The Secret Hum of a Daisy (12 page)

Flat

Sure

“Where are we going?”
I said, panicked, as we passed Daisy on the side of the road. “You aren't going to leave her there, are you?”

“I'll take care of it.”

We drove deeper into the darkness and silence. Maybe this was it. She really was driving me to the bus station in Colfax since Lafollette's was closed.

It wasn't until Grandma turned onto Highway 80 and headed west that I knew where she was going. I expected relief. For some strange reason, there wasn't any.

After an hour, we came to Exit 116, California 193. Grandma made all the right turns like she knew them by heart. It was still raining, the windshield wipers a squeaking blur. She parked in front of Mrs. Greene's house and the porch light clicked on. Mrs. Greene pushed through the screen to stand there in her powder-blue robe.

“Your mother and I didn't get along, Grace. Just as she told you. Especially after the accident. I did ship her off, to my cousin in Texas, but she never made it there. I could tell you I sent her away because I felt that would be easiest on her, instead of having to live in such a small town, pregnant, after such a tragedy. But really, it was easiest for me.”

I didn't know what to say. She cleared her throat.

“There isn't a day goes by that I don't blame myself for what happened. I was hard, and that set things off. I missed out on your life. On her life. For that, I have regret. I'd do things different now. I'm not sure how much that is worth to you. But it's all I have.”

“You're not doing much different,” I said, looking at Mrs. Greene standing in her doorway. “Considering where we are.”

Grandma's face glowed a soft green from the dash lights. A tear rolled down her cheek and she brushed it away. “Sometimes you need to see where you've been so you can decide where you're going. I'll be back to pick you up in two days—Monday afternoon.”

I was surprised to see the tear, but there wasn't anything else to say, so I climbed out and grabbed my duffel. I ran through the rain, and Mrs. Greene took me into her open arms, not caring one lick about my dripping hair or coat. Something I was flat sure Grandma would never do.

A Trick

of the Light

If you stare
at something long enough and then close your eyes, you can see the outline of it there on the backs of your eyelids. That was how it was for me in Mrs. Greene's house. Mama was everywhere. But only that outline impression of her. A trick of the light I couldn't turn into anything else.

I saw her standing beside Mrs. Greene, drying the dishes and bumping hips. I saw Mrs. Greene put an arm around her shoulder and kiss her right on the temple, telling her she didn't know how she got along before we came. We filled the house with laughter and tears and all manner of chaos, but it was the happiest chaos she'd known. Mrs. Greene was older than Mama so she was a mother to all of us.

As I watched her put together her special-occasion French toast with apples and cinnamon—Mama's shadow beside her—I got to thinking about her love of cooking and how that had to be one of the reasons Mama and I had stayed those nine months. After keeping grocery money in a coffee can my whole life and just buying staples—mac and cheese, hot dogs, hamburger, Wonder Bread—Mrs. Greene's fried chicken, black-eyed peas, and corn bread or her teriyaki flank steak and roasted potatoes were just what we needed. It got to the point that Mama and I stopped cooking for ourselves altogether. We shopped, Mrs. Greene cooked, and then we did dessert. It was a good system and I never knew how soothing it could be to gather around a table at the same time every day and eat good food. And laugh. With Mrs. Greene and Lacey, we laughed a lot.

Mrs. Greene swooped in with two plates heaped with French toast and set them down in front of me and Lacey. Then she brought over a plate of bacon while Lacey talked about Denny Thompson, whom we'd both had a crush on what felt like a lifetime ago, and now he was in love with Marsha Trett. Mrs. Greene rotated between tsking, oohing and ahhing, and saying, “Lordy!” or, “What nerve!” depending on what was needed in the moment.

“He likes her because of her bra size.” Lacey whispered the last two words as though saying them any louder might singe her eyebrows. “And is she decent enough to be insulted? Nope. She goes around smoothing her shirt and posing this way and that like she has something to be proud of. Plus she eats meat.”

“I eat meat. So do you,” I said around a mouthful of bacon.

“Yes, but we haven't eaten beef tongue.”

“No, sir,” Mrs. Greene said. “And I never will.”

I remembered the day it came up. We were playing truth or dare at lunch recess, and when Marsha picked truth, Lacey asked her what was the grossest thing she'd ever eaten and liked. When Marsha said beef tongue, Lacey never recovered.

“I noticed you aren't carrying around your notebook. I used to think it was stuck to your armpit,” Mrs. Greene said.

It was too confusing to explain my thoughts on Before and After, since I wasn't real firm on it myself. “I haven't much felt like writing.”

“I don't much feel like taking my fiber in the morning. But I need it.”

