Lucy Clark Will Not Apologize

by Margo Rabb

The police officer had an expression on his face, looking at me: Who are you? What kind of person would do that?

And then, around midnight, when the halls were quiet and nobody else was awake, I began to relax a little. The dark covered the world like a blanket. I liked the idea of everyone else being asleep. There was no one judging me. No one disapproving. No one to taunt me or be cruel, or to demand anything, to take something away. No one to disappoint.

I was sent to Mr. Fell, the school nurse, to check on my “mental health and well-being.” He was Uriah’s grandfather, and the only other male staff member. He drove a giant black hearse-like sedan, and was the opposite sort of nurse from my grandmother—he was gaunt, with a thick beard flecked with dandruff like frost crystals, as if he’d spent time in a freezer. Maybe Mrs. Fell made him sleep in the walk-in. “Good night, Frosty,” Dyna used to imitate Mrs. Fell saying. “Sleep tight and don’t bump into that frozen ham.”

I leaned down and petted Wiggy. It felt good to touch an animal, its fur and softness. I fed him a treat, and then he sniffed my hand and let me scratch his face. I found the spot by his whiskers where Gertrude loved being scratched, and after a while and many treats, he let me really pet him, and he went melty into the sidewalk. Then he rubbed against my leg. He sat still at first, and then I miraculously got him to walk a little. I coaxed him over to a square in the sidewalk in front of the building where lots of plants grew, by the street. Wiggy lay down beside a fern and pawed at the dirt.

Here the plants seemed like a festival, gathering to celebrate the world.

The tiny plot was filled with lots of ferns and strange plants I’d never seen before, a miniature forest sprouting from a cement sea.

The ferns were still growing, their tops unfurling, their ends like curlicue snail shells, like green lollipops.

Wiggy let out a funny cat sigh. Cat happiness. He sniffed the dirt and turned over, his belly in the air. One flower in front of me seemed from a fairy tale—white bells with tiny green dots like hand-painted china, hanging from a tall stalk. I touched it. “What is it?” Jack said a Latin name but the name wasn’t what I was asking for—I meant, how can this be? How can this grow from the sidewalk? I touched its pointed petals. “It looks like a lantern for a fairy ball.” He smiled. “I like that one...

Sun shone through the leaves, lighting up their different shades of green. A rainbow of green.

Now I live there myself. With Wiggy.” He sipped his coffee. “Though I think he’d be happier living right here, napping under the ostrich fern.” “Who wouldn’t,” I said.

“Wenli, Jack’s mother, was one of my closest friends—she conducted pioneering research on bumblebees, and she loved to garden, too.

“He was a really sweet boy once, before the world began to stomp on his soul.”

Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely of places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it. —Roald Dahl

a gravestone that read “SMUSHY, YOU WILL ALWAYS BE LOVED,” for Mimsy’s old bulldog,

At the end of the path was an outdoor library filled with stone books with titles like “HOLY SCHIST” and “IT’S NEVER TOO SLATE.” A magnolia stood against the library wall, its buds like pink baby owls.

It was different from any place I’d ever been—it felt like being inside a strange wo...

“You do know that Edith is one of the most famous horticulturists in the world?” Mimsy asked me. “That she’s authored three b...

Edith waved the compliment away and pinched off flower heads that were turning slightly brown. “Always editing,” Mimsy said. “That’s what she calls it when she clips and trims. ‘Editing.’”

We walked over to a cherry tree, and hidden behind it was a white metal table set for tea, and a tiered tray filled with scones and tiny muffins. Yellow birds and red hearts decorated the teacups; everything at Mimsy’s was brightly colored.

I had an odd feeling, being there—Nana used to say that homes had souls, like people do, and we loved them like people. Maybe gardens had souls also.

I was glad they didn’t know about the jaded—or worse than jaded—parts of me, and the real reason I was on an “internship” from Thornton.

I hadn’t known Edith was Jewish, too. I felt glad she was—it was like finding a fellow member of a secret society.

