Authors: Mary Rickert
A sound—what is it, the creaking of twigs as though someone walks nearby—startles Nan. She opens her eyes to find herself surrounded by dark. What happened to the bright sun? Where is the lemonade? Where is Miss Winter’s house, wild with overgrown vines and unkempt flowers? It’s all rather frightening for a moment until Nan remembers herself, and then it’s frightening in another way.
Oh, I am old.
She shakes her head and closes her eyes.
I
am
an
old
woman
now.
Every summer the community players put on a production of
A
Midsummer
Night’s Dream
in the park. Though Nan doesn’t like to drive, especially in the dark, she and Bay used to go, sitting on the old quilt, sharing a picnic of tomato sandwiches, pickles, and chocolate cake. Nan always offered to share her wine with Bay, who, aware of the narrowed eyes of those nearby, declined, sipping lemonade instead. After the play, when they returned home, though it was not the Fourth of July, Nan let Bay run through the yard with sparklers. Even when she was past the age for doing so, Bay liked to pretend she was lighting the stars.
Now the yard looks much the way Bay imagined as a child, before she no longer wanted to be seen in public with her Nana and lied about not enjoying the play. (They ate their picnic on the porch and watched the fireflies blink through the dark, but it wasn’t the same. This year, with everything else going on, they hadn’t even done that.)
Somehow, Ruthie found time to hang mason jars from tree branches and placed them strategically throughout the yard, tucked near flowered shoes, resting on flat rocks. In each jar is a white candle, its glassed flame creating an aura of light as alluring as fireflies.
Bay feels like she’s just woken from an odd dream where nothing makes sense, to this golden night and Thalia making broad gestures with her small hands, saying something about ghosts.
“Do you think my Nana really is a witch?”
Thalia stops in midsentence.
“I want to know,” Bay says, inhaling the scent of bee balm, cut grass, and grilled meat. Someone, probably in the subdivision, is having a barbecue tonight.
Thalia is uncharacteristically silent.
“Please, I’m serious.”
Thalia nods. It takes a moment for Bay to realize that the nod is the answer.
“Why?”
“Well, you know, it’s kind of obvious. Don’t you ever wonder about the deer not bothering your flowers out here? Doesn’t that seem strange? Nobody has a garden like this in the country, not without a lot of fencing and barbed wire. The deer eat everything except daffodils, but you have all these flowers. Doesn’t that make you wonder? And what about roots? No one else can plant flowers in shoes and have them grow forever. Everyone knows flowers need to sink their roots into the earth. Don’t you ever wonder about that?”
“My Nana is a really good gardener.”
“But, Bay, who has friends like those? I mean were you even paying attention in there? Don’t you wonder if they are all, you know, witches?”
Having asked for Thalia’s opinion, Bay tries hard to be receptive to it. She bites her lower lip and nods politely, but her mind is not near as compliant as her countenance. People have always been jealous of Nan’s garden. Thalia doesn’t know what she’s talking about. As to Ruthie and Mavis, well, that point, Bay has to admit, does sort of stick. They do seem kind of witchy, especially Ruthie. But isn’t that just what people say about old women? Isn’t it easy to call an old woman a witch?
“My mother says it doesn’t have anything to do with Satan or stuff like that. She said a long time ago being a witch just meant someone who was good with plants. You know, herbs and stuff.”
Hard as she tries, Bay can’t focus. She scans the yard, as though looking for escape. Why would she want to leave here? This is the safest place she knows, so pretty tonight, the candles glowing among the branches like fallen stars, but Bay is not, as she believed for so long, standing in Forever. Things are changing.
“My mother says people started calling your Nana a witch a long time ago. Things just got worse after that boy died out here.”
How is it that Thalia knows more about Bay’s life than she herself does? What boy died out here? Bay scans the yard again, thinking she will understand everything if she can just figure out where to look. The flowers, in such distress only this morning, perk brightly from their shoes—though they remain in disarray, scattered throughout the yard, giving the odd appearance of a gathering where guests were suddenly possessed of a need to wander away barefoot. The house, from here, is mostly dark, but for the soft, buttery glow emanating from the kitchen. Howard sits by himself on the lawn, in a circle of candlelight, picking blades of grass. Bay has no idea where Stella went.
