Luckily I didn’t have to answer. He just grinned and said, “Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss … .” He turned to me. “But every once in a while you find someone who’s iridescent, and when you do, nothing will ever compare.”
As we walked up to our front porch, my grandfather put his arm around my shoulder and said, “It was nice walking with you, Bryce. I enjoyed myself very much.”
“Me too,” I told him, and we went inside.
Right away we knew we’d stepped into a war zone. And even though no one was yelling or crying, from the look on my parents’ faces I could tell there’d been a major meltdown while my granddad and I were out.
Granddad whispered to me, “I’ve got another fence to mend, I’m afraid,” and headed into the dining room to talk to my parents.
I wanted nothing to do with that vibe. I went straight to my room, closed the door, and flopped through the darkness onto my bed.
I lay there awhile and let the dinner disaster play through my mind. And when I’d totally burned a fuse thinking about it, I sat up and looked out the window. There was a light on somewhere inside the Bakers’ house and the streetlights were glowing, but the night still seemed really dense. Like it was darker than usual and, I don’t know, heavy.
I leaned closer to the window and looked up into the sky, but I couldn’t see the stars anymore. I wondered if Juli had ever been in the sycamore at night. Among the stars.
I shook my head. Flat, glossy, iridescent. What was up with that? Juli Baker had always seemed just plain dusty to me.
I snapped on my desk lamp and dug the newspaper with the article about Juli out of the drawer where I’d tossed it.
Just like I thought — they made it sound like Juli was trying to save Mount Rushmore or something. They called her a “strong voice in an urban wilderness” and “a radiant beacon, shedding light on the need to curtail continued overdevelopment of our once quaint and tranquil community.”
Spare me. I mean, what’s wrong with letting a guy cut down a tree on his own property so he can build a house? His lot, his tree, his decision. End of story. The piece in the paper was gag-me gush.
Except. Except for the places where they quoted Juli. Maybe it was just in contrast to the reporter’s slant or something, but Juli’s parts didn’t come off oh-woe-is-me like I was expecting. They were, I don’t know, deep. Sitting in that tree was seriously philosophical to her.
And the odd thing is, it all made sense to me. She talked about what it felt like to be up in that tree, and how it, like, transcended dimensional space. “To be held above the earth and brushed by the wind,” she said, “it’s like your heart has been kissed by beauty.” Who in junior high do you know that would put together a sentence like that? None of my friends, that’s for sure.
There was other stuff, too, like how something can be so much more than the parts it took to make it, and why people need things around them that lift them above their lives and make them feel the miracle of living.
I wound up reading and re-reading her parts, wondering when in the world she started thinking like that. I mean, no kidding, Juli Baker’s smart, but this was something way beyond straight A’s.
A month ago if I’d read this article, I would have chucked it in the trash as complete garbage, but for some reason it made sense to me now. A lot of sense.
A month ago I also wouldn’t have paid any attention to the picture of Juli, but now I found myself staring at it. Not the one of the whole scene — that was more emergency rescue equipment than Juli. The other one, on the bottom half of the page. Someone must’ve used a killer telephoto lens, because you can tell that she’s in the tree, but it’s mostly from the shoulders up. She’s looking off into the distance and the wind is blowing her hair back like she’s at the helm of a ship or something, sailing into the sun.
I’d spent so many years avoiding Juli Baker that I’d never really looked at her, and now all of a sudden I couldn’t stop. This weird feeling started taking over the pit of my stomach, and I didn’t like it. Not one bit. To tell you the truth, it scared the Sheetrock out of me.
I buried the paper under my pillow and tried to remind myself of what a pain Juli Baker was. But my mind started to wander again, and pretty soon I had that stupid paper out from under my pillow.
This was insane! What was I doing?
I made myself shut out the light and go to bed. I was slipping, man, and it was definitely time to get a grip.
Juli: The Yard
I’d never been embarrassed by where we lived before. I’d never looked at our house, or even our side of the street, and said, Oh! I wish we lived in the new development—those houses are so much newer, so much better! This is where I’d grown up. This was my home.
I was aware of the yard, sure. My mother had grumbled about it for years. But it was a low grumbling, not worthy of deep concern. Or so I’d supposed. But maybe I should have wondered. Why let the outside go and keep the inside so nice? It was spotless inside our house. Except for the boys’ room, that is. Mom gave up on that after she discovered the snake. If they were old enough to adopt a snake, she told my brothers, they were old enough to clean their own room. Matt and Mike translated this to keep the door closed, and became quite diligent about doing just that.
Besides the yard, I also never really wondered about the money, or the apparent lack thereof. I knew we weren’t rich, but I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. Anything you could buy, anyway.
Matt and Mike did ask for things a lot, but even though my mother would tell them, No, boys, we just can’t afford that, I took this to mean, No, boys, you don’t deserve that, or, No, boys, you don’t really need that. It wasn’t until Bryce called our home a complete dive that I started really seeing things.
