by Lois Ruby
“Oh, come on, you’ve been here a million times, and Cady’s anxious to meet you.” She isn’t, I’m pretty sure of that.
Scooter parks on the log, feet on the house side rather than the forest side. “Be honest, Hannah. There isn’t really a girl who lives in the forest, right?”
“There is! You’ll see. She said she has lots of friends there, too. Maybe one of them’s a guy around your age.” Of course, she did say all girls, but Scooter doesn’t need to know that right now.
He slowly slides one leg over, then the other, and I do a handspring across the log. That’s how eager I am to see what Cady’s up to today. We zigzag through the trees, crunching pine needles and leaves under our shoes. Insects scatter, out-racing us. We try not to step on them, or on the lovely white wild flowers that have sprung up since I was here last.
At the clearing, Scooter spots the glistening Moonlight Lake and hangs back. “We’re not supposed to go there,” he says. He’s way more timid since his last asthma attack.
“I’ve been in it. You’ve got nothing to worry about. We won’t go too close to the muddy banks, I promise.”
Scooter’s steps are tentative, but he follows me. There are two gently sloping tree stumps close together, and that’s where we sit … and wait … and wait. My stomach’s growling, and the two peaches I was planning to give Cady smell so sweet. We slurp them, juice dripping down our wrists, and wait … and wait.
“Cay-dee!” I call, using both sticky hands as a megaphone. “I’m here, Scooter, too. Come on out, Cady.”
A tiny ruby-throated bird peers down at us from her nest, as if she’s saying, quiet, my babies are sleeping.
After ten minutes Scooter jumps up. “Okay, I get the joke. Let’s go home.”
“We can’t! She’s here, I swear.” I drop the bag, and out tumble peach pits with fruit clinging to them. We watch a giant cloud of insects stampede toward the treasure, which is already swarmed by red ants, and when we look up, Cady is standing in front of us.
“Whoa!” Scooter cries. His eyes are as wide as cucumber slices.
“Do you always have to just pop up like that?” I don’t bother to hide my annoyance.
“You didn’t hear me because my footsteps are feathery soft.” In fact, her feet are bare, and I wonder how she can walk across the rough, prickly forest floor that way. It sure tore up my feet.
As I expected, she’s wearing a sundress, like me, and her hair is dyed a freaky black and is now so straight that she must have ironed it to get it to hang that way. It’s a fake imitation of my hair, but about twelve shades darker and twice as straight.
“What did you do to your hair?”
It clinks when she flips it off her neck. “Yours is so pretty, I wanted mine to be just the same. I guess I went a little overboard on the dye.”
“I can’t believe your mother let you do that.”
Cady tilts her head and the hair, like a sheet of black metal, flops in one piece to her shoulder. “We’re free spirits, women who make history.” She squints at Scooter. “You’re the pesty little brother that Hannah told me about with the so-called allergies.”
Scooter shoots me a look of betrayal.
“I never said he was a pest. He’s the best thing in my whole family.”
“Whatever.” As if to say, Yeah, right, but I’ll let it pass.
How could Cady be so insensitive? Scooter shuts down. He never fights back except to get a snide zinger in now and then.
“We’re going home. Come on, Hannah.”
“You just got here!” Cady’s eyes cloud over, and her mouth turns down.
I’m a sucker for a sad face. “Just a little while,” I murmur.
“Yes!” Her whole face switches, just like that. She breaks off a clump of some weedy green leaves with droopy red flowers nesting in them. “Amaranth,” she says, “also called pigweed. Here, smell.” She waves it under Scooter’s nose.
He recoils. “I don’t smell a thing.”
“That’s because your nose is always stuffed up,” Cady points out.
“You feeling okay, Scooter?” Me, the worrywart. No wheezing, though.
“Sure.” His eyes flash, get me out of here.
Folding her legs like a baby deer, Cady drops to the ground in front of us, her dress ballooning around her. “Know what amaranth means? It’s from a Greek word meaning immortal. Isn’t that a nice thought?”
Scooter is so not up for a language lesson or Greek or living forever. Cady studies his red eyes, his twitching nose. He sneezes five times in a row like a fast drumbeat, wiping his nose on the shoulder of his T-shirt until I hand him a tissue.
