Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary

  Caesar and his train then came back. Caesar said to Mark Antony, “Let me have men about me that are fat, sleek-headed men, and such as sleep a’nights. Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.”

  Gentian’s mother read blithely, “Fear him not, Caesar; he’s not dangerous. He is a noble Roman, and well founded.” Her tone made Gentian realize how chilling this was, because Antony was wrong and Cassius was going to kill Caesar.

  Caesar remained unpersuaded, and cited a long list of Cassius’s faults: he was a keen observer, he loved no plays or music, he hardly ever smiled. This speech convulsed Rosemary with laughter, though it did not really line up with Juniper’s numerous faults. Caesar then invited Mark Antony aside to tell him what Antony really thought of Cassius; and Brutus pounced on Casca and asked him what had happened to make Caesar and his train look so upset.

  Casca was a scatterbrain, and Rosemary, who had far too much practice pretending to be stupider than she was, dealt with him admirably. Eventually Brutus and Cassius extracted from Casca the information that Mark Antony had offered Caesar a crown three times, and Caesar had refused it each time, but Casca thought Caesar would very much have liked to take the crown, just the same. Then, said Casca, at the third refusal the crowd had yelled so much, and had such bad breath, that Caesar fell down in a faint and foamed at the mouth.

  “’Tis very like,” said Gentian as Brutus, “he hath the falling-sickness.”

  “No, Caesar hath it not,” said Juniper-Cassius, in a morose and meaning tone, “but you, and I, and honest Casca, we have the failing-sickness.”

  “I know not what you mean by that,” said Rosemary, giddily, “but I am sure Caesar fell down.”

  “And after that,” read Gentian, “he came thus sad away?”

  “Ay,” said Rosemary.

  “What said Cicero?” asked Juniper.

  “He spoke Greek,” said Rosemary, with a disgusted look that made her father choke.

  “To what effect?” said Juniper, in exactly the tone she would have used to her sister in a similar situation.

  Casca didn’t know. Cassius invited Casca to dine with him on the morrow, and Casca accepted and departed.

  “What a blunt fellow is this grown to be!” read Gentian, trying to remember which voice was for Brutus. “He was quick mettle when he went to school.”

  Juniper laughed unpleasantly, and then had to regroup for Cassius’s speech. “So is he now,” she said, “in execution of any bold or noble enterprise, however he puts on this tardy form. This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit, which gives men stomach to digest his words with better appetite. Don’t,” she continued in her own voice, “think you can use that as an excuse, Rosie.”

  Rosemary stuck out her tongue.

  In Scene III, four characters whose names all began with C met in a thunderstorm. The first two were Cicero, whom Gentian’s mother hastily assumed, and Casca. Casca was frightened by the storm, and by various strange happenings within it: fire dropping from the heavens, lions in the Capitol who went by without molesting the people, men all in fire walking up and down the streets. Cicero, in just the same calm tones with which Gentian’s mother would discuss tales of how Juniper behaved in school, said that well, yes, it was strange, but there were many ways to interpret it all, and asked if Caesar was coming to the Capitol tomorrow. Casca said he was, and Cicero went home.

  Cassius came in; Casca tried to get him to admit that the storm was frightening, and Cassius informed him that he, Cassius, had been going about exposing himself to the lightning with no ill effects whatever. Casca asked, in effect, what was the matter with him, and Cassius, in Junie’s best scornful-sister voice, said, “You are dull, Casca, and those sparks of life that should be in a Roman you do want.” She went on in considerable detail to explain that Cassius knew a man as monstrous and unnatural as the storm itself.

  Obediently, Casca said, “’Tis Caesar that you mean, is it not, Cassius?”

  Cassius said it didn’t matter whom he meant, the Romans were womanish. Juniper, who had been increasingly flushed during this conversation, slapped her book down and cried, “Foul!”

  “Don’t be such a knee-jerker,” said Rosemary. “All the Romans were sexist.”

  “Shakespeare wasn’t a Roman,” said Juniper, furiously.

