Front Yard (8 page)

“We'll take care of the fairies for you,” said George, who was secretly planning to treat them to little saucersful of merlot. Nan made a big show of looking at her watch. She was getting tired of all this fairy talk, and had concluded that this new, reincarnated Dr. Sproot was probably a fraud and definitely a bore.

“Gosh, we have to get to work, don't we, George?”

“We do?” said George, slouched into his chair, deep in contemplation about these new fairy findings.

“Yes! We do!”

“Well,” Marta said. “We have to go, anyway. But thank you for taking on the fairies. And I must say this was entirely Phyllis's idea. She's hoping to be reconciled with you. Then, we can all be gardening buddies.”

“We will take that under consideration,” Nan said curtly. “But you're just about the last person we'd want to reconnect with, Sproot.”

“I understand that,” said Dr. Sproot. “But try to be open-minded about me. I have changed. I'm trying to change some more. I'm trying so hard to undo the bad things I did to you last year.” Marta tugged at Dr. Sproot's elbow. Dr. Sproot, as rigid as a tomato plant stake, turned silently and walked, with Marta in tow, slowly back down the steps. Nan was forced to note, approvingly, that neither she nor Marta disturbed the pea gravel.

“Strange,” George said.

“Strange?”

“Didn't you notice anything strange about Dr. Sproot?”

“Everything is strange about Dr. Sproot, George.”

“Something in particular I noticed. Marta took her sunglasses off when she was up here on the patio with us. Dr. Sproot never did.”

“So?”

“I think there's something in that. I can't help but think that Dr. Sproot hasn't really changed at all, but is just going through the motions. Something's going on behind those Foster Grants that we don't want to know about. We need to treat her with care, or, better yet, not at all.”

“No argument from me,” said Nan, who was feeling too good from the gin and tonics to be too concerned about how Dr. Sproot, whom she had humbled with so much ease, might somehow threaten them in the misty, uncertain future. She made a note to file this in her mental “George's paranoid observations” folder for possible future consideration.

Something completely off the subject and infinitely more pressing suddenly occurred to her.

“Here's a treat for you, George. A new plant joke.”

George groaned.

“How many Joe-Pye weeds does it take to move a pressure-treated railroad tie? Ponder that while you go freshen my drink, please.”

10

A
year ago, Dr. Sproot would have scoffed at the notion of supernatural powers at the beck and call of those who knew how to summon them. There had been a dramatic turnaround in her thinking since then.

For one thing, there was that blight on her garden that had no horticultural explanation. That was Edith Merton's doing; that bitch of a witch casting her gardening spells hither and yon, and Dr. Sproot knew it was so because she had seen the dire results herself.

Edith had been rejected for membership in the Rose Maidens, and had not taken rejection sitting down. She had punished each and every voting officer by visiting a gardening plague of biblical proportions upon their gardens. Including Dr. Sproot's.

Dr. Sproot had thus been the victim of supernatural extortion, having to pay Edith to undo the curse on her own yard. While she was at it, she figured she might as well pay Edith to take down her archrivals, the Fremonts, big-time. That freak-of-nature hailstorm couldn't have happened without some supernatural intercession. Then—drat that Edith!—she must have cast a good spell that revitalized the Fremonts' gardens— and in August, no less!—after everyone got caught on that awful night, and Marta got Edith to turn over a new leaf and play nice.

Dr. Sproot surveyed the expanse of her five new garden plots, which she had staked out, churned up, fertilized, and aerated in the hopes of turning them into her new, revolutionary creations. Yes, she thought; maybe there are things that happen that no amount of gardening erudition and wisdom—such as her own—can explain. Maybe that means that the Fremonts really could talk to their plants, and that gardening spirits await only the proper medium for unleashing their cosmic influences, for good or evil.

Dr. Sproot frowned. A Christian of sorts, she wondered how all this could be reconciled with the tenets of organized religion. Maybe she was destined to go pagan.

The night she spent in the clink following her Fremont backyard escapade had also made a profound impression. Even such a hard case as Dr. Sproot could give some serious thought to reforming after spending time with a couple of mucus-smeared drunks, a middle-aged prostitute who chomped on about ten pieces of gum while leering at her through sparkling Day-Glo lips, and three loquacious teenagers who kept taking off their shorts and waving them around until the prostitute threatened to “scrotum-kick” them.

Besides, there were a few chromosomes of good in Dr. Sproot that occasionally exerted a teensy bit of influence on her behavior. She decided that it was time to give those chromosomes full rein, and to become the new “Phyllis.”

The new Phyllis would be kind, engaging, and encouraging to any and all gardeners who would flatter her enough to seek her advice. Gone were her old rigid formulas that dictated to the percentage point the amount and types of flowers you had to have in your garden for it to truly achieve a measured magnificence. She would garden from her heart now, letting pure instinct tell her what to do. She would be plain old Phyllis-the-Gardener, and drop any pretense of being Livia's ruling gardening savant.

