Chapter 15
Pru hands me her phone before she starts the car.
“Go through my voicemail,” she says. “All of it. If I have to carry this by myself I’m going to drive us into a tree.”
“What’s your passcode?”
“My birthday.”
There are twenty-six voicemails, all from Pru’s mom — my Aunt Genie — all of them from the last week. I go in order with the phone on speaker in my lap. Pru drives and supplies commentary.
Friday, four-eleven in the afternoon. “Prudence. The hedge is wrong.”
“Which hedge?” I ask.
“There are two hedges at Hemlock Hill. I’ve looked at both of them. They seem fine.”
Saturday, six-forty. “Don’t let them switch my pen.”
“I assure you nobody in that building wants her pen.”
Sunday, seven-oh-two in the morning. “Betty’s girl will tell the truth.”
I stop the playback with my thumb. “Who’s Betty?”
“Betty is Tiffany’s mom’s name. I didn’t think about it at the time.”
“Huh,” I say. “That’s days before Tiffany confessed.”
“When she’s right, she’s right,” Pru shrugs.
Sunday, eleven-fifty at night. Fourteen seconds of a television playing a golf match.
Monday, six a.m. “Have you eaten?”
Monday, six-oh-four. “You need to eat.”
Then Monday, two in the afternoon, nine seconds long. “Tell Marigold it’s green.”
“What’s green?”
“Who knows.”
* * *
Jessica, the woman at the front desk at Hemlock Hill, has our name badges printed before we’re through the door.
“She’s been rowdy all week,” Jessica says. “She had me take dictation the other day.”
She hands Pru a half sheet of notepaper.
Pennies
the hedge
Prudence: nail scissors, small ones
NOT the ones she brought
Tell M. It’s green
(she won’t say what’s green)
“How is she today?” Pru asks.
“Sharp this morning. She told the podiatrist his mother worries about him, and he had to go sit down.” Jessica waves us through. “She’s on the porch. She’s in a mood about the chairs.”
* * *
“There was a dispute,” Aunt Genie says, before either of us can sit.
“About what?” Pru asks.
“His radio,” she says, nodding toward the man asleep a few chairs down. She lifts the corner of the bakery bag I’ve set on the little table, looks inside, and nods once.
“Two turnovers and a cardamom loaf,” I say. “Dorcas supervised. There’s nothing in there with a seed in it.”
“That’s what you said last time and I found a fennel.” She takes my hand and pats it. “Who cut your hair?”
“Tiffany at Shear Magic.”
“Mm. She did a nice job. Her grandmother always did a nice job. It’s her mother who shouldn’t be trusted around a pair of scissors.”
Pru sits and hands over a paper bag from the pharmacy — she brought nail scissors, at Genie’s request. Genie inspects them for a moment and makes a face. “I told you to bring small scissors.”
“No you didn’t. You told Jessica that I brought the wrong ones, before I brought them, and I only received the memo when we got here.”
“Bring small ones next time.”
“Yes, mother.”
“So,” Genie says. “Somebody knocked out your Macbeth.”
“Indeed they did,” I say.
“Tell me the story properly. I’ve only heard bits and bobs from Prudence. You know she doesn’t like talking about her old beau.”
“Mom—”
I cut in before Pru can protest and fill Genie in properly. She listens, her eyes focused on the hedge across the lawn, the one clipped into the shape of a bird.
“Well,” she says, when I’m finished. “I don’t see anything clearly that can help you. I haven’t seen anything yet, I mean. I saw a tangled mess of green, and some figures. Some people. Did I tell you? Did I call?”
“You called Pru. Twenty-six times.”
“That’s Prudence’s own fault for not answering.”
“Those were the twenty-six times I didn’t answer,” Pru says. “I assure you I answer plenty.”
“Well, I saw some men. Three of them, moving about in the haze. Start from there.”
“Mom,” Pru says, carefully. “Can you try to focus on Damien? Did he do it to himself? The poison, I mean?”
“Oh, he did it to himself,” Genie says immediately.
“He stood where he was told. Or he told her where to stand. Something like that. I can’t see clearly, and it’s making me cross.
” She sighs. “He’s a vain man, that Damien.
He was a vain boy. He came to the house once to collect Prudence for a dance and spent the whole wait looking at himself in my hall mirror. Didn’t say a word.”
“He hasn’t changed much,” Pru says.
