Part 18 (1/2)

No matter how friendly the people of Aberdeen were to her, no matter how grateful for healing their sick children, she stil must have sensed an undercurrent of danger best remedied by the twin conventions of marriage and motherhood. After al , spinsters have always been a social problem al up and down history, and spinsters with spel s are even more unappealing.

I have it easy in some ways. No one's ever real y expected much of anything out of me- certainly not snagging a husband or children of my own. My size makes me speak slowly and move slowly, and it's also paradoxical y enabled me to slip through cracks no one in Aberdeen would ever think possible. Like testing out Tabitha's mixtures. Or kil ing off Prissy Sparrow right under Robert Morgan's pointy nose.

Based on what the doctor had told me about my own condition, I thought the chances were pretty good that I might one day require the same grace I was about to extend to Prissy. It gave me comfort to know that if Robert Morgan's medicines didn't work, and if I couldn't find cures in the quilt, I stil would have a more comfortable option than the smoking end of a pistol or the long drop of the train trestle outside of town. But the real reason I took so much time poring over the scattered wings and vines of the quilt almost pains me to admit now. Much as I of the quilt almost pains me to admit now. Much as I would like to think so, my intentions weren't total y altruistic. In fact, they were the absolute opposite.

They arose from pure, unadulterated revenge.

I knew Priscil a Sparrow was sick and aging, and I knew she'd gotten down on her knees in front of me to beg, but I can't lie. There was a tiny part of me that thril ed to see those things. It was as if the child inside of me were standing with arms akimbo, bottom lip stuck out, sulking. I was glad that the woman who'd first labeled me a giant, and had stolen the one thing left belonging to my mother, and had never given me a drop of praise, was il . I was happy to watch her die heartbroken and in solitude.

In fact, I was happy to see that even dying wasn't working out for Miss Sparrow. Finally, I thought, she's getting a taste of what it's like to have your body betray you.

Wel , that lasted al of about a week. The problem was that I couldn't reconcile the ferocious Miss Sparrow of the past with the turbaned lady propped on her bony knees in front of me. If I were better at holding on to a grudge, I'm sure I could have managed to pin down her ghost, but, as it tends to do, the present won out, and I let my school memories dissolve like tarnish in a vinegar bath.

Release, the wings on the quilt seemed to urge, the edges of them so faint that they s.h.i.+fted when I tried to trace them. Release. And so, on a Sat.u.r.day in early summer, I found myself scouring roadsides, empty fields, fence lines, and even the weedy thickets of the town green. Any neglected spot where deadly plants might happen to grow, al the way out to the fence of the cemetery.

It was the kind of day that asked you to take off your shoes and go creek walking or wriggle your toes in the gra.s.s, not a day for col ecting the ingredients like these. I had made a list. Oleander and nightshade. Foxglove, and thorn apple, and devil's trumpet. Nettles for sting and bite. Al the herbs that Marcus had warned me against. Al the ones I'd used on Sentinel-and more. That night, it took me four hours to cook them into a kind of sludge. I made some of my own improvements, adding peppermint to ease the bitterness, and chamomile to make the drink gentle, and then some sugar to make what I was about to do go down a little sweeter. I let the mixture cool and then strained the liquid into three smal jars, capping them tight and setting them on the table. How much would it take to do Prissy in? I wondered. A spoonful? An entire cup? The whole jar? When it came to questions of dosage, I was beginning to realize, Tabitha's quilt was more a blueprint than a handbook. It didn't have al the answers.

In the morning, I woke early and made sure Bobbie and the doctor were stil sleeping before I stole back down to the kitchen and fetched a basket from the pantry. I wrapped one of the jars in a clean tea towel and laid it inside the basket, then I sat down and wrote a quick note. This is what you've been waiting for, I wrote. Drink it all at once. Don't hesitate. G.o.d bless. I shoved the note into an envelope and tied it to the basket handle with red ribbon. There were two jars left. I put them in the pantry, where the liquid s.h.i.+mmered and glowed with an unsettling light. Two jars left for me just in case the doctor's worst-case scenario came true. Or maybe not just in case. Maybe for when it did.

