Out on a Limb (22 page)

“You need things to sell? Just grab an armload of whatever you see.” Great-great-aunt Lydia waved her veiny hand at the china vases and the oil paintings and the giltframed mirrors. “I’ve seen it all for ninety-one years and I don’t need to see it any more.”

Mr. Bickert was moving again, but he didn’t look happy. He was rearranging his rearrangement of biscuits.

“The biscuits are a work of art, Mr. Bickert,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said. “You may be excused.” Nodding and pursing his lips, Mr. Bickert left. “Now, Rosamund,” she said when he was gone. “You must tell me all about how you manage in the treehouse. I’ve been able to determine some things through my binoculars, but of course so much can’t be seen. I want to hear everything.” When I started describing our life in the treehouse, Great-great-aunt Lydia seemed really interested. She said that we were resourceful, and she said that we were clever, and she nodded and nodded. After awhile her eyelids drooped, and then on one of her nods her head just didn’t come up again.

“Great-great-aunt Lydia,” I said. Deathly silence. “Great-great-aunt Lydia,” I said again, and this time she gave a single snore. I called her name a few more times, and I even jiggled her arm. I tried for five minutes, but I couldn’t wake her up. She was still slumped and snoring in her wing-backed chair when I left the turret. I tiptoed down the great hallway. I hoped to avoid Mr. Bickert, but when I stepped outside the front door, there he was. He had a pipe in his mouth, and he stared down at me. His nostrils curled with smoke, like a person from a nether world. There was a musky, sweet, smoldering smell. It was the Halloween smell from the Manor garden.

“She’s asleep,” I told Mr. Bickert.

“Asleep, is she? All the
stress
, I expect. Well, you’d best be off,
Rosamund
,” he said, and the way he said “Rosamund” you’d think it was a swearword. “I think you’ve caused quite enough
excitement
for one day.”

He left his pipe on a stone urn and stepped inside the front door. It seemed to close very quickly behind me. Outside it had gotten darker and colder. I squelched along the mossy path and slipped between the loose boards of the fence. Looking over my shoulder at Mr. Bickert’s No Trespassing signs, I headed into the twilight. As I reached the orchard I felt a weird sensation. I had a sense of myself as tiny in the vast meadow, as if observed from a distance. Shivering like the new cherry blossoms, I hurried across the meadow to the treehouse.

NOTEBOOK: #27

NAME: Rosamund McGrady

SUBJECT: Enemy Watches

As I climbed the ladder
to the treehouse, my head swirled with discovery. There was no violent drama in the McGrady family. That was not what had caused the big split.The big split was about a pair of borrowed scissors. The big split was about, when you got right down to it, nothing at all. And Great-great-aunt Lydia had wanted to get to know us all along. She hadn’t tried to keep us away. Mr. Bickert had just tried to make it look that way, because he hoped that if he could keep Great-great-aunt Lydia completely alone, he would inherit all her money. It was Mr. Bickert who had ripped up Great-great-aunt Lydia’s welcome letter and thrown it in the stream. It was Mr. Bickert who’d arranged the fence and the
No Trespassing
signs. It was Mr. Bickert who had taken Great-great-aunt Lydia’s get well card, and him who had stabbed her medicinal herb posie to our oak tree. It was Mr. Bickert who had lurked quietly in the dark garden on Halloween. It was Mr. Bickert who had taken Great-great-aunt Lydia’s Christmas card and left just the empty envelope. The evil that we’d sensed around Grand Oak Manor had all been Mr. Bickert’s. These were my thoughts as I butted open the rain-swollen treehouse door.

Mom, Dad and Tilley sat at the folding table, shelling peas. “Rosie, what is it,” Mom said as I stood in the arched doorway.

“What’s what?”

“You look all dazzled. You look like you’re bursting with news.”

I
was
bursting with news, and the three of them would be fascinated to hear it.

“No. No news,” I said. I was dying to talk about what had just happened, but it was better not to. If I told, my parents would find out I’d trespassed in the Manor garden, but that wasn’t really what kept me quiet. What really kept me quiet was Tilley. It would be a mistake to share my knowledge with her. Knowledge is power, and Tilley had too much power already. If I told her about Great-great-aunt Lydia, she’d probably specify that I had to bring her and Eveline to Grand Oak Manor, and then visiting Grand Oak Manor would feel just like all the lunchtime trips to Lester’s Pizza Hideaway. Knowledge was power, and power was something I was missing. I didn’t want to tell Tilley anything anymore, which meant that I couldn’t tell my parents much either. None of them even knew that Great-great-aunt Lydia’s coded letter had been solved. I turned from my family and peeled potatoes at the counter that circled the oak branch.

