Walk Two Moons - Quia



14

THE RHODODENDRON

ONE SATURDAY, I WAS AT PHOEBE'S AGAIN. HER Father was golfing, and her mother was running errands. Mrs. Winterbottom had read out a long list to us of where she would be in case we needed her. If we heard any noises at all, we were supposed to call the police immediately. "After you call the police," Mrs. Winterbottom said, "call Mrs. Cadaver. I think she's home today. I'm sure she would come right over."

"Oh sure," Phoebe whispered to me. "That's about the last person I would call." Phoebe imagined that every noise was the lunatic sneaking in or the message-Ieaver creeping up to drop off another anonymous note. She was so jumpy that I began to feel uneasy too. .

After her mother left, Phoebe said, "Mrs. Cadaver works odd hours, -doesn't she? Sometimes she works every night for a week, straggling home when most people are waking up, but sometimes she works during the day."

"She's a nurse, so I guess she works different shifts," I said.

That day Mrs. Cadaver was home, puttering around her garden. We saw her from Phoebe's bedroom window. Actually, puttering is not the best word. What she was doing was more like slogging and slashing. Mrs. Cadaver hacked branches off of trees and hauled these to the back of her lot where she lumped them into a pile of branches that she had hacked off last week.

"I told you she was as strong as an ox," Phoebe said.

Next, Mrs. Cadaver slashed and sliced at a pitiful rosebush that had been trying to creep up the side of her house. Then she sheared off the tops of the hedge that borders Phoebe's yard. She moved on to a rhododendron bush, which she was poking and prodding when a car pulled into her driveway. A tall man with bushy black hair leaped out and, seeing her, he practically skipped back to where she was. They hugged each other.

"Oh no," Phoebe said. The man with the bushy black hair was Mr. Birkway, our English teacher.

Mrs. Cadaver pointed to the rhododendron bush and then at the axe, but Mr. Birkway shook his head. He disappeared into the garage and returned with two shovels. Then he and Mrs. Cadaver gouged and prodded and tunneled around in the dirt until the poor old rhododendron flopped onto its side. They lugged the bush to the opposite side of the yard where there was a mound of dirt, and they replanted the bush.

"Maybe there's something hidden under the bush," Phoebe said.

"Like what?"

"Like Mr. Cadaver-as I told you before.

Maybe Mr. Birkway helped her chop up her husband and bury him and maybe they were getting worried and decided to disguise the spot with a rhododendron bush." I must have looked skeptical. Phoebe said, "Sal, you never can tell. And Sal, I don't think you or your father should go over there anymore."

I certainly agreed with her on that one. Dad and I had been there two nights earlier, and I had hardly been able to sit still. I started noticing all these frightening things in Margaret's house: creepy masks, old swords, books with titles like The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Skull and the Hatchet. Margaret cornered me in the kitchen and said, "So what has your father told you about me. ?"

"Nothing," I said.

"Oh." She seemed disappointed.

My father's behavior was always different at Margaret's. At home, I would sometimes find him sitting on his bed staring at the floor, or reading through old letters, or gazing at the photo album. He looked sad and lonely. But at Margaret's, he would smile, and sometimes even laugh, and once she touched his hand, and he let her hand rest there on top of his. I didn't like it. I didn't want my father to be sad, but at least when he was sad, I knew he was remembering my mother. So when Phoebe suggested that my father and I should not go to Margaret's, I was quite willing to agree with that notion.

When Phoebe's mother carne home from running all her errands, she looked terrible. She was sniffling and blowing her nose.

Phoebe said that we were going to do our homework. Upstairs, I said, "Maybe we should have helped her put away the groceries."

"She likes to do all that by herself," Phoebe said.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure," Phoebe said. "I've lived here my whole life, haven't I?"

"She looked as if she'd been crying. Maybe something is wrong. Maybe something is bothering her."

"Don't you think she would say so then?"

"Maybe she's afraid to," I said. I wondered why it was so easy for me to see that Phoebe's mother was worried and miserable, but Phoebe couldn't see it - or if she could, she was ignoring it. Maybe she didn't want to notice. Maybe it was too frightening a thing. I wondered if this was how it had been with my mother. Were there things I didn't notice?

Later that afternoon, when Phoebe and I went downstairs, Mrs. Winterbottom was talking with Prudence. "Do you think I lead a tiny life?" she asked.

"How do you mean?" Prudence said, as she filed her nails. "Do we have any nail polish remover?"

Phoebe's mother retrieved a bottle of nail polish remover from the bathroom.

"Oh!" Prudence said. "Before I forget-do you think you could sew up the hem on my brown skirt so I could wear it tomorrow? Oh, please?" Prudence tilted her head to the side, tugged at her hair in exactly the same way phoebe does, and smooshed up her mouth into a little pout.

"Doesn't Prudence know how to sew?" I asked.

"Of course she does," Phoebe said. 'Why?"

"I was just wondering why she doesn't sew her own skirt."

"Sal, you're becoming very critical."

Before I left Phoebe's that day, Mrs. Winterbottom handed Prudence her brown skirt with the newly sewn hem, and all the way home I wondered about Mrs. Winterbottom and what she meant about living a tiny life. If she didn't like all that baking and cleaning and jumping up to get bottles of nail polish remover and sewing hems, why did she do it? Why didn't she tell them to do some of these things themselves? Maybe she was afraid there would be nothing left for her to do. There would be no need for her and she would become invisible and no one would notice.

When I got home that day, my father handed me a package. "It's from Margaret," he said.

“What is it?"

"I don't know. Why don't you open it?"

Inside was a blue sweater. I put it back in the box and went upstairs. My father followed me.

"Sal-? Sal-do you like it?"

"I don't want it," I said.

"She was just trying to-she likes you-"

"I don't care if she likes me or not," I said.

My father stood there looking around the room. "I want to tell you something about Margaret," he said.

“Well, I don't want to hear it." I was feeling so completely ornery. When my father left the room, I could still hear my own voice saying, "I don't want to hear it." I sounded exactly like Phoebe.

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