Garden Spells (5 page)

“I like her. She’s like Snow White.”

They walked into the kitchen through the sunroom and Sydney looked around in awe. The kitchen had been remodeled, taking over most of what had been the dining room beside it. It was all stainless steel and efficiency, and there were two commercial refrigerators and two ovens.

They wordlessly went to the kitchen table and sat, watching Claire put on coffee and then slide two Pop-Tarts into the toaster. Claire had changed—not in big ways but small ones, like the way light changed throughout the day. A different slant, a different hue. She carried herself differently; she no longer had that greedy, selfish way about her. She seemed comfortable, the way their grandmother used to seem comfortable. Don’t-move-me-and-I’ll-be-fine comfortable.

Watching her, it suddenly occurred to Sydney that Claire was beautiful. Sydney had never realized her sister was so beautiful. The man she was with earlier, the man from next door, thought so too. He was clearly attracted to Claire. And Bay was captivated by her, not taking her eyes off her even when Claire put warm Pop-Tarts and a glass of milk on the table in front of her.

“So, you run a catering company?” Sydney finally asked when Claire handed her a cup of coffee. “I saw the van.”

“Yes,” Claire said, turning away in a swish of mint and lilac. Her hair was longer than it used to be, and it veiled her shoulders like a shawl. She used it for protection. If there was one thing Sydney knew, it was hair. She loved beauty school and loved working in the salon in Boise. Hair said more about people than they knew, and Sydney understood the language naturally. It had surprised her that some other girls at beauty school thought it was hard. To Sydney it was second nature. It always had been.

She didn’t have the energy to keep talking to Claire when Claire was making it so difficult, so she took a sip of the coffee and found it had cinnamon in it, just like Grandma Waverley used to make it. She wanted to drink more, but her hand started shaking and she had to set the cup down.

When was the last time she’d slept? She’d made sure Bay slept, but she was too scared to sleep more than small pockets at a time at rest stops and Wal-Mart parking lots along the way. Miles of highway ran on a permanent loop in her mind, and she still felt the hum of the road in her bones. It had taken them ten days, surviving on the food she’d packed, white bread and gingersnaps and cheap packages of peanut butter and crackers, the ones where the peanut butter tasted oily and the crackers crumbled at the touch. She wasn’t sure she could last much longer before she broke down in tears.

“Come on, Bay,” Sydney said the moment Bay finished her breakfast. “Let’s go upstairs.”

“I left new sheets from Evanelle on the beds,” Claire said.

“Which room?”

“Your room is still your room. Bay can sleep in my old room. I sleep in Grandma’s now,” she said, her back to them as she began to bring down large canisters of flour and sugar from the cabinets.

Sydney led Bay straight to the staircase, not looking around, because she was disoriented enough and didn’t want to discover what else had changed. Bay ran up the stairs ahead of her and waited, smiling.

It was worth it. All this was worth it, just to see her child like this.

Sydney led her to Claire’s old room first. The furniture was different, mismatched. The sewing table used to be in the sitting room downstairs, and the bed used to be in their grandmother’s room. Bay ran to the window. “I like this room.”

“Your aunt Claire used to spend hours at that window, staring out at the garden. You can sleep with me, if you want to. My room has a view of the blue house next door.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m going to start bringing in our things. Come with me.”

Bay looked at her hopefully. “Can I stay up here?”

She was too tired to argue. “Don’t leave this room. If you want to go exploring, we’ll do it together.”

Sydney left Bay, but instead of going downstairs to get the boxes and bags left in the car, she walked to her old room. When she was young she spent a lot of time by herself in her room, sometimes imagining that she was trapped there by her evil sister, like in a fairy tale. For two years after her mother left, Sydney even slept with sheets tied into a rope under her bed so she could crawl out the window when her mother came back to save her. But then she grew older and wiser and realized her mother wasn’t coming back. She also realized that her mother had the right idea by leaving in the first place. Sydney couldn’t wait to leave, to follow her boyfriend Hunter John Matteson to college, because they were going to be in love forever, and even if they came back to Bascom it would be okay, because he had never treated her like a Waverley. Not until the very end, at least.

