Fairy Circle Read online

  Fairy Circle

  Johanna Frappier

  Edited by Donna L. Bobbs

  Copyright 2011

  Smashwords Edition

  To Leo with love.

  You are magic.

  And awfully patient.

  To Carrie, who always encouraged me.

  To Laura, who accepts me and my demons.

  Chapter 1

  “Saffron, are you okay?”

  Saffron tasted dirt and grass. She could smell the ocean and hear the waves. It was too much of an effort to answer her mother. Her eyelids were so heavy she didn’t want to open them to take a look around and see where she had landed herself this time.

  “Here,” Derek’s voice, “give me a hand getting her up. She’s all right. We saved her again, like a couple of fricken heroes.” He pointed up to the night-bright sky. “How come you didn’t lock her door?”

  Audrey looked up at the almost-full moon as she pulled Saffron to her feet. “I thought you locked the door.” She said this softly, accepting the blame as they guided Saffron through the field and past the curious alpacas. Saffron was quiet on the walk back to the farmhouse. When her mother tucked her into bed, she felt like she had just graduated kindergarten, not high school. She was asleep before the bolt slid home on the outside of her bedroom door.

  ***

  “And here he is.” Derek leaned on the kitchen counter for a long look out the window over the sink.

  Saffron stayed in her seat at the table. She looked down at her omelet when the heat rushed up the back of her neck.

  “Awfully loud, what’s wrong with his car? Is that a motorcycle?” Audrey gave the home-fries a scrape in the iron skillet and went to lean on the counter by Derek.

  Derek snorted. “Yeah, it’s a motorcycle. Saffron, come look at the yummy man-boy.”

  Saffron dropped her fork in her plate and rubbed the heel of her hand over her forehead. “I know what Markis looks like. He was only a year behind me in school. So stop staring at him Derek; that’s gross.”

  Derek smiled. “You need to show the new lawn boy where the mower is, Saffron. And make sure he weedwacks around the fence.”

  “I’m not going out there. You do it.”

  Derek pushed off the counter. “Gladly.”

  “Don’t scare him, dirty old man.” Audrey whipped Derek with a dish towel, then went back to the home fries. “Aren’t you going to go say ‘Hi,’ to him, Saffron?”

  Saffron swallowed. “Never talked to him before.”

  “Speaking of school, if you’re really not going to go to college, why don’t you get a job to keep busy this summer? I saw a sign when I got the Half & Half at the Black Chicken. They’re hiring.”

  Saffron sucked her next breath in through her teeth. “Mom, we weren’t ‘speaking of school’.”

  “It’s not a bad idea.” Audrey sniffed.

  Saffron rolled her eyes over her cup of juice as Audrey came to the table with the home fries.

  “And when’s the last time you combed your hair? It looks like a pile of plop propped with chopsticks. Like red tide. I can tell you haven’t combed it.” Audrey pushed some potatoes onto Saffron’s plate, and then some onto Grandmother’s plate. Grandmother sat staring. She didn’t seem to be in the room with them. The screen door slapped closed behind Derek just as the mower started up out back.

  “Derek, you owe me rent.” Audrey sat at the table, placed a wrinkled linen napkin on her lap, and buttered her toast.

  “Put it on my tab, luv.” He stared at Saffron. “Let me tell you something, honey.” He went at his plate of mounded food like a bear dining at a toy table. When he started to talk, food went flying into the air, on the table, on his shirt, in his beard. “Listen to your mother. It’s not like you hafta be queen of the fricken world right away. Just go do something. You hear what I’m sayin’?”

  “How do you even know what we’re talking about? You just came in the door.” Saffron folded her arms across her chest.

  “Well, let me see….” Derek shoveled in another load. “You’ve got a puss on your face. The sun’s out. It’s Tuesday morning. We’re eating breakfast. And what else do you people hiss about day after day?”

  Saffron stuck her tongue out at him.

  He smiled and smacked his lips.

  At least they weren’t going to talk about her sleepwalking. They all treated it like bedwetting - she did it, they didn’t talk about it, and they were all waiting for it to go away.

  Grandmother’s voice came muttering across the table. “Someone was here last night.”

