by Keziah Frost
“I’m adopting her, you know. We’ve done the paperwork, and we have a court date. She’ll be my daughter forever.” In her mind, for some reason, Hope heard Queen adding, just so you know.
Arnie smiled.
“I can see how much joy she brings you. Congratulations.”
“Do you know, you’re the first person to congratulate me?”
“Hey, we should celebrate the adoption! I would have a bunch of storks or something put all over your lawn, but… how about we go out to dinner at Renata’s instead? With Queen, of course.”
“That would be lovely! Let’s wait until after it’s final. And this time, if I leave the table, don’t believe anything Queen tells you.”
She had to get back to the café. But first, she gave him a hug. And that felt really, really good.
-84-
Carlotta and Queen were muses for each other. Carlotta wrote down the droll things that Queen was always saying. Amusingly, Queen was also quick to write down quotes from Carlotta. It seemed the child was writing a book, bless her. She wouldn’t let Carlotta read it; like Carlotta, she claimed it wasn’t ready to be seen by others yet.
“Ah, it’s still in rough draft form, then? Do you have a working title?”
“My title is always changing,” said Queen. “Right now, I live in Gibbons Corner. So….”
Queen showed the front of her notebook where a label had been placed over several other labels. The top label read: Queen of Gibbons Corner.
Carlotta was suffused with pleasure at the charming title, but she had a correction to make.
“You need to put a comma after ‘Queen.’ That way, it means your name is Queen and you live in Gibbons Corner. Without the comma, it gives the impression that you are the monarch of this town.”
“Monarch? Like a butterfly?”
“No. Monarch, like a royal person, like a queen with a crown.”
“Huh.” Queen reflected, drawing a comma with her finger where Carlotta had suggested it should go. “I like it better without the comma, then. I wouldn’t mind being the monarch of this town.”
Carlotta bit her lip.
A natural ambition, she thought.
Queen’s eye was caught by an interesting book in Carlotta’s house: The Meanings of Flowers: The Study of Floriography, by Flora Posey. She brought it to Carlotta.
“This book has all the flowers in alphabetical order, with their meanings. I never knew flowers had meanings.”
“That is a very valuable resource, Queen. The French people are especially knowledgeable about the significance of each flower. You should never send anyone flowers without first knowing the meaning of what you are sending.”
“Especially,” resumed Queen, “if I’m sending flowers to French people.” She leafed through the book, entranced by the illustrations. “I’m going to look up my mama. Her first name is Dahleeya, but that’s just a different way of saying Dahlia. She was named after her great grandmother Dahlia, but her mother wanted to make it different and modern, so she made it Dah-LEE-yah.”
She read aloud: “‘The dahlia represents grace under pressure’—hey! Isn’t that what you said the other day? Grace under pressure?” She continued reading. “‘Inner strength, commitment to another person’—hey! That’s me! She’s committed to me! Let’s see, what else: ‘The message of the dahlia is to not be held back by the challenges in life.’”
Queen sat back and thought, gazing at the photograph of a dahlia.
“Well, now. That’s just like my mama.”
Carlotta, well aware of Queen’s little practical joke on poor Arnie Butler, said, “Why don’t you look up the meaning of daisies?”
Queen started guiltily.
“Oh. You know about that?”
Carlotta kept a straight face and nodded.
Queen turned to the next page.
“Ugh.” She looked up at Carlotta. “Says here, ‘true love and new beginnings,’ and a whole mess of other stuff. I don’t need to be reading about daisies. I sure don’t.”
An excerpt from Queen’s notebook:
I snooped in Mrs Moons house and read her book I feel gilty cause I wouldnt like it if she red mine but I was soooo qurious. Now that I have read it I have a new problem cause there is a disasster that is going to happen if any of her freinds snoop and reed that book like I did or if she publishes it like she said she might do. Mrs Moons book is going to burn bridges. Looks like she doesnt care cause she thinks her freinds desserve it but I know lotsa people desserve lotsa things don’t mean you should do it. I want to tell her all this but then she will know I read her book and she will be mad at me. Oh. What shall I do? Alas! That is what they say in ferry tails when something is verry sad. Alas!
