The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin

by Stephanie Knipper

  Antoinette tapped the wheelbarrow and raised her hands.

  “You want a ride?” Seth asked.

  Antoinette flapped her hands. Yes!

  He laughed and picked her up. “You’re getting big.” He gave her a tight squeeze then settled her into the wheelbarrow.

  “Hold this for me.” Seth pressed his iPod into her hands. It was hooked to a wireless docking station. “Are you up for a music lesson?”

  Antoinette flapped her hands. She didn’t need paper to communicate with Seth. She held the iPod while he scrolled through the songs on his playlist. “John Hiatt on the way to the fields? Classical while we work?”

  She bobbed her head. Seth loved music almost as much as he loved the farm. He taught her the names of the instruments and how to tell if a piece was written in four-four time or three-four time.

  He pressed Play on his iPod, and Hiatt’s “Thirty Years of Tears” started. Then Seth grabbed the wheelbarrow’s handles and pushed Antoinette out of the barn. “Hiatt has a great southern folk sound,” he said. “This song is in three-four time. Like a waltz.”

  She rode with her back to Seth so she could look out over the land. The tree leaves were the new green that only came in spring. From the woods, a whip-poor-will called and a mockingbird sang. She tapped her finger against the side of the wheelbarrow, the sound blending with the birdsong and the music until Antoinette felt like she was singing along.

  Seth added his voice to the mix. He harmonized easily with Hiatt, the birds, and the wind. He was part of the land.

  The song ended when they reached the daffodil field. Seth lifted Antoinette from the wheelbarrow and directed her to a wooden bench at the head of the row. He set the iPod beside her, then squatted in front of her and grinned. “I’m quizzing you today. I think I can trip you up.”

  He started a playlist then grabbed a steel pail. “The first song’s a freebie. You’ll get it no problem.”

  This was the way she learned best. Studying things she loved with people who understood that not speaking was not the same as not comprehending.

  Over the iPod, a piano started playing. Antoinette raised her chin and flapped her hands. “Für Elise.” Beethoven.

  Seth laughed. He was at the spigot that stood at the head of the row. “I told you you’d know this one. It’s too easy.” He hung the pail from a hook and turned on the spigot. To keep the flowers fresh, they had to be placed in water as soon as they were cut.

  “We’ll do tulips and daffodils today. Maybe the last of the hyacinths if we have time. Your mom asked me to keep back some of the flowers for her to make bouquets for the market. You’re in charge of those, okay?” He turned off the water and set the bucket by her feet. The next song started while Seth filled a second bucket. A violin held a single note for several beats, then an organ joined in, giving depth to the piece.

  Seth took the pail and bent down among the daffodils. The muscles in his shoulders were tight with effort as he dug out weeds and clipped buds for market. Soon a thin sheen of sweat covered his arms.

  The music still played. The violins were soaring now. Antoinette imagined them as birds looking down over the trees.

  Seth straightened and swiped the back of his hand across his forehead. Sweat and dirt streaked his arms, and his brown hair curled around his shoulders. “Mozart?” he asked.

  Antoinette sat still. Mozart’s music was lighter.

  “Beethoven?”

  She almost popped out of her seat but caught herself just in time. No. Beethoven’s violin concerto started with oboes. This was Bach. “Air on the G String.”

  He dropped his pruning shears into the bucket of daffodils at his feet. “I can’t fool you, can I? You know it’s Bach, don’t you?”

  Antoinette flapped her hands and shrieked. Bach. If she could say his name, it would come out like a growl.

  Before Seth came to the farm, she used to study men in the grocery store, wondering whether one of them was her father. Her mother was beautiful, and she could speak. No one would want to leave her. But a child who couldn’t speak? Couldn’t control her body? That was a reason to leave. She imagined her birth father taking one look at her and running for the hills. She hoped someday her mother would tell her about him. But she didn’t know how to ask.

  Seth grabbed the smooth green stem of a budding daffodil, cut it at an angle, and dropped the flower in the bucket. He made his way down the row, leaving the tight buds that weren’t quite ready. Plantings at the farm were staggered to extend the bloom time.