When Mrs. Greene stood up to rinse the dishes, Lacey tapped me on the shoulder and leaned in to whisper, “C'mon.” I could smell her apricot shampoo as a curl brushed my cheek.

I followed her up the stairs to Mrs. Greene's flower-patterned bedroom, where she tiptoed to the tall dresser and opened the bottom drawer, pulling out an armful of underthings. We slipped back through the hall into her room, closing the door behind us.

For the next half hour, we tried on Mrs. Greene's bras over our shirts, stuffing them with socks, lots of socks, and paraded around the room, saying, “My name is Marsha Trett, don't I look maaaaahvelous?” and then collapsing onto the floor in fits of giggles. It felt good to giggle again.

“I have a real bra,” I said, feeling the wood floor solid against my back.

Lacey sat up straight. “What do you mean?”

“A real bra with an underwire and lace and stuff.” I showed her. Lacey was impressed, and it was hard to impress Lacey. She stood up in front of her floor-length mirror and ran her hands over her waist and hips.

“I don't have any curves,” she said with a pout.

“That's because you're a ballerina.”

She stood up taller at that. “You always know just what to say, Grace. It's been awful without you. You're like my very own cheerleading section.”

“You don't need me for that.”

She did a fancy pirouette over to the bed and slid into one of Mrs. Greene's slips. “You must be so glad to be away from your grandma. Does she ever even smile?”

“She needs a good reason is all.”

“You're sticking up for her!” she said, hands on hips.

“No, I'm not!”

“Yes, you are.”

She was right. I was. Which was weird. It felt like a reflex almost, the way you might reach up to block a ball aimed at your head before you even know what you're doing.

“I'm not sure she's as terrible as I thought,” I offered.

“Is that why you've been doing dumb stuff like tracking mud in the house and unscrewing lightbulbs instead of flushing your shoes down the toilet or digging up her garden? Because your idea of sabotage is pretty lame.”

I shrugged. “I'm not good at sabotage.”

“Whatever.”

“Are you mad about something?”

“I just don't think you're trying very hard to get back here.”

“Of course I am!”

But as we cleaned up the mess of slips and underthings and put them back into Mrs. Greene's drawers, I wondered if she was right. Lacey fluffed her hair in the mirror, twisting curls around her finger so they took their proper shape. I picked at a loose thread on her bedspread.

“I found another clue,” I said.

She stopped fluffing. “Grace, seriously?”

“Why can't you just believe me?”

She tried not to look impatient. “You want me to believe your mother is sending you signs. That doesn't sound crazy to you?”

I knew it was a lot to ask. And I didn't have proof. But I felt you should be able to talk to your best friend about anything and they should believe you, no matter what.

“Have you made any friends yet?” she said, changing the subject. Her words were snippy. Something I'd already forgotten about her in my short time away. How she could get to Snippy Town in no time flat.

Jo came to mind. How she'd offered to help me investigate the river trails without thinking it was strange or a waste of time. Max and his bandages. Archer and Ladle Boy. “There's a horse,” I said.

Lacey looked mystified. “A horse?”

“Next door. She comes and visits me at the fence.”

She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. Even a horse could make her jealous. “Jill and Carrie ask me to eat lunch with them every day, but I leave early to help Mrs. Flute with the kindergartners just like we always did. I'm suffering for you.”

“So I guess suffering includes sleepovers with Jill and Carrie?”

“I already told you, they didn't give me a choice.” Lacey threw herself onto the bed face-first. I twirled a lock of her hair around my finger.

“You don't need to suffer for me, Lace. I don't know how long it might take for everyone to figure out I should be here.”

She popped up onto one elbow. “Promise you'll keep trying, though? No matter what?”

“Promise,” I whispered.

We crossed our pinkies and the deal was sealed.

• • •

Later that afternoon, Lacey went to Denny's house to pick up a book she'd left there accidentally on purpose. I stood on the back porch for a long time and looked toward the river gliding by quietly in the distance, wondering if the footprints were all still there in the sand or if the wind and rain had washed them down to random hills and valleys. I could almost hear the static pop of the two-way radio on the police officer's belt as she sat across from me in Mrs. Greene's house with her little notebook and pen, waiting for me to say something she could write down. All I offered was, “I found her. She was dead.”

Even as Mrs. Greene, who'd found us by the water, had shrieked, “What happened? What happened?” I could feel my mind closing in around the words, sealing them up in a way they would never get free. They were still there now, safe from the world. From people who only wanted to know for knowing's sake. Not because any good could come of it.

I'd been pulled here, not just because I wanted to be home with Mrs. Greene and Lacey, but because this was where Mama had been lost. I wanted to turn around and say all those things to Mrs. Greene, to fall into her arms and let her hug it all away for a little while, but there was something about saying the words out loud that would be like writing them down. Saying it out loud would make it After.

