Backyard (18 page)

A loud sniffling and a belch interrupted Marta's cosmic reverie. Something loomed over her. All she could really see was a dark head-sized shape blotting out a small part of the sky. Also, there were a couple of things that looked like bent rabbit-ears antennae sticking out of it. Marta stifled a scream. She knew better than to panic when a wild beast was sizing you up for a nighttime snack.

“I'm a moose,” said the figure. “And I eats little girls like you for dinner.” With that, it lurched backward, plopping noisily onto the spongy ground. Marta jumped up, threw off her suffocating cowl, and ran a wind sprint across the sucking mud of the marsh to the other side of the lake.

For an hour, she wandered aimlessly, following one street, then another, until she had no idea where she was. Then, she knew. There was Dr. Sproot's house, smack in front of her. She had been drawn to it as if by a homing device. Marta rushed to the door and pushed the doorbell. Again. The door flew open and there stood Dr. Sproot, a wall of looming rigidity partially hidden by her screen door. Dr. Sproot squinted, then switched on her front porch light.

“Marta! What in the name of Hades-on-fire happened to you?”

“Dr. Sproot,” Marta gasped. “Please help me. I was almost caught spying on the Fremonts, then a horrible moose-person almost ate me. Then I had to run across that lake, and all the gooey mud spattered all over me and . . . and . . .”

“And what? You look a disgrace, Marta! Don't you dare cross this threshold with all that carnival tomfoolery slime all over you.”

“But, Dr. Sproot, I need to wash up and get back to my car. I've got to get back home before Ham starts worrying. Please . . .”

“Where's your cowl, Marta?”

“I threw it on the ground somewhere, Dr. Sproot. It was so hot, and . . .”

“And your camera?”

“My camera? Oh, no! I must have dropped it somewhere. I must have . . .”

“You will go back and retrieve the cowl and camera, and make sure they are restored to their original condition. Do you understand me?” Marta stared at her blankly. “Otherwise, you'll owe me for them. Did you think I got them for free? That's $600 for the camera, conservatively. And the cowl? I'll have to figure that out. Were you discovered?”

“I don't think so, Dr. Sproot.”

“Better not have been. Otherwise my name is mud, and rest assured, Marta, if my name is mud I will make sure yours is as thoroughly soiled as mine. Now, go find that cowl and camera!”

Marta arrived at her home around midnight worried sick that Ham might be frantically searching for her, calling out the police and volunteers and bloodhounds and whatnot. But he lay quietly in bed, in his pajamas, snoring up a storm, as usual. She jostled him gently awake.

“Honey? Honey? I'm home. Sorry I'm late. Were you worried?”

“Huh? Wha? Worried. What worries? Who's worried? Muskies over the Brickbats, eight to six, in thirteen innings.” With that, he turned over and returned to his noisy slumber.

“Men!” Marta hissed.

As she got out of her wet and rumpled clothes and showered, she reflected on her humiliations of the night, and how that twisted Dr. Sproot had done nothing to help her. In fact, worse; she had heaped on scorn, which just added to her shame. For the first time, she felt an energizing fury rise up into her reddening face. Never again would Dr. Phyllis Sproot treat her like a poor dandelion getting pried out of the ground, roots and all.

Never again!

17

Bismarcks and Broomsticks

D
r. Sproot was getting impatient. Here it was ten thirty a.m., and she was still waiting in the back booth of the Hi-Lo Doughnut Shoppe. She munched on her third gooey, chocolate-glazed Bismarck, which was giving her a stomachache, and slurped down her fourth cup of coffee, which was making her feel like jumping up and doing the jitterbug. Still no contact. It
was
the right place, wasn't it? Marta, that pathetic scatterbrain, had probably told her the wrong place to go, or maybe the right place to go, but the wrong time, or the wrong part of the right place to seat herself.