  A new song started. This one was easy. “The Grand Theme” from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Before Seth could throw out a name, Antoinette stood, raised her arms above her head, and spun on her toes. She moved so fast her knees almost folded.

  “You’re right,” he said as he watched her dance. “Swan Lake. Tchaikovsky.”

  Antoinette stopped spinning and grinned. Now that Seth was here, she didn’t search for her father in grocery stores anymore.

  The bucket at his feet was full. He picked it up and hoisted it into the wheelbarrow. “Did I ever tell you that my dad was a musician?” he asked as he grabbed another empty pail. “He’s the one who taught me.”

  He hadn’t told her. She shook her head from side to side. Seth didn’t often talk about his childhood.

  “When he was in a good mood, he used to quiz me on the composers.” One corner of his mouth quirked up.

  Antoinette tried to imitate him, but she grimaced instead.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re better than I ever was. I couldn’t tell Bach from Beethoven until I was fourteen.” He tousled her hair as he walked down the row.

  He walked back to the row where he had been working and knelt. “My dad was first chair violin for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra,” he said without looking up. He cut three daffodils and put them in the pail. “My mom also played, but she wasn’t as good. She was a high school music teacher. My parents met when my mom brought a group of students to the symphony.”

  The pail at his feet was getting full, but he added a few more daffodils. “It’s funny. My dad taught me the violin, but when I play I think of my mother. When my dad wasn’t home, she’d put on CDs of Bach and Beethoven. I was little then. I’d stand on her feet, and she’d waltz me around the house.” He smiled at the memory.

  Antoinette looked out beyond the daffodil bed, across the rows of raised soil. Several rows down, bright green tulip leaves unfurled like flags. She understood how Seth felt. Antoinette saw her mother in every inch of the farm.

  “She would have loved you. My mother, I mean.” Seth stopped working and looked up at her. “I know it’s been hard on you . . . your mother being ill and all. It’s never easy to lose a parent. No matter how old you are. But you should know, your mom’s trying to look out for you. Lily’s her sister. You should try to get to know her. Your mother loves her. You will too if you give her a chance.”

  Antoinette started rocking. Other than Seth, no one talked to her about her mother’s illness. Most of the time, she loved that he talked to her about things others wouldn’t, but right now she didn’t want to hear what he was saying.

  “I used to wonder why bad things like this happened,” he said, “especially to good people like you and your mom. I spent a lot of time trying to find the answer to that question, and I still don’t have it.

  “But I do know that Lily’s here to help your mom.” He paused for a moment before adding, “And you. I think you should let her.”

  Some small part of Antoinette wanted to clamp her hands over her ears. She knew her mother was sick. Very sick. It made her feel small and helpless in a way that nothing else did. But she did not want—no, she did not need—Lily’s help. Antoinette could take care of her mother alone.

  Seth nodded toward the house, and Antoinette turned to see what he was looking at. The back porch was just visible from the daffodil field. Antoinette saw the porch swing where her mother and Lily sat, a wide space between
them. From this far away, they looked like dolls.

  Seth cut another daffodil and added it to the pail. “A long time ago—before you were born—Lily was my best friend. I felt comfortable around her. I could be myself. You know?”

  He looked at Antoinette as if to see whether she understood. But she had never had a friend like that, other than her mother of course, and she didn’t count. She wondered how it felt to have someone who saw through to the inside of you and loved you anyway.

  “It’s rare to find someone who knows all your secrets and still accepts you. My dad could be . . . difficult,” Seth said. “On the nights that were especially hard, I’d sneak over here and toss pebbles at your aunt Lily’s window until she woke. She’d sneak me inside, and I’d lie down on the floor between your mom’s bed and Lily’s.

  “Your mom would fall right back to sleep, but Lily would stay up with me, talking until I could close my eyes.”