It wasn’t just the yard. It was my dad’s truck, my mother’s car, the family bike that was more rust than steel, and the fact that when we did buy something new, it always seemed to come from a second-time-around store. Plus, we never went on vacation. Ever.
Why was that? My father was the hardest-working man in the world, and my mother worked for TempService doing secretarial jobs whenever she could. What was all that hard work about if this is where it got you?
Asking my parents whether we were poor seemed incredibly impolite. But as the days went by, I knew I had to ask. Just had to. Every day I’d ride home from school on our rusty bike, pull past the broken fence and patchy yard, and think, Tonight. I’ll ask them tonight.
But then I wouldn’t ask them. I just didn’t know how.
Then one day I had an idea. A way to talk to them about it and maybe help out a little, too. And since my brothers were working at the music store that night, and nobody was saying much of anything at the table, I took a deep breath and said, “I was thinking, you know, that it wouldn’t be hard to fix up the front yard if I could get some nails and a hammer and maybe some paint? And how much does grass seed cost? It can’t be that much, right? I could plant a lawn, and maybe even some flowers?”
My parents stopped eating and stared at me.
“I know how to use a saw and a hammer—it could be, you know, a project.”
My mother quit looking at me and stared at my father, instead.
My father sighed and said, “The yard is not our responsibility, Julianna.”
“It’s … it’s not?”
He shook his head and said, “It’s Mr. Finnegan’s.”
“Who’s Mr. Finnegan?”
“The man who owns this house.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “What?”
My father cleared his throat and said, “The landlord.”
“You mean we don’t own this house?”
They looked at each other, having some private wordless conversation I couldn’t decipher. Finally my father said, “I didn’t realize you didn’t know that.”
“But … but that doesn’t make sense! Aren’t landlords supposed to come and do things? Like fix the roof
when it leaks and clear the drains when they’re plugged? You always do that stuff, Dad. Why do you do it when he’s supposed to?”
“Because,” he sighed, “it’s easier than asking him for help.”
“But if—”
“And,” my father interrupted me, “it keeps him from raising the rent.”
“But … ”
My mother reached over and took my hand. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry if this is a shock. I guess we always thought you knew.”
“But what about the yard? Why keep up the inside but not the outside?”
My father frowned and said, “When we signed the lease, he assured us he would fix the fences, front and back, and plant sod in the front yard. Obviously that never happened.” He shook his head. “It’s a major undertaking, and fencing is not cheap. I can’t see putting that sort of investment into a property that’s not ours. Plus, it’s the principle of the thing.”
“But we live here,” I whispered, “and it looks so bad.”
My father studied me. “Julianna, what happened?”
“Nothing, Daddy,” I said, but he knew I was lying.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered, “tell me.”
I knew what he’d say if I told him, and yet I couldn’t not tell him. Not with the way he was looking at me. So I took a deep breath and said, “The Loskis have been throwing my eggs away because they were afraid they’d have salmonella because our yard is such a mess.”
My father said, “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” but my mother gasped, “What?” Then she cried, “Did Patsy say that?”
I looked down. “No, Bryce did.”
“But it must’ve been a family discussion! A boy doesn’t come up with that on his own … !” My mother looked for all the world like a doe waiting to be shot through the heart. She covered her face with her hands and said, “I can’t go on like this! Robert, things have got to change. They’ve just got to!”
“Trina, you know I’m doing the best I can. I’m sorry about the yard, I’m sorry about the situation. This isn’t the picture I had for my life, either, but sometimes you have to sacrifice for what’s right.”
My mother looked up from her hands and said, “This is not right for our family. Your daughter is suffering because we won’t fix up our own yard.”
“It’s not our yard.”
“How can you say that? Robert, wake up! We have lived here for twelve years. It’s not temporary anymore! If we ever want to have a decent place with our own yard, if we’re going to help the kids through college or do any of the other things we’ve promised each other, we’re going to have to move him into government care.”
My father let out a deep sigh and whispered, “We’ve discussed this so many times, Trina. In the end you always agree that keeping him at Greenhaven is the right thing to do.”
I wanted to say, Wait! What are you talking about? Who are you talking about? But the conversation was flying so fast and furious that I couldn’t seem to break in, and it wasn’t long before they were bickering so badly that it was almost like I wasn’t there.
Then in the back of my mind, it clicked. Everything clicked. It was my dad’s brother they were talking about. My uncle. David.
To me Uncle David was only a name. Someone my parents had explained to me, but not someone I’d ever actually met. And even though I knew my dad visited him, I never knew exactly when. He never talked about it.
Dad also thought we shouldn’t talk about Uncle David to others because David was retarded. “People jump to conclusions,” he’d told me. “They assume that, by association, something must also be wrong with you. Trust me, I know.”
So we didn’t talk about it. Not at home, not with friends. It was almost like there was no Uncle David.
Until now. Now he felt larger than life, and I could tell from their argument that he was the reason we didn’t have our own house; he was the reason we didn’t have nice cars or fancy things. He was the reason there always seemed to be a cloud of weariness hanging over my parents.
