“I was sent to cheer her up,” said Roy, picking up where they left off. “You were sent because they were trying to get rid of you.”
“Rid of me?” Margaret stopped. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I do, too. I heard Gran talking to him on the phone before you came. Your dad said you were being a handful and Gran said that must make it hard on everyone. Then she said, ‘Why don’t you send Margaret here?’”
There was a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. She should have known. Dad had made it sound as if he was trying to be nice to her. But that wasn’t it at all. All he really cared about was Wendy and the girls. They were probably having a much better time at home without her, sitting together in the family room with the twins on the floor in their usual tangled heap and Claire on the couch between Wendy and Dad, peacefully enjoying being a family. Without her.
“A handful of what?” she said, tossing her hair back over her shoulder as if she didn’t care.
“Not a handful of anything,” said Roy. He pulled a small notebook out of his back pocket and opened it. “It means you’re hard to handle. I looked it up. The first definition is ‘A small amount or quantity,’ but that’s not what Uncle Matt meant.” He stopped and ran his finger down a page. “He meant, ‘Someone or something that is as much as one can handle.’ As in,” here he looked at Margaret with the sun glinting off his glasses, “‘That child is a real handful.’”
“As in?” said Margaret. She was suddenly wildly, amazingly angry. At Roy … at Dad … at herself. She didn’t know where to direct her anger, it was so new and blazing hot.
“Do you know what a nerd you are, writing down words like that?” she said. Her wide mouth flattened into a disapproving line. “Everyone at school must make fun of you.”
“I don’t mind.” Roy looked back at her with a friendly, unguarded expression on his face. “Words are interesting.”
As hard as she tried to stare him down, he didn’t flinch. “I can’t believe this,” she said finally. She turned on her heel and started to walk as quickly as she could. A slight breeze ruffled the leaves overhead, and the faint sound of a lawn mower started up somewhere in the distance. Walking in and out of the shadows of the trees had a regular, calming effect, Margaret thought, like a metronome. She could hear Roy trotting along in companionable silence behind her.
“I don’t think being a handful’s so bad,” he piped up suddenly. “It must be pretty interesting sometimes.”
She stopped and looked at him in amazement. He was trying to be kind. She had just insulted him and had marched off in a huff trying to ignore him, and here he was, being nice to her. Her anger went up in a puff of smoke.
“Remember when you came to our house last summer?” she said to him.
“That was fun.”
“Remember when I told you I hated you, and you cried?” She shook her head. “That was so amazing.” “I don’t think it was amazing,” Roy said. “You hurt my feelings.”
“But I say that to the girls all the time, and they say it to me,” said Margaret. “It doesn’t really mean anything.”
“To me it does.”
“No one says it to you because you’re an only child,” she said, remembering.
“They don’t that much. All I have is my parents.” Roy thought for a minute. “Do your parents tell you they hate you?”
“Of course not,” said Margaret. It was true. As many times as she might have thought about hating Wendy, Wendy had never once thought about hating her, she suddenly realized. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did. And it made her feel so glad, she laughed.
“Come on.” She stepped up onto the edge of the curb and held her arms out to the sides. “Both arms out and no looking at your feet,” she said.
“Okay,” said Roy, stepping up behind her. “But no more stone walls.”
“Okay.”
“What do you think the baby will be?” said Roy after a while.
“Are you joking? All Wendy has is girls.”
“Maybe having another girl will be nice,” he said. “It was kind of fun, having them around. When they weren’t crying, that is.”
“Which is never.” Margaret started to hop on one foot. “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to listen to Sarah making snurgling noises through the wall every night.”
“Snurgling?” Roy sounded interested. “I don’t think that’s a word.”
“It should be.”
“What does snurgling sound like?”
Margaret stopped. “Kind of like little bubbles are coming out of your nose, and you’re breathing through your mouth with phlegm in the back of your throat.” She started up again, on the other foot this time. “Sarah won’t wear anything except her bathing suit, so she always has a cold.”
