Once he leaves, you’re still going to have to deal with him being your father.
That, I decided firmly, was a Future Enid problem.
Current Enid problem (okay, less a problem than something that had always annoyed me): Dr. Holden’s car. He drove one of those uselessly extravagant SUVs with silver paint, leather interiors, seat warmers, satellite TV, a coffee maker, a Sudoku-puzzle solver, a registered accountant living in the trunk to do one’s taxes, etc. I felt like deflating a tire; Mrs. Delavecchio had a pair of pruning shears that I could use as a pointy thing. That would show Dr. Holden.
Show him what? That you’re a vandal? That you’re acting out? That you’re not handling any of this maturely?
And Mrs. Delavecchio would probably see me getting the pruning shears, then ask me what was going on, then I’d have to make up some reason I was taking her pruning shears, then we’d get to talking, and I’d never get my plan in motion.
Fine.
WASH ME, I wrote with my finger on the basically non-existent layer of dust on the car’s side.
Take that, Dr. Holden.
I looked around to make sure no one had seen me, then scampered.
list of items required for my plan to succeed:
1.Banishing powder: Not to banish a faerie. Definitely not to vanish a faerie. But my mother had always talked about the powder like it made a certain barrier that a faerie couldn’t cross. So if I sprinkled the powder in a circle around a faerie, it couldn’t get away. Or it would be banished to the outside, but already being outside, where my plan was going to take place, it wouldn’t go anywhere and I could still grab it.
2. Net: For the grabbing.
3. Long extension cords to plug in the …
4. Lamps.
5. Cover: The bright orange of an extension cord would definitely stand out in the grass. I’d need to hide the extension cord in order to not alert the faeries as to what I had planned. Grass clippings would probably work, in which case I needed:
6. Grass clippers.
I’d self-Hoovered (which was an impressive way of saying used the side of my hand to sweep into an empty yogurt container) some banishing powder off my windowsill before I’d left, so number one on the list was checked off. Grass clippers were in the utility shed at the farmhouse. There’d be extension cords there too. That left a net and some lamps. Oh, and:
7. A power bar, so I could plug in more than one lamp at a time off the extension cord.
I fumbled in my pockets for my change purse. I had $8.24. I needed to buy more than $8.24 worth of supplies. Luckily, I lived in a small town, a trusting town, a town where certain stores, like the hardware store, which had everything I needed, let you run up a tab.
I admit, I felt what cheap novels call a frisson using my mother’s tab to destroy her and Dr. Holden’s relationship.
But you gotta do what you gotta do.
Precisely me, precisely.
I took a red basket off the hardware store’s stack and got to work filling it. In went four Angelpoise-style lamps, three packets of LED light bulbs (faeries had to hate fluorescent ones as much as I did), a surge-protected, surge-resistant, and surge-repellant power bar, a flashlight, batteries, a fishing net, a butterfly net, webbing (in case the other nets failed me and I had to construct one myself), and, to throw them off my trail, a spray bottle of fungicide.
“I’d like to put this on Margery Strange’s tab,” I said to the woman at the front of the store. “Thank you,” I said, reading her name tag, “Barb.”
“Normally I would, sweetie, especially for Nurse Strange.” She smiled at me and pushed a strand of permed hair behind her ear. “You know, the way she took care of our Stephanie when she didn’t know her left from her right, let alone who any of us were, but —”
But what? Had my mother somehow discovered my plans and rushed to the hardware store to close her account and warn Barb to stall if she saw me come in? My mother would describe me as bookish, with eyes wise beyond my years. Barb, making a mental note, would nod, and then carefully evaluate the face of each eleven-year-old passing by. That one — too scrawny. This one — never opened a book in her life by the looks of her. Now this one — yep. Exactly. That has to be Enid Strange. Having located her target, she had to surreptitiously dial my mother’s phone number under the counter, let it ring two long and three short, then hang up, which was the code they’d agreed upon, and —
I’d been thinking so loudly that I hadn’t heard Barb’s actual explanation as to why she wouldn’t let me put my purchases on my mother’s tab.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Could you repeat that?”
