Page 52 of Potion Sickness

In the parking lot Pru unlocks the car but doesn’t get in.

“The hedge looks fine, right? I looked at it again just now. It’s a bird. It’s always been a bird.”

“The hedge looks fine,” I say.

“She was right about Tiffany.”

“We just didn’t realize until after.”

“She was right about Tiffany, in a nine-second voicemail, shoved in between forty-something calls about how a man was going to come about the pipes.”

“Did a man come about the pipes?”

“He did. That’s what’s so exhausting about it.”

“When she’s right, she’s right.”

* * *

“Marigold,” my mother says when I pick up the phone. “I’ve been calling all evening. You’re not answering the house line.”

“I didn’t even know we had a house line until recently. Why didn’t you call my cell?”

“I called the house first out of respect for the house,” she says. “Are the wards holding?”

“The wards are fine.”

“Are they settled?”

The stove has been behaving. The staircase has stayed in one configuration since June. Nothing seems to be awry… with the house, at least.

“Englebert,” I say. “Are the wards settled?”

“I believe so,” he says, not moving from his place on the window sill.

“Englebert says they’re settled,” I say into the phone.

“Then they’re settled,” she says. “I read your articles.”

“What articles?”

“The ones about the play, of course.”

“You read New England Byways?”

“I read a great deal, Marigold. Your father printed them.”

“He printed them?”

“He printed them and he’s been showing them to people. There is a couple from Rhode Island who are now very vested in the production and very disappointed they can’t find tickets.”

“Hi honey!” my father calls, from somewhere.

“Hi Dad.”

“Ask her about the water heater,” he says.

“He would like me to ask you about the water heater,” my mother says. “I am declining.”