“Even in winter?” said Roy. He fell off the curb for the second time and gave up, following along behind her in the road.
“That’s better than Emily,” Margaret said. “For a long time, she wouldn’t wear anything at all.”
“Nothing?”
“Except boots. You couldn’t turn your back on her for a minute.” Margaret leapt off the curb and spun around. “No fair, cheater!”
But there wasn’t any passion in it. They were home.
Margaret felt a strange sinking feeling as she looked at Gran’s front door. It was black, like all the other doors. When they’d first moved into Carol Woods, Gran said she was going to paint it a different color every spring, the way she’d painted the front door at Blackberry Lane different colors. But then she found out that there was a rule against it, so she didn’t. Looking at it now, Margaret wished it was yellow or red—any color other than black that would mean Gran was behind it, the old Gran, the happy Gran.
“What’s wrong?” said Roy.
Margaret looked at him, startled. She’d forgotten for a moment that he was there. “Why should anything be wrong?”
“You look kind of funny.”
“Look who’s talking.” She peered at him closely for the first time. “You’re a mess,” she said, poking her finger into the hem of her T-shirt to make a washcloth.
“No spit,” he said, pulling back.
“No spit.” She put her hand on the back of his neck, the way she’d learned to do with the girls, and scrubbed at his face until the tear tracks running out from under his glasses joined with a dirty circle around his mouth. “There,” she said. “That’s better.” Margaret opened the gate and started toward the house.
“We’d better be quiet,” Roy whispered. “She might be taking a nap.”
“Who, Gran?” The thought horrified her. “Gran doesn’t take naps.”
“She did the day before you got here. She fell asleep in her chair, sitting up… .” His voice trailed off.
“That’s ridiculous,” Margaret snapped. “Only babies take naps.”
She grabbed the knocker and rapped it against the door like a fireman come to alert the house to the fact that flames were shooting out of an upstairs window. “Gran!” she cried, throwing open the front door. “We’re back!”
And there was Gran, coming in through the doors from the back patio with a smile on her face and a trowel in her hand, awake.
Chapter 3
“There you are!” said Gran. She sounded surprised and pleased, as if they had all been playing hide-and-seek and she had been scouring the house for them, checking under beds and behind doors. Until at last she’d found them crouched behind a pile of clothing in the closet, giggling.
“Roy said you were taking a nap, but I knew you weren’t,” said Margaret. She ran across the room and threw her arms around Gran’s waist.
“Margaret, you’ll cut me in two!” Gran protested, laughing.
Margaret let go and stood back. “You were gardening,” she said with satisfaction. Gran looked happy. She had a smudge of dirt on one cheek, the knees of her jeans were stained green, and her big toe was poking its way throug
h a hole in her sneaker. It was the way Gran had looked at Blackberry Lane. She always seemed to be either going out to the garden behind the house, or coming in from it. That garden was huge. Sometimes Margaret helped her weed. Other times, they sat together and ate ripe tomatoes right off the vine with the juice running down their arms to their elbows.
Margaret fell into a large, soft chair next to the fireplace. “Are you going to grow strawberries and squash, like you used to?” she said happily.
“With the space I have?” Gran put the trowel on the table and started to peel off her gardening gloves. “I’m afraid not. I’ll be lucky if I can coax a few tomatoes into life in pots. I only get about two hours of sun on the terrace.”
“Why don’t you make a compost pile?” said Roy, lying comfortably on his stomach on the rug. “That would help.”
“It’s not allowed.”
“Says who?” said Margaret.
“Mr. Roland Whiting,” said Gran crisply.
“Who’s he?”
“President of the Carol Woods Steering Committee.” Gran sat down on the couch and tucked a piece of hair back into the bun at the nape of her neck. Her face, which was usually so tan, was pale. “No compost piles … no clotheslines … no color …” Her face grew still. “No signs of humanity of any kind.”
