Dragonfly Secret (7 page)

“You know, Jessie, clover blossoms may not be enough.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“We know Willow eats clover. Or drinks it or something. But maybe that's like us trying to live on lemonade. Besides,” I added, shifting the coffee can so Jessie could see better, “baby fairies may need something special to eat.”

Jessie looked so stricken that I hurried to reassure her. “Willow has done all right so far, and she seems to be happy, so maybe it will be okay. Even so, I think we better figure out a way to get them back to the farm where they belong as soon as we can.”

She nodded, looking sad. “I know we can't keep them. Willow's not like a pet. She's more like a friend, even if she can't talk.”

We went in the back door. “I'm going to take Willow into my room for a while,” Jessie said.

“Good idea,” I agreed. “We don't want Mother getting curious about why you spend so much time in my room.”

Mother was sitting in the living room sewing a button on one of my shirts. I nodded to Jessie to go ahead through the laundry room and went into the front room just as a knock sounded at the front door.

“I'll get it,” I told Mother. I opened the door. “Good morning, Miss Ryderson,” I said politely, the way Mother taught us to greet special visitors. “Won't you come in?”

“Nathan!” I heard Gramps screech my name from the hallway and turned away from the door. “The fairy's gone!” he cried. Then he caught sight of Miss Ryderson and stopped, his mouth opening and closing as if the words were stuck in his throat.

Mother sat stock-still with the mending clasped to her the way Willow had held the baby the first day. It was a wonder she didn't stick herself with the needle.

Miss Ryderson recovered first. “I seem to be interrupting something. Would it be better if I came back?”

“No, no,” I said, finding my voice. “Come on in.” I turned to Gramps. “It's all right. Jessie took the fairy in her room to work on the story.”

Gramps swallowed.

“Honest,” I said.

Mother threw her mending back in the basket. “I wish you'd finish that story and do something else,” she snapped. “What's wrong with playing ball in the backyard? Every time I turn around you're talking about fairies.” Then she seemed to remember why Miss Ryderson was there. “I'm sorry. I guess I got up on the wrong side of the bed. I'm so worried about your report I can't seem to sleep. I'll be glad when that's over, too. Let me get you a cup of coffee.”

Miss Ryderson set her briefcase on the coffee table and sat down on the sofa. She looked at me. “Does your fairy have a name?” she asked with a smile.

“Yes,” I said with reluctance. “We call her Willow.”

“A pretty name. Does she have a magic wand?”

I shook my head.

“How about your three wishes? What are you going to wish for?”

“She isn't magic,” I said, wondering how I could get out of this conversation. “She's like a tiny person with wings.”

Miss Ryderson laughed. “If I were inventing a character for a fairy story, I'd have made her more magical. What if she
could
grant wishes, Nathan? What would you wish for?”

I looked at her, wondering if she was trying to trick me. I couldn't tell. “I'd wish that Gramps could stay with us,” I said at last. “But that isn't up to fairy magic. That's up to you.”

She looked down at her hands, a little embarrassed, I thought. “Nathan, I don't decide what will happen. I only make recommendations. Sometimes older people get confused enough to do foolish, dangerous things. It's my job to determine whether they are likely to do things to hurt themselves or the people around them.”

Mother came back with the coffee, and I took the chance to escape. I went outside, and sat on the grass beside the flower bed, thinking about the way everyone is always making decisions for other people. Parents decide what's best for kids. Grown-ups decide for old people like Gramps. Even Jessie and I were deciding what was best for Willow and Reed. No matter how sure we were, no matter how much we cared about them, we could never really know what other people thought or needed.

Mother came outside with a pair of scissors. She walked over to the flower bed and looked at the roses. She cut a pink one and two red ones and a couple of white ones. Then she came over and sat on the grass beside me, her knees drawn up under her chin with her arms resting on them.

“Nathan, I think Jessie's been crying. Is everything all right? Is there something you should tell me?”

