A Little Bit of Spectacular

by Gin Phillips

  I took my time swallowing. Gram had a little bit of roasted pork on her cheek, and it seemed like a good time to mention it.

  “You have something on your cheek,” I said.

  She swiped at it and kept watching me, not losing focus at all.

  “What do you mean?” I tried again, kind of laughing that she’d asked a silly question.

  “Why are you really going to Celestial Realm?”

  “It sounds cool,” I said.

  “They have a mocha drink that’s supposed to be amazing,” said Amelia. That was true. And it was about as much help as I could expect from Amelia. Because, really, it’s sort of understood that you don’t lie to other people’s parents, certainly not other people’s grandmothers. If there was lying to be done, it had to be me.

  “Uh-huh,” said Gram. “Right. Now, what’s the real reason? You’re two smart girls. I can see your brains working. You’re planning something. Don’t try to distract me with pork this time. I can only have so much food on my face.”

  It occurred to me that sometimes I underestimated Gram.

  “No reason,” I said.

  She just kept looking at me. Amelia just kept eating her quesadilla.

  “It’s nothing bad,” I said.

  She kept looking at me. Her hair was puffed like a gray cloud around her face, and her eyelashes were long and thick like Mom’s. I let myself stare at her eyelashes for a little while.

  “Here’s the thing,” I said, and it was maybe the first time I had talked to Gram like a real person and not like a very nice stranger who let us live with her. “There is a reason. It’s nothing bad. It’s not, like, meeting boys or anything. But it’s a secret and I’d like to keep it a secret. If you don’t mind.”

  I clenched and unclenched my fists. This, I thought, was the problem with having moved around her politely in the condo. With having not talked much. With having been so determined to act like this was not permanent and she was not permanent and that we didn’t need to know each other. Now when I was desperate, I had no idea what she was thinking. What she would say. We looked at each other for a little while over the empty basket of chips and the cold queso, and then she smiled.

  “Fair enough,” she said, and she reached over and took my hand in hers. Her hands were warm and soft and for some reason made me think of biscuit dough. “I’m not just a grandmother, you know. I’m an actual person. I’ve had secrets. I like secrets. I say give a girl a good friend”—she nodded at Amelia—“and a good exciting secret, and you’ve got everything you need.”

  “Really?” I said, leaning forward and accidentally setting my elbow in a puddle of cheese. “You say that?”

  She winked at me.

  “You can go to the coffee shop. I will stay here. I will not cramp your style. But you’ve got an hour before I’ll come over there to make sure you’re all right.”

  That seemed fair, really. So we finished our food, I kissed Gram on her poofy hair—which smelled sort of pleasantly of hair spray—and soon enough Amelia and I were strolling into Celestial Realm coffeehouse.

  The minute we were inside, I forgot all about Gram. I forgot all about real life. I only wanted to think about whoever was waiting for us.

  “I’m still not sure why she’d make the message into a riddle,” I said, looking around the warm, softly lit room.

  “And I keep telling you, she didn’t want everyone in the city meeting her here at tonight,” said Amelia. “Secret groups don’t like to advertise their private meetings.”

  We paused as we looked around. I’d only been in Celestial Realm once before, and it was a little fancier than most coffee shops. Instead of tables and chairs, the shop was full of leather sofas and puffy chairs. Rugs of all colors lay across the floor, overlapping, and the teardrop-shaped lights hanging from the ceiling were rainbow-colored. The room looked soft and touchable, lit up with reds and purples and greens and blues all around.

  “Now comes the real question,” I whispered. “Who is it we’re meeting?”

  We scanned the room carefully. People were sprawled across four of the sofas and five of the chairs—a few students staring at books or computers, two couples obviously out on a date, an older man listening to headphones, a group of women about my mom’s age laughing as they sipped at cups overflowing with whipped cream. None of them looked up at us, and none of them looked particularly mysterious. Definitely none of them looked like aliens.

  None of it felt like I had expected. This was possibly the biggest night of my life, the night where everything would change forever. There was no telling what I might learn—the world might seem like a totally different place tomorrow. But the coffeehouse looked normal. The people looked normal. There was no sound track like in movies, where the music let you know something big was about to happen. All I could hear was the low buzz of conversation, the espresso machine whirring, and some guitar music playing over the speakers.

  I had been expecting something more dramatic. Maybe dead silence when I walked into the room. Maybe spotting a group of people, probably dressed in black, possibly wearing sunglasses. People with mysterious expressions who talked in whispers, people who would give me a quick “come here” sign, scoot their chairs even closer together, and ask me to prove myself worthy of joining them. I didn’t know that’s what I expected until I looked around and saw nothing but totally unsuspicious, nonmysterious people.

  “Maybe we should have included some sort of instructions in the message,” said Amelia. “Like ‘wear a green hat’ or ‘carry an umbrella.’”

  I frowned. “Whoever they are, they won’t have any idea who we are, either.”

  As I said that, I noticed someone new, someone not sitting in a comfy seat. Over against the wall, next to the shining glass coffee bar, stood a tall, white-haired woman. Silver-haired, even. She was staring right at us, sipping a hot cup of something and breathing in the steam. She smiled over her cup, and I wasn’t sure if she was smiling at us or at the smell of her drink. Then she gave sort of a half wave, half salute. I looked behind me, wondering if she was acknowledging someone else.

