The Secret Hum of a Daisy

by Tracy Holczer

  • • •

  Mr. Brannigan was tall and lanky where Mrs. Brannigan was small and round so that together they looked like a lowercase b or d depending which side of him she was standing on. He wore a brown cowboy hat and work boots and had a chin full of brownish-red stubble, which he rubbed with long fingers.

  “So, you ready to ride a horse today, Grace?” he said.

  “I am,” I said, and gulped, because I wasn’t really ready at all. Horses were tall and liked to trot and I was afraid of tumbling off.

  He handed Jo the cooler and then put his hand on top of her head as though it were a basketball. “I’ll meet you in the barn,” he said and winked at me. Just that little wink made me feel a whole lot better.

  As he walked out the sliding glass door, Jo scooted over to Mrs. Brannigan and pointed toward her sweater pocket. “What did it say?”

  “‘Have a sit in the shade,’” she said.

  Jo nodded. After gathering her Bear River park research and loading it into her backpack with her camera, she took my arm and steered me outside. As we marched across the grassy field toward the barn, I kept staring at her backpack, thinking the answer to the next clue might just be that close.

  The Brannigans had loads of land, flossy green hills, trees scattered in groups of pines and cedars, a thick rocky stream feeding into a deep swimming pond with a dock and raft, a fenced-off barn at the back. A family of geese sat on the bank of the pond. I couldn’t see any houses other than Grandma’s off to the right, just a hint of blue through the lacework of trees.

  “Just when you thought we couldn’t be more loony tunes, all those jars on the bookshelf? Those are my mom’s Answer Jars. When she figures something out, she writes it down and then sticks it in a jar. When something comes up and we don’t know what to do, we consult the jars.” She wrapped her scarf tight around her neck. “I know it sounds weird, but it works. Well, mostly . . .”

  “Doesn’t sound weird to me.”

  The horses grazed in the pasture, each as different as the pines were from the oaks or the cedars. Beauty came to me from where she stood and nudged my hand.

  “When is her baby due?”

  “Should be within the week.”

  Jo introduced the rest. Raven was black as pitch and belonged to her father, who loved Edgar Allan Poe and any kind of story that might raise your hairs in the dark of night. Beauty was her mother’s. White with bluish-gray splotches, she liked to flick her mane about and prance as though preparing for a beauty contest. When she wasn’t pregnant, that is.

  Pumpkin and Shade were in the barn with Mr. Brannigan.

  “When I was younger, I’d sit under that tree over there and read, and Shade would come and stand right over me, blocking the sun. He was named Fudge, but I got to calling him Shade, and he liked it better,” Jo said.

  “They’re beautiful.”

  “Have you ever ridden?”

  “Nope.”

  “Max named Pumpkin because he is the color of a pumpkin. So original! The horse is sweet, though.”

  Mr. Brannigan helped me saddle Pumpkin while Jo saddled Shade. He named everything as we went. First there was a saddle pad, then a fancy red-and-white-checked blanket. Next he helped me lift the saddle, which weighed about a thousand pounds, onto the horse. He showed me how to tighten the front and back cinches, warning me to always double-check them before climbing into the stirrups.

  His face was lined and tan, like he lived outdoors, and he smelled like fresh-cut wood. He put his hands on either side of my waist and helped me into the saddle whether I was ready or not.

  “How does it feel up there?” he said, and patted Pumpkin on his haunches.

  “Good,” I said, and I wasn’t lying.

  “Just sit tall and straight, don’t lean forward or backward. And no flapping elbows! That is terrible form and we can’t have you riding around looking like a chicken.”

  I smiled at that and felt myself ease into the saddle even more.

  “Don’t worry,” Jo said from the back of her horse. “Horses have been known to read your mind after a while, if you let them. So don’t just yank the reins; lead the horse with your whole self and you’ll get where you’re going. At least that’s what Dad always says.”

  Mr. Brannigan took Pumpkin’s reins and led us outside. Once we were at the trail that ran parallel to Ridge Road, he said, “Both reins in one hand. Relax like Jo said and you’ll be fine.”

  Once we got going, I turned around and gave Mr. Brannigan a small wave. He saluted and went back into the barn.

  We led them, Shade and Pumpkin, down the hard-packed trail. The saddle was stiff but comfortable.

  Jo took it slow and steady. When the trail widened, we walked the horses side by side for a long time. The sun was warm when it slid out from behind the clouds. I closed my eyes and felt like I’d grown bigger somehow, like I had more room inside.

  “Did you want to get together this weekend and search for your meadow?” Jo said.

  “I sort of found it already.”

  “You did?” Jo seemed happy. “Where was it?”

  “Walking distance from Grandma’s.”

  “Isn’t that how it is with most things? You screech for your mom to help you find your shoes and they end up being right under your nose.” Jo suddenly looked stricken. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to talk about . . .”

  “It would be weirder if you never talked about your mom.”

  There was a crosswalk in the middle of Main Street, so we used it and walked up the side of the road toward the park.

  I took Max’s mummy out of my pocket and showed it to Jo. “Max is upset about his kitten party.”

