Backyard (12 page)

Dr. Sproot stared at Muffy's gardens in disbelief. Something awful had turned them into masses of crinkled, brown mulch-in-waiting. Before her very eyes, petals and leaves broke off and fell, pulverized into thousands of motes to be wafted away by the breeze. It was plant Armageddon, that's what it was! And there was Muffy, vigorously watering, her hat askew and her sunglasses perched crookedly on her sunburned nose. Dr. Sproot noticed that the plant food mix attachment had not been correctly screwed on to her hose, which was dribbling fertilized water all over her bare, bronzed legs and sandaled feet as she wobbled weakly from one dying plant to another.

“Muffy!” said Dr. Sproot, startling Muffy into dropping her hose. “What in heaven's name has happened here?”

Muffy wavered, then steadied, and stared at Dr. Sproot.

“Awful,” muttered Muffy so softly that Dr. Sproot had to lean in closer to her and ask her to repeat herself. “Everything dying. Don't know why. Been up for three days straight.... Where's my hose? Where's Jock?”

“Jock?”

“My husband. You know, Jock. Did he have a coronary or something?”

“Who cares about Jock right now, Muffy? There's your hose.” Dr. Sproot pointed to the ground, right at Muffy's feet. “Now get a hold of yourself and pick it up.”

Muffy bent over to pick up the leaking hose, which suddenly spurted water all over her gardening apron as the fertilizer attachment loosened even more. Dr. Sproot jumped back to avoid getting soaked. As she did, a gust of wind lifted Muffy's hat off her head and carried it all the way to the fence that separated the McGonigles' yard from their neighbors', where it stayed pinned halfway up one of the fence posts as fast as if it were hanging there on a hook. Muffy didn't notice. She just kept on pointing the hose in the general direction of some forget-me-nots, though she was mostly watering herself and her very healthy, and apparently unharmed, lawn.

“Muffy, listen carefully: have you heard from Dawn?”

“Dawn?” said Muffy, groggily.

“Dawn Fisher. Our president, you dodo. Has anything happened to her gardens? Anything bad?”

“Dawn? Gardens burned brown. Destroyed. Awful blight. Don't know. Dawn distraught.”

With that, Muffy McGonigle keeled over. She flung the garden hose out toward the open lawn, and landed facedown on her turf, which was a combination of rye, fescue, and Kentucky bluegrass, with a little buffalo grass and Bermuda mixed in.

Dr. Sproot raced to her car. She roared out of the driveway, knocking over a watering can that had been carelessly left by the curb. When she got home, she wasted no time in calling Marta.

“Marta!” she gasped. “Marta! I've got to talk to Edith Merton. Got to! Can you get me in touch with her? Marta, you know Edith. You might even be friends with her for all I know. Marta?”

There was an ominous silence on the other end of the line.

“Marta! I must talk to Edith. Could you get her to talk to me?”

“About what, Dr. Sproot?” came the soft, halting voice over the receiver.

“You know damn well about what, Marta. You're the one who warned me in the first place. I didn't believe you then, but now . . . I need to talk to her about her spells. I want her to take her little witch's curse off my gardens and put it on to somebody else's. Do you hear me, Marta? Huh?”

“Why don't you just call her yourself?”

“Marta, you know darn well you don't just call somebody you don't know and ask her to start performing witchcraft for you. She'd tell me she didn't know what I was talking about. I don't even know what she looks like because I don't drink and I get my vacuum cleaner serviced at B&D Appliances. When she burst into our meeting like some . . . some . . . some criminal that night years ago, I wasn't even there. I was having the house fumigated to get rid of Mort's stench. She could walk right by me, Marta, and I wouldn't recognize her from Eve. Besides, she hates me because I'm an officer of the Rose Maidens. I need an intermediary to get my foot in the door.”

“I'll see what I can do, Doc Phil.”

“
Doc Phil!
Don't call me that again, Marta. Haven't I told you . . . ?”

But Dr. Sproot was ranting to no one. Marta had hung up the phone.

14

An Angel's Trumpet Is the Devil's Kazoo

S
is and her friends Freida and Colleen were sitting around the patio table trashing boys, wondering whether they should break out the cigarettes Colleen had in her purse, and which she had stolen from out of her older sister's dresser drawer, and debating which of their parents were the worst.

“I only have one parent,” Freida said. “And she never lets me stay out past nine o'clock, even on weekends. And I haven't seen my dad in three years. I think he's in jail for starting a fencing operation. That pretty much makes mine the winners, hands down.”

“Jesus!” Sis said. “What's a fencing operation?”

“It's where you say you're going to make fences for people but make them pay in advance, then keep the money and leave town without making the fences. The worst thing, though, is my mom makes me read books. One a month.”

The other girls groaned.

“My parents are always tipsy,” Colleen said. “They don't even notice when I get home. They don't set any limits on me. I come home whenever I want and stay at anybody's house I want to. Even though I like that, it makes them bad parents. I've seen them drunk at least fifty times. That's why I'll grow up emotionally stunted and never able to love a man. My dad hit me once.”