  When I looked back toward her, she’d turned away, facing a small hallway that led toward the back of the building. She looked over her shoulder directly at me and Amelia, then she started walking. She did not move like an old lady. She moved fast and easily.

  “I think that’s her,” I said, taking off after her.

  “Her?” Amelia pointed.

  We had to rush to keep her in our sight. When we got to the end of the hallway, she turned a corner. We stepped into a small private dining room, the kind you could reserve for a birthday party. It had one long wooden table and eight chairs. The table was covered in platters—scones, muffins, tiny quiches, cut fruit. There was a tea pitcher and a French press of coffee, both steaming.

  Distracted briefly by the food and the hidden room, I looked up into the eyes of the white-haired woman, who was standing perfectly still about two feet away from me. She had gray eyes, not cerulean.

  “I suppose you are the young ladies with an interest in graffiti?” she said.

  I nodded. She held out her hand, and when I took it in mine, she shook my hand with a strong, sure grip. Her nails were polished a very pale pink, which matched her silky blouse and skirt. Tiny pearls dangled from her ears.

  “I am Cassandra Halley,” she said.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, not sure what else to say. I didn’t know where to start. I studied her, hoping if I just looked more carefully, this might make more sense. This polite, well-dressed woman had been writing on bathroom walls?

  “And it’s very nice to meet you,” she said. “I’ve been very curious who might walk through that door. I didn’t expect there to be two of you. You’re younger than I would have thought.”

  None of my possible responses seemed very polite: You are older
than I expected. And more human. And pinker.

  “How did you know it was me, Mrs. Halley?” I asked. She was an old lady—it’s not like I could call her by her first name.

  “You were looking for someone,” she shrugged. “I’ve been here for half an hour, and no one else who walked through that door scanned the whole room like you did.”

  She gestured to the table.

  “Won’t you join me?” she said. “I wasn’t sure what you liked to snack on, so I ordered a bit of everything.”

  We settled in at the table, and Amelia and I both chose a scone and began picking them apart. We were stuffed full of quesadillas, but it was nice to have something to do with our hands.

  “I’m sorry I took so long responding to your first request for a meeting,” said Mrs. Halley. “I had gotten a bit busy. Time slipped away from me.”

  “What were you busy with?” asked Amelia, looking at Mrs. Halley like she was a rare Eastern spadefoot.

  “A few things,” said Mrs. Halley. “We’ll get to that.”

  She sipped at her tea, and when she blew on it lightly, the smell of orange drifted over. “I suppose we should start with the high school, though. Plantagenet. That’s back when I was Cassandra Mosely, before I met my husband, Lowell.”

  Something about that caught my attention. Cassandra Mosely. Who was now Cassandra Halley. So her husband had been named Lowell Halley. C.M. and L.H. The same initials I’d seen carved into the tree out at the old high school.

  “Did you carve your initials into a tree recently?” I asked, setting down my scone altogether.

  She stared for a moment and slowly nodded. “You found that, huh? You are observant. I did carve those. Just once. Lowell had been going out there every year or so and recarving it for the past few decades. He had a real fondness for leaving his mark on things.”

  “He sort of rubbed off on you, didn’t he?” said Amelia.

  She smiled. “You could say that.”

  I felt like I should just confirm a thing or two. Make sure we were on the same page. Maybe if I said things more directly this would stop feeling like a dream.

  “You’re the one who’s been writing about Plantagenet on the walls, right?” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Are you the only one?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said.

  I waited for her to say more. She picked up a cinnamon scone and broke it in half. She tore off a small piece and popped it into her mouth. For a while we sat there, chewing. She chewed very neatly, I noticed, tearing off piece after tiny piece of her scone like I imagined princesses—or gerbils—did. She wiped her mouth with the corner of her napkin. I couldn’t see that she’d spilled a single crumb. Meanwhile, I was pretty sure I’d dragged my hair into my coffee. Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “I’d love to know what the messages meant,” I said.

  There was still a chance that I hadn’t been totally wrong. That this one woman was only the tip of the iceberg to something bigger and better.

  “And I’d like to tell you,” she said, crossing her legs. “I guess I was trying to decide where to begin.”

  “Maybe with the high school?” I suggested. She’d already started there, but we hadn’t gotten very far.

  “It’s as good a place as any,” she said. “Plantagenet is where I went to high school, of course. Class of 1949. But the story really starts with Lowell. I’d gone to school with him for two years before he first spoke to me. That’s not even right—he didn’t speak. He wrote to me. I should mention he was an artist. He did cartoons and sketches and all kinds of drawings, but he also had beautiful handwriting. He’d do banners for the football games and such—just markers on white paper, but they looked like they should have been hung in a museum.”

  So far this story was not living up to my expectations. The way Mrs. Halley told a story reminded me of how she ate a scone—it might have started out whole, but it got broken into pieces and scattered around. But I smiled politely and nodded encouragingly, hoping these bits and pieces would wind up making sense.