  “Give the man a chance, Junie,” said their father.

  Cinna came by, was assumed by Gentian’s father, and said Cassius should win Brutus to their party. Cassius said he would go to Brutus’s house and talk to him again, and that they would all meet later.

  “And so shall we,” said Gentian’s father, closing his book smartly. “To bed, to bed; the glowworm shows the matin to be nigh, and ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire.”

  Gentian kissed her parents, smiled at Rosie, and went back upstairs. Maria Mitchell was pacing about the upstairs hall, emitting sounds of profound disapproval. She could meow like an ordinary cat, but the noise she made when Gentian had forgotten to feed her more nearly resembled the creak of an ungreased bicycle.

  “Oh, no,” said Gentian, and went at a gallop into her bathroom, where the cat food lived under the sink in a galvanized metal pail with latches to the top. She tipped a generous amount of food into Murr’s blue porcelain bowl, dumped yesterday’s water down the tub, and filled the green porcelain water bowl again while Murr growled pleasurably over her meal. The plates had been her grandmother’s; they had chipped gold rims and were painted with pansies.

  Gentian sat down on the crumpled bath rug and watched Maria Mitchell eat. It was really unconscionable to forget to feed one’s cat. How would you like it, she said to herself, as always. Not a bit, was the usual answer, but somehow it did not serve very well; once a week or so, she would always forget.

  She went back to her desk, where the rest of the undone homework awaited her, and made a big sign with blue paper and a red marker: feed cat! She taped it to her door, and sat back down to her algebra. About halfway through the assignment, she went over and looked through her telescope again.

  The dark side of the new house looked back at her. Maybe Becky would come over tomorrow after school.

  Chapter 4

  Gentian overslept the next morning. Maria Mitchell, fed so copiously so late, did not awaken her. She opened her eyes suddenly on a shaft of sunlight she usually saw in that spot on a weekday only when she was sick. Murr was curled around her head, purring madly. The smells of bacon and coffee had come up the stairs and faded while she still slept. From Juniper’s room, just below, came the irregular tapping of her sister’s unskilled typing on the computer keyboard, unfairly fulfilling the morning requirements of her schooling by typing reams of stupid stuff on the local teens echo and pretending she was doing a sociological study by logging in as two different people, one male and one female.

  “Why didn’t anybody wake me up! " cried Gentian, trying to untangle herself from the quilt.

  Maria Mitchell, wise in the ways of the household, sprang away from her head and landed neatly on the headboard of her bed between a precarious stack of the last ten issues of Sky and Telescope and a tangle of Mardi Gras beads that Steph’s big sister had brought back from New Orleans two years ago.

  Gentian sat up, rubbing her eyes, and said, “Way to go, tiger.” Murr gazed blandly over her head. Gentian got up, patted the telescope, and rummaged in her second drawer for a T-shirt.

  She was hungry, rumpled, and much disinclined to go to school, but if she wanted Becky to come over and look at the telescope, she would have to go.

  There was a note for her on the kitchen table. “Don’t bother Daddy, he’s got a deadline he forgot about. Juniper, let Rosie use the computer for at least an hour this afternoon; Gentian, remember you said you would rake the yard.”

  Gentian gazed blearily around the kitchen: red countertops, red and white floor tiles, white cabinets, with the door to the one where they kept the cat treats a bit ajar; half a carafe of coffee keepi
ng warm, or getting thick and bitter, depending on how you looked at it, for her father as he worked; Rosie’s cereal bowl and Junie’s toast plate, and their teacups, piled in the sink; the magnetic letters on the dishwasher that said clean—whoever puts these away gets first crack at the new yorker, which meant that it was her father trying to get out of the job, since nobody else would think first crack at The New Yorker was worth that much trouble; her own Peter Rabbit bowl and mug set out on the table with a blue napkin and the glass jar of granola.

  The light was wrong. Not because of the hour; because of the house next door.

  Pounce, her father’s white cat, bounded into the kitchen and leapt up into Gentian’s chair. He made a small chirp when he landed, like a slightly startled bird.