The other girls drew back in shock.

“It's true. He hit me. You're the first I've told.”

“Where?” said Sis.

“Right here,” said Colleen, tipping her head forward and pointing to a place of no apparent significance on her scalp. “He made a fist and rubbed it really hard into me right here. You might still be able to see a mark.”

The girls leaned in to look.

“I don't see a mark,” Freida said.

“Well, if it was four years ago, you would have. That's when he did it.”

“I think he just gave you a noogie,” said Sis.

“A what?” said Freida.

“A noogie. Just a playful little jab. It's supposed to hurt a little. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a real noogie.”

“But it hurt a lot,” Colleen moaned. “It hurt so bad I can almost remember the feel of the hurt.”

For a few moments, the girls just sat there, silently pondering the iniquity of parents. Then, Freida and Colleen looked at Sis, whom they called by her given name, Mary. Mary had perfect parents, at least on the surface. They knew that because, when they came over, Mr. and Mrs. Fremont were so nice to them and were always offering them something to eat and drink. They were
so
unlike Jaime's parents. Or Natalie's. Or Jake's. Those were parents who were seldom home, spoke little when they were, and
never
offered you anything. Sometimes, those parents' gazes would follow you through the house, as if they expected you to filch a billfold or a stray quarter.

The Fremonts, on the other hand, were usually home. They were always smiling at you and wondering how you were doing. At least on the surface, they were the parents from heaven.

But what terrible things did they do in the privacy of their home after all the friends had gone home?

Sis tilted back her head and thought for a while. Her parents had never hit her. They had hardly even yelled at her. They set reasonable limits on what she could do at night and how late she could stay out. They supported her aspirations to be the next Kai Winding or J. J. Johnson by getting her private lessons with Bob McKenzie, who played trombone for both the Northland Jazz Stompers and the St. Anthony Symphony.

“C'mon,” Colleen said. “Nobody's perfect. Not even George and Nan Fremont.”

“I don't know; they're pretty close to perfect,” Freida said. “You've pretty much got the neatest parents. That means you lose.”

It annoyed Sis to know that her parents were so admired. She racked her brain for some little chink in the armor that would reduce her parents in her friends' estimation.

“I know,” she said, sitting bolt upright. “They're obsessed. Goddamn obsessed. They spend so much time working on this goddamn backyard, they hardly have time for anything else. You wouldn't goddamn believe how much they obsess over it.”

“But it's so pretty,” Colleen said. “My mom and dad say your parents are what keeps the property values up in the neighborhood. They say your backyard is a neighborhood treasure.”

“But you wouldn't believe how much they goddamn obsess over it,” Sis said. “Jesus goddamn Christ, it seems like it's all we goddamn hear about these days. The backyard
this
and the backyard
that
. It just swallows up every goddamn thing.”

Sis had just added
goddamn
to her vocabulary. She was fitting it into conversations with her peers, especially those such as Freida and Colleen, whenever she could. She was the first of her really good friends to be using profanity in earnest, and she wanted to show them that once she took the plunge into something new and daring, there was no turning back no matter who might disapprove of it. She had even vowed to debut it to her parents at some point, though the opportunity had not presented itself so far.

“Anybody want to smoke?” Colleen said, poking through her purse for the pack of cigarettes. Freida and Sis hemmed and hawed.

“Ah, come on; I didn't rip off Janice's cigarettes just to have them sit in my purse.”

“Okay,” said Freida meekly. “I guess so.”

“Let's do it, goddamn it,” Sis said. “I gotta have a smoke.... Maybe we should go back in the woods. Somebody might see us from the street and tell goddamn Mom and Dad.”

“What is it with you and this ‘goddamn' thing?” Colleen said. “It just sounds stupid.... Goddamn it, I don't have any matches.”

“Shit!” Freida said.

“Goddamn it!” Sis screeched. The Fremonts' pale-blue Ford suddenly appeared cruising down Payne toward the driveway. “It's Mom and Dad. Put 'em away, quick!” Colleen stuffed the pack back in her purse. They waved at George and Nan as they got out of the car and climbed up the steps to the patio.

George and Nan were generally not that pleased to see Colleen and Freida hanging out with Sis, as their reputations among Nathaniel P. Kelley High School parents were somewhat suspect. There were insinuations that they were loose girls who liked to moon people from cars and who sloughed off their studies. They were known to have attended parties where bottles of three-two supermarket beer were passed around. They had parents who didn't seem to know or care what their children were up to, or how late they stayed up at night. Worst of all, there was a cloying smarminess about them that made George and Nan think they were trying to hide something.

Colleen and Freida flashed sparkling Pepsodent smiles as Nan and George paused to greet them on the patio.

“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Fremont,” they sang out in their best rendition of an angelic chorus. “So good to see you.” George and Nan nodded and smiled, waiting for the effusion of baloney they knew would be coming.

“Mr. and Mrs. Fremont, your backyard looks so beautiful,” Colleen said. “My parents say you have the most beautiful gardens in the city. They say you have a gift. Just look how beautiful it is.”

