Sugar Castle, chapter 8
On Thursday, zoom classes were cancelled because of a district-wide internet issue, and their mother said that they would make it a holiday and go to their aunt’s house. Aunt Nicky and her boyfriend Shane were in their pod, so it was OK to go. She announced this at breakfast. Sophie and Colin were all in, although Colin complained that he was so close to getting to the next level on his game.
“That game will be there when we get back,” their mother said. She was in one of her moods, what Gindy called her happy-on-purpose mood. “Do the dishes, sweep the floors, make your beds,” she said. “Or you can’t go to the ball.”
“Why are we Cinderella?” Colin asked, but they all got to it.
At 11 they were in the car and on their way. It was cloudy but dry. There were still leaves on the trees but they were thinning out. Waiting for a good wind to give up their little ghosts, their grandmother used to say. They went over the creek and onto 56, with a quick turn onto the road to town. Their mother turned on the radio, looking for some music, but it was time for the news, so she turned it off.
As they started to get closer to the school, Gindy began to feel peculiar. Her throat felt tight and her mouth dry. Sophie was looking at her, which made Gindy feel even worse. “What?” she said.
Sophie shrugged and looked out the window. They were driving past the informal junkyard where Mr. Kincer kept all of his old vehicles, plus some he’d bought and towed there. A graveyard of cars. Gindy remembered looking out of the window of the SUV just here, when the man had started talking about dogs. She remembered how the water was running in the ditch, and how a woman had come out of her trailer just a little farther along to check her mailbox.
It seemed strange to her that they didn’t know what the man’s name was. She wanted to know. But would it make it better or worse if she did?
She wished she had someone to talk to, someone who wasn’t a kid.
Nicky was making cookies when they got there, and she tied aprons on the three of them and sat them down to do the decorations. Cookies at Nicky’s house were never plain. They had icing or nuts or those red cherries. She had a storage container of different colored and shaped sprinkles that she brought out for every occasion. Today, she told them they were making lockdown cookies. ”Good for what ails you.”
“We’re not sick,” Colin pointed out.
“These cookies are going to keep it that way,” Nicky said. “They have the magic ingredient.”
“Like vitamin C?” Sophie said.
“No,” Nicky swooped down on them. “Love!” she shrieked. “Love is all you need.”
Their mother smiled in a tired way. “Beatles reference,” she said, for their benefit, and they all nodded. Nicky was a Beatles nut.
“These cookies aren’t going to decorate themselves,” Nicky said. The table and counters were covered with racks and plates of cookies, cookies on the cutting board, on dish towels, everywhere, cut into the shapes of acorns and witches’ hats, with a few nondescript flowers and a little group of boy and girl cookies.
Nicky had a bottle of wine, and she poured a glass for their mother. “Adult time, coming up.”
“It’s too early,” their mother said.
“Look on this as medication, Ren,” Nicky said. “And I’m your doctor.” She led their mother away to the back of the house, to the TV room. They heard the door close.
“These cookies aren’t going to decorate themselves,” Gindy said.
“It would be cool if they did,” Colin said. He stared at the cookies, as if he could make them start working with the power of his mind.
Sophie was already applying orange icing to a batch of acorns.
Colin let his sticks drop and sat down across from her. “Acorns are brown,” he said.
“No one likes brown cookies.” Sophie chose red sprinkles for the acorns.
“What about brownies?”
Gindy started work on a platter of flowers, making each a different color. No sprinkles, because she didn’t like them.
“Are you ever going to tell me what happened when you went out yesterday?” Colin said.
Gindy and Sophie looked at each other. Gindy didn’t want to tell him. She didn’t want him to be upset or afraid. Colin had had some times when he worried about certain things, like earthquakes or car crashes, He had to look in the news for stories about them every day and he was afraid that whatever it was would happen to them, to their family. Gindy knew that their mother was worried that he might start that again, because of their father.
“Did you see something dead? Like a dead deer?” Colin was looking at her, his glasses a little crooked.
Gindy shook her head.
“Who was that woman? She had a baby. I saw it in the car.”
“We should tell him,” Sophie said.
Gindy shook her head. “He’s just a little kid.”
“We’re kids,” Sophie said.
“You are,” Gindy said.
“You were a kid last year,” Sophie said. “You’re not that different now. You’re not even thirteen yet.”
Colin looked back and forth between them, blue icing dripping from the spoon he held.
“I have to think about it,” Gindy said.
When they had finished the cookies, their mother and aunt hadn’t come out of the TV room. Colin went to look through Shane’s collection of vintage video games. Gindy started to clean up.
“Are we going to tell him?” Sophie was dragging her fingers through the bowls of colored icing, making patterns.
“I don’t know.” Gindy stacked the baking things up and ran the water in the sink.
“We probably have to. Or he’ll tell Mom.”
“Are you going to help clean up?”
Sophie brought some dishes and utensils and stacked them on the counter. “Call me when the rack is full and I’ll come and wipe.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m just going to look around.”
“We already looked everyplace. It’s not here.”
