The Secret Hum of a Daisy Read online

  Try as I might to hold them off, pictures came: the silent whirling lights of the ambulance, Mama’s matted hair, a policeman standing frozen on the bank of the river with helpless hands stuffed in his pockets.

  I tried to get my mind to settle on good pictures of Mama instead, a purple scarf in her hair, digging in some small snatch of dirt to plant tomatoes, the smile on her face each morning when she saw me for the first time, the faraway look she had when she sat down with her birds. But they wouldn’t stay. Jo galloped through my mind instead, and Grandma. Max and Beauty with her big belly. New pictures kept flashing and I couldn’t get past them to stay with Mama.

  Beach sand. The words from Mrs. Brannigan’s jar came to mind. I went into my duffel and took out the small plastic bag of sand and remembered our day at the beach. I saw my tiny white feet in the dark wet sand, Mama on a blanket just out of reach.

  Build me a memory.

  I’d taken pail after pail of the heavy, wet sand from where the waves fanned out on the shore and built a castle. While I was at it, I rubbed the sand on my arms and in my hair and on my feet so the memory would build into me too.

  That sand crept into every crease, deep in my ears and on my scalp, and in the soft spaces between my toes. By the time the castle was done, I was coated up like a cinnamon doughnut. Mama fawned over my droopy castle and told me she wished we could live inside.

  Then she took my hand and walked me toward the showers on the slatted wood boardwalk. When I saw where she was headed, I started to fight and kick and cry because I’d gotten it in my head that the memories for the day somehow lived in the sand, and if she washed it off, the day would be gone too. I wanted to bring it home with me, and so Mama took an empty Styrofoam cup and filled it with sand and we put it in the bag so I’d have it forever.

  All that lived in the girl on the paper. I put my hand on the other side, on the blank side, feeling torn, wanting to put down my hopes for the future. But that would make it After.

  I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep myself in Before.

  • • •

  I stood in front of Grandma’s porch, rain gluing the hair to my face, waiting for some direction until I realized I didn’t need it. This much I was sure of. I climbed the steps and let myself in the front door. Grandma sat in her sleepless-night chair, knitting something purple.

  “Mama wouldn’t want me living in a shed,” I announced.

  She stopped knitting and looked up at me. “Well, it’s about time. Let’s get you settled in your mother’s room.”

  “Can I sleep on the sofa for now?”

  Grandma only paused for a second before going to the closet in the hall and coming back with a pile of sheets and a quilt.

  “Let me take that coat,” she said. “You’re soaked through.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  I laid Mama’s coat on the hearth so it would dry quickly as Grandma made up the couch. I sat on the floor next to the wood stove, trying not to shake, noticing the smell of cleaning. Grandma wrapped a dry quilt around my shoulders and put a towel in my lap.

  “Fold your sheets in the morning and set them in that cabinet over there. I don’t want to look at a bed in my living room.”

  As I dried my hair with the towel, Grandma sat on the edge of her rocking chair and watched me.

  “The gardening tools you bring every morning in the truck when you drop me off at school, what do you need them for?”

  “I spend a few hours every morning in the park, weeding, cutting things back.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Mama’s fountain when I first got here?”

  “I didn’t feel much like sharing.”

  I blinked. She was so honest. Even when it made her look bad. There was something about her honesty that was a comfort, even if the words made me feel prickly. “Tell me about the fountain,” I said.

  “What do you want to know?”

  I shrugged. “Whatever you can tell me.”

  Grandma’s knitting needles moved so fast, I’d never be able to follow. The fire inside the wood stove threw dancing shadows all over the room.

  “She started making birds with your grandpa after a birding trip when she was eight. They’d seen a crane and Anna came home with this story about it being magic. She’d collected some things she’d found while they were out, an old aluminum can, bottle caps, twigs, and some feathers, and she snipped and glued until she had quite the work of art. A set of beautiful wings fixed to a piece of canvas. When she finished your grandfather went on to tell her that the crane wasn’t just magic, but that the wings could carry her wishes and sorrows out into the world. So she wrote on a little piece of driftwood that she wished she could fly and attached it to her canvas.”

  I thought of her wings in my dreams. How I wished I could fly too.

  Grandma went on, “By the time she was ten, she worked with a soldering iron and a rivet gun so her birds would be more three-dimensional. But I think the whole reason she built them that way was so she could put her little slips of wishes and sorrows inside. She always hid something in her birds. Did she still do that?”

  I nodded.

  “Of course,” Grandma said. “Her work was beautiful. Thomas encouraged her creativity.”

  She put her hands to her face and took a couple of deep and hitching breaths. I stared down at the tiny stitches on the edge of the quilt, not sure what to do. Finally, I got up and grabbed some tissues from the downstairs bathroom. Grandma took them from me, her callused hand giving mine a squeeze. I squeezed back.

  Once she’d blown her nose, she picked up where she left off. “Your mama found a book on Central Park and just fell in love with it. The way everyone came together. How you could be alone, but still be with people. She felt her art would fit right in and so that was where the idea came from. To build something where Anna’s art would fit right in. I’ve never been good with words . . .”

