The Little Giant Of Aberdeen County Part 16

"What's your secret?" Vi always begged her, but Amelia just smiled and pressed her lips together. Vi wouldn't have liked the answer anyway, which was hard work and harder living. That and a general avoidance of mirrors.

The day she told me about Hitching Post, however, Amelia was rus.h.i.+ng through her work. As she reached for the last book on the doctor's shelf, she leaned so far over the top of the stepladder that she fel off balance and dropped it. She watched it thud to the floor, facedown, and then saw a bundle of envelopes slide from its pages. She climbed down and retrieved them, turning them over one by one, an expression of alarm and surprise scribbled on her face. Suddenly, without any warning, the doctor's black shoes appeared in her peripheral vision.

"I don't pay you to snoop."

Amelia's cheeks burned. She tried to hide the wad of papers in her fist, then gave up and simply stood shaking. The doctor's nostrils flared- always a bad sign. "Now that I think about it, however, I'm real y quite happy you found them. It's serendipitous, real y. Because now you can get rid of them for me."

Amelia blanched. "Sir?"

"Isn't that what I pay you to do? Clear out my trash?"

Amelia bowed her head. She worked her mouth, forming words with difficulty. "But these-"

The air exploded as the doctor flung a crystal ashtray-a wedding gift-across the room. It didn't shatter, however. Merely cracked with an ugly fracture running down its underside like a scar.

Without taking her eyes off the doctor, Amelia picked it up and replaced it on the desk. She was August's daughter. She didn't scare easily. She worked her gums for a minute, wetting her tongue, and then her voice rose up thick and determined, like a cloud of mosquitoes. "I want what you promised me. I've been waiting for four years, and now I want the papers to the farm. I know you have them in your desk. I seen them there."

The doctor waited a moment before responding, as if he were trying to decide between a display of righteous fury or icy disdain. In the end, he surprised Amelia. He smiled, flas.h.i.+ng those long teeth of his like a bear that's set on winning you over before it digs into your hide. "Wel , wel , wel ," he droned, the tight set of his eyes a dead contrast to the honeyed lilt coming out of him. "I must say, this is a real surprise. I seem to have final y found myself a worthy adversary here in Aberdeen. And in quiet little Amelia Dyerson to boot. Maybe you have more of your father's genes in you than I previously thought."

At the mention of her father's name, Amelia c.o.c.ked her chin and pointed it straight at the doctor, like a gun. Robert Morgan rubbed the back of his neck. "Fine. You've got yourself a deal. But on one condition. I want you to burn those papers. While I watch. Only then wil I sign the deed over to you."

At that moment, the b.u.t.tery scent of apple pie wafted through the clinic's open window.

Startled, Amelia looked through it to see me waving at her from the kitchen, a hot pie balanced on the sil .

I remember I swept an arm through the air to tel her to hurry, to come on over. Amelia crooked a finger in the air back at me and, without my noticing, dropped the bundle of yel ow paper at her feet, sweeping it together like yesterday's ghosts.

I've often considered what would have I've often considered what would have happened if Amelia had made a different decision that afternoon, but it's easy to solve the past in the present, and when you do, you sometimes forget to leave room for forgiveness. What kind of a mess would she have made if she had brought that bundle of paper inside and shared it over a piece of pie, I wonder, and what price would she have had to pay for it?

Glancing through the kitchen window, I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. Al I saw was Amelia cleaning up the way she always did- straightening out the books and streaking beeswax on the shelves while the doctor watched, his usual sour expression pickling his features. I watched her line the books back up in order, their spines al level, the tops of them brushed free of cobwebs, taking special care with the last book. She stepped off her ladder and surveyed her work, then swept a pile of rubbish into a brown grocery sack. The doctor fol owed her into the house, leaving the room empty, and soon I heard them conversing in the parlor and smel ed the rich smoke of a fire being started.

"What are you doing in here?" I poked my head through the door. "Why are you making a fire so early? I've got pie."