-85-
Mabel and Walter returned to Gibbons Corner on Tuesday, October twentieth, and burst upon Birdie’s Watercolor Class with their usual raucousness.
“The chickens have come home to roast!” Mabel proclaimed as she and Walter entered the studio.
Everyone but Carlotta put down their brushes to take in Mabel’s incredible accounts of her travels.
“It was just like a honeymoon, only without the wedding, wasn’t it, hon?” she beamed at Walter, who beamed back, sleepily.
“And we brought each of you a little something from out west, where it’s legal!”
From a blue Yankees tote bag, Mabel produced five dark chocolate candy bars and passed them around to Carlotta, Norbert, Lorraine, Birdie and Margaret.
“Oh, chocolate!” said Margaret happily.
“Whaddaya mean, ‘where it’s legal?’ Chocolate is legal in New York, you know.”
Mabel winked at her. “Not this kind of chocolate!”
Norbert read aloud from the label: “‘Warning: this product contains a high level of THC. Not a food. Keep away from children.’”
“Edible marijuana!” cackled Mabel. “What’ll they think of next, that’s what I always say.”
Carlotta said, “They put marijuana in candy bars?”
Mabel nodded, “Yep! And brownies, and gummy bears, and cookies! We tried them all, didn’t we, Walter?”
Walter nodded slowly. He didn’t seem to have much to say. He was very mellow.
Carlotta sputtered, “That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard of! It’s irresponsible! Children are so attracted to candy. What if a child got hold of it?”
Mabel considered. “I never thought of that. Gee. That would be bad. Because these are very potent. If an adult my size ate half of one of these bars, she’d be knocked on her ass, hallucinations and the whole ten yards. Believe me. I know. Ha ha! But we’re not children. We’re responsible adults!”
Norbert handed the candy bar back to Mabel. “I appreciate the souvenir, Mabel, but it’s not my sort of thing. I hope I’m not offending you.”
“Not at all!” said Mabel, amiably. She stuffed the chocolate in Walter’s shirt pocket.
Carlotta was next to hand her candy bar back to Mabel. She looked at Lorraine, Margaret, and Birdie expectantly, but they didn’t follow suit.
Mabel instructed them, “Now, it takes a while to feel the effects, maybe even as much as an hour. So start with a nibble and wait; don't keep eating it, thinking it’s not working. Ha ha! If you do that, you’ll wind up in the emergency room like I did the first time.”
Margaret was startled. “Oh, Mabel! The emergency room? What happened?”
“Well, I got real dizzy, see, and everything started going in real slow motion, and I saw some ducks and I thought they were talking to me. That wasn’t the problem, though. I would have been fine, except then my breathing got real shallow, and I thought Walter here wanted to kill me.”
Mabel gave Walter a hard jab in the side with her elbow, waking him out of his reverie.
“But you weren’t trying to kill me, were you, hon?”
“Of course not,” said Walter, blinking his red eyes.
Carlotta could not believe that her friends had not given back Mabel’
s nasty present.
“Lorraine. Margaret. Birdie. Be very careful here. It’s been known for years that there is a link between marijuana use and the onset of mental illness. I, for one, still value my brain. This tainted candy is very dangerous.”
Lorraine made a dismissive gesture toward Carlotta, “We can think for ourselves, Carlotta.”
“If you want to talk about dangerous,” said Mabel, “I’ll tell you what’s really dangerous. Trying to stay safe all the time. Taking no risks at all. Until you turn to stone.”
Carlotta stared stonily at Mabel.
Birdie, moderating, said, “Carlotta is just concerned for our well-being. And Mabel just wants to offer us a new experience.” She smiled serenely first at one, and then at the other. “I think it’s good to always keep an open mind.”
Carlotta countered, “Yes. But not so open that your brains fall out.”
Birdie said, “I smoked quite a bit of pot in my earlier days. I haven’t had any for decades. I just forgot about it, I guess. But at one time, I used it daily. I think. My brains didn’t fall out.”