“I guess your mother hasn’t told you yet.” Barb clucked. “Well, it’s not really my place,” she said in that tone of voice people who love gossiping use just before they spill. “But now that another doctor, the orthogonalist or whatever, quit, the Will O’Wisp doesn’t have enough staff left to keep its accreditation.”
Thanks to my mother’s physics textbook and a dictionary, I knew that orthogonal was a fancy word for perpendicular, and that perpendicular was a fancy word for a ninety-degree angle. There being no such thing as a ninety-degree specialist (at least not in the medical field, but maybe in physics, or math, or something), I needed more info. “Who exactly quit?” I asked.
“The British woman. Or Indian.” Barb seemed puzzled. “I never quite understood how that worked.”
“That her ancestors at one point lived in India, then moved to England? And that then she moved here?” It didn’t seem that difficult a concept to grasp, migration of labor and all that. “You must be talking about Dr. Sivaloganathan. She’s an orthopedic specialist,” I clarified. “Not an orthogonal one.”
“It doesn’t matter what her specialty is, she quit,” Barb said. “Add that to the four nurses that have gone out west or to the States, and the two that retired. Those positions haven’t been filled. Plus another one of the older doctors, they’ve scaled back his work since, you know,” she lowered her voice, “the incidents.”
I vaguely recalled my mother telling me something about one of the doctors (a man so old and doddery that he was often mistaken for a resident of the hospital rather than an employee) writing prescriptions he shouldn’t be writing for visitors and townies.
“So,” I said, willing us to move past Barb’s interest in Will O’Wisp employment statistics, “about putting these items on my mother’s tab —”
“We’re calling them in.”
My brow wrinkled. Barb correctly intuited that I still didn’t understand.
“There’s not enough staff to keep the place open. No one who works there is going to have a job in a week. So we’re asking everyone to pay their tabs off while they still can,” she explained. “Hold on.” Barb typed into the store’s supply chain management and payment computer next to the cash. “I’m supposed to collect the tab of anyone who comes in. There.” She turned back to me. “Your mother owes $3.82 from when she came in a few weeks ago to buy —” Barb scrolled down the screen “— an amaryllis bulb. Don’t know why. It’s too late in the season to plant an amaryllis. Your yard’s not the right soil for it, either.”
“Maybe she planted it inside.”
Barb was unmoved. “So, you got $3.82?”
I did, but I wasn’t going to part with it to pay off my mother’s horticultural bill when I had my own purchases to make. I picked up one of the lamps: $28.00. The batteries were $7.99. I didn’t even know how much the rest of the stuff cost. I was seriously overdrawn. This was unfortunate.
“You can’t make an exception, maybe?” I asked. “About adding stuff to the tab? My mother’ll come in and pay it off as soon as she can. We’re good for it. Please?”
Barb curled the left side of her lip up. “No. And do me a favor and put all that stuff back, since you know where you got it from,” she said, as th
e only thing my begging could mean was that I wasn’t able to pay for my basket’s contents. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” I replied reflexively but insincerely as I mourned the loss of my brilliant plan.
A loud squeal interrupted my self-pitying spiral. The lights brightened and then turned off. The whirr of the air conditioner stopped, and the display fans stilled.
“See,” Barb said, shaking her head. “If, instead of all of its schemes, our government put its money into infrastructure renewal, not only would that signal to companies that we are a robust place in which to do business, but nonsense like this wouldn’t happen.”
“Okay,” I agreed, even though I had no idea what Barb was on about now.
“As it is, when’s the last time you saw someone trimming back branches close to the power lines? A branch must have fallen onto the lines.”
“I don’t think the power is off everywhere, Barb.” I pointed outside. Across the parking lot, the family restaurant’s sign was still spinning and flashing its light bulbs.