  “Cat,” said Gentian, “what day is it?”

  She went over to the back door and consulted the Minnesota Weatherguide Calendar hanging there. It ought to be the eighteenth of October. She dug her assignment notebook out of her knapsack and looked at the last page. “Friday, October 15 (new moon) Act IJC (disc. Mon).” There were the history reading, the book report, the repeat of the geometry problems, right where they should be. She sat on the edge of the kitchen table and rubbed Pounce’s spine. He purred. Yesterday was Sunday, surely. Mrs. Hardy had come, and her mother had been home. The day before that had been Saturday and Gentian had gotten up at 6:45 to look at Mercury and spent much of the rest of the day raking the lawn.

  Gentian took her denim jacket out of the front-hall closet and went outside. There was a drift of red maple leaves in a corner of the porch, and a red butterfly clinging to the chain of the porch swing. Gentian looked at it thoughtfully. “Isn’t it getting late for you?” she said. She jumped over all four wooden porch steps and landed jarringly on the sidewalk. There were leaves on the front lawn, certainly, because the trees were shedding like a cat in spring. But that lawn had been raked. There were the four bags of leaves she had gathered, lined up against the foundation of the porch.

  Gentian ambled down the front walk, looking at the day. The new house squatted like a toad on her old garden. There were no leaves on its lawn now, and no sign that there ever had been any.

  She went briskly down the steep concrete steps, also scattered with maple leaves, and began walking down the middle of the street, which pleased her because she could see the way the elms met in an arch in the middle of the sky. The black asphalt of the street was strewn with their yellow leaves, and a few stray ones from the maple. Gray porch boards, white cement steps, black street, all patterned with red and yellow leaves, like samples in a wallpaper book. The sky was brilliant. It was not a day to be inside. Maybe she could persuade Becky to leave school early. If it was Monday, their last period was a study hall; during the one before it, Gentian had Gym, which didn’t matter, but Becky had Algebra. Becky alternated between saying poets didn’t need to know mathematics and saying poets needed to know everything.

  The city bus arrived on its weekday schedule, which was a slight relief. Gentian read her history assignment on the way downtown and bolted into the school building just in time to catch Becky as she came out of their shared English class.

  Becky had resisted all blandishments of fashion since before she went off to kindergarten. When almost every other girl in the school, including both Gentian’s sisters and even Alma and Steph in Gentian and Becky’s own circle, had cut and curled her bangs and put her hair up in a ponytail with a great huge filmy bow on it, Becky went on wearing her straight brown hair brushed ruthlessly back from her freckled forehead and plaited into one braid down her back, which she decorated with a piece of yarn from whatever she was knitting at the time. It was red today. Her sweater was yellow, her pants blue, and her socks purple. Gentian regarded her with immense satisfaction. Nobody but Becky would tell Becky what to do.

  “Where were you?” said Becky.

  “Mom thought it was Sunday.”

  “Your Mom?”

  “Well, maybe Daddy did and she believed him.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Anyway, can we leave early? There’s something the matter with my telescope. We’ll feed you macaroni and cheese for supper and we can do our homework together.”

  “I’m supposed to have supper with Steph.”

  “Okay. Is tomorrow Tuesday?”

  “Last time I checked.”

  “Can you come over then?”

  “It’s Jeremy’s birthday,” said Becky. Speaking of her younger brother, she did not pull the kind of face anybody else would have.

  Gentian considered. Wednesday, Rosemary’s Girl Scout troop would be there; Thursday, she had to do a lot of reading for a history test on Friday; Saturday, her parents were going out and refused to let teenaged girls reach critical mass in their absence. “Can you come over on Friday?”

  “I could come spend the night. I have to rake leaves and clean my room after school. I could come after supper, maybe around eight.”

  “Okay. If I don’t call you, it’s all right with Mom.”

  “Sarah’s not coming to stay with Junie, is she?”

  ‘I don’t think so. I think it’s Junie’s turn to go over there. Why?”

