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Pip and the Fairies

By Theodora Goss, illustration by Susan Moore

3 October 2005

"Why, you're Pip!"

She has gotten used to this, since the documentary. She could have refused to

be interviewed, she supposes. But it would have seemed—ungrateful,

ungracious, particularly after the funeral.

"Susan Lawson," read the obituary, "beloved author of Pip and the Fairies , Pip

Meets the Thorn King , Pip Makes Three Wishes , and other Pip books, of ovarian

cancer. Ms. Lawson, who was sixty-four, is survived by a daughter, Philippa. In

lieu of flowers, donations should be sent to the Susan Lawson Cancer Research

Fund." Anne had written that.

"Would you like me to sign something?" she asks.

White hair, reading glasses on a chain around her neck—too old to be a mother.

Perhaps a librarian? Let her be a librarian, thinks Philippa. Once, a collector asked

her to sign the entire series, from Pip and the Fairies to Pip Says Goodbye .

"That would be so kind of you. For my granddaughter Emily." A grandmother,

holding out Pip Learns to Fish and Under the Hawthorns . She signs them both

"To Emily, may she find her own fairyland. From Philippa Lawson (Pip)."

This is the sort of thing people like: the implication that, despite their minivans

and microwaves, if they found the door in the wall, they too could enter

fairyland.

"So," the interviewer asked her, smiling indulgently, the way parents smile at

their children's beliefs in Santa Claus, "did you really meet the Thorn King? Do

you think you could get me an interview?"

And she answered as he, and the parents who had purchased the boxed set,

were expecting. "I'm afraid the Thorn King is a very private person. But I'll

mention that you were interested." Being Pip, after all these years.

Maintaining the persona.

Her mother never actually called her Pip. It was Pipsqueak, as in, "Go play

outside, Pipsqueak. Can't you see Mommy's trying to finish this chapter?

Mommy's publisher wants to see something by Friday, and we're a month

behind on the rent." When they finally moved away from Payton, they were

almost a year behind. Her mother sent Mrs. Payne a check from California, from

royalties she had received for the after-school special.

Philippa buys a scone and a cup of coffee. There was no café when she used to

come to this bookstore, while her mother shopped at the food co-op down the

street, which is now a yoga studio. Mrs. Archer used to let her sit in a corner and

read the books. Then she realizes there is no cup holder in the rental car. She

drinks the coffee quickly. She's tired, after the long flight from Los Angeles, the

long drive from Boston. But not much farther now. Payton has stayed essentially

the same, she thinks, despite the yoga studio. She imagines a planning board, a

historical society, the long and difficult process of obtaining permits, like in all

these New England towns.

As she passes the fire station, the rain begins, not heavy, and intermittent. She

turns on the windshield wipers.

There is Sutton's dairy, where her mother bought milk with cream floating on

top, before anyone else cared about pesticides in the food chain. She is driving

through the country, through farms that have managed to hold on despite the

rocky soil. In the distance she sees cows, and once a herd of alpacas. There are

patches too rocky for farms, where the road runs between cliffs covered with

ivy, and birches, their leaves glistening with rain, spring up from the shallow soil.

Then forest. The rain is heavier, pattering on the leaves overhead. She drives

with one hand, holding the scone in the other (her pants are getting covered

with crumbs), beneath the oaks and evergreens, thinking about the funeral.

It was not large: her mother's co-workers from the Children's Network, and

Anne. It was only after the documentary that people began driving to the

cemetery in the hills, leaving hyacinths by the grave. Her fault, she supposes.

The interviewer leaned forward, as though expecting an intimate detail. "How did

she come up with Hyacinth? Was the character based on anyone she knew?"

"Oh, hyacinths were my mother's favorite flower."

And letters, even contributions to the Susan Lawson Cancer Research Fund.

Everyone, it seems, had read Pip and the Fairies . Then the books had gone out

of print and been forgotten. But after the funeral and the documentary,

everyone suddenly remembered, the way they remembered their childhoods.

Suddenly, Susan Lawson was indeed "beloved."

Philippa asked Anne to drive up once a week, to clear away the letters and

flowers, to take care of the checks. And she signed over the house. Anne was

too old to be a secretary for anyone neater than Susan Lawson had been. In

one corner of the living room, Philippa found a pile of hospital bills, covered with

dust. She remembers Anne at the funeral, so pale and pinched. It is good, she

supposes, that her mother found someone at last. With the house and her social

security, Anne will be all right.

Three miles to Payne House. Almost there, then. It had been raining too, on that

first day.

