Part 5.2

Eleanor sat on the red swing, dragging her feet in the dust. Harvest lay on his back in the grass and smashed aphids between his thumb and forefinger.

“Two hundred and twenty-seven,” he said with satisfaction.

“You know, you don’t have to count them out loud,” she told him.

“But I’ll lose count,” he replied. “Two hundred and twenty-eight.”

In the shade of the fence, the twins growled at the dog next-door. Hanging from one of the eaves, Fox looked like a cross between a snake and a bat. Pitchtongue was perched on the roof of the fort to watch the sky. They were all plunged briefly into shadow as a string of clouds passed across the sun.

“There will be hail tonight,” Pitchtongue predicted.

The toys that the children played with during the warm months were lined against the side of the house: buckets of plastic animals, a red wagon, four steel dump trucks rusting under their yellow paint, bicycles and scooters. There was a sand box, the half-buried buckets and shovels obscured by the carefully fastened cover. Jack always wanted it to be so, “To keep the sand clean,” he would say. Eleanor leaned her head against one of the swing chains. She remembered a time when the children would tumble into the house when called, red-faced and glowing, leaving the toys scattered across the yard. Now Cailyn and Jack would take time to gather up everything they had played with and place it in order before coming through the back door. They never slam the door anymore, she thought, but didn’t wonder why.

When she heard the rumble of the school bus, she walked the path from the swing set to the back patio. Harvest strolled behind her into the kitchen as the front door opened.

“I did see one,” Jack was saying. He sounded insistent.

“I’m not saying you didn’t,” Cailyn replied. “They’re just very rare. Hardly anyone sees them these days.”

Eleanor could hear the sound of back packs being hung on hooks.

“I saw it in the alley behind the school. It was eating blue bells.”

“What were you doing in the alley behind the school?” asked Cailyn.

There was a pause. “Nothing,” replied Jack.

She came out of the kitchen to see where they sat on the floor to untie their shoes.

“Mama,” Cailyn brightened. “How was your day?”

“Are you going to ask them if they missed you?” wondered Harvest.

Eleanor didn’t know how to answer the girl. “Do you want a snack?”

“Snack!” exclaimed Baz from somewhere upstairs.

“Yes,” answered Jack. “Can we have it in the fort?”

“Mhmm,” Eleanor nodded. “What do you want?”

Cailyn pulled off her socks. “Graham crackers and green apple slices. Can we dip them in yogurt?”

“I’ll bring it out to the fort,” she told them. As they went out the back door, Jack grabbed his blanket. She watched Cailyn climb the ladder to the second level of the swing set and then reach down as Jack handed up his blanket before climbing up after her.

“When to you think he’ll grow out of that blanket?” Harvest asked her.

“He can take it with him to college for all I care,” she said. “He loves that thing.”

“Surrogate parent,” said Harvest.

Eleanor didn’t answer. Through the kitchen window she watched the children as she sliced and cored two apples, spooned vanilla yogurt into a bowl and broke graham crackers into quarters. She wondered what they talked about when they sat in the fort together. Sometimes they looked so serious. She put it all on a large green plate and carried it outside.

At the bottom of the ladder she called, “Here’s your snack.”

Cailyn reached down for it and then smiled at her, “Come up,” she invited.

Eleanor climbed the ladder and sat in one of the corners, looking up at slatted roof. Pitchtongue’s silhouette was joined by the larger form of Harvest.

“It might rain today,” Eleanor said.

“I don’t think so,” Jack sounded dubious. He took a slice of apple and bit it carefully, sideways, to avoid the skin. Cailyn was dipping a graham cracker into yogurt.

“We had a fire drill today,” she said before taking a bite.

“It wasn’t a drill,” said Jack. “A drill is when it’s fake. It wasn’t fake.”

Cailyn nodded. “That’s true.”

“What happened?” asked Eleanor.

“A phoenix got into the cafeteria. It caught one of the spirit posters on fire.”

“That’s it?” Harvest’s disappointed voice came from above. “I was hoping for more damage.”

“The smoke alarms were really loud and screamy,” added Jack.

“We all had to line up outside while the firefighters came to put the fire out and catch the phoenix.”

“I stepped in gum,” said Jack, “it was purple. And I saw a unicorn.”

“Unicorns don’t exist,” Pitchtongue said to Harvest.

“Did you?” Eleanor asked, “where?”

“In the alley behind the school,” he said.

“You shouldn’t go back there,” Cailyn told him, “There’s broken glass.”

“You’re just jealous because I saw it and you didn’t,” he grinned at her. She wrinkled her nose in return.

“What did you do today, Mama?” Cailyn asked.

“I mopped the floor and went to the store –.”

“Did you get my jam?” interrupted Jack.

“Yes,” she smiled at him.

“What else?” asked Cailyn.

“I talked to a cockatrice.”

“Really? I’ve never seen one up close.”

“What’s a cockatrice?” asked Jack. “Are those the green, scaly chickens?”

