Front Yard (7 page)

9

“M
ary, Shirelle, you girls go ahead and scoot. Go around to the front yard and continue staking out your plots, or whatever it is you're doing now. Go on, shoo. George, a couple of gin and tonics for us, please. Mixed strongly. I think I'm going to need to fortify my constitution for this. Chop-chop!”

“So that's the infamous Dr. Phyllis Sproot,” said Mary. “Ha-ha! I guess I better go fetch the shotgun and shells, huh, Ma?”

“You got a shotgun?” said Shirelle, who had grown up in the western part of the state, where you had to have bagged a minimum of four Canada geese and three mergansers before you could attend high school or get your driver's license. “What kind? At this range, I'd say a twelve-gauge pump action. Five-shell magazine capacity. Yep, that should do the job just fine.”

“Scat, I said!” yipped Nan, and the two girls scurried off toward the back, then around the corner.

“George, are you armed?”

“Sure am,” said George, setting two freshened gin and tonics on the table. Nan took a quick sip, then puckered up her lips.

“Whoa, George, are you loaded for bear or what!”

The two women had been making their way deliberately up the steps from the driveway to the patio. Halfway up the steps, the tall, lanky woman stopped, seemingly oblivious to the two seated persons anxiously awaiting her arrival, and made a slight pivot to her right, turning her head to take in the full panorama of the still-dormant backyard.

“The season's late this year,” she said, either addressing everyone or no one. The shorter woman smiled up at the Fremonts, then grabbed her companion by the crook of her arm and moved on slowly up the steps.

“Nan and George,” she said. “Long time, no see. How are you? How's everything progressing this year?”

“Slow, Marta,” said Nan. “Slow. As you can see. I'm afraid we don't have much to show you yet. Dr. Sproot, I presume.” The taller woman nodded, her face largely shielded by her sunglasses. “And to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?”

Nan noticed that Dr. Sproot was carrying what appeared to be a miniature house; not a dollhouse or a birdhouse, but something in between. It looked a bit like an A-frame cabin open on one side and made of twigs and bark with flooring fashioned from stained popsicle sticks. Sphagnum peat moss and grass clippings had been stuffed into the corners of the structure, which was about a foot tall and wide, and seven inches or so deep. It smelled of pine sap, even at this distance.

“A little house for your rats, Dr. Sproot? Or your tarantulas maybe?”

“Nan!” said George.

Dr. Sproot's hands trembled. Her lips curled into a sneer that she meant as a smile. George chuckled and took a long draw from his gin and tonic. Marta squinched her face in sadness.

“Gin and tonic?” chirped George.

“Thanks, George,” Marta said. “But maybe some other time for me. Right now, we're here to ask a favor, and my friend, Phyllis, comes here as a supplicant.”

“What, you can't speak for yourself, Sproot?” scolded Nan, emboldened by the gin with its hint of tonic she had just guzzled. She turned to Marta, addressing her as if Dr. Sproot wasn't even there. “She's got a lot of nerve, asking us for a favor.”

Marta turned to Dr. Sproot and nodded. Dr. Sproot cleared her throat in a disgusting, phlegmy way.

“This is a fairy house,” she said in that gravelly contralto Nan and George remembered so well from last year. “I was wondering if I could put my fairy house in your garden this year. It attracts fairies, you know, and from everything I've heard fairies are very good for gardens. I brought it as a gift for you. Since I've never really properly made up to you for what I did last year. I made it myself.”

“Nice craftsmanship,” said George upon taking another emboldening draw from his drink. “And it's comforting to know that you actually eat Popsicles. The moss, I assume, is kind of a fairy bed.”

“Yes, that's right, Mr. Fremont.”

“George.”

“George.” Nan turned to frown at George. This was a bit too much familiarity, especially after what had happened last year. Dr. Sproot placed the fairy house carefully on the glass tabletop.

“I'm also paying tribute to your gardens,” she said, a tremor modulating her voice. “This, I think, is where the fairies will truly come.”