"Look," her mother said, pointing as the Beetle swerved erratically. If she looked

down, she could see the road though the holes in the floor, where the metal had

rusted away. Is that why she has rented one of the new Beetles? Either

nostalgia, or an effort to, somehow, rewrite the past. "There's Payne House. It

burned down in the 1930s. The Paynes used to own the mills at the edge of

town," now converted into condominiums, Mrs. Archer's successor, a woman

with graying hair and a pierced nostril, told her, "and one night the millworkers

set the stables on fire. They said the Paynes took better care of their horses

than of their workers."

"What happened to the horses?" She can see the house from the road, its outer

walls burned above the first story, trees growing in some of the rooms. She can

see it through both sets of eyes, the young Philippa's and the old one's. Not

really old of course, but—how should she describe it?—tired. She blames the

documentary. Remembering all this, the road running through the soaked

remains of what was once a garden, its hedges overgrown and a rosebush

growing through the front door. She can see it through young eyes, only a few

weeks after her father's funeral, the coffin draped with an American flag and the

minister saying "fallen in the service of his country" although really it was an

accident that could have happened if he had been driving to the grocery store.

And through old eyes, noticing that the rosebush has spread over the front

steps.

As if, driving down this road, she were traveling into the past. She felt this also,

sitting beside the hospital bed, holding one pale hand, the skin dry as paper, on

which the veins were raised like the roots of an oak tree. Listening to the mother

she had not spoken to in years.

"I have to support us now, Pipsqueak. So we're going to live here. Mrs. Payne's

going to rent us the housekeeper's cottage, and I'm going to write books."

"What kind of books?"

"Oh, I don't know. I guess I'll have to start writing and see what comes out."

How did it begin? Did she begin it, by telling her mother, over her milk and the

oatmeal cookies from the food co-op that tasted like baked sawdust, what she

had been doing that day? Or did her mother begin it, by writing the stories? Did

she imagine them, Hyacinth, the Thorn King, the Carp in the pond who dreamed,

so he said, the future, and the May Queen herself? And, she thinks, pulling into

the drive that leads to the housekeeper's cottage, what about Jack Feather? Or

did her mother imagine them? And did their imaginations bring them into being,

or were they always there to be found?

She slams the car door and brushes crumbs from her pants. Here it is, all here,

for what it is worth, the housekeeper's cottage, with its three small rooms, and

the ruins of Payne House. The rain has almost stopped, although she can feel a

drop run down the back of her neck. And, not for the first time, she has doubts.

"One room was my mother's, one was mine, and one was the kitchen, where

we took our baths in a plastic tub. We had a toaster oven and a Crock-pot to

make soup, and a small refrigerator, the kind you see in hotels. One day, I

remember having soup for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Of course, when the

electricity was turned off, none of them worked. Once, we lived for a week on

oatmeal cookies." The interviewer laughed, and she laughed with him. When

they moved to California, she went to school. Why doesn't she remember going

to school in Payton? She bought lunch every day, meatloaf and mashed

potatoes and soggy green beans. Sometimes the principal gave her lunch

money. She was happier than when the Thorn King had crowned her with

honeysuckle. "Young Pip," he had said, "I pronounce you a Maid of the May.

Serve the May Queen well."

That was in Pip Meets the May Queen . And then she stops—standing at the edge

of the pond—because the time has come to think about what she has done.

What she has done is give up The Pendletons , every weekday at two o'clock,

Eastern Standard Time, before the afternoon talk shows. She has given up being

Jessica Pendleton, the scheming daughter of Bruce Pendleton, whose attractive

but troublesome family dominates the social and criminal worlds of Pinehurst.

"How did your mother influence your acting career?"

She did not answer, "By teaching me the importance of money." Last week,

even a fan of The Pendletons recognized her as Pip.

She has given up the house in the hills, with a pool in the backyard. Given up

Edward, but then he gave her up first, for a producer. He wanted, so badly, to

do prime time. A cop show or even a sitcom, respectable television. "I hope you

understand, Phil," he said. And she did understand, somehow. Has she ever been

in love with anyone—except Jack Feather?

What has she gained? She remembers her mother's cold hand pulling her down,

so she can hear her whisper, in a voice like sandpaper, "I always knew they were

real."

But does she, Philippa, know it? That is why she has come back, why she has

bought Payne House from the Payne who inherited it, a Manhattan lawyer with

no use for the family estate. Why she is standing here now, by the pond, where

the irises are about to bloom. So she can remember.

The moment when, in Pip and the Fairies , she trips over something lying on the

ground.

Theodora Goss - Pip and the Fairies.pdf

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