointed. “That’s the name he finally settled on . . . though his could have been much worse, too. Greene, Jersey—you know, for the state, the Garden State?—Spade, Tater—Tate for short—Sonny, Able, and, um . . . oh, or Bean.” She shook her head at his silent chuckles. “Once again my father interceded, and his full legal name became Random J. Gardner. The J is just a J.
“We used to call him Randy until he hit puberty and the other kids were learning what they thought were dirty words . . . then he was a randy gardener and everyone would howl with laughter. So in college he went by RJ. He said the girls he dated spent most of their time trying to guess what the initials stood for, which was okay because he didn’t really want to talk as much as he wanted to get in their pants. But by the time he graduated that was getting old, and he started wanting something a little more serious. So now he goes by Jay, and if anyone asks if he has a middle name, he says it’s just J, and they don’t think to ask if it’s his only name.”
“What does your mother think of that?”
“Oh, she did her damage. She doesn’t really care how we deal with it. And she was gracious when I decided to keep Bonner . . . though I did rely heavily on Patty Ann for my argument.” Having cleared their palates with water and tea, Ivy picked up the turkey sandwich, took half, and handed the rest to Craig. “Tell me about this gazebo. I know it was your mother’s wedding canopy. Why’d you move it down here?”
“I didn’t.” He considered her and collected his thoughts as he chewed, then answered. “Actually, Gus helped his father make this for my grandfather, who wanted it built in honor of his new baby daughter, Sophia. My mother. The idea was that she’d sun in it as an infant, learn to walk in it as a toddler, practice reading in it as she got older. I heard she was a bit of a tomboy, and when she had friends over, they used it as a fort against bad guys or a castle where she chased away dragons. Everyone used it, but it was hers, meant to be her wedding canopy when the big day came. Which it did, of course, and she and my father lived happily ever after for almost twenty-one years. She died when I was nineteen—pancreatic cancer. It . . . broke my dad. He just sort of checked out, emotionally.” He sighed heavily and looked around. “He couldn’t stand looking out the windows and seeing it, but he couldn’t bring himself to destroy it either, so he made Gus move it down here, out of sight.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, though it didn’t seem enough. Nor was it sufficient to describe the ache in her heart or the certain knowledge of the pain he was feeling—as if it were her loss as well. “ And I’m sorry I asked to use it. It didn’t occur to me that it might be a special family place that strangers shouldn’t—”
“No. Please. Come and use it every day if you want. I’m glad you love working here. It was built to be loved . . . for happy memories. My mother would be very pleased to know you’re enjoying her canopy.” He stood, kept his back to her as he inspected a support column and the railing beside it. “In fact, there was a time when I’d planned to have it restored and put back, up near the house, but . . .” After a moment he turned to her with a new, different, greater sorrow in his eyes that he tried to shrug off. “Time gets away from you, you know?”
“I do.” She hurried to change the subject. “So did you want to go into the family business or did you do it because it was expected?”
“No, I wanted to. I couldn’t wait to take over and do things my way.” He shook his head at his youthful ignorance, bent his knee, and lowered himself to the railing, his back against the post. “I studied mining and geology in school. After I graduated I came back to work the mines while I got a Masters of Mining Engineering. Lots of paper on my walls but I still don’t know as much as old Charley Mumford did when he came over here. Safer, more modern techniques of mining, certainly, but neither my granddad or my Dad or I got Charley’s nose for great rock.”
“You mean prospecting? Like for gold?”
“Well yeah, sort of, but you can find granite anywhere. Most of the North American continent is underlain with granite. There are deposits that are many miles long and wide and deep, and then there are smaller stocks like the original Mumford Mine.” He tipped his head in the direction of the cliffs. “It’s a very coarse-grained rock, so the prize is in the content of the rock, the minerals . . . mostly feldspar and quartz and some hornblende and mica. Then, depending on the combination and color of the minerals, you get a whole range of colors from white to yellow to gray and black; to pink and green and red and even blue. And because the minerals vary drastically, or not so drastically, from place to place, no two quarries produce the same color granite.”
She listened attentively while he explained in simple terms all the uses for granite, aside from fine-looking countertops—sand, gravel, ready mix and asphalt concrete for highways, tunnels, dams, bridges . . . buildings, sidewalks, and patios . . . statues and tombstones. She’d already heard somewhere that granite was less porous than marble, which made it a harder stone and less susceptible to scratches and stains when used for countertops, but it interested her to learn that it was replacing marble as a building stone because it stands up better to acid rain and that some of the Egyptian pyramids were actually built of limestone and then covered in granite for its beauty and protection.
It wasn’t until he got to the accessory minerals—apatite, magnetite, and zircon—that many of his words melted away, leaving only the deep rumbling sound of his voice rippling through her muscles—warm, rela
xing, hypnotic.
“. . . rare minerals deposited in the spaces in granite . . . tourmaline and topaz . . .” and her hand slid from the arm of the chair and touched her drawing pad on the floor. While his rocks were seriously boring to her, his face was anything but. He was enjoying his topic, and his expressions were animated, his eyes lit from within.
“The feldspar in the granite contains some radioactive components. All natural rock material does.” She glanced down to find her pad open to a clean sheet and a favorite 2B sketch pencil in her hand. “Granite is formed when cooled volcanic magma hardens over thousands and thousands of years, millions sometimes . . .”
Her gaze barely left his face as her hand guided the pencil down the page—over, across, and diagonally. She caught the strong lines of his chin and the softly squared symmetrical angles of his cheeks that had struck her that first day. But after that it got . . . well, it went all wrong.
“. . . and as the granite breaks down over time the thorium, radium, and uranium release a colorless, odorless radioactive gas . . . you’ve heard of radon, right?”
“Sure. My mother has a detector in her house.”
But her outline of his lips was a little askew and not full enough. Her hand slipped, not once but three times, as she attempted to capture the mold of his hair around his face and near his ear. She accidentally drafted a notch, a bump, on the bridge of his nose—she botched the rhinoplasty, and in the end even his eyes, his very best feature in her opinion, looked like someone else’s.
“. . . and in 2007 the Marble Institute of America announced the amount of radiation and radon released from granite countertops was inconsequential.”
Ivy looked up when she became aware of the silence—their eyes met and he shrugged, saying, “Of course, there are those rare instances of young children growing buck teeth and rabbit ears, but like I said before, it beats fins and gills.”
She stared at him as if she’d just woken up. “What?”
He laughed. “That’s an interesting method of keeping your eyes from glazing over when you’re bored. Do I get to see it?”
The Unquiet Page 36