She took a deep breath and entered the room reverently, a church of old memories. Her bed and dresser were still there. The full-length mirror still had some of her old stickers on it. She opened the closet and found a stack of boxes full of old linen that mice had gotten into. But the room didn’t have an air of neglect. There wasn’t any dust, and it smelled old and familiar, like cloves and cedar. Claire had taken care of it, hadn’t turned it into a sitting room or filled it full of things she didn’t need or use anymore or taken Sydney’s old furniture out.

That did it.

Sydney went to the edge of the bed and sat. She put a hand over her mouth as she cried so Bay, singing quietly in the next room, wouldn’t hear.

Ten days on the road.

She needed a bath.

Claire looked prettier, and cleaner, than she did.

Grandma Waverley was gone.

Bay liked it here, but she didn’t yet realize what being a Waverley meant.

What was David doing?

Did she leave behind any clues?

So much had changed, but her room was exactly like she’d left it.

She crawled to the pillow at the top of the bed and curled into a small ball. She was asleep seconds later.

CHAPTER

3

T
here was an art to the male posterior. That’s all there was to it.

Well, that was most of it.

The young runners on the university track had such verve and tone and, probably best of all, if Evanelle ever felt the need to give them something, she could never catch them. Obviously her gift knew that and never decided to kick in at the track during the school year. But in the summer there were slower, older people on the track, and sometimes Evanelle had to give them little packets of ketchup and tweezers. She even had to give one old woman a jar of sourwood honey one day. They gave her strange looks on the track in the summer.

That morning, instead of going to the track, Evanelle decided to walk downtown before the shops opened. There were always runners around the square. She followed a few of them until she came to Fred’s Gourmet Grocery and happened to look in the window. It was well before he normally showed up for work, but there was Fred, in his stocking feet, getting a container of yogurt out of the dairy section. His rumpled clothing was an obvious indication that he’d spent the night there. Evanelle supposed the rose geranium wine didn’t work on James, or maybe Fred decided not to use it after all. Sometimes people who had been together for a long time got to imagining that things used to be better, even when they weren’t. Memories, even hard memories, grew soft like peaches as they got older.

Fred and James were a steadfast couple, everyone knew that. The fact that they were gay had been overlooked a long time ago, when it was obvious they were one of the always-togethers, a distinction usually reserved for very old couples. She knew Fred. She knew that what people thought was important to him. He was a lot like his father that way, though he’d never admit it. Once someone told him something critical, he would hold on to it for a long time, change everything he did just so he wouldn’t face the same criticism again. He would hate for anyone to know that he and James were having problems. He was an always-together. He had so many expectations to live up to.

She knew she should leave, but she decided to wait for a moment to see if her gift would kick in. She stared at him, but nothing occurred to her. She had nothing to give him but advice, and most people weren’t inclined to take that too seriously. Evanelle was neither as mysterious nor as clever as her Waverley relatives who had always lived in the Queen Anne home on Pendland Street. But she did have the gift of anticipation. From the time she was a little girl, she brought her mother dishcloths before the milk was spilled, she closed the windows before there was even a hint of a storm, and she gave the preacher a cough drop before he had a coughing spell during the sermon.

Evanelle had been married once, a long time ago. The first time she met her husband they were six years old, and she gave him a small black stone she’d found on the road that day. That night he used it to tap on her window to get her attention, and they became the best of friends. After thirty-eight years of marriage and not once feeling the need to give him something again, she was seized with the need to buy her husband a new suit. It turned out to be because he didn’t have a decent one to be buried in when he died the following week. She tried not to think too hard about her gift, because then she would think about how frustrating it was not to know why people needed the things. Sometimes at night when her house felt particularly empty, she still wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t bought her husband that suit.

She watched Fred go to the picnic-supply aisle and open a box of plastic utensils. He took out a plastic spoon and opened his cup of yogurt. She really should be moving on, but then she got to thinking about how nice it would be to live in a grocery store, or better yet a Wal-Mart, or better still a mall, because they had beds in the linen departments of the stores and a big food court. She suddenly realized that Fred had stopped short, the plastic spoon in his mouth, and he was looking back at her through the window.

