“I wonder why she didn’t let them go,” Mom adds.
“Maybe she was saving the wishes up for something real big, then she was going to let them all go at once.”
It’s Mom’s turn to shrug and she lays the fluff back into your treasure box on top of all the other stuff, puts the lid back on and slides it under her bed.
“Come on, Ben,” she says. “Let me make you a sandwich. Louis will be here soon.”
I have an idea of what you might have wished for, because they’re the same wishes as mine. Number one— for you to talk again. Number two—get a dog. Number three—that Dad would just go on back to Alaska and not come back. God knows you’d never admit it and neither would I, but those would be your wishes. I know.
ANTONIA
As I make Ben and me a ham sandwich and slice an apple in half, I think of Calli’s treasure box. The dandelion fluff reminds me of Louis, of when we were kids.
The summer after Louis moved here, we’d go out to the meadow behind my house, the very house I live in now. Our field would be filled with happy yellow dandelions, and my mom would pay us a penny a weed to dig them out by the roots. No easy feat. We’d get old spoons to dig down as deep as we could, under the roots, and then toss them into an old plastic bucket. We could wrench out about one hundred in a day. My mother would give us a dollar, one shiny quarter for each of our grimy hands, and we’d hop on our bikes, ride downtown to the Mourning Glory Cafe and pool our earnings. I’d buy us a cherry Coke, not the kind that comes in a can like today, but the kind straight out of a soda fountain, with the cherry juice squirted in. Mrs. Mourning would always put in two straws and two cherries, one for Louis and one for me. Louis would buy us a basket of French fries, piping hot and salty. He would write my name out on top of the fries in ketchup from the squirt bottle and then script his own directly below it. The fries with my name on them were mine, the fries with his name, his to eat. Some days, we’d each buy a candy bar. I always picked Marathon bars, and he would choose a Baby Ruth. Petra’s mother, Fielda, was often at the cafe helping her mother. Friendly and sweet, Fielda would stand behind the counter watching us carefully, refilling our sodas. Looking back, I can see that Fielda wanted to be my friend, but I had Louis, and, well, he was all I needed, all I wanted. Years later, when we became neighbors and were eventually pregnant with our girls at the same time, Fielda tried again, invited me over for coffee, for walks, but once again, I was aloof, this time for completely different reasons. I was afraid she’d get an inkling of my sad marriage, catch my husband and me in a bad moment, see the bruises. Eventually she gave up and left me alone, just as she had eventually done when we were young.
Our dandelion weeding would last approximately ten days. By then we were bored with the job and had our fill of cherry Cokes and fries. We hadn’t even made a dent in removing all the dandelions. They were beginning to seed and white puffs were whirling in the air above us, undoing all that we’d accomplished.
“You know,” Louis told me, “these really are fairies.”
“Yeah, right,” I said, unconvinced.
“They are. My dad told me. He said that dandelion fluffs are magical fairies. If you grab one before it hits the ground, the fairy will be so grateful she will give you a wish once you set her free.”
I sat up, setting down my dirt-crusted spoon. This interested me. Louis never spoke of his father, ever. “I didn’t know they had flowers in Chicago.”
“Yeah, they have flowers and weeds and grass in Chicago,” he said indignantly. “Just not so much of it.
“My dad would say, ‘When fairies dance upon the air, reach out gently and catch one, fair. Make a wish and hold it tight, then softly toss your pixie back to summer’s night.’ My dad said his granny from Ireland told him that and that the wishes really come true. Every summer when we’d see dandelion fluff we tried to catch one, make a wish, and then blow it back into the air.”
“What’d you wish for?” I asked.
“Stuff.” Louis, all of a sudden bashful, dropped his spoon and ran toward the woods, grasping at fluff as he went.
“What kind of stuff?” I called as I chased him.
“For the Cubs to win the pennant, things like that.” He wasn’t looking at me.
“What about your dad? Do you ever wish for your dad?” I asked softly. His shoulders sagged and I thought he would take off running again.
“Naw, dead is dead. It doesn’t work for stuff like that. You gotta wish for money or to be a movie star or something.” He handed me a soft white wish. “What are you going to wish for?”
I thought for a moment, and then blew it gently from my hand, the cottony wisp floating away.
“What did you wish for?” he asked again.
“For the Cubs to win the pennant, of course,” I responded. He laughed and we ran off to play in the creek.
That wasn’t my wish though. I wished for him to have his dad back, just in case.
Eight years later, when we were sixteen, we were back at the creek. We had just made love for the first time and I was tearful. I couldn’t put into words what I was feeling. I knew I loved him, I knew that what we had done wasn’t a mistake, but still I wept. Louis was trying to make me smile, tickling me and pulling funny faces, but tears just kept rolling down my face no matter what he tried. Finally, in an act of desperation, I suppose, he ran from the creek. I sat there, devastated, pulling my clothes on, mucus dropping from my nose. I had lost Louis, my best friend. He came back moments later, though. He held his two hands in front of him clenched tightly.
“Pick a hand,” he said, and I chose his left. He opened his palm and inside were three frail white tufts of a dandelion. “Three wishes,” he said and then opened his other fist to reveal three more dandelion fairies, “for each of us.”
“You first,” I said through my tears, finally, a smile on my face.
“That the Cubs win the pennant.” He grinned and I laughed. “That I become a policeman.” Then his young man’s face became serious. “And that you will love me forever. Your turn,” he said quickly.
I thought for a moment. “To live in a yellow house.” I looked carefully at Louis’s face to see if he was laughing at me. He wasn’t. “To visit the ocean,” I continued. “And…” the tears resumed, great sloppy tears “…that you’ll love me forever.”
Three years later, Louis had gone away to college and I married Griff. Damn fairies, I thought to myself now. I don’t live in a yellow house, I’ve never been to the ocean, and Louis didn’t love me forever. And my Calli, my dear heart, is missing. All that I touch gets damaged or lost.
DEPUTY SHERIFF LOUIS
Once again I am sitting at Toni’s kitchen table, a sweating glass of iced tea in front of me. This time Agent Fitzgerald is sitting next to me instead of Martin. I worry, when this is over, Martin will never speak to me again. And I fear that Toni won’t, either. I can tell Toni doesn’t know what to make of Fitzgerald, his precise, unemotional questions. She wonders if he is judging her and her mothering. I see her turning over each of his questions, searching for any hidden meaning, any tricks, I suppose because she is so used to Griff’s manipulative ways.
Finding Toni curled up on her couch, delivering a dead baby girl four years ago, I’d hoped that she would wise up and get rid of Griff for good. Granted, I don’t know exactly what happened that winter night, just that Ben had come home and found his mother covered in a blanket on the sofa with Calli sitting by, patting her shoulder. I couldn’t get Calli to talk to me. She just looked up at me with her big, brown eyes and sat there as the ambulance carried her mother away.
I asked Ben where his father was, and he couldn’t say for sure, but guessed that he was probably at Behnke’s, a bar downtown. I debated just phoning over there and talking to Griff, but decided a face-to-face
