He could have sworn he heard the sound of scurrying feet racing across the lawn and down the slope to the street, where they padded off into nothingness. The lights went off. It startled George. He cried out in surprise.
“Honey? George?” came the thin but reassuring squeak of a voice from the bedroom, all efforts to communicate via whisper being abandoned at this point. “Quit yelling! What’s with this ‘Hey!’ business, anyway?”
“I thought I heard something,” said George. “Maybe it’s nothing. Snipping. Something tearing off into the street. Then, the light went off. Whatever was out there is gone now.”
“Well, look around anyway, please. I’m coming out.”
George waited for the soft shuffling of Nan moving over the hallway carpet. He didn’t really care for this notion of going outside on a scouting expedition for something that wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. Especially since all the signs pointed to it being gone—or just about gone—with no intention of sticking around and causing a fuss . . . that is, unless cornered or provoked.
“Lead the way,” said Nan, clinging to his pajama top. “I’m right behind you.” George slowly opened the screen door. He cringed when it squeaked, and just about jumped out of his pajamas when he stepped onto the patio and the floodlights came on again.
“Well,” he said, chuckling nervously. “Whatever it is that’s out there, if it’s still out there, can certainly see us now, though we just as certainly can’t see it.” They crept toward the edge of the darkness.
“I don’t hear anything,” Nan whispered.
“Aliens from another planet. Didn’t you hear the snips?”
Nan sniggered.
“Aliens don’t snip, they beep,” she said.
“You said you heard something. It wasn’t snipping sounds?”
“No. I heard something. But nothing I could identify as a snipping. What I heard was more like something in motion, Very subtle, but out here for sure. Probably just kids screwing around.”
“Kids snipping?”
“I don’t know, George,” said Nan, the need to sleep winning the battle over her initial disquietude. “Maybe kids. Maybe snipping. But snipping about what?”
“Not snipping as in dissing someone. That would be sniping. Not being snippy. Snipping as in snipping. You know. Snip, snip.”
“This is getting silly,” said Nan with a yawn. “Who cares if it was kids, and who cares if kids were snipping. No sign of any damage done. We’ll check tomorrow. If it keeps up for a few more nights, I’ll get more worried. But, right now, I need sleeeep.”
“Maybe it was our kids snipping. I know I heard snipping.”
“Okay. If it makes you happy, we’ll check the rooms on the way back.”
Sis was in her room downstairs, which was a good thing since she wasn’t allowed out past midnight. Upstairs, a big snoring lump indicated that Ellis was in. Next door, there was Cullen, curled up under the blanket.
“Hmmm,” said George. “So who was it out there, and what the hell were those snips?”
“Just mischievous kids who probably had a few nights of fun in the woods, and won’t ever come back again,” Nan said. “Now, get back to bed before I decide to get out the loppers and snip you.”
10
Cutworms
“This is obviously the work of an amateur . . . a rank amateur.”
Dr. Sproot turned from the computer monitor she had been studying. She focused her squint-eyed stare on the furiously blinking Marta, who fought the overpowering urge to hunch over and lower her head like a cringing animal.
They had spent the morning going over Marta’s notes. Those had been carefully arranged by backyard section to fill twenty-seven impeccably typed pages held in a fuchsia-colored ring binder, picked out specially by Marta to reflect Dr. Sproot’s favorite non-garden color. There were also five maps drawn by Marta to professional draftsman standards.
Through it all, Marta noticed Dr. Sproot downing mug after mug of steaming coffee without any apparent effect on her damaged throat. Apart from reiterating her threat to sue, she had not mentioned her throat or any sort of medical prognosis or treatment in the week and a half since she had been scalded by Marta’s hot tea. Wouldn’t someone as coffee-amped as Dr. Sproot find that a natural topic to broach, especially to her alleged best friend and the perpetrator of the injury?
Marta toyed with the notion of bringing up the subject in some sort of indirect way just to see what kind of response she would get, but quickly backed off: such recklessness could set off another confrontation with her old friend and more threats. At this point, Marta couldn’t bring herself to face any more of that unpleasantness and the disturbing ramifications it might have.