She smiled and gave him a little wave.

He walked to the door and unlocked it. “Can I help you with something, Evanelle?” he said, stepping outside.

“Nope. I was just passing by when I saw you.”

“Is there something you want to give me?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Oh,” he said, as if he really wanted something, something that would make everything all better. But relationships were hard. There was no cure for them. He looked around to see if anyone on the street had seen them, then he leaned forward and whispered, “I’ve asked him to be home early for the past two nights, and the past two nights he hasn’t come home at all. I don’t know what to do with my time at home when he’s not there, Evanelle. He’s always so good at making the decisions. Last night I couldn’t even figure out what time I should eat. If I ate too early and he came home, then I couldn’t eat with him. But if I waited too long, it would be too late to eat. At around two o’clock this morning I figured I should get things ready to fix breakfast in case he came in. That would be a nice gesture, right? I came here to pick some things up, but James usually leaves me a grocery list, so when I got here I wasn’t sure what to get. I kept thinking, what if he doesn’t want grapefruit? And what if I brought home coffee beans he doesn’t like? I ended up falling asleep on the couch in my office. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Evanelle shook her head. “You’re putting it off is what you’re doing. When you have to do something, you have to do it. Putting it off only makes it worse. Believe me, I know.”

“I’m trying,” Fred said. “I bought rose geranium wine from Claire.”

“What I’m saying is you have to talk to him. Don’t wait for him to come home. Call him and ask the serious questions. Stop putting it off.” Fred got a stubborn look to him, and Evanelle laughed. “Okay. You’re not ready for that. Maybe the wine will work, if you can get him to drink it. But no matter what you decide to do, you should probably do it with shoes on.”

Fred looked down at his stocking feet, horrified, and hurried back into the store.

With a sigh, Evanelle walked up the sidewalk, looking in windows. Most of the morning joggers were gone, so maybe she would just go home and clean up before she went to visit Sydney. Claire was a little panicked, though she tried to hide it when she called Evanelle last night to tell her about Sydney’s arrival. Evanelle calmed her down and told her everything was going to be all right. She reminded Claire that coming home was a good thing. Home was home.

Evanelle passed the White Door Salon, where women with too much time on their hands and too much money in their purses paid way too much for haircuts and hot-stone massages. Then she stopped in front of Maxine’s next door, the posh clothing shop that the women from the White Door liked to shop in after their hair was done. There in the window was a button-down silk shirt.

She walked in, even though they hadn’t put out the open sign yet. Her gift was like an itch, like a mosquito bite in the center of her body, and it wouldn’t go away until she did what it demanded.

And it suddenly, insistently, demanded that she buy Sydney that shirt.

Sydney woke up with a start and checked her watch. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She stumbled to the bathroom and drank water from the sink, then she splashed her face.

She left the bathroom and stopped to check in on Bay, but Bay wasn’t in her room. Her bed was made, though, and some of her favorite stuffed animals were sitting on the pillows. She checked all the rooms upstairs, then jogged downstairs, trying to stave off panic. Where did she go?

Sydney walked into the kitchen and froze.

She’d just walked into heaven. And her grandmother was right there, in every scent.

Sugary and sweet.

Herby and sharp.

Yeasty and fresh.

Grandma Waverley used to cook like this. When Sydney was young, Claire always found a way to run Sydney out of the kitchen, so Sydney would sit in the hallway outside the kitchen and listen to the bubble of sauce boiling, the sizzle of things in skillets, the rattle of pans, the mumble of Claire and Grandma Waverley’s voices.

There were two big bowls, one full of lavender and one full of dandelion greens, on the stainless-steel island. Loaves of bread sat steaming on the counters. Bay stood on a chair by Claire at the far counter, and she was using a wood-handled artist’s brush to carefully paint pansy flowers with egg whites. One by one, Claire then took the flower heads and delicately dipped them in extrafine sugar before setting them on a cookie sheet.

“How did you manage this in just a couple of hours?” Sydney said incredulously, and Claire and Bay both turned.

