The Sparrow Sisters (7 page)

“Here,” she said, handing the glass to Matty. “I'll get the cookies.” She left Matty sitting at the counter, his legs wound
around the stool, the glass to his lips. The four deep blue marbles he carried everywhere were lined up precisely in front of him like a tiny protective wall.

Sorrel was standing outside with a lithe blond woman in running clothes. She was waving her hands, and Sorrel had to step back to avoid a collision.

”I want it so big that people won't be able to see around it,” she said. “Roses, peonies, that tall greeny-white stuff . . .”

“Bells of Ireland,” Sorrel said softly.

“Whatever, it has to be amazing.” She paused for breath. “Can you do that, Sorrel?”

“Of course she can.” Patience moved into the doorway. “It'll cost you.”

“Naturally,” Charlotte Mayo said. “Hi, Patience. Can it be ready by the end of the day? Simon will come by.”

Patience saw Sorrel blink at Simon's name.

It's not that Simon's wife was bad, as Matty would say; she didn't really know what Sorrel and her husband might have been if he hadn't given up. She could only guess at Simon's early years in Granite Point. Charlotte did know that the Sparrow Sisters were a strange but useful part of Granite Point, and right now she needed a serious flower arrangement for a party she and Simon were giving the next evening. It was the yearly Founders' Cocktails, held the last week of June, first by Simon's great-grandparents, then his grandparents and parents and now by Simon. It heralded the beginning of the season with its influx of people and cash, and the decorative center
piece was always the original town charter, framed, propped on a rickety easel from the Historical Society and set in the large center hall of the Mayo house. Charlotte had decided to put her own stamp on the event with a grand, but still local, display, preferably large enough to hide the tatty charter. She was particularly anxious about this party for another reason: she wanted to introduce Henry Carlyle to the community. She wanted to make sure he knew who she was, what she could do for him, and what she so needed him to do for her.

Charlotte Parsons Mayo was everything a Mayo wife should be, and more. She played tennis like a pro, cooked quite well, decorated even better, and kept Simon happy and sated. Still, there were nights when he looked down at her as if she were a stranger. There were days when she looked at him with dismay. That's when Charlotte took on something else, anything, which she could do very well. What she couldn't do was conceive. And while this inability to provide a Mayo heir for the oldest of a very prominent family made her mother-in-law chilly, it positively froze Charlotte's heart. After visits with specialists from Boston to Minnesota, Charlotte was told she was idiopathically infertile. All she heard was “barren,” a word that had begun to define her very soul. As she stood waiting for Sorrel to acknowledge her request, Charlotte was already rehearsing how she could get Dr. Henry Carlyle to agree to see her, to add his list of specialists to her datebook.

Dr. Higgins had been kind but firm when he spoke to her before his retirement.

“There really isn't anything we can do. You know that, Charlotte,” he'd said as he tapped the file that had grown to more than two inches thick. “Modern medicine can work miracles, but I am afraid we can't make magic.” She could still feel the pity that floated off him, and just remembering the look on Sally Tabor's face made her lips purse hard enough to ache.

Patience ate a cookie at the door and watched her sister carefully. Sorrel had been taking notes, and now she slipped the pad into her jeans pocket and nodded as she gestured for Charlotte to get into her car.

“It'll be ready,” Sorrel said. “Really, Patience can bring it over around six.”

“No, I'll send Simon. God knows he should do something for this thing. It's his party.”

Charlotte drove off, her Mini bouncing over the ruts and pebbles. Sorrel didn't turn away until the little car pulled onto Calumet Landing. When she did, Patience nudged her arm.

“Patience will bring it over? Are you nuts? You know I hate that crowd.”

“And now Simon will be
here
.” Sorrel picked up the empty seedling trays and walked to the barn. “Either way . . .” She shrugged.

“It sucks. She is just so
Charlotte
.” Patience was gearing up for a bit of a rant, and Sorrel wanted to run to the field behind the fruit trees, lie in the tall grass, and let her bitter tears water the black-eyed Susans.

Sorrel might have gotten that lecture if Matty hadn't come out of the barn.

