The Secret Hum of a Daisy (15 page)

“It must have been hard going to all those different schools.”

I picked at my thumbnail. “It was.”

“Listen, I'd like to set the collage in your box. This way, I don't have to look at an empty frame anymore. It's murder on my need for orderliness.”

I took in her cluttered desk and matching shelves behind it. There was a smudge of red paint on her cheekbone and all over her blue striped button-down shirt. She had a tiny white feather in her hair.

“I'd like to keep it,” I said.

“When you're good and ready, then.”

I stared at all the box frames on the wall. My eyes went right to Archer's. He had a sketch of Ladle Boy doing yoga. Stubbie's held a magazine called
Old Fishing Lures and Tackle.
Ginger had taken out her
Wicked
Playbill and put in a flyer for Shakespeare in the Park at Bear River Park. Jo's still had the tiny director's chair.

I looked at my box frame with my name underneath. I hadn't given much thought to the emptiness of it until just now. But when I searched my mind for what might belong there, I came up blank.

Mrs. Snickels caught me looking at my frame. She walked over to her desk and scrounged around, coming up with a pinecone. She handed it to me.

“Sometimes we just need to fill the hollow spaces with what's handy until we're ready for what's true.”

I took the pinecone and set it in the frame, feeling a small rush of warmth. What was empty just seconds ago wasn't empty anymore, and I wished everything could be that easy.

The Other

Side

At lunch I called
Grandma from Mr. Flinch's office to make sure it was okay to go to the Brannigans for horseback riding after school, and Jo called her mom. I could hear Mrs. Brannigan's happy exclamations through the phone even though Jo was standing a good two feet away. Jo smiled at me and gave a thumbs-up. It was nice to be wanted.

After school the Brannigan and Son truck pulled up with Mrs. Brannigan waving like a crazy person. Her hair was the color of eggshells, almost white it was so blond, and it blew in the breeze of her open window. I hadn't noticed before how young she looked, and so much like Jo, down to the turned-up nose and small ears except rounder.

“I'm so glad you're coming over today!” Mrs. Brannigan gushed. “Mr. Brannigan is so glad too!”

“Thanks for having me,” I said.

I climbed into the back of the cab with Max. He looked at me meaningfully, as though we shared a secret. Which, I supposed, we did. I understood his strange need for an entombment party in a way his family didn't, and somehow, that felt like a secret. Weird as it was.

After we pulled away from the curb, Mrs. Brannigan looked at Max through the rearview mirror and asked a series of questions. How was your day? How did you do on your report? Did you make up with Spencer? When he didn't answer, her forehead crinkled with frustration. Max sat with his bandaged arms tightly wrapped around his suitcase and stared out the window.

“Still ignoring me, huh?” Mrs. Brannigan said.

Silence.

“Well, I guess I'll have to keep talking until you talk back.” Then she went on about how some people can just make their own yellow food and wash their own yellow sheets.

Jo said, “Mom! Please. Can't you wait until after Grace leaves to be . . . crazy?”

“I have a good mind not to let you go fishing today,” Mrs. Brannigan said to Max, ignoring Jo altogether.

Max perked right up. “You wouldn't!”

“I would. The least you can do is give one-word answers. Yes. No. Fine. I'll even throw some in a hat and you can pick one out.”

Jo turned around in her seat. “Stubbie takes Max fishing every other week if the weather's good.” Then she said to her mom, “You can't take fishing away!”

“Stubbie Wilkins?” I said.

“The one and only.”

Jo, Max, and Mrs. Brannigan continued to bicker. I took a deep breath and let everything wash over me. The way you can ask for help and people will actually give it. The surprising feeling of belonging as I sat in the middle of a squabbling family when I'd just left Mrs. Greene's feeling the opposite. The idea of riding a horse for the very first time.

• • •

Mrs. Brannigan turned into her driveway just as Stubbie got out of an old blue Ford Bronco. Before I could get out of the car, Max pressed something into my hand. A mummy in a tiny sarcophagus. “Thanks for listening to me before,” he said and then climbed out.

“Hello, Mrs. Brannigan,” Stubbie said as he walked up to us.

“Hello, Warren. Be back in an hour or so, would you? No later than an hour and a half. Max has some extra reading to do tonight.”

“Mom!” Max said, pleading.

All she had to do was put both hands on her hips and glare. Without a word, Max turned around and headed toward the back of the house, head hanging, kicking at rocks.

