Bring the boys.Cathy hesitates. There is a pinching sensation in her stomach, like a contraction. It’s one thing to expose herself to old wounds. Another to drag her boys into it. She sucks in a quick breath, telling herself she’s worrying unnecessarily.
“Listen, Hazel, I have to get to work. Shall we—Scout, hang on, honey, hang on—shall we say Saturday? I can meet you out front by the fountain about eleven.”
“Sure. Eleven sounds good.”
Danny is lingering in the doorway, as if waiting to ask her a question. Money for lunch maybe, or needling her again about watching the video he made for school. She waves him away, pointing at the clock.You’re late, she mouths, and then Scout lets out a piercing wail as he topples off his ride-on truck, one foot snagged in the little red steering wheel. Cathy moves the phone to her other ear, wishing all of this away so she could just talk to her sister for another minute. She should be rushing out the door by now, pushing Scout’s buggy ahead of her, but there’s something she wants to say, and it can’t wait.
“I am glad you called, Hazel. Really.”
“Me too.”
And Cathy knows this is the truth, and that her sister means it. But when she hangs up, there is still a lingering doubt sitting uneasily inside her, like a sliver of glass.
Bring the boys.
3
I consider taking the bus to town, but the thought of the downhill journey and those narrow twisting roads makes my already bilious stomach lurch. I decide to walk instead, zipping my coat against the cold autumn air. I wave to the neighbor across the street who is staring at me over the roof of his car, unsmiling. He raises a hand solemnly in return. Mr. Jenner. When me and Cathy were kids, he’d tell us off for riding our bikes up and down the road. I gave him the finger once and he threatened to tell my parents.
It’s strange to be home. Idless is a small town, made to feel smaller by the trees seaming it into the valley on all sides. Around here you get used to the constant fragrance of the pines; green and resinous and as bright as cut ginger. I’ve never liked the view from the valley, looking up toward the sloping hills. It always makes me feel as though the trees are slowly inching toward the town like a lumbering arboreal landslide.
As I cross the deserted town square toward the pharmacy, something catches my eye. There, just beneath an old wooden bench, something is growing. I bend down to squint at it.
“Hello, you,” I whisper. To the passersby, it probably looks likea wad of chewed gum, bright yellow and gelatinous, stuck beneath the slats of the bench. But I know better. Gently, I reach out a finger. The mass is firm, and it shivers slightly at my touch.
“Aren’t you beautiful?” I’m getting on my hands and knees to take a closer look, not minding the damp concrete, the grit and grime digging into my palms. Right now, my whole focus has shrunk to this tiny growth beneath the bench, this yellow brain fungus, so called because of the folds and crenellations that make up the fruiting body.
“Are you okay?” a voice asks me. I’m halfway under the bench right now, my head almost touching the wall behind it. “Do you need me to call someone for you?”
I slide myself awkwardly out. There is a man standing over me—loomingwould be a better expression, he’s at least six feet tall—looking at me with concern and just the slightest hint of distaste. I grin, but his expression doesn’t change. If anything, he looks more suspicious.
“I’m looking at a mushroom.”
“Is that right?” Hard to read his tone, but I can see he doesn’t believe me.
I point. “See? It’s called yellow brain. Also known as witch’s butter.”
“Why?”
“Because it was said that if it grew on your front door or gate, then you’d been cursed by a witch.”
“Huh. So you think a witch cursed this bench?”
He smiles. There is a gap between his front teeth wide enough to fit a coin through. I always wanted one of those. Like Madonna.
“Well, I suppose she might have done. If it was too uncomfortable.”
His grin widens and I take a better look at him. He’s older than me—late forties or early fifties is my best guess—with a crooked nose that has been broken more than once. His skin is sallow, with a broad forehead and heavy brows which frame eyes shining with good humor. There’s a familiarity about him, but if you spend long enough in small places like Idless, you start thinking like that about everybody. We’re all kin here one way or another, that’s what everyone says.
“Do all mushrooms have such weird names or is it just this one?”
“Depends what you mean by weird. There’s a powdery piggyback, a turquoise elfcup, destroying angel—”
“I don’t like the sound of that one.”
“It’s lethal. There’s a well-known aphorism among my forager friends: All mushrooms are edible, but some of them only once. The destroying angel is an ‘only once’ kind of mushroom.”
He laughs at that, unfolding his arms to reveal smears of dusky orange mud on his overalls, as if he has wiped his hands there.