“Would you, if he asked?”
“How would I know he was asking?” said Gentian, and they dissolved into giggles. But as they sprawled on the bed later, listening to the soundtrack of Henry V, she knew that while Becky had first instituted the comparison between Micky and Dominic, she had perpetuated it, and that denying its validity was dishonest.
When they got up, she called Alma’s house, but Alma was still at Steph’s. Gentian packed up her belongings and went home. It was bright and extremely cold outside. People were still shoveling their walks, and some, perhaps having gone away for Thanksgiving, had not done it yet. Gentian plowed happily along, and sometimes when she struck a patch of cleared, salted pavement, she walked in the piled-up snow instead. It scattered in dense sunny sparkles, like stars in light instead of darkness. Maybe the core of the galaxy was like that.
When she got home, their half of the driveway had been shoveled and her mother was working on the front porch. The sidewalk was still pristine.
“When icicles hang by the wall,” Gentian’s mother sang, from inside a cloud of fine snow. It was her snow-shoveling song.
Rosemary didn’t like it. She thought “Then nightly sings the staring owl” was creepy and “While greasy Joan doth keel the pot” was gross. “Well, that’s why we didn’t name any of you Joan,” her mother would say cheerfully. “Or Marian, come to that. No sense in being teased about your nose all winter.” Gentian, having climbed the unshoveled steps, stood thinking of this and regarding her mother with the sense of disbelief and resignation her parents regularly inspired in her. Only they could possibly believe that having a name from an obscure song in Shakespeare would subject a child to more teasing than being called after a bunch of plants—especially plants nobody else was named after.
“Oh, hello,” said her mother breathlessly. “I didn’t see you. If you’ll finish the steps and shovel the walk, I’ll make tea and cinnamon toast.”
“Let Daddy make it,” said Gentian, taking the shovel and handing her mother her suitcase. “You always burn it.”
“That’s just my shorthand,” said her mother. “Good Lord, what is in this, neutronium? When I say I’m going to cook something, I almost always mean I am going to ask your father to do so.”
She went inside, whistling the tune of her song, and Gentian started shoveling. It was one of her most hated tasks, but she hoped to see Dominic. She thought of singing something herself, so he would know it was she out there, and not her mother, but her singing voice was not one of her more admirable attributes. She couldn’t think of a suitable song, anyway.
It clouded over and began to snow again while she was working, small constant flakes from a sky the color of Mrs. Zimmerman’s hair. That ought to mean she would have company soon, even if it wasn’t Dominic. The Meriweathers and the Zimmermans had always shared the shoveling of the vacant lot’s sidewalk, and Mrs. Zimmerman didn’t believe in putting off unpleasant tasks.
Gentian shoveled her way down the remaining porch steps, the short flat walk, the long flight of terrace steps, in a glow of virtue and a cloud of small sparkles. When she got to the bottom of the steps and paused for breath she found Mrs. Zimmerman standing, shovel in hand, regarding the clean bare sidewalk in front of the new house.
“You did all of it!” cried Gentian.
“No,” said Mrs. Zimmerman, consideringly.
“They did it?”
“No. Look at it, Gentian.”
Gentian looked. From the far side of the driveway the Meriweathers now shared with the Hardys to the place where Mrs. Zimmerman’s sedums brushed the sidewalk, the concrete in front of the new house was not only clear of snow, but dry.
“Eugh,” said Gentian. “Did they spread some new awful chemical on it?”
“They didn’t do anything,” said Mrs. Zimmerman. “I’ve been out here, or in the yard, all day.”
Gentian stood and squinted at the falling snow. The flakes were so tiny that it was hard to follow a single one to its resting place. She half expected many things: to see the snow all deflected from the sidewalk to the grass on either side; to see the flakes land and sizzle instantly like water on a griddle; to see the snow blown aside. She saw none of these. The snow fell, but it did not reach the sidewalk.
“That’s very weird,” she said.
“I’d give a year’s good compost,” said Mrs. Zimmerman, “to know that woman’s first name.”