Barb’s eyes narrowed as she looked at me. “Maybe something tripped the breaker. I’ll go check the fuse box.” She pushed open the half-sized door that separated her in the cashier’s box from the rest of us hoi polloi on the floor and walked, without much enthusiasm, to a full-sized door marked Employees only. No exceptions. “You still put your stuff back since you can’t pay for it,” she called as she unlocked the door, pulling the keys off a carabiner that she’d hung around one of her belt loops. “Don’t just leave that full basket there.”
“I won’t,” I said. And I wouldn’t, not because I was going to do Barb’s job for her and restock the shelves but because I was going to take what was in my basket and leave. I felt queasy at the idea of not paying, but it wasn’t like I was stealing. At least, eventually, it wouldn’t be like I was stealing because:
1.I would save the UPC codes and the price tags so that their supply chain management versus inventory calculations would balance; and
2.Once I made the faerie break its spell on my mother and Dr. Holden, I’d have it cast the same one on Dr. Holden and Dr. Sivaloganathan so that they’d reconcile, Dr. Sivaloganathan wouldn’t quit, the Will O’Wisp wouldn’t go under, everyone would have tabs again at the hardware store, and I’d come by with my mother to pay off the items I was currently putting on our tab, even if the hardware store didn’t actually know that was what I was doing right now.
With Barb safely ensconced in the Employees only. No exceptions area, I leaned over and grabbed one of the reusable bags the store sold for ninety-nine cents (or free with any purchase of seventy-five dollars or more) and began transferring everything in. I had to move fast (How long did it take to check a fuse box? And what was a fuse box, exactly?) and I had to move carefully — it would be no help if I got to the farmhouse with a bunch of broken light bulbs and Angelpoise lamps rendered unusable by leaked fungicide.
My escape was going swimmingly until I found myself under the automatic door-opening eye, which, without power, was non-operational. As I gazed at the outside world where I needed to be for the next steps of my plan, it was obvious that the family restaurant sign spun because of the restaurant’s roaring diesel generator. Once Barb realized that all breakers were unflipped (were fuse boxes full of pancakes?), she’d be back, and I’d be dealt with to the full extent of the law, as the numerous signs posted around the hardware store promised shoplifters they would be.
Focus, Enid. They can’t have only one exit. That’s a fire safety violation.
Well, maybe if the hardware store was on fire, that would be reassuring.
Well, maybe with all those full extent of the law signs, the hardware store has a robust respect for rules and regulations. Find another way out.
A quick scan and I found it: the external seasonal nursery attached to an open loading dock at the side of the store, a perfect getaway vector. I zoomed over and pushed through the billowing plastic strips that separated in from out. Freedom!
Except — I stopped short — there was someone else in the greenhouse. Behind the till was a university-aged boy (as my mother had predicted) balanced on a high, rickety stool.
“Well, hello there. Well met,” I said vivaciously. (When caught where you’re not supposed to be, be cheery and act like you’re meant to be there). “Barb said I could go. I mean, she said this was okay, so no need to worry about it,” I babbled while pointing to my bag of purloined goods. “I’ll just be going. The electricity’s off, you know. That’s why I couldn’t go out the doors, and Barb sent me out this way. That’s all. Nothing else. How are you doing today? I’m a bit under the weather myself, but otherwise —”
The cashier gave me an eye-rolling glance before returning to thumb-type on his phone. Clearly, he wasn’t going to be an issue. Neither was leaving the greenhouse, whose exit to the parking lot was simply a slit in the plastic sheet-ing. I walked through, hoisted my bag of supplies onto my shoulder, rescued my suitcase from behind the display of riding mowers, and then took the long way around so that Barb, if she looked out the front window, wouldn’t see anything more than a dot on the far side of the parking lot, vanishing into the sunset.
s for that sunset, it dazzled (a lesser mortal might have said burninated). I’d been so eager to get away from my mother and Dr. Holden’s love-nest that I’d left without packing a hat or sunscreen, and I hadn’t had the foresight to grab some from the impulse aisle at the hardware store either. To add insult to injury (freed from my mother, I was going to use all the clichés now), I started to feel uncomfortably crisp right outside the town drugstore’s sun protection display. The past few days of walking around without sun protection had finally caught up with me.