Three days later I went back to Grand Oak Manor to work out the details of Panther-Lamp Day. I didn’t let the glaring brass lady on the door knocker intimidate me: I rapped on the thick front door. Mr. Bickert answered, with an expression exactly like the door knocker. “May I please see Great-great-aunt Lydia?” I asked. He didn’t answer right away. I’ll bet he was thinking of how to get rid of me. He must have been scared that he wouldn’t get away with it though, because eventually he invited me in and went off to get her. I stood in the big entranceway and listened to the grandfather clock measuring out time. Great-great-aunt Lydia appeared at the end of the hall, about half a block away. Slowly she made her way toward me.

“You’re back, Rosamund,” she said when she finally got within talking distance. “I’ve been thinking about your Panther-Lamp Day. I’ve put together a few things for you to sell. Come have a look.” She opened the huge hall wardrobe to show me shelves of dishes and lace and candleholders and stuff. “Will these be suitable?” she asked. They looked like the kind of things the Windward mothers would go nuts over.

“Totally suitable,” I said. “Those will be great. Thank you very much for doing all this.”

“Oh, you’re perfectly welcome,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said. “It gives me something new to think about, this Panther-Lamp Day of yours.”

“There’s something else about Panther-Lamp Day that I forgot to tell you last time,” I said. I explained how I’d pretended to the Hanrahans that we were renovating a family room.

“You do complicate things, don’t you, Rosamund,” she said. “Well, come along then. I’ll show you what rooms I’ve got, and you can pick one to be your family room.” Walking at old lady speed, we went around to all the rooms on the main floor. Every single one of these rooms was so much like every other that I wondered why anybody would want so many of them. They were all very stiff and fancy. None of them was much like a family room, so I just chose the biggest. “So this is to be your family room, is it? This used to be our ballroom,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said. “I danced in this room with the Prince of Wales. I’ll bet you can’t imagine me dancing, can you?” She smiled. Either I was getting used to her, or she was getting a bit better at smiling. The ballroom did not look as if it had been recently renovated. As fancy as it was, it actually looked a bit dingy. This didn’t worry me. I planned to say that the decorators had worked hard to achieve an authentic antique look.

“There’s just one more thing,” I said as we stood in the ballroom doorway. My heart thumped with apology. “When I told Bridget that my family lived at Grand Oak Manor? I also told her that you
don’t
live here. I said that you ran away from Grand Oak Manor years ago. I’m sorry.” Great-great-aunt Lydia’s face didn’t change but it did: it was like watching a landscape shadow with arriving cloud.

“Did you now?” said Great-great-aunt Lydia. “Then I suppose you’re asking me to keep out of sight on Panther-Lamp Day?”

That would definitely be the simplest for me, but it was too hard and mean to ask Great-great-aunt Lydia to hide inside her own house, especially when she was doing so much to help me. “No,” I said. “No. I’ll just tell Bridget that we met and made up and got over the past. I’ll tell her that we’re all here together now. That we’re one big family.”

“Yes,” said Great-great-aunt Lydia. “Yes, I like that better.”

Great-great-aunt Lydia and I worked out the final details of Panther-Lamp Day in the turret, over tea and beige biscuits. The merchandise would be on the Manor’s long, long dining room table. Great-great-aunt Lydia and I would handle sales together. Panther-Lamp Day visitors would be permitted to tour the main floor of the Manor, but not the upper floor. An exception would be made for Bridget and Paige. Great-great-aunt Lydia would show them the upstairs, including two rooms that she’d pretend were Tilley’s and mine. Beforehand I’d bring clothes and other props for these two bedrooms. For added authenticity I’d recreate bedroom mess.

“And you may rest assured, Rosamund, that before I meet the Hanrahans I’ll invent the life that I led after you have me running away. I’m quite looking forward to it, really. The possibilities are endless.”

