death of Tommy Tipp, I know these stories flared to life again.
Strange how people never forget the wounds inflicted in their childhood.
Even before I met Dr. Martin, Pepper-Man had left very little room for anyone else in my life; I had not one friend, no playmates or confidantes. Even when he wasn’t present, Pepper-Man was there, coloring my world in twilight shades. His world was a dangerous place for a little girl, violent and cruel despite all its wonders. Faeries are no fit company for the living; touching them taints you like a disease. I grew like a pale fruit in the shadows, small and bitter, never getting enough sun—but I grew. I didn’t shrivel up and die; didn’t fall from the branch and crash to the ground. I was a white apple, a moon-colored pear, a toxic green plum the size of a coin. Grew strange and crooked, but there was life, flushing my veins with rich red blood, enough to sustain more than one.
Olivia, though, she was a child of summer, golden wheat and heavy blossoms. Her birthdays were always splendid affairs. On her tenth, my mother and Fabia set the table in the garden. White tablecloths and vases filled with flowers adorned the large table beneath the oaks. Because Olivia loved it, Mother had brought out the best china: the one with painted pink roses and tender golden rims, each plate accompanied by a small silver fork. Olivia and her gaggle of friends would use them to dismember the strawberry cake, sponge and jam, whipped cream and berries, and ply their soft, round mouths with the mess. Not me, though. No cake for me.
Mother had tried at first, tried to convince Olivia her sister had a natural place at the table, but Olivia would hear nothing of it. She said I was a nuisance. I made her friends uncomfortable. She said they were afraid of me, those braided, frilly girls.
“Cassie will ruin everything,” she told Mother. “She always does.”
My mother, as always, was not hard to convince. Olivia usually had her way with her, being the golden child. And maybe—just maybe—Mother found it more convenient too, to keep me away from the party. Maybe—just maybe—she worried that the girls would go home afterward and tell their parents what I’d done, if I’d laughed out loud at nothing or whispered to the air. They were afraid of me, sure, but we didn’t have many lunatics in S—, and the fear was often mingled with a wicked fascination.
They liked talking about me—a lot.
“You don’t want to sit at the table with all those little girls,” Mother told me. “You’re a young woman now, and Olivia and her friends are just children. You wouldn’t enjoy it much.”
And she was right, of course, but that was beside the point.
So there I was, rejected, high up in the apple tree with Pepper-Man. I remember I sat on a thick branch, legs straddling the wood. I picked leaves and ripped them in half between my fingers, smelled the strong fragrance as the greenery came apart, then let the pieces fall to the ground. I could see the party between the branches. See the decorated table, the girls clad in white, pink, and blue, fluffy bows tied at their necks, hairbands in their hair. I wore a dress too, but mine was checked in shades of red. Red and angry—like my heart. Pepper-Man sat on a branch above me; his feet made circles in the air.
“You can have the best cake at the mound,” he said, “sweeter and softer by far.”
“I don’t want the stupid cake.”
“Whatever you want, then. Just tell me what you want and you will have it.”
“She does look like a princess, doesn’t she?” I was looking at my sister, seated at the end of the table, wearing a new blue dress. Her red braids shone in the sunlight. Father was down there too, taking pictures of the assembly. Ferdinand, banished from the girlish event, slunk behind the flowerbeds and dismantled a yellow tulip with his fingers. Fabia was blowing up balloons.
“What sort of a princess is that, truly?” Pepper-Man shifted on his branch. “A lonely girl trapped in a gilded cage? Better to be free, like you are, free to be a princess of the mound.”
“I don’t want anything of Olivia’s,” I said—lied.
“She will be a miserable adult,” Pepper-Man mused, and was absolutely right, as you both well know.
“I bet that cake is good, though.” It was all very confusing.