  “So now he’s harassing you too?” She sighed heavily.

  “No. He was just sad. Why won’t you let him have his party? Is it against your religion or something?”

  “It’s unhealthy, that’s all.”

  She leaned toward me as though she might say something, but then she didn’t.

  About five minutes later, we came to a long curve in the trail, and then the park. It was just as I’d remembered it, all piney green and secret pathways.

  “There’s a trail along the outside edge, and a place we can tie the horses,” Jo said.

  I followed her under a canopy of trimmed tree branches that felt like passing into a fairy forest with twinkling hummingbird feeders, birdhouses, and other kinds of interesting objects hanging from the trees: a toilet seat cover spray-painted red, an old rusty mailbox with the red flag raised, and a surfboard, which made me think of my father. I decided right then and there I would learn to surf.

  The dirt path led to a watering trough for the horses and an old-fashioned hitching post. Jo went to her pack for carrots and the cooler. We fed the carrots to the horses and then Jo led me through the trees to Mama’s fountain. It gave me the same feeling of wonder to see it again.

  There were so many details, layers of curved and flat pieces of metal so that if you tilted your head, they might look like waves. The steel waves of an overcast day. But those bits of metal also looked like wings, all different kinds, from tiny hummingbird wings to the giant wings of an eagle. I supposed you could see what you wanted to see, depending on what you were looking for.

  Jo spread the blanket in a patch of sunlight between two trees, the sun lighting up the reddish tint of her brown hair. As soon as we sat, though, the clouds moved the sunlight out of reach. She took a big yellow envelope out of her backpack and handed it to me.

  There was a smoochy couple sitting on the edge of the fountain and a small short-haired dog running around in circles chasing its tail. A jogger went by, running for her life, it seemed, and wearing a fluorescent pink shirt most likely visible from heaven. A woman sat in a fold-out beach chair and read a book. She wore a baseball hat and dark sunglasses.

 
The folder had lots of newspaper clippings from when the park was being suggested to the city council, the different park ideas that were tossed around, and the final plan. There were blueprints and schematics and some quotes Jo had written down from her interviews.

  It just seemed so strange. How Grandma could make this place where everyone wanted to be, but she couldn’t do that in her own house, with her own daughter and granddaughter.

  As I read, Jo put on her beret and took her camera over to the people at the fountain, asking if she could interview them about the park. About ten minutes later, she moved on to some dog walkers while I read through everything she had in the folder. None of it helped me understand how this fountain was a clue, though, what I might find here. I got up to read the plaque again with the clip of Robert Frost’s poem.

  Where the bird was before it flew,

  Where the flower was before it grew,

  Where bird and flower were one and the same.

  The first time Jo brought me to the park, I’d wanted those words to mean leaving. But now I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I didn’t know what else to look for. Where to go from here.

  “It seems like you’re trying to figure something out,” Jo said. She took off her beret and put the camera away. “In case I haven’t told you, I am a master sleuth. I’ve read every single Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie novel in my parents’ house. Of which there are many.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  She sat down on the blanket and patted the place next to her. “Let me see that mummy.”

  I reached in my pocket and handed it to her, then sat down and crisscrossed my legs.

  “I should have told you before,” Jo said. She set the mummy down and laid out our food in a perfect square. Tiny triangles of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a basket of strawberries, potato chips, and two thick wedges of chocolate cake. “Max has been sick. He’s got something called acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a form of cancer. He’s been in remission a little less than a year now.”

  I didn’t know what to say at first. “Remission is good, right?”

  “Remission isn’t cured,” she said, and then took a mouthful of chocolate cake. “Sorry if that was weird to tell you.”

  But it wasn’t weird.

  She explained what it had been like, having Max so sick, losing his hair and having to take so many different pills. How she couldn’t ever sleep very well thinking he wasn’t safe in the night.

  “The Other Side is closer to us at night, I think. Waiting there, just ready to pounce,” she said.

  I nodded some more because I knew a thing or two about the Other Side and how it pounced in the middle of the night. It was nice to be sitting across from someone else in the world who understood, even though that understanding came from something sad. “Is that why you have short hair?” I said.

  “I cut it off when Max lost his hair. So did my mom and dad,” she laughed. “We looked ridiculous!”

  Eventually the sun found its way back to our blanket and warmed my hair and shoulders, and something inside me sprang loose. I could almost hear the metallic plooong as some invisible wire, some important cable holding certain things down, snapped free.

  “My mother died in the river,” I said. “It was an accident.”

  Jo touched my hand. “I know. I’m real sorry, Grace. I wish I could have known her.”

  I tried to say more, but my throat closed over the rest of the words and wouldn’t let them free.

  “Can I ask you something?” Jo said after a while.

  “Okay.”

  “Why are you living in the shed out by the road?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m mad, I guess. About lots of things. And I can hear the river in the house sometimes.”

  “Well, I can’t fix the mad. But I’ve got an extra pair of great earplugs. I used to wear them when I’d sleep with Max in the hospital.”