Oh, didn’t they, thought Carlotta. She tossed her head.
“We are all examples for a child now. Are you forgetting that? What if Queen could see you all, with your marijuana?”
Lorraine said, “As far as I can see, she’s not here right now.”
“Children perceive everything, Lorraine. You know that. Especially a gifted and sensitive child such as Queen. Nothing remains hidden.”
“Yeah, right, especially when she wanders through houses and goes through purses.”
“Exactly.”
“Yeah, well, you might wanna teach her to not do that.”
“And you might want to remember that New York is not Colorado, and you are holding an illegal substance in your hand, according to our state laws. You are in criminal possession of a drug.”
Lorraine, Margaret, and Birdie, in synchronized motion, looked down at the candy in their hands, and stepped forward to give it back to Mabel.
“Aw, scared of getting busted?” asked Mabel. “Listen, at our age, nothing would happen to you. A night or two in the can, max. Slap on the wrist.” Seeing the group unconvinced, she went on, “Or if they did send you away, we’d help you break out. We’d smuggle in a file or something. Ha ha!” At last, she shrugged and said, “Well, that’s fine! More for us, huh, Walter?”
Mabel then turned to Margaret: “Listen, Margaret, I hope this doesn’t hurt your feelings, but I’m going to move into Walter’s room at the Harbor Home Bed and Breakfast. You don’t mind, do you?”
Margaret’s blue eyes opened wide with happy surprise.
“But,” added Mabel, “can I leave some of my stuff at your place, just for a while, until we get a place with more room?”
“Of course, Mabel, of course you can!”
Carlotta knew that Margaret would have been happy to allow Mabel to leave any amount of junk behind her. The main thing was: Margaret had gotten rid of Mabel.
-86-
Hope and Queen sat perplexed at the kitchen table. Queen had an impossible school assignment. Tomorrow morning, she was required to bring in a baby picture of herself. No such picture existed.
“Looks like everyone but me has one. There’s no proof I ever was a baby. So maybe I wasn’t.”
“Of course you were a baby, Queen.”
“I don’t remember being a baby.”
“No, of course not. No one does. Our brains are not developed enough yet at that age to create memories. But some people say they remember being three or even two years old. What is your earliest memory?”
Down came the bars over Queen’s eyes. While staying seated at the kitchen table, she retreated far, far away from Hope.
“Never mind,” said Hope. “I just got an idea. Why don’t we look at images of babies on the internet? We’ll pick one that looks like you, and there you go, ta-dah! Your baby picture.”
Queen was not amused.
“Will I have to lie?”
“If you want to lie, you have my permission. If you want to tell the truth, you do that. Mr. Fisher wants a picture? We’ll give him a picture. What’s it for, anyway?”
“We’re going to look at our picture and write about ourselves.”
“Oh! Well, then, Queen. No worries! The picture is nothing more than an illustration. It doesn’t matter if it’s really you or not. The important part is the writing. And that’s your specialty.”
-87-
On Tuesday evening, at Carlotta’s Oil Painting Class, Margaret was troubled.
“A teenage boy approached me on the street, just as I was coming here,” she confided to Carlotta, Lorraine, Birdie, Norbert, Liam, the teenage girl, and the young mother.
“Oh mercy!” cried Lorraine in pretend hysteria. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, of course, I’m all right,” said Margaret, ignoring Lorraine’s attempt at mockery. “I’m just confused. Lately, it seems people say the strangest things to me, and this one was really strange.”
“What did he say, Mrs. Birch?” asked Liam.
“Well, he said, ‘Do you still want to sell your nickel bag?’” Margaret’s brow was deeply furrowed. “At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what he said.”
The teenage girl asked, “What did you say back to him?”
“I said, ‘I don’t understand you.’ Then he looked over his shoulder, and just slinked off. Just like that. What does that mean?”
Liam and the teenage girl glanced sideways at each other.
Birdie said, “As I recall, that is a reference to pot. Five dollars’ worth.”
