Earnest (21 page)

C
HAPTER
41

E
verywhere Anna looked was a reminder of what she was about to lose. Grammy's beautiful house. The flower beds, whose weeds, to her, had been a personal offense. Anna's former vegetable garden, where Grammy had taught her to sow seeds, fertilize, and mulch. In two weeks, to Anna's crushing disappointment, a bulldozer would scrape the entire property to the bone. Eventually, her childhood vegetable garden would be paved over for Jeff's parking lot.

Every time Anna thought about Mrs. Scroogemore's eviction letter and the planners' decision to demolish Grammy's house, she felt like they'd ripped out her heart and flung it into the bulldozer's path as well. In the last week, as she'd packed vases, ribbons, and wraps, she'd fought back tears, and grief had harried her. She was David with no slingshot to fight Goliath. She could never stop the giants who held the power: Mrs. Scroogemore, the planners, Jeff. There was nothing to do but try to accept the unfairness and move on, as devastating as that would be. With pain, Anna told herself,
I give up.

If she couldn't save the house, however, she intended at least to save some of Grammy's plants. Anna wanted cuttings of her roses, rhodies, and camellias, and she needed to dig up dahlias, peonies, and asters that had descended from Grammy's. Even if Mrs. Scroogemore had Anna arrested for stealing plants, she would keep potting them and lining them up in her condo's backyard till she found them a permanent home.

As Earnest gnawed his ball and watched over her in his sphinx position, Anna poured soil from a bag into one of the plastic pots she'd salvaged from Gamble Nursery. She snipped a six-inch stem off the gnarled New Dawn rose bush, cut off the stem's bottom leaves, and pushed it into the soil. After firming it with her fingertips, she watered the cutting and fit a Mason jar over it. “Grow into a big bush, you lovely rose,” she encouraged. “I'd like to save your mother bush, but it would take two men to dig her up.”

The New Dawn rose was a special, old-fashioned climber that Anna and Grammy had ordered from a catalog and planted as a scrawny stem one chilly afternoon. The rose grew to a giant, which, if not pruned back each year, would have overgrown its trellis and covered a whole side of the house. The flowers were white with hints of pink, and in the summer, bees and butterflies swarmed around them as if they'd been personally summoned.

Once Grammy had found a chrysalis attached to the trellis's slat, and she dropped the hard brown case onto Anna's palm. Grammy told her that in spring, when the weather warmed, a butterfly would emerge, a magical surprise. “You can look at this now and think there's nothing going on inside. But just wait! A creature is growing into what she's meant to be. When she's ready, she'll fight her way out. She'll meet her destiny.”

“Does she have to fight very hard?” Anna asked.

“Pretty hard. If she doesn't, she won't be strong enough to survive. She'll die.”

“That's not fair.”

“Tell that to a chicken or a sparrow. Birds have to peck their way out of their shell,” Grammy said. “We all have our shells and cocoons of adversity to struggle against. They make us strong. Fighting is a fact of life.”

Anna brought the chrysalis to her bedroom and placed it on the windowsill. All winter she checked to see if the butterfly had presented herself, and, finally, one spring day Anna came home from school, and there she was, a tiger swallowtail, sitting on the curtain rod, airing her yellow-and-black-striped wings. She seemed to know how gorgeous she was. She was poised on the rod as if she were announcing her presence to the world.

Below in pieces on the windowsill was her chrysalis and former home. No longer of use, it was a discarded sign of her battle waged and won. Yet no one would have looked at her and thought she'd faced hardship and fought like a tiger for the strength to live on earth. When Anna opened the window, the butterfly flapped her delicate wings, and with grace, she swooped across the lawn.

Now buoyed by the memory, Anna cut another stem from the New Dawn rose and snipped off the leaves for a second future bush—and a thought came to her on wings as silent as the butterfly's had been. Maybe Anna's own fight wasn't over. Maybe she, Lauren, and Joy had too easily accepted defeat. Maybe they could still do more to save the house. Those “maybes” stayed in Anna's mind as she filled another pot with soil and planted the stem.
Fighting is a fact of life.

Earnest, apparently tired of being a sphinx, rose on his paws, and with a resounding
ptooey,
spit out his ball at Anna's feet. He loved the ball so much that she and Jeff often passed it back and forth when they traded him for visits. Earnest had worn down its once-bright orange fuzz to slimy gray felt, which stayed vile no matter how much Anna scrubbed it.

Earnest fixed her with desperate eyes that begged,
Exercise is crucial for my body. If you don't throw my ball again, I will grow feeble and arthritic. I could be irreparably damaged. Really. Forever.

With iron determination, Earnest's longing eyes bent Anna to his will. She put down her scissors and threw the ball across the yard. He ran after it and picked it up in his mouth, then pranced back to her and plopped it at her feet.
Kerplunk
.

His gaze urged,
Oh, please. I'm a retriever. You must help me be true to my nature. Fetching is my job.

Anna threw again. As the ball flew across the grass, she thought,
He never gives up
.