“Why is everyone sad?” he asked. Then he paused. “Why are you angry?” he asked Patience. A completely contrary aspect of his condition was his ability to pick up on the Sisters' moods. Matty couldn't relate to his own classmates, was unable to join in games or even intuit when he was being teased. To everyone else Matty was an uncomfortable reminder of how things could go wrong—and the Sisters, they were ciphers—but to each other they were completely readable.

“We're not sad, buddy,” Sorrel said. “We're just tired.”

“But it's morning.”

“Yes, it is,” Patience said. “And there is a crap ton to do. Let's check the hollyhocks.”

The rest of the day passed in a pleasant haze. Matty and Patience bent low over her plants as she picked and plucked, explaining everything she did in a soft, even voice. Matty was the only one Patience shared her secrets with. He listened with rapt attention as if the names themselves held power. As Patience listed the various ailments her plants could help, Matty almost wished he had rheumatism that called for bladderwrack or high blood pressure to be cured by skullcap. “Conjunctivitis needs eyebright,” Matty repeated under his breath. “Eczema needs Chinese peony root, no bark.” He had a remarkable memory and when he got home, he would transcribe all the names and uses into a black-and-white-patterned composition book he kept under his mattress. When he could (without the Sisters
seeing, sometimes early or late), he snatched a petal or blossom, a leaf or seed, to paste beside the entry. Matty thought maybe he could learn to be like Patience, to save someone the way she did. He was sure that if he could, people wouldn't look away every time they saw him.

Matty seemed calmer and by lunchtime slept sweatily in the hammock strung between two pear trees at the edge of the meadow. He was boneless in the way children can be, draped over the canvas sling, his head thrown back in complete unconsciousness. Sorrel finished her planting and began work on the arrangement for Charlotte. The tallest white roses were still closed, and they could be for another day or more so Sorrel laid them in the long soapstone sink and filled it with warm water. Since everything bloomed early and long at the Sparrow Sisters Nursery, everyone had begun to count on that fact, even if they couldn't explain it. Under the Sisters' hands even the most difficult flower sat up and paid attention. Still, white roses were fiddlier than most. The peonies Charlotte wanted were nodding heavy on their stems, bowing over the edges of a tall tin bucket, blooming far past their May prime. Their blossoms were perfectly open, the scent so heady that Sorrel had to step outside for air. Honeybees had followed her into the barn, abandoning the hives Nettie kept for the flowers that spilled over the sink, for the honey that Patience stirred into teas and lotions, for the wax that she used to seal her bottles. Sorrel waved her hands to shoo them out. She tiptoed by Matty and into the field in search of bells of Ireland. Nettie had planted a
long stand of them the first year the Nursery opened, and they were quickly well established. Now the tall stems were covered in electric green calyxes, the tiny white flowers at their centers only buds. They smelled faintly of mint, and Sorrel wondered if the arrangement might be positively intoxicating.

“And who will notice?” she murmured as she clipped an armload.

H
ENRY
C
ARLYLE WAS
bent low over his work too. A six-year-old girl had gone butt over teakettle on her bicycle and landed on her chin.

“One minute she was pedaling along like Miss Gulch and the next, wham!” Her mother was rattling away as Henry took tiny, deft stitches in her daughter's chin. He wondered what kind of mother compared her daughter to the Wicked Witch instead of Dorothy. The light from the old gooseneck lamp beside the exam table was hot on his hands; the smell of the latex gloves an acrid, powdery thing.

“They use glue at the ER in Hayward,” she said, hovering too close, getting in his field. “They say it leaves less of a scar, the glue does. I'm not so sure when I look at Martin's arm. But he's driving the good car to Boston and the thought of getting on the Post Road . . .”

Henry breathed slowly and softly as he turned the little girl's chin one way and the other. Her skin was nearly transparent under the bright light. A few flecks of dried blood clung to the fine hairs on her jaw. Tears had left salty, sandy trails over her
cheeks. Henry knew his sutures would not leave much of a scar at all.

“Well,” he said and stripped off his gloves, “we're done now and I don't think anyone will even notice by Labor Day.” He looked at the girl; she was almost sedated by the light, the anesthetic, and the shock of her fall. Her eyes were glazed, and as Henry brushed her hair away from her face, she leaned into his hand like a cat.