“Would you?” said Gentian, whose compost piles never heated up, so that she had to wait three years for anybody else’s one-year compost. Then, with a jolt, she thought, But I haven’t got a garden any more. There’s nowhere to put the compost. She glared at the Hardys’ snow-covered lawn. No tomatoes, no basil, no bitter-juiced gentian, bluer than anybody’s eyes; no snowdrops and no chrysanthemums. Why didn’t it bother me before, she thought, what was I paying attention to instead? Astronomy, sure, but they always fit together. The thing closest to hand and the thing farthest away, Mom said. Stay up all night stargazing, weed before it gets hot, go to bed.
Dominic, I’ve been paying attention to Dominic. Only he’s a lot more like a star than like a plant. She grinned, saw that Mrs. Zimmerman was looking at her curiously, and said hastily, “Because I think I can find out. I mean, if you don’t want to just ask her.”
“I don’t, and neither do you,” said Mrs. Zimmerman.
Gentian thought of the drab medium-sized woman in the shapeless clothes, her hesitancies, her conventionalities. She looked at Mrs. Zimmerman, all six foot four of her, in a long red down coat and a black scarf, her dark gray hair spangled with snow.
“Don’t you?”
“No compost for just asking her,” said Mrs. Zimmerman. “Now, let’s finish your walk, shall we?”
Gentian went on thinking on how Dominic could have distracted her from the disappearance of her garden. A daytime star, she thought, like a supernova. Maybe I should try looking at him with averted vision. Only why, when he’s so bright? She tossed a shovelful of snow onto the growing pile and giggled. Why, because he might be associated with dim companions, or with a nebulosity. His mother was dim enough, his father less noticeable than the nebulae.
When they had finished shoveling, Gentian invited Mrs. Zimmerman in for the promised tea and cinnamon toast. Her mother was nowhere to be seen. Junie was making rum balls in the kitchen, and glared ferociously. She would require careful handling. Gentian was still choosing both her words and her overall strategy, while Mrs. Zimmerman took her boots off, when her father came into the kitchen.
“That was fast,” he said.
“The Hardy’s walk didn’t need shoveling,” said Mrs. Zimmerman, shaking snow off her braid onto the rag rug that Rosemary had made in Girl Scouts.
“Didn’t it?” said her father.
Gentian watched their eyes meet.
“Look,” said Juniper, with suppressed violence. “I’m trying to work in here.”
“Come into my parlor,” said Gentian’s father to Gentian. “We can make Rosemary some cocoa in the microwave.” He always called Mrs. Zimmerman Rosemary, which caused a lot of confusion and made his daughter Rosemary mopey.
Gentian was annoyed that Juniper could drive away three people, two of whom were grownups, a different two of whom had just done some real work outside, but she followed obediently. She hoped her father and Mrs. Zimmerman would go on talking about the Hardys’ sidewalk.
Her father’s office was a sunroom originally intended as a breakfast room. It had four windows overlooking the back yard and another two facing the sharp drop into the Mallorys’ side yard. It was painted bright yellow, with dazzling white trim, somewhat marred by fingerprints and some smudges where Pounce periodically rubbed his whiskers.
Her father had two filing cabinets, two black metal bookcases, another of Rosie’s rag rugs, an old chrome-and-formica kitchen table with a computer on it, and a spindly, improbable-looking, insanely comfortable office chair. He gave this to Mrs. Zimmerman. Gentian, as usua
l, sat on the rug. It was red, green, yellow, black, and white, and she liked to find shapes in it.
Her father busied himself with the cocoa. Pounce slid out from under the computer table and climbed onto Gentian’s lap. Mrs. Zimmerman took her father’s copy of Strunk and White from his desk and opened it seemingly at random.
“Well, R. A.,” said Gentian’s father, shutting the door of the microwave on the cocoa and starting the oven humming, “how goes the neighborhood?”
“Still abuzz,” said Mrs. Zimmerman. “Is there a Mr. Hardy? Well, you never see him. She’s so closed, don’t you think? And always borrowing strange tools.”