Robert Morgan hastily threw a log onto the crackling pile of kindling, sending blue smoke curling up the chimney. When he turned to me, it was with the snarling, open-toothed determination of a hyena. "Did I ask for you?"

I took a smal step back. "No, but-"

"Then leave before I make you."

I wrinkled my brow. Something was definitely wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on what.

In the far corner of the room, Amelia was crouched at the doctor's feet like a much-maligned serf, silent as ever, watching the growing flames lick and swal ow the log with a curious expression of grief washed over her face.

The doctor paced across the room and put his hand on the door. "Amelia wil be out shortly.

Right now she's busy tidying up a few of the household's loose ends. After al , isn't that what I pay her for? A clean slate." And with that, he slammed the door, leaving me alone with the nostalgic, hopeful scent of pie fil ing up the air around me.

Across town, Priscil a Sparrow was beginning to have trouble squeezing her foot into its spectator pump. Every morning she twisted and wriggled it, but to no avail. The shoe refused to accommodate the bunion on her left metatarsal, and she was given no choice but to don the pair of wide-toed black oxfords she'd purchased two days before the start of Aberdeen's new school year-her twenty-third in the cla.s.sroom, but her first in ugly shoes. Her feet weren't the only things slipping. Some mornings she had trouble twirling the wiry shock of gray hairs into a respectable chignon. Some mornings the Satin Primrose lipstick looked a little garish on the thin set of her mouth; and some days she even needed to band a girdle around her little paunch of bel y.

Already, she'd twice replaced the tweed skirts in her closet with one size larger, but every year her body betrayed her and spread another inch. This month, she was fol owing the cabbage diet, and in the depth of her bowels, she could feel a rebel ion brewing.

of her bowels, she could feel a rebel ion brewing.

She belched discreetly, then blushed, even though she was alone.

Just as I was learning the ropes of loneliness, so was Priscil a Sparrow. At one time, in the early sixties, the little schoolhouse at the edge of town had boasted a ful range of pupils, but these days the town offered only ten children to instruct.

Now, after the third grade, the pupils were bussed to the middle school in Hansen, where they were able to socialize with children their own ages and take advantage of art cla.s.ses and a physical education program. If Priscil a Sparrow was going to be honest with herself, she'd have to admit that her current students would also probably be in Hansen if it weren't for the intervention of the late great d.i.c.k Crane, who'd played poker with the superintendent of education. To thank d.i.c.k, Prissy had knitted him a particularly fine Shetland wool cardigan, but when she'd gone to drop it off at his house, Estel e, his wife, had answered the door with a sour look and raised eyebrows, and Priscil a never saw the sweater again.

She sighed and gave up her struggle with the spectator pump, kicking it under the bed and reaching for the hated black oxfords. She smoothed her hair along her temples and hooked her pearl earrings through her lobes. She'd bought them for herself as a present to mark her five-year teaching anniversary. She'd spied them in the window of the jewelry store in Hansen and had known immediately that they were just the kind of thing d.i.c.k would have picked out, had he been at liberty to do so. But, of course, he wasn't. Despite her best efforts, he'd gone home every evening to silver-framed wedding photographs, afghans draped over easy chairs, and a martini mixed by Estel e exactly the way he liked it.

In her darker moments, it pained Prissy to have to admit that she had no idea how to blend a martini or any other c.o.c.ktail, for that matter. She stuck mainly to sherry and a gla.s.s of port at Christmas. She cleared her throat and reached for the heavy telephone on her vanity, final y resigned to cal ing Dr. Morgan and doing something about her darned foot. Real y, she thought, she ought to get one of those lighter touch-tone phones, but one hated to waste, and this phone stil worked fine.

Everyone has one lie they tel themselves, and that was Prissy's-that everything stil worked fine, just fine. As fine as fine could be. Stil , a visit to the young Dr. Morgan couldn't hurt, she reasoned. What could he possibly tel her that she didn't already know?

