Backyard (21 page)

“Ms. Sproot—”

“
Doctor
Sproot . . . D-O-C-T-O-R. Or you may put a comma and a Ph.D. after my name. The P and D are capitalized, with a period between the h and D.”

Roland smiled at Dr. Sproot in a way she took to be patronizing.

“
Doctor
Sproot, in my business you have to talk to lots of people. You can't develop a good story without intensive reporting, taking in lots of information from lots of sources. Ooh, this looks like a good one.” He was studying that wretched paper again.

“And who might that be?”

“Marta . . . uh . . . Marta . . . Pop . . . Pop . . .”

“Poppendauber?”

“Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Poppendauber.”

Dr. Sproot flushed. Marta had entered her gardens in the contest! What a joke! She had specifically warned Marta that her feeble efforts would not be nearly up to the standards of the Burdick's Best Yard Contest, but now see what she'd done! Out of some little pique directed at her, no doubt.

It had been more than a week since she had seen or talked to Marta, whom she had tried to call three times, only to get the answering machine, and then no returned call. Marta was avoiding her on purpose. The ingrate! See if she would ever help her again with the scrubby little dirt pits she called gardens.

“I happen to know that the Poppendaubers are on vacation in . . . the Adriatic. Completely out of the country. They'll be out of town for two weeks. Probably too long for your article. Who else? Hmmm?”

“Ummm. Looks like the Fremonts on Payne Avenue. They seem to have lots of stuff in their garden. Do you know them?”

The Fremonts! Good God Almighty, how could he possibly have tumbled to those people? Why, they were just drunks who used gardening as an excuse to get soused, that's what they were. The problem was that they had shown just enough skill in working their grounds that they might bamboozle an untutored ignoramus such as Mr. Ready into believing they had something of actual merit to show off.

What was worse was that Edith Merton's little bad-girl spell didn't seem to have taken effect on their gardens yet. What was the story with that, eh? Next time, Dr. Sproot fumed, she would press harder for a money-back guarantee.

Seeing as how Marta seemed to have detached herself from her service, and was thus no longer submitting reports and photographs to her, Dr. Sproot had taken it upon herself to do her own sleuthing. She had done so unapologetically. Having determined that a certain amount of subterfuge could still be accomplished without resorting to disguises or slinking around when nobody was home, she strolled boldly through the Fremonts' backyard, examining every inch of ground, politely declining any offers of refreshment from those boozehounds.

“I'm just admiring your wonderful gardens,” she told them.

“Be our guest, whoever you are,” called the man from their patio. “No special permission required. Just remember, there's a glass of merlot always up here with your name, whatever that might be, on it.”

Dr. Sproot wrinkled her nose and continued her inspection. New things here, either just planted or popping up through the ground. She sniggered at the sight of the hibiscus. What in heaven's name had caused them to plant those? Too much drink, perhaps? As she turned away to get a good, hard look at the roses smothering their arched trellises, she heard something. Was it just the breeze? Her imagination? No, it was someone whispering. Someone very close by. She turned back toward the hibiscus and there was the Fremont woman, kneeling and muttering. Muttering to whom? To herself? No, for heaven's sake, she was talking to her plants! Sweet little coaxings and blandishments in the most repugnant little baby-talk voice.

Dr. Sproot shuddered. This was an outdoor asylum, that's what it was! And she was in the presence of lunatics! She double-timed it back toward the street, halfway convinced that she would at any moment feel the sharp stab of a hurled pitchfork digging its prongs deep into the small of her back, and wondering why the hell it took so long for Edith Merton's spell to start earning its pay.

Now, she was dolefully reflecting on the glories of the Fremont's backyard. That hateful little voice inside of her kept extolling it as a work of genius, that could easily have been designed by a top-flight landscape designer. Then there were those angel's trumpets! What an inspiration! What if Roland Ready saw them? Dr. Sproot told the nagging little voice to put a lid on it. It was time to stop all this foolishness.

“Do not go to the Fremonts'!” she said in the most stentorian, threatening tone she could muster. Roland jerked his head and frowned.

“Why not?” he said. “Why not go to the Fremonts'?”

Dr. Sproot quivered with anger and disdain.

“Why? Because the Fremonts are amateurs who should never have been allowed to participate in a contest of this sort. They are gardening parvenus.”

“What's that?” said Roland, pen and steno pad poised for action.

“Parvenus. I'm not going to spell that for you, and stop writing what I say until I give you permission to do so. This is all off the record.”

Roland pursed his lips into a disagreeable smirk, clicked his pen, and put it back in his coat pocket.

“They also have criminal tendencies,” Dr. Sproot said. “Although you didn't get that from me.”