“Well, that last makes sense,” said Gentian’s father, sitting on one of his filing cabinets. “They have ordinary tools; they just need to borrow the odd ones.”
“Nobody with a brand-new house should need a snake, a fish, and a punch-down tool all within three months.”
“It’s an ill-built brand-new house,” said Gentian’s father. The microwave chimed, and he took the mugs out one by one, peered at them, stirred each with an old red enameled chopstick, and handed them around.
“Well,” said Mrs. Zimmerman, “what can you expect from something that went up so fast?”
Gentian’s father lifted his head from blowing on his cocoa. He looked like Maria Mitchell about to pounce on a dustball.
“No,” said Mrs. Zimmerman, just as if he had spoken. “Ira doesn’t think so either.”
“No,” said Gentian’s father. “Neither does Kate.”
“Odd,” said Mrs. Zimmerman.
“Only if it were a matter of perception.”
“It is a matter of perception.”
Gentian had been looking at Pounce’s ears when the shape of the conversation changed. Now she had to go on looking at Pounce, lest they remember she was there and change the subject.
Pounce’s ears were very pink and clean on the inside and covered with short dense white fur on the outside. Her father had found him hiding in the empty rabbit hutch on a cold day in February, so they had named him after Junie’s first rabbit, an ill-tempered and ill-fated creature who challenged a German shepherd to a duel with horrible, if predictable, results. Junie had seemed largely unperturbed, but Rosie, who was four at the time, still had nightmares about it.
Pounce began to purr. Neither adult in the room had said anything more. Gentian did not think it was because they had suddenly remembered her presence. She could feel them arguing without arguing. Her parents did that sometimes too. Rosie was very good at it. Junie never did it; Junie was an overt arguer par excellence.
“Well,” said Mrs. Zimmerman at last.
If her mother had said that, it would have meant something like, This is too pleasant a setting for an argument, I’ll get back to you later, which Rosemary had in fact once heard her say not to their father but to her visiting roommate from college.
When Mrs. Zimmerman said it, it seemed to mean something more like, Yes, all right, the situation is more complicated than I make it sound. Steph said that a lot. She had to, because she was so fond of sweeping pronouncements that nobody would let her get away with.
Gentian’s father said peaceably, “There’s perception and perception.”
“Kate’s,” said Mrs. Zimmerman, “is more like interception.”
Gentian blinked at her; why make peace and then insult her mother for no reason? Her father, however, laughed, and asked Gentian if her cocoa was bitter enough.
“It’s fine,” said Gentian. She fixed Mrs. Zimmerman with the glare she used on Steph. “Tell him about the sidewalk.”
“He saw it, Gentian,” said Mrs. Zimmerman.
Gentian looked at her in disbelief. She sounded as parental as any parent, much worse than either of Gentian’s own, a lot more like Steph’s. That utterly dismissive use of one’s name was almost more pedagogical than parental—the way teachers at her other schools had talked to her before she got into the open school, where they assumed you were human even after you filled the counselor’s office with balloons.
Mrs. Zimmerman’s tone of voice was, in short, odious, and completely unlike anything in their long friendship.
Mrs. Zimmerman seemed oblivious to this, but Gentian’s father looked as though he might have noticed. “I saw that the sidewalk was dry,” he said to Gentian, “but not what happened to the snow.”
“Nothing happened to it,” said Gentian. “It just wasn’t there.”
“Maxwell’s demon,” said Gentian’s father.
“Pity they can’t patent it,” said Mrs. Zimmerman.
“It would cost too much,” said Gentian’s father.
Gentian knew how much a patent search would cost because Erin had investigated the matter when she thought she had invented a new kind of bicycle pump; but she did not think her father was talking about money.
After she had drunk her cocoa and ascertained that the two adults were going to talk about politics, Gentian went into the kitchen and made cinnamon toast. She had planned to do so whether Junie was there or not, but Junie had departed, leaving a smell of rum and spices and four large tins with threatening notes stuck to them. Gentian took her toast upstairs and called Alma’s number, and after she had gone through two furry-voiced brothers, one of whom regaled her with the news that his hamster had just had babies and the other of whom yelled, “Alma! Telephone! It’s Gentian!” with the regularity of a foghorn while apparently standing right next to the owner of the hamster, Alma shooed them away and said, “Genny?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“You aren’t mad?”
