The Fifteen Wonders of Daniel Green

by Erica Boyce

  “Sure,” I say. I push my cart back and forth, as if to rock a baby to sleep.

  She claps her hands a little. “Wonderful! Oh, and”—she glances up and down the aisle, then leans in closer, though no one else is here—“how’s Sam?”

  “Well,” I start, prepared with my usual vague answer. But then, why bother? “He’s not well, actually.” My voice wavers a bit, but it’s surprising how good it feels to tell someone without needing to cushion their fall.

  One of Allison’s hands flies to her mouth. “No,” she says, her voice muffled. She turns to put her basket on the floor, and before I can step away, her arms are clasped around my neck. They’re soft and cool, and they smell like deodorant, powdery. “I am so, so sorry,” she whispers in my ear, as if her closeness could heal me. “He is such a wonderful man.”

  I nod, and my chin digs into her shoulder.

  She backs up, bracing my upper arms between her hands, and glances at my halfhearted cart. “Don’t worry a thing about food, okay? I’ll organize a meal train,” she says. I smile thinly, my heart sinking. “I’ll come by tonight with something. And I’ll bring a pencil and some paper, too, so we can talk flowers. Take your mind off of things.” She smiles, and her ponytail bobs. Problem solved.

  I think of the cigarette I will smoke in the parking lot, not caring who sees.

  * * *

  I come home with an army of plastic bags, lining the counters with their tipsy weight. I fill the fridge and cupboards with steaks, frozen home fries, hamburger meat, Twinkies, and bacon. All the foods that Dr. Cooper gently suggested (and the internet not-so-gently demanded) Sam should avoid.

  I’ve just finished stuffing the last of the granola and the jiggly boneless chicken breasts in the trash when Sam walks up. He stands in the doorway, wrists resting on either side, and watches as I shove the lid of the trash bin down.

  I stand and push aside a strand of my hair with my forearm. “I was thinking about making some chicken-fried steak for dinner tonight.”

  He grins. “It’s like you read my mind.”

  My cheeks warm, and I turn to the sink to start tidying up the dishes from breakfast. He comes up behind me and snakes his arms around my middle. I lean back, and his ribs ridge up against my spine. His arms are still solid and firm, enough to hold me together. I touch his hand with soapy fingers, and the warm water slips down over my belly.

  “By the way,” I say, chipper, “I ran into Allison at the grocery store. She’s organizing a meal train for us, and she said she’d kick it off by bringing us something tonight.”

  He groans. “Not the Tupperware Brigade.”

  I turn to him and wink. “My bets are she brings her famous buffalo chicken.” It’s cruel to joke about her kindness, I know, but at least for now, it’s still the two of us against everyone else.

  “And my bets are I spend half the night in the bathroom as a result.”

  “Why do you think I’m planning on making steak?” My smile grows. “I’ll have to make some more room in the trash can for that chicken, though.” I tap my chin thoughtfully.

  Sam roars with laughter. He’s still laughing when he walks back up the stairs to bed, and I can almost convince myself that’s why he clings to the bannister for support.

  * * *

  The phone rings, and I snatch it up before it can wake Sam.

  “Hi, Molly. It’s Connie. Connie Shannon.”

  “Connie! Yes! Hello! How are things going on the farm? I hope it’s not been too much trouble with Daniel gone.” My shoulders tense with shame, for what, I’m not sure—for my daughter stealing away her much-needed farmhand, for the stories she’s had to tell in town to explain his disappearance.

  “Oh—no.” She falters a little bit, barely enough for me to hear the lie. “We’ve been managing just fine.”

  “I know you were hoping Earl would be able to ease up on the work now, with his bad back and all,” I can’t help but say.

  “You know Earl,” she says quickly. “He insists he’s got at least another season or two in him, and I guess now I believe him.” She laughs, two high breaths. “Look at me, babbling about my own husband when it’s yours I’m calling about.”

  I knead one knuckle into my temple and close my eyes. She works fast, that Allison.