This new attitude made it easier for Dr. Sproot to concede that there were other gardeners in Livia far more accomplished than she. True peace of mind was now within reach. All she had to do was step out of the gardening limelight and let the dictates of her soul steer her toward a fruitful, contented anonymity.

How heartening it was for her to see that this new Phyllis thing was getting results. Her few friends and many acquaintances were back on speaking terms with her. The Rose Maidens announced they would consider her for readmittance to their ranks. Dr. Sproot had even thought about calling Edith. A contrite Edith had allegedly given up her dark practices, though Dr. Sproot knew she was keeping her hand in because would you look at her gardens! She was the rankest of amateurs, yet her meager little blooms, once so bedraggled and puny-looking, shone out like guiding beacons of the gardener's craft. Well, bless her little heart anyway.

Mostly, it was poor Marta who had worked so hard to change her. Good old self-effacing Marta. It was Marta who had come by to visit her after she was branded a pariah, a marked woman expelled from the Rose Maidens, and whose name was nutrient-deprived mud in every gardening circle for miles around. It was Marta who had worked hard to extract the tiniest nugget of pure good that was buried deep down inside her. Marta said she had that little wavering flicker of saintliness that made her want to love and cherish her flowers, and not to treat them so callously as
things
.

And, speaking of the little saint maker, here she was now, coming through the fence gate to get her first long look at Dr. Sproot's straight-from-the-heart creations.

“Morning, Marta.”

“Hi, Phyllis. Lovely day . . . finally!”

“Isn't it, though?” said Dr. Sproot, proudly scanning the panorama of her new flower beds. “So, what do you think, Marta?”

In the past, Dr. Sproot's gardens would have been crowded with her coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend, yuccas, and a smattering of dahlias and roses. Marta had always thought it a weird combination, especially based as it was on Dr. Sproot's insistence on assigning a precise percentage of the whole to each particular flower grouping. It had been her pedantic way of doing things, and for that reason it had always had a sort of artificial, mathematical look to it.

What we had here now was so different Marta didn't know quite what to make of it. Dr. Sproot had kept it a secret from her and implored her to stay away until she could properly unveil her new gardens. It appeared Dr. Sproot had completely given herself over to geraniums and spikes, which gave her yard the appearance of a bristling red, pink, and white torture chamber. Marta had to stifle a gag impulse. In small doses, geraniums and spikes were just fine, though not to her particular taste. When planted solely and over such a broad expanse, it would make any experienced gardener want to run to the nearest weed patch for shelter. It screamed out obsession of the absolutely worst kind.

“It's quite impressive, Phyllis,” she said. “It truly is.” She had not lied. It would also be telling the truth for Marta to call a giant sanitary landfill impressive. Dr. Sproot's geranium-spike extravaganza was impressive in that it was one of the most ridiculous horticultural displays she had ever seen.

Marta wiggled her nose in a subtle show of disgust. My gosh, she thought, I'll never be able to come over here again. It will make me nauseous. She reflected with some sadness that in trying to let her spirit take over from her old, coldly pedantic ways, Dr. Sproot had shown that her passion was woefully misguided. It was now plain that gardening from the heart was not going to be her forte, and that, in essence, she had no gardening soul at all. In fact, it would have been much better had she kept her gardens the way they were before, though Marta had no desire for the old, rampaging-nutcase version of Dr. Sproot to reassert herself.

“This is something else,” said Marta again, trying desperately to sound enthused in order to encourage Dr. Sproot's personal transformation.

“These gardens are from the heart, Marta,” said Dr. Sproot. “From the heart, I tell you. All my fabulously impressive knowledge and revolutionary approaches to gardening innovation mean nothing to me anymore. I don't care what anybody says about what I'm doing here. I'm doing this to please myself. And I've found that I am obsessed with geraniums and spikes.”

Marta cringed.

“I'm so proud of my geraniums and spikes, and, Marta, I don't go by the book anymore. I go by my gut. I water when the spirit moves me. Same with fertilizing. I figure my inner gardening being will tell me when it's time.”

And your inner being better start telling you to come up with a new plan, thought Marta, because there's way too many geraniums and spikes here. Ecch!

“I'm so happy with the way I've changed,” Dr. Sproot said. “It's so much more spiritually fulfilling. In time, I feel I'll be able to be one with my flowers—see how they seem to be bending toward us as I talk about them; it's almost as if they can hear what we're saying and want in on the conversation.”

Marta saw no such thing. She couldn't imagine Dr. Sproot talking to her flowers. As happy as she was to behold over the winter and spring what seemed to be a truly contrite Dr. Sproot seeking forgiveness and redemption for all the bad things she did last year, there was a ring of artificiality in what she was saying and doing. It was as if Dr. Sproot was reading from a script, and once the pages of the script ran out, the imperious, cruel, manipulative bitch the whole world knew to be Dr. Phyllis Sproot would come roaring back in ways that would be too awful to imagine.