There was a heavy silence in the room. Watching Gran, Margaret was suddenly reminded of a conversation she’d overheard between Dad and Wendy in the living room one night. The little girls were asleep and she was supposed to be reading in bed, but she’d tiptoed down the hall to crouch in her usual hiding spot behind the banister in the upstairs hall.
“Mom got another letter from Mr. Whiting,” her dad said.
“What is he objecting to this time?”
Her dad sighed. “Remember the flowered curtains that used to be in Margaret’s room at Blackberry Lane? Mom hung them in her new guest room as a surprise.”
“Oh, Matt.” Wendy sounded sympathetic. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, you would think, but Carol Woods has an exterior appearance rule, and Mom broke it.”
“And what is an exterior appearance rule?”
“The residents are allowed to hang only white curtains in their windows,” her dad said. “They want all the houses to look the same from the outside.”
“Boy, your mother must hate that.”
“She does, but Carol Woods is a retirement community, and retirement communities have rules.”
“I know they do,” Wendy said, “but you have to admit, some of them are pretty silly. Your poor mother had a fit when she got the letter about hanging her wash on the line.”
“Rules are rules, Wendy.” Her dad’s voice had been tired. Margaret could tell he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. As she ran back to her bed and slipped beneath the covers, she’d been filled with indignation. Gran will never put up with people telling her what to do, she thought as she pulled the blanket up to her chin.
But Gran was putting up with it now.
Margaret sat up. “Why don’t you go talk to the Steering Committee about it?” she said encouragingly. “You never let people tell you what to do. Remember that time they were going to widen Blackberry Lane and everyone was going to lose five feet from their yards, so you led a big protest and they stopped? Do that here.”
“I’m afraid I was a lot younger and had a lot more energy back then, Margaret.” Gran leaned her head against the back of the couch and closed her eyes. “And I don’t think I can bear to hear about one more thing I’m not allowed to do.”
“But maybe if you talked to him …”
“Please. Don’t hound me.”
Margaret sat back, hurt. She wasn’t hounding Gran, she was trying to rev her up. Trying to make Gran stand up for herself, the way she always told Margaret she should. But there Gran was, leaning back in that exhausted way with her eyes closed as if she didn’t have the energy to do anything anymore.
Tears of frustration prickled behind Margaret’s eyes.
“I hate Mr. Whiting,” said Roy.
“Me, too,” said Margaret.
“Me, three,” said Gran. Then her eyes shot open and she actually laughed. “Listen to me,” she said, sitting up straight. “I sound like a child.”
She was all energy again, filled with love and concern as she patted the couch on either side of her. “Come here, both of you,” she said. “I’m sorry I’ve upset you.” She put an arm around each of them as they settled down next to her. Roy immediately slumped against her, but Margaret held herself stiff. “You mustn’t worry about me. I’m fine, really. I don’t know what gets into me. I go along perfectly happy for days at a time, and then something happens to set me off. Seeing your shining faces makes me think of how much Tad would love to be here, enjoying you the way I am.”
“Are you going to die of a broken heart?” said Roy in a small voice.
“No, Roy, I’m not.” Gran’s voice was firm. “I may have to live with one for a while, but I’m definitely not going to die of one. I was married to your grandfather for a long time, so of course I’m sad. But I think that if I missed him one iota less than I do, that would be more sad, don’t you?”
She looked at Margaret’s glum face, and then at Roy’s, and laughed. “Look at you both!” she said. “You’re two of the gloomiest cheerer-uppers I’ve ever seen. Come on, what would you like to do this afternoon?”
Roy was caught up in her new mood immediately. “Can we go to the zoo?” he said. “The one you took me to when I was little?”
“What, you’re not little anymore?” Gran laughed. “I don’t see why not. How about you, Margaret?”
