All-Season Edie (5 page)

“Round 'em up, cowgirl,” I tell Dusty, who yawns, showing his pink tongue and needle teeth. Bored, I consider Dexter, who's lying on the sofa, reading one of Mom's magazines. “THEY'RE HERE!” I shout, making her jump. This is hilarious. I lie on the floor, rolling and laughing, until Dexter comes over and starts hitting me on the head with her magazine. “Fight!” I yell, still laughing. My sister has a temper like a house of cards.

“Edie, leave your sister alone.” Mom looks in from the kitchen, where she's making supper. “She doesn't feel well.”

“I want to go lie down in my room,” Dexter whines.

“All right,” Mom says. I gape at this injustice, pointing speechlessly at my departing sister. “She has a tummy ache,” Mom says.

“She
is
a tummy ache,” I say. Outside, a familiar engine coughs and pants and chokes to silence in the driveway. “Grandma!” I say.

“See, you conjured them up with all that yelling,” Mom says. I race out the front door and into the driveway. Behind me I can hear Mom calling, “Edie, socks!”

“Hello, darling,” Grandma says mildly, getting out of the passenger side of their chocolate brown station wagon. Grandma is very calm and elegant and wears long sweeping clothes and clanky silver jewelry. She would never mention a thing like socks. Today she wears a crinkly black cape, like bat wings, which she uses to enfold me in a hug. Close up, she smells like oranges and spice.

“Albert,” Grandpa says. He's always slower getting out of the car, even though he has a rotating cushion on the driver's seat to help him. Everybody tells me it's not a toy, but one time when I was little he sat me on it and spun me back and forth while I clapped my hands, and everyone stood around saying he was Setting a Bad Example. “Nuts!” he said. He smells like smoke and mint. It turns out he has had another small stroke, which is why we came home from vacation in such a hurry. It was a tiny, tiny stroke, as Mom said—yeah, right.

He looks just the same as usual, though, and he drove, so maybe she wasn't just treating me like a baby. After I go up to him for my hug, he fiddles around in his pocket and pulls out a nickel and gives it to me.

“What do I do with it?” I ask. I don't know anything you can buy with a nickel, not even gum, which I don't like anyway. Dumb as glue is my verdict on gum. It even makes you look dumb, chewing and chewing and never getting anywhere.

“I think it's lucky, isn't it, Grandpa?” Grandma says. She takes the nickel and blows on it. “Now, you put that in your pocket. Next time you see a fountain, you throw it in and make a wish.”

“Magical powers!” Grandpa shouts, stomping up the driveway to the front door, where my family is waiting. I quickly stuff the nickel deep in my jeans pocket. “Where's Half-Pint?” Grandpa shouts. This is what he calls Dexter. “Sure is filling in, isn't she?” Dexter's face goes bright red, like she's going to cry. Filled in, I know, means you read the newspapers every day, like Dad. Stroke or no stroke, Grandpa doesn't always make a lot of sense.

“Grandma, my stomach hurts,” Dexter says in a small voice when we're all inside and Dad has taken Grandpa into the den to watch
TV
.

“I know, pumpkin,” Grandma says. “I brought you some special tea.”

I follow Dexter and Grandma and Mom to the kitchen. “Go
away
,” Dexter says fretfully, but the two women soothe her. “It's all right, Dexter,” they say in singsong voices, like you would use to lull a baby. They're being way too nice.

“Did you have a good time with your friend while your mom and dad and sister were on holiday?” Grandma asks Dexter.

Dexter pulls her T-shirt off her skinny shoulder to show Grandma the tan marks from her bathing suit. Where the straps were, her skin is white as a fish belly. “I caught a fish,” I say, mostly to myself, remembering. The kettle shrieks. Grandma reaches into an invisible pocket and produces a small envelope, which she tips out onto the table. It contains some dried leaves and flowers. Mom scoops up the brittle sticks and leaves and crumbs, tips them into the teapot and pours the boiling water on top of them. Clouds of steam poof out of the pot, smelling like the clouds of steam that poof out of the sink when you pour in the dish detergent.

“Stinks,” I say, half lying on the table, trying to see into the pot. A flower and some barky scum float on the surface of the tea-water.

“It's not for you.” Grandma rearranges the folds of her mysterious clothes.

“Is it a potion?” I ask.