  “I came to school one day in eleventh grade,” she said, “and when I got to my homeroom, there was a big poster board taped right up on the wall that said, ‘Cassie Mosely, will you go to East Lake Park with me this Friday?’”

  “Did you think it was sweet?” asked Amelia, who was apparently doing a better job than I was of going with the flow of the story.

  Mrs. Halley rolled her eyes. “I thought it was tremendously embarrassing. Who asks a girl out with a sign in public like that? I ripped it down and threw it in the trash can. Teenage girls are not the nicest creatures. Try to remember that when some nice boy asks you out for the first time. Even if he’s odd.”

  “You thought he was odd?” I asked.

  She laughed—a very deep laugh to come from such a delicate-looking lady. It made me think of Santa Claus and jiggling bellies and pipes. I wondered if Mrs. Halley smoked a pipe.

  “Oh, he was definitely odd,” she said. “At any rate, he never even mentioned having asked me out. A few weeks went by, and he fell into step beside me in the hallway between classes. He asked me if he could walk me home. I didn’t want to be rude—I at least had the decency to feel a little guilty about ripping up his sign. So I said I wouldn’t mind. He walked me home, and for a while that was all. He’d show up next to me once a week or so, and he’d walk me home. Carry my books, tell me about whatever comic book he was working on—he was always coming up with new ideas—ask me about my day. It got to be comfortable enough.”

  “And then he carved your initials in the tree,” I said, feeling like what I had hoped was a mystery story had turned out to be a love story. Love stories were much more boring than mysteries.

  “Oh, that was much later,” she said. “After the dance. After the dance, my dear, he carved our initials everywhere. Trees, fences, wet sidewalks, mud puddles, sandboxes. A whole lifetime of carving and scribbling.”

  She laughed again, and I expected to see little smoke rings coming out of her mouth. “There never was a man more interested in leaving a record of himself.”

  I felt like the story was falling into pieces again.

  “No,” continued Mrs. Halley, correcting herself. “It wasn’t about leaving a record of himself. He wanted to leave a record of us. He wanted us—him and me, the fact that we loved each other—to be carved in every nook and cranny of the city. He told me one time that long after we were gone, he wanted the trees and the streets and rocks to scream out how he loved me. And that I loved him back.”

  She looked at us critically. “You two are too young to appreciate that, but, trust me, it’s very romantic. I hope both of you find someone who loves you like that one day.

  “He didn’t stop once we got married either. Always carving initials or some such everywhere. Carving our names in the sidewalk outside our house. Handprints in the garden wall. That sort of thing.”

  She stopped.

  “And then?” I asked.

  She set her teacup very neatly back in its saucer. “And then he died. A year ago. Pancreatic cancer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Amelia and I said at the same time.

  “Thank you. I was very sorry, too. A bit lost really. Aimless. I didn’t know how to fill up my days. I didn’t like being alone in our house, so I just wandered around—shopping, walking, ordering coffee I never finished. Up and down streets, in and out of shops.”

  I nodded. When Mom had her operation, she had to spend two nights in the hospital, so it was just Gram and me in the condo. Those were the longest days and nights of my life. I couldn’t stop thinking about what if Mom never came back, what if her bed stayed empty and her favorite coffee cup never got filled up and the shoes she’d left by the front door never got worn again. I couldn’t stand seeing all her things that seemed so unimportant when s
he was there using them and holding them and wearing them, but that suddenly seemed so sad and empty when she was gone.

  I could understand why Mrs. Halley wanted to get out of her house. I’d made every excuse I could to avoid the condo while Mom was in the hospital. That’s when I discovered Trattoria Centrale, when I was desperate to find someplace to kill time. But after dark, when I had to come home, I’d curl up on Mom’s bed and slip on her favorite Lucky Charms T-shirt, even though I normally made fun of her for wearing the raggedy thing. I’d slide under her sheets and drink decaf out of her coffee mug, even though I hated decaf, because she liked it. I wanted to taste what she’d tasted, feel what she’d felt.

  Mrs. Halley lifted her teacup to her mouth, even though the cup was empty.

  “You wrote on the walls because it reminded you of him, didn’t you?” I said.

  She smiled into her empty cup.

  “It started out as a spur of the moment thing,” she said. “Just a lark. Silliness. I happened to be in a restroom, and there was all sorts of boring business—bad words and names on the walls—and I fished through my purse, found a pen, and wrote the first thing that came to mind. And it felt good. It did make me feel close to him. Connected. So I kept doing it. I started carrying a purple pen with me all the time, and, when the mood struck, I’d jot down a phrase in the ladies’ room.”

  She looked up, seeming self-conscious for the first time since we’d walked in.

  “I’m not as creative as Lowell was, though. I just kept thinking about when we were first together. Our time at school. And for some reason the alma mater popped into my head.”

  “The alma mater?” I repeated.

  “For Plantagenet High.” She scrunched up her face for a moment, peered at the ceiling, and began to sing softly, slightly off-key.

  We are Plantagenet.

  We are chosen, a unique breed,

  Forever striving upward and onward

  Always to succeed.

  Progress and truth

  Are our watchwords.

  Every wound we’ll soothe.