Eleanor nodded.

“Mmm…” said Baz. He hung upside-down by his knees from the horizontal ladder above the swings. “Fried cockatrice.”

Jack bit into another apple slice. “I didn’t know cockatrices could talk,” he said.

“What did it say?” Cailyn asked.

“It asked me where my revenants were,” Eleanor told them.

“What’s a revenant?” asked Baz.

“A pink polka-dotted squid that walks on land,” Pitchtongue stated.

“Ha!” guffawed Harvest.

“What’s a revenant?” echoed Jack.

“I don’t know,” Eleanor answered.

“Maybe you should find out,” said Cailyn. “It might be important.”

“Maybe,” she nodded. Eleanor looked from one child to the other, both were watching her. “Bring the plate in when you’re done. Do you have homework?” They both nodded, mouths full. “Well,” she told them, “do that before anything else, alright?” They nodded again.

Eleanor climbed back down the ladder, startling as Harvest leapt down to join her. She could hear the voices of the children as she went back into the house.

“The boy saw a unicorn,” remarked Harvest. “That’s supposed to be good luck, you know.”

“Is it?” Eleanor asked. She remembered the last time she had seen one. It had been a day that many things had changed.

“Always,” Harvest emphasized the word ironically.

She didn’t answer.

She wandered around the house for a while, wondering what to clean. Everything seemed to be in order. She went through the children’s school folders, signing permission slips and marking reading charts. She straightened the books in the library, dusted the piano and finally went up to the art studio.

The blank canvas still sat expectantly on the easel. She stood before it. Her hands were heavy at her sides.

“Are you going to start it?” asked Harvest curiously.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“What are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” she said again.

“What are you going to paint?”

“I don’t know.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” she hissed, glaring at him.

“You don’t know what you’re thinking?” he said with mock incredulity. “How can you not

know what you’re thinking?”

“I can’t hear myself think, because you won’t stop talking,” her voice was loud.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “Thinking goes on inside your head. Your ears have nothing to do with it.”

Stop it, stop it, she thought. Leave me alone.

When she didn’t answer, he came to stand next to her, making her skin prickle. They both stared at the canvas.

“I think you should just start it,” he said. “Stop wondering what to paint and just start painting.”

“Don’t give me advice on art,” she began.

“….Unless you’re worried that you can’t do it,” he continued.

I can't, she thought. I know I can’t.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” queried Harvest. He looked across at her. “You know you can’t do it. You’ve forgotten how.”

She turned with a sigh and fell into the armchair. Harvest reached out to her supplies. He ran his fingers, without quite touching anything, over the brushes, the paints. He spoke as if to the art materials themselves.

“You’ve forgotten how to hold a paintbrush. You’ve forgotten how to make a line. You’ve forgotten how to mix colors. What do you get when you combine red and blue?”

I don’t know, she thought. What do you get?

“You don’t remember how to put the paint on the canvas. You don’t want to try because you know you won’t be able to do it.”

But I’ve done it before, she thought.

“What are you thinking?” asked Harvest.

She didn’t answer.

“Maybe you’re thinking, I’ve made a painting before, I can do it again. But you don’t know that. What you did before, it was just a fluke. Things were different then. Everything has changed. You’ve changed. You don’t know what to do and you’re terrified that you’ll make a stroke on that canvas and fail.

“Yes,” she said under her breath.

“What?” said Harvest. “I didn’t quite catch that.” He stepped to where she sat and crouched down by her arm. “But what do I know?” he said in a friendly tone. “You should paint. You think too much.”

She heard the back door open and the children come into the kitchen. She heard Cailyn rinse the plate and bowl and put them in the dishwasher. She heard them settle themselves at the table and pull out their homework. She heard their voices float up through the entryway and down her hallway.

“I want chocolate milk,” said Jack.

“That’s nice,” said Cailyn.

“Will you please make me some chocolate milk?” asked the boy.

“Sure.”

Eleanor heard the fridge open and close, milk being poured into two glasses and after a moment, stirred. She knew Cailyn was putting a glass next to Jack’s right hand, on the side of his paper where he was practicing his letters.

“Don’t spill,” she said.

“I won’t. Can I have a crazy straw?”

Eleanor heard a drawer open.

“What color?” she heard Cailyn ask.

“Green,” he said.

She heard the drawer slide shut again.

“Thank you,” said Jack.

Eleanor looked up at Harvest, who smiled to himself.

“What?” she asked him.

“They’re just so perfect,” he told her.

Eleanor nodded. “They are….” She agreed.

“What does that say about you?” he asked.

That they would be better off without me, she thought.

“Jack,” Cailyn said, “Don’t blow bubbles.”

“Why not?” he asked after a moment.

“Because they’ll spill over and get on your homework.”

He seemed to consider this. “Okay.”

“Just do it,” said Harvest. He didn’t tell her what he was talking about. He always seemed to read her mind. “They’d never even know you were gone.”