According to the directions the bailiff gave her, the
doctor’s place is almost directly across Pudding Creek from the middle school.
Weekdays, it will be a twenty-minute bike ride, but today is Saturday, and she needs
an extra ten minutes to get there from her house.
The
shortest route would be down to the Highway One, then north, but Kelsey takes
back streets until the river has to be crossed. She cuts down to the highway,
turns north and crosses the narrow, traffic-y Pudding Creek Bridge. On the other side of the bridge, the hill past the
recycling center is so steep she has to get off her gearless, old bicycle and
push it.
It
takes a few tries to find the house because the number on the mailbox is
missing, and the place is down a long gravel drive lined on either side with
the tallest rhododendrons Kelsey has ever seen. The driveway ends in gravel
parking area that has grown weedy. The only vehicle is a rusty old Dodge truck.
There’s supposed to be a greenhouse somewhere around her, but she doesn’t see
it.
Her
bike doesn’t have a kickstand so she leans it against rear of the truck and
walks toward a long, low plywood building once painted dark brown, now covered
with a tangle of sweet-smelling honeysuckle vines. It’s shaped as if it might
have once contained horse stalls, but there’s only a single,
rotting-from-the-bottom-up, hollow-core door with a carved woodpecker knocker
with the beak broken off. Yellowing lace curtains sag against the dirty glass
windows on either side. A fat, black and white cat lies in the sun near the
front door. It opens one eye as she approaches, and yawns, does a double-take, scrambles
to its feet, and runs toward her.
She squats down, and, to her astonishment, the cat hops into
her lap and stands on her knees. It puts a paw over each shoulder, buries its
face against her neck, and begins to purr. Kelsey strokes the back of its head
and it purrs louder.
She
likes animals and animals like her, but she’s never had anything show such affection.
Kelsey feels like she might burst into tears. The cat tightens its grip around
her neck, and for no reason at all, Kelsey thinks of her father—a man she’s
never met. If he were to show up someday, this is how she thinks she’d greet
him—like he’s someone she loves and has been waiting a long time to see.
Kelsey
cradles the cat’s head and presses her cheek to one soft ear until the strain
of its weight on her legs makes her muscles quiver. “I’m going to have to stand
up.” She tries to disengage, but the cat holds on.
Kelsey
struggles to her feet, carries the cat to the front door and raps on it using
the broken woodpecker knocker. Odd, tuneless music floats in the air, but she
can’t tell where it’s coming from. No one answers the door. She tilts the cat’s
chin up. “Is anybody home?” She kisses the top of its head and puts it down.
It
rubs against her leg, then waddles, tail up like a tour guide’s flag, down the
side of the house, pausing once to see if she following. They walk down a path,
which turns and meanders along the west side of the house and passes beneath a
rose-covered archway. Beyond are two huge greenhouses, each bigger than the
house Kelsey and her mother live in. The greenhouses are made of a series of
glass panes set in aluminum. Between them, and of equal size, is a shed. From
the beams supporting the roof hang dozens of begonias blooming in shades of
red, pink, orange, yellow and white. A neighbor once gave Kelsey’s mother a
coral-colored one, but Lydia watered it too much and it rotted.
Kelsey
opens the door of the closest greenhouse even though the sign on it says No Admittance. The moist, muggy building
is full of orchids. A ceiling fan makes lazy, squeaky circles, and another fan
directly above the door rattles noisily. “Anybody here?”
Through
the opaque glass wall of the other greenhouse, she sees the shadowy figure of a
man moving slowly down the row between shelves of plants. He’s talking softly, almost
lovingly to someone. The music kind of reminds her of one of those dripping-water,
nature sound recording her mother used to like. The cat nudges the door open
and squeezes in. Kelsey follows. The back of this greenhouse is concrete, and
it takes Kelsey a moment to realize the wall is a block building attached to the
rear of the greenhouse. There’s a black steel door in the center and a big
window to the right of the door. The window has a dark tint so she can’t see
through, but otherwise it reminds her of pictures she’s seen of old bomb
shelters.
The old man, whose white hair is sticking out every which
way, is still wearing pajamas and bedroom slippers though it’s nearly eleven.
He turns and smiles at the cat. “Hey, old boy,” he says, then sees Kelsey. “Who
the hell are you?”
