It Was Spring; Patti Andrews Favorite Time of Year. Even Though the Change of Seasons Were

YELLOW BIRD

It was spring; Patti Andrews’ favorite time of year. Even though the change of seasons were much less dramatic in northern California than in central North Carolina where she grew up, she became just as giddy about the return of a few birds and flowers as she did as a child.

“God, what a beautiful day to work in the garden!” Patti said to her husband seated in the passenger seat of their family minivan. She braked for a red light. “I can’t wait to get home!”

Scott Andrews smiled, apparently amused by how excited she was about playing in the dirt. He turned and made a funny face at their daughter, Molly, seated in the back seat. In the rearview mirror, she looked on as the three-year-old giggled and applauded her father’s antics from her car seat. The toddler appeared to be floating amidst a sea of purple and yellow petunias, Patti’s favorites,which she painstakingly selectedfrom dozens of flats to perfectly accent their Santa Rosa home.

Molly picked a vibrant blossom within her reach and brushed its velvet-soft petals against her plump cheek before offering it to her daddy.

“Thank you, sweetie,” said Scott, reaching back to accept the gift.

“Molly, no!” Patti scolded as she observed the exchange. “Don’t let her pick any more, Scott!”

The child immediately retracted her arm, curling it under her chin accompanied by a pathetic looking frown earning her father’s sympathy.

“She’s not hurting anything.” said Scott.

Pattie turned to him with a “guess I was being a little silly” expression.

“Green arrow,” he pointed out.

WhenPattie entered the intersection to make the left turn, her head was thrust against the driver’s door window as the right side of the van was struckby somethinglarge enough to block out the sun. She gripped the steering wheel as the passenger side of the vehicle was peeled open like a tin of sardines. In an instant, her husband was plucked away through a gaping hole into the blinding sunlight. “Scott!” Patti screamed in her mind. There was no time for the word to form on her lips as she braced herself within the out of control centrifuge.

As if shot from a rotary sprinkler, a stream of purple and yellow petunias flew past herin what seemed like slow motion while she agonizingly waited for the sound of her daughter’s scream. She couldn’t feel the busting glass showering over her or hear the twisting metal and cracking plastic, focusing on any sound emanating from the back seat. Within seconds, what remained of the minivan had spun two and a half rotations across the intersection and came to rest in the middle of the road facing oncoming traffic.

Patti cringed in fear as two vehicles nearly hit them head on. “Molly!” she screamed repeatedly. She struggled to free herself to get to her little girl, but the restraint clasp of her safety belt was jammed between her seat and the console. With the harness strap nearly choking her, her lap belt cutting into her waistand the rearview mirror gone, Patti couldn’t see Molly seated directly behind her. Awarm pasty substance began to blur her vision despite her efforts to wipe her eyes clear of it. Trapped and blinded, her attention was immediately drawn to the hissing sound of the ruptured radiator spraying onto the hot, exposed engine block nearly in her lap. The unmistakable scent of gasoline burned her nostrils and her throat as she gasped for air. Patti sat helplesslywaiting for the vehicle to burst into flames!

As certain as she knew her husband was gone forever, she was convinced Molly was alive. “God, please help us!”

< 2 >

“Shit! New neighbors again!”

Jane McCain carefully pulled the faded chestnut-brown corduroy drapes openjust enough to view the yellow Cape Cod next door. A sliver of blinding sunlight split the dark, stuffy dining room with a thin curtain of illuminated lint. The eighty-year-old stood to the side attempting to avoid the golden ray as though it were a laser that might sever her pale body in two. She watched as two men exited the movingvan and retrieved a key from under the side doormat. Anxiously, she waited for the new tenants to pull in.

“What’s it going to be this time? It’s always something!” she whined.

Over the course of her twenty years on the quiet cul-de-sacin the outskirts of Greensboro, Jane had scrupulously followed the comings and goings of her neighbors to the south. Every summer new tenants moved into the rental house, each not staying a day past their one-year lease agreement. She feared another screaming baby or howling dogor worse yet, another damn teenager playing their crap music so loud her plates nearly rattled off theshelf. That would illicit yet another formal complaint to the sheriff’s department, who had come to know her on a first-name basis, even though not once had one of her limited edition plates fallen from their preciselymeasured positions across thedining room shelf. On one occasion,a teen’s custom bass speakers, which filled the back seat of his Mustang, vibrated her diligently hung paintings slightly off center, requiring some adjusting during one of her twice-a-day perimeter inspections.

