The Bird Sisters (26 page)

“Bett has a bald spot on the back of her head,” she told her father.

“Is that so?” her father said.

“She has lice, too. When I changed her sheets, I saw them jumping all over her bed.”

“It can’t be as bad as that,” her father said.

“Her toenails curl under they’re so long.”

“We should write to the
Guinness Book of World Records.
”

“They break off,” Twiss said. “I doubt they’d get here in time.”

Her father put down Rust-O-Lonia. “You’re greener than the greenest green.”

“Bett thinks green is just a color,” Twiss said.

“In Deadwater, it probably is,” her father said.

Before Twiss could open her mouth again, her father latched on to her arms and spun her around like he used to when she was a little girl. “Who’s my little champion!”

“Put me down!” Twiss said, although she clung to his back the way she’d seen Milly cling to Asa’s in the meadow. “I feel sick! I might throw up on your shoe!”

Her father set her on the ground, but not immediately. He spun her around one more time. While he spun her, he sang, “There’s nothing as wonderful as spinning my daughter around on a summer afternoon” to the tune of “Paper Moon.”

“Those aren’t the real words,” Twiss said.

“They’re the only words I can think of right now,” her father said.

Which made Twiss forgive him for the milk pail and for Jester—whatever he’d meant by telling that story. “I was just kidding about Bett and the bald spot and stuff,” she said. “She just got a pedicure. It’s supposed to be French.”

“Your mother must be jealous,” her father said. “When I met her, she used to have perfect little pink seashell toenails.”

“Now she has wolf feet,” Twiss said. “Every night, she tears up her sheets.”

“You’re terrible,” her father said.

He reached into the back pocket of his trousers and handed Twiss a note to give to her mother. This time, the note was folded several times and taped securely shut. It was written on light yellow writing paper instead of on a scoring card.

“Don’t read this one,” he said to Twiss very seriously.

“What does it say?” Twiss said.

“It’s a secret,” her father said.

“Then why don’t you give it to her yourself?”

“Just promise me you won’t open it,” her father said.

“I promise,” Twiss said.

“Double promise,” her father said.

“I promise.”

Twiss set off toward the pond to look for her secret ingredient, but she stopped when she got to the place where the reeds came up to her waist, and the barn and house were shielded from her view. She’d never read her mother’s or father’s notes without Milly standing beside her to translate their words into words that were more hopeful, but Milly was busy standing in the kitchen drafting plans for her cake for the town fair. She’d said she wanted to win the twenty-five-dollar prize to help bring Father Rice back, but tractor sketches were strewn all over the kitchen table, along with bowls of bright green frosting and a miniature steering wheel she’d fashioned from a rope of black licorice.

Plus, Milly’s face couldn’t hold a lie, even for twenty-five dollars.

Earlier, she’d gone out to measure the backseat of the car.

“Don’t forget to account for potholes,” Twiss had said as a joke.

“You’re right,” Milly had said thankfully.

Mrs. Bettle had brought over a twenty-pound sack of flour for Milly to experiment with once she’d learned of the contest. Mrs. Collier had brought the leftover sugar she used to use for canning. The crowning offer was a small bottle of liquor from Mr. Stewart, who claimed he’d fallen in love with a woman once over a forkful of Grand Marnier–infused frosting.

“Estelle,” he said. “That was her name.”

“What does it taste like?” Twiss said.

“Oranges,” Mr. Stewart said.

“What happened?” Milly said.

“She didn’t like fossils as much as she thought she did,” Mr. Stewart said.

“Mrs. Bettle’s not married,” Twiss said to Mr. Stewart. “I bet if you drank the bottle instead of putting it in a cake, you’d fall in love with her, too. She looks like an ottoman, but you don’t seem concerned with the more superficial qualities of women.”

“Twiss,”
Milly said.

“Milly,”
Twiss said.

“She’s right,” Mr. Stewart said. “I’m too sentimental for my own good.”

With her father’s note in her hand, Twiss sat in the reeds. She snapped one of them off and positioned it between her thumbs. She used to be able to play the entire national anthem on a single reed, but today the reed broke after only a few notes, although
Oh, say can you see …
was just enough to attract Kingsley, the grandfather of all the snapping turtles that lived in the pond. Twiss jumped up and away. She didn’t toy with Kingsley the way she did with the other turtles; unlike his female counterparts, Kingsley lunged for whole limbs, vital organs. He smirked the way Twiss imagined real kings did when they sentenced someone to death.

Why had her father given her a note that didn’t look anything like the others? When had he gone into the house to get the yellow paper? The tape? The nerve? Twiss thought about what she could do, what she
should
do, which led her to another thought, and then another. No teacher had ever believed her when she claimed that the dog ate her homework, and she was certain her father wouldn’t believe it if she told him Kingsley ate his note, either. But Twiss offered it to Kingsley anyway, who snapped the words up quickly, but with no more interest than he paid a golf ball or a tin can. Then he dragged himself back to the pond.

What would her father have written? What came between love and hate, Maisie and Margaret? Twiss went back to the house to draft a new note. Since her father hadn’t written the note on old scoring paper, the message may have been more positive than the other ones. She didn’t know why, now, after so many notes, this one felt so crucial to the future of their family. Lately, her mother was less mournful when she gazed at the barn, as if, like Aunt Gertrude, she’d begun to figure out how to live without Twiss’s father.
Dear Maisie
, she wrote, forming the letters in the slanty way her father formed his,
I miss your perfect little pink seashell toenails. Will you go to the fair with me? Love, Joe
.

