Chapter 21
The next day dawns gray and rainy, and I spend ten minutes just lying in bed, luxuriating.
The misty morning filters gently through the tall windows, making the rosy walls a pretty periwinkle and giving me the sensation of being wrapped up in a cocoon.
The sheets are soft and worn, the quilt just heavy enough.
I am not hurrying through breakfast or driving exactly the speed limit so I won’t get pulled over on my way to work.
I am not being yelled at by Mr. Buckley or scrubbing the black charcoal out of the coffee pot he insists on leaving on all day long.
I’m not cleaning dirt off my coffee table after Billy and Jimmy monopolized my TV to watch football and refused to take off their work boots.
I’m in my own soft, puffy bed, in my own apartment that I own without a mortgage, which is right over the business that I will soon make my dream store. This bed—
“GamGam?”
She bustles into the room and jumps up onto the bed. “You know you can call me Grandma, right? Or Grammy? I never got my chance to be a Grammy.”
“GamGam, did you ever…get up to any funny business in this bed?” I ask her, looking down at the pastel quilt.
“I am not a GamGam!” She fussily shakes out her feathers. “And no, I did not”—she doesn’t want to say it, either—“have relations in this bed.”
“So you didn’t date? No hookups? Hot parrots in your area? Were you on the lookout for a big cock—”
“Lordy!”
“—atoo boy?”
The look she gives me is one of avian disgust. “Are you normally this interested in the sex lives of your elders?”
“No, but I don’t usually inherit their mattresses. So who was my grandfather?”
Maggie paces across the quilt. “I don’t see how that’s important.”
“Then tell me why the Blakelys hate you.”
“No!”
I grab her and stand, carrying her to the big cage. “I’m getting sick of you dodging my questions, so you can be in the Cockatoo Clink until you decide to get honest with me. You have nothing to lose. You have no dignity. You’re a parrot who poops on a puppy pad. So just tell me the truth.”
I close the door and snap on the carabiner that always kept Doris from breaking out.
“This is against the Geneva convention!” Maggie shouts.
“Yeah? You keep saying that, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t apply to birds. Legally, I can eat you and put your feathers in my pillow.” I open a kitchen cabinet and find plates and bowls in neat stacks. “Do you have a coffee maker?”
“I was more of a tea person,” Maggie says, which isn’t helpful.
“Then you can stay in the Cage of Truth and Bad Choices to contemplate your sins.”
Long-term, this lack of coffee supplies will not work for me, but short-term, I know where to get the best latte in town.
I take a quick shower, slip into jeans and a tee, fluff my hair, add some eyeliner, and spritz on some perfume, because I now know that I can’t leave this apartment without seeing a new acquaintance.
Before I head out with my raggedy old umbrella, I figure out which keys open the apartment door and the store door, and separate them, sliding them onto my regular key ring.
“You can’t leave me in here!” Maggie screams when she realizes I intend to walk out while she’s still in the cage. “This is illegal! This is torture! You can’t—”
“You’re not as loud as Doris, so this is actually an upgrade. Let me know when you’re ready for real talk.”
The walk is pleasant enough despite the rain.
All the flowers outside are soaking up the water, bursting with color.
The trees are beginning to turn, pops of orange and yellow and red flashing among the lush green.
As I pass by Marla’s, I look through the window and see people I’ve met, laughing and eating as an older woman in an apron hurries around with cast-iron skillets full of steaming scrambles.
I almost want to splash in a puddle, it’s all so homey.
The inn is bustling, thanks to a bachelorette party, and Nathan is happy to make me a mocha.
My five dollars also gets me a biscuit, and I realize that this is a wonderful system.
Then I realize that I wasn’t necessarily invited into this system.
“Is this okay?” I ask Nick. “Am I taking someone else’s biscuit?”
“You’re one of us now. We’ll always have a biscuit for you, girl,” Nathan assures me as he brings out my drink in a to-go cup. He winks at me. “Have fun talking to Hunter today.”
For a minute, I’m shocked that he knows my business, but then I remember—Nathan himself made my business quite public last night when he set up the appointment.
“If I don’t like his quote, is Cisco really just as good?”
“Honey, you’re going to like his quote just fine. He truly is a gift. And not just visually.”
I blush as I head back to my place—somehow, with Abraham gone, it really does feel like my place.
I’m the only one left to run it. At least no one is standing at the door to the video store, waiting for me to open up.