  Grandmother always thought someone had come on the nights Saffron went on her nocturnal jaunts. Saffron assumed Grandmother was just hearing them all walking around during the hullabaloo.

  Derek stopped mid-bite. “Well, Jesus H, Grandmother, you don’t say.” He shifted around without turning his neck to give Audrey a look.

  “Derek…” Audrey’s voice was soft. She had never quite perfected admonishment.

  Derek picked up his coffee and slurped, avoiding eye contact with the old lady. Grandmother suddenly focused on Saffron. Saffron looked away, hoping her mother would handle it. Audrey’s chair creaked as she leaned back. She grabbed her coffee mug. “What about the job, Saffron?”

  Saffron made a disgruntled ‘pfft’ sound. “Why, Mom? What I’m doing’s not enough? You want me to start paying rent too?”

  Audrey winced. “What?”

  “I mean, why do I have to get a job? You need some money or something? Why do I have to get a job? I have a job. I clean the house! I do the dishes. I wash the laundry and everything else. I dust till I gag, Mom. C’mon, since I graduated I pretty much do all of the menial chores. Inside and out. I do all the barn stuff, too. I feed the alpacas, I shovel their poop. I get the chicken eggs. I take the goats on their poison ivy binges.”

  “No, I don’t need money, Saffron. And no, you don’t do all of the work. And it’s good for you to do work. Derek and I are working. A regular job would be good for you. I want you to feel good about yourself, about something you create or accomplish.”

  Saffron threw up her arms. “Oh, now we have arrived at our destination, folks.”

  “…and you never talk about your future. Nothing. Not even plans for this weekend.” Audrey’s voice crackled like a live wire skipping around in a puddle.

  “Here we go round the mulberry bush on a hot and sticky morning.” Derek bellowed, using his best Puccini.

  “Saffron,” Audrey gasped, “why do we have to keep doing this?”

  Saffron looked down and wagged her head back and forth. “This isn’t right, Mom. You’re not being fair.” Her mother was always the one to start this, and at least once a week since graduation. “Why do you always have to start this? I can’t believe you just told me to go become a clerk.” Saffron spat clerk’ like clog from her throat.

  “I didn’t start anything. I only suggested you become a clerk.” Audrey dropped her knife and the loud clatter made everyone jump. “I just mean you should find something, anything, to keep you occupied while you think things through. I just thought of the convenience store as an idea. Go become a brain surgeon. Go collect trash - whatever.”

  Saffron had to yell as the mower passed close by the window. “I am occupied.”

  “Doing what?” Audrey yelled back, even though the mower had moved on.

  “Think what through?” Saffron gave the open window a dirty look when the mower doubled back.

  “Oh, gee, look at the time.” Derek hardly glanced at his watch, a shocking piece of jewelry graced with the Vitruvian Man, Davinci’s famous anatomical. One rigid arm and one rigid leg kept time, sometimes at grotesque angles; his family jewel was a centered diamond. Derek used the table to pus
h himself out of his seat. He patted Saffron on the head, and then went to peck Audrey’s cheek. He rubbed her shoulders with his big paws, loosening her like a boxer between rounds. “Need help getting those canvases to my shop, honey?”

  Audrey shook her head no, and dragged her eyes from Saffron to look up at him. She huffed. “No, but I need you to check Han Solo before you go. I think he only has one testicle.” She bit her bottom lip. “I don’t think I’ll be able to show him at the Invitational.” She reached up. “Derek, look at all the marmalade in your beard.” She raked his beard with her short nails as he jutted his chin out.

  “Yes, my love, I’ll grope your alpaca. I’ll call you. Then I’m going to go open up my shop. Because, you know, it’s my J-O-B. I take great pride in clerking and so forth.”

  Saffron made the forced air out of her throat sound of disgust that women do so spectacularly. “You are not a clerk! You’re the shop owner, the boss!”