“Ooh, are you allergic to pigweed? So sorry.” Cady tosses the clump of green leaves behind her, and the amaranth petals scatter to the wind. “So, listen, while we’re talking about plants—”
“We’re not,” Scooter snaps, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
She ignores him. “You’ll never guess what I know about your house.”
Scooter says, all nasally, “You must be the world’s authority on everything.”
“Most things,” Cady says with a snicker. “So, if you’re wondering why your house is called Nightshade, I have the answer.”
“We have to go home right now,” I tell her, poking Scooter.
But he looks at Cady with those red-rimmed eyes and says, “What’s the story?”
Our shoulders clunk against a fat tree trunk. How easily she did that—pulling both of us into her web.
“Long ago a woman named Vivienne lived in your house,” Cady begins, her voice creamy, her eyes looking into the distance. It sounds like a story she’s told lots of times before, all flowery words and pictures she sketches in our minds, like poetry.
“Vivienne’s hair was the color of sunrise, a glimmering light blond with golden wisps, and it fell down her back nearly to her slim waist. She held it out of her eyes with bright silk scarves of every color of the rainbow. Her green eyes set off a nose as regal as a queen’s. Her fingers were long and delicate, made for holding a fine brush.”
I ask, “Was she an artist? A painter?”
“Of course she was,” Cady says, as though I’ve offended her with the question. “The house you’re living in was built for her in 1895 by her husband, Anthony, who loved her more dearly than he loved his own life. True love is like that, I suppose.” Cady locks eyes with each of us. Scooter looks away, breathing okay. I can only whisper, “Yes.”
“She named the house Autumn Splendor because of the radiant reds and oranges and golds of the trees. Autumn Splendor was Vivienne’s dream house. She was in love with color. When everyone else walked around the village in drab grays and blacks to their ankles, Vivienne wore wild hues of cranberry and lime and persimmon and eggplant.”
“She dressed in fruit and veggies?” Scooter snorts. His breathing is heavy and slow.
“She means their colors,” I explain when Cady gives Scooter an eye-roll.
“And crimson and cerise, ten different shades of red,” Cady continues. “Oh, people laughed at her, thought she was mad. Crazy mad, not angry mad. But, you see, she was an artist, way back when people seldom recognized women as great painters. Her studio was on the third floor of the house.”
“Like Dad’s architecture studio,” Scooter volunteers, sniffling. I hand him another tissue; I always have a supply ready for him.
“Yes, that third-floor room has incredible morning light that floods it from windows on three sides.”
How does Cady know such details about our house?
“Vivienne’s whole life was painting. Everything, everyone else was a distraction.”
“No kids?” Scooter asks. He can’t imagine a family without children.
“There were three.”
“What were their names?” I ask.
“Lost to history. The children meant nothing to Vivienne. The three of them, two girls and a boy, lived under the tyrannical rule of a governess
named Hypatia. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because this story is about the mother, not the children. What do you think is the cruelest thing that could have happened to Vivienne?”
Scooter offers, “She fell out one of those windows and cracked her noggin?”
Cady shakes her noggin.
“People hated her paintings, and she cut them all up?” I suggest.
“Wrong again.”
I have another idea: “Anthony, who loved her so much, fell in love with another woman, maybe that governess person. Aren’t there a lot of old stories like that?”
Cady squares her shoulders in surprise. “That would never in a thousand years happen. Hypatia looked like a giant toad.”
Scooter sniffles. “Then what did happen?”
“If you quit that constant sniffling I’ll tell you.” Cady pulls her knees up to her chin, smooths the dress around her, and sinks her chin into the space between her knees. “One night in autumn, the season that Vivienne loved best, a torrential tempest blew in. You might think the storm was terrifying. You might huddle under blankets, or even under your bed, until it tamed and passed. But not Vivienne. She loved the infinite colors of wavy leaves, the blue-black sky, the silver wind and rain.”
“You can’t see colors of wind and rain,” Scooter scoffs.