“They never do,” Genie concurs. “Is there honey?” Genie says.
“In the bakery bag?”
“Somewhere, Marigold. Prudence brought me a jar once. It was very good and I’ve been out for a week and the kitchen here only has honey that comes from a horrible little plastic bear.”
“Annabel’s honey, I’d imagine,” I say. “From her hives.”
“Yes, yes. The pretty girl. The one with the bees.” She turns to Pru. “Tell her I’ve been out for a week.”
“I’ll tell her,” Pru says.
Genie starts to drift after that, the way she does. She asks us both, several times, whether we’ve eaten. Halfway through she calls me Eudora — her mother, our grandmother’s name — and doesn’t notice. Pru doesn’t flinch, and neither do I.
“The timer’s going. I’m making a roast,” she says, standing up abruptly. I’m fairly certain the kitchen at Hemlock Hill would not let her near a pot, but we accept that she’s decided it’s time to go.
Pru puts her hand over her mother’s hand on the arm of the rocking chair and they sit like that for a minute.
“Friday,” Genie says.
“Today is Friday.”
“Yes, Prudence. I know. The crown.”
“Opening’s not for another week, Mom. Not today.”
“I know when it is.” She waves a hand. “The crown looks lovely on you, I’ve told you. Don’t worry about the play.”
“You keep saying that, and every time you say it I worry more about the play.”
“That’s not my fault. That’s a failure of listening on your part.” She pats Pru’s hand twice. “Bring your honey next time. You too, Marigold. I’m running out of Fridays.”
“Do you want the crossword book?” Pru says.
“I want both.”
“I only brought one.”
“Then bring another next time,” Genie says.
When we stand to go, she catches my hand again.
“You’re doing it properly,” she says. “You’re ruling things out. That’s the only method you need.”
“I’m trying my best,” I say.
* * *
In the parking lot Pru unlocks the car but doesn’t get in.
“The hedge looks fine, right? I looked at it again just now. It’s a bird. It’s always been a bird.”
“The hedge looks fine,” I say.
“She was right about Tiffany.”
“We just didn’t realize until after.”
“She was right about Tiffany, in a nine-second voicemail, shoved in between forty-something calls about how a man was going to come about the pipes.”
“Did a man come about the pipes?”
“He did. That’s what’s so exhausting about it.”
“When she’s right, she’s right.”
* * *
“Marigold,” my mother says when I pick up the phone. “I’ve been calling all evening. You’re not answering the house line.”
“I didn’t even know we had a house line until recently. Why didn’t you call my cell?”
“I called the house first out of respect for the house,” she says. “Are the wards holding?”
“The wards are fine.”
“Are they settled?”
The stove has been behaving. The staircase has stayed in one configuration since June. Nothing seems to be awry… with the house, at least.
“Englebert,” I say. “Are the wards settled?”
“I believe so,” he says, not moving from his place on the window sill.
“Englebert says they’re settled,” I say into the phone.
“Then they’re settled,” she says. “I read your articles.”
“What articles?”
“The ones about the play, of course.”
“You read New England Byways?”
“I read a great deal, Marigold. Your father printed them.”
“He printed them?”
“He printed them and he’s been showing them to people. There is a couple from Rhode Island who are now very vested in the production and very disappointed they can’t find tickets.”
“Hi honey!” my father calls, from somewhere.
“Hi Dad.”
“Ask her about the water heater,” he says.
“He would like me to ask you about the water heater,” my mother says. “I am declining.”
“The pilot has a trick to it—”
“Clifford.”
“—you have to hold the knob down a full thirty seconds after it lights, or it’ll go out again in the night and you’ll have a cold shower and blame the house.”
“I would blame the house,” I admit.
“So,” my mother says. “The play is Friday.”
“The play is Friday.”
“Prudence wears a crown.”
“Indeed she does.”
“Good,” she says. I hear a seagull in the background. “Imogene called yesterday. She’s very happy you’ve been visiting.”
“I’m glad,” I say. “She called me Eudora.”
“She does that with me too now. She keeps talking about honey. Make sure to bring her the honey.”
“I will.”
“Good,” she says. “I’m glad you’re settling in.”
“Just until you get back.”
“This place likes you. I’ve said that. Let it—”
“Let it help. I remember.”
“Then I’ve nothing further,” she says, and hangs up.