  Grandma’s hands slowed and she stretched the scarf she’d been knitting. She got up and laid it around my neck. “Is this long enough?”

  “For me?”

  “Of course for you.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say, it was so unexpected, so I nodded.

  She unwrapped it from my neck and sat back down, finishing the last stitches. Then she pulled scissors from a small basket that sat beside her and snipped off the end of the yarn. She handed it to me.

  “Thank you,” I said, and put it on, feeling cozy and warm.

  She walked down the hall into Grandpa’s office and came out with a pillowcase stuffed with something that wasn’t a pillow. She set it on the floor in front of me and then sat in her rocking chair.

  When I paused, she said, “It won’t bite.”

  I reached inside and pulled out the bundle of letters I’d written to Grandma. The ones I’d thrown across the shed before leaving for Mrs. Greene’s. I reached in again and pulled out another bundle. More letters. I opened one.

  Dear Grace,

  I have a great recipe for cherry pie that your mama used to steal right out of the kitchen. That child would hide in the closet and eat half a pie if I wasn’t careful. First you start with ice-cold water. The crust won’t turn out right any other way . . .

  I pulled out another and another.

  Dear Grace,

  I wish you could have sent me your grandparent’s letter. I would have loved to answer all your questions about hats and furniture and if I lived where it snowed . . .

  She’d answered them all. Twenty-seven letters. Even the angry ones. She must have done it while I was at Mrs. Greene’s.

  There was more in the pillowcase: a fluff of purple yarn, some knitting needles, and a book called Knitting for Beginners.

  “Thank you,” I said again, feeling the tears creeping up.

  Grandma would never be Mama. But I was starting to thi
nk I could love her. Maybe in some future time when it wasn’t snowing or raining, and the flowers had grown and then died. Maybe once the leaves turned and the wind started to blow, I might love her. A little.

  I waited for the familiar feelings of betrayal and guilt to come knock my door down. But they didn’t.

  “Sometimes thinking can steal the magic right out of a thing,” Grandma said.

  I smiled, surprised. “Mama used to say that.”

  Grandma smiled back and it crinkled her nose. “Did she, now?”

  I stared into the crackling fire for a little while wondering how much more of Grandma Mama had brought with her and never told me about, what else I might discover along the way.

  “Hop in bed now, it’s late. We’ll talk more in the morning.”

  I climbed between the crisp sheets with Jo’s earplugs. She’d told me they had to warm up a bit in order to get soft enough to fit, so I held them tight in my hand. The river was a faint rustle, almost like wind.

  I expected Grandma to hurry off to bed, but she stayed in the chair by the fire, knitting something new. As I lay on the sofa in the moonlight, I listened to the lonely sound of Grandma’s rocking chair and let the rhythm of it soothe me for a while before putting in the earplugs and going to sleep.

  26

  One and

  the Same

  Everything changed three days later when I was doing homework at the breakfast table, staring out the window at the sun slanting through the trees, trying to work a math problem using the Pythagorean theorem, when Grandma’s words came back to me.

  She always hid something in her birds.

  Which, of course, I knew. So why would the fountain be any different?

  Grandma was busy at the sink, scrubbing something that probably didn’t need to be scrubbed, when I almost shouted, “Did Mama hide something in the fountain?”

  She turned around to look at me, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “That’s a good question.”

  I stood up fast, almost knocking the chair over. “Can you take me there?”

  “Right now?” Grandma said.

  “It’s important.”

  She gave me the once-over. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with mischievous raccoons, would it?”

  It was a fair question since the only thing separating me from a mischievous raccoon up until now was a coat of fur and a bushy tail. So I didn’t get mad. “It’s just something I have to do.”

  With that, Grandma went into the mudroom and put on a sweater instead of her lumberman jacket and grabbed her big black purse.

  As we pulled onto Ridge Road, Beauty stood near the fence line and nodded as though wishing me luck.

  • • •

  Grandma barely had the car stopped when I leaped out and started running, kicking up gravel as I went. I wasn’t sure what I’d find, but deep down, I knew I was on the right track.

  I studied the fountain from every angle, walking around people sprawled on the grass, looking for levers or empty spaces or anything that might be a hiding place. When I didn’t see anything obvious, I read the Robert Frost quote on the plaque again.

  Where the bird was before it flew,

  Where the flower was before it grew,

  Where bird and flower were one and the same.

  “It was your mother’s favorite poem. She told me it made her think about home.” Grandma walked up behind me, dabbing a handkerchief to her brow, just like the one she’d given me all those days ago at Mama’s funeral. The sun was just above the tree line, about to fall into leafy shade. “She thought it was a secret, but I knew she put it there for your dad. He was fond of Robert Frost.”

  “Mama always read it before we moved.”

  Maybe the poem got her thinking about what home should feel like and so she’d know it once she got there. A thought niggled at me, though, like I was missing something important. I tried hard not to get mad at Mama all over again, telling myself she had no idea she’d be gone so soon, leaving me with a pile of unanswerable questions.

  “Where do you think she might have put a hiding place?” Grandma said. She held a hand to her eyes, shading them from the sun. It was the first time I noticed she wore a wedding ring. A plain gold band.