When Robert Morgan's patients came to the house, sometimes they'd step onto the porch if I was sitting out there and make a little conversation. Priscil a Sparrow, however, wasn't one of those people. The day of her appointment, I watched her mince up to the clinic door without even saying hel o, her eyes as pinched as ever at their corners, and I immediately knew in my heart-time was not on her side.

Inside the office, she changed into the paper gown provided for her, remembering when Robert Morgan had been a chattering boy with gangly elbows. It must have been strange for her to see him attired like his father and running a medical office, but with the same chin and eyes he'd had as a child. There was a tentative knock on the door, and a child. There was a tentative knock on the door, and then Robert Morgan's gravel y voice asked if she was decent. Priscil a cleared her throat and twittered, "Yes. Of course. Yes."

She tugged the gown a little tighter around the back of her, feeling even more naked than she would have without it-a feeling I knew wel .

Al around Prissy's shoulders, the stiff edges of the garment stuck out like wings, and whenever she moved, she crackled. She looked around the room, uneasy with the hard edges and metal. She was used to the knotty wood of the schoolroom and its heady smel of chalk dust, pencil grindings, and bananas. On the table, Priscil a slumped a little as Robert Morgan prepared a dizzying array of instruments with which to check her, none of which looked at al familiar. She felt her head swim and put a hand down to steady herself, and I recognized that feeling, too-when you realize that the future has gone on and happened without you.

Robert Morgan thumped her clavicle with his knuckles. "How long has it been since your last medical exam, Miss Sparrow?"

The inside of her chest rang and reverberated like a hol ow urn. "Years."

"I couldn't find your records in our files."

Robert Morgan put his stethoscope in his ears and averted his eyes while he slipped the disk between her wrinkled b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Oh, I used to go to a doctor in Albany, but it's so far. I thought I'd just come here. I'm only having a little bunion trouble, you know. I have to wear those ugly shoes." She tilted her chin toward the hated black oxfords squatting in the corner.

Robert Morgan turned his head and removed the stethoscope. "They don't look so bad."

"Oh, but they are. They real y are." How could Prissy explain that the awful black shoes were insinuating themselves into her life with the bra.s.sy arrogance of crows? She opened her mouth to elucidate but saw him frowning while he ran his fingers over her spine, the oxfords already forgotten as he concentrated on something in her back.

"Does this hurt?" He pressed on one of her vertebrae, eliciting a smal universe of pain.

"Oh!" A bal of fire rumbled down the tracks of her central nervous system. It was the same sensation she'd been having in her foot, only from the top down, as if by switching direction, the pain were trying to cheat her-and Priscil a Sparrow hated cheaters.

"Sorry." Robert Morgan pul ed his fingers away and closed the edges of her gown back together again. He frowned some more while he made notes. "Do you ever have dizzy spel s, or breathlessness?"

Wel , come to think of it, lately she had.

"I've been on a diet," she explained. "Cabbage."

Robert Morgan stared down the length of his nose at her. "That's not healthy."

"Neither is being fat, young man." Her voice smacked like a ruler. By now, the unyielding corset of a schoolteacher's voice was easy enough for Prissy to slip into.

"I think you need to see a specialist."

"What? Why?"

"An oncologist. I can give you some names, but you'l have to travel. There isn't even one in Hansen."

Priscil a scowled. "An oncologist? But that's for cancer. I just have a little problem with my foot."

Robert Morgan shook his head. "I don't think so." He paused, giving the news time to sink in, then flipped open his prescription pad and wrote down a name and phone number. "I'd cal this guy first. He's the best, and if you tel him you're a patient of mine, he'l fit you in right away." He tried to hand the paper to Prissy, but her fingers were stiff, and she dropped it. Undeterred, Robert Morgan bent over and retrieved it, making sure she held on to it this time. Every time he broke bad news to a patient, it was the same thing. They dropped the name of the referral or they lost it. Quite often, he had me cal the person to make sure he or she fol owed up. Robert Morgan wouldn't have that problem with Priscil a Sparrow, though. She was a rule fol ower through and through, right down to her cancerous bones. Just the kind of patient he liked.