She studied two customers sitting at the counter. One was a man, which ruled him out unless some sort of intermediary would be secretly employed to arrange the
real
meeting at yet another location. The other was a pimpled teenage girl, probably a high school freshman dawdling away the summer morning. Who knew? Dr. Sproot looked at the teenager, and, catching her attention, fluttered her eyelids as a sort of signal. The teenager blushed and turned her attention back to her cinnamon strudel.

Dr. Sproot suddenly felt extremely silly sitting around for a half hour, waiting for an assignation as if she were . . . as if she were . . . someone extremely silly. All this talk about spells and the supernatural, why, it was patently absurd, that's what it was. How could she ever allow herself to believe such nonsense? Huh? It was Marta's doing. Marta was trying to get back at her in her own little infantile way. She was being had, and, at some point, Marta and her cronies would burst in, surround her, and revel in her humiliation. Well, that simply was not going to happen!

Dr. Sproot was about to signal the proprietor—a short Vietnamese woman whose name she had never bothered to learn and who couldn't possibly be her contact—could she?—for the bill when the bell on the entrance jangled and one of the most absurd apparitions she had ever seen entered the doughnut shop.

Here was a rather large woman wearing a ridiculous outfit. Her hair was all bouffed up with wavy curls lapping at her cheeks and long bangs grazing her forehead. She wore a trim, short-lapeled green suit buttoned over a white translucent blouse, and white gloves. Three strings of pearls hung from her neck like a choker necklace. On top of her large mass of auburn hair rested a pillbox hat that matched her suit. From that hat dropped a black mesh veil that thinly covered a heavily made-up face, squinty and mascaraed eyes, and a pair of black cat's-eye glasses. Refugee from the sixties, and the early sixties at that, thought Dr. Sproot, who couldn't help but let fly with a deep-throated chuckle.

The proprietor still hadn't seen her, so Dr. Sproot signaled again with a curt wave meant to also signify impatience and an irksome sense that there was no accounting for the quality of the help these days. Her extremities tingling with caffeine, she couldn't sit still another moment. Just as she was about to bounce up from her seat, the sixties woman approached.

“Is anyone sitting here?” she said, motioning to the opposite side of the booth.

“No,” said Dr. Sproot. She wondered why this odd duck had chosen her particular booth instead of four other ones, which were quite empty. “And I'm leaving now, so you could also sit on this side if you wanted.”

“I hear the guacamole-slathered croissants are quite good here,” said the looming human cartoon character. She threw up her veil, and peered at Dr. Sproot expectantly through those clownishly dated glasses, which Dr. Sproot noted had tinted lenses and thick frames inscribed with the initials E.M. in gold, cursive script. Dr. Sproot shrugged and frowned. She wasn't aware that they sold guacamole-slathered croissants at the Hi-Lo. If so, since when? Besides, who'd want to eat something like that! And who was this impertinent oddity anyway? Then, it clicked. The secret sentence! Marta had given her a secret sentence that was to be delivered to her . . . and to which she would respond:

“Yes, and the snapping turtle milk goes quite well with them.”

The woman smiled slyly and slid into the booth across from her. The proprietor, whom Dr. Sproot had failed three times now to flag down, instantly appeared and took the woman's order for three toasted waffles with maple syrup on the side and a glass of orange juice.

“You wanted to see me, I understand, on a matter of... business?” The woman mouthed the words slowly and carefully, almost in a whisper. So this was the infamous Edith Merton.

“Is this how you really look?” said Dr. Sproot. She made no attempt to disguise her simmering contempt.

“Of course not. I go incog in matters such as these. This is my mother's outfit, which I'm proud to say fits me. I've lost twenty pounds in the past six months. Imagine what it was like trying to squeeze into it back when I was a much plumper witch. Mom's wig, too. What do you think of it, eh?”

“I could give a holy hoot what your stupid costume looks like,” said Dr. Sproot. “And why should I? I don't know you from Eve. We've never met.”