Roland moved to retrieve the pen from his pocket, but Dr. Sproot was quicker; she grabbed his wrist firmly and jerked it downward.

“Hey!”

“I told you this is all off the record. Do you want to hear it or not?”

Roland nodded grudgingly.

“All right. This is strictly confidential.”

Dr. Sproot lowered her voice, cupped her hand over her mouth, and leaned close enough to Roland to get a whiff of what must have been the most powerful aftershave lotion ever created. Eau de musk oxen, she thought, as the powerful, chemical-laden fumes singed the hairs in her flaring nostrils.

“Mr. Fremont was caught a month ago in flagrante delicto.”

“Where is that?”

Dr. Sproot rolled her eyes.

“It's not a place, Mr. Ready, it's a situation. He was caught . . . uh . . . um . . . relieving himself in the woods . . . outside . . . in broad daylight . . . with strangers . . . little strangers . . . present.”

Roland jerked back from Dr. Sproot, not so much out of shock or outrage, but because she was emitting an overpowering odor that smelled like caffeinated paper plant effusions mixed with raspberry jam.

“Phew!” he said reflexively.

“That's right,” Dr. Sproot said. “The police were there, too. His wife just stood by. Did nothing to stop it. They say she sunbathes nude back there and lets chipmunks and squirrels and all the other creatures of temperate suburbia crawl all over her when she is in a naked state. That's all I can tell you. You might think twice now about devoting any of your precious time to a couple of questionable characters like that.”

But what seemed questionable or worse to Dr. Phyllis Sproot sounded enticing or better to the young journalist. He had been thoroughly bored by her; she struck him as a self-important, intolerant prude whose gardens didn't seem all that extraordinary to him anyway.

“I don't know; they sound pretty interesting to me. Well, I'll be on my way. Thanks for the time and the fascinating tour.”

Dr. Sproot rushed to insert herself between Roland and the route to his car.

“Mr. Ready, if you interview those people over my objections, I will demand that you strike everything you heard and saw here from your record. I will simply not be in the same story with
those people.
”

Roland wriggled his nose. That smell!

“Dr. Sproot,” he said. “You will not prevent me from exercising my right as a journalist to talk to whomever I please. I will talk to the Fremonts if they consent to be interviewed, and will be more than glad to ignore anything I saw and heard here today.”

He jerked quickly around Dr. Sproot, who stood rooted to the ground, fuming, and wondering what her next move might be, and strode swiftly to his car. As he slammed the door shut, he caught a glimpse of her, as unmovable as one of her plants, her face frozen into the malevolent scowl of a gardener scorned. He suddenly reflected, miserably, that he had just torpedoed whatever chances he might have had with the one bit of gardening that someone in the Sproot family had truly excelled at: Little-Miss-Tent-Pole-Tits.

21

The Plant Whisperer's Guide

G
eorge and Nan were meant to be plant whisperers. It came so naturally to them. Once they got the hang of talking to the erstwhile silent multitudes in the backyard, it got to be as routine as conversing with themselves, singing in the shower, and muttering monosyllabic mantras in the meditation bower.

And so rewarding! Say whatever you wanted to plants and they never failed to listen, often respectfully. George noticed the impatiens to be somewhat haughty, perhaps because they bloomed all season long, and the irises to be barely conscious when he was addressing them, though that might have been because their blooms had been gone now for well over a month. Or maybe it was because he had clipped a couple of them inadvertently while mowing the lawn. Amputees!

Both Nan and George hoped the flowers would grow to trust them enough that they could get a little more feedback about what was bothering them, especially in the area of bugs or funguses. That would just take time. Still, it was wonderful to watch them all perk up as they approached with the hose or watering can, or a special treat of fertilizer.

The Fremonts' friends watched them, amused and a little concerned. A few would indulge them by accepting their invitations to join them in some basic plant chitchat in the hope of getting a full-fledged backyard klatch going. The proviso was that they should expect no two-way social intercourse in the usual sense.

Whatever their friends might have thought, there was certainly no arguing about the results. Something had turned the Fremonts' backyard from merely wonderful into a paradise on earth. Though the heat wave lingered, alternately steaming and baking everything within its reach, the Fremont gardens were lush and iridescent. Blooms exploded by the score. Ruby-throated hummingbirds and butterflies alighted everywhere. Even the rabbits seemed to have noticed, and refrained from wreaking their usual havoc; no nibbled leaves or shoots turned up for an entire week.

Inspired to do even more, the Fremonts bought some coleus to plant among the rocks near the patio, and a serviceberry, which was placed at the base of the split-rail fence, near where it intersected with the chain-link fence, and just to the east of the hydrangeas.