"If he absolutely can't fit you in, cal me, and I'l give you the name of someone else," Robert Morgan said, and swept out of the room.

I watched Priscil a Sparrow emerge into the afternoon stunned, her face crumpled at its edges like a wad of wrapping paper waiting to be burned, and although it seemed impossible that the burned, and although it seemed impossible that the two of us would ever share anything in common, I somehow knew just how she felt.

Chapter Nineteen.

Death is a kind of quilt in itself. We're al alive in this world together, and we're also al mortal, but when one person pul s his thread through to the other side, it can start a chain reaction you never in your wildest dreams saw coming. Maybe you'l be left with nothing more than an unholy knot to unpick. Maybe a new design. Sometimes a whole new perspective on yourself.

Marcus's refusal to bring me any of the herbs from the wild border of Tabitha's quilt began to sting in my craw. "Doesn't he trust me?" I fumed to myself as I sorted laundry or mixed a pot of mashed potatoes on the stove. "What does he think I'm going to do? Slip them in the doctor's dinner?" Although to be honest, the thought had occurred to me when I was watching my murder mystery shows on my little TV late at night, the rooms of the house an open conspiracy around me. At that time of night, plans just seem to get darker and rougher around their edges.

The puzzle of the deadly knots of plants The puzzle of the deadly knots of plants on the quilt began to bother me more and more. I tossed and turned under them when I slept, and during the day, I had a hard time keeping my hands from going round and round in circles over their stems and leaves. It occurred to me that Marcus could probably take one look at the thing and figure it al out, but it seemed wrong somehow to share Tabitha's secrets with anyone else. Al that winter, I fretted and schemed, and when spring burst, my curiosity was so great, it was al I could do to wait for Tabby's nasty weeds to hurry up and bloom so I could see if my suspicions were right.

I took a few samples of everything I found on the quilt: hemlock and oleander leaves, nightshade, daffodil bulbs, and foxglove. A little devil's trumpet and a single castor bean seed. Thorn apple. Once again, I waited for the household to sleep, and then I crept downstairs. The mixture, as I mashed it with a mortar and pestle, turned from a mossy green pulp to an almost black paste. I held up the bowl and took a cautious sniff, expecting foulness, but was pleasantly surprised by how sweet it smel ed. So sweet, I thought, it might just do the trick.

Al through the winter, I had pondered how to test Tabitha's quilt. Al joking aside, I knew I couldn't disguise a mixture of fatal plants in the doctor's food because I wasn't sure what such a combination would do: sicken or kil . I thought about setting some out for birds or rabbits, but they would be hard to observe and fol ow, and we didn't have any pets. I thought about giving up on the idea, but the maze of vegetation on the quilt maddened me more and more, and then, after one particularly miserable night's sleep, I came up with a solution.

I slipped out the kitchen door now, a pair of rubber boots on my feet, the black coat I'd found in the doctor's attic thrown over my nightgown. There was a half-moon up and a few moth-eaten stars hanging in the sky, as if Aberdeen had gotten the leftovers from a long-dead vaudevil e show, but they were enough for me to navigate by, and for that I was glad.

It took about five minutes for me to walk to Amanda Pickerton's house, and when I arrived, it took another moment for me to catch my breath outside her gate. Al the Pickertons' lights were turned off, even the porch light, and I pictured Amanda and the reverend tucked upstairs in their antique bed, their pil ows angled in the same direction, their blankets pul ed up high over their bony hips. I wondered if Serena Jane's room was stil covered in primroses, the vanity ruffled within an inch of its life, or if Amanda had converted it into a sewing room or an upstairs den, and how she could bear to go in it if she had.