Probably
spying
on
Ruthie,
she thinks.
“Bay, are you okay?”
“I need to figure this out.”
“Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not.” Bay is surprised that her tone of voice sounds as though she is, in fact, angry. “I’m not,” she says again, this time softly. “I just need to think, okay?”
Bay and Thalia have been through a lot, as they say. What would their lives be like if they weren’t friends? When they talk about it, as they sometimes do, they agree their lives would be horrible and lonely without each other.
“You know you’re my best friend, right? Just ’cause I sometimes need to be alone, that’s nothing against you. You know that, right?”
“Remember what you said on your birthday?” Thalia asks. “About going away? I thought, when you started to act so strange, that maybe you didn’t want to be friends anymore.”
Bay is shocked. How could Thalia possibly believe such a thing, though suddenly it all kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? How would Bay have felt if Thalia said she wasn’t coming back to school? “I can’t believe you thought that. I just need to figure some things out, that’s all. It’s nothing against you. I need a little time alone, okay? Look, there’s Howard. Why don’t you hang out with him? I’ll be back. We’re best friends, right?”
Thalia narrows her eyes at Bay, as if she can best be seen at a squint, then nods abruptly. They give each other a quick hug. Bay watches Thalia run across the lawn, the silver threads in her white dress causing her to sparkle.
How can Bay feel sad after such an amazing meal, during such a special night? She feels stuck, not sure what to do. She shakes her head and murmurs, “What’s gotten into you?” She is acting just the way her Nana sometimes does, like someone who’s lost her way in her own yard, which is stupid. Bay knows exactly where she wants to go. Her feet feel strange as she walks across the grass. Why doesn’t she go barefoot more often?
The stench of her special place rises like a warning, but Bay can think of no better spot for solitude. Besides, she sat there just this afternoon, and it wasn’t so bad, was it? There’s not really anything particularly special about it. It’s just a circle of grass tamped down by deer that sometimes sleep there, sheltered from the yard by the lilacs and tall grass, but it is the one place that has always belonged to Bay. She even stood here last winter listening to the snow fall through the few stubborn leaves still clinging to the weeping apple trees. She has no one to blame but herself for what she finds now: Stella, changed out of her party dress, lying on the ground like a deer, waking with a start, her eyes wide, frightened.
“Oh,” Bay says, “I didn’t know you were here.”
“You can see me?”
“It isn’t that dark.”
She sits up slowly, patting her hair made curly by lying on the grass. “You can hear me?”
Bay nods, then, wondering if she’s obscured by shadows, says, “Yes, I can see and hear you.”
“Can you still hear me?”
Bay thinks Stella is probably a lot like the mean girls at school: someone able to smile as she ridicules, someone who knows how to make alliances but not how to be loyal, someone who drinks too much at parties. Not that Bay ever gets invited to those parties, but she hears about them, even as she keeps her face averted, not wanting to be caught watching the people at school who say she has an evil eye.
“Yes. I hear you.”
“You actually hear me?”
Nana is right,
Bay thinks.
Drunk people are so annoying.
“You see and hear me?”
Bay almost feels sorry for Stella, she seems so confused.
What
is
she
wearing, anyway? Why did she take off her beautiful dress and put on this ugly thing instead
? “How come you changed?”
“Well, now let me see if I can answer that. I haven’t had to answer to anyone for so long. It isn’t easy being here. I’m sure that’s part of it. At first I was sad all the time. Then I was angry. And now I’m just—wait, you can hear me? I have been wanting to talk to you for so long! I used to watch you play here.”
Bay rolls her eyes. She doesn’t have to be polite. Stella won’t remember any of this when she’s sober. Bay wonders if she had too much to drink herself, though she doesn’t remember taking more than a few sips of the merlot. It must be the combination of moon and candlelight, and not an alcohol-induced illusion that creates the aura around Stella, almost as though she is its source. “Listen, Stella—”
“Stella? Stella? Oh,” she says, and the light around her dims.
A
bat
must
have
crossed
the
moon
, Bay thinks.
“Oh, changed! You mean my dress.”
“When did you watch me play here?”
