Front Yard Page 7

  “I’m toying with a couple more ground covers and maybe even a tree or two. I love paper birches!”

  “I love paper birches, too, Shirelle!” Nan cried. “And I had just been thinking about placing one at the bottom of the slope, where it levels out, next to the intersection. Then, maybe putting a little rock garden around it.”

  “That’s exactly where I was thinking of putting it, Mrs. Fremont! You’ll need to give it plenty of TLC, though. Lots of mulch. A rock garden? Hmmm, I don’t know. You need to concentrate on moisture collection at the base of paper birches. Very nice, design-wise, though. We’ll see. You know, Mrs. Fremont, this would not be a paper birch’s favorite location. But in terms of letting it stick out in all its glory, yes!”

  “Now, Shirelle,” said a suddenly stern Nan. “Your plan is wonderful and we’re delighted with it. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. But . . .”

  But? But what? There are reservations? Shirelle felt the color drain out of her florid face.

  “What I mean to say, Shirelle, is that I have one teensy-weensy concern.”

  Nan leaned over the tabletop toward her in a conspiratorial way and began to whisper.

  “I’ve heard through the grapevine that hybrid tea roses are stuck-up prima donnas. Real snobs. Um-hmmm. And that they will cause us nothing but grief.”

  Wanting to be cooperative and conspiratorial, too, even though she had no idea what Nan was talking about, Shirelle lurched forward instead of leaning slowly, almost knocking heads with Nan. Nan cupped her hands around her mouth to whisper into Shirelle’s ear, which Shirelle had obligingly tilted toward her.

  “Our backyard friends,” she said. “Our flowers. They know these things.” Shirelle nodded, then slowly looked around as if to spot any hidden and unwelcome eavesdroppers. She knew Mrs. Fremont was well-versed in the arcane art of plant whispering, but this was taking it to a whole new level. She tingled with excitement.

  “Ordinarily, you might chalk this up to pettiness and jealousy,” Nan said. “But this is coming from reliable sources, too. You know, the petunias. They’re only here for a year. They believe they have to prove themselves during their brief existence by not only making themselves beautiful, but by ratting on the bad influences in the gardens.”

  Shirelle just nodded. What could you say when someone was passing on such a remarkable confidence?

  “Well, let’s go ahead with them,” said Nan, pulling away from Shirelle and throwing her hands up. “I’m sure we can handle a few difficult characters in the gardens. Not everyone can have the stoicism of the clematis or the equanimity of the daylily.”

  “Or the humor of the variegated dogwoods,” said George, chuckling. “They’re such a hoot!”

  “Yes, dear, you do have a way with the variegated dogwoods, don’t you? You must have tapped into their male persona. Their female persona is too snooty by far for my taste. Well, and I did have that problem with the Dusty Miller.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Shirelle. “I heard about that.”

  George wrinkled his nose and frowned.

  “They wouldn’t grow for me, the little albino shits. They were the only ones that never responded to anything I did. All my coaxing, putting them first in line for the Miracle-Gro, singing my favorite songs to them. Lord knows, I tried everything. I’ll try them again sometime, though I must have earned a pretty bad reputation, yanking them out of the soil and throwing them in the compost the way I did.”

  “Massacre,” George said. “They might have been mutes. Did you ever stop to consider that?”

  “That’s putting it a little strong, George. Besides, they weren’t wanted. I never heard any of the other plants complaining about it when I did that. It was a ‘good riddance’ kind of thing.”

  Shirelle smiled. Wasn’t it amazing that Mrs. Fremont could actually talk to her flowers! And Mr. Fremont, too, though Shirelle couldn’t help but believe that that was likely on a much more rudimentary level.

  “Don’t forget the Baltimore oriole feeder and the bluebird houses, Shirelle.”

  “Huh? I mean, excuse me?” Shirelle placed her fingertips decorously on her lips as if she had just said something untoward and instantly regretted it.

  “The oriole feeder.”

  Birds. Shirelle knew nothing about birds.

  “And, while we’re at it, the bluebird houses. We already have them, so you don’t have to worry about making them.”