“Hi,” Claire said, looking at her warily. “How do you feel?”

“I’m fine. I just needed a little nap.”

Bay jumped down from her chair and ran to Sydney and hugged her. She was wearing a blue apron that dragged on the ground and had
Waverley’s Catering
written on it in white. “I’m helping Claire crystallize pansies to put on top of custard cups. Come look.” She ran back to her chair by the counter.

“Maybe later, honey. Let’s go get our things from the car and let Claire do her work.”

“Bay and I brought everything in yesterday,” Claire said.

Sydney looked at her watch again. “What’re you talking about? I was only asleep two hours.”

“You arrived yesterday morning. You’ve been asleep for the past twenty-six hours.”

Sydney’s heart lodged in her throat, and she stumbled to the kitchen table and sat. She’d left her daughter alone for twenty-six hours? Did Bay say anything to Claire about David? Did Claire care for Bay? Did she tuck her in, or had Bay been huddled, afraid and lonely, in her room all night in a strange house? “Bay…”

“Has been helping me,” Claire said. “She doesn’t say much, but she’s a fast learner. We cooked all day yesterday, she had a bubble bath last night, then I put her to bed. We started cooking again this morning.”

Did Claire think she was a bad mother? The one thing Sydney could be proud of, and she was already messing it up. This place messed her up. She was never sure of who she was here.

“Have some coffee,” Claire said. “Evanelle said she was stopping by today to see you.”

“Stay, Mommy. Watch what I can do.”

Get yourself together
, she told herself. “Okay, honey. I’m not going anywhere.” She went to the coffeepot and poured a cup. “How is Evanelle?”

“She’s fine. She’s anxious to see you. Have some lavender bread. Bay and I have been eating on that last loaf there. There’s some herb butter too.”

Was Claire concerned about her? She’d thought a lot about Claire over the years. Mostly they were thoughts of how adventurous Sydney was being and how poor, pitiful Claire could do nothing but stay at home in stupid Bascom. It was cruel, but it made her feel better because she’d always been jealous of Claire’s comfort with who she was. Claire had been so happy to see her leave. Now she was worried about her. Telling her to eat. Sydney tried to slice the bread slowly, but she was so hungry she ended up tearing most of it off. She spread some herb butter on the bread and closed her eyes. After her third slice, she started walking around the big kitchen. “This is impressive. I didn’t know you could do this. Are these Grandma’s recipes?”

“Some of them. The dandelion quiche and the lavender bread were hers.”

“You never let me see them when I was little.”

Claire turned from the counter and wiped her hands on her apron. “Listen, this is for a job in Hickory tomorrow. I’ve called two teenage girls who sometimes help me in the summer, but if you need some money, you can help me with it instead.”

Sydney looked at her strangely. “You want me to help you.”

“Normally, I can do this alone. But for bigger jobs I have to call people. Are you still going to be here tomorrow?”

“Of course I am,” Sydney said. “What? You don’t believe me?”

“While you’re here, I could use your help.”

“I guess it’s pretty obvious I need the money.”

Claire smiled slightly and Sydney liked that, the small connection it formed.

Encouraged, she said congenially, “So, tell me about that Tyler guy.”

Claire lowered her eyes and turned around. “What about him?”

“Has he come by today?”

“He doesn’t come by every day. Yesterday was the first time. He was bringing some apples that fell on his side of the fence.”

“Did you bury them?”

“We always bury the apples that fall off the tree,” Claire said, and Bay looked at Claire curiously. Sydney felt a sense of dread, wanting to hold off Bay knowing things for as long as possible. Sydney had traded any chance of Bay being considered normal for her safety. How exactly did you tell a child, even a child like Bay, that?

“So, Tyler,” Sydney said before Bay could start asking questions. “Is he single?”

“I don’t know.” Claire took the cookie sheet with the pansies on it and put it in a barely warm oven.

“Are you interested in him?”

“
No,”
Claire answered vehemently, like a middle-school girl.

“He belongs here,” Bay said.

Claire turned to her.

“It’s this thing she does,” Sydney said. “She has very firm opinions on where things belong.”