Stubbie gave Jo a quick sideways glance. “Hi, Jo. Grace.”

“Hey, Stubbie,” Jo said.

He ran both hands through his spikey red hair and then shoved them in his back pockets. “Well, um . . . it's a good day for fishing.”

“It sure is. Shouldn't you go after my brother? He's getting away.”

“Right!” He said, and hurried off after Max, turning to wave just before disappearing behind the house.

I looked at Jo and smiled. “He totally likes you.”

“No. He's just a goofball.”

“Well, yeah. But he totally likes you.”

Jo puffed up a little. “Do you think so?”

“I think so.”

“Ugh. All I see when I look at him is his preschool self putting a worm down my pants.”

“Admit it. He makes you laugh.”

“I'll never admit anything.”

Mrs. Brannigan had already gone inside and as we came through the door, she was standing in front of a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf lined with containers of every shape and size. There were beautiful pottery jars and a small metal box with a dragonfly lid. There were Kerr jam jars, too, like the one that held my origami cranes, only these were filled with slips of paper.

She reached into one of the Kerrs and pulled one out. After reading it, she held it close to her heart and then shoved it into the pocket of her orange sweater.

“Come on, girls, let me pack you some snacks.”

“Already done,” Mr. Brannigan said as he came around the corner with a portable cooler.

• • •

Mr. Brannigan was tall and lanky where Mrs. Brannigan was small and round so that together they looked like a lowercase
b
or
d
depending which side of him she was standing on. He wore a brown cowboy hat and work boots and had a chin full of brownish-red stubble, which he rubbed with long fingers.

“So, you ready to ride a horse today, Grace?” he said.

“I am,” I said, and gulped, because I wasn't really ready at all. Horses were tall and liked to trot and I was afraid of tumbling off.

He handed Jo the cooler and then put his hand on top of her head as though it were a basketball. “I'll meet you in the barn,” he said and winked at me. Just that little wink made me feel a whole lot better.

As he walked out the sliding glass door, Jo scooted over to Mrs. Brannigan and pointed toward her sweater pocket. “What did it say?”

“‘Have a sit in the shade,'” she said.

Jo nodded. After gathering her Bear River park research and loading it into her backpack with her camera, she took my arm and steered me outside. As we marched across the grassy field toward the barn, I kept staring at her backpack, thinking the answer to the next clue might just be that close.

The Brannigans had loads of land, flossy green hills, trees scattered in groups of pines and cedars, a thick rocky stream feeding into a deep swimming pond with a dock and raft, a fenced-off barn at the back. A family of geese sat on the bank of the pond. I couldn't see any houses other than Grandma's off to the right, just a hint of blue through the lacework of trees.

“Just when you thought we couldn't be more loony tunes, all those jars on the bookshelf? Those are my mom's Answer Jars. When she figures something out, she writes it down and then sticks it in a jar. When something comes up and we don't know what to do, we consult the jars.” She wrapped her scarf tight around her neck. “I know it sounds weird, but it works. Well, mostly . . .”

“Doesn't sound weird to me.”

The horses grazed in the pasture, each as different as the pines were from the oaks or the cedars. Beauty came to me from where she stood and nudged my hand.

“When is her baby due?”

“Should be within the week.”

Jo introduced the rest. Raven was black as pitch and belonged to her father, who loved Edgar Allan Poe and any kind of story that might raise your hairs in the dark of night. Beauty was her mother's. White with bluish-gray splotches, she liked to flick her mane about and prance as though preparing for a beauty contest. When she wasn't pregnant, that is.

Pumpkin and Shade were in the barn with Mr. Brannigan.

“When I was younger, I'd sit under that tree over there and read, and Shade would come and stand right over me, blocking the sun. He was named Fudge, but I got to calling him Shade, and he liked it better,” Jo said.

“They're beautiful.”

“Have you ever ridden?”

“Nope.”

“Max named Pumpkin because he is the color of a pumpkin. So original! The horse is sweet, though.”

Mr. Brannigan helped me saddle Pumpkin while Jo saddled Shade. He named everything as we went. First there was a saddle pad, then a fancy red-and-white-checked blanket. Next he helped me lift the saddle, which weighed about a thousand pounds, onto the horse. He showed me how to tighten the front and back cinches, warning me to always double-check them before climbing into the stirrups.

His face was lined and tan, like he lived outdoors, and he smelled like fresh-cut wood. He put his hands on either side of my waist and helped me into the saddle whether I was ready or not.