“It's good medicine,” Grandma says.

“Dexter has her period,” I singsong, and then they kick me out of the kitchen.

I go to find Grandpa in the den. He's in the recliner, sipping what looks like apple juice from one of Dad's special chunky glasses and watching golf on
TV
. “Look at that chip,” he says, pointing at the man on the screen. He fiddles around with the side of the chair until it jerks him backward and the footrest pops up. The drink swings in the glass. We watch the little white ball fall a long, long way down and land in a lipped pool of sand. “Fudge,” Grandpa says.

Mom and Dad say small strokes can give you memory loss. If I notice this, I'm not supposed to make a big deal out of it, but Grandpa just seems like Grandpa. When I tuck myself against his knee so I can rest against his chair and watch the screen over his big thick-socked feet, he reaches forward to pat my head. He leans back again with a sigh. The golfers hike over the links, keen as explorers. I think about what it would be like if Grandpa couldn't remember me anymore.

“Here you are,” Grandma says a few minutes later. “Look at the two of you. You're both almost asleep. It's time for supper. Honestly, Harvey, making poor Edie watch this nonsense. You're probably hijacking her cartoons.”

“Cartoons are over,” I say, quickly wiping my eyes. Grandpa still knows who I am. Crying is ridiculous.

“That,” Grandpa says, pointing at the set with his thick finger. “Did you see that? Eagle.”

“Bald or golden?” I say, squinting.

“Nonsense,” Grandma says.

“You old witch,” Grandpa says. “You're making us miss the last hole.”

I giggle. Then I look up and see Grandma's face and stop. My heart starts to pound. I think,
Oh
.

At supper, I stay quiet, watching. Dexter seems happier now, eating roast and rice and peas like everyone else. Grandpa seems kind of distracted and keeps staring at his plate like he's forgotten what food is for.

“All right, Edie?” Grandma asks. “You're not eating.”

Neither is Grandpa, I want to say. But before I can say anything, Grandpa sneezes. “Bless you,” we all say. But he isn't finished. He pulls a big cloth hankie out of his pants pocket just in time to catch a second, even bigger sneeze, so loud it seems to shatter the air into icy fragments, deafening us. It takes a minute to realize he's blown over his wine glass. There's a big red stain on the tablecloth, spreading by the second; shards of glass are everywhere.

“Harvey, honestly,” Grandma says.

“Oh, hush up a minute,” Grandpa says. “I'm covered in glass.”

He is, too, bright splinters and crumbs of glass in his clothes and on the table, in our food and all over the floor. “Nobody move,” Mom says.

“Jesus, Dad,” Dad says. “Are you okay?”

“Don't eat any more, Albert,” Grandpa says to me, ignoring him. “You might get a cut.”

“You made Grandpa do that,” I say to Grandma.

“Not I,” Grandma says, picking a piece of glass out of her salad. There's ranch dressing on the glass.

“If that had been a mirror, you would have seven years' bad luck,” Dexter tells Grandpa.

“Don't you start,” Grandpa says. Mom and Dad are both up, moving gingerly around the kitchen, getting plastic bags and brooms. “I get enough of that superstitious claptrap from your grandma: black cats and lucky charms and garlic and I don't know what.”

“I've been using that herb book you gave me for my birthday,” Grandma says conversationally to Mom. “It's very absorbing. The history and therapeutic properties of humble garden plants—weeds, even.”

“She put dandelions in my food,” Grandpa says.

“Let's vacuum Grandpa,” I say. I jump up and feel something go crunch. “Oh, my foot.”

“Why do you think people wear socks?” Mom snaps. I know better than to point out that this doesn't make a lot of sense.

“Don't eat any more, Albert,” Grandpa says to me. “You could get a cut.”

“You just said that,” I tell him.

“Albert could get a cut,” he says to everybody else. He looks uncertain, like he doesn't know who he's supposed to say it to.

I look at Grandma. Her eyes are as bright as the piece of glass she's still holding. Dad and Mom and Dexter have gone still, like Dusty when he's trying to be invisible.