Nan didn't believe in fairies, and was astonished that such a force of naked empiricism as Dr. Sproot would. Or maybe this was some kind of elaborate joke. That, on reflection, would be unlikely since Marta was here. Marta, after all, was the former close Dr. Sproot ally who had turned against her when Dr. Sproot tried to wreak havoc among their gardens in order to win the Burdick's Best Yard first prize.

Nan chuckled at the thought of that night in July last year, when, at the same ungodly hour, Dr. Sproot and her unwitting confederates had arrived in their backyard to create mayhem. And in the middle of that terrible thunderstorm! They had scared the living bejesus out of her and George. Dr. Sproot had carried a hatchet in one hand and a tomahawk in the other and was wearing a gas mask to ward off what she was afraid would be debilitating poisonous fumes coming out of the angel's trumpets.

Her inhibitions pretty well put to flight by the gin, Nan erupted in a kind of hee-haw laughter that she would normally allow to escape only during the most intimate of family occasions. George, telepathically privy to Nan's thoughts, began to laugh. Marta looked amused. Dr. Sproot, suspecting herself to be the object of all the mirth, sighed and frowned.

“Oh, oh!” said Nan, gulping back a guffaw and stopping to catch her breath. “I can't get over it. You with that gas mask! All because you were afraid the angel's trumpet fumes would start you hallucinating! It's just too much!”

George stopped laughing and frowned. Mention of the angel's trumpets awakened his own fears that those wretched plants, known for their toxic and hallucinogenic poisons, would eventually bring them to grief.

Nan laughed again, this time with such force that she almost keeled over the chair's armrest. George had to reach over to stabilize the chair as she pitched back against the mesh fabric backing, causing it to skid noisily across the patio concrete.

“And George thought you were a zombie. A
zombie!
And you, Marta, in that ridiculous cowl that made you look like a monk. George thought you were, what, an angel of the Lord? Ha-ha! Ha-ha!”

Marta blushed. The hint of a smile crept across Dr. Sproot's face. She nervously grabbed the fairy house off the tabletop and pretended to study it.

“Maybe that's enough alcohol for you, dear,” said George, patting the hand of his wife, who was still shaking with unrestrained mirth.

“So now,” gasped Nan, struggling to regain her composure and relishing Dr. Sproot's discomfort. “So now, we have this, we have this fairy house as a, what, peace offering?”

Dr. Sproot nodded.

“It's made exact to specifications of fairies' size and demands for creature comforts,” she said, her voice oozing earnestness. “You can place it next to a tree, or in the middle of one of your gardens if you prefer.”

“What, the fairies don't appreciate the . . . what was that blend of flowers you used to advocate? The coreopsis . . . Help me out here. . . .”

“The coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend.”

“That's it. So you can't attract your own fairies with this special blend of yours?” Dr. Sproot and Marta looked at each other knowingly.

“Actually, I've abandoned the coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend.”

“No!” said George.

“Yes, Mr. Fremont.”

“George.”

“George. I've decided, especially after all of the trouble I got into last year, and all the hardships I created for you, that I would free myself to plant something that's not so dogmatic. I just want to plant a regular garden that I can nourish and love.”

Nan guffawed, once again threatening her balance.

Dr. Sproot bowed her head. “Yes, Nan.”

“That's ‘Mrs. Fremont' to you,” Nan sputtered.

“Yes, Mrs. Fremont, it's true. I'm really trying to put my
heart
into my gardens this year. And Marta, who I'm very thankful to say is once again my friend, is going to be my adviser and help me out. She's a special consultant to Burdick's now, you know.”

George and Nan nodded approvingly at Marta.

“But I am a work in progress. It will take time to show my flowers the love I need to show them. Fairies can sense that. Until they feel the garden ambiance is right, they won't come. That's why I've brought my fairy house to you. If anybody can attract fairies, it's the Fremonts.”

“What a nice thing to say,” George said.

“Why would we want fairies in our gardens in the first place?” Nan wondered. “That's assuming they exist, of course, which I don't, although after what happened last year, Lord knows I'm prepared to be open-minded about it. It's also assuming that, if they exist, we'd want them to come anyway. I imagine their little nighttime frolics among the buttercups can be quite noisy. Ha-ha! Ha-ha!”

