Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary

  Erin would probably have been Gentian’s first choice. She would not have shown Dominic that she was impressed, but she would have talked about him afterwards to the others in a calm tone that would convey better than anybody else’s gushing just how impressed she was. But Erin was busy that evening, babysitting her niece.

  Gentian’s mother had taught her how to run the sewing machine when she was ten, and had given her a number of peculiar tips designed to overcome difficulties Gentian did not suffer from, but she resolutely refused actually to touch any project of Gentian’s.

  “It’d be the kiss of death, sweetie,” she had said, laughing. “King Sadim’s own touch. Your father had to make his own wedding cravat.” Gentian hunted King Sadim through every reference book in the library until Steph, apprised of her frustration, looked at the name and pointed out that it was “Midas” spelled backwards.

  After Gentian and Alma had cut out the pattern and stitched the major pieces together, with Alma making the interfacing behave, they went outside and took turns tossing Juniper’s soccer ball through the basketball hoop attached to the garage.

  Alma had just made a spectacular shot from halfway down the driveway when Dominic appeared under the last red leaves of the apple tree. Appeared was exactly the word for it. Gentian had not heard the back door of the new house bang—not that she ever had—nor the rustling of his feet through the drying grass. But there he was.

  Gentian managed not to gape at him. She waved instead and tried to look insouciant.

  Dominic walked across the grass to where Alma stood admiring her shot. The cold fall afternoon that had put Gentian into sweatshirt and leggings and made Alma get out her denim jacket blew around Dominic’s black T-shirt and thin billowy trousers like the balmiest breeze of April. It lifted the black hair delicately off his white brow. Gentian couldn’t decide if he looked like a rock star, Hamlet, or a person with a wasting disease.

  His big dark eyes conveyed interest and curiosity and something else that made Gentian’s spine shiver, in a sensation, like going downhill on a roller-coaster, that was thrilling and pleasurable even though when you examined its component parts in careful abstraction no single one of them seemed anything but unpleasant.

  “A good shot,” said Dominic to Alma. His voice made Gentian’s stomach jump.

  “I didn’t expect to get it from here, the way the driveway slopes,” said Alma, in her slightly breathless way. Steph had once said that Alma should be an actress because she could make anything sound exciting. She looked like somebody constructed to be Dominic’s opposite: dark where he was pale, round where he was angular, as tall as he was but strong where he was delicate, with her hair, as black as his, braided all over her head and covered in blue beads while his fell disarranged and straight.

  Gentian kicked the soccer ball back along the driveway to announce her intention of joining the conversation. Dominic picked it up, sent her a grin that made her knees feel odd, and, examniing the ball with momentary puzzlement, looked vastly entettained and said to Alma, “Should you like to use this in its intended game for a little?”

  “There isn’t really enough room,” said Gentian, arriving. “I know the yard looks big, but a lot of it’s Mom’s creeping thymes.”

  “We can play in the street,” said Dominic. “There will be no cars.”

  He dribbled the ball down the driveway, through the deep shadow of his mean little house.

  “Fine,” said Gentian to Alma, who was tying her shoe. “Wait’ll Woody honks at him and calls him a damn kid.”

  “I wonder what he’ll say back,” said Alma, pleasedly, and stood up.

  She was destined to go on wondering, because Woody did not drive down the street at his usual time.

  There were, in fact, no cars. In the cold autumn evening under the streetlights they kicked the ball over the leaf-strewn asphalt, laughing and shouting. Alma and Gentian were understood, without any arrangement except that possible between people who have known each other since the first grade, to be members of opposite teams. Gentian’s goal was the roots of a huge maple tree that had buckled the asphalt in front of the Careys’ house, and Alma’s was the manhole cover at the other end of the block.

  Dominic was either a third team with no goal, or else a kind of Lord Gro of the soccer field who changed sides whenever the one he was on seemed to be winning.

  The white segments of the ball, Dominic’s white face, the white hem of Alma’s T-shirt hanging below the hem of her jacket, dipped and floated in the darkening air. Gentian kicked the ball over a luminous pattern of pale leaves that seemed laid across a void as deep as the sky above the street, where one by one, without any fuss, the stars were coming in.