  “I found the giggling very distracting last time,” said Becky, with a primness that made Gentian, not much prone to such things, giggle herself, as Becky had meant her to.

  “We’ll be as solemn as judges,” she said, “engaged in the desperate work of repairing the telescope before the giant meteor hits us.”

  “You read too much fantasy,” said Becky. “Giant meteor indeed.”

  “Only somebody who didn’t read any would think that’s where I would get such terminology.”

  “Giant is not a scientific term.”

  “Red giant. White dwarf.”

  “A hit,” said Becky, “a hit, I do confess it. Do I have to buy you lunch?”

  “It’d be nice if you did. I forgot my wallet. Can we go to the Golden Dragon?”

  “Well, I don’t know; it’ll make us late for Biology.”

  “Oh, right. I forgot it was Monday.”

  “I guess you did,” said Becky, eyeing her sidelong as if she were a broken toaster.

  “It’s that new house,” said Gentian.

  “Let’s go to Burger King, all right? It’s better than gluey spaghetti. What new house?”

  “The one they built on our vacant lot.”

  “When did they do that? You never told me.”

  They walked out of the school building and went down to the corner to cross the street. Gentian, left to herself, would have jaywalked, but Becky refused to do so, and it was irritating to dart across the street and then wait for Becky to come around by the light.

  The Burger King had a little concrete courtyard with concrete benches and tables, plants in concrete boxes, some tattered umbrellas, and a large collection of interested sparrows. Gentian always got an extra hamburger so she could crumble the bun up and give it to them. Becky often brought birdseed.

  They took their lunch to a table in the corner. Mercifully, their classmates had gone mostly elsewhere today, and besides themselves and the sparrows the courtyard held only a young woman with two toddlers and an elderly gentleman reading a copy of the collected poems of William Butler Yeats. It was the same red-covered paperback Gentian’s father had had in college. Rosie had been hoarding it in her room for several months now.

  “When did they build the new house?” repeated Becky.

  “A couple of weeks ago,” said Gentian vaguely.

  “They can build a house in a few weeks?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Has it got a basement and a foundation and everything?”

  “Yes. Well, I don’t know about everything, but yes to the first two; and it looks like a house, not a shack or a summer cabin or anything. I don’t know what it’s like on the inside, of course.”

  “Maybe when somebody moves in you’ll find out.”

  “Somebody has moved in.” r />
  Becky paused with an onion ring halfway to her mouth, and gave Gentian the broken-toaster look again. “When?”

  “Right after the house was finished.”

  “What date?”

  “End of September?”

  “Don’t ask me. "

  “I don t remember. It’s not as if I didn’t have anything else to think about.”

  “What’s the new family like?”

  “We only saw the mother,” said Gentian, bending her mind backwards. “She was undistinguished. She came to borrow a snake.”

  “Did you just happen to have a boa in the basement?”

  Gentian laughed. “I’d like to see anybody trying to get a boa to clear out the plumbing.”

  “And how do you know she’s a mother?”

  “Oh,” said Gentian, jolted. “Because there’s a kid, too. And she said he was her son.”

  “Maybe you can babysit.”

  “He’s fifteen.”

  “Gentian Meriweather-—”

  “No, really, that s not why I didn’t tell you. Come on, Becky. I might ask you not to tell Steph, but I’d tell you.”

  “Well,” said Becky, “tell me, then.”

  “His hair is black, his eyes are blue, his lips as red as wine,” said Gentian.

  “Genny.”

  “No, really, they are. Well, we weren’t close enough to see his eyes. But he’s taller than Junie. And we haven’t seen hide nor hair nor tooth of him since the day they moved in.”

  “Which was when?”

  Gentian concentrated. Becky would keep asking, for months if necessary, until she got an answer. “All right,” she said. “They started building the house on the first day of school. And it took about three weeks, I think; and then they moved in.”

  “Gentian Meriweather, you have seen me every day at school and spent the night at my house two times in that interval, and you never said a word about it.”

  “I forgot,” said Gentian, holding Becky’s eyes. She had, in fact.