I probably need to make a sign to let folks know we’re closed and under construction.
And that makes me think of fonts, which makes me think of Hunter and flirting with him over fonts.
As soon as I’m back in the apartment, Maggie is screeching at me in true Doris style; I should not have dared her to be more annoying. I sit at the table, just a few feet away from her cage, glad we don’t have any neighbors to hear her caterwauling. The moment I unwrap the biscuit, she stops.
“Nathan’s?”
“Yup.”
“Did you bring me one?”
“Human food is horrible for cockatoos. It’ll make your liver explode. You have your pellets, and I’ll give you fresh fruit and veg each day, plus some nice mealworms. Yummy yummy.”
“But I can still taste biscuits, and Nathan’s are the best.”
“Then tell me about the Blakelys. And why Colonel said you had some enemies—enemies who gave me the stink eye last night.”
I peel off a chunk of biscuit—not too much, because it really is absolutely terrible for her health—and hold it up to the light.
She fluffs up her crest. “I always dreamed my granddaughter would be a sweet and respectful girl.”
“And I was told from the start that you were a stubborn old witch, so here we are.”
After a long pause, she sighs in defeat. “I made a decision. An important decision meant to keep Arcadia Falls safe. To protect this place. Needless to say, some people didn’t agree with it.”
I hold out the crumb of biscuit, and she gently pecks it from my fingers and gobbles it down. “Got any bacon on there?”
I tear off a piece of bacon and consider it. “Okay, next question. What was this altruistic decision of yours that other people didn’t like?”
I dangle the bacon just beyond the cage bars, and she tries to poke her beak through but can’t.
“Well?” I press.
Maggie jerks her head back, turns around, and shows me her tail. Grandmothers, it turns out, are just as fussy as cockatoos. I hate that she’s my only source of information—
Or is she?
I fetch my Little Webster dictionary, which has been sitting on the bedside table.
I haven’t used it since I stood in front of the video store, trying to see past the bleached-out King Ralph stand-up and into a better future, but, well, if my magical grandmother can’t help me, maybe I can skip the grandmother bit and go straight to the magic.
“What was Maggie’s decision that made folks mad?” I say out loud, in case that helps.
I flip through the book and put down a finger.
“Grimoire,” it says.
I stare at the cage. Her back is still to me.
“Maggie, where is your grimoire?”
In true parrot style, she raises her rump and poops.
“Quit being undignified and answer the question.”
She turns around and sways angrily from side to side. “How should I know? I died. Do you know what that’s like? One minute, you’re driving along in the car, laughing with your friend, and the next minute, everything hurts, and people are shattering your ribs—”
“I don’t know would’ve been answer enough,” I say. “Was it in the car that day?”
“Again, I don’t remember. I try not to think about it.”
“So what decision did you make that affected other people and had to do with a grimoire?”
She draws herself up with as much chilly hauteur as a pink parrot can accomplish.
“I do not answer to you, child. In our current relationship, you have far more power over me than I would prefer, but even if you restrict my freedom or threaten me, you can’t make me tell you anything.
I would suggest you worry more about your own problems than about what happened in the past. What’s done is done. ”
I look her directly in the eye and pop the tidbit of bacon in my mouth, followed by a big bite of the biscuit.
She watches me chew with great longing. I should’ve known my grandmother would be as stubborn as all the other women of her lineage.
She’s right, though. I’m not going to threaten her; even if I don’t like my grandmother right now, I’m not the kind of person who would harm an animal under any circumstances.
“Then maybe we just don’t need to talk as much. You can go back to singing musicals, and I’ll figure things out on my own.” I turn my back to her and pick up my dictionary. “Where is Maggie’s grimoire?”
Flip pages, put down my finger. The word?
Below.
Well, that’s not helpful.
Below what?
I look around the kitchen. The only thing below it is the video store.
Still, there are several doors I haven’t opened that I’ve just assumed are closets, so I might as well take stock of my new home.
Maybe it’s below the fridge, or below the bed, or below a big pile of broomstick skirts—or brooms—in her closet.
I start by opening all the kitchen cabinets, and I’m surprised at how normal everything is, outside of the tea selection, which is truly disturbing.
“Oh my God, did you rob a British grandmother? How many teas do you have?” I ask, holding up a box of Sleepytime tea—one of dozens of such boxes.