  They dodged and leapt and laughed, dizzy and breathless, until in full darkness on the long-empty street they collapsed panting onto Gentian’s goal. Gentian and Alma leaned on one another, still laughing. Dominic sat with his legs drawn up, on a different root a little distance away, dandling the ball on his knees.

  “Where is no dust in all the road?” he said.

  Gentian looked at Alma; they both looked at the city street, scattered with leaves and the occasional cigarette pack or Styrofoam cup; they both looked at Dominic. Gentian looked at the street again. It had lost dimensions since they sat down. She gazed at her sky instead. It was as always, infinite distances of black strewn and scattered and sewn with stars, before and behind and around one another. A luminous density, a powdering like spilled talcum on a velvet dress, announced the Milky Way.

  “The galaxy,” said Gentian, lazily.

  “Clever child,” said Dominic to the soccer ball.

  Gentian felt Alma looking at her; she smiled slightly and shook her head, to admit that she had guessed the riddle by accident, and Alma smiled back and started to sing.

  “I gave my love a cherry

  That had no stone;

  I gave my love a chicken

  That had no bone;

  I gave my love a story

  That had no end;

  I gave my love a baby

  With no crying.”

  Dominic’s red, precise mouth smiled. “How can there be a cherry that has no stone?” he said, sounding like Hamlet, or Romeo, or Mark Antony declaiming to Rome’s citizens. “How can there be a chicken that has no bone: how can there be a story that has no end: how can there be a baby with no crying?”

  Gentian did not even have to look at Alma. Together they carolled,

  “A maraschino cherry, it has no stone;

  A chicken a la king, it has no bone;

  A story in soap opera, it has no end;

  A baby that is strangled has no crying.”

  Alma collapsed laughing again—the soap opera line was hers, since they had forgotten that line of the parody, and it always did her in—but Gentian felt uneasy. She looked at Dominic. He was looking at her. His head was cocked a little. He was thoughtful, speculative, as though he were about to ask her to help assassinate Caesar. Between the acting of a dreadful thing and the first motion, all the interim is like a phantasm and a hideous dream. She had read that line as Brutus, and it had stuck with her.

  Gentian felt that she did not want to hear what Dominic had to say. She poked the giggling Alma and began to sing another song.

  “Tell me why the stars do shine;

  Tell me why the ivy twines;

  Tell me why the sky’s so blue;

  And I will tell you just why I love you.”

  They had learned it in Girl Scouts, but even the religious Alma and the conventional Steph had found the original answers soppy. “‘Because God made’ is always a copout,” Steph said. “No it isn’t,” said Alma, “but it’s cheating in a riddle song.”

  Dominic dropped the soccer ball; he looked distinctly annoyed.

  “Nuclear fusion,” sang Gentian, “makes the stars to shine.” She always got to sing that line, of course.

  “Cellular osmosis,” Alma sang, “makes the ivy twine.”

/>   “Molecular diffusion makes the sky so blue—” Erin got that when she was present, but Gentian took it for her, since it was still science.

  “Glandular hormones are why I love you.” And that was Steph’s line, but Alma picked it up for her.

  Dominic retrieved the soccer ball; he still looked rather fractious, but also relieved somehow. Gentian concluded that he didn’t like his riddles being made fun of, but liked religious songs even less.

  “I should be heading home, Gen,” said Alma, regretfully. “I’ll walk you,” said Gentian. “It’s pretty dark.”

  “I’ll walk you both,” said Dominic, imitating her tone precisely, “so you needn’t come home in the dark.”

  “Let me go tell Mom,” said Gentian. She sprinted up the driveway and plunged onto the back porch and into the kitchen. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, replacing the switch on the coffeemaker. It had been defunct for at least two years; you turned the machine on by plugging it in and turned it off by unplugging it again.

  “I need to walk Alma home,” said Gentian.

  “Well, take one of your sisters, then.”