The gate barely squeaked when I pushed it open, but the noise was enough to rouse the ancient Sentinel from his perch on the porch. If any creature had the secret of life, it was surely Sentinel, for he was nearly as old as I was. In the darkness, his eyes glittered like a younger cat's, and his outline was once again sleek and dangerous. In the daylight, he had a gray muzzle and bald patches on his rear, but his temperament was ever the same, even if his claws and vision were no longer as sharp.

Moving slowly so as not to spook him, I edged closer to the Pickertons' front steps, pul ing the jar of Tabby's mixture out of my coat pocket as I did so and uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g it stealthily.

To make the concoction more palatable, I'd added some leftover tuna and raw egg. Sentinel's whiskers twitched, and he let out a hoa.r.s.e meow.

"Good kitty," I whispered, trying to copy Amanda's singsong rhythm, and set the jar on the top step.

Sentinel paused, as if considering whether to attack my ankles or accept the offering, but final y chose the latter. He finished the pulp off in three bites but took an extra moment to lick the inside of the jar clean, his back arched with pleasure. He walked a tight circle around the jar, tail upright, as if it were a kil he'd made al on his own and dragged home. One circle, then two, and then, on the third circuit, he faltered, listing dramatical y to the left, a look of cross bewilderment pa.s.sing over his face. His legs buckled under him, and he meowed once-a punitive, accusing sound- before col apsing, paws twitching.

Watching him writhe on the porch was both worse and better than I had imagined it would be. It was horrifying, of course, to see his furry stomach lurching and heaving and his chin tucked into his chest, but after it was over, he was beautiful in the silvery light-an object of perfect stil ness. I reached over him and plucked the jar back up, reached over him and plucked the jar back up, putting the cap back on, and tucked it in my pocket again. Then I glanced over my shoulder once or twice. I felt as if I ought to say a little prayer or something, but my mind was empty, and my feet were growing numb from squatting. I heaved myself back up to standing and rearranged my coat around me again, being careful not to touch Sentinel. I made sure to latch the gate and began to walk back to the doctor's house, keeping in the shadows as best I could, my head ducked low.

I felt little satisfaction as I skulked home in puddles of darkness. My suspicions about Tabitha's quilt had been correct, but now I wasn't sure what to do with that knowledge. I cupped my hand around the empty jar in my pocket and tried not to think about the foam that had col ected around Sentinel's mouth.

From now on, I imagined, a part of me would always be keeping in the shadows.

Having been told she was going to die, Priscil a Sparrow wanted nothing more than to get it over with as soon as possible. In her opinion, her entire existence had been narrowed down to the fine art of waiting, and she was frankly a little tired of it. In her teaching career, she had waited for children to return from recess, then she had waited for retirement, and in love she had waited for d.i.c.k Crane to leave his wife and claim her, and now she was just waiting for an ending.

Except that it never arrived. Dr. Morgan's diagnosis of bone cancer didn't finish her off, and neither did anyone else's. For months she woke up skinnier, more wrinkled, pale around the chops, and mad as hel at the world. She visited a series of doctors. The last doctor she'd seen had actual y shown up on her doorstep. He was young-barely out of medical school-and he'd sat in her little front room, a cup of tea trembling on his knee, shaking his head over and over again. "Are you sure the diagnosis was correct?" His voice rustled like a reed.

Priscil a shrugged. "Three different doctors said it was."

She knew how the young man felt, for at first she, too, had been dismayed and amazed by Robert Morgan's news. She had come home and peered at her face in the mirror, running her polished fingertips over and over the plain bones of her cheeks and nose. When she came back to the house to visit Robert Morgan, he scowled at her lab results again and thumped and ma.s.saged her, hitting al the sore spots. In the end, he was unable to give her any answers. She certainly wasn't in remission, but neither was the disease progressing, he said. It was merely idling in her body.

Prissy sat on the edge of the examining table, her bare feet dangling like a child's. "So what you're saying is that this could go on indefinitely?"