  “Oh, please, honey, don’t start that bickering with me. You don’t know who you’re messing with. Now, I’m off to stand behind my store counter, aka, ‘to clerk.’ I need to know when my shipment arrives if somebody named Saffron could give me a call when UPS shows up. You owe me. I saved you again last night…”

  Audrey rubbed her hands all over her face. “I know. I know, Derek. I’m sorry. Don’t salt the wound. Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it, honey. Anyway, Grouchyrella, do you think you can do this for me today?” He was already grabbing his keys off the counter and checking his teeth with his tongue.

  Saffron rested her forehead in her palm and waved him off with the other hand. “Yessss.”

  “Good. Ciao!” The screen door smashed behind him.

  “I never said there was anything wrong with being a clerk!”

  “Can’t hear you.” He yelled from the gravel drive.

  “I never said there was anything wrong with being a clerk.” She muttered.

  “Then why don’t you go try it?” Audrey studied Saffron while Saffron hunched over her cold breakfast dregs.

  Grandmother was considering the blue veins on the back of her hand. The lawnmower moved around to the side of the house. Saffron and her mother listened as Derek slammed the door of his yellow bug and started the engine.

  Audrey jumped. “And he already forgot to check Han Solo.” She was out the screen door in two seconds.

  Saffron perked up. Her mother was a brilliant painter but the worst actress in the world. Han Solo’s testicles didn’t warrant a two-second sprint. Saffron got up and hurried to the window over the kitchen sink. She couldn’t hear what her mother was saying over the grind of the lawnmower. She saw Audrey yapping and flapping away like a jay bird and going on for way too long.

  Saffron stretched her neck and flattened her cheek to the window, but Markis was out of sight. She took a step back and frowned at Derek and Audrey, then moped to her seat, her red hair slipping out of the chop sticks and streaming down her face.

  ***

  That afternoon, Saffron straddled her mountain bike. Somber-eyed, she looked down the long line of the driveway to the country road at its base. She breathed deep for five seconds, held it for five seconds, and exhaled for five. Then did it again. It didn’t help. Her teeth stayed clamped, her hands still shook, and the freight train still roared in her ears. She narrowed her eyes and scanned the farmhouse to see if anyone was watching. Her mother was probably still in the sunroom out back, working on her canvas. Saffron looked front and shuddered. Tears welled in her eyes as she held her breath.

  In high school, the breathing technique had worked well. Used on a daily basis, the urge to chain herself to the quarry-stone foundation wasn’t as strong as it was today when she hadn’t left the farmhouse in weeks.

  She got off the bike and let it drop to the ground. She lay down, and immediately got up, brushing the gravel off her back and butt. She got on the bike. Tears of rage welled up as she rammed her pedals around and around and forced herself forward.

  She was at the bottom of the drive when she slowed to a stop and frowned at the line of mushrooms that marched across her path. Mushrooms that grew in gravel? The hot, sunny gravel? They had always been there, marching out of the field on one side of the driveway and disappearing into the tall grasses on the other side. Her paranoia piqued as she kicked and ground at them with both feet, then quickly got on her bike and pushed her way across the broken line.

  You’re nineteen and you don’t have your license. Her eyes were narrow slits. This was all her mother’s fault, making her do this. Freakin’ convenience store clerk. She moved on in a daze, ignoring the cow-filled pastures and the rocky shoreline. The mountain bike had never been out of her yard.

  After about two miles, she reached the business part of town. She passed the Happy Grocer, Gary’s Old Thyme Wieners, which was in a pretty Victorian house with brightly-colored, scalloped edging, passed the post office and Frank’s Diner, and rode around the corner of main street where the brick pharmacy stood. The Black Chicken was in the next little brick building. She pedaled into the parking lot and peeked out from behind her hair. She parked her bike behind a keeling evergreen decorated with faded candy wrappers.

  Her lips started to get twitchy as she slunk past the sale signs that hung in the store windows. When she opened the glass entry door, a small man in a big plaid shirt and polyester slacks came charging forward, waving a lottery ticket in her face. She started swatting without thinking, as much as to get the lottery ticket away as to dispel the smell of cabbage and smoky skin.

  “This is it! The winner!” he let her know, then ran to the hood of his big, red Road Master to scratch it.