Much of their morning’s work involved Dr. Sproot tearing apart Marta’s efforts. She picked apart her notes for mistakes—of which Marta freely admitted there were probably a few. She shook her head in disgust at the appearance of smudges on pages four and seventeen. She wondered why Marta, on her maps, had drawn the various plants and flowers in mere black pencil, instead of their true colors, seeing as how pencils of every conceivable hue could easily be obtained at Lelia’s Artsy Stuff, near the high school, on the corner of Tremblant and 33rd.
Now, as the day approached mid-afternoon, Dr. Sproot wasted no time dashing Marta’s hopes that she would fare better on her photographs.
“Look at this, blast it all,” Dr. Sproot said. “I mean, some of these photos are out of focus. Some are too close. Some are too far away. What am I going to do with these? I can barely see them. How am I to even tell what’s here? Huh? You have failed me, Marta. Failed! Failed! Failed! And just when I need you the most.”
Marta leaned in toward the photograph glaring at them from the monitor. There was nothing wrong with it. The detail and perspective were perfect. The clarity and light were all she could have hoped for. She had risked ridicule and worse to take this and scores more pictures for Dr. Sproot. Now, to be subjected to this, even by a flawed, vulnerable, yet towering genius. . . well, this time she wasn’t going to sit there and just meekly agree. She would meekly disagree.
“They look crystal clear to me, Dr. Sproot. I thought they were quite detailed and very good, actually.”
Dr. Sproot snorted.
“Very good! Very good, you say! Good God, woman, you might as well have sent a kindergartner over there with a box of crayons or an Etch A Sketch!”
Marta cleared her throat and gazed at the photo she had taken of some meadowsweet they had not noticed before. Meadowsweet! An interesting choice. It would require lots of watering, but that wouldn’t be a problem for the Fremonts. They were every bit as diligent as Dr. Sproot. What’s more, they put their hearts and their joie de vivre into their gardens. She could tell the moment she set foot in them. The flowers and shoots seemed to want to jump out to her in their joy and fecundity. Even in the photographs, you could see that.
Dr. Sproot’s gardens delivered no such warmth. They were like wild animals tamed by the confines of their zoo cages into facsimiles of themselves. Suddenly, the whole notion of the yuccas and coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend seemed inane to Marta. It was like a parody of gardening, with Dr. Sproot as the chief gardening clown. Marta stifled a nervous titter. She imagined Dr. Phyllis Sproot as Doc-Phil-the-Flower-Buffoon dressed in floppy shoes, moth-eaten hat, and a tatterdemalion suit, with a little plastic flower attached to her lapel that would squirt hot coffee in your face if you got too close.
Dr. Sproot frowned at the monitor, clicking her mouse to move from one photograph to the next. She muttered something, then snarled. That snarling was something new, even for Dr. Sproot. It signaled that she might be reaching deep within her tortured soul for something better left unplumbed.
The depth of Dr. Sproot’s knowledge never ceased to amaze Marta. Why, there were shoots that had just barely come up through the ground, and Dr. Sproot ID’d them without hesitation. After two hours of going through Marta’s photos, she had identified thir
ty-four different kinds of flowers, shrubs, and vines, and four places where freshly turned and dampened soil indicated that something would likely be coming up soon.
“Very well,” Dr. Sproot said. “Let’s go back and pay special attention to the monarda, the first target of our ‘death-by-a-thousand-cuts’ campaign, eh?” She clicked back through the images. “Ah-ha, here we are. Now, let’s take a closer look.”
Marta stiffened. It was bad enough to get all furtive and dressed up in a steaming hot, ridiculous outfit to go snooping around in somebody’s yard, but to violate someone’s gardens by taking the snippers to them was quite another thing. To say nothing of having to perform the act of destruction with noisy snippers that no amount of cleaning and oiling would quiet. It was no wonder she woke up the Fremonts that night and had to go running through the dark down that wretched hill again. At least she hadn’t crashed into a tree! Well, she thought, thank goodness the task was finished.
Dr. Sproot blew up the image of the monarda and studied it intently.