  Shirelle bent over her drawing, looking for the best place to put these new additions to the front yard gardens. She stroked her chin, erased something, then drew something in. Nan leaned over to try to get a peek.

  “Simple,” said Shirelle. “I’ve got the bluebird houses at either end of the highest part of the slope, then the oriole feeder smack in the middle, among the hybrid tea roses. The symmetry should work out just fine. It’s good to have a few manmade items sticking out of all the natural stuff.”

  Mary, meanwhile, had gotten up and was inspecting the backyard gardens, which were poised to spring to life once the temperatures rose, now that the rains had stopped and a bright, direct May sun was shining down on them.

  “Any day now,” Mary said, sitting back down at the patio. “God knows we’ve had plenty of rain. I can see the tips of hosta, there are buds on the creeping phlox, and the bleeding hearts are three inches tall. Hope they shoot up before getting covered by hosta leaves. Nothing wrong with the columbine. Another couple of days and they’ll be bursting out. Silver maples, ash, locust, and sugar maple just starting to leaf.”

  A white sedan of uncertain make, but which looked vaguely familiar, pulled into the driveway.

  “Who might that be?” wondered George.

  A lanky middle-aged woman wearing oversized sunglasses got out of the front passenger side of the car, followed by the driver, a shorter, stouter woman, also wearing sunglasses.

  “My God!” cried George.

  “My God?” said Nan. “What are you ‘my God-ing’ about?”

  “Keep looking. Because you will soon recognize Marta Poppendauber, accompanied by one Dr. Phyllis Sproot.”

  “My God!” cried Nan.

  9

  Reunion and Reparation

  “Mary, Shirelle, you girls go ahead and scoot. Go around to the front yard and continue staking out your plots, or whatever it is you’re doing now. Go on, shoo. George, a couple of gin and tonics for us, please. Mixed strongly. I think I’m going to need to fortify my constitution for this. Chop-chop!”

  “So that’s the infamous Dr. Phyllis Sproot,” said Mary. “Ha-ha! I guess I better go fetch the shotgun and shells, huh, Ma?”

  “You got a shotgun?” said Shirelle, who had grown up in the western part of the state, where you had to have bagged a minimum of four Canada geese and three mergansers before you could attend high school or get your driver’s license. “What kind? At this range, I’d say a twelve-gauge pump action. Five-shell magazine capacity. Yep, that should do the job just fine.”

  “Scat, I said!” yipped Nan, and the two girls scurried off toward the back, then around the corner.

  “George, are you armed?”

  “Sure am,” said George, setting two freshened gin and tonics on the table. Nan took a quick sip, then puckered up her lips.

  “Whoa, George, are you loaded for bear or what!”

  The two women had been making their way deliberately up the steps from the driveway to the patio. Halfway up the steps, the tall, lanky woman stopped, seemingly oblivious to the two seated persons anxiously awaiting her arrival, and made a slight pivot to her right, turning her head to take in the full panorama of the still-dormant backyard.

  “The season’s late this year,” she said, either addressing everyone or no one. The shorter woman smiled up at the Fremonts, then grabbed her companion by the crook of her arm and moved on slowly up the steps.

  “Nan and George,” she said. “Long time, no see. How are you? How’s everything progressing this year?”

 
; “Slow, Marta,” said Nan. “Slow. As you can see. I’m afraid we don’t have much to show you yet. Dr. Sproot, I presume.” The taller woman nodded, her face largely shielded by her sunglasses. “And to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?”

  Nan noticed that Dr. Sproot was carrying what appeared to be a miniature house; not a dollhouse or a birdhouse, but something in between. It looked a bit like an A-frame cabin open on one side and made of twigs and bark with flooring fashioned from stained popsicle sticks. Sphagnum peat moss and grass clippings had been stuffed into the corners of the structure, which was about a foot tall and wide, and seven inches or so deep. It smelled of pine sap, even at this distance.

  “A little house for your rats, Dr. Sproot? Or your tarantulas maybe?”

  “Nan!” said George.

  Dr. Sproot’s hands trembled. Her lips curled into a sneer that she meant as a smile. George chuckled and took a long draw from his gin and tonic. Marta squinched her face in sadness.