I wanted to tell her about Willow and Reed. I hadn't lied to her, but I hadn't told the truth, either. I didn't like the way that made me feel. I couldn't tell her, though.

“Everything's fine,” I said. “We're just worried about Gramps.”

She sighed. “I am, too. Especially this talk about fairies. I think Louise may be right. He may be getting senile.”

“Does senile mean you have a good imagination?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, it means you can't tell the difference between what's real and what's imaginary.”

“Gramps can tell the difference. He jokes around and won't say what you want him to sometimes, but he knows what's real and what isn't.”

“I hope you're right.”

She stopped as Miss Ryderson's voice drifted to us from the open window. “Nathan says his fairy doesn't grant wishes. Do you believe in magic, Mr. Bentson?”

Gramps's reply was muffled, and I guess Miss Ryderson couldn't hear it, either. “What?” she asked.

“I said I don't know,” Gramps said, clearing his throat and sounding irritated. “If you mean the three wishes variety, I reckon Nathan's right, ain't likely anything to it. But there's other magic, young lady, and them who disbelieve it and shut their eyes to anything what's not ordinary lead mighty dreary lives.”

“Your daughter, Louise, for example?”

“For example,” agreed Gramps.

“Do you think she understands you?” asked Miss Ryderson.

“How could she, when we don't see each other any more than a beggar sees lamb chops?”

“Why do you think she asked me to do this evaluation?”

There was a long pause. Then Gramps said, “I reckon you'd have to ask her that.”

“I have,” said Miss Ryderson. “She seems to care about you a lot, Mr. Bentson. Can you believe that?”

“Louise cares a lot about Louise.” He paused again. “Maybe she does care about me, right enough, in her own way. But that don't give her the right to meddle. That's mighty hard to forgive.”

“Did you ever think she might be right? That it might be best for you to live with people your own age, with the same sort of interests?”

“Like what?” Gramps demanded. “Like whether my rheumatiz is actin' up when a storm's comin', and whether I'll live to see my grandkids through college? Like how to keep my teeth in so's I can eat an apple, or how to pick up a newspaper off the porch when I can't bend over? I don't rightly think I'd like living in a place where everybody shared that sort of interests, missy.”

Beside me, Mother shook her head and stood up. “Eavesdropping isn't right. People hear what they shouldn't.” She picked up the roses and went around to the back of the house. I heard the back door open and close.

Inside the front room, Miss Ryderson said something about the recreational opportunities at a senior citizens facility.

“Ain't much to live for, is it?” Gramps asked. “Pinochle and TV shows. Might as well sit on the porch and smoke my pipe until it's time to die.”

Mother was right. Eavesdropping wasn't a good idea. I wished I hadn't heard the sadness in Gramps's voice. I wished that Miss Ryderson had never come. I wished more than anything that Gramps could stay with us. If Willow had been a magic fairy, those would have been my three wishes, for sure. But she wasn't. She was nothing but a freak, a cross between a human being and a dragonfly. There wasn't any magic in that to help any of us.

“W
hat do you think Miss Ryderson will say in her report?” I asked Mother when the two of us were sitting at the breakfast table alone.

She sighed and turned her coffee cup in little half circles, pushing the handle between her thumbs. “I'm afraid it won't be good, Nathan.”

“What will she say?” I persisted.

“Well, let's see. She saw him yell at Mrs. Pruitt yesterday, and throw rocks at her cat. She'll probably call that antisocial behavior.”

“But that cat is always in our yard,” I objected. “It scratches up your flower bed and does things under the bush by the front window. And yesterday it got in the house and knocked my lizard cage off my desk and broke it.”

“Doesn't matter,” Mother said, her face glum. “It shows he doesn't get along with other people.”

“He gets along fine with us.”

“That's different, Nathan. We're his family.”

“If he doesn't get along with people, why should he go live where there are lots of people around instead of only a few?” I demanded. “It doesn't make sense.”