  “We can’t get inside the metal. So that leaves the rocks. Maybe one of them is loose?”

  Grandma started to poke at the rocks and mortar. She went in an orderly line starting at the top and working her way down. I scooted in beside her and did the same thing. A few people watched us from their chairs in the grass. Kids laughed in the distance, flying a parrot kite. A dog barked.

  She picked weeds as we went and I did, too, watching her so I knew the difference between a regular old blade of grass and a weed.

  “So you were a ballerina?”

  Grandma nodded. “I danced in the San Francisco Ballet. But then I met your grandfather just before he shipped out to Vietnam in 1972 and it changed everything.”

  “Vietnam! That’s ancient history!” I said.

  Grandma smiled. “He swept me clear off my pointe shoes, romancing me for two straight weeks before he shipped out. We wrote to each other over the next year and he swore if he made it out alive, he’d marry me.

  “It wasn’t until he actually showed up at my tiny apartment that I realized he was serious. It was the first and only crazy thing I’ve ever done in my life. But I just had this deep-down feeling that it was the right thing to do. I gave up dancing to be with your grandfather, and I have never looked back.”

  I poked and she poked and I thought about love and how it makes you feel clicked open, like a key turned in a lock. Once you knew, you just knew.

  “So why didn’t you let Mama have that? She loved my dad.”

  Grandma sat back on the grass and rubbed her forehead, leaving a smudge of dirt. “Sometimes being a mother makes you blind. You think you know what’s best and refuse to see any other way.”

  I tried not to get all worked up again, so I moved away from Grandma to give myself some room. I concentrated on the mineral smell of the fountain water and the crispy softness of a blade of grass. After a few deep breaths, I found a thin gap around a long, flat stone. “I found something!” I shouted. Grandma came over and crouched beside me.

  The stone was easy to pull free from the deep opening. Once it was out, we both sat there looking into the darkness of the hole.

  “I’ll be darned,” she said.

  I reached in and touched something flat and metal. I pulled out an old, tarnished number 4. I scoured the inside of the opening again, looking for more. Looking for something I might understand.

  “What’s that?”

  I held the number flat on my hand, feeling wobbly all over. “I have no idea.”

  • • •

  Once we got back to Grandma’s house and she went out to do her gardening, I laid everything out—all my treasure-hunting clues—on the coffee table next to my sofa-bed. Mama’s unfinished bird, the postcard of Threads, the map and poem on the back of Mama’s flyers, the spoon from the crane in the meadow, and the mysterious number 4.

  I slipped the number 4 in my pocket and each of the other pieces into the Kerr jar with the origami cranes. I tucked the jar behind the sofa and then picked up Robert Frost so I could look over “In a Vale.” Something about the poem had stayed with me.

  When I got to the stanza that Mama had quoted on her plaque, I realized what it was. She’d left the first two lines off.

  Before the last went, heavy with dew,

  Back to the place from which she came—

  Where the bird was before it flew,

  Where the flower was before it grew,

  Where bird and flower were one and the same.

  Mama had read that poem so many times, I almost knew it by heart. Because I’d always been sad when she’d read i
t, thinking of the move to come, I’d never thought about it having another meaning.

  Back to the place from which she came.

  She’d recite the poem in the days before we’d leave, over and over again. Those words meant something to her, and while I always took them to mean leaving, now I wondered.

  Had she been trying to come home all along?

  27

  Beginnings

  Early Saturday morning, after tossing and turning all night, I finally gave up on sleep, put on boots, and grabbed a flashlight. I left a note for Grandma and walked the trail, eventually finding the meadow, patches of white glowing in the early dusk.

  Brand-new daisies.

  I settled on the edge of the rocky beach. I couldn’t keep away the crushing memories, though, so I tried to tell myself this wasn’t really the same river since they had different names. It didn’t even look or sound like the same river, and it wouldn’t have power over me.

  I said this to myself over and over until it turned into a wobbly sort of belief. When the sky finally brightened, I reached in my pocket for the picture of Mama and Daddy, held it by the edges, and walked the meadow in careful circles until I finally came to what looked like the place where they’d posed. It was where the crane now stood, under a taller pine.

  The idea that Mama might have been trying to come home had been with me all night, so I went over what I knew. She’d started acting strange when she saw those sandhill cranes migrating home back in February. Quiet, moody, not her usual sunshiny self. Mrs. Greene’s words came back to me. When I tried to ask her why she was leaving, she said she couldn’t talk about it, that she might lose her nerve.

  I thought over our last few moves. Each one had gotten us closer and closer to Auburn Valley, with Mrs. Greene’s being just an hour away.

  So many clues and no answers. I felt like I was going crazy.

  I walked over to the crane and rested my ear against the hollow body again. Mama had told me it wasn’t the birds with hopes for the future but the ones with sorrows inside that sold more often. People were drawn to them at the local farmers’ markets or tiny art festivals we’d sell them in. Those people held them close—their own sorrows scratching at them maybe, itching for a way out—until they’d reach in their pockets and pay whatever Mama was asking. Not that she ever asked for much.