Margaret hesitated. It was scary, the way Gran kept changing. One minute she was sad, the next minute she was happy. Margaret wasn’t sure she could trust this new mood, but there was something she wanted to do, more than anything. “Could we maybe drive by Blackberry Lane?” she said tentatively. “Maybe the new people will let Roy and me climb the tree fort.”
The minute she said it, she knew it was a mistake, because Gran’s face fell again. Oh, she wished Gran would try it, just try it. It would do her good. Gran missed the old house, too, Margaret could tell. It would be so wonderful to drive by. Margaret had spent so much time there, it was as familiar to her as her own house. She loved the slanting floors upstairs, and the wide screen porch that wrapped around two sides of the house. She loved the round window at the bottom of the stairs that the sun shone through as dependably as a clock. Tad said the stairs could tell time. “Yep, it’s one o’clock,” he would say in the summer when the sun hit the second step from the bottom. And “Uh-oh, almost lunchtime,” when it shone on the fourth step in the winter.
If Gran drove past the house, it would make her feel better—Margaret knew it would. But she wasn’t going to. Margaret’s shoulders sagged as Gran turned to stare blankly out the window.
“Oh, I don’t know… .” Her voice trailed off. “To tell you the truth, I’m a bit afraid of seeing Blackberry Lane again.”
It was too hard, Margaret thought. It was just too hard. Gran was like the sun on a windy day—shining bright one minute, hidden behind a cloud the next.
She looked down at her watch now and jumped to her feet, as if surprised. “My goodness, I didn’t realize how late it was. You children must be starving.” She left the room quickly. She’s running away, Margaret thought, watching her. Running away from me. “I’ll go wash my hands,” she said over her shoulder, “then we’ll have lunch.”
Roy and Margaret looked at each other without speaking as they listened to Gran’s footsteps in the hallway and then her bedroom door closing.
“It wasn’t me this time,” Roy said quickly.
“It wasn’t anyone,” said Margaret bitterly. “It was Gran.”
“Do you think she’s crying again?” he said.
“You heard her. She’s fine.” Margaret got up and started to move restlessly around the room, picking up a magaz
ine, then throwing it down. Taking one of Gran’s glass animals off the shelf, then putting it back. She stopped by Gran’s desk and stared down at her gloves.
“She’s fine,” she said again.
Roy watched her for a minute, then pulled his notebook out of his pocket and rested it on his knees. “How do you think you spell that?” he said.
“Spell what?” Margaret picked up one of Gran’s gloves and frowned.
“Iota. Do you think it’s spelled the way it sounds?”
“How should I know? I don’t even know what it means,” she said impatiently. She shoved her hand into Gran’s glove and then stared at it, amazed. How could Gran’s glove fit her hand? Shouldn’t it be much too big? Was Gran shrinking? Disappearing, right in front of Margaret’s eyes?
“I don’t know what it means, either,” said Roy. “That’s why I want to look it up.” He looked at Margaret expectantly, waiting for an answer. But it never came. When she finally looked up, he was gone.
Chapter 4
The sun shining in her eyes woke Margaret up the next morning. She jumped out of bed and pulled on some shorts and a T-shirt, then slipped her feet into her sandals and ran a comb through her hair. She knew how to get this day off to a good start. She knew exactly how.
She ran down the hall and was about to head into the kitchen but then stopped. “Gran?” Margaret walked slowly into the living room. “Are you okay?”
Gran turned away from the picture window and smiled. “Good morning, Margaret. Come sit down.” She patted the couch next to her. “I’m watching the birds on the feeder. We seem to have a family of cardinals.”
“You’re still in your pajamas,” Margaret said. “You never come to breakfast in your pajamas.”
“I do now, actually, from time to time,” said Gran. She smiled vaguely. “Without Tad to cook breakfast for, or the garden to look after, there’s really no reason to get dressed as early as I used to, is there?”
“But what about our walk?” It was silly, Margaret knew it was silly. But her eyes were suddenly stinging like mad. “We always took a walk first thing in the morning, remember? I thought maybe we could today.”
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