  “I’m so sorry to hear he’s unwell again,” Connie says. “Is there anything we can do for him? Or for you? I’m happy to hop by and spruce things up around there—you know, if you’re too busy with appointments and things…”

  “That’s sweet of you to offer, but I think we’re fine for now.” I open my eyes and start collecting the flotsam that has, in fact, begun to collect on our coffee table, the tissues and paper pharmacy bags.

  “All right,” she says. “Well. You let me know if that changes, okay?”

  “Of course. I will.” I soften. Connie is always the first to offer. She bustles in at the first rumor of distress, silently sweeping and straightening. She loves gossiping as much as the rest of us, but she’ll never tell a soul about the closed-door arguments and tears she overhears during those cleaning sessions.

  “By the way, you haven’t heard any updates from Nessa about when she and Daniel will be back, have you?” She says it casually, but her hope gives itself away. “He hasn’t been in touch, and we’re a bit worried, to tell the truth.”

  “I’ve spoken to her, yes. They should be home within the week, I expect.”

  “Good! That’s good.” She pauses. “I found something a little weird while I was cleaning his room last night. I pulled out the bed so I could vacuum, and there was this folded-up sheet of paper tucked behind the headboard. I know I should’ve let it be, but I opened it up without thinking, and it was this—drawing, I guess? Only it didn’t look like anything I recognized. It was all abstract and loopy, almost.”

  The handful of trash I’ve been collecting falls to the floor. It sounds like the crop circle plans I’d seen Daniel pull from his pocket over and over again, at our kitchen table and outside our bedroom window at night. I assumed he’d brought them with him. I think of Sam’s face while he read Nessa’s email, how afraid he was that the town wouldn’t believe him and would laugh at him. I silently curse Daniel for his recklessness.

  “Actually,” I say, the story tumbling into place, “he was helping me out with a quilt design I’ve been having trouble with.” I drop my voice so it’s low and secretive. “I’m sure you know he was around here quite a bit to visit with Nessa. They’re just friends, of course.” She giggles. I’ll have to apologize to Nessa for this. “He mentioned geometry was his best subject in school, and I’d been puzzling over this pattern for weeks, so I asked if he could help me draft the pattern. That must’ve been what you found.” I clutch the back of the sofa. It sounds like a serviceable lie to me, but then, I’m not exactly known around town for my quilting. The few I’ve made for Nessa and Charlie were simple blocks sewn messily together.

  “I see,” she says. “I’ll have to drop it off the next time I see you so you can sneak a peek at what he’s come up with. It looks pretty complicated.”

  “Oh dear. We’ll see if I’m up for the challenge. I have to go. Someone seems to be knocking on our window. Bye, now.” I hang up and step carefully toward the rapping in our kitchen.

  “Anybody home?” Allison cups her hands around her eyes and peers in.

  I steel myself and open the door. “You’re just in time. I was just slicing up this morning’s bread.” I motion to the table, where I’ve laid out a stack of thick slices and my mother-in-law’s old butter dish.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” she says, depositing a glass dish of something aggressively orange into the fridge. She sits and helps herself. Crumbs scatter over the notepad she lays out in front of her. “Mmm.” She closes her eyes, and I feel a small glow of pride in spite of myself. “You’ve outdone yourself
with this one. You really should think about opening a bakery. I bet people would come from all around,” she says, squinting appraisingly at me and shaking the crust like a finger. A piece of it falls off and tumbles to the floor. When I bend to pick it up from under the table, I sweep my palm across my cheeks as if to clear away the flush.

  “Sam would ordinarily love to join us, but he’s asleep upstairs. The medication makes him so tired, you know.” This much is true. He’ll be genuinely disappointed I didn’t wake him. Much as he dislikes the meals in the meal train, he adores the company that comes with them, loves being fussed over and exchanging town gossip.

  Allison makes a valiant effort to cover up her own disappointment, waving my apologies aside.

  I touch the notepad. “What’s this?”