Why did I have to bring up the yard in the first place? I’d never seen my parents fight like this. Ever. I wanted to grab them and say, Stop it! Stop it! You love each other! You do! But I just sat there with tears streaming down my face.
My mother stopped suddenly and whispered, “We should not be doing this in front of her!”
“I’m sorry, Julianna,” my dad said, then reached over and held my forearm. “Don’t cry. None of this is your fault. We’ll work it out, I promise we will.”
My mother tried to laugh through her tears, saying, “We always have, and we always will.”
That night my parents came into my room and talked to me, one at a time. My father talked about his brother and how much he loved him and how he’d promised his parents he’d always take care of him. My mother talked about how much she loved my father for his strength and kind heart, about dreams and reality, and the need to count your blessings. And she made me cry all over again when she kissed me goodnight and whispered that of all her many blessings, I was her best and brightest.
I felt sorry for my father. I felt sorry for my mother. But most of all I felt lucky for me that they were mine.
And in the morning, as I rode my rusty bike out the driveway to school, I promised myself that when I got home, I’d tackle the yard. Rented or not, this was our home, and I was going to help make living here better.
As it turns out, this was easier thought than done. First it took me half an hour of rummaging through the garage to find a hammer and a box of nails, a saw, and some pruners. Then it took another half hour of standing around to figure out just where to start. The actual yard was just clumps of weeds, but what about the bordering shrubs? Should I dig them up, or prune them way back? Were they shrubs, or just overgrown weeds? And what about the fence? Should I knock it down, or rebuild it? Maybe I should take out the front end entirely and use the wood to fix up the sides.
The longer I looked around, the more I felt like forgetting the whole thing. Why bother? It wasn’t our property. Mr. Finnegan should be the one making repairs.
But then I remembered my mother’s words from the night before. Surely, I thought, a few bushes and some dilapidated wood couldn’t stop someone’s best and brightest blessing! Surely not!
And with that, I picked up the clippers and got to work.
Half an hour later I was keeper of the knowledge that one bush equals many branches, and that the volume of a bush increases exponentially as it’s cut and tossed into the middle of a yard. It was ridiculous! Where was I going to put all this stuff?
Mom came home and tried to talk me out of my mission, but I’d have none of it. Oh, no-no-no! I’d already pruned two bushes down to a respectable size, and before long she’d see— the place was going to look just dandy.
“You didn’t get that stubborn streak from me,” she said, but came back outside with a glass of juice and a kiss for my cheek. Good enough for me!
By the end of that first day, what I’d made was a big mess. But if chaos is a necessary step in the organization of one’s universe, then I was well on my way. At least that’s what I tried to tell myself when I flopped into bed that night, dead tired.
And the next afternoon I was busily expanding the chaos of my little universe when I heard a deep voice say, “That’s quite an undertaking, young lady.”
The man standing on our sidewalk was Bryce’s grandfather, I knew that much. But I’d only ever seen him outside one time. All the other times I’d seen him had been through windows— either one in their sitting room or one in their car. To me he was just a dark-haired man behind glass. Having him appear on my sidewalk was like having someone from TV step through the screen and talk to you.
“I know we’ve seen each other from time to time,” he was saying. “I’m sorry it’s taken me over a year to come introduce myself. I’m Chester Duncan, Bryce’s grandfather. And you, of course, are Julianna Baker.”
He stuck out his hand, so I took off my
work glove and watched my hand completely disappear inside his as we shook. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Duncan,” I said, thinking that this man was way bigger than he looked from the sitting-room window.
Then the strangest thing happened. He pulled his own work gloves and a pair of clippers from a back pocket and said, “Are you pruning all of these to the same height?”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, yes. That is what I was thinking. Although now I don’t know. Do you think it would look better to just take them out?”
He shook his head and said, “They’re Australian tea shrubs. They’ll prune up nicely.” And with that, he put on his gloves and started clipping.
At first I didn’t know what to say to this man. It was very strange to be getting his help, but from the way he was acting, it was as though I shouldn’t have thought a thing of it. Clip-clip-clip, he went, like this was something he really enjoyed doing.
Then I remembered what Bryce had said about our yard, and suddenly I knew why he was there.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, throwing his clippings into my pile. “Did I cut it down too far?”
“N-no.”
“Then why the look?” he asked. “I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I just thought you might like a little help.”
“Well, I don’t. I can do this by myself.”
He laughed and said, “Oh, I have no doubt about that,” then got back to clipping. “You see, Julianna, I read about you in the paper, and I’ve lived across the street from you for over a year now. It’s easy to see that you’re a very competent person.”
We both worked quietly for a minute, but I found myself throwing the clippings into the pile harder and harder. And before long I couldn’t stand it. I just couldn’t stand it! I spun on him and said, “You’re here because you feel bad about the eggs, aren’t you? Well, our eggs are perfectly fine! We’ve been eating them for nearly three years and none of us have gotten poisoned. Mrs. Stueby and Mrs. Helms seem in good health to me, too, and the fact of the matter is, if you didn’t want them, you should’ve just told me so!”