Chicory Up: The Pixie Chronicles

by Irene Radford

  Dusty bit back the words that she needed to say. A lifetime of deferring to other people so she could indulge in the safety of shyness made her drop her head and tune out her mother’s reprimands.

  “Now, Abigail, if we soak that little stain in cold water, right now, it won’t show in the least.”

  “My fault, Madame,” Abigail said, accent back in place. “Such a tiny drop of blood. No one will see it on an undergarment. We proceed with fitting.”

  “If you think so, but I do want this wedding to be perfect.”

  “It’s my wedding, Mom, not yours.”

  “Of course, Desdemona. I want it to be perfect for you. It’s the biggest day of your life. We need to make the most of it since you can’t have children because of the cancer. Now don’t you think we should redecorate your room? I don’t think a man as strong as Chase will want to sleep beneath a canopy of pink ballerinas. I do so love a full house.” A sly smile crept over her face.

  “Mom, do you even listen to yourself?”

  “What? What did I say?”

  “You’re planning on me staying at home with you and Dad for the rest of my life. Chase and I have plans. He has an apartment…”

  “Such a waste of money to rent a little place like that. Better he move in with us. After all, a policeman doesn’t make a lot of money, and you won’t go find a better paying job at the community college. You should have taken the teaching position instead of pushing Joe into it just so you could stay at your museum…”

  “Miss Desdemona,” Abigail interrupted. “I need you to try the hoops to see how they fit over the corset. Then next fitting we progress to the dress itself. Such a beautiful piece of material…”

  Something inside Dusty burst, like an overripe peach thrown against a barn. She’d done that once with Dick and Chase when she was six. And gotten into trouble for it. But, oh, how satisfying to hear and almost feel the squish as pulp flew in all directions.

  “I’d rather elope than wear this horrible contraption!” There she’d said it. She’d let her true feelings fly and go splat against her mother’s face—judging by the horrified expression of gaping jaw and wide eyes, strawberry-blonde eyebrows reaching for her receding hairline.

  Dusty began pulling at ties and hooks that she couldn’t really reach. A dozen pins cascaded from the seams, landing on the floor with loud pings in her mother’s shocked silence.

  “I hate this dress. I hate the wedding you are planning. I hate thinking about living in your house the rest of my life. I hate being your fragile little doll. I want a life of my own! A wedding of my own. A home of my own.”

  “If you don’t wear this dress…” Mom’s voice turned quiet, precise, and menacing.

  “I’ll buy the one in the window of Bridget’s with my own money.”

  “A contemporary dress won’t carry near the impact of a historical recreation. You can’t possibly mean that you prefer something modern. You’re a historian. Surely you want something that reflects your personality.”

  “Yes, I do. And I’ve found the perfect dress, and it’s not this one. If you like it so much, you wear it.” Dusty threw the first petticoat into her mother’s face and marched behind the dressing screen. “Abigail, get me out of this corset or I swear I will shred it with my fingernails.” Dirty, broken fingernails after a morning in the basement cleaning, sorting, cataloging, and photographing artifacts found in a Chinook tribal midden. She knew where she belonged and who she was when she worked at the museum, in and out of the basement.

  Phelma Jo tapped her foot impatiently against the floor of her Lexus—cream with gold trim. Ian was late meeting her at the Old Mill Bar and Grill. She’d been waiting since a half hour before their scheduled date of six thirty PM. It was now six forty-five. She had a clear view of the parking lot behind the building and the front entrance. He had not shown.

  “No one does this to me!” she said, reaching for the key still in the ignition. “No one.” Not in high school. And definitely not now. Even Dick Carrick had the good manners to call her and break off their three-date relationship rather than stand her up.

  “How did I offend Ian?” She paused with her fingertips on the key chain.

  A tap on her window dragged her out of her loop of self-doubt.

  “Ian!” She turned the key to auxiliary and rolled down the window, delight and reassurance filling the gaps in her mind, pushing out the bad thoughts. “Is everything okay? You look tired.”