  I almost laughed at how easy that was. I couldn’t move the river or Grandma’s house. But I could block the sounds if it got to be too much.

  I looked around the park and breathed deeply, taking in early spring—the honey scent of flowers, the sweet-sour smell of cut grass, the wildness of growing things and how it all reminded me of little kids after they’d been cooped up too long.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said.

  “I guess it wouldn’t be fair if I said no.”

  “It’s pretty and all. But why did you pick this place for your documentary?”

  She smiled. “Before he got sick, Max and I would hide in the trees of the park and make up this whole world with our own rules, like the ability to make time stand still and laws against needles and green Jell-O. When he got sick, he just wanted to be in the trees. He said the cancer couldn’t get worse if he was here.”

  She looked up toward the sun and closed her eyes for a minute. “I’ve always known there were special areas in the park, like Billy’s tree house or your mama’s fountain. But mostly it was just this place where I’d come to play with my brother and listen to music on summer nights. Once he got sick, though, it turned into something else. I would come by myself and talk to the trees when no one was looking. It felt like they were, I don’t know, listening. All I know was that I’d come into the park feeling like I’d never be happy again, and leave feeling there was a chance.

  “You probably think I’m crazy,” she said.

  “I’ve known crazier,” I said, and we both laughed.

  I did understand. I felt that way myself at Mama’s fountain. But maybe it was more than just the fountain. It was the whole place. This park was almost like a living version of Mama’s birds, collecting feelings so people might breathe a little easier. I hoped Mama was in a place where she could breathe easy too.

  I gave the fountain the once-over, scanning it from top to bottom, but still didn’t know what I was looking for. As much as I liked Jo, and even though she’d just told me something really personal, I couldn’t get myself to tell her about Mama and the signs. My own best friend didn’t believe me. It was one thing to believe in the Other Side, it was something else entirely to say you had proof.

  “I’m furious with him, you know?” Jo said. “For fighting with his friends and wanting an entombment party instead of a normal laser tag party, and with my mother for making everything yellow and still not being back to her normal self. Then I get mad at myself for being mad at them.”

  I understood that too. How angry I was at Grandma and Mama. At myself.

  We packed up the food and walked back toward the horses, who were calm and still, maybe even snoozing in the sunshine.

  “Do you get tired of thinking about everything all the time, how things might turn out or not turn out?” I said.

  “Really, really tired,” Jo said. “Come on, you ready to let these horses run?”

  I wasn’t, but I followed her lead and found myself as close to real flying as I’d ever been.

  25

  Building

  a Memory

  The sun went down and Mrs. Brannigan busied herself filling the kitchen with garlic and onion smells. As Jo edited the footage on her laptop at the kitchen table, I snuck into the dim living room, where the Answer Jars sat on the shelves. I closed my eyes and asked, once and for all, if Mama really was trying to tell me something. Something important. When I was sure my question had floated around long enough, I reached into a green-tinted Kerr jar and pulled out a pink slip of paper. I held it close to my chest, took a deep breath, and read my message. Three eggs, it said.

  Figuring the Great Beyond must not have heard me correctly, I reached in and took another slip of paper. This one said, Beach sand.

  There was beach sand in my duffel. One of the few things I’d saved and brought with me from place to place. I thought about that long-ago day on the beach with Mama and wondere
d what it might have to do with anything.

  “What are you doing?” Max stood on the steps, studying me.

  “I’m not sure.” I put the notes back in the jar and sat down on the bottom step. “So, Jo told me why they don’t want you to have your entombment party. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wanted you to think I was normal.”

  I laughed. Then he laughed too.

  “Jo and your parents are pretty set against it.”

  “Exactly.” Max sat down next to me and picked at the carpet.

  The phone rang in the distance and then Mrs. Brannigan called, “Grace, your grandma asked you to come over now. Jo can walk you.”

  “So what now?” I asked Max.

  He raised and then dropped his knobby shoulders.

  Exactly.

  • • •

  I thought about what Mrs. Greene had said about Grandma’s trying, and what Jo had told me about her fretting over the decoration of Mama’s room. I thought about Grandma’s own confession to snooping through my things, trying to get a sense of who I was, maybe. What might be important to me.

  Then I realized I wasn’t sure myself sometimes.

  But one thing I did know. I was cold out here in the shed. And now I had earplugs.

  I took down my dish towel curtains and folded the rag rug. I tucked Mama’s clothes, sheets, two frying pans, and the kitchen utensils into a box and carried it out to Daisy’s trunk. Which was a ways off now that Grandma insisted Daisy be parked next to the front porch. She had parked Granny Smith behind her for good measure.

  I packed the other box with Mama’s quilt, our two photo albums, all my treasure-hunt clues, and my duffel. It made me think about moving to a new place, how Mama only ever let me tape stuff to the walls—magazine cutouts, artwork and stuff. We’d buy this special two-sided tape that wouldn’t leave so much as a smidge on the paint. That’s how it had always been with Mama. Taping things up in a way that was easy to take down.

  The last thing I did was open my backpack and take out the tube that held my self-portrait. I laid it on the flower-garden sofa. Half a girl.