“Ah,” said Edith. “But I know you. I know you quite well, and for all the wrong reasons. You're one of those awful nose-stuck-in-the-air gardening snobs who blackballed me from the Rose Maidens. Yes, indeed, I know you all too well, Phyllis Sproot. Oh, and how, may I ask, are your grounds looking these days?”

Dr. Sproot shuddered. She felt violated. Had Edith Merton been watching all this time from her little witch hiding places as she fussed and fretted over her moribund gardens?

“You know darned well how my
grounds
are looking because I have it on reasonable authority that you are the cause of it. You wouldn't be here trespassing on my neighborhood doughnut shop if you hadn't known that.”

Edith Merton cackled in a way that Dr. Sproot had to admit sounded very witchy, but which she was afraid might mark her to the alerted doughnut shop crowd as a weird person who bore watching.

“Welllll,” said Edith. “Let's get back to this wonderful disguise I've cooked up. It serves a dual purpose. No one will know I'm Edith Merton in this getup. The glasses, by the way, are my own touch. I find they strengthen the spells, and besides, I like them. But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. I also need to wear this outfit to cast my spells. It channels the spirit of my poor dead mother and, for some reason I'm not sure I fully understand, the energy force of thousands of dead plants, into my extremities. It's quite intoxicating, actually.”

Dr. Sproot guffawed.

“Oh, you don't believe me? Well, then, what are
you
doing here other than stuffing yourself with sweet rolls? I tell you what, we can always try a spell
without
the uniform. Then, I'll have the advantage of taking your money without having to work up a sweat, because the spell won't work. You don't want that to happen now, do you?”

Dr. Sproot, silently furious at being addressed in such a manner, sat there crossing and uncrossing her legs and fidgeting. Her much-abused bladder was sending out its distress signal.

“Do you have to go to the little girls' room, Phyllis Sproot?”

“I can hold it!” Dr. Sproot barked proudly. “I can do anything I put my mind to. Now, please continue. And please refer to me as Dr. Sproot. I must insist that you address me by my proper title.”

“Very well,
Doc-tor
Sproot. You should know that, in our professional dealings, you're to call me Sarah.”

“Sarah?”

“Yes, Sarah. Sarah Twiddle.”

“That's about the dumbest thing I ever heard. Why can't I just call you Edith, tell you what I want, and then you can get on with it without all this super-secret shilly-shallying around?”

Edith Merton frowned.

“Marta warned me about you.”

“Warned you about
me?
What did that silly little twerp say? What kind of calumny is it that's being flung in my face these days? Why, I'll—”

“You'll do nothing!” roared Edith so abruptly it startled Dr. Sproot into spilling some of her coffee, which had been refilled yet again. “You will do nothing to hurt Marta, or anyone else for that matter. You've seen your gardener's delight turn into the fossil fuels of tomorrow. You and your other dried-up old Rose Maiden hags. I can make it worse, and will if you continue with this attitude. Get this straight: I'm only doing this for the money. Now, here are my conditions. . . .”

“
Your
conditions? I'm the one who's the customer here.”

Edith held up her gloved hand palm out, directly in front of Dr. Sproot's face, causing her to go tongue-tied for the first time since she went into a deep coreopsis-induced reverie, and walked into the crowded men's restroom at Barnum's by mistake.

“My conditions are full payment in advance. That's number one. Number two, you are to sponsor me for membership in the Rose Maidens.” Dr. Sproot twitched. “Three, you are never to reveal my identify to anyone, under any circumstances. Is that clear?”

Dr. Sproot, now reduced to what, for her, was a certain degree of meekness, nodded.

“Very well. I understand I am to reverse the spell on your gardens,” said Edith, hungrily forking one big bite of waffle after another into her mouth, and revealing a set of crooked, pearly teeth smudged red where she had misfired on her lipstick application. “Is that correct?”

Dr. Sproot nodded.