  “I am. Sorry to be so late, things got dicey at the office. I hate people who lie.”

  Phelma Jo prepared the luxury car for leaving it.

  “Do you mind if we just sit for a few moments and be quiet?”

  “Sure, come on in.” With a flick of a button she unlocked the doors.

  He slumped into the cushy leather seat beside her.

  “Do you need to talk about it?” God, was that her speaking? She had no time or use for people who had to hash out their “feelings.” They needed to just make a decision and get on with their lives.

  She wished now that she’d told Dusty that back in second grade. No, in kindergarten. The girl annoyed her no end with her crippling shyness and constant deferral to Dick for any decision or speech. She should just get over herself and do something!

  “No, I don’t really need to talk about it. I just need to get all the yelling out of my head before we eat.”

  “Yelling doesn’t sound good.” Phelma frequently indulged in yelling when faced with stupid people who made mistakes, especially if the mistake cost her money.

  She never yelled when her secrets were at stake. Yelling drew attention. Silence did not.

  “It wasn’t pretty. But it was necessary. I had to fail a building inspection because the owner produced a forged work order from a nonexistent electrician that a fire hazard of a fuse box had been replaced by a new circuit breaker. Like I wouldn’t notice a false and illegal front over the old box, and dangerous pennies replacing blown fuses? He wasn’t happy. My boss wasn’t happy because he’s going to lose a client. I wasn’t happy because the man’s lies are so wasteful and endangered all of his tenants as well as a whole block of wooden buildings if the thing caught fire.”

  Phelma Jo caught her breath. How many times in her life had she lied? She started young as a survival mechanism with a drunken mother and her abusive boyfriends. Then she’d lived with a few less-than-caring foster parents and social workers, until Marcus had taken her case and showed her ways to get around the system. Mabel had tried to teach her the value of truth, but the habit had become ingrained. When she needed out of a mercenary marriage or a way to manipulate real estate clients into giving her the best price, she lied more easily than telling the truth.

  “Lies can be destructive.” She patted his hand.

  “Especially when they cover illegal behavior. Thanks for being here, and letting me vent. I think I needed it, though I don’t usually indulge. Let’s go eat.”

  “Yes. Let’s.” Phelma Jo took his arm as they crossed the street, determined to change some of her bad habits before he found out about them.

  Right after she finished one last round of forged birth certificates and fingerprint cards.

  “No,” Phelma Jo said the next morning without looking away from Dick or muffling her words, or even hedging like she wanted to say yes but was afraid someone was listening.

  “But… but, Phelma Jo, I know you’ve helped other people get new IDs so they can hide from….” Dick pleaded. He ignored the sweat trickling down his back.

  “Teenagers. I’ve helped teenagers who have been abused by their parents and the system. I’ve helped kids who have no alternatives to survive. Now get out of my office. I have work to do.”

  “I can pay you.”

  “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand? Thistle has lost her documentation or wants to lose her past. She’s not abused.” Phelma Jo swiveled her chair to face the window behind her desk.

  Dick could see by her ex
pression that she found this hard. He decided he had nothing to lose by pressing the issue.

  “Phelma Jo. We are desperate. Thistle grew up in a commune…” he spun out the story he and Dusty had concocted months ago. “She’s been abused, too.”

  “She’s an adult, perfectly capable of standing on her own two feet and figuring it out herself. Go tell that lie to a judge. Maybe he’ll believe you.” She began fumbling with papers, trying to end the interview.

  “Phelma Jo, you owe me for keeping you out of jail after you set fire to The Ten Acre Wood.”

  “You told the truth. Haywood Wheatland dosed me with roofies to make me compliant to his orders. I was under the influence of a date rape drug and not responsible for my actions. What you are asking is illegal and I’ll have no part of it.”

  “And I thought you had become reasonable, willing to be a friend.” He half turned away from her in disgust.