Mother looked at me. “No, it doesn't, does it?” She sounded sad.

“What else will Miss Ryderson say?”

“That he thinks Louise is trying to get him committed.”

“She is.”

“Well, yes, but not because she wants to hurt him.”

I frowned. “She doesn't care about him at all. All she wants is the money from the farm. That hurts him a lot.”

Mother's eyes were wide and serious. “So you believe that, too.”

I swallowed a mouthful of cereal. “She's always saying he ought to sell the old farm. Why else would she say that?”

“Because she thought it was costing your grandfather too much money. Until a few weeks ago she didn't even know it was rented for pasture. She thought it was sitting abandoned and he was paying the taxes out of his retirement check.”

“She still wants him to sell the farm,” I said. I couldn't believe that Aunt Louise was really trying to help Gramps.

“She thinks it's too much responsibility for him.”

“Why? He doesn't have to do anything.”

She smiled. “Louise and Edward have a house in Jamestown that they rent out.”

I knew that. It was the house Edward lived in before they were married. It was a little house, and when they moved into the big one where they lived now, they had rented the old one instead of selling it.

Mother stood up and walked to the window. “They go to check it over every month, when the rent is due. There's always something that needs to be fixed. A dripping faucet. A leak in the roof. Paint starting to peel. Louise thinks the farm is the same way.”

She walked over to the refrigerator and took down a magazine clipping that had been pinned there with a magnet shaped like an apple. “Louise gave me this for Dad. It's about a group called the Nature Conservancy. They buy land to keep it from being developed.”

“So she does want him to sell it.”

“Actually, she suggested that he donate the farm to them, to be set aside as a park. She said they might name it after your grandmother.”

I sat staring into my cereal, ideas whirling in my head. It sounded like a wonderful plan. Like something Gramps might really like to do.

“What does Gramps think about this?” I asked.

Mother took the clipping and stuck it back on the refrigerator. “I don't know. With all that's been happening around here lately I haven't had a chance to talk to him about it. Anyway, you wanted to know what Miss Ryderson will say in her report. People who think others are out to get them are paranoid, so she may say that.”

I nodded. “Aunt Louise told her what Gramps said about trying to poison him.”

“With too much sugar in the cake? He just meant it wasn't good for us. Not that she was really trying to poison him. But that's just the sort of thing they'd tell a judge.”

She gazed out the window for a minute, to where one of the climbing roses had clawed its way up to peek around the window frame like a fat pink face. “Then there's the matter of the fairies,” she said.

I waited. I wasn't sure what she was going to say, and I didn't want to make things any worse than they already were.

“Miss Ryderson may feel that your grandfather is losing his grip on reality. It isn't believing in fairies that matters. It's whether he can tell what's real and what's make-believe.”

She looked down at her coffee cup, as if she'd suddenly remembered it was there. She tried to smile. “Whatever she's going to say, we'll find out soon. Before she left yesterday she said she didn't think she needed any more tests or observation. I guess we may as well enjoy ourselves until we hear from her.”

“Could we go out to the farm for the day?” I asked, thinking of the fairies. “We could take a picnic lunch and take a better look around than we did last time. I think Gramps would like that, and he said the man who rented the pasture didn't mind.”

I looked at her expectantly, but she shook her head. “I have a doctor's appointment this morning. It's only a routine checkup, but I won't be able to do anything else until this afternoon. When I get home we'll see what your grandfather wants to do.”

Even though it was a beautiful day, nobody was in a very good mood. We sat around the house looking glum until Mother left for her appointment. I guess we all thought the same thing: Miss Ryderson would make her report in a day or so and that would be the end of our good times together.

After Mother left, Jessie brought the coffee can into the front room and let Willow climb out on her hand. The rose was beginning to wilt, so I went outside and cut another one, the pink one that had peered in the kitchen window.

I took the yellow rose out of the can gently, and carried it over to where Gramps was sitting in his old chair, frowning around the unlit pipe he held clamped between his teeth.