“You don’t know everything, Virginia.” Sophie ran out of the kitchen.
Gindy squirted soap into the sink and watched the bubbles mound up. Sophie could never give up. Their mother said it was one of her good traits, but mostly it was annoying. They had looked everywhere and the sugar castle wasn’t here. She didn’t think it was such a big deal, alongside of everything else, but to Sophie it was.
Gindy had stood at this sink many times when her grandmother still lived here, helping her with the dishes or washing vegetables from the garden. She could see the garden from the window, stretching away toward the chicken house at the back of the property. There hadn’t been any chickens there for a long time, but they used to find a feather now and again when they had poked around back there, or some egg shell fragments. The chickens had belonged to their grandfather, who had died before they were born. When he was gone, their grandmother had sold them. She said it was because she couldn’t stand their squawking, but Gindy had heard her mother tell her aunt that she thought it was because they reminded her of him.
The garden was brown and dead now. Nicky said that she might do something with it next year. Their father had said that the something would be that she’d rototill it flat. She’s not a plant person, he’d said, and their mother had agreed. He’d said it in this very kitchen, when they were all sitting around the table, her parents and Nicky and Shane and the three of them. Gindy stood very still, the warm water running over her hands, imagining that they were back there, behind her, eating the last pieces of pie. It had been Shane’s birthday and Nicky had made two pies, cherry and buttermilk chess, because he didn’t like cake. “Who doesn’t like cake?” Colin had asked, and the adults had all laughed in that way they had when you were being particularly kid-ish. Their forks had clattered against the plates. Sophie had been arguing with Colin about something, and her father had said –
But she couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said. She opened her eyes. The sink was full and ready to overflow. The garden was dead. There was no one behind her.
She had to stop doing that, she thought, because it was crazy. She started to wash the dishes, rinsing each one carefully and setting it in the dish rack.
The attic was dark. Sophie wished she’d brought a flashlight, or her grandma’s battery lantern. Nicky and Shane had said they’d checked it out, but it couldn’t hurt to look again. Did Shane even know what the sugar castle looked like? He hadn’t lived here then. He’d only come after their grandmother had gone to live at the nursing home. And they all knew that Nicky wasn’t good at keeping on task.
Gindy didn’t like the attic because it was dirty and dusty, but Sophie liked being up high. When she looked out of the small round window under the eaves, it was like being in a tower. Nothing could touch you up here. No one could find you. It was a good place to think, too, and maybe she should clear a space to sit down and come up with her plan.
She opened a box full of old clothes and poked around in it. A pair of overalls, some flannel shirts, a straw hat. Her grandma’s gardening clothes. Nicky and their mother had several times bought her a new hat for her birthday or Christmas, but she never wore them to garden. She said that the old hat was magic, and that if she threw it away, the garden would refuse to grow. That was a long time ago, when Sophie was little enough to believe her, when she had still half believed in the magic of the game.
Dust and some kind of sandy grit was scratchy under her shoes, and she shuffled her feet to hear the sound it made. She opened another box full of saucers and cups, and then one half full of books, the kind with a woman in an old-fashioned dress on the cover. Her grandmother’s romances. She pushed the box to the top of the stairs. They could take some the next time they went to visit. It wasn’t like her grandma couldn’t read anymore.
By the window there was a trunk, and she opened it even though she knew what was inside – dozens of records. Sometimes her grandma had played one for them on the record player in the TV room. Men in fancy suits, she remembered, and some girl singers with big poufy hair. She pulled one out that she recognized: Blue Hawaii, which was from a movie with Elvis. Why was it blue? Elvis’s face on the record cover was scarred and scratched, as if a cat had gotten at it. She tried to read the small print on the back, but the light from the cloudy afternoon wasn’t strong enough.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. These dishes aren’t going to wipe themselves, Gindy had texted, and she wrote back, I’m coming before she went over to the shelves on the north wall. Some of her grandma’s old dolls were sitting on the top one. Sophie hated the way they were leaning on each other and half falling over. She started to right them, fixing their skirts and smoothing their hair. She remembered all their names. Fawny. Elsie. The bride doll, Rebecca. Donna and Sally, the two baby dolls. The costumes of the world dolls, six of them, with funny hats. Morning Glory, the Indian doll. No Barbie dolls, because her grandma was too old for those, she guessed.
Where are you? It was Gindy again, and Sophie texted, Doing something. She put her favorite, Elsie, at the end of the line. Elsie had dark hair, like Sophie’s. It was a little ratty now, and her dress had a stain on it. Somewhere there was a little trunk full of Elsie’s doll clothes. Her great grandma had made them for some long ago birthday. Sophie stood there, holding Elsie in her arms as if Elsie was a baby, feeling sorry for Elsie in her stained dress, or for her grandma, or for someone. Maybe she could take Elsie home with her. Nicky wouldn’t mind if she did. But when her phone buzzed again, she put Elsie back on the shelf, smoothing down her dress. There was something underneath the skirt and Sophie felt around for it. It was hard and sharp under her fingers, dirty and white, but unmistakably a sugar cube.