“How does it feel up there?” he said, and patted Pumpkin on his haunches.

“Good,” I said, and I wasn't lying.

“Just sit tall and straight, don't lean forward or backward. And no flapping elbows! That is terrible form and we can't have you riding around looking like a chicken.”

I smiled at that and felt myself ease into the saddle even more.

“Don't worry,” Jo said from the back of her horse. “Horses have been known to read your mind after a while, if you let them. So don't just yank the reins; lead the horse with your whole self and you'll get where you're going. At least that's what Dad always says.”

Mr. Brannigan took Pumpkin's reins and led us outside. Once we were at the trail that ran parallel to Ridge Road, he said, “Both reins in one hand. Relax like Jo said and you'll be fine.”

Once we got going, I turned around and gave Mr. Brannigan a small wave. He saluted and went back into the barn.

We led them, Shade and Pumpkin, down the hard-packed trail. The saddle was stiff but comfortable.

Jo took it slow and steady. When the trail widened, we walked the horses side by side for a long time. The sun was warm when it slid out from behind the clouds. I closed my eyes and felt like I'd grown bigger somehow, like I had more room inside.

“Did you want to get together this weekend and search for your meadow?” Jo said.

“I sort of found it already.”

“You did?” Jo seemed happy. “Where was it?”

“Walking distance from Grandma's.”

“Isn't that how it is with most things? You screech for your mom to help you find your shoes and they end up being right under your nose.” Jo suddenly looked stricken. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to talk about . . .”

“It would be weirder if you never talked about your mom.”

There was a crosswalk in the middle of Main Street, so we used it and walked up the side of the road toward the park.

I took Max's mummy out of my pocket and showed it to Jo. “Max is upset about his kitten party.”

“So now he's harassing you too?” She sighed heavily.

“No. He was just sad. Why won't you let him have his party? Is it against your religion or something?”

“It's unhealthy, that's all.”

She leaned toward me as though she might say something, but then she didn't.

About five minutes later, we came to a long curve in the trail, and then the park. It was just as I'd remembered it, all piney green and secret pathways.

“There's a trail along the outside edge, and a place we can tie the horses,” Jo said.

I followed her under a canopy of trimmed tree branches that felt like passing into a fairy forest with twinkling hummingbird feeders, birdhouses, and other kinds of interesting objects hanging from the trees: a toilet seat cover spray-painted red, an old rusty mailbox with the red flag raised, and a surfboard, which made me think of my father. I decided right then and there I would learn to surf.

The dirt path led to a watering trough for the horses and an old-fashioned hitching post. Jo went to her pack for carrots and the cooler. We fed the carrots to the horses and then Jo led me through the trees to Mama's fountain. It gave me the same feeling of wonder to see it again.

There were so many details, layers of curved and flat pieces of metal so that if you tilted your head, they might look like waves. The steel waves of an overcast day. But those bits of metal also looked like wings, all different kinds, from tiny hummingbird wings to the giant wings of an eagle. I supposed you could see what you wanted to see, depending on what you were looking for.

Jo spread the blanket in a patch of sunlight between two trees, the sun lighting up the reddish tint of her brown hair. As soon as we sat, though, the clouds moved the sunlight out of reach. She took a big yellow envelope out of her backpack and handed it to me.

There was a smoochy couple sitting on the edge of the fountain and a small short-haired dog running around in circles chasing its tail. A jogger went by, running for her life, it seemed, and wearing a fluorescent pink shirt most likely visible from heaven. A woman sat in a fold-out beach chair and read a book. She wore a baseball hat and dark sunglasses.

The folder had lots of newspaper clippings from when the park was being suggested to the city council, the different park ideas that were tossed around, and the final plan. There were blueprints and schematics and some quotes Jo had written down from her interviews.

It just seemed so strange. How Grandma could make this place where everyone wanted to be, but she couldn't do that in her own house, with her own daughter and granddaughter.

As I read, Jo put on her beret and took her camera over to the people at the fountain, asking if she could interview them about the park. About ten minutes later, she moved on to some dog walkers while I read through everything she had in the folder. None of it helped me understand how this fountain was a clue, though, what I might find here. I got up to read the plaque again with the clip of Robert Frost's poem.

Where the bird was before it flew,

Where the flower was before it grew,

Where bird and flower were one and the same.

The first time Jo brought me to the park, I'd wanted those words to mean leaving. But now I wasn't sure what I wanted. I didn't know what else to look for. Where to go from here.