Mrs. Greene walked up behind me and stole me away from my thoughts. “Come inside and have some tea.”

• • •

I held the warm cup between both hands and shadowed Mrs. Greene upstairs to the Fabric Wonderland. She collected fabrics from flea markets and antiques stores and loved to sew quilts in dizzying patterns. She turned on her Elvis Presley gospel music and then sat in her soft wingback chair with a square of purple velvet.

“Can I take some fabric?”

“Help yourself,” she said.

I ran my hand over soft velvets and scratchy denim, picking up a cheerful piece of apple-green gingham.

“Your grandma tells me you're still living in her shed.”

“I've lived in worse places.”

“I know you have. Can you give me a reason?”

Today she wore a yellow sweater. I knew she hung her outfits in the closet color-coordinated, where she'd decide on purple days or red days or blue days. It was always fun to see what she'd turn up in at the breakfast table. I wished everyone were as easy to read.

“It isn't what you think.”

“You mean that you're being unreasonable? That you're worrying that poor woman for pure sport? That you're so damn stubborn, you'd rather live in a tin-roofed broken-down shed than give her the satisfaction of sleeping in her house?”

I fussed with the fabrics. “Well, there's that. But on some days, I can hear the river from the house too.”

“Oh, Grace.” Mrs. Greene looked so sad.

Elvis sang about how he would never walk alone. I closed my eyes and let the sway of his voice talk me into the comfort of that for a while. Then the song ended.

I laid my hand over the fabrics again, wanting them to hum the way the bird parts did with Mama. I wanted to feel certain about something. But nothing happened.

Mrs. Greene asked, “How is it? Being here?”

I didn't know how to answer. I thought about eating her special-occasion French toast with apples and cinnamon, snuggling into the overstuffed chair by the fire, and drinking Earl Grey with lemon and honey, sitting right where I was, with a lifetime of fabric collecting, and the outline image of Mama everywhere. Then I thought about laughing with Lacey as we stuffed our bras. It was all Before.

“It doesn't change anything,” I said, rubbing a piece of faded denim.

Mrs. Greene nodded.

“There's something I want to ask you. Promise you won't laugh,” I said.

“I'd never laugh at you, Grace.”

“I've been finding . . . things. Special things. Do you think it's possible Mama might be trying to tell me something?”

Mrs. Greene took a minute. She looked out the window into the overcast day. “Anything's possible, I suppose. But it's more likely you're trying to tell yourself something. Death is a hard nut to crack.”

I didn't know what to think about that.

“Sometimes you see what you want to see because it fits the picture you already have in your head. It's hard to let go of those old pictures and see things as they are.”

Which made me think of Grandma. I'd made a decision about her a long time ago: that she was mean and terrible. But living with her, even for this short time, had shown me there was more to her than the worst.

“You will go your whole life, Gracie May, and every single person in it will fail you in one way or another. It's all about the repair. It's all about letting yourself change those pictures.”

“Maybe the repair is Grandma's job. Maybe that's why Mama never went back.”

“This isn't like a hole in a boat, where you get yourself some wood and some patching and you're good to go. It's a two-person job.”

“So maybe I need Grandma to make the first move.”

“Hasn't she?”

I had followed Mama for the whole of my life, going from here to there, chasing some idea she had of home, maybe, or running away from what she believed she'd done. Mama was like one of her birds, pieces of lovely all cobbled together with a heart full of sorrow that she'd welded closed. But I didn't have to be that way too.

“Do you know why Mama wanted to leave?”

Mrs. Greene shook her head. “I don't. Especially because we'd just had a conversation about how all the moving had affected you over the years. How she wanted to give you a home. When I tried to ask her why she was leaving, she said she couldn't talk about it, that she might lose her nerve.”

Mama had been funny since we saw those sandhill cranes fly over sometime at the end of February. She'd turned irritable. She went for more walks and snapped at me for no good reason. I'd had such high hopes since we got to Mrs. Greene's. Mama had talked about how she understood now that I needed a stable home, and she'd even talked about opening a little shop that only sold cookies and cupcakes, since that was the only kind of cooking she was good at. I even helped her figure out a name. We decided on the Flyaway Bakery.

But then, after those cranes and her mood change, she'd started reading the leaving poem from Robert Frost. She'd thumbtacked the map of California to the wall and had started pacing. For the first time, I stood up to her, told her I wouldn't go. My last words to her were angry ones and I wasn't sure how to live with that, how to fold it in a way that would fit. I wondered if the reason I didn't want to be with Grandma wasn't just because of disloyalty to Mama, but because I was afraid. The only other time I'd tried to claim a place for myself, something horrible had happened.