“How are Cullen and Ellis?” Freida said. “Is Ellis enjoying college after his first year?”

“I hear Cullen's going to Dartmouth. Isn't that nice! You must be so proud!”

“Mr. and Mrs. Fremont, how do you manage to look so young?”

“Could you teach me how to garden, Mrs. Fremont?”

“How about those Muskies, Mr. Fremont?”

Sis sat through this interrogation slumped in her chair, looking as if she was about to gag. Ten minutes later, after George and Nan had calmly and affably answered each question, it was finally over. When Freida and Colleen got tired of slinging the bs, it happened abruptly, with no transitions to ease the way toward whatever new subject had captured their attention.

“Well, I gotta go,” said Freida, sliding out of her chair in a way that made its metal runners screech annoyingly on the concrete patio. “I need to get a Freddy Burger. You coming, Colleen?”

“Yeah,” Colleen said. “You, Mary? C'mon. Burger, shake, fries. Perfect diet for the growing girl.” She winked at George and Nan, as if letting them in on a little private joke. They both chuckled politely.

“Nah,” said Sis, slumped and despondent looking in her chair. “I'll just stay here and eat.”

“Suit yourself,” said Freida. She and Colleen sashayed down the steps in a manner that George, against his better nature, appreciated, but which Nan found unduly provocative, especially for two seventeen-year-old girls.

“Where are your other friends, Sis?” Nan said. “Margo and Taylor.”

“They're around. But I like hanging out with Freida and Colleen, too.”

Nan and George nodded gravely. Sis, they feared, was at a watershed point of her life, where she could choose the good crowd, good grades, and constructive activities, or the bad crowd, flunking out of school, getting pregnant, and turning into a community college deadbeat. Too much parental interference, they feared, could backfire on them, but they had to offer at least some guidance.

“Honey . . .” Nan began gently.

“Sis,” George interrupted. “What are you hanging out with those two for? They're nothing but trouble.” Nan's jaw clenched. When would this moron of a husband ever learn to appreciate the arts of subtlety! She held out her hand magisterially for George to halt whatever calumny he was about to spew out next, then cleared her throat.

“We just feel, Sis, that while Freida and Colleen are very nice girls, and we love them dearly, Margo and Taylor are just super-nice, wonderful girls, and we'd sure love to see more of them.”

“Great girls!” George gushed. “Just great!”

Sis sat there pouting. She wondered why she was allowing herself to be subjected to this parental harangue and hadn't gone out with Freida and Colleen for Freddy Burgers. Besides, this was nothing any parent had to tell her anyway. She was beginning to see Freida and Colleen for what they were—losers—and was reconnecting with the old crowd; which, as it happened, was the one her parents approved of. She entertained briefly the notion of debuting her new word, then thought better of it. But there was something else that needed a public airing, and it needed it right now.

“Mom, Dad, I want you to quit calling me Sis. I'm seventeen years old and you guys and Cullen and Ellis have been calling me Sis ever since I was a baby. I can drive now. I will be able to vote in a year, and my reproductive organs have for some time been capable of bearing human fruit. I have changed from a little girl into a woman, in case you haven't noticed. Would you mind if you started calling me Mary?”

She lifted her eyes from the rippled glass texture of the tabletop and looked at her parents. They were muttering and looking at something. In fact, they weren't paying any attention to her at all!

“Mom! Dad!”

“Excuse us, dear,” said Nan, finally looking at her daughter. “We've got something we have to go check.” With that, they stalked off purposefully toward the far reaches of the yard. Sis watched as they stopped to look at that plant with all the white flowers and the perfumy fragrance, and which Nan had told her not to touch, and to never, ever, under any circumstances eat because it would kill her. Sis had thought that so strange. Why would she want to eat a goddamn plant! Now, they were inspecting the leaves and the flowers, talking about something she couldn't make out, their faces turned into masks of concern.

So where is their concern for
me?
Sis thought. How come I don't measure up to a plant in your eyes, huh?

“Ob-sessed!” she hissed as she stared down at the tabletop, then squashed an ant with a quick stab of her fingertip.

Something had been nibbling at the angel's trumpets. The rustling noises from that corner of the yard had alerted George and Nan and when they turned their attention in that direction they noticed one of the plants quivering in short spasms.

They arrived at the angel's trumpets to find something they couldn't see careening through the woods on their left and a scene of the most awful plant mutilation on the ground before them. Several of the horn-shaped flowers had been torn. Two spiky seed pods had ripened and burst open to spread their seeds. Or had they been torn apart? Pieces of leaves had plainly been chewed off. Some fragments lay on the ground at the base of the plants.

“Who could have done such a thing?” Nan wondered. “Or
what?
A bird? A squirrel? A little child?”

Why in hell, George wondered, had they ever thought to introduce something to the garden that, although fast-growing and beautiful, was considered by many to be one of the world's most poisonous plants? But, if a plant was poisonous, didn't that mean that animals and birds would be deterred from eating it? And surely humans had the common sense not to eat any old thing sticking out of the ground. At least,
adult
humans. George shivered. The evidence was quite plain; something had been mucking with the plant.