“Vivienne could. She rushed outside to that small balcony in her studio. Next to your room?” she asks, eyes fixed on my face. “I thought so. Vivienne stood there with her arms raised, to embrace the storm like a lightning rod. She watched a bolt of lightning slice the night sky. That was the end for her.”
“Oh my God, she was struck by lightning and died right there on our balcony?” I said.
“Worse,” Cady whispered. “From that moment on, she was blind.”
“Totally?”
“Yes, Hannah, all color gone from her eyes. It was 1897, people didn’t know about diseases that could turn a person suddenly blind. She was convinced that the jolt of lightning burned the vision out of her eyes, though the lightning never touched her.”
Cady let that thought wash over us; we didn’t say another word.
“Can you imagine the drama, the horror? How she screeched and keened and bellowed and wept? The whole household did, even Bascom, the Maltese puppy. And think of the bitterness that poisoned the house afterward.” Tears slid down Cady’s cheek, as if she’d been there, as if she were reliving a terrible time in her own life. She dabs at her tears with the tissue I hand her. I kind of sniffle myself. Crying is contagious.
She squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them with determination to finish her story in a flat monotone. “That night Autumn Splendor became Nightshade, for Vivienne only knew dark and shadow, and for her, it was eternally midnight.”
I’m charmed by Cady’s story. Vivienne is totally real to me, as if I actually knew her in the 1890s, which of course is impossible. Long shadows have fallen on the forest floor. How long have we been here? Hours!
We’re both on our feet, reeling from Cady’s story. “Come on, Scooter, Mom’s going to skin us alive.”
“When are you coming back?” Cady asks frantically. “Come on Tuesday, my favorite day of the week. We can spend the whole day together.” She doesn’t mention Scooter.
“Why is Tuesday your favorite day?” he asks.
“Remember that poem? ‘Monday’s child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace.’ You’ll come at sunrise?”
“Maybe not so early. It’s summer, sleep-in time,” I remind her.
She lunges toward me for an awkward hug, and it’s not like hugging Luisa or Sara, though I can’t quite figure out why.
Walking home, that weird old poem kept running through my head. “Monday’s child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace.” What’s Wednesday’s child? And then it hits me: “Wednesday’s child is full of woe.” Tuesday may be Cady’s favorite, but she’s definitely Wednesday’s child.
Once we’re out of the forest, I replay Vivienne’s sad story and our whole afternoon with Cady in my mind. I’m so lost inside my own head and heart that I barely notice Scooter lagging behind me, hanging onto a wagon in the yard, stumbling a few steps, then leaning on the side of the house. His breaths come in short bursts, like the stuttering sound after you’ve had a big cry. Oh, no! He’s doubled over. Again.
“Scooter! Let’s get you inside.” He pulls the inhaler out of his pocket and tries to suck in the medicine between gasping breaths, three puffs, pause, three more puffs, but it isn’t doing what it needs to. I let the kitchen door slam behind us and shout at the top of my lungs: “Mom! Dad! Scooter’s real bad!”
Both parents thunder down the stairs, instantly mobilized. You’d think it’s a military operation. Phase One: Dad hits speed dial to alert the lung specialist to meet Scooter at the emergency room. Mom tosses her ever-ready bag into the SUV, packed with library books, her cell phone charger, contact numbers, knitting, and Scooter’s thick medical file. She props Scooter up in the back seat with pillows all around him and pulverizes stones in our driveway as she zooms out. She’s a pro at this; she can get Scooter to the ER faster than waiting for an ambulance.
Inside, Dad launches Phase Two of the military operation: “Hannah, I gotta pick up Trick at baseball practice. Can you handle Gracie? She’s watching a Disney video in my studio. It’ll be over in ten. When Franny gets home tell her to start dinner. I’ll drop Trick off here, then go to the hospital to help with Scooter. Got all that?”
“Sure, Dad, I’m on it.” I’m snuffling back tears—this is the worst I’ve ever seen Scooter. We could lose him, lose him. No!