And then she thought,
Neither should I.
She needed to fight her way out of her own chrysalis of hurt and betrayal. She needed to keep trying to save Grammy's house. If she didn't, she'd be sorry. And, worse, she'd always wonder what might have been.

C
HAPTER
42

G
amble's mayor, Alexander Maksimov, looked as old and fragile as his Polar fleece jacket, which he must have worn every day since fleece had been invented in 1979. The sleeves were pilling, and the collar had shredded around the seams. Someone who was either blind or lacking half his fingers had sewn patches on the elbows.

Anna glanced at the Seattle Seahawks lined up in his poster. She cleared her throat. She explained that the city planners had granted Mrs. Blackmore's permits, and bulldozers would arrive on April 7 to demolish the house. “We need to stop her. It's a historic Gamble landmark. Losing it would be a travesty. Can you help?”

Mayor Maksimov rubbed an arthritic finger over his chin. Whoever had sewn on his patches must also have shaved him, because the stubble on one side of his jaw was longer than on the other. “I can't personally do anything, Anna. I try to stay out of skirmishes, even though I'd like to get into them sometimes. And I definitely try not to cross the Planning Department.”

“What about the city council? Could they help?”

“I can only think of a single time that the council stepped in to alter a planner's verdict. In the end it didn't work.”

“Can't somebody do
something?
”

Mayor Maksimov rested his hands on his swivel chair's arms. His gaze went to a red Ford passing by the window. “I suppose the council could vote to appeal Naomi Blackmore's demolition permit to our hearing examiner. I could put it on the agenda for our next meeting.”

“Oh, please, would you?” Anna leaned forward on the edge of her seat.

“Yes, but I can't guarantee the outcome. A vote like that could be complicated when the town's already stirred up about the project.”

“At least the house might have a chance.”

“Not necessarily.” Mayor Maksimov wagged his finger at no one in particular. “If the council does vote to appeal, the examiner could rule in favor of Naomi. Then your only recourse would be to go to court.”

“We couldn't afford the legal fees.” Mad Dog Horowitz had taught Anna more about them than she wanted to know. “When's the next meeting?”

“Next Thursday, the twenty-seventh.”

“If the council votes yes, we'd have time to stop the demolition while the examiner decides,” Anna said, excitement stirring inside her.

“That's true, but don't get your hopes up. The Planning Department rules the roost in this town.”

Anna had only a week before the meeting to organize supporters.

 

Now that the days were longer, it was light after six o'clock. Rain was pouring onto Anna's beach-ball-striped umbrella and splashing on her yellow galoshes. Though she was bundled up in an Irish wool sweater and yellow slicker, she was shivering. Earnest seemed not to mind the damp and cold. He pressed against her legs and watched people pass by on the sidewalk outside Thrifty Market.

On Anna's clipboard was a petition urging the city council to appeal Mrs. Blackmore's demolition permit. So far Anna had gotten over three hundred signatures, a major accomplishment considering the short few days she'd had to canvass the town. But her success had taken a toll. She'd caught a cold, and at the end of each day she dragged home and went to bed. Still, determination and the pressure of time's passing drove her forward.

All weekend Anna, Lauren, and Joy had called friends to corral them to the city council meeting on Thursday, three days away. The plan was to gather a crowd in Thrifty's parking lot and march in a show of force to city hall. The house's supporters could speak to the council, just as they had to the planning commission. But then, Cedar Place's supporters could also speak. The house had become a lightning rod for opposing groups. The most anyone could hope for was that the crowd would be polite.

Anna and Lauren had also made posters announcing the meeting, and pinned them to community bulletin boards outside Thrifty Market, Sweet Time Bakery, the ferry building, police station, and post office. Joy had put on her lowest-cut sweater, and, like her heroine Penelope, she'd loosened her hair so it fell, free and sexy, to her shoulders. Then she'd paid a call on the
Gamble Crier
's single, thirty-something male editor. She'd placed her elbows on his desk, leaned forward, and let him feast his eyes as she begged him to write another editorial on the house. The heat of her persuasion melted his resistance. His support would appear in the
Crier
tomorrow.

“Sir, may I talk with you a minute?” Anna asked another thirty-something male. Dressed in a power suit, wing-tip shoes, and a navy overcoat, he was likely returning from work in Seattle.

“Only a minute. I'm in a rush,” he said.

“I'll hurry.” Anna smiled. “I'm wondering if you'd sign this petition.” She held out her clipboard.

He waved it away, unwilling to take time to read. “What's it for?”

“We're asking the city council to appeal a permit that the Planning Department granted.”

“What permit?”

“To demolish the old Victorian house on Rainier. Maybe you've heard about it.”

“I certainly have.” He looked down at Anna as if playing tiddlywinks might be a better use of her time. “I'm a friend of Naomi Blackmore. Does she know about your petition?”

Gulp.
“I don't know.” Anna reached down for the consoling top of Earnest's head.

“Surely you
do
know she won't be happy about it,” he said.

“I expect so.”

“Are you one of those women who opposed her building? She's told me about you. You've been a real pain.”