  “Gin and tonic?” chirped George.

  “Thanks, George,” Marta said. “But maybe some other time for me. Right now, we’re here to ask a favor, and my friend, Phyllis, comes here as a supplicant.”

  “What, you can’t speak for yourself, Sproot?” scolded Nan, emboldened by the gin with its hint of tonic she had just guzzled. She turned to Marta, addressing her as if Dr. Sproot wasn’t even there. “She’s got a lot of nerve, asking us for a favor.”

  Marta turned to Dr. Sproot and nodded. Dr. Sproot cleared her throat in a disgusting, phlegmy way.

  “This is a fairy house,” she said in that gravelly contralto Nan and George remembered so well from last year. “I was wondering if I could put my fairy house in your garden this year. It attracts fairies, you know, and from everything I’ve heard fairies are very good for gardens. I brought it as a gift for you. Since I’ve never really properly made up to you for what I did last year. I made it myself.”

  “Nice craftsmanship,” said George upon taking another emboldening draw from his drink. “And it’s comforting to know that you actually eat Popsicles. The moss, I assume, is kind of a fairy bed.”

  “Yes, that’s right, Mr. Fremont.”

  “George.”

  “George.” Nan turned to frown at George. This was a bit too much familiarity, especially after what had happened last year. Dr. Sproot placed the fairy house carefully on the glass tabletop.

  “I’m also paying tribute to your gardens,” she said, a tremor modulating her voice. “This, I think, is where the fairies will truly come.”

  Nan didn’t believe in fairies, and was astonished that such a force of naked empiricism as Dr. Sproot would. Or maybe this was some kind of elaborate joke. That, on reflection, would be unlikely since Marta was here. Marta, after all, was the former close Dr. Sproot ally who had turned against her when Dr. Sproot tried to wreak havoc among their gardens in order to win the Burdick’s Best Yard first prize.

  Nan chuckled at the thought of that night in July last year, when, at the same ungodly hour, Dr. Sproot and her unwitting confederates had arrived in their backyard to create mayhem. And in the middle of that terrible thunderstorm! They had scared the living bejesus out of her and George. Dr. Sproot had carried a hatchet in one hand and a tomahawk in the other and was wearing a gas mask to ward off what she was afraid would be debilitating poisonous fumes coming out of the angel’s trumpets.

  Her inhibitions pretty well put to flight by the gin, Nan erupted in a kind of hee-haw laughter that she would normally allow to escape only during the most intimate of family occasions. George, telepathically privy to Nan’s thoughts, began to laugh. Marta looked amused. Dr. Sproot, suspecting herself to be the object of all the mirth, sighed and frowned.

  “Oh, oh!” said Nan, gulping back a guffaw and stopping to catch her breath. “I can’t get over it. You with that gas mask! All because you were afraid the angel’s trumpet fumes would start you hallucinating! It’s just too much!”

  George stopped laughing and frowned. Mention of the angel’s trumpets awakened his own fears that those wretched plants, known for their toxic and hallucinogenic poisons, would eventually bring them to grief.

  Nan laughed again, this time with such force that she almost keeled over the chair’s armrest. George had to reach over to stabilize the chair as she pitched back against the mesh fabric backing, causing it to skid noisily across the patio concrete.

  “And George thought you were a zombie. A zombie! And you, Marta, in that ridiculous cowl that made you look like a monk. George thought you were, what, an angel of the Lord? Ha-ha! Ha-ha!”

  Marta blushed. The hint of a smile crept across Dr. Sproot’s face. She nervously grabbed the fairy house off the tabletop and pretended to study it.

  “Maybe that’s enough alcohol for you, dear,” said George, patting the hand of his wife, who was still shaking with unrestrained mirth.

  “So now,” gasped Nan, struggling to regain her composure and relishing Dr. Sproot’s discomfort. “So now, we have this, we have this fairy house as a, what, peace offering?”

  Dr. Sproot nodded.

  “It’s made exact to specifications of fairies’ size and demands for creature comforts,” she said, her voice oozing earnestness. “You can place it next to a tree, or in the middle of one of your gardens if you prefer.”