“Fairies can protect your gardens and help them flourish.”

Nan shook her head disjointedly in utter bewilderment. It absolutely defied logic that she was listening to the same person who only a year ago had been such a shining example of what happens when you cross a pedant with a hatchet murderer. Part of her couldn't help but think that Dr. Sproot was still out to get them, and that there was some flower-destroying scent or spraying device built into this little fairy house.

“I know it seems strange to you, Mr. and Mrs. Fremont, but Marta can vouch for the fact that I'm a changed woman. Or, at least, I'm trying to change.”

George and Nan looked at Marta, who shrugged in what could magnanimously be described as an indecisive way.

“She's definitely putting forth the effort,” said Marta. “And, yes, she has been humbled by the events of last year. You heard about Earlene McGillicuddy and the chain saw?”

This time it was George who guffawed. Dr. Sproot bowed her head and pursed her lips in a way she hoped would look like someone who's been martyred a dozen or so times. On the day of the contest judging last year, Earlene, who'd feuded with Dr. Sproot in a dramatic fashion, had chain-sawed her way through most of Dr. Sproot's flowers before the police finally arrived.

Dr. Sproot turned toward Marta, and both Nan and George thought they detected the beginnings of a snarl.

“Well, I think even you will admit, Marta, that
that
was going too far.”

“Yes, I do admit that, Phyllis.” Dr. Sproot smiled at the Fremonts.

“There. You see?”

“See what?” said Nan.

“Evidence that I've changed. I no longer insist that everybody call me
Doc-tor
Sproot. Now, with the new me emerging, it's okay to just call me Phyllis.”

“I actually prefer Dr. Sproot,” Nan said. “Don't you, George?”

“Why, yes,” said George. “It has that, that gravitas to it. I like it.”

Marta chuckled. “Oh, you Fremonts,” she said.

“One last thing about the fairy house,” Dr. Sproot said. “Fairies like sweets, or so I've heard. A few M&M's or Hershey's Kisses placed strategically inside your fairy house or in the form of a trail leading up to the house from the nearest wooded area wouldn't hurt. You can space these treats one to two feet apart. Do these things and the fairies should start appearing once things start really blooming. Fairies can sense the positive energy emanating from these blooms. So don't be disappointed if they don't come right away.”

“We'll try our best not to be,” Nan said.

“With your natural gardening abilities, and especially considering that you can apparently communicate with your plants. . .” Here, Dr. Sproot paused, wrinkled her nose, and sniffed, as if smelling something pungently unpleasant. “Then, I'd say your chances of having at least the first scouting parties of fairies arrive in the next, say, two weeks, are really good.”

“And how,” said Nan, “shall we know we're being visited by these tiny supernatural fiends . . . I mean, friends?”

“A little glow, bluish-white, deep in the night, barely discernible. Gardens healthier than you can imagine. If you wake up in the middle of the night, you might think you're hearing voices. Sort of like what you might imagine if you can hear the movements of a brook or river, or the whispering of the wind. Don't try too hard to understand because you won't be able to. Also, you will see no physical signs of a fairy's presence. Your candy won't appear to be eaten. Your fairy house will never appear to be disturbed. They operate on a plane that leaves no physical evidence.”

“That's convenient,” said George.

“It is true, George. It is most certainly true. I believe it.”

“What do you have to say about this, Marta?”

Marta offered up another noncommittal shrug.

“Anything that helps Dr. Sproot . . . uh, I mean, Phyllis . . . turn over a new leaf works for me. Besides, who am I to say such forces don't exist? Your own gardens are testimony to that. Their remarkable recovery. Phyllis knows what I'm talking about. So do you. It wasn't by chance.”

“You mean that so-called spell?” cried Nan. “What nonsense!”

“I don't know, Nan,” said George. “That was awfully weird. Along with the super-localized hailstorm.”

“Bad spell followed by good spell?” said Marta. “But who am I to say? Coincidence, perhaps. Divine intervention?”