Upstairs, Gracie is so wrapped up in her video that she doesn’t even notice me. I plant a smooch on her sweet head. She smells like a Dumdum lollipop. Late afternoon shadows cast their gloom over the studio, and I imagine the beautiful Vivienne in this room, more than a hundred years ago, filling canvases with bold brushstrokes of vivid paint—all those vegetable colors and fall colors and ten shades of red.
When Gracie’s video ends, she hits the right button to play it again. I can’t get onto the balcony, since the door is painted shut, so I sit on the south window ledge with my legs dangling in the air. Mom will go crazy if she sees this. If I spot her SUV coming around the bend on Thornbury Trace, I can slide back onto the window seat inside. She’ll be at the hospital for a long time, though, looking after Scooter, so I’m safe.
This studio is where it happened, where Vivienne lost her sight. I close my eyes and cover them with my hands so not a sliver of light leaks in. I spin back inside, and inch my way from one side of the room to the other, trying to imagine what it was like for Vivienne to be struck blind in an instant.
“It’s Cady’s fault,” Scooter says, lying on the family room couch. They kept him at the hospital for two nights until he was stabilized. Mom stayed with him, so I was on Gracie duty and couldn’t get back to the forest. This afternoon they released him, and I know Mom will sleep in the twin bed next to Scooter’s tonight to make sure he’s breathing okay. No one wants to say it out loud, but we all know that Scooter’s asthma is getting unmanageable.
“You’re saying Cady, like, hexed you? Get real.”
“Worse. Up to the time she deliberately waved that flower under my nose, I was just sneezing and my eyes were watering. Garden variety allergies, like I’m used to. But that pigweed in my face really set me off. I Googled amaranth and pigweed. Guess what: it’s hyperallergenic. Cady knew it would send me into an attack. She hates me.”
“No! She just wanted you to smell the flower.”
“Pigweed has no scent. She already knew that. She did it to make me really sick.”
“No way, Scooter. That’s totally insane.”
Gracie’s munching an unpeeled carrot. She knees her way up onto the couch, straddles Scooter’s stomach, and slams a square board book on his chin. “Read storybook!” she says, spraying small carrot chunks. Scooter tickles her neck and underarms. I love her giggle. She turns
to me and says, “Shooter all better!” while bouncing on his belly to emphasize her point.
“He sure is,” I reply, though he’s really not. Dishes are clattering around in the kitchen where Trick’s loading the dishwasher. Scooter, Trick, and I each have two dish nights, but Trick’s taking Scooter’s shift tonight, and he yells from the kitchen, over the blasting radio, “You owe me big time, dude!” He won’t collect. We all look after Scooter, including Gracie.
Could Scooter possibly be right? Did Cady deliberately try to set off his attack? Was she just trying to prove that he was faking it all? I can’t believe that. But here I am defending my friend against my brother. “She wouldn’t do such a mean thing.”
“Yeah, she would. I’m in the way. She wants you all to herself.”
Even as I deny it, the truth nags at me.
For days Franny and I have avoided talking about what happened at Food Lion, but the oozing sore isn’t going to heal by just slapping a Band-Aid over it. I’m ready to hash it out.
Franny’s going through her closet and drawers when I slip into the room and bounce down on her trampoline of an unmade bed piled with clothes.
“Only fifty-nine days until I. AM. OUT. OF. HERE!” she says.
Sheesh, does she have to rub it in?
“My entire wardrobe is so high school. Look at this stuff. Pitiful. I can’t take any of it to Athens.”
So I start picking through it. I can wear her tops and shoes and some of her dresses if I cut about a foot of fabric off the bottom. This lavender and turquoise tiered skirt will be great with my Navajo shirt. “Mine!” I declare.
“Sure, you just have to roll it up about three turns at the waist.” Franny tosses an out-of-shape green turtleneck onto my lap. “Yours, too. I wouldn’t be caught dead in this at college.”
“Gee, thanks, Franny. Let me be caught dead in middle school in this horrendous thing.” I stash it under her bed and change the subject. “Looking at this pile of ugly clothes reminds me of something I forgot about because, well, a lot’s been going on. Did you know that there’s a trunk up in the attic that’s full of great-grandma and great-grandpa’s stuff? Want to come up with me and see what’s inside?”