Robert Morgan peered over the tops of his bifocals at her. He had a nasty cold, and he curled his hand into a fist and coughed. For the first time, he felt like one of his own patients. His head ached, and his bones ached, and he just wanted to go lie down. "We're in uncharted waters here, but yes. It's highly unusual, however."

Prissy s.h.i.+fted her weight. Her sinuses throbbed. Her mouth was always dry. She'd entirely forgone makeup, spectator pumps, and her narrow tweed skirt. She looked Robert Morgan in the eye.

"Can things change?"

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You're a doctor. You must know how to hurry things along."

Robert Morgan turned down the corners of his mouth. He thought about the mouthwatering temptation of holding the power of life in the pocket of his hand, but, in the end, rules were always rules for the doctor. The body had its own laws, and he was bound to fol ow them. He sighed. "I'm afraid I can't do that. It's total y against medical ethics. I could lose my license."

"I see." Priscil a hung her head.

"You shouldn't be thinking in those terms, anyway." Robert Morgan pul ed his gla.s.ses off his nose. "You should be staying positive. Try some gentle exercise-swimming, or gardening. Get together with a reading group. Enjoy this time you've been given. Also, I can give you the number for hospice."

Priscil a blinked at him. The nearest swimming pool was ten miles away, and she didn't have a car. Her cottage had a garden the size of a postage stamp, and the only people she knew who would be interested in a reading group were the remaining friends of Estel e Crane. For the first time in her life, Prissy could see her days floating in front of her as empty and useless as children's party bal oons. She didn't know whether to pop them or just let them rise and disappear.

Priscil a sucked in her gut. "Yes," she said. "You're absolutely right. Of course." She climbed off the table, got dressed, and went home, where she made herself a cup of tea, retrieved a forgotten deck of cards, and dealt herself a winning hand of solitaire. She reached for a tattered notepad and scratched another tick on it, adding the forbearance of sorrow to the paltry list of her life's accomplishments.

Everyone has a personal breaking point, and the day Priscil a Sparrow woke up to find her hair fal ing out in clumps was the day she decided she was fed up.

Cl.u.s.ters of hair fanned over her pil ow when she lifted up her head, and most of the rest of it came out in the shower, sliding off her scalp like rain off a roof before clogging up the drain.

Alarmed, Prissy turned off the water and stepped onto the bath mat, bald and wet. When she final y got up the courage to peek in the mirror, she was shocked. Without hair, she final y saw what al of us had been looking at for years and years. Her brows were spindly and uneven. Her mouth was a ragged gash. And her nose-her nose was a pointy beak. Had she always looked like this, Prissy wondered, or was it simply age playing a trick, enchanting her mirror to reflect al her fears and miseries?

She reached for a tube of lipstick, drew on a smile, then put her hands over her face and wept. Her bones throbbed. The corners of her eyes always felt as if they were fil ed with sand, and her heart buzzed and banged in her chest like a furious bee. It's just a matter of time, the doctors al said.

Time will take its toll. It was their answer for everything, but they knew about as much as a barrel of chimpanzees. For Prissy, time and pain ruled like two competing queens, the map of her body rol ed out between their feet.

She wound a chiffon scarf around her head, then removed it and tried her winter hat, but it was too warm for a felt cloche. She knotted on the scarf again and added a brooch-something d.i.c.k had given her. A mermaid in gold and pearls with two emerald eyes. She'd pinned it to her lapel the afternoon he'd presented it to her but then had taken it off almost immediately and never worn it again. It was too girlish, she told herself. And secretly, she was afraid Estel e had one exactly the same. It would have been like d.i.c.k to buy them identical baubles, then turn hangdog when he got found out. Shoot, he would have said, grinning . It was too pretty to buy just one.

Forgetting to lock her door, she rounded the corner, relieved to see the doctor's house looming at the far end of the street. She put her head down and made for it. Come hel or high water, she vowed, this time she wouldn't be leaving empty-handed.