“Well, Marta, you’ve done the job far too subtly, I can tell that right off the bat. For crying out loud, I can barely tell where you snipped.”
“But wasn’t that the idea, Dr. Sproot?” said Marta, puzzled at how Dr. Sproot could suddenly make out the details of her photographs quite easily.
“The idea, Marta, was to make it so the damage was not overly obvious. The idea was not to make it so much so that the blasted flowers will look virtually the same when they bloom. What is the point of that? Good Lord, look at this! It’s like looking at a Where’s Waldo . . . Ah-ha, there’s a snipped stem . . . uh . . . and . . . there’s another . . . And that’s all, Marta?”
Marta squirmed.
“Well, Dr. Sproot, if you look at my photos of the other monarda, you will see that I snipped some of them, too.” She clicked on another photo.
“For heaven’s sake, where have you snipped? Um-hmm, there’s a little snip . . . and . . . there’s another, barely noticeable to the well-trained eye, which, of course, is what we’re dealing with here. If I can’t notice the difference without prolonged and careful inspection, how in God’s name do you expect the judges to? And, Marta, these are judges who won’t have the leisure that we do to examine each stem so carefully. What do you say to that, hmmmm, Marta?”
“I say that I tried my best, Dr. Sproot. Gracious, you can see where the stems have been cut and I’d be amazed if the Fremonts can’t tell. I actually thought I was erring on the side of being too obvious.”
Dr. Sproot gazed upon Marta with all the scorn she could cram into a stare.
“You’ll have to go back and do more snipping, Marta. This simply isn’t enough. I want you to go after the monarda again, then hit some of the roses. It is a fine line between subtle and obvious destruction, Marta, but you have not even come close to grazing that line. This, of course, is in addition to your continued spying mission. Do I make myself clear?”
Marta could only nod meekly in agreement, and hate herself for doing so. Secretly, she swore to draw the line this time. She would continue her undercover work, as onerous and mortifying as that was, but she would not cut and cripple any more flowers. Would not!
“Ugh!” cried Dr. Sproot, who had been clicking through some photographs she had neglected to examine during her first run-through. “Those ghastly angel’s trumpets! So lovely and yet so lethal.”
She pushed herself back from the monitor, yet continued to stare intently at the image that would not allow her to look away.
“Do you want me to cut those, too, Dr. Sproot?” Marta wondered. “It would be awful if you did, but I know how you hate them.”
“Cut them? Why certainly not! Of course not! That would be too obvious. Far too obvious. That would be the work of nothing less than a top-flight professional. And it would destroy a feeble little thing like you, Marta, or at least scramble your mind beyond recognition. I would not cast you into such a dangerous situation, Marta. How dare you think for one moment that I would do such a thing! And look, look, would you, how they have some power over me. I can’t look away! Can’t! They’ve got me in their clutches! Turn off the computer, Marta! Turn it off quickly if you value my life!”
Marta, stunned by Dr. Sproot’s reaction to what seemed to her nothing more than a benign image of some lovely, sweet-smelling flowers—flowers she would consider planting in her own gardens were it not for Dr. Sproot’s dire warnings—bent over to turn off the computer. Dr. Sproot collapsed in her chair with a gasp.
“Well, it took you long enough,” she whimpered. “It took you blasted long enough when you could see that a few more moments and I might have been lost to their hypnotic spell. Why, maybe you’re so slow because you’ve been exposed to them, Marta. Have you ever thought of that? I hope you were wearing an appropriate breathing apparatus when you approached them. Otherwise, there’s no telling what might happen to you.”
11
What Cold Fronts Do
Sometimes in the summer the wind shifts and blows down from Canada, which is to say it comes out of the northwest. It is a cool, dry wind that sweeps away the murky, heavy-aired stillness that oozes up from the south and so inexorably settles down upon the land, unrelenting and unmovable. This cool air mass comes barreling down quickly, often hard on the heels of thunderstorms, impatient, it seems, to relieve all those who have been sweltering through that wet, stifling swimming weather and conducting their lives in a kind of greasy, downtrodden slow motion because of it.