  “Dominic says he’ll come with us.”

  Her mother laid down the screwdriver and looked at her. “He does, does he?”

  “We were playing soccer with him.”

  “That’s wholesome enough, I suppose. All right, but I want you back in twenty minutes. That’s plenty of time.”

  “For what?” said Gentian, nastily, and plunged outside again.

  Dominic and Alma were standing at the bottom of the driveway, talking in low voices. Dominic sounded intense and Alma dubious. Gentian resisted the urge to tread softly and overhear them. She stomped a little. They stopped talking. Alma came to meet her, very promptly, and put an arm through hers. They walked sedately down the driveway. Dominic fell in with them next to Alma, and they went just as sedately along the sidewalk, scuffing up the dry leaves. Gentian wished they had brought the soccer ball. She could not think of a single thing to say.

  Alma lived six blocks away. They came to the end of the first block and crossed two streets at once on a neat diagonal. Gentian looked up at the sky. It was dazzlingly clear. There was a brisk wind, from the west, with no ice in it. I want my telescope, she thought.

  Two blocks. Three. Four. Gentian had to clear her throat, but she said firmly to Alma, “Thanks for helping me. That lining was awfully slippery.”

  “That’s the idea,” said Alma. She had to clear her voice too. “So you can wear things under it. But it can be a bitch to sew.” Gentian saw Dominic’s head turn when Alma said “bitch.” He said nothing. She suppressed an urge to giggle and another to see what else might shock him. She said, in a voice that came out slightly stifled, “The soccer was fun too.”

  “Yeah,” said Alma. She leaned a little so she could see Dominic. “Thanks for playing with us. We should get Steph and Erin next time.”

  Becky hated sports, but Alma and Steph were always trying to get her to play anyway. Gentian wondered if Alma also thought Becky and Dominic hardly belonged in the same universe.

  “What about Becky?” she said.

  “I think what we were doing needs an odd number of players,” said Alma.

  They stopped before Alma’s house. Alma dug in the pocket of her jacket for her keys, said, “Thanks for the company; see you in school, Gen,” and ran up the sidewalk. Gentian and Dominic watched her unlock the door and go inside. The door shut. Gentian and Dominic stood there.

  “You are bold to consort with her,” said Dominic.

  Gentian turned and started back home. “Why?” she said.

  “She has the fierceness of her race.”

  “She what?”

  Dominic was silent. Gentian looked at him as they walked under the streetlight at the end of Alma’s block. He looked disbelieving, a little pitying, a little mocking. He looked superior.

  Gentian suddenly understood him. “Wouldn’t you say she’s the bold one?” she said scornfully. “We’ve got her outnumbered four to one, after all.” She sounded like Junie in a temper. She was in a temper. She wished she weren’t. Dominic had made her say, “we” and “her” as if the difference he was being insinuating about mattered one whit. That was all losing your temper got you; you played into the hands of idiots. “Where are you from?” she said furiously.

  “Oh,” said Dominic, “south of here.”

  I just bet, thought Gentian. She could not think of a way to express her feelings that did not sound sanctimonious, priggish, self-righteous—or no way other than smacking him in the face, which would be satisfying, but only briefly. Besides, then she would have done in her escort, which would upset her mother. This struck her as funny, and she vented her furious feelings in an explosion of giggles.

  Dominic looked vaguely alarmed. Gentian got herself under control, and said, “Alma is fierce, but no more than my sister Junie, or our friend Erin.”

  “Though she be little, yet she is fierce,” said Dominic.

  Gentian walked faster. He had met Juniper, and Juniper was no littler than Alma; neither was Erin. She wondered if he were perhaps a bit crazy in some way, or if he indulged in inappropriate quotations so she would correct him and there would, thus, be conversation, since conversation was so clearly something he was not very good at. His remarks were as irritating as her father’s, and they did not, somehow, carry the same conviction that they would make sense if you wanted to bother thinking about them.

  Two blocks. Three. Four. Dominic was not keeping especially close to her, but in the chilly autumn night she could locate him by warmth alone. He’d be all right if he never spoke, she thought.