“Looks like a 24 footer. Not big enough for an older couple’s stuff that’s for sure. There, some movement at the back of the truck,” Jane announced as if she were a play-by-play sportscaster. “Oh no, the back door is stuck…nope, there it goes.” The movers pulled a ramp from the back of the truckproducing a metal-on-metal screech loud enough to penetrate her airtight compound. She watched intently as the men removed boxes and furniture from the back of the truck.

“Look at that!” Jane was entertained by a funny-looking turquoise dining room set of plastic and metal construction. “So, that’s what they’re callingfurniture these days? Looks like a pile of crap to me! They must be finally running out of trees!”Then a car pulledin the driveway and the crap furniture was forgotten.

< 3 >

Patti Andrews parked her faded blue Grand Am a good distance behind the truck. “We made it!” she announced, cheerfully. “Good, the movers are already here. Looks even cuter than the picture, don’t you think Mol?”

Molly Andrews ignored her mother and the charming little house, complete withshutters and a white picket fence. Patti watched in the rearview window as the fifteen-year-old peered outfrom the backseat window at the unusual house next door. They both studied the large log cabin which stood in glaring contrast to the remainder of conventional brick and wood-sided homes on the block. Pattie noticed a curtain being pulled open ever so carefully then suddenly drawn shut again.

“Great! Weirdo neighbors!” said Molly.

Disregarding her daughter’spessimistic comment, as she had become accustomed to doing, the well-preserved blond forty-year-old stepped out of the car in a lime green Juicy tracksuit. She placed her hands on her hips and began stretching her torso right to left. The long drive from L.A. had aggravated her old back injury. Once her back popped,she walked around the front of the car, opened the passenger seat door, and leaned in.

“C’mon Mol, get the front door for me.” Patti strained to pick up their old heavytwenty-seven-inch television from the passenger seat. The remaining space inside the car was pilled nearly to the roof except for where her daughter was sitting.

Reluctantly, Molly exited her little nook behind the driver’s seat and casually moved in the direction of the front door as her mothergrappled with the awkward set she could barely wrap her arms around.

“Hurry!” Patti shrieked.

Molly gestured toward the moving van. “Why didn’t you just have one of them carry it in?”

“Molly Lynn!” screamedPatti out of desperation. The door was opened just in time before she lost her grip. She set the TV down on the floor and slowly straightened her aching back. “They’re being paid to empty the truck, not our car. I’m on my last dime…you going to pay them?”

Molly looked disappointed she didn’t get the opportunity to come up with a witty response to her question, interruptedby the movers.“Key was right where you said it would be Ma’am,” said the larger of the two robust men as they passed. “I left it on the kitchen counter.”

“Thank you. Everything should be clearly marked, but please don’t hesitate to disrupt us if you’re uncertain of where anything goes.” Pattie said in her pleasant and professional secretary voice.

Pattie was grateful for the mover’s interruption. She didn’t want to fight with her daughter any longer. They hadn’t uttered more than a dozen civil words to each other in over twenty-four hundred miles.Molly was furious about leaving her friends, school and California in general.

Patti studied her daughter sitting on the hardwood floor avoiding eye contact. How she resembled Scott, with his dark hair and eyes. For an instant, she imagined Molly as a child playing joyfully with her favorite toy horse. What she wouldn’t do to have her little girl back, the one who would have been excited about the swing in the yard and the park down the street.

Walking into the hall separating the bedrooms, Patti smiled tenderly and asked the stranger in the corner, “Which room do you want, honey?”

“I don’t want any room in this stupid hicktown!”

Exhausted and frustrated, Patti took a deep breath and shrugged off the snideremark, desperately needing the approval of her daughter. If only Molly could understand themove was for her…for them…a chance at a fresh start. God knows they needed one. Molly had gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd in school and she was still recovering from her latest break-up in a string of bad relationships over the past ten years.

“They’re both good size rooms and either would look great in purple,” Patti joked, trying to relate to the teenager who had painted her last room to resemble a dungeon in dark purple and black.

4

Unwilling to pardon her mother so easily for ruining her life again, Molly delivered her favorite nonverbal response: a well-rehearsed “screw you” expression which she calculated had about a 75% success rate at pushing her mother’s “pissed off” button. Again, she got the desired result.

Her motherlost it, stompingthrough the living room and slamming the front door between them.

The moment the door closed, her hateful glare was replaced by a victorious smile. Molly got up and checked out both bedrooms. She marked her new territory by tossing her black hoodie in the center of the room. Her face hardened again as she passed her mother on her way out to retrieve her Ipod and journal from the back seat. She would not give her mother the satisfaction of making eye contact or speaking to her for the remainder of the day. If she was miserable, her mother was going to be miserable too.