There is no particular name for this refreshing draft, though there should be, because when the shift comes, everyone notices, and everyone talks about it. Deep, sultry summer becomes bright, sparkling May. The old and turgid becomes new and sprightly. Friendly cumulus clouds, looking like giant, tumbling cotton balls, sail across the sky as brief visitors. Moods brighten. Movements quicken. Some people say they almost feel resurrected. Any researchers doing a study of what happens before and after these Canadian cold fronts come through would undoubtedly find marked differences in productivity, visits to psychiatrists, jogging mileage tallied, and the incidence of friendly and charitable gestures.
It was at times such as these that Nan swore she could see smiles spanning the width of all her flowers’ upturned blossoms and leaves. Actually, all except the Dusty Miller. Despite showering more than the usual care and fertilizer on it, Nan had been unable to coax the wretched little albino malcontent into anything approaching the brilliance that all the others had worked so hard to achieve. Perhaps, she thought, it’s destined for a different fate. Or maybe it’s one of those evil plants, a sort of secret weed camouflaged as this meek little snowy thing. She would have to watch for signs that it might be spreading its negative contagion to its neighbors, the monarda, purple coneflowers, and balloon flowers. In the meantime, she thought of a riddle for George:
“Why is monarda like a weapon? . . . Because it’s a bee balm! Ha-ha. Ha-ha.”
Cold fronts always brought out the neighbors. Mitzi and Howard “Frip” Rodard were the first. They ambled up the railroad tie steps toward the Fremonts, talking animatedly and gesticulating wildly to each other, as those chatterboxes always would.
George and Nan watched their approach with some apprehension; when the Rodards showed up, you knew you were in for a gabfest that would keep you a good hour and a half, conservatively. What’s more, they were the world’s greatest contrarians; make any sort of declaration, and they were bound to contradict it. When talking to the Rodards, it was best to never say anything definitive, though George would often play with them, tossing out one observation after another that either begged to be challenged or was so patently correct that questioning it would be comically absurd.
“Fripper, Mitzi,” George said. “What’s happening?”
“Why?” Frip said. “Should there be anything happening?”
“I don’t know of anything happening,” Mitzi said. “You must know of something we don’t.” The Rodards frowned. Geor
ge and Nan tittered.
“You’re right,” Nan said. “We don’t know of anything happening and there’s no reason anything should be.”
“Well, there could be,” Mitzi said. “There’s always something happening.”
“In fact, there is,” said Frip as he and Mitzi settled into the other two patio chairs, which responded with squeaks and groans from the fabric backing and coiled metal springs. “We’re having that big ash in our front yard cut down.”
Nan gasped.
“That beautiful ash! That’s the biggest tree in your yard. It must be hundreds of years old.”
“It’s actually quite ugly,” Mitzi said. “As for age, I wouldn’t place it at more than sixty or seventy years.”
“You’re right,” said George, lifting his drink mischievously. “It’s the ugliest tree in the neighborhood. Drink?”
“It’s actually much admired by the neighbors,” Frip said. “And it has its points. For instance, the leaves turn a lovely yellow in the fall. No, no thanks. Mitzi?”
“Mitzi what?”
“Drink?”
“No, dear, we have to be off in, uh, fifteen minutes,” said Mitzi, stealing a quick glance at her watch. Nan and George looked at each other, amazed. If that indeed proved to be the case, it would set a record for Rodard brevity.
“Any other time, sure,” Frip said. “But not today. We’ve got a recital downtown.”
“Mippi must be playing,” said George, shooting a quick wink at Nan. “Wish I could hear her. She’s so talented.”
“In a manner of speaking, it is Mippi,” said Mitzi, referring to her fifteen-year-old daughter, whose real name was Beatrice. “But, in a way, it’s not. Mippi’s only part of the recital.”
“Talented?” Frip mused as he stroked his chin then threw his arms skyward for no reason that Nan or George could discern. “Well, that’s kind of a loaded term, isn’t it? She’s got a long way to go on that darned cello. I’m not sure I’d call it talent. Perseverance is more like it.”
Backyard Page 8