What was the story with that fairy house?

Marta was skeptical, to say the least. Still, she had witnessed so many strange things last year that she couldn't completely discount the notion that gardening fairies went gallivanting around in the gardens of people whose green thumbs sent out powerful signals of nurturing and kindness.

In reality, Dr. Sproot had come up with the fairy house idea after reading an article about them in the St. Anthony
Inquirer
. What better way to cement a new beginning with the Fremonts than by giving them a gift of one?

Marta had to admit it was nice of Dr. Sproot to make such a gesture of atonement. And a handmade fairy house at that. A really ugly and jerry-rigged one to be sure, and one that no self-respecting fairy would use even as an outhouse, but still . . . What the Fremonts would make of it she had no idea. She stifled a chuckle as she imagined them drinking their merlot and horsing around with a bunch of naughty, besotted fairies. She pictured Dr. Sproot as Tinkerbell with a little Tinkerbell wand, waving it around and sprinkling fairy dust all over her stupid geraniums and spikes. Dr. Sproot still had a pretty good figure, Marta thought, but she'd have to put on a few more pounds in the right places to look good in that Tinkerbell costume.

“Tee-hee, tee-hee.”

“Why, Marta,” said Dr. Sproot, the icy sting returning to her voice. “What is it you find so funny? Eh? Is it my flowers? Do you find my geraniums and spikes amusing? So maybe they're not good enough for Miss-Second-Place-Contest-Winner, huh?”

Marta stepped back, stunned, from Dr. Sproot. This was more like the Dr. Sproot she used to know, not the newly reincarnated Phyllis.

“I was just chuckling at a funny thought that entered my head, Dr. Sproot . . . er, Phyllis.”

“Well, how about sharing your little funny thought with us, missy?” said Dr. Sproot. Marta imagined undersized gossamer wings sprouting from either side of her and making dainty flicking motions.

“Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Oh, Phyllis,” Marta cried, “I was imagining you dressed up like Tinkerbell in a little fairy suit, with that super-short skirt, low-cut to show whatever cleavage you can muster, and you waving a little fairy wand around. Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Dr. Sproot seethed with fury. How dare a little pipsqueak like Marta make fun of her in such a mortifying way! And right on top of the humiliation she had suffered at the hands of that Nan Fremont. Why, she could only turn the other cheek so many times. Maybe it was time to start hitting back.

Dr. Sproot trembled. She could feel her “nice Phyllis” chromosomes shrivel into nothingness. A meek, halting voice from somewhere deep down pleaded with them to come back, but it was time to silence that inner milquetoast. It was time to call forth the real, the dominant, the merciless Dr. Sproot. And what better time than now to cast off her Little-Miss-Priss veneer and start sowing some havoc and discord.

Her gardening-gloved hands pressed against her bony hips, and her arms rigidly akimbo, Dr. Sproot lurched forward, using her five-eleven height to dominate the much smaller Marta, and trying to bore laser holes through her with those piercing gray eyes.

My God, what have I done? thought Marta. It's the old Dr. Sproot back from the depths of poor Phyllis's blackened soul. I could be in mortal danger!

More terrified than saddened, Marta, nevertheless, stood her ground resolutely. For Phyllis's sake, for Livia's sake, for humanity's sake, she had to stand tall, at least figuratively speaking, in the face of this new threat.

“Don't you dare try to come back, you awful Dr. Sproot!”

“What! I am back, you little turd! Do you dare to presume that you could transform me into one of your namby-pamby little flower-slut friends? Huh? Not on your life! And to turn me into your circus-sideshow laughingstock? Huh? Well, look here, little Marta, and look good; the real Dr. Sproot is here now, live and kicking, and she's got some scores to settle.”

Without quite realizing what she was doing, and aware that she had to take immediate action to ward off this incarnation of evil, Marta crossed the forefingers of her hands into a crucifix configuration and thrust them up and out toward Dr. Sproot's contorted face. It wasn't much, but it was the best she could do under trying circumstances.

“What in the name of Hades-on-fire are you doing, Marta? I don't believe it. What, you think I'm some kind of
demon?
How insulting! Or maybe I should say how flattering. Ha-ha!”

Marta opened her eyes to see Dr. Sproot still looming in her threatening manner, still shaking with all the pent-up evil that had been boiling up, unvented, for so long. Okay, she thought, so the crucifix thing doesn't work. What now?

“I know how to deal with little pests like you!” screeched Dr. Sproot, a thread of spittle hanging from her trembling lower lip.

Dr. Sproot turned away from her and sprinted toward her deck. She didn't bother to detour around a bed of geraniums and spikes, and tromped right through them, even stopping for a few seconds to gleefully smush the drooping, barely semi-erect spikes beneath the grinding heels of her work boots. Marta watched her scramble up the steps to her deck, then reach for a long stick-type object propped against the back of the house.