The music stops.
“Kelsey McCully.”
“McCully? I knew a McCully once.” He says this as if he’s
forgotten she’s there. “Well, what do you want, McCully?”
“The judge sent me.”
The old man shakes a trowel at her. “Make some sense or
get out.”
“I wish I had a choice,” Kelsey says.
“Aha,”
says Dr. Jonathan Hobbes. “You must be my newest delinquent.”
“What’d you do to your fingers?”
He
looks down at his hands, as if he hasn’t the foggiest notion what she means. “These?” He wiggles the last two fingers of
his left hand, which move as a unit since they are wrapped together with black
electrical tape. “Broke ‘em a while back.”
“Did
a doctor wrap them like that?”
“I
wrapped them like this. What are you doing here so late? The day is practically
over.”
“It
took me a while to find this . . . dump.
. .” she thinks, “place,” she says.
“Well,
hell, is this what I can expect—you showing up when it’s nearly too late to get
anything done?”
“What
do you want from me? I had to ride my bike clear across town.”
“Watch
your tone, girly. I understand I’m your last chance, so you better keep your
nose clean.”
“Yeah,
well, Juvie might be better than hanging around here.”
“You
ever been in Juvie?”
“No,
but I’ve got friends that have. They say it’s not so bad.”
He
waves a hand like he’s shooing flies. “Well, if you think it’s such an Eden, get on out of here. I don’t need this crap.”
Kelsey
squares her shoulders and bites her lip. The cat has jumped up onto a potting
table, and makes his way toward her like an eight-ball with legs. When he
reaches her, he stands, put his paws on her shoulders, and rubs his chin
against her chin.
“Ah,
hell’s bells. If Genera likes you, you can stay.”
Don’t
do me any favors, she thinks, but,
for a change, keeps her mouth shut.
“You
can start by sorting these pots.” He sweeps his hand the length of the potting
tables. Beneath each are piles of pots, hundreds of them, maybe even thousands,
in all sizes.
“Where do you want them to go?”
“I don’t want them to go anywhere. Leave them there, just
sort them.”
“Sort them by color, size, shape—what?”
“Hell, I don’t care. Just make them look neater.” He picks
up the cat and shuffles toward the steel door in the concrete wall. He hunches
over and squints to see the numbers as he dials a code into the bottom of a
padlock. When it pops open, he glances back at her. “Those pots have been like
that for years, so watch out for Black widows.” He grins. His teeth are yellow
and crooked. “You know what those are?”
Duh. “Spiders,”
Kelsey says. He’s set her to a fool’s task, as her mother likes to
say—meaningless work, like digging a hole, then filling it in again.
“See that jar?” He points to a glass jar with a filthy
dirty, worn-away applesauce label on it.
“Yeah.”
“Put any earwigs and brown slugs you find in there.”
Kelsey’s nose crinkles in disgust. “Earwigs pinch and
slugs are slimy.”
Dr. Hobbes smiles. “Your point is?”
“I don’t want to touch them.”
“Then don’t.” He taps the side of his head. “Use
something to pick them up with.” He squints at her. “Do you like plants?”
“They’re okay. Why?”
“Just asking.” He pulls the steel door open. “What’s your
favorite subject in school.”
She kind of likes biology, but she isn’t going to tell
him. “Lunch.”
“Figures.”
He rubs the cat’s ears. “Watch her,” he says before stepping inside and closing
the door. She hears a bolt slide shut on the inside.
Kelsey shoots him the bird, and then nearly jumps out of
her skin when the music starts again. For a moment there is just one long note,
before it softens into pattern-less tones.
*
The usual heavy August
fog has rolled in by the time Kelsey finishes sorting the first hundred pots,
and decides she’s had enough. “I’m leaving now,” she yells at the door.
There’s
no answer.
Genera is curled near one of the fans that keeps the air
moving in the greenhouse.
“Tell him I left, okay?
The cat rolls on his back and starts to purr.
Kelsey rubs his broad belly, and sees the applesauce jar.
She’d conveniently forgotten about that task. “If he asks—” She presses her
lips to the soft fur of one of Genera’s paws. “Tell him I didn’t find any slugs
or earwigs.”