“Then, I am to cast a spell over some other people, the Fremonts, at the corner of Payne and Sumac. This is to be a bad spell?”

“Yes. A bad spell.”

“Good. I know the spot. I've already inspected it, not wearing this silly getup, of course, since people would suspect me as a mentally ill sixties throwback, but as simple old Edith Merton attending their lovely party of a few days ago. Did you go, by the way? That had fabulous ice cream floats. Oh, well, certainly not. You are probably persona non grata as far as the Fremonts are concerned.”

“No, I'm not. They don't know me from anyone.”

“What? You don't know these people and you still want to hurt their yard full of lovely creations? And they are quite lovely, I must say.”

“Yes, I want to hurt their lovely creations, which are not
that
lovely.”

“Well, you have your own reasons, I suppose, and I don't have to know them. And, as I said before, I'm only in it for the money. The good thing about casting a spell on strangers is that it helps us to cover our tracks. Not that anyone would suspect witchcraft as the cause of all this distress we're going to cause . . . except maybe the plants, and they're not talking. Ha-ha. Ha-ha. Now, enough of this levity. You have photographs to refresh my memory?”

Dr. Sproot nodded.

“For a simple, low-power spell, that should be sufficient. Not enough to wreak utter havoc, just dry things out a bit, to turn the spectacular into the merely average, or maybe slightly below.”

“Yes, that should do the trick.”

“Very well, my fee is this: $500 to release your gardens from the industrial-strength bad spell I put on them, and $350 for the mild little run-of-the-mill spell I will cast on these Fremonts. Since you're going for two, you get the bargain rate of $700. Could you give me the payment now, please?”

Having been told that Edith Merton did not accept checks because of the paper trail they created, Dr. Sproot had come prepared with a crisp wad of hundreds and fifties. She retrieved it from her purse, and was counting out the fee, one bill at a time, when she noticed the proprietor, coffeepot at the ready, standing next to her. Dr. Sproot froze, visions of bleak little prison flowerpots sitting on barred window slats flashing before her eyes.

“No more coffee, please,” said Edith. “We're kind of busy here arranging for the sale of my antique armoire.”

The proprietor moved away. Dr. Sproot was relieved to notice that she did not go immediately to the telephone on returning to her station behind the counter.

“Whew!” she gasped. “That was close!”

“Too close,” said Edith. “After we leave this place, you are to avoid it for one year, minimum. Understand?”

“What? They sell my favorite Bismarcks here! And I get unlimited free refills on my coffee!”

Edith leaned menacingly across the table.

“That means they know you, which is bad. You are to avoid it. No ifs, ands, or buts. And once you are finished counting out my fee, we will leave together, smiling and chattering away as if we are the oldest friends in the world, which will take some very hard work on my part, I have to tell you. Oh, and on the topic of fees, there's the matter of a possible surcharge to be tacked on to your bill.”

“Surcharge? What surcharge? Marta didn't tell me about any surcharge.”

“It's in the eventuality that you win the Burdick's Best Yard Contest, which my sources tell me is a very good bet . . . assuming your gardens get un-spelled, that is.”

“Of course it's a good bet. My gardens will
not
be beaten.”

“Well, in that case, I see no reason why I shouldn't take my cut. I'll take ten percent of the prize money. That's the surcharge.”

“That's outrageous!”

“Listen here, doc; you wouldn't even be in the running if it weren't for me. And, hey, if you don't win it's just the standard fee that applies.”

“If you're such an accomplished witch, why don't you just wave a magic wand over your own garden and win the blasted prize yourself? Huh? And don't call me doc.”

Edith chuckled silently, infuriating Dr. Sproot.

“You obviously know little about witchcraft. Let me explain: I can improve on something already good or knock it down. I can't create from whole cloth. I can only make my garden better within its modest confines. It's already perfect in its own little way. But its scope is far too small for the Burdick's judges to even consider it. That's why I'm depending on you. So, what's it to be, yea or nay?”