< 5

Jane remained at her post studying the two womenwhile they made repeated trips to and from the car. “No husband or male friends…must be another single mother. Aren’t there any married couples left out there?”

She left the window long enough to retrieve her binoculars from the breakfront drawer. Prior to hervoyeurism practices, she used the field glasses solely for bird-watching, but they had become her only link to the outside world after her television died a few years back. She focused in on the younger subject, scrutinizing her short black hair, heavy make-up, and black nail polish.

“What a strange child,” she observed. “Wynona Ryder in Beetlejuice that one.”

Jane poured herself a glass of Coke and pulledher chair closer to the window. All that was lacking was a bag of popcorn as she enjoyed the plot unfolding before her. She found the dynamics between the mother and daughter fascinating.

“So we have the perky optimistic mom versus the dark depressed daughter. This could get interesting!”

Jane was fully entertained until the moving van left and activity stopped next door. This was the most fun the hermit had experienced since the teen with the Mustang had accidentally run over his bike. When the grandfather clock strucknine, Jane panicked to find she was running thirty minutes behind schedule.

Walking as briskly as her bad knees would allow along the well worn path in the carpet, Jane confirmed each door and window was secure. Once her inspection was completed, she looked over the shopping list she would call in first thing in the morning to ensure same day delivery.

“One thousand, two thousand, three….” Jane counted, brushing her teeth for exactly thirty seconds before swishing with fluoride for ten. For twenty years she had not left her fortress. A cavity would be a disaster.

That evening Janeread for half the time to get back on schedule, but the senior had trouble focusing on the early nineteenth-century romance; her concentration disrupted by unanswered questions about her new neighbors. That night, for the first time in years, she anxiously awaited the next day.

< 6

Molly awoke to her mother’s knocking on her bedroom door. She peeked in, still dressed in her robe and slippers. “Time to get up sweetie, I need to get to the office early this morning. Be readytogo by seven-thirty, okay?”

“Yeah,” Molly grumbled. Two months had passed since she started at her new school and she still didn’t feel she fit in. She clumped all of her new peers and teachers into the category of “lame and boring.” Thirty minutes later, Molly joined her mother in the kitchen where her breakfast was waiting.

Patti poured one more cup of java for the road. “We’re going to Aunt Gracie’s for dinner tonight. I’ll be home by six…be ready to go.”

Molly frowned over her bowl of Cheerios. It was her aunt who talked her mother into moving to this God-forsaken place and found her the legal secretary position as well as the rental house.

“Did you finish your writing assignment last night?”

“Yes, Mother,”Molly garbled, as she finished her last spoonful.

“Well, I want to see it after Mrs. Wilson grades it. I can’t believe you’re nearly failing English!”

Molly tried to conceal the smile sneaking across her face. She knew how much it aggravated her mother, an English major graduate from UCLA, to have a daughter nearly flunking English. She watched her mother rinse out her cup and grab their sack lunches from the refrigerator.

“No daughter of mine is going to flunk English!”

“It’s a lot harder than at my old school,” Molly offered as an excuse as she gathered her books.

“Ifyou spent as much time on your homework as you do writing in that journal of yours, you’d be an A student. English is the most important subject. Where would we be if I couldn’t write a good settlement letter? It was the only skill I had afteryourfather....well, it’s a good thing I applied myself in school, isn’t it?”

Molly escapedout the side door to the safe confines of the backseat.How dareshe bring Daddy into this!You’d think she’d know by now that mention of her father never helped make a case in her favor. Even though Molly only knew her father from photographs, too young to have any solid memories of him, she felt he was more her loss.

Her mother slid in behind the wheel and glared at her in the rearview mirror. “Why do you always have to sit in the back seat? I feel like a damn chauffeur!”

Deep down Molly guessed her mother knew the answer to her own question, but she preferred not to believe her daughter was capable of being so cruel to continuously remind her of the accident by sitting in the same seat as she had on that tragic day thirteen years earlier. Wrong.

< 7

Patti replaced her anxiety over Molly with the pleasant thought of having dinner with her sister. Gracie, five years Patti’s senior, had been trying to get her to move back to North Carolina for some time.

Close as children, the sisters had gone their separate ways after college: Gracie, the religious conservative, Patti the rebellious liberal. They reconnected following Scott’s death. Aware of the growing problems between mother and daughter, Gracie convinced Patti a small town with good family values was just what she and Molly needed to get back on track. Seeing Gracie always gave Patti a glimmer of hope that she and Molly might share a loving relationship again someday as well.