“Oh, that.” She moves her hand, a bright flash of white.
Is
she
flickering?
“I didn’t mean it the way it sounds. I didn’t mean I used to watch you. How could I? We only just met, didn’t we?”
Bay nods.
“I meant to say I imagine. Yes, that’s what I meant to say. I imagine you played here as a child.”
Stella
sounds
an
awful
lot
like
Ruthie
right
now,
Bay thinks, realizing that Ruthie, who hasn’t drunk a drop of wine since her arrival, sounds like she’s drunk most of the time.
“You want to know why I changed? My dress?” She plucks at the skirt but picks up nothing, her finger and thumb pinching air. “I guess I changed because I wanted…that is to say, this is more comfortable.”
The dress reminds Bay of the sort of thing her Nana sleeps in. It appears to be quite loose, a dismal shade of brown splotched with red, which Bay assumes is a rose pattern on the skirt. It looks comfortable but ugly and too warm, with its long sleeves, for summer.
“Why don’t you sit with me, Bay?” She pats the ground. “What did you think of the party? Did you have a wonderful time? I used to love parties!”
There is something about the way Stella is behaving right now; she seems so lonely and strange that Bay sits, letting her dress with its full skirt spread out in such a pleasant fashion, forgetting for a moment, how unhappy she is. “It was an amazing party. Ruthie did a great job.”
“Oh, Ruthie. She is something, isn’t she?”
The sudden infusion of honeysuckle that passes in the space between them quickly becomes cloyingly sweet; combined with the bad smell, the effect is sickening. “Ruthie’s great,” Bay says. “Not at all the way you think.”
“But I think Ruthie is—wait—did I say something unkind about Ruthie?”
This is the weirdest conversation Bay has ever had. Can Stella be so drunk she doesn’t even remember her accusation?
“I don’t know why I would have said something unkind about Ruthie, unless it was, you know, under duress, but let’s talk about something else. Something happy. I heard you like to swim?”
“Yeah,” says Bay, though she hasn’t gone back to the river since the day after her birthday. She thought her Nana would worry about that, but she believed Bay when she said she had too many things going on to go swimming. “I used to like it,” Bay says. “I’m not sure anymore.”
“Well, that happens. I was quite a swimmer myself for a while, which reminds me, Bay, I have something important to tell you, okay? Something you have to tell Nan, and Mavis and Ruthie too.”
Bay shrugs, not willing to fully commit until she hears what it is.
“Say I’m not angry. I never was. Not at them, at least.”
“Why would you—”
“You have to tell them. All of them.”
“But—”
“I know not everything makes sense right now. Believe me, I remember when everything stopped making sense, though your situation is different. My goodness, yes. There are times when things just don’t make sense, but that doesn’t mean—”
“No.” Bay shakes her head. She isn’t sure what they are talking about, but she’s sure about this. “You’re wrong.”
“Wrong? What do you mean I’m wrong? I should know, I think. I should know whether I’m angry or not.”
“You’re wrong. You can’t call someone a murderer and make it better by not being angry about it.”
“Well, my goodness, of course not, whatever would make you say such a thing?”
“Not me, you. You’re the one who said it.”
“Well, I, goodness. Who knows what I said at the end? I hope I didn’t say anything like that, but I was entirely unprepared. I was only a few years older than you are now. I don’t remember what I said. I was sad. You have no idea. It wasn’t… I wasn’t ready. I had, why I had dreams. I had so many dreams! Ruthie knows. We were going to leave together. Move to the city. Can you imagine what Ruthie would be like if I hadn’t… I wanted to get away from there. I was going to get a job. Any old thing. I had an idea that I would save up for teacher’s college. That probably sounds strange, considering. I loved children. What happened to me was… Tell them, Bay, tell them I never blamed them at all.”
Bay wonders again if she might be the one who has had too much to drink, though she doesn’t recall more than those few sips. Her Nana is always serving wine so it won’t be tempting to overindulge at teenage parties. Poor Nan still hasn’t noticed that Bay doesn’t get invited to parties, which is all right for the most part. Who wants to drink so much they throw up? Bay doesn’t understand the attraction.
“Can you still hear me?”
“Yes. I hear you.”