AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD (3 page)

“Anything dangerous at all?”

“To tell you the truth, the most frightening thing I’ve encountered so far was a bug that got into my bedroom and sat on my bedstead looking at me. The largest thing I’ve ever seen, all legs and wings and about a hundred pairs of eyes. Horrible. Really horrible. It took some doing to get it out of the cabin, I’ll tell you.”

Maya and Bernard stifled yawns. Misty was already fast asleep.

“Well, I can only pray for the sake of your sanity that it doesn’t visit you one night. I nearly packed my bags and left for New York City.”

A little while later Snooky, yawning, said, “Time for bed,” and showed them with a flourish into the guest room. He left them with repeated admonitions to get up early the next morning. The room was freezing cold, but Bernard discovered with joy that it was toasty warm under the goosedown quilt. He kissed his wife a sleepy good-night and rolled over on his side. Misty, left abandoned by the hearth, crept trembling into their room, her toenails clicking on the wooden floor. She sat and whined until Bernard lifted her onto the quilt, where she snuggled in happily between them. Soon all three of them were sound asleep, although (as Maya had often remarked testily to Bernard) only the dog snored.

The next morning Bernard and Maya awoke to the heavenly smell of fresh coffee wafting through the cabin. Maya got out of bed, shivering in her pink flannel nightgown. She went to the window and pushed aside the green gingham curtains. It was a bright sunlit day; the sky was a perfect translucent blue. The road leading up to the cabin, which had seemed so dark and threatening the night before, now
appeared to curve away gently through the trees. The forest, which last night had leaned in menacingly around them, tall shapes looming through the darkness, now looked sylvan and welcoming with the sunlight slanting through the bare branches. She sniffed the air. “I smell bacon.”

“And coffee,” said Bernard, throwing back the covers.

“And eggs.”

“And toast.”

“Breakfast!”
cried Snooky, appearing like a vision in his ratty blue bathrobe at their door. “Nippy, isn’t it? I’ve started the fire. You two sleep much too late. It’s nearly eight o’clock. I’ve been up for hours.”

“Stop bragging,” said Maya. “It isn’t becoming.”

“Go take showers or whatever. I’ll have breakfast ready when you get out.” He vanished with a wave of a spatula.

“It’s amazing,” Maya said to her husband in a whisper. “I never thought Snooky would take to the wilderness this way.”

“I never thought Snooky could survive more than fifty feet away from a TV,” said Bernard. “He used to hang onto our remote control like a life raft, if I remember correctly.”

After breakfast, which consisted of perfect scrambled eggs, bacon, coffee, toast, raspberry jam, and hot buttery croissants, as well as (for Bernard only) a thick slice of the cherry pie left over from the evening before, Snooky said, “Now for a walk in the woods. I insist you go out and smell the fungus, both of you. My day will not be complete otherwise.”

Maya was interested in smelling the fungus (“Maybe I could get an article out of it”), but Bernard refused point-blank.

“Forget it,” he said, sitting down on one of the sofas and stretching out his hands toward the fire. “I have to get some work done.”

There was much cajoling and whining on Snooky’s part, but Bernard held firm. It was decided that only Snooky and Maya would go.

“Of course we’ll take Misty,” said Snooky, reaching
down to pat the fluffy red back. “You don’t mind going, do you, Misty? You’re not a stick-in-the-mud like Bernard. You have a sense of adventure. You know, Maya, maybe we should put a bell on her or something. I’d never forgive myself if somebody took a shot at her.”

“I’m not putting a bell on her,” said Bernard sourly. “And what if somebody takes a shot at either of you?”

Snooky shook his head. “They seem to be able to tell human beings from mice or rabbits or whatever it is they’re trying to kill. I guess their own survival rate wouldn’t be too high if they couldn’t tell the difference. Misty just looks so—so woodlike, if you know what I mean.”

“I’ll put her leash on,” suggested Maya wisely, “and keep her right by me. Good-bye, darling. Good luck with your work.”

“Good-bye.”

“He’s not going to work,” said Snooky, once they were safely out in the woods. He picked his way along a narrow dirt path that twisted and bent between the trees. “He’s going to sit there for a while, and then he’s going to go get another cup of coffee and the rest of that cherry pie. I know him.”

Misty, trembling with excitement, strained eagerly at the leash, then stopped dead in her tracks to examine something in the bracken. “Come on, Misty. Come on,” said Maya, tugging at the leash.

