R My Name Is Rachel (12 page)

In a hurry, I choose squash and carrots and onions again. My fingers walk their way through the packs. Ah, beets and, at the last minute, lettuce.

“Good choices.” He reaches back and takes out two more packs. “One is marigold seeds.”

Marigolds!

He taps the other envelope. “I don’t remember what these are. I forgot to label them.” He shrugs. “Want them?”

“Sure.” I duck my head. “I’m grateful.”

He smiles. “I’m grateful, too. The shelves were a mess.”

“Maybe I could help out again.”

“Maybe,” he says.

As soon as I’m away from the store, I pull off my shoes. I have blisters on both heels. But never mind. I clutch the small packets in my hands. A garden and thirty days to pay the rent.

It’s late by the time I’m home. Cassie’s waiting at the door. “I thought you were dead.”

I stare at her, and her face reddens. We’re both remembering her stay in the barn. I wave the packets at her and then at Joey, who comes to the door to see what’s happening.

“Wow,” Joey says when he hears about the rent and sees the seeds. Cassie breathes, “Oh, Rachel.”

It’s almost dark, but the three of us go outside and plant. We put the mystery seeds right in the middle. “Maybe it will be something really special,” Cassie says.

We stand there grinning at each other, happy with ourselves.

“If only Pop could see this,” Joey says.

“He’ll see the best of it,” Cassie says. “When it’s all grown.”

Cassie, surprising me.

Today is perfect. I tell myself I’m going to have a holiday from worrying about the rent today.

Barefoot, I go out to look at our garden. Tiny green shoots cover the earth. I spot pale lettuce leaves; soon we’ll have a taste. Leaning down, I brush my fingers over the mystery plants. What an odd smell they have.

Then I go to the barn and bring Xenia outside. She looks at the garden. “Oh, no!” I say. “Not this time.”

Joey has put out a stake, and I tie her to it. There’s enough room for her to move around, but our vegetables are safe!

Back in the barn, I pour some of her food into the pan and glance up at the painting of the girl reading. I look at her carefully. I can’t see her face; she lies on her stomach, one ankle crossed over the other. She must be happy, because she’s reading. Her book is painted blue.

I think of what my art teacher said: the painter always tries to tell you something.

What was he trying to tell me?

He. Not a girl.

Anton, with blue paint over his hands.

I give Xenia another pat, then go down to the stream.

I walk around the ferns and wade along the edge of the water until I reach the rock. And there’s the painting: a girl in front of the school. I know that now because of the flagpole.

Something else about it makes me smile. I see now what the girl is wearing on her hands. Boxing gloves! The artist might have been laughing as he drew.

I turn and take the stream in the other direction, up toward the hills, toward Anton’s cottage. It’s a long way in bare feet, but I’m determined.

And at last I’m standing in front. “Hey, Anton,” I yell.

Suppose his mother comes out, or his father. Nobody opens the door, but then there’s a hand on my shoulder. I swivel around.

“You’re going to wake the whole world,” he says.

“How did you get into my house and paint all that stuff?”

“I did it before you came. No one was there. It was a great place to paint. Lots of walls.” He hesitates. “I know I was mean that first night. I’d begun to think the house was mine, my own place to paint.” He spreads his hands. “And then you moved in. Afterward, I was sorry I wasn’t nicer.”

I nod, thinking about my own meanness. “But you did
the one in the barn after that. And the one on the rock,” I say.

“I wanted to see how long it would take for you to figure it out.” Is he trying not to grin?

“I didn’t make that mess in the school.”

“That happened before you came. No one will blame you.” Now he grins. “You were just stealing books.”

“Borrowing.” My stomach turns over. “I just meant to borrow.” I picture my Rebecca book in the principal’s office.

Anton’s mother is at the door. It’s the woman with the ferns I saw at the train station. She waves. “Want some breakfast?”

I shake my head; I don’t want her to see how hungry I am.

At least—at the very least—I can stop worrying about being blamed for what happened in the school.

But what about
Rebecca
?

“At least muffins,” the woman calls.

I can’t resist. I stand at the door as she hands me three muffins in paper napkins.

Ah, one for each of us.

I head toward home, munching and looking up at that clear sky. Pluto is still up there, so far away, not worrying about rent or food. It must be cold, all those miles away from the sun.

How many miles away is Pop?

As I reach our house, I hear the sound of a motor. I stop. Could it be Mr. Grimm? I can feel the pulse in my throat, but then I take a breath. It’s the mail truck.

The mailman reaches out, and I can see from here there’s a letter.

A letter from Pop. How do I know it? I cross my fingers. I just do.

For a long time I stand in the road, Pop’s letter in my hand. He’s alive, he’s somewhere, and someday he’ll be home. It just seems so long, though.

I look back to make sure Xenia is still where she’s supposed to be. I see she’s eaten a patch of weeds. She stares at me, almost as if she’s saying,
Too bad for you, Rachel. I found something to eat anyway
.

I smile and go toward the back door. From the corner of my eye, I see something streak through the garden. I’m ready to go after it, but it’s gone. And the letter from Pop is too exciting to bother about that right now. In the kitchen I put the letter on the table. Cassie and Joey read as we eat the muffins; Joey’s is gone in a moment, but Cassie eats hers slowly, licking her fingers after every bite.

I go to the closet. Lined up neatly are the jars of beans, the tomatoes in juice. That’s all there is. The beans are gray and my stomach turns as I look at them.