Tonight, after my bath, I go straight to bed. For once it's not because I'm in trouble, but so that I can read. I have the tiniest room in the house, with a creaking wood floor and a ceiling that slopes because it's right under the roof. Before I was born, this was the attic, but Mom and Dad fixed it up for me when I was little. There haven't been spiders up here for years, despite what Dexter says. I can handle the occasional spider anyway, if it means not having to share a room with my sister. Three of the walls are butter yellow, one with a deep-silled window where I keep my cactus and my Venus fly-trap. The fourth wall is lined floor to ceiling with shelves for my books. It's a warm, friendly place and it's all mine. If I still have a night-light, it's not because I'm scared, despite what Dexter says. It's so that if I have to use the bathroom in the night I won't trip and go down the steep, narrow, attic stairs like a basketball,
bump, bump, bump
, breaking my neck and waking everybody up.

Tonight I want a book about magic and witchcraft, but the best I can find are a couple of kiddie books about Halloween. “Throw your own Halloween party!” “Super costumes to make at home!” “Spells for kids!” That sounds interesting, but when I turn to that page I find the ingredients are things like Kool-Aid and marshmallows, which doesn't sound genuine at all. Next to the Kool-Aid spell, a cartoon of a goofy witch stirring a pot full of bubbling pink liquid reminds me of another book, one I rarely look at, that Mom and Dad gave me for my birthday.

There's a scratching at the door. Dusty's bed—a wicker basket lined with old beach towels—is down in the kitchen, but as often as not he ends up in my bed instead, which is strictly against the rules. When I open the door, he doesn't come in right away. Instead, he lowers himself into a long, luxurious curving stretch— paws down, bum in the air—and then he starts to wash. The book I want is shoved down on the bottom shelf. It's called
Shakespeare for Children
, with complicated poetry and drawings of fairies and Romans and crazy old men with beards and this one guy with a donkey's head. I skipped the poetry when I first read it; it's the pictures—one specific picture—I remember. And here it is: three hideous crones crooked over an enormous black cauldron. One of them is holding a frog, and in the soup they're making floats an eyeball.

“This book is GROSS,” I tell Dusty informatively, and then I start to read.

“‘Double, double, toil and trouble,'” I announce at breakfast the next morning.

“‘Fire burn and cauldron bubble,'” Mom responds, smiling and pouring milk onto bowls of sliced bananas and granola. I gape.

“What
ever
,” Dexter says.

At school, before class starts, I ask my teacher, Mr. Chen, if I can borrow the big dictionary that stands on his desk.

“Sure, Edie,” he says, setting it down for me with a satisfying
chunk
. “What are you looking up?”

“Newt,” I say, frowning over the tissue-thin pages.

“Edie is a newt!” yells Timmy Digby, who is in my class—why? why?—for the third year in a row. “Edie-Snow-Peadie!”

“Settle down, class,” Mr. Chen says. “Time for French.”

Reluctantly, I go to my seat. Then I pull out my French/English dictionary. Newt:
triton
. “
Triton
,” I whisper. “
Oeil de triton
.” The rest of the class recites the alphabet.

Already school seems to go on forever, and it's only the second week of September.

At lunch, I eat my sandwich and carrots with my friend Sam. When we're bigger, we decide, we'll go to Africa to see the wildlife. We'll rent a car and drive alongside the zebras and the antelope. We'll take a cooler of food. I've decided not to mention witchcraft to any of my friends just yet, but it's hard to concentrate on other subjects. After lunch, Mr. Chen makes us line up so we can walk neatly down the hall to the library. I squirm with impatience. MY GRANDPA IS LOSING HIS MIND, I think. BUT THERE MIGHT BE A WAY I CAN HELP. My thoughts feel as bright as fluorescent lights. I wonder if eventually they'll start glowing through my forehead, searing the words and sentences for everyone to see.

My classmates arrange themselves on chairs. I jiggle. Ms. Conklin, the librarian, who has red hair and a red face and speckled reddish skin on her arms, tells us today we're going to start Projects. The class groans. We'll have to find our own books, make notes on index cards, include maps or drawings or something with colors and create a title page and a bibliography. Today is for Brainstorming: we each have to come up with a subject. At the end of the hour, we'll tell our teacher our topics.

I run right over to Mr. Chen. I'm first. “Yes, Edie,” he says.

“Witchcraft,” I say.

“You have an hour to think about it,” Mr. Chen says.

“Witchcraft,” I say.

“Edie Snow,” Mr. Chen says, shrugging and making a note in his folder. “Witchcraft.”