Only $20.99!! the promotional cardboard cutout of a cartoon sunscreen bottle told me.
I didn’t have $20.99, and, unlike the hardware store, the drugstore didn’t let you buy on credit (perhaps considering their clientele too transient.) But a trial-size bottle of sunscreen probably cost less than $20.99, maybe even less than the $8.24 in my pocket. It wouldn’t hurt my sunburned skin to check.
What did hurt, however, was walking smack into the glass door of the drugstore.
Power outage. No automatic doors, remember?
Clearly not.
Since no one came forth from inside to jimmy open the door for me, I figured the staff had used the power outage as an excuse to close up early (oh, my kingdom for a twenty-four-hour pharmacy) and I had to let go of my dreams of zinc- and/or chemical-based UVA and UVB sun protection.
We’d better hope that the power is back on by the time you need to power all those lamps you stole will-pay-for-at-a-future-date-in-time.
I hadn’t thought of that.
Hmmm.
Future Enid’s list of problems was growing quite lengthy.
And my sunburn, on the back of my neck and arms and shoulders and head, stung.
Left with no other option to shelter myself from the sun’s rays, I unzipped my suitcase and pulled out my hooded rain poncho.
“Oh, is it supposed to rain?” a woman asked me, walking by.
“Yes,” I answered, adding another lie to the mix. I didn’t like how devious I had become, what with the sneaking and taking and fibbing and all that, but agreeing with strangers about rain seemed easier than explaining wearing a raincoat to keep from burning in the sun instead of simply going home and getting a hat.
“Well, we sure need it,” she said genially, before moving along.
By the time I got to the edge of town I had forty-five more minutes of walking ahead of myself, had sweated through the poncho’s army-green nylon, and had a throat as dry as the Kalahari. My limited stores of water wouldn’t be able to hold out if the poncho remained on.
“Fine then,” I said aloud. “Off you come.”
I needed to prioritize. The parts of my anatomy tha
t needed the most protection, I decided, were aural: my ears. I stuffed the poncho back in my suitcase and rooted around for a less dehydrating option, which was socks, pulled over the tops of my burned ears. First wandering around town sopping wet, then draped in a rain poncho under the setting sun, now footwear as headwear, I was fast becoming the town’s most avant-garde clothing trendsetter. I looked about for my faerie, eager to see what it thought of my getup.
Nothing. Not even a flash of movement in my periphery.
Well, I reasoned with myself. It’ll show up again. And even if that faerie has lost interest, there’ll be others I can catch. It won’t matter which faerie I get, as long as I catch one.
I don’t think faeries are like Legos or Baby-Sitters Club novels, i.e. interchangeable. I say we need to catch the same faerie that cast the spell.
I disagree, magic is magic. It’s like playing a musical instrument — anyone can do it with practice.
But some people practise more than others.
So? I’m sure where we’re going to there are plenty of faeries. Just lousy with them. Eventually I’ll catch one that can do what I need it to do.
If I say so.
I do.
I did.
I gave myself a firm nod and continued.
Out past the Official Town Limits sign, the sidewalk faded away, as did the asphalt. Underfoot: red dirt; to the sides: fields melting into copses of trees, then copses of trees thinning back out into fields. I walked. I roll-roll-roll-kthunked. I occasionally kicked a rock or a piece of gravel along a few paces. And I hovered on panicking over all of Future Enid’s problems.
To quell my brain’s disaster mongering, I decided to deconstruct what had happened with Amber at the fish tank. Perhaps — I stumbled over a half-buried tree root but managed to right myself before I face-planted — perhaps, with Amber, I was witnessing someone going from an inactive relationship to an active one. There were already plenty of similar case studies (although they were generally called fairy tales or fables rather than case studies), but nothing was stopping me from adding my take to that wealth of knowledge. All I had to do was observe Amber Holden in a controlled environment.
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