  She flips to a page filled with penciled diagrams, words crossed out and rewritten several times over. “I was just doing some brainstorming for that garden.” My eyes widen, and she laughs. “I know it looks a little overwhelming, but trust me, this is one of those things you only have to do right once and then—”

  We both hear the uneven thumps of Sam’s feet on the stairs at the same time. Allison’s face lights up in anticipation. As he descends into view, her mouth drops open into a wide, horrified circle.

  I suppose it is a bit alarming, from her point of view. He would’ve filled out that sweater nicely a couple of months ago. He wouldn’t have needed a sweater at all, in fact, in these warm late-summer afternoons. His cheeks are sinking in, deflating. His face is pale except for two spots of dark pink surfacing from the effort of walking the stairs. People in town are used to seeing him fluctuate, the chemo sapping him of any excess for weeks, months at a time. It’s never this fast, though. Never this final.

  Allison snaps her mouth shut, but not before Sam sees. His eager smile falters a little, and he pauses. I hurry to his side and give him my hand, knowing full well he can make it down himself and would usually, in fact, be annoyed with me for helping. I press his knuckles gently.

  Allison appears to have collected herself. “Well, look who decided to honor us with his presence. If it isn’t the queen of Sheba himself,” she teases.

  Sam leans over to embrace her. “What’s the fastest redhead in town doing in my kitchen?”

  She tosses her hair over her shoulder and laughs as he pulls out a chair. The two of them launch into a discussion of the town plans to build a new parking lot for the grocery store while I run my finger over the list of flowers Allison has written down, names I don’t recognize smudging slightly under the pressure of my thumb. Delphinium. Hyacinth. Coreopsis. Penstemon. Clematis. For some of them, she’s noted the Latin names or particular color varieties.

  By the time I’ve reached the bottom of the list, imagining their twisting stems and spindly leaves, Sam’s chuckles have grown softer and more punctuated with sighs. I lean across the table and say, “I’m so sorry to interrupt. Sam, you’d really better get some rest before dinner. Make sure you’ve got enough energy to do Allison’s chicken justice.”

  He pushes his chair back. “You’re right. Thanks for stopping by. Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

  She shakes her head. “No, of course not.” She means it. She beams up at him as he pulls himself up the stairs. When he’s out of sight, she turns to me and touches her chest. “He’s a good one, that Sam. I can’t tell you how much my husband looks up to him.”

  I paste a smile on my face. I want to tell her there’s no need to eulogize him yet, that he’s still here in the flesh, with all his flaws and goodness both. It would only make her gasp and run out the door to tell her friends it’s too bad that poor man married such a shrew. So instead, I just swallow it down and shift in my seat while her eyes travel around the room.

  She frowns when she looks out the window at the fields. For the first time in days, I study them, too. A crop can deteriorate just as quickly as a body, it seems. Without Sam’s ministrations, the cornstalks have begun to sag, and the soybean plants are wilting. Dark clusters of crows rise from certain corners.

  “Who’s going to manage the fields while Sam is sick?” she asks, like it’s a temporary inconvenience.

  “Nessa will when she returns,” I say, though in truth, I hadn’t thought about it at all. “She should be back in a few days.” It sounds like an apology.

  “Hmm” is all she says, squaring up the pages of her notepad. The disapproval in her voice is unmistakable.

  Chapter Thirty

  Daniel

  Nessa does her best. She laughs a little when I point at the waffle iron, which churns out waffles in the shape of the state of Nevada. She loads up her plate with stale English muffins and Hostess donuts. But in the end, she only picks at her food. I open my mouth a couple of times to ask what Charlie said, then think better of it.

  Finally, when I throw our plates away, she comes back long enough to say, “I need to get back home.”

  “Sure,” I say, “of course. If you want me to drive the car back, you can go ahead and buy a plane ticket—”

  “No,” she says, more forcefully than I think she means to. The woman eating next to us stops feeding her toddler and glances over her shoulder. “I need to drive,” she says, more softly.