  “The female of the species,” remarked Dominic, “is more deadly than the male.”

  “Which species?” said Gentian instantly.

  “How beastly the bourgeois is, especially the male of the species,” said Dominic.

  Steph’s father was a Marxist, but he did not talk like that. Dominic went on, as if he were continuing a rationally connected series of ideas, “I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species.”

  “Women are ruder than men?” hazarded Gentian. Any meaning at all would be preferable to nonsense.

  Dominic did not answer. They reached the bottom of her front steps. Does he care if I say anything? she thought.

  “Thank you for the company,” she said.

  “I’ll have cause to thank you for yours,” said Dominic, “once we come to build our time machine.”

  He had meant that, then.

  “When do you want to start?” said Gentian. If he made any racist remarks to Junie, Junie would skin him alive, although all her own friends were white. That might be interesting.

  “I’ll call on you soon,” said Dominic. He made a courtly gesture and ushered her up the steps to the porch. When she had the door open, he said, “Farewell for the moment.”

  Gentian turned to say something else, she hardly knew what, but he was gone.

  It was very warm and bright inside. From the front sunroom came the sounds of one of Junie’s television shows. Her mother had built a fire in the fireplace and was lying on the hearthrug with Pounce, reading Shirley Jackson’s Raising Demons, not for the first time. Her father was curled up in an armchair with Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, looking distracted. Rosemary was sprawled on the sofa reading Little Women, also not for the first time; the fact that she was doing so downstairs meant she was getting close to what she would call the sad part and Gentian would call the sentimental soppy part. Gentian much preferred Louisa May Alcott’s adventure stories, and she had never forgiven Alcott, Jo, or Professor Bhaer for making Jo stop writing them.

  “I’m back,” she said.

  “Is your homework done?” said her mother, without looking up.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you had something to eat?”

  “Yes, we ate that leftover spaghetti. Can I use the computer?”

  “Use mi
ne,” said her father, also not looking up. “Junie needs the other one as soon as her benighted show is over.”

  “Thanks,” said Gentian, and went through the family room and the breakfast room to his office.

  He had left the door shut, and when she opened it she saw why. There was a new cat, mostly black and white, crouched under the radiator. It hissed at her.

  “Yes, I know,” said Gentian, quickly shutting the door again. She sat down at the computer. It was possible that they had forgotten to tell her, and equally possible that he had not yet gotten around to confessing. Nobody came in here without permission, especially when the door was shut.

  She called the BBS. The line was busy. Gentian let the program go on trying while she thought, and kept half an eye on the new cat. When she shifted in the chair, it growled; otherwise, its white-tipped black tail twitched from under the radiator and back again every few seconds, flicking out with it a growing collection of dust and cat hair.

  “Nice job sweeping,” said Gentian.

  The cat hissed.

  The terminal chimed to tell her that she was connected to the BBS, and the cat growled. Gentian logged on, after a pause to remember who she was, and looked at the teen romance echo first.

  Jason had posted a short, pungent message that accused Juniper and Crystal of being the same person. Gentian thought this was dangerous. But, of course, it was near the end of the semester, and Junie would want to bring her project to some spectacular close.

  Why was she giving Jason the job, though? Why not have Crystal accuse Juniper and Jason? It was terribly tempting to post a message that would somehow address this point without giving Junie away; but contaminating your sister’s sociology project, however satisfying, was really beyond the pale.

  Gentian sighed, and looked at the teen culture echo. Juniper had posted eight messages since the last time Gentian read it, but she had not addressed The Light Prince’s contention that she was not an intellectual, and she had not taken any notice, either, of Gentian’s message posted under the name of Betony. Hot Dud had called her Bethany and made a joke on one of her typos. Mutant Boy addressed to her a long diatribe on the obsolescence of literature, and added a few insults based on the fact that she could spell. Someone called Silk who, she said, had never entered a message before, remarked that if more people in the group could spell she might join in the conversation. The Light Prince welcomed Gentian to the group without addressing anything she had said.