Margaret stood dumbfounded before the class.
“Are you telling me, that a teenager just asked me to sell him marijuana?”
Liam, who seemed to have become very fond of all the old people, said, “What’s his name, Mrs. Birch? Do you want me to beat the crap out of him?”
Liam was small for his age, and it was alarming to imagine him starting a fight with anyone.
“Oh!” exclaimed Margaret. “Please, no! Don’t even think of doing anything like that, Liam. I have no idea what his name is. I just wish strangers would stop coming up to me and saying such odd things.”
Carlotta, wishing to draw her students’ attention back to their easels, concluded, “I think you can easily piece together what is going on, Margaret. You have…” she paused, considering Liam, the teenage girl and the young mother, who were not privy to Mabel’s recent nefarious activities. “You have a certain so-and-so to thank for your strange experiences. It’s nothing we can solve in our painting class. For now, let’s listen to Eine kleine nachtmusik and focus our eyes on our work.
“‘Art washes away from the soul, the dust of everyday life.’ Pablo Picasso.”
-88-
Hope found her credit card bill in Queen’s sock drawer while putting away laundry. It was Halloween, and Queen was singing in the kitchen, and declaring, “This will be my best Halloween ever!”
Hope opened the bill and scanned the charges. One stood out to her: the merchant’s name was unfamiliar. “Two hundred and seventy-seven dollars!” she said aloud.
A floorboard creaked, and she looked up to see she was being observed by a three-and-a-half foot mouse. The mouse let out a surprisingly powerful bellow.
“Why do you hate me? You want to give me back to the social worker!”
Queen’s head, above her mouse costume, was moist with tears and sweat, and she held her mask under her arm.
Aunt Margaret had sewn the Despereaux costume for Queen, working on it steadily for a month. Queen had visited Aunt Margaret several times for fittings and had been looking forward to this day with all her heart.
And now, Queen stood with tears dribbling down her face, as Hope held her credit card bill in her hand, looking from it to the distraught child.
“Of course I’m not going to give you back to the social worker. I wouldn’t even think of such a thing. Of course I don
’t hate you, honey. Just—stop crying and tell me if you know what this charge is for. I don’t understand.”
Queen flung herself onto her white bedspread, face down, mouse tail dangling over the side of the bed. She cried hot, repentant tears, and Hope sat down next to her and rubbed her back. Queen did not pull away from her.
She turned her head to look at Hope from the side of her eye, as new tears flowed.
Hope waited.
“I-I-I-needed to talk to someone who knows everything about everyone. So I called Madame Fifi—do you know her? The TV psychic? While you were sleeping. Oh! I didn’t know it was going to cost so much until I was hanging up. Then it was too late.”
Hope’s mind swirled with questions. She didn’t know what to ask first.
But Queen went on, “I told her about that Mr. Butler. And that I want to get rid of him. Oh! And then Madame Fifi said, how do I know he’s a bad man. I said maybe he’s not exactly bad, but he wants to move in and change things, and nobody needs him. We talked longer and longer. I couldn’t get off the phone because she wouldn’t give me my answer. Finally, she totally ripped me off. Oh! She never did tell me how to get rid of him. She said the spirits were telling her that he was probably nice, and I shouldn’t worry about it. I was so mad. She is just a liar-liar-pants-on-fire! I bet the spirits don’t even talk to her. They probably know she’s a fake. And then another person came on the phone and said $277.00 would be charged to my credit card.”
Queen rolled over and sat up, her chest heaving from overheating and emotion.
“Are we poor now?”
“No, we’re not poor now. We’ll just cut back on extra goodies this month—like ice cream.”
“Oh, Hope, I am so, so sorry. I will never do that again.”
Hope, fighting to keep from smiling, said, “I forgive you, Queen. And listen. You don’t need to worry about getting rid of Mr. Butler. You’re my priority. We’re not making any big changes around here unless both you and I agree. You understand?”
Hope opened her arms, and Queen hugged her, resting her head on Hope’s shoulder.