  On our way out the hotel door, the wobbly wheel on Nessa’s suitcase catches on a pebble, and the whole thing thuds to the ground. She swears under her breath and blushes when a bellhop scurries over to help her. My phone buzzes while I’m bending over to pick up the luggage tag that freed itself from the suitcase’s handle. I forget to check the caller ID before answering.

  “Can you believe this bullshit?”

  I stop short. “Ray?”

  “They’re calling me a schizo, a fucking psycho. It’s all over the internet. Just for telling the truth? And it all gets pinned on me?”

  “How did you get this number?” Stupid question—everyone gets a full contact list when they become an official member, in case of emergencies.

  He ignores me. “I get it, you guys value your privacy. Sure. Maybe I was a little drunk during that radio call-in. A little bitter because you guys didn’t let me do shit. But this? I’m getting pulled into court left and right, paying for damages I didn’t make.”

  A kid shoves past me in the doorway, his scowling face focused on his phone. His parents follow behind, arguing in whispers. And Nessa stands by the valet stand and stares into space. “Look,” I say, “I know it sucks, but what do you—”

  “You have to talk to Lionel. He listens to you. Get him to come out with the truth, take back the story. I know he must’ve been the one to start it, right? Right? There must be something, anything you could do, he could do.” His voice is high and panicked. He takes a breath, and it lowers. “I got fired last night. Again. My wife, she laughed at me at first, but now she thinks I’ve been hiding all these bullshit secrets from her. She’s talking about moving out.” The valet pulls up in Nessa’s car. “Please,” Ray whispers.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. And I really am as I watch Nessa drop into the driver’s seat, her face blank. It could just as easily be me, thrown out into the cold with humiliation to keep me company. “But there’s nothing I can do.”

  “I could still list the names, you know,” he murmurs.

  “Who would believe you now, Ray?” I say, trying to make it sound gentle without inviting an actual response.

  He sounds resigned now, tired. “You can’t hide forever, you know,” he says.

  A headache starts to form behind my eyes. “Wanna bet?”

  “I sure do. Look what happened to your girlfriend.”

  My fists clench, along with my stomach.

  “This work drove her crazy,” he continues. “You’re in too deep, buddy. You’re next. Get yourself out, and tell everyone I was right. Give me a hand.”

  “She wasn’t crazy,” I say. “She was an addict.” And
I hang up and walk toward the car.

  * * *

  It takes us a fraction of the time to cross the country back east that it did on the way out. Nessa is barely talking again, and when she drives, the road whips by so fast, I’m afraid to close my eyes. It’s no better when I’m behind the wheel, Nessa curled up on the passenger’s seat, tapping her fingernails on the window. She’s like a cattle prod, burning red, keeping my foot pressed on the accelerator. Migraine pills rattle into her palm over and over again.

  Lionel calls when we reach Kentucky. We haven’t spoken since I called him at Charlie’s. I don’t want to ask Nessa how far gone Sam is or what we’ll do about the circle if it’s…too far. It’s time for Lionel to know there’s a delay. Maybe an indefinite one. I keep my voice jolly on the phone, glancing at Nessa, but she just picks at a hole in the knee of her jeans, pulling away at the thread.

  “I was beginning to think we’d never speak,” he says. “I know you’re close to your milestone circle here, but I’m not sure you’re taking this seriously enough, my friend.”

  “No, I do. I am,” I say. “You did a great job on that Ray story, by the way.”

  “It’s time to talk about you,” he says impatiently. “Should I be congratulating you?” Two other pairs of circlers had been close to fifteen at our last meeting, the one with Ray’s outburst. I sat there staring at the stains on my shoes while the four of them laughed around me after the meeting ended, talking over themselves about their plans for the big one. Lionel stood in front of us, smiling as he sorted his papers.

  “Um, no,” I say. “There’s been a family—something came up. With the farmer.” Nessa plucks at her seat belt, and it thumps against her collarbone. “This might not be the one after all.”

  “I see.” He pauses. “And you’re still there, in Munsen?” He must be paging through his ledger, written in his own oddball code.

  “Not exactly. We’re—I’m on an errand. I’ll be back soon, and I’ll know more then.”