  He sat back on his heels and laughed. “Your grandma found me there once. I was twelve. I thought she was going to skin me alive, but she just leaned against the doorframe and said, ‘For God’s sake, Lily, don’t make the boy sleep on the floor. Put him in the guest room.’ Then she went downstairs and made me a plate of scrambled eggs.”

  The pail at Seth’s feet was now full. He stood and picked it up, sloshing a bit of water over the edge. As he placed it in the wheelbarrow, he said, “You need to give Lily a chance.”

  Antoinette shook her head hard. Seth could like Lily if he wanted to, but she didn’t even want to try.

  Chapter Twelve

  The sun was setting behind the hills as Lily followed Rose and Antoinette to the drying barn. The temperature had dropped, and the wind picked up. It felt like a storm was coming. She kept some distance between herself and Antoinette. I can’t do this, she thought every time she looked at her niece. But how could she abandon Rose again?

  She kept going back to her conversation with Will. He believed she could handle Antoinette, but Lily wasn’t convinced. She started counting her steps.

  A series of flagstone paths wound through the farm, but the one leading from the house to the drying barn was more worn than most. The barn was only a few yards away, directly across from the house. Bright pink azaleas flanked its entrance, with a stand of birch and oak trees to the right.

  It hadn’t always been a drying barn—at least not an herb-drying barn. Years ago, when Lily and Rose were still young, their father had converted it from an old tobacco barn. He ran electricity to power a commercial freezer and installed lights and a phone line.

  The rafters, from which farmers before them had hung tobacco, were perfect for drying lavender, basil, and other herbs. The plants were bound into bundles, then hung from the beams. Securing them had been one of Lily’s jobs, and once that was done, she’d stretch out across one of the rough beams, surrounded by the warmth of the barn and the smell of the drying flowers. There she pictured a future in which she and Rose and Seth ran the farm together.

  Back then, she never would have imagined spending her adult life away from this place.

  “You’re falling behind,” Rose said, looking over her shoulder.

  “Same as always, isn’t it?”

  Rose held the barn door open for Antoinette, then flicked on the light.

  Lily shivered as the wind picked up. She hurried into the barn, accidentally bumping into Antoinette. The little girl growled.

  Lily stepped back, then walked a wide circle around the girl. She didn’t know how to handle a normal child, much less a child like Antoinette. “I don’t know how to be a mother,” she said, her voice a whisper. Parenting wasn’t math. There wasn’t a child-raising formula. No x + y = perfect parent.

  At the word mother, Antoinette bared her teeth.

  “And you think I did?” Rose zipped up her faded green jacket. The barn kept the wind off them, but Rose was cold all the time now. Her face was whiter than usual, and her lips were rimmed with blue. “When Antoinette was born, I cried every night until she was six months old. Mothering isn’t something you’re born knowing. You figure it out as you go along.”

  “She doesn’t like me,” Lily said as she watched her niece shuffle through the cedar shavings on the barn floor.

  Seth had left a steel bucket full of daffodils and tulips on a table at the far end of the barn. Rose went to one of the shelves and took down a handful of water tubes. They would fill each of the tubes with water and preservative and then insert one stem into each tube.

  Wind whistled through the cracks in the barn’s slats. The sound was eerie, and Lily counted the seconds until it stopped.

  Thirty-three. An odd number. Not good.

  “Fill these for me,” Rose said as she handed Lily the tubes. “And Antoinette will love you. You just need to give her time.”

  “How can you say that?” It wasn’t a rhetorical question. Lily really wanted to know. “Weren’t you at the farmers’ market? She hates me.” Lily went to the sink in the corner.

  “It’s not that bad. Give her time.” Rose selected a daffodil and trimmed its stem.

  “It’s a little early to be doing this, isn’t it?” Lily asked.”We’ve got, what, ten hours until the market tomorrow? The tubes will only keep the flowers fresh for six hours. Besides, the wind is really picking up out there.”

  Normally, Lily loved storms. She and Rose used to sit on the porch swing and watch the clouds roll in. They’d count the seconds after lightning flashes: “One Mississippi. Two Mississippi,” squealing in delight as the time between seeing the lightning and hearing the thunder lessened. But tonight Lily felt off balance. She wanted to be inside the house, preferably in bed with a mug of hot chocolate.