“Here’s the fungus,” said Snooky. “Give a whiff.”

Maya leaned down and inhaled deeply. The faint, earthy, woodsy, brown smell wafted up from the large golden globes that were clustered at the base of an oak tree. It smelled of autumn, of moist crumbly dirt and burrowing insects and red leaves crackling underfoot. “Delicious!”

Snooky was delighted. “I knew you’d say that. Bernard will be sorry he missed this. There’s a view over here.”

He led her over to a place where the trees thinned out. Pine-covered mountains hung serenely in the distance, undulating against the pale blue sky. Maya was impressed. “Very nice, Snookers. That’s a ski slope over there?”

Snooky squinted against the morning sunlight. “Yes. I think so. I don’t know. I’m not much of a skier myself. You know how William feels about that, My. All those expensive skiing lessons in vain.”

William, who was an expert skiier (he and his family spent part of every winter holiday season in Gstaad, skiing the Swiss Alps), had wasted vast amounts of money, time and emotional energy trying to teach Snooky to ski. William, who was Maya’s elder by a decade, had taken her and Snooky as young children out to an easy slope in the Poconos and then proceeded to tear his hair out as he watched Snooky wobbling his way downhill. Maya had mastered the essentials fairly quickly, although she never became more than merely proficient; but the six-year-old Snooky, who was a gifted athlete in nearly every sport he tried—Snooky, who was long-limbed and coordinated and rarely moved with a wasted motion—had somehow never gotten beyond the basics, ploughing determinedly downhill with his skis pointed inward toward each other, and falling down in every snowdrift he passed. William would sweep downhill, pick him out of the snowdrift, and set him on his feet again, but to no avail. Later the personalized family lessons gave way to exorbitantly priced professional ski instruction, but with the same result. Maya knew perfectly well that Snooky was refusing to learn simply because he knew it annoyed William. William, who was no fool, knew it also, but he could not help being annoyed. They went on like this for several winter seasons, until one day William threw up his hands in despair. “I give up. Take up bowling, or jai alai, or pick-up-sticks, or what you will. I wash my hands of you. You will never ski the Swiss Alps.”

Maya was startled out of her thoughts by Misty, who lunged forward suddenly and began to bark. Snooky was laughing. “It’s a woodchuck. Practically the same size as Misty. She wouldn’t stand a chance. I never knew she had such a bloodlust in her.”

The woodchuck gave them one disdainful glance and then scuttled away through the underbrush, a small brown
furry shape moving with unexpected speed. Misty stood panting and disappointed. Maya gathered up the leash and said, “Time to head back, Snookers. Bernard must be convinced we’ve left him alone to die in the woods.”

“Bernard is making his third cup of coffee, and is perfectly happy,” said Snooky, but he obediently turned around and started back along the path.

When they reached the cabin, they found Bernard hunched forward on the sofa, typing away determinedly. He had found an old wooden crate out back, near the wood pile, and had lugged it in and placed it between the sofa and the fire. He had balanced his electric typewriter on top of it, dragged over one of the floor lamps, and was working away, the very picture of concentration. On a small table at Bernard’s elbow was an empty plate, smeared with the moist red innards of the cherry pie, and a steaming cup of coffee.

“Why is the typewriter on top of the unsteady crate, while the coffee cup is on the table?” asked Snooky.

“The crate is taller,” said Bernard, not taking his eyes from the page.

“I could find you a better table if you want.”

“Fine.”

Maya gave her husband a kiss. “Everything all right? Anything happen here while we were gone?”

Bernard took a large red pencil and made an undecipherable mark on the page. “Somebody called.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I wrote it down. Over there.” He motioned vaguely toward the telephone, which was on the floor. By the phone was a torn scrap of paper.

“Sarah. Lunch,” read Snooky. “Thank you, Bernard. Clear and to the point. Did she say anything else?”

“She asked where you were.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her you were out sniffing fungus in the woods. She seemed to understand.”

“Sarah does understand. She’s a wonderful girl. I can’t wait for both of you to meet her. Let me get changed, Maya, and then we can go.”

On the way over in the car, with Maya driving and Snooky directing from the back seat, he filled them in about his new girlfriend.

“She’s a few years younger than me. Turn left here, Maya. She just graduated from college a year or so ago. She came home to figure out what she wants to do with her life. She lives with her aunt, who raised her from the time she was little. Her parents died, just like ours. Isn’t that sad, Maya? Don’t you think we have a lot in common?”

