LaRose(108)

Actually, I wanted to ask your mom how to make a lawn.

They’re gone to town. C’mon, we’re hungry.

Josette followed them into the house. She’d never been past the front door. She looked all around, at the tan carpet, tan couch, at the brown and golden throw pillows, plumped and lined up.

This is where LaRose lives his other life, she thought.

There were old, polished, antiquey things. Heavy milk white pitchers. Carved wooden clocks and picture frames. In one of the pictures, LaRose and Maggie sat in front of Peter and Nola. They were dressed up and smiling—not stiffly but naturally, as though they had always been together. Josette passed her hand over a shining end table. Every piece of furniture was bare on top, or maybe had one decorative item on its surface. A glass horse. A series of dull green ceramic boxes, various sizes. The bookshelf had a few books arranged by what, color? All were stacked and aligned with exacting precision. The dining room table was bare. Not even a doily. The kitchen counters didn’t have random bottles of medicine or bread bags or tools spread across them. Everything was contained in cabinets. Maggie opened a cabinet door, to get cones. Josette saw clear storage jars containing various shapes of pasta. At first the house was like a movie set. An ad in a magazine. Then it began to weigh on her. Maggie took a box of ice cream out of the freezer drawer of the refrigerator. Josette peered over her shoulder and saw that freezer bags of vegetables were stacked and labeled. Maggie made cones of blackberry swirl ice cream, gave one to LaRose. She refolded the tabs on the box, replaced it. Then she rinsed the scoop and put it into the dishwasher. Josette was holding two ice cream cones, standing in the kitchen, when she began feeling weird.

Can we go back outside?

They went out the sliding glass back door, sat on deck chairs. Down on the grass Josette saw a pile of wilting dandelions, and that the tools had forked metal ends.

What were you doing?

We have to get a hundred dandelions every day, said LaRose.

Not every day, said Maggie.

Seems like it, said LaRose.

How many do you have? Josette felt slow-witted. The concept threw her.

Oh, we have seventy-eight already, said Maggie.

Then what do you guys do?

She shrugged. I dunno. Throw ’em in the big weed pile behind the barn. Then more grow on the lawn. Some people poison them but Mom lets the chickens out here. Can we come over to you guys’ house?

I like this flavor, said Josette. Won’t your folks be mad?

I can leave them a note, said Maggie.

Well, I still need to know how to make a lawn, said Josette. How do I make a lawn?

I don’t know, said Maggie. The lawn was always here.

Don’t make one, said LaRose. I’m not forking dandelions at two places.

Want to help us make a party? Graduation party for Hollis? I was thinking barbecue. That’s what the lawn is for.

Wish I could roll up this one, said Maggie. It never gets used.

Wish we could borrow it, said Josette.

She licked into the sugar cone, then ate the cone down to a tiny nib. The lawn was thick, green, soft-looking, like a blanket. Josette saw herself rolling it up piece by piece. She would carry the lawn over, light and airy, on her shoulder. She would spread it out behind the Iron house, take down the volleyball net, for a while at least. People would walk barefoot on the soft grass. There would be . . . oh, paper lanterns. All colors—coral, yellow, sky blue. Tiny lights inside of them.

You should wait for your parents, she said to Maggie. Come over later. Thanks for the cone. I’ve got to go.

Maggie didn’t like it, but after Josette left she went to the yard with LaRose and stabbed the dandelions.

Why do people hate dandelions so much?

You always ask that, said Maggie.

You never have a good answer.

It’s because I honestly do not know, said Maggie.

Dandelions are cheerful, and they try so hard.

I know, said Maggie, sitting back on her heels.

Let’s go on strike.

Strike? You mean quit.

Yeah.

Maggie took her dandelion fork and his dandelion fork. She hefted them and threw them in the woods.

I think that’s a good idea, she said, dusting off her hands. Let’s go on strike!

Let’s stop being grown-ups, said LaRose.

Josette walked back along the highway, her mind blurring out the image of the carpety Ravich grass. There was plenty of grass beside her, in the ditches, the new grass growing out of the dead grass. She thought of her house, where she could put something down and pick it up later, where Mom always bugged everybody to straighten up but still the shelves held a spill of books and papers, an eagle fan on a rectangle of red cloth, abalone shells, sage, tobacco ties, red willow baskets, framed pictures, a bird’s nest, cedar, Disney figurines. Maybe it was too much. She walked down into the ditch, and then up to her scruffy gray house. She stopped. Surveyed her valiant little flowers. The classroom-toughened geraniums hadn’t died yet. There were white violets dug from the woods, Johnny-jump-ups from her grandmother’s flower box, some budding purple onion-smelling plant, chives. And the yard, oh well. Some weeds were growing in. She’d keep watering it. In the shed there was an old push mower. A gas-powered weed whacker. Dandelions were everywhere, and they were green, very green, and she’d let them grow until they touched leaves and grew together. She’d mow them too. Mow everything, she nodded, looking around the place and smiling. There would be splashes of color around the front door. It was the cake people came for, anyway, and she had that solidly covered. She and Snow were buying the cakes with their own money. One would be chocolate with white icing that said Happy Graduation, with a frosting diploma that said Hollis. The next would be yellow cake with chocolate icing that said the same. The third would say You Go! and the frosting would be desert camouflage.