  “I know,” Rose said. She trimmed another daffodil before plopping it back in the pail. “I won’t insert the flowers into the tubes until right before the market tomorrow. I like getting everything ready the night before. It makes things easier in the morning. Put the tubes here.” She indicated a plastic container on the table. “And we’ll be finished before the worst of the storm.”

  Lily sensed Antoinette watching her as she placed the filled tubes in the box. She tried to ignore her niece, but even with her back turned, she felt the little girl’s stare. “Mom didn’t do it this way.”

  Rose shrugged. “Mom didn’t have Antoinette to deal with. Mornings aren’t always easy with her.”

  Lily glanced at Antoinette, who growled and started walking in circles.

  “Change always came easy for you,” Lily said to Rose as she turned from Antoinette.

  Rose flinched. “Easy? You think this has been easy for me?”

  “Easier than it is for me, I mean.”

  Rose frowned. Two sharp lines appeared between her eyes. “I’m dying. I’m leaving my daughter. You think that’s easy?” Her voice went up a notch.

  Lily shook her head. “I don’t mean it like that. Things come easier for you. People like you.” At school, Rose had always been surrounded by friends. Lily was lucky if she made it through lunch without someone “accidentally” spilling milk in her lap.

  “People like you too, Lily. You just don’t let anyone get close to you. So what if you have a few odd habits? We all do. Most people are just better at hiding them—” Rose stopped talking. “Where’s Antoinette?”

  “By the door,” Lily said as she turned around. The door was open. “She was right there.”

  “Antoinette?” Rose hurried outside with Lily close behind her.

  Rose stopped abruptly. Antoinette was kicking her feet through a semicircle of dead pansies. “You can’t run off like that,” Rose said.

  Antoinette kept swishing her feet through the flowers. When she saw Lily, she growled.

  The anxiety Lily had felt since coming home threatened to explode. She started to count.

  Now that they had found Antoinette, Rose resumed her conversation with Lily. “You said earlier that you used to dream about being me. Well, I’d give anything to switch
places with you. You’re the one who will be here when Antoinette finishes school. You’ll see what she looks like at twenty. At thirty. That’s something I can only imagine.”

  Rose glanced at Lily’s lips, which moved as she counted, and grabbed her shoulder. “Are you listening to me?”

  At the same time, Antoinette started humming.

  Lily stopped counting. “What’s she doing?” she asked.

  Antoinette was now kneeling in the middle of the dead flowers. She had closed her eyes and was running her fingers over the browning petals as she hummed.

  “Shit!” Rose said. “Pick her up. Pull her away from the flowers.”

  “Why? They’re dead. She can’t hurt anything.” The wind lifted Antoinette’s hair, swirling the strands around her head.

  Rose’s face, already pale, went paler still. “Help me, Lily. I can’t lift her.”

  The desperation on Rose’s face spurred Lily into action. In four steps, she was at Antoinette’s side. The girl kept humming as she pushed her hands deeper into the soil.

  “Your mom wants you to come with me,” she said. As she reached for Antoinette, she prayed the girl wouldn’t scratch her again.

  Just before they touched, Antoinette stopped humming.

  “Pick her up!” Rose yelled over the rising wind.

  At the same time, Antoinette looked Lily right in the eye and smiled.

  Lily’s skin prickled.

  “We’re too late,” Rose whispered.

  Antoinette slumped forward, and the dead pansies blushed back to life.

  “Oh my God!” Lily stumbled back. “It’s not possible.” She forgot about the mounting storm, knelt, and cautiously touched a flower petal. It was fragile and unbelievably soft.

  Then Rose was there. “Don’t let her seize this time,” she murmured as she turned Antoinette onto her side.

  A statistic flashed through Lily’s mind: a major cause of death in epilepsy was asphyxiation due to the inhalation of vomit. She shook off her wonder at the flowers and helped Rose hold Antoinette on her side.