When Great-great-aunt Lydia and I finished our tea she saw me to the Manor’s big front door. Mr. Bickert held my fleece jacket for me to put on, and I flailed my arms for the sleeves. “I do hope you’ll come again before this Panther-Lamp Day,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said, and Mr. Bickert wrinkled his mouth. I had started down the front steps when Great-great-aunt Lydia spoke again. “Don’t I get one of your fierce hugs?” she asked. She meant the one I’d given her the time that Paige had driven me. I ran up three steps and hugged her, and she gave me a crepe-papery kiss on the cheek. Mr. Bickert turned away.

On the way through the Manor garden I passed the fishpond. The fish swam to the surface as if they hoped to eat me alive. “No humans for you today,” I told them. I slipped through the gap in Mr. Bickert’s fence and headed back to the treehouse. Spring was all around me. There were stunt-flying birds; there were daffodils sprouting so close together on the meadow that I could hardly take a step without squashing one; there were big, pink clouds of cherry blossoms against the blue sky. These signs of spring no longer filled me with dread, now that the problem of Panther-Lamp Day was solved.

Spring is fickle. The next morning it was raining hard enough for the hideous rain gear. Except for the plastic rustle of our capes, Tilley and I rode toward school in silence. She and I didn’t talk much anymore. As we crossed the plank bridge over the stream I saw six fluffy new ducklings with beaks the size of sunflower seeds, pecking at the landing raindrops as though they were food. They were so cute it was almost heartbreaking, but I didn’t even point them out to Tilley. I didn’t say anything either about the blue carpet of periwinkle, or about the new pink salmonberry blossoms lighting up the dark green woods. Neither did Tilley. She knew better than to try to make happy springtime talk with me.

Near the end of the path I locked my bike. I was getting my umbrella out of the hollow tree when Tilley spoke. It was the first time either of us had said anything since leaving home. “Do you feel like there’s someone watching us?”

“How can you
feel
someone watching you?” I scoffed. “You know,” Tilley said. “Like little prickly dots on the back of your neck, sort of.”

“That’s stupid,” I said. At the very end of the path I looked through salmonberry leaves.

“See?” I said, stepping out of the woods. “Nobody.” I put up my umbrella and led Tilley down the sidewalk to Sir Combover Elementary.

After school I went to Bridget’s. “What do you feel like doing?” Bridget asked. “Do you want to map out where to go on Panther-Lamp Day?”

“Actually,” I said. “Actually, I won’t be able to tour the other sales. I have to do sales at Grand Oak Manor. The most amazing thing has happened.”

“What?”

“Great-great-aunt Lydia. She’s not mad at my family, and she’s living at Grand Oak Manor. And she wants me to man the sales table with her on Panther-Lamp Day.” These were all true statements, if only I could have left them at that.

“
What
? Rosie, you’re leaving a million things out! How did this happen?”

I felt such a longing to tell the truth. The truth was expanding within me, and I knew that the only way to relieve the pressure would be to tell it. Plus the truth seemed so nice and simple, with all the details ready-made and included. But so much of the truth did not fit with what I’d told Bridget so far. I took a deep breath. Oxygenated, I began my story.

I said that Mom had run into Great-great-aunt Lydia at the supermarket, and recognized her from old family pictures. I knew stories needed convincing details, so I said that Mom and Great-great-aunt Lydia were waiting for the chickens to finish roasting. I said that there had been regular chickens already roasted, but that they’d looked dry and stringy, so Mom had decided to wait for the free run chickens to finish their circuit on the rotisserie, even though they were three dollars more.

“Who cares about roast chickens,” Bridget said. “What did they
say
to each other? That’s what I want to know.”

But here I got vague. They’d said it was a shame that they’d lost touch, I told Bridget, and Great-great-aunt Lydia said that she didn’t like her old age home, and Mom said to come and live at Grand Oak Manor, where the whole McGrady family belonged.

“Just like that? Bizarre!”

“It takes awhile to roast a chicken,” I pointed out. “It was a long conversation.”

“And she’s already moved in with you guys? When?”

I picked the day that I’d met Great-great-aunt Lydia. “Monday,” I said.

Bridget stared. “She’s been living with you all week and you didn’t tell me? I can’t believe it.”

I stared back, consciously trying to make my face look honest.

“What does she say about your great-grampa?” Bridget wanted to know. “Who did he attack with the scissors?”