  She shuddered. “Friends. Why is this town obsessed with friends? When I truly needed a friend, your sister, my only friend, betrayed me. I have my own friends now. You and your codependent sister—God, I wish she’d just get over herself—are not among them.”

  “Consider yourself off the wedding invitation list, if we can ever get legally married without ID.”

  “Why can’t you just live in sin? No one thinks twice about that anymore.”

  “We don’t want that. We want a lasting marriage with legitimate children. I want to be able to provide for the love of my life, which includes health insurance and tax deductions, which I can’t do if we aren’t legally married. But you wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “It won’t be a legal marriage with fake ID. Go away, Dick. I don’t care what you do, or how you do it. Just leave me out of it. I don’t even want your money to do this.”

  “You haven’t heard the last of this, Phelma Jo.” Dick stalked out of the glass office, slamming the door so hard the frame shook. The noise drowned out any reply she made. If she bothered.

  Now what?

  Phelma Jo had said something… Go see a judge and see if he’ll believe the story of the abusive cult.

  Yeah. He could do that. Chase would know which judge in town was most likely to listen with a sympathetic ear and start the ball rolling to get a proper ID.

  Thistle’s wedding wasn’t called off, just postponed a bit.

  Eighteen

  THISTLE CAUTIOUSLY COUNTED THE burners on Mabel’s stove, matching them to the dial at the back. “Left front.” She looked at the little burner, comparing it to the size of the half-full teakettle. Too small. “Left rear.” That one looked a closer match. She turned it on and carefully centered the kettle on the coils. She heaved a sigh of relief. That wasn’t so hard. In a few moments she should have a nice cup of tea to refresh her between appointments with her friends.

  A plan was forming in the back of her head for seeking out the lost child while she patrolled the ridge district, making sure each of the old folks had what help they needed to remain in their homes and independent a little longer.

  If she were out in the cold looking for shelter, where would she go? A Pixie would find a hollow log or abandoned birdhouse. Hm. What about detached garages and attics?

  A quick rap on the back door interrupted her search for the perfect cup. With a dozen to choose from, how was she supposed to know which was the perfect one? The same thing went for garages and attics.

  Answering the door gave her a good excuse to postpone the decision. Decisions.

  “Dick? Why aren’t you at work?” she asked, throwing open the door.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said as he gathered her into his arms and kissed her briefly. Then he kissed her more deeply. “I could get used to this,” he sighed. His hands clutched at her waist with a strange intensity.

  “Me, too. But that doesn’t tell me why you are here and not sitting in some doctor’s office trying to sell him pills.” She rested her head against his chest, content to listen to his heart and breath.

  “We’ve run into a minor problem getting a marriage license.”

  “Oh?” Chills run up and down her spine. She knew she shouldn’t have planned on happiness.

  A lost child couldn’t plan on happiness either. Thistle felt more than a little lost, between Dick’s world and Pixie.

  “Nothing we can’t overcome, but you need to do something for me.” He kissed the top of her head.

  “That almost sounds ominous.”

  “Not really. I need you to write out, in your own hand, the story we tell about you escaping from a commune. That you have no idea if you have a birth certificate, or your parents’ last name.”

  “But… but that’s a lie.”

  “Of course it is. But if we tell the truth, a judge is more likely to lock you in an insane asylum than grant you a substitute birth certificate.”

  “Um… Pixies can’t lie.”

  “I know that, but you aren’t a Pixie anymore and you said you’d never go back. So surely you can manage to write out a story.”

  “I don’t know. It feels so wrong. Besides, I wouldn’t know what to say.”

  “Just try it. Please? If it doesn’t work at all, I suppose I could write it and have you sign it. But it will look better if written in your own hand.”

  “If you think I should.” Thistle broke away from Dick, scanning the kitchen for pencil and paper, and inspiration to get out of the onerous chore.

  “Maybe Mabel keeps paper and pens in the desk over in the corner,” Dick said. Obviously, he’d seen through her attempts at delay.

