"How's it going, Jeffy?"
The child continued to stare into the flower as if he had found the secrets of the universe there.
Sylvia pulled a box of Nerds from her smock pocket and squatted beside him. She had found Nerds the most suitable for her purposes because they released their flavor instantaneously and were not filling. She pinched one of the tiny candies at the tip of her thumb and forefinger and held it ready.
"Jeffy!" she said, pronouncing his name in a crisp, sharp tone. "Jeffy!"
His head turned a degree or two in her direction. At the first increment of motion, her hand darted out with an accuracy born of years of experience and pressed the Nerd between his lips. As he bit into it, she called his name again in an attempt to get him to turn a few more degrees her way.
"Jeffy! Jeffy!"
But he turned away again, back to the dandelion. Another half-dozen repetitions of his name elicited no response.
"Maybe you don't like Nerds anymore, huh?" she said. But she knew it wasn't the candy. Jeffy was slipping away. After doing so well for years with the operant techniques, he had become resistant to the therapy since sometime around the first of the year. Worse than that, he was regressing, slipping deeper and deeper into his autism. She didn't know what was wrong. She provided a structured environment and continued working with him every day…
Sylvia swallowed hard past the constriction in her throat. She felt so helpless! If only…
She resisted the urge to hurl the candy out into the Sound and scream out her frustration. Instead, she tucked the Nerds back into her pocket. She would try a full-length operant therapy session with him this afternoon. She straightened up and gently ruffled the golden hair of the child she loved so much.
She had a flash of an old dream—Jeffy running across this same lawn toward her, a big smile on that round little face, his arms open wide for her as she lifted him up, laughing, swung him around, and heard him say, "Do it again, Mommy!"
It faded as suddenly as it had come. It was an old dream, anyway, browned and crumbling at the edges. Better to leave it undisturbed.
She studied Jeffy for a moment. Physically, he seemed fine this morning. No fever, no sign of a problem in the world since he had awakened. In fact, he had immediately gone to the refrigerator upon arising. But Sylvia had guided him out here to make him wait a bit before breakfast, just to see how he was acting. She had called the school and told them he wasn't going to be in today.
She turned and glanced toward the garage. The big double door was open but there was no sign of life. Then she heard Phemus' familiar bark from the west side of the house and went to investigate.
As Sylvia rounded the near corner, Ba came around the far corner, carrying the new tree. The sight startled her. When the twenty-foot peach tree had been delivered from the nursery two days ago, it had taken three men to off-load it from the truck. Ba now had his arms wrapped around the burlap-wrapped rootball and was carrying it by himself.
"Ba! You'll hurt yourself!"
"No, Missus," he said as he put it down. "Many fishing nets were heavier when I was a boy."
"Maybe so." She guessed hauling in fish-filled nets every day since boyhood probably would leave you pretty strong. "But be careful."
She noted that Ba had dug up a rather large section of the lawn.
"What time were you up this morning to get so far already?"
"Very early."
She looked again. No doubt about it. The plot was large— considerably larger than necessary for the planting of a single tree.
"Flowers around the tree, don't you think, Missus?" Ba seemed to be reading her mind.
"A flower bed. Yes, I think that would be nice."
She glanced at the older peach tree thirty feet away to the south. That too would need a flower bed to even things out. Maybe this year, with two trees to cross-pollinate, they would get some peaches.
She watched him dig. For a man who had grown up on the sea, Ba had a wonderful way with growing things, and an innate aesthetic sense. He had known nothing about yard work when he had first come here, but had learned quickly and well. He had also become a proficient assistant in her bonsai arboretum, wiring branches and pruning roots with the best of them. And since taking over as her driver, he had become a crack auto mechanic. There didn't seem to be anything he couldn't master.
She helped him slide the burlap-wrapped rootball into the hole in the center of the plot. As he began to back-fill, she saw the crude bandage on his arm.
"How did you cut yourself?"
He glanced at his forearm. "It is nothing. I was careless."
"But how—"
"Please do not worry, Missus. It will not happen again."
"Good." She watched him tamp down the soil around the newly planted tree with the flat of his shovel. "You seem to have an awful lot of dirt left over."
"That is because I have added peat moss and a special root food."
"You shouldn't fertilize a newly planted tree, Ba."
"This is a special food that will not burn the roots. I learned of it back home."
"What is it?"
"That is a secret, Missus."
"Fine. Meet me in the arboretum as soon as you're finished."
Smiling and shaking her head, Sylvia turned and headed for the backyard. Secret root food… but she let him have his way with the yard. He did an excellent job and she didn't believe in tampering with success.
She pulled Jeffy away from his dandelion and set him up with breakfast. Gladys had made him a bowl of Maypo and he attacked it. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with his stomach this morning.
As usual, Alan had been right.
Wandering back into her work area, Sylvia stood and considered the ishi-zuki from a distance. The gallery was really anxious for this one. Someone called at least twice a week asking when they could expect delivery.
Who'd have ever thought her hobby would make her the latest Big Thing with the New York art crowd and celebrity set? You weren't anybody, dear, unless you had a tree sculpture by Sylvia Nash somewhere in the house.
She smiled at how innocently it had all started.
The art of bonsai had fascinated Sylvia since her teenage years. She had come across a book on the miniature trees and had been touched by their delicacy, the sense of age about them. She decided to try her hand. She found she had a knack for the art, and after many years of working at it, became quite adept.
But after Greg's death, she neglected them and one of her prized trees died. She had pruned and wired that particular little five-needle pine for years, transforming it from an ordinary collection of needles and branches into a graceful living work of art. Its loss seemed all the more tragic after losing Greg. It sat in its pot with its needles turning brown, its roots rotting, beyond salvage. When the needles dropped off, only a naked trunk would remain.
Then Sylvia remembered seeing a demonstration of a laser technique used to sculpt heads and busts. She investigated, found a place that did it, and had her dead tree, pot and all, laser-sculpted from a laminated block of oak. She was delighted with the result: The outer needles were sharp, the intricacies of the bark and even the moss at the tree's base were all preserved forever. She painted it, and set it back in its former spot among her other bonsai. It needed no watering, no pruning, no wiring. It was perfect. Forever.
And that would have been that had not Christmas a few years later found her without the slightest idea of what to give half the people on her list. Her gaze had come to rest on the laser-sculpted bonsai and the idea struck her: Why not take one of her favorite bonsai to the laser studio and have a dozen or so replicas run off? Why not indeed? A unique personal gift.