“You mean she’s an orphan and she also has no job, just like you?”

“There’s a difference, though. She
wants
to have a job. She’s thinking about going to law school. I keep trying to dissuade her. Think of what law school does to you. I mean, look at William.”

“William was that way before law school.”

“Was he really? Anyway, Sarah’s—well, I think she’s beautiful. I don’t know if you’ll agree. You have funny taste sometimes. After all, you picked Bernard, didn’t you?”

“Bernard is very handsome,” said Bernard.

“Well, I don’t know. If you like mountain men. Anyway, we just clicked right away. You know how it is. There’s all sorts of trouble going on in her family right now because her aunt, who’s superrich, I mean really loaded, is going out with this younger guy who’s clearly after her money. Everybody keeps telling her so, but she won’t listen. Sarah’s sort of upset about it.”

“This is fascinating,” said Bernard. “I’m so glad we could hear all about your little friend.”

Snooky was unperturbed. “Do you see this house here, Maya? It belongs to the Grunwald sisters. They’re strange. They’re like something out of a nineteenth-century English gothic novel. You know, the two elderly sisters who live together and crochet little things for the town’s babies and
bake bread for the vicar (what
is
a vicar, Maya? Why don’t we have any in America?), and they’re the first ones to see the vampire or realize the rats have been called down to overwhelm their little village. You know what I’m saying. And this house here, the blue one with the black shutters, the Victorian, that belongs to Sarah’s uncle. That’s her aunt’s brother, not her husband. He’s a weird guy. Maybe you’ll meet him someday. Isn’t this a charming village?”

They were driving down the main street of the little village of Lyle. Maya wended her way carefully around the town square, which boasted a red brick town hall and an enormous oak tree, leafless now in the chill November air. There were houses dotted on either side of the street, ranging from Victorian-looking monstrosities to ramshackle clapboard houses to new, neatly tended ranch houses. There seemed to be no one architectural style. People had come to Lyle and had built whatever they liked and felt comfortable with. There were a few shops along the main street—Snooky pointed out the bakery (“That’s where I got the bread and the cherry pie—you’ll make a note of that, won’t you, Bernard?”) and a hardware store. There was even a little red-brick library tucked back among a copse of trees, set away from the road.

“Turn right. Go down here. Turn left at the light. Okay. Turn at that little road there. Good. Here we are.”

“You seem to know your way around,” commented Maya.

“I do. I always know my way around. That’s my second priority whenever I move someplace new.”

“And your first is …?”

“To meet as many people as possible.”

“Well, you seem to have succeeded here,” said Maya as they turned into a tree-lined drive. A sign on a low stone wall bordering the drive said simply, in gold letters,
HUGO’S FOLLY.

“Hugo’s Folly?” said Maya.

“Hugo was Sarah’s aunt’s late husband. He had a sense
of humor, that’s all. He said if he ever made enough money to build the kind of house he wanted, he would put a gold sign out front that said Hugo’s Folly. All right?”

“Looks like he made enough money,” remarked Bernard dryly, as the house came into view.

“He did.”

The house was Victorian in design, huge and sprawling, with wings, annexes, twisted chimneys, and turrets reaching to the sky, small lead-paned windows in the eaves and two massive stone lions guarding either side of the entry-way. It was gray with dark green shutters. It stood on the top of a hill, the land falling away from it in gentle curves on either side.

“This is unbelievable,” said Bernard, looking out the window.

“It’s the same inside, I’m sorry to say,” said Snooky. “A real period piece. Sarah’s uncle said he wanted room to breathe. Well, he got it, and he filled it up with all kinds of fantastic stuff. Wait until you see.”

“Looks like a ghost house,” said Maya.

“Well, don’t say anything to Sarah, she grew up here and she’ll be offended. Bernard, on your best behavior, please. Here she is.”

A slim, slight figure bounded off the front steps and came to meet them. Snooky’s girlfriend had shining dark red hair reaching to her shoulders, a small delicate face, large hazel eyes, and an inquisitive expression. She had pale, freckled skin and a large, generous mouth. Her features were too haphazard to be truly beautiful, but her eyes were intelligent and her glance, when she greeted Snooky, was (Maya was glad to note) affectionate. She shook hands with Maya and Bernard, and Snooky introduced her as Sarah Tucker.