  “What, the fairies don’t appreciate the . . . what was that blend of flowers you used to advocate? The coreopsis . . . Help me out here. . . .”

  “The coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend.”

  “That’s it. So you can’t attract your own fairies with this special blend of yours?” Dr. Sproot and Marta looked at each other knowingly.

  “Actually, I’ve abandoned the coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend.”

  “No!” said George.

  “Yes, Mr. Fremont.”

  “George.”

  “George. I’ve decided, especially after all of the trouble I got into last year, and all the hardships I created for you, that I would free myself to plant something that’s not so dogmatic. I just want to plant a regular garden that I can nourish and love.”

  Nan guffawed, once again threatening her balance.

  Dr. Sproot bowed her head. “Yes, Nan.”

  “That’s ‘Mrs. Fremont’ to you,” Nan sputtered.

  “Yes, Mrs. Fremont, it’s true. I’m really trying to put my heart into my gardens this year. And Marta, who I’m very thankful to say is once again my friend, is going to be my adviser and help me out. She’s a special consultant to Burdick’s now, you know.”

  George and Nan nodded approvingly at Marta.

  “But I am a work in progress. It will take time to show my flowers the love I need to show them. Fairies can sense that. Until they feel the garden ambiance is right, they won’t come. That’s why I’ve brought my fairy house to you. If anybody can attract fairies, it’s the Fremonts.”

  “What a nice thing to say,” George said.

  “Why would we want fairies in our gardens in the first place?” Nan wondered. “That’s assuming they exist, of course, which I don’t, although after what happened last year, Lord knows I’m prepared to be open-minded about it. It’s also assuming that, if they exist, we’d want them to come anyway. I imagine their little nighttime frolics among the buttercups can be quite noisy. Ha-ha! Ha-ha!”

  “Fairies can protect your gardens and help them flourish.”

  Nan shook her head disjointedly in utter bewilderment. It absolutely defied logic that she was listening to the same person who only a year ago had been such a shining example of what happens when you cross a pedant with a hatchet murderer. Part of her couldn’t help but think that Dr. Sproot was still out to get them, and that there was some flower-destroying scent or spraying device built into this little fairy house.

  “I know it seems strange to you, Mr. and Mrs. Fremont, but Marta can vouch for the fact that I’m a changed woman. Or, at least, I’m trying to change.”

  George and Nan looked at Marta
, who shrugged in what could magnanimously be described as an indecisive way.

  “She’s definitely putting forth the effort,” said Marta. “And, yes, she has been humbled by the events of last year. You heard about Earlene McGillicuddy and the chain saw?”

  This time it was George who guffawed. Dr. Sproot bowed her head and pursed her lips in a way she hoped would look like someone who’s been martyred a dozen or so times. On the day of the contest judging last year, Earlene, who’d feuded with Dr. Sproot in a dramatic fashion, had chain-sawed her way through most of Dr. Sproot’s flowers before the police finally arrived.

  Dr. Sproot turned toward Marta, and both Nan and George thought they detected the beginnings of a snarl.

  “Well, I think even you will admit, Marta, that that was going too far.”

  “Yes, I do admit that, Phyllis.” Dr. Sproot smiled at the Fremonts.

  “There. You see?”

  “See what?” said Nan.

  “Evidence that I’ve changed. I no longer insist that everybody call me Doc-tor Sproot. Now, with the new me emerging, it’s okay to just call me Phyllis.”

  “I actually prefer Dr. Sproot,” Nan said. “Don’t you, George?”

  “Why, yes,” said George. “It has that, that gravitas to it. I like it.”

  Marta chuckled. “Oh, you Fremonts,” she said.

  “One last thing about the fairy house,” Dr. Sproot said. “Fairies like sweets, or so I’ve heard. A few M&M’s or Hershey’s Kisses placed strategically inside your fairy house or in the form of a trail leading up to the house from the nearest wooded area wouldn’t hurt. You can space these treats one to two feet apart. Do these things and the fairies should start appearing once things start really blooming. Fairies can sense the positive energy emanating from these blooms. So don’t be disappointed if they don’t come right away.”