“Lydia, thank the doctor,” Lydia's mother gathered her daughter's bike helmet and sweatshirt.

“Thank you,” the little girl whispered into Henry's neck as he lifted her off the table. Her breath was warm against him, and he pressed his own cheek into her hair.

“You are entirely welcome,” he said and smiled genuinely for the first time that day. Lydia gave a gappy, shaky smile and for absolutely no discernible reason, Henry felt tears prickle at the back of his eyes. He cleared his throat and ushered the two out the door, pausing to watch as they walked down the hall, Lydia swaying a bit as she held her mother's sleeve.

It was lunchtime already, the hour when Henry returned calls and tried to read his own handwriting. Sally Tabor usually got him a sandwich from Doyle's and brought it to him at his desk. It surprised him that he'd fallen into such an easy pattern in a matter of weeks. There was comfort in the routine, and Henry found himself able to go hours at a time without thinking about anything other than what was right in front of him. But as soon as a patient left his exam room, or Henry sat at his
desk as he did now staring at his notes, he fell into thoughts of the strange effect this town was beginning to have. Perhaps it was the softness of the early, perfect summer that had crept up on Granite Point, blurring all the hard edges, painting everything in a lemony light. Or maybe it was the lovely specter of Patience Sparrow, who insisted on hovering over everything he did.

“I am a mess,” he mumbled as Sally came in.

“What?” she asked.

“I'm going to clean up this mess,” Henry said.

He waited until Sally left him before picking up the phone. Then he made three calls to check on patients, one to the lab to push a blood test, and one to the storage facility in Watertown to have his books sent on to Baker's Way. Finally, he called the Sparrow Sisters. He wanted to check on Nettie, and Henry wasn't sure whether he hoped that Patience would answer or that she wouldn't. She didn't.

“Oh, Dr. Carlyle,” Nettie piped when he identified himself. “How nice of you to call.”

“Nothing nice about it,” he said and put his forehead down on his desk. “I mean, Nettie, that it's my job to be sure you're feeling better.”

“Well I am. Much,” she answered. “My sisters are at the Nursery, and I am sitting in the sun feeling grateful we have you.” If Henry could see Nettie, he would have seen her slap her palm to her own forehead. Both of them sounded as silly as they felt, and the conversation was short. Nettie put the phone
down on the grass next to her, and Henry hung his up with a bit of a slam. Nettie suspected Dr. Carlyle was trying too hard. Henry would agree. He needed to get out of his office.

“Oh, you should go down to the harbor,” Sally said when she saw him in the hall. “It's beautiful out there.”

The village green was the oldest in the country, lush and inviting with a gazebo at its center. Wisteria climbed the pillars all the way to the shingled roof. The Sparrow Sisters had planted it after Hurricane Bill tore away the original vines. Now, in only a few years, the cinnamon-scented purple blossoms tumbled over the entire building, the twisty branches braided themselves along the eaves. The Catholic church, Our Lady Star of the Sea, stood at one end of the green and the First Episcopal Church at the other. Henry cut across the lawn toward the harbor without a look at either. He was following his nose. The breeze off the water was heavy with salt, and as he neared the docks and day boats, the fish was so fresh it simply smelled of the sea. Gulls circled the boats, their cries as cutting as the wail of a newborn.

Henry paused to watch a man unloading lobsters. He was tall and broad through his chest, his legs long below stained, wet shorts. His biceps were the size of hams and lines framed his eyes; a map of hard work, early mornings, and sun. Dark blond hair stood out from his head in briny spikes. He swore as the lobster he was holding clamped a claw down on his thumb. The rubber band meant to hold the claw closed shot clear off across the dock. The lobster hung on as the man twisted at
it, and Henry could see blood well up at the base of the guy's thumb. Henry walked over quickly and took his elbow just as he managed to yank the lobster off.

“Let me look,” Henry said, suddenly eager for a purpose.

“It's fine,” the fisherman growled as he held his bleeding hand away from his catch.

“Seriously, you need to clean that.” Henry turned the man's hand over so he could see the thumb now covered with dark blood.