Ellis, Cullen, and Sis were forced by sheer proximity to witness their parents' new talents, which they viewed as bemused spectators. It was the latest turn in a long history of bizarre behavior to which they had become accustomed. Plant talking, however, marked a radical shift that ratcheted the weirdo factor to a whole new level.

Still, they figured, if you were shameless enough, there was entertainment value in it. Ellis and Cullen even took some pride in knowing that their parents were unconventional, not the usual bourgeois types. At the same time, it was good that there were no signs that their feelings and actions as responsible parents had changed any, though this was not something either of them would have openly voiced.

Sis was more sensitive. She was easily humiliated by bizarre parental behavior. The day before, she had been publicly mortified when she and her friends Margo and Taylor were walking across the yard and chanced upon a laughing Nan, who, it turned out, was sharing a joke with some of the petunias. That was the kind of behavior no teenager could ever forgive. Knowing their parents' talents, and appreciating those gifts more than Sis, who could only pout about her genetic lot in life, Ellis and Cullen were beginning to realize that there could be positive benefits to their parents' eccentricities.

“It's lame,” Ellis said. “It is truly the lamest thing I've ever seen them do, and I've gotta say that I'm concerned about their sanity. But, hey, this contest has over $100,000 in prize money, and everyone says Mom and Dad are the ones that can make a garden do what they want. If it takes yakking to the plant life, I'm all for it.”

“Yeah,” Cullen said. “Check out the way the backyard looks, even though the front yard is a pit. Man, it is something
else
. JoAnne and Mark said their parents don't think there's anything like it in town. And their parents should know. Hey, you've heard of horse and dog whisperers. So, Mom and Dad are plant whisperers. What's the difference? And one hundred thousand smackers could sure go a long ways toward a college tuition . . . am I right, Sis?”

“Don't call me ‘Sis' anymore,” said Sis. “I'm Mary now, please. I am a fully formed woman now at the age where I can bear human fruit.”

“Human fruit?” Ellis said, chuckling. “You mean like half-baby, half-tangerine?”

“You're not telling us you're
with child,
are you, Sis?” Cullen said.

“
With child?
You mean pregnant? Good God, no! I don't even have a boyfriend. I wish I had a boyfriend, but I don't. I mean I'm old enough to
get
pregnant, so I am a woman, and you can quit calling me Sis. That is so juvenile.”

“Okay, Miss Sis, then,” said Ellis.

Mary flushed strawberry-vanilla and sputtered, trying to spit out a bad word that wouldn't quite escape. She turned abruptly and stormed out the back door. Outside, Nan and George were bent over, locked in a very casual, pleasant conversation with the alyssum. Mary boldly walked up to them.

“This is, like, the weirdest thing I've ever seen anyone's parents do,” she said. “You're, like, kidding, right? You just do this as a joke.... If it's not a joke, will you please stop?” Nan and George beckoned Mary to bend over and lean closer to the alyssum.

“We promised to introduce you,” Nan said. “They've been asking about you.” Mary stomped off in a huff, muttering something about parent aliens and drug use in the sixties. She brushed past Ellis in the doorway. He was holding the phone.

“Hey, plant whisperers!” he yelled. “Telephone.” Nan took the phone. It was a fellow named Roland Ready from the
Inquirer.

“Sweetheart!” she yelled at George, who was still absorbed in his little chat with the alyssum, whom they had both found to be a bit too loquacious.

“What?” said George, excusing himself politely from a conversation that seemed to be going around in circles.

“There's a fellow from the
Inquirer
who wants to interview us. Shall we let him?”

George gasped.

“About . . . that? Tell him I have no comment.”

Nan laughed.

“Not
that,
” she said, cupping her hand over the receiver's mouthpiece. “It's about our backyard, and the contest. He's doing a story about the contest.”

George heaved a sigh of relief, and winked at the roses, who were eavesdropping. They were so
prying.

“I guess so. Why not?”

Roland Ready arrived a half hour later with a photographer, who was snapping away rapid-fire as soon as he set foot in the backyard. Here, truly, was Eden, thought Roland as George and Nan showed him around the grounds. He had never seen anything so lush and colorful in his life. Where was that fragrance coming from? It might be the sweetest thing ever smelled.

Nan and George proved to be wonderful guides, so pleasant, answering all his questions with smiling and unevasive aplomb. Roland could not help but draw a distinction between these laid-back and welcoming gardening wizards and that flinty, smelly old bitch, Dr. Sproot, who had sneered at him, and accosted him, and had falsely made herself out to be the greatest thing that ever happened to plantdom.