After she perfected his handwriting, Twiss folded the note the way her father had and taped it closed. Then she went to the garden where Bett and her mother were pulling up carrots and potatoes and placing them in their aprons.

“Dad said to give you this,” she said.

“What is it?” her mother said.

“How am I supposed to know?” Twiss said. “It’s taped shut.”

She pulled a carrot from the earth and threw it in the grass before she stomped back into the house. But from the kitchen window she watched her mother turn away from Bett to read the note. Her mother held on to the note with one hand until she saw how securely it was taped. When she let go of the end of her apron so she could use her other hand to open it, the carrots and potatoes she’d gathered fell to the ground.

“Are you all right?” Twiss heard Bett say.

“Clumsy is all,” her mother said.

Bett went back to pulling up carrots, Twiss blushed at the thought of her cousin’s lips on her own, and her mother opened the note. After her mother finished reading it, she folded it back up and tucked it into the pocket of her dress.

She knows it’s not from him
, Twiss thought.
She’ll give me a turn with every belt in the house
.

But just before her mother went back to the carrots and the potatoes, back to whatever she and Bett were talking about before Twiss had interrupted them, her mother looked down at her soil-black feet and wiggled her toes.

That afternoon, Twiss’s mother and Bett sat on the porch together with glasses of iced tea, looking at a book about French impressionists. (“I love the way he captures light,” her mother said, to which Bett said, “Was the world a better place back then?” to which her mother said, “The world was always a better place back then.”)

“Even the lily pads look hopeful,” Bett said.

“Serene, I think,” her mother said.

“Is there a difference?” Bett said.

Her mother placed her hand on Bett’s.

“My God,” she said. “I’m going to be sad to see you go at the end of the month.”

Bett didn’t say anything—she just kept staring at the lily pads, the yellows and greens and blues. Usually, she would have said something about lily pads in Deadwater, maybe how they ate frogs and insects that hopped onto them.

This time, she stayed silent.

“I can’t wait to go up there,” Twiss said, not understanding that the home Bett had left wouldn’t be the home she returned to. “I’m going to canoe until my arms are like paddles.”

“I’ll have a different kind of countdown going then,” her mother said.

“We don’t canoe for fun,” Bett said.

I’m sorry
, Twiss mouthed to Bett, but Bett ignored her.

“What if I don’t come back?” Twiss said to her mother.

“Just make sure to send my real daughter back,” her mother said. She turned to the next page in the book. “Isn’t it interesting how they bundle their haystacks in Europe?”

Twiss got up from her chair.

“I hate the impressionists!” she said, dragging Milly off the porch. “Moan-nay. Man-nay. Fan-nay. They make me want to draw pictures of the guillotine.”

“What are we doing?” Milly said, hopping on one foot until she’d pulled her muck boot onto the other and then hopping on that foot until both feet were clad in rubber.

“Finding a secret,” Twiss said.

She dragged Milly along through the backyard, past the site of their unfinished tree house, until they were in the woods and Milly didn’t need to be dragged anymore.

“I need to finish designing my cake,” Milly said, but she kept walking anyway.

“You’ll win whatever you make,” Twiss said.

“This one has to be special,” Milly said.

Twiss thought of the tractor drawings, of Asa and Milly pressed together in the meadow, of Bett’s parents, and she stopped walking. “You have to promise me something as my sister.”

“What?” Milly said, running into her back.

“That you won’t leave until I’m old enough to leave, too.”

“I thought you were going to pitch a tent in my backyard,” Milly said.

“What if you don’t have a backyard?” Twiss said.

“Then we’ll have to put you up in the trees,” Milly said.

“With a hatch, so I can see the stars?”

“Aren’t we supposed to be finding a secret ingredient for your tonic?” Milly said.

“I did something,” Twiss said, turning around. “I don’t know if it’s good or bad.”

She told Milly about her father’s note and about giving it to Kingsley, and then about her forgery and their mother’s response to it. Twiss was expecting Milly to say that she’d have to apologize and bear whatever punishment their parents bestowed on her.

“That was one of the nicest things you’ve ever done,” Milly said. “Dishonest, but nice.”

“I did it for him,” Twiss said.

Milly picked a wood chip out of Twiss’s hair. “You’re allowed to love her, too.”

The two of them didn’t find a secret ingredient for Twiss’s tonic that day, even though they walked all the way to the river and back up through the fields and the woods. Somewhere along the way, Twiss had stopped worrying about the secret ingredient for her tonic and started to think about what might come of her note, her mother’s wiggling toes, the belief in love.

lthough Milly and Twiss spent most Augusts in Spring Green sitting on the porch with cold washcloths wrapped around their necks to keep off the heat, this year they spent the month getting ready for the fair. In an unusual show of generosity, their mother gave them fewer chores to complete and more time to tinker with their cake and tonic recipes. She’d even offered input, as did Mrs. Bettle, Mrs. Collier, Dr. Greene, and Mr. Stewart. In four weeks, the house accommodated as much traffic as it usually did in a year.

On the night before the fair, Mrs. Bettle decided Henry should run through a final dress rehearsal of “Ave Maria” in front of a crowd, since he was used to just performing for her. She’d brought along a cuttlebone in case he needed to be coaxed.

“I understand completely,” Dr. Greene and the others said.

Bett had gone for a walk because she said she needed to be alone—since her mother’s letter had arrived, she needed to be alone a lot. Twiss’s father was in the barn.

Henry turned out to be quite a showman. When he finished singing, he bowed. Mrs. Bettle had sewn a tiny top hat for him.