Priscil a's newspaper-folded into thirds like the doctor's-was sitting on her stoop when I arrived, along with a bottle of milk. I glanced up and down the sidewalk, but al I could see were ticking sprinklers, her neighbor's newspaper stuck in his hedge, and a calico cat. I nudged the basket up against her door, then turned and walked away.

On the way back to the doctor's, I imagined Prissy tearing open the envelope, reading my note, and then tossing it away. Then I pictured her uncapping the jar and inhaling the gra.s.sy concoction before leaning her head back and pouring it straight down her gul et. Summer would fizz along the back of her tongue, I hoped-fresh hay, and the nip of lemonade, and the smoky blare of fireworks. A time when everything in the world was youthful and plump and ful of lazy grace. Maybe the faces of her students-every one of them, right from the beginning-would swirl before her eyes, rising up to meet her. I like to think so. I like to think I was even marching at the front of them, leading the show, my stocky legs scissoring, my hair flying, my hands clapping out the joyous overdue music of the seraphs.

Chapter Twenty-one.

After Prissy's death, I fel into a kind of limbo where it seemed time went on without me, like a river bending its way around a mountain. For one thing, I stopped growing. I don't know if it was the doctor's pil s or maybe the cures from the quilt, but something halted my increases so that for the first time in my existence, I knew the suffocating equilibrium of absolute stil ness. A series of winters came and went in Aberdeen, snows piling deep and then melting away again, the lilac hedges on the side of the house creeping higher and higher until Marcus arrived to hack them back, but through it al , I was just a bored observer, my viewpoint perfectly fixed, the world around me so distant and smal , I felt as if I were looking through the wrong end of a telescope al the time.

”What's the matter with you?” Marcus asked as I was hanging out the was.h.i.+ng one afternoon. We had al the modern conveniences, but I loved the way the suns.h.i.+ne made the sheets smel , so I used the chance of good weather to air the so I used the chance of good weather to air the household linens. I couldn't remember the last time I'd done it.

”What do you mean?” I mumbled, my mouth ful of pegs.

Marcus reached up gently and removed them, then held his hand open so I could pluck them from his palm, one by one. ”This is the first time I've seen you outside in weeks this year. You mope around the kitchen al day, but you barely cook anything anymore. You've gotten pasty as a ghost.

You're avoiding Amelia's and my company, and Bobbie says you can go whole days without even speaking. I think he misses you.”

I.

missed him, too. A ful -blown adolescent now, he was like a leaky bucket getting emptier by the day, the soul dribbling out of him in a steady stream. Over the past few years, his voice had cracked and deepened, and he had sprouted wisps of hair under his arms and in his groin, but I was pretty sure the normal path of his development had ended there.

The truth was, Bobbie was more like a teenage girl than a teenage boy, and I wasn't sure what to do about it. He spent hours in the bathroom tweezing and grooming, relis.h.i.+ng the sting of each and every pluck, and I knew he kept a stash of stolen makeup hidden under a loose floorboard in his room. On rainy afternoons, when his father had appointments in the clinic, Bobbie would sweep an arc of Tangerine Dream over his bottom lip before anointing his eyelids with the glittery mystery of Midnight Blue. Holding a mirror so close to his face that his breath fogged the gla.s.s, he would watch as his real self emerged-the wil owy one with sooty eyelashes. The one whose hips swung like a delicate bel . The one he kept trapped in a fairy-tale tower, awaiting a handsome prince.

”Am I as glamorous as Princess Bugaboo?” he'd ask, peeking his head around my door and fluttering his eyelashes with the efficiency of a harem vixen. The first time I caught him painted up, I have to confess, I was just the tiniest bit revolted. Not shocked. Not outraged or even embarra.s.sed, just a little repulsed-the way I would have been if I'd come across weevils frolicking in the flour bin.

”What have you got on your gob?” I cried, my reflection rearing up behind his in the bathroom mirror like a mountain hogging the sky. My own hair was threaded with gray, I saw, and there was no definition left in my face anymore. My cheeks melted into my neck, which rol ed and spil ed onto the b.u.t.ts of my shoulders, which rounded into my arms and wrists. My breath scuttled around inside me like a ragged animal trapped in a cage.

Bobbie cringed. ”Don't be mad, Aunt Truly. Please. I think I'm supposed to look like this.”

I was about to make him wash it off, but I looked again and saw that he was right. He did look better-more alive. I reached out and cupped his chin. ”It's okay,” I said, gazing into his adorned eyes.