“Yes, I am, you dodo, I’m mad you thought for a moment we’d believe you moved the planchette.”
“But nothing else could have happened that you’d believe.”
“I believe I don’t know what happened!”
“Do you?”
“What the hell has your church been telling you about scientists now?”
“Nothing, and don’t swear at me. It was Dominic.”
“And what did he say?”
“Praised you to the skies,” said Alma, with an unaccustomed note of irony. “Said how you were so objective and clear-minded and logical and so good at eliminating wrong answers.”
Gentian felt slightly winded. She bit her lip hard on an impulse to say, “He did?” so as to make Alma say it all over again, or say more. “So,” she said, and had to clear her throat, “so, he didn’t say I thought you did it, you just deduced he meant that?” “He also said,” said Alma, more ironically, “that you were so fucking honest yourself you couldn’t forgive dishonesty in anybody else, even in your very dearest friends.”
“He didn’t say fucking.”
“Nope. Too much of a gentleman, I’m sure.”
“But, well, so what? Why did you believe him?”
“Come on, Gentian. You know what he’s like. What he gave me to understand was that you had talked to him about it all and he was providing a friendly warning.”
“Well, I didn’t, and I wasn’t. Well, I mean, I did tell him about it, but I didn’t say you did it, because you didn’t.”
“Oh, that’s real logical.”
“Listen, God damn it.”
“Don’t blaspheme at me.”
“Then don’t be an idiot. Look. Becky and Erin and I are going to do a control experiment. We’re going to have another seance without you.”
“And without Steph.”
“Well, yeah, she wouldn’t come, and it’d be nice if you didn’t tell her.”
“I don’t know if I can promise that.”
“Well, think about it.”
“What good will another seance do, anyway?”
“I think,” said Gentian, goaded into claiming a hypothesis despite herself, “that it was just the mental influence of the Giant Ants that moved the planchette, so the three of us having another seance should make it happen again, and you won’t be there, and then you’ll be cleared. Not that we think you need clearing,
but it’s the only way to persuade you.”
“It might work better than swearing at me.”
“I take it that means, not very well.”
“I didn’t feel what Steph felt,” said Alma, “but I don’t think seances are an especially hot idea. I don’t mean anything supernatural even. But look how much trouble this one’s caused.”
“Only because you’re a dodo.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. Only because Dominic said a lot of ambiguous things to you and you acted like a dodo about it.” Only, she thought suddenly, because I talked to Dominic and gave him something to talk to Alma about. “When did he talk to you, anyway?”
“I was putting salt on the sidewalk Thanksgiving Day and he just walked up to me.”
“Huh.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk to him about me,” said Alma. “If you have to talk to him.”
“Okay, I won’t. But don’t you listen to him that way, either. I don’t think he could have made you think we were accusing you if you weren’t already worried.”
“See, that’s just it, he made me worried, when he talked to me before.”
“But why? Who is he anyway? Why do you care what he thinks?”
“I think he’s crazy,” said Alma.
When she had hung up the phone, Gentian tried to settle down to her homework, while keeping a wary eye on the weather. She dispatched her history and her algebra and then sat looking at Julius Caesar. She could ask her family to read Act IV, but they might not like having missed Act III. Her study group would read it tomorrow, laboring and stumbling and, for a change, giggling; but she wanted to look at it by herself first.
She had a bit of Act III left, having quit in disgust when Antony became so bloodthirsty. She found the place and read on. At the beginning of Act IV, the Plebians—people like me, thought Gentian, moodily, who are going to have to work for a living— demanded to be satisfied about Caesar’s death. Brutus and Cassius both agreed to speak to them. Brutus made a very pretty speech; Gentian made a note to show it to Becky, for its sentences if not for its sentiment. Its sentiment seemed to be that Caesar was wonderful but too dangerous to live.