“People look down on teens as much as—or worse than—they look down on old ladies. Like we’re all idiots.”

I liked that Mimsy and Edith were old, and not only because of my grandmother—it was that thinking about being their age was like peeking into another realm where the shallow things didn’t matter.

It smelled fresh and strange and new, and its leaves felt feathery and soft. Its fronds stood tall like an all-green peacock.

It was an 1800s mansion plopped inside the six-story building: an open living room with a spiral wood staircase to the second floor, elaborate moldings and ceiling plaques, chandeliers and marble fireplaces, wood shutters, and honey-colored plank floors that creaked with every step.

“This whole building used to be one house,” Mimsy explained. “A thirty-room mansion. Edith’s father, Robert Fox, bought it from Henry Alton, an old New York shipping magnate. Later on, her father broke it up into one- and two-bedroom apartments—this is the only original part of the building that remains.” She waved her arms around. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” “I’ve never been anyplace like this,” I said. “It’s the only home I’ve had in my life,” Edith said.

We both felt like our family trees had been chopped down.

something thrilled in me, seeing this mess—discovering this treasure trove of the past. I loved the smell of antique paper, of things that had a long life, that were held on to and loved. These magazines seemed like peeking into another world. Time traveling.

secret mess tucked away, this holding tank of her past.

all this stuff was a window into a whole other world. A treasure chest. Something amazing.

Edith has memory loss. Confusion and disorientation. Paranoia. Agitation. Delusions.”

I couldn’t put into words what I felt about Edith. Her warmth. Her sense of wonder. Her comfort with herself. “I believe her.”

“We all want Edith to be okay,” he said. “To protect her. To keep her safe. To get her the help she needs.”

The library was two stories high, with built-in wooden shelves covering every wall from floor to ceiling, a deep window seat, and a ladder and walkway along the second story. It was a more organized, less cluttered version of the unused room—it held tons of stuff, but in an acceptable, presentable way. Books were stacked everywhere, and old magazines with crumbling edges teetered on the shelves and side tables. It was like an old bookstore or the best ephemera shop. I saw a Woman’s Day from 1945 with a price of two cents, and magazines called Home Life and Lady’s Almanac. Antique typewriters balanced on the stacks, and tchotchkes and old handwritten letters; all these antique books and papers calmed and thrilled me at the same time, all these old, beloved things.

Cyrus snaked around, reading the spines on the shelves. He seemed like a snail who’d leave a trail of slime behind. He ogled everything Edith owned—vases, books, framed paintings, and potted plants. Nanette nodded approvingly, drinking in Edith’s wealth, as if money were contagious.

The next morning, and throughout the week, Edith self-medicated by planting dahlias, her favorite flower. “This helps me think,” she said. “To get clarity.” She was right—it felt good to take a break from thinking and do physical work. “Dahlias cure everything,” Edith said. She showed me how to make a spiderweb out of twine for the dahlia plants to grow through. Boxes kept arriving that contained more and more dahlia tubers—they resembled dried-out deformed giant’s toes. “In three months, they’ll be the most beautiful flowers you’ve ever seen,” she said.

Maybe gardens were my own sea change place. They helped me pick up those bits of soul that were leaking out all over the place, and put them back in.

I loved how it didn’t feel like we needed to be fixed here. To be changed. To follow rules or do something to be valued and whole. Here, all you had to do was exist.

“I’m not something you fix like a broken plate or revise like a term paper. I’m a person. You love a person by accepting who they are, not constantly fixing them or trying to shape or change or teach them.”

flowers that you grew yourself felt different. You’d tended them, cared for them, raised them, poured your time and love into each plant.

I could see why Edith fell madly in love with dahlias, why they were her favorite flowers. They were out singing when everything in the world around them seemed to be dying. Some had fluffy centers like powder puffs, and others were bigger than my head, with floppy faces like Muppets. Flamboyant, defiant, triumphant.