Unlike Dr. Sproot's yuccaland, here was a vast variety of different plants with exotic names he had never heard of: hosta, phlox, petunias, monarda, clematis. How were they ever able to find and nurture such a motley assortment? Why, it beggared description! Nevertheless, Roland scribbled furiously in his notebook, asking for the spelling of every plant name, which Nan and George furnished without complaint. And such humility! As the framework of the story began to rise in his head, Roland saw this as only a slight variation on his original theme. It would be a suburban idyll, a story about a couple of carefree suburbanites removed from the travails of city life, creating their own Nirvana in the form of a peaceful plant kingdom, where beauty and tranquility reigned supreme.

The screen door flew open with a bang. Out charged Sis, wailing for George and Nan, and screaming back at Ellis and Cullen, whose taunting voices could be heard following her from the dining room.

“Mom, Dad, make them stop! They keep teasing me about getting pregnant. Make them stop! And they keep calling me ‘Sis'! I'm Mary now. Mary, Mary, Mary!”

George and Nan smiled wanly as Roland and the photographer, attracted by the commotion, walked over after making a brief detour to inspect one of the rose trellises.

“Oh!” said Sis, suddenly burying her burning face in her hands to hide her embarrassment. “Sorry. I didn't know we had guests. Jeez, I'm sorry.”

“Excuse us,” said Nan as she put her arm around Sis and ushered her back into the house. George smiled self-consciously at Roland and the photographer.

“Trouble in paradise, Mr. Fremont?” said Roland.

“Teenagers,” said George, wondering ruefully whether Sis really was pregnant.

At this point, Roland's story construct had crashed into a pile of dust-choked rubble. New story foundations began to rise. One portrayed the Fremonts as a dysfunctional family where some kind of abuse—physical or mental, but it made no difference—was going on, forcing the family to seek escape and redemption in the solace of their gardens. Another put the onus on the teenagers; they could be terrors beyond the control of their mom and dad, manufacturing drugs in the basement, holding sex parties in the bedrooms, driving their poor parents to seek shelter in an ersatz outdoor paradise.

“Lemonade anyone?” said Nan, pushing through the door with a tray of glasses and a pitcher of rich pink lemonade with pieces of lemon pulp still floating around in it, just the way Roland liked it.

“Yes, absolutely!” said Roland, so glad to get some refreshment on such a steamy day that he draped a mental drop cloth over his story ideas to be uncovered sometime later. He and the photographer then sat down to enjoy some of the best lemonade they'd ever tasted.

“Sorry about the disturbance,” Nan said. “Sis's older brothers were teasing her a little too cruelly. And, for the record, she is
not
pregnant! Three teenagers—uh, I mean two teenagers and one twenty-year-old—can be a handful, Mr. Ready.”

“I can imagine,” said Roland as the photographer jumped up to snap some photos of two goldfinches that had landed on the feeder perches, and promptly scared them away.

“Wow!” said Roland. “That was the yellowest bird I ever saw. What was that?” He whipped out his pen.

“Goldfinch,” said George. “G-O-L-D-F-I-N-C-H.”

“Hey,” said the photographer, who had sat back down and lifted his camera with its big lens to his squinting eye. “Check out the blue bird at the other feeder. Pure blue.”

“Wow! And that is . . .”

“Indigo bunting,” said George. “I-N-D-I-G-O B-U-NT-I-N-G. And you've gotten a treat there. It's the first time we've seen that guy around this summer.”

Orange-and-black monarch butterflies fluttered over the monarda, which were starting to show signs of life, and lighted on some daisies.

“Monarchs?” said Roland. Nan and George applauded.

“You've done your homework, I see,” George said.

As Roland and the photographer were getting ready to leave, Nan told them to wait for a moment and ran back into the house. She emerged carrying two plastic bags filled with Asiatic lilies in full bloom.

“A parting gift for you as a thank-you for showing interest in our humble efforts,” she said. “You, in turn, might want to present these to your girlfriends or wives. Women are suckers for lilies.”

The story Roland wrote appeared three days later, in the Sunday edition. It got centerpiece display on the front page of the metro section with a beautiful photograph of the indigo bunting and another of the smiling Nan holding her daylilies.

Roland, in what he considered to be his best effort to date, described in effortless prose a suburban wonderland, a refuge from the roar of the crowd, a haven from the troubles of our time. He also made sure, at the insistence of his editor, to insert a couple of paragraphs with more prosaic details about the Burdick's contest. As his fingers flew on his computer's keyboard, he barely recalled the unruly teenager who had run, wailing, toward her parents, and what that might portend.

Praise was fulsome. The Fremonts called to thank him. Readers called and e-mailed to laud his writing and the positive light it had shed on gardening. Even old grump Joe Edwards, his editor, gave him one of his rare “tip o' the hat” praises. There was one jarring note: Dr. Sproot called in a fury.