  Just then the kettle began to whistle. “Dick, would you look for paper and pencil for me? Do you want a cup of tea?” She grabbed a mug at random, pleased that it was the one with sunflowers painted all over it. She liked sunflowers. Bright and cheerful, plentiful seeds that lasted a long time and fed Pixies quite well.

  “No, thanks. I haven’t got time,” he said, his voice half muffled as he bent his head over the drawer in the plain wooden desk. It was sturdy and square in a pale wood. Dusty had called it a schoolteacher’s desk.

  “Got it!” Dick proclaimed waving a thick sheaf of papers and a pencil at her.

  “I guess I can’t put this off any longer.”

  “Sorry, my love. We have to do this if we want to truly and forever get married.”

  “For you, I’ll try.” Thistle placed the paper squarely on the counter and held the pencil as Dusty had taught her long ago. She stared at the blank page long and hard. “What do I write?”

  “Start with ‘I, Thistle Down, a resident of Skene Falls, Skene County, Oregon…”

  “Not so fast.” That seemed easy enough if she could remember how to spell it all. Letter by letter she put the words onto the page. “Now what?”

  “Do solemnly swear.”

  That didn’t sound good. She felt the potential lie building in her tummy, spreading dark tendrils of fire upward and outward.

  Dick continued to dictate the words for her. Her head grew numb. Darkness encroached from the edges, turning her vision into a narrow tunnel, like crawling into a hollow log with one end blocked with moss. Tiny points of light came through, not much else. Her chest felt heavy. She couldn’t breathe. Heat robbed her of thought and connection to the four winds, and the floor.

  Which way was up and which down?

  “Thistle!” Dick caught her as her knees gave out.

  The world righted for Thistle again. She reached up and caressed Dick’s face. “I’m sorry, beloved. I can’t do it. I cannot lie.” Hot tears filled her eyes even as she cherished the feeling of resting her head in his lap as she stretched out on the floor. Disappointing him hurt almost as much as the lie.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, running his hands delicately around her shoulders and neck, looking for something wrong. “Your skin is a little warm, but not feverish. Your eyes are clear now. What happened?”

  “The lie.”

  “Oh.”

  They lingered
in silence a bit.

  “Drink your tea, get your senses straightened out again while I write out the statement on a separate sheet of paper. Then all you have to do is copy it letter for letter. You aren’t telling the lie, I am. All you are doing is copying letters from one sheet to the other. Can you do that?” He hoisted her back to her feet and sat her at the tiny table in the window nook.

  Thistle sat gratefully, sipping her tea and watching Dick as he bent over the counter. His long legs and lean back looked stiff, anxious. No more than she. “I understand that this is important,” she told herself.

  “It is very important,” Dick replied.

  “I want to be with you forever, no matter how much it hurts to tell a lie.”

  “You aren’t lying. You are copying letters. Nothing more.”

  “If you say so.”

  Phelma Jo slumped within her dark, oversized trench coat. She pulled the hood closer about her face as she approached the pocket park, an unkempt vacant lot with a single picnic table and bench, two blocks from the elementary school.

  “You’re late,” Marcus whispered from behind the dubious shelter of an overgrown lilac.

  “My schedule isn’t fluid today,” Phelma Jo replied. She’d had to make lame excuses to Ian to leave their lunch date early. Lies. Lies she swore she had given up for the sake of preserving her relationship.

  “Do you have the papers? The new foster parents are flying in from Medford later this afternoon. They have to have those documents to get the girl in school, to keep her safe until the trial.” Marcus twisted his hands anxiously, looking right and left for observers.

  “Don’t whine, Marcus. This is not witness protection. It’s giving children who fall through the cracks a second chance.” Phelma Jo fished a packet in a plastic file protector from inside her coat and handed it to him.

  He grabbed it and secreted it inside his own raincoat. “Is it all here?”

  “Everything but vaccination records. I won’t do those unless I know for certain the child has had them.”