  “Sweetie, you can’t stand there all day, got the flies to think about. Food in here, you know.” A sallow-skinned woman, fortyish, fake-smiled at Saffron from behind the register counter. Her brown teeth were not included in the ads of the good times you can have with Marlboros. She tilted her Michael-Jackson nose up. Clearly, she was queen of all she surveyed.

  Saffron scurried across the threshold and presented herself at the counter like a terrified recruit.

  “What can I getcha?” The woman smacked her gum.

  “Do you need help?” White lights danced into Saffron’s vision and blurred the image of the lady’s cigarette teeth.

  The woman reached under the counter, laughing. “Of course I need help! Who doesn’t need help? I gotta kid at home that I need ta feed and keep in Wii games and music downloads. Now he wants a Kindle.” The woman looked Saffron up and down, her lips still pulled in a thin smile.

  The woman was at least three inches shorter than Saffron, but Saffron automatically gave her the upper hand by letting her own body shrink into a more pronounced hunch. She tried to fake-smile back at the woman, but just managed to look like she had shut her finger in a door. “I’m looking for a job.” I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, she thought. Ruh-row dumb ass; me need job. She longed for the rough, brick outside of the building to rub her forehead on. Then she smiled wider, her bottom lip shaking as the woman smirked at her.

  “Yeah, I get it.” The woman presented Saffron with the one page form she had pulled out from under the counter. “Just fill this out. I’ll give it to tha ownas as soon as they get back. They’ll call ya.”

  Saffron’s smile dropped and she stood up straight without realizing it. Her nostrils flared. This queen wasn’t even the owner. Not the boss! Saffron could hardly believe she wasted her best mumbling kiss-ass routine on this woman. She snatched at the application and took it over to the lottery ticket station. There, amongst the shavings of a million ‘winining’ tickets she white-knuckled a half-chewed pen and quickly filled out some of the application, fretting over the other empty rest of it because she had done nothing in her life. Nothing.

  Saffron walked the application back to Bea, the woman’s nametag read, and handed the paper over with a grimace she was convinced, this time, was a nice smile. Bea squinted at Saffron, studied her li
ke a moldy roll, and proclaimed, “Ya know, this job’s not easy.” Now she was sounding downright vicious. “It’s not like you’re gonna get hired, then come sit around here all day.”

  Saffron had no idea what to do with this information. “O…kaaay.” She jerked her head around to look at the door. “You know, I gotta.…” She sighed heavy. “I’ll be right back.” Then she took off through the door, jumped on her bike, and pedaled like the Wicked Witch of the West was after her all the way home.

  Chapter 2

  Several watchers came that night, always up for a game, just before two in the morning. They settled in the willow on the edge of the woods beyond her front lawn. But, they were too late - Saffron was already dreaming. They hung from the gnarled limbs until they became bored, and then scattered like a murder of crows.

  Saffron dreamt of a rough woman who lived in a thatched hut on the shore of a different grey and raging sea.

  The woman took care of everything - herself, her home, and some petty livestock. Everything but her own children who, in five years of marriage, had never come into existence. Her coarse, orange hair was windblown, its kinks dull and colorless from lack of attention. The skin on her hands was chapped and scarred from hard seaside labor. Yet, she was strong, and often when she rose with the sun, she possessed a warm light that marked her pretty to those who cared to search.

  She was waiting for her husband to return from a holy war, a crusade she had never understood but supported blindly as his passions were her passions. She longed for the day when she could strip him of his mail to cast it to the white and foaming jaws of the sea. She cared not for war and the other vices of men, but thought only of her home, a family, and the sun on her garden, the moon on the water.

  She had waited months for his return, then over a year. When two years had passed, she was one day out hanging clothes to dry in the briny air. The glare of the sun reflected off the white, salted grass, setting her eyes in a perpetual wince of which she was hardly aware. The rider was obscured, wavering in the haze and dust of the path as his horse clopped toward her. She wiped her hands on her patched apron, breathed deep the wild-rose-scented air, and bit her bottom lip as she waited to greet the man she finally recognized as her husband’s best mate. She let out a cry at seeing him back, and ran to receive him with hugs and babbled prayers of thanks. After several moments, he held her from him and looked sadly into her eyes. She asked harshly, “Is he dead, then?”