Anna mustered her grit. She would not back down. “We're trying to save the house. It's important.”

“Give it up. If Naomi has to, she'll fight all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Before Anna could reply, the man walked away, trailing the smell of an acidic aftershave.

Phooey on you.
“Thanks for your time, sir.”

C
HAPTER
43

J
eff walked off the ferry a satisfied man. It was a pleasant evening, and at work he'd had a productive conference with Mrs. Blackmore's contractor, who'd start Cedar Place in less than two weeks. The permit process was behind Jeff, and the project was moving forward at last. He'd run the gantlet, and now Cedar Place shimmered in his future. He'd prevailed!

Jeff joined the other commuters on the long ramp to the terminal. All the feet on the worn green carpet made muffled thunder, which faded at the exit as Jeff stepped outside to fresh, clean air. The sky was clear. At Thrifty Market he'd pick up a steak to celebrate Cedar Place's imminent groundbreaking. All was right with the world.

Across the street, Joy and five women whom Jeff did not know were shouting at the passengers and waving homemade signs. For a second, he wondered if he'd missed mention in the
Crier
of an upcoming election for the city council or school board. Local politics always brought out citizens and heated up the town.

But then he read Joy's sign, and his heart keeled over, paralyzed. He couldn't believe his eyes. Written in brash red letters was: SAVE GAMBLE'S MOST IMPORTANT HISTORIC HOUSE!

The other women's signs also thumbed their noses at him: “ONCE HISTORY IS DESTROYED, IT'S GONE FOREVER!” “SAY NO TO CEDAR PLACE!” “SAVE OUR PAST!” “COME TO THE CITY COUNCIL MEETING THURSDAY NIGHT @ SEVEN.”

Jeff stopped and stared as commuters flowed around him to the street.
What the hell?
He'd bet a year's paychecks that Anna was behind every word in those signs and she'd wrangled the city council into hearing more pleas about Mrs. Blackmore's house. Jeff's deal was done, and he had the permits to prove it. Why couldn't Anna just accept it and give up? Did she have to keep stirring her damned pot of opposition? He'd been a fool to feel sorry for her or to think that at last they might make peace.

Jeff turned and hurried, disgusted, through the parking lot to avoid Joy and her friends. Eager to get home, make a few calls, and find out what was going on, he sprinted up the hill, turned onto Rainier, and headed to his apartment. As his annoyance propelled him down the street, in the distance he saw bright lights and a crowd in front of Mrs. Blackmore's house. He got closer. TV cameras were aimed at the porch, and the lights were shining on Anna.

She was standing with Earnest behind a small grove of microphones, which let Jeff know she'd contacted media not just on the island, but also in Seattle. She held a sign that urged, “HISTORY TRUMPS GREED!” Under the lights' glare, her eyes seemed flinty, and Earnest's fur looked bleached. Her hair's tufts spiked like barracuda teeth.

“I'm trying to save my grandmother's historic house and her hundred-year-old madrona tree,” Anna told the reporters. “We can't let developers destroy our island's heritage. History can't be replaced. Thursday night is our last chance to speak our minds and save a Gamble landmark.”

How absurd. A decrepit house is
not
a landmark.

Anna pointed to the madrona. A woman in a dark green running suit was lounging on a wooden platform high up in the branches, from which hung yellow balloons and a banner: “SAVE THIS TREE!” She waved at the crowd as if she were wearing a tiara and throwing doubloons from a dragon float in the Mardi Gras parade. Her confident smile rankled Jeff as much as Anna had.

“That's Madeline,” Anna said. “She's going to sit up there till the city council votes to appeal this house's demolition permit to Gamble's Hearing Examiner. And she'll stay till he cancels it and rescues this house once and for all. Madeline's committed. We've got volunteers to watch after her for as long as it takes.”

Someone shouted, “You go, girl! You rock!” Then people chanted, “Save the house! Save the tree! Save the house! Save the tree!”

As Jeff pushed his way out of the crowd, the chant changed to “No mini mall! No mini mall!”

How ridiculous! It's
not
a mini mall. It's a small commercial building.

By the time Jeff got to Thrifty Market's newspaper stand, he was breathless. He couldn't put distance quickly enough between him and Anna's circus. He fished two quarters from his pocket, slipped them into the slot of the
Crier
's collection box, and pulled up the window for a copy. By the light coming through Thrifty's plate-glass window, he opened the paper and flipped through the pages to an op-ed headline: “City Council to Vote on Appealing Controversial Permit.”

The editorial began, “When a town loses its history, it loses its soul. . . .”

Jeff blanched. Once again he knew where that biased jerk of an editor stood.
Surely I haven't come this far only to be blocked another time.
But Anna and the editor might drum up enough ill will to make that happen. They could get hundreds of people to a meeting that could ruin Jeff's career.

He shouldn't have counted his chickens and let down his guard. He should have remembered Yogi Berra: “It ain't over till it's over.”
Damn Anna. Damn the editor. Damn Madeline, the tree hugger. Damn those women and their signs at the ferry dock. Damn the TV crews. Damn the house.