”Let's just keep this quiet, though. I don't think your dad needs to know. It'l be our little secret.”

And it was, until Robert Morgan came stomping in from work early one afternoon and ruined everything. Panicked, Bobbie tried to smudge the blush off his cheeks, but when he descended the front steps, he saw his father gaping at him.

”What the hel is on your face?” Robert Morgan demanded, and Bobbie, with a quick wit I didn't know he possessed, told him it was pink highlighter.

”I fel asleep on my books and smeared ink on my face,” he said, which made no sense but seemed to satisfy his father.

”Go and wash it off,” Robert Morgan ordered, and then added, ”And why don't you use blue ink, like a normal boy?”

”Hinkleman's was out of blue,” Bobbie mumbled, slinking back upstairs, sweat slicking him like spring rain. He stepped into the bathroom and washed his face, then picked up one of the rough towels, rubbing his eyelids and lips raw, rubbing that side of him out of existence.

I know how that feels, I wanted to tel him, but lately if I tried to talk to him, tapping on his door gently or luring him into the kitchen with cookies, he always rebuffed me, saying he had too much homework or that he just wasn't in the mood.

”It's not like you're my mom,” he sneered once, grabbing a fistful of the fudge I'd set out on the kitchen table. I sucked in my breath as if I'd been slapped.

”I'm the closest thing you've got left,” I snapped, and then it was Bobbie's turn to look snapped, and then it was Bobbie's turn to look stunned. ”Wait, I'm sorry,” I cal ed after him as he stormed out of the room. I'd never before spoken harshly to him, but it was too late. The damage was done. After that, he grew even more distant and sulky, avoiding eye contact with me at dinner, giving one-word answers to his father's questions about his day.

”What's going on with him?” Robert Morgan wanted to know. ”Does he talk to you? Is he on drugs?” His face clouded.

I looked up, startled. Was Bobbie? I didn't think so-at least not on a regular basis. But what could I tel Robert Morgan about Bobbie's particular brand of heartache? That his son was more comfortable in lipstick than jeans? That he wasn't growing out of his pretty stage? And why should I have to say anything at al , I wondered, when the truth was right in front of al our eyes?

Marcus saw it, as he saw al facts. ”The boy's just different,” he said, shrugging, when I tracked him down by the lilacs to ask him his opinion. ”It's hard in a town like this, the size of a cricket wing. Anything the least bit out of the ordinary seems about five times worse than it real y is.”

Amen to that, I thought.

He squinted. ”You know, in Vietnam, they had these bars in the cities, where the boys dressed up like girls and danced and sang and everything.” I tried to picture Marcus in a place like that, his fist unscarred and curled around a dirty bottle of whiskey, but I couldn't. His eyes were too peaceful these days, and the strongest thing he ever touched was hot tea. He shrugged. ”After a while, the fel as kind of forgot who was who and just enjoyed the show.”

I twirled a leaf. ”So what are you suggesting?”

Marcus smiled. ”Enjoy the show, Truly.

Don't try to direct it.” His hand brushed mine, and I blushed and jerked backward a few inches. He ignored my reaction, his gaze focused on the middle distance. ”Say, what would you think about putting in a proper garden out here? I've been studying some old designs from the nineteenth century that would real y complement the house. You and the doctor could have your own vegetables.”

I looked around at the stretch of lawn, hedges, and the borders of perennials. As long as I could remember, these things had always been the same. Every spring, daffodils and irises shot up in alternating bands, and every summer, primroses lazed along the back fence.

”I don't know,” I said. ”The doctor won't even let me change my brand of shoe polish. And these were al his mother's plants.”

Marcus's face darkened. ”I suppose you're right. It's just that, wel , d.a.m.n it, I real y want to do a little something more than clip other people's boxwoods.”

Suddenly, I could see how important building a garden was to him, how maybe he actual y wanted to put down some roots rather than just dig at them. I wondered if he ever got frustrated knowing al the fancy Latin names for the bushes around him, not to mention the complicated biology of photosynthesis, but in the end being just a kind of janitor for other people's yards. ”Why don't you plant yourself a garden at the cemetery?” I suggested.

”There's acres of s.p.a.ce out that way.”