“I’ll smother the beans in chives and dump tomatoes over the whole mess,” Cassie says. “We’ll hardly taste the beans.”

Joey rolls his eyes. “Delicious.”

I glance out the window, looking toward the garden. Is something moving in there?

Cassie is talking about going to town. “Days and days ago, when everything looked so terrible …”

Wait a minute. What is that out there, anyway?

My eyes fill. “Cassie. Look.”

“Are you listening?” she asks.

“No. Come outside. Come quietly.”

“You never pay attention,” she says as she and Joey follow me outside. We stand on the step and I don’t even have to point.

“Woodrow!” Cassie says, and she’s crying, too.

“Clarence,” I whisper. But who cares what his name is?

He’s there, and he’s safe, and he’s rubbing his torn ear on the mystery plants.

“He’s rubbing his face in catnip,” Joey says. “Cats love it.”

Catnip!

We go closer and the cat looks at us a little suspiciously.

“Don’t you remember me?” Cassie bends down and puts her hand out.

Maybe he does remember, or maybe it’s the catnip. But he lets her run her hand over his head.

I don’t try. Maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, it’s enough to see that he’s gained a little weight. Poor mice, maybe, poor birds. But still, he’s alive.

I go to sleep every night worrying about the rent. I dream about it and wake up thinking about it.

We eat those gray beans three times a day. We sit there staring at the ceiling so we don’t have to look at them and holding our noses so we don’t have to smell them. But even more important, we live on the fish Joey catches.

The sun is hot as I pat the plants in my garden. I have to thank the grain man for his generosity. I walk to the stream and plunk myself all the way down in the water, feeling the coolness of my soaked skirt against my legs.

I think about the house. How did it become so dear to me? Everything is wrong with it. No, not everything. It has a family now. I swallow. Almost a family. If only Pop were here. And Miss Mitzi, with her white straw hat and a rose pinned to her collar.

I crane my neck to look up at the willows, and spot a
house wren that has a huge song for such a small bird. How soothing to watch him, then to run my fingers through the ferns, which crowd each other now. Some of them have wide leaves; others are thin as knives. Which ones does Anton’s mother send down to the florists in the city?

I wonder.

I stand and squeeze the water out of my hem. And then I splash through the stream toward Anton’s.

I’m going to find out.

Cassie is painting. Everything in sight is turning gold. I’d like to tell her it was a mistake to let Xenia in for a visit. Gold hoofprints trot from one end of the hall to the other. For once, Cassie is furious at her. “That’s it!” she says. “Back to the barn.”

I go into the kitchen and pump water onto a rag. Back in the hall, I dab at the wet paint. Some of it comes up; some doesn’t.

Cassie’s staring at me. “Thanks, Rachel. Thanks.”

I nod, surprised at myself, but glad about it.

She’s on to something else. “We can’t sleep in the living room anymore. It’s a terrible habit, as if animals sleep there.”

Joey and I grin at each other. We don’t remind her that Xenia actually did sleep there. Instead, we drag the mattresses back upstairs, then the pillows.

But Cassie’s not finished. The dust flies from one room to another, then out the door. And a day later she appears at breakfast with rag curlers poking out all over her head. “Clean yourselves up, please,” she says. “We have to go to town today.”

“Not me,” Joey says.

“I tried to tell you two, but you didn’t pay one bit of attention.”

Joey supplies fish for Clarence-Woodrow every day. The cat is still mean, but he’s ours, and I love him even though his disposition is appalling.

I love that word.

Cassie points a fork at us. “You won’t be sorry.”

I’ll be sorry; I know it. That long walk to town. No shoes that fit. “What are you talking about?”

“I will never ask you to do one more thing for the rest of your lives.” And then she says something strange. “I know you said we should do everything on our own—”

“And we are, almost,” I say.

“But I thought you were wrong. I thought we needed help.”

Impossible. Who knows what she’s talking about?

“All right, we’ll go with you,” I say.

Joey looks at the ceiling. “I guess.”

She pulls at one of her curlers, then goes upstairs to find something else to clean or paint.

Joey shrugs at me.

After lunch, we wend our way to town. When Pop gets home, we’ll take the truck. I’ll never walk so far again for the rest of my life.

In front of me Cassie’s curls are enormous, sticking out all over her head. She plunks herself down on the bench in front of the real estate office.

I spent yesterday afternoon at the grain store. I traded three hours of work for boxes and paper. Anton’s mother, Mrs. Freeman, is going to show me how to cut the ferns and send them. She’s also going to lend me the money for postage.

I didn’t want her to do that, but she said it was no bother, none at all.

I sit on the bench next to Cassie, my eyes closing against the sun and against Mr. Grimm, who is sitting in the window two inches away from me. “What are we doing here?” I ask Cassie, hardly moving my lips.

“I know you said I couldn’t ask the grocery man for help, but I had to do something.”

I stare at her.

“We were eating beans,” she said.

“There were wild strawberries.”

“And I’ve been fishing,” Joey says.

She doesn’t answer.

Across the way a train steams into the station. Soot and cinders fly everywhere. Cassie shouts over the noise. “I thought I had to save us.”

What is she talking about?

A hobo scurries across the street, ready to jump on the train. Cassie is still shouting, even though the train has stopped. “I wrote a letter. I brought it to the post office myself. I used my life savings.” She grins a little. “Two cents.”

I put my hand up to my face. When I see who’s getting off the train, I begin to cry and I don’t even try to stop.