Kankakee Mallow

Everyone knows everyone in Linden, Illinois. 

You’re relatively new to town, but almost a year of working in the circulation department at the public library affords you that same familiarity with your neighbors. You’ve seen every face make its way through the library at some point or another. It’s hard to pass up the Monday Movie Matinee or the free WiFi. 

Yours is not a difficult job. While hardly life-affirming—essentially just customer service given a different shape than you’re used to—you enjoy being surrounded by stories, most of your coworkers are a decent sort, and you get to play your favorite music on the Alexa installed at the front desk. The biggest issues you face regularly are wrestling the ancient microfilm readers in the genealogy department into submission and negotiating business with the temperamental fax machine. 

You’re in the process of carving out a life for yourself here. You’re three states away from your whole family, and the friends you moved to Illinois with all scattered to the winds in the wake of the Coronavirus. You couldn’t afford to go back home, couldn’t afford to quit your job and uproot your fragile ecosystem. 

You’ve made the best of it. Yours is a paycheck-to-paycheck kind of life, and there isn’t a lot left in your bank account once you’ve paid rent, and the car payment, and the phone and internet bill—but you and the cats have never gone hungry. This is a solid step up from the last handful of hard years. It’s lonely, but everyone in their late twenties is a little lonely. Everyone is starved for something. 

All that to say, you’re comfortable. Maybe not happy, but happiness is a luxury item that you can’t afford on your salary. Comfort is more attainable. Comfort is the familiar shape your days take, one after the other. The easy routine. Linden doesn’t throw you any curveballs. 

Until one day, it does. 

“Oh, that woman came in the other day,” Laura says distastefully, making a show of sorting the books on your shelving cart that you sorted before hauling it into the stacks. It gives her a reason to linger and bend her head next to yours, adding, “I had hoped we’d seen the last of her.”

Laura is about thirty years your senior and has an opinion on absolutely everything. You disagree with her as a general whole but you like to let her talk. It spares you from contributing much to the conversation and it's sometimes better than any of the daytime dramas cluttering the DVD section. 

Now, because Laura’s feathers are ruffled, and she’s clearly waiting on a cue, you say, “What woman?”

“You don’t know?” Laura says. She must know that you don’t know or you wouldn’t be standing in the adult nonfiction section with a Mediterranean-style ketogenic superdiet cookbook in your hand while she makes a mess of your cart. “That’s right, you wouldn’t—it feels like you’ve been here forever, but it hasn’t quite been a year, has it?”

“A year in July,” you say.

“Well,” Laura says, clearly enthusiastic despite her disapproving moue, “let me tell you, that woman is bad news all-around. My hairdresser told me just the other day that there was a strange bonfire out at her place last week. A bonfire! And she said the flames were white!” 

It’s on the tip of your tongue to say that tossing epsom salts in a fire turns it white. You read that somewhere, or maybe you saw it on Youtube. You don’t think it’s the appropriate time for an impromptu science lesson, though, so you just make a vague humming sound that Laura is free to interpret as interest if she so chooses. 

She so chooses. 

“And last December, James Holloway came ‘round her place. He’s her closest neighbor. He told her to keep her kids from shrieking and making an awful racket skating around the pond. What do you know, just a week later, he’s in the Urgent Care—pneumonia! The timing seems a little suspicious is all I’m saying.”

A seventy-year old man coming down with pneumonia in December is not news worthy, in your humble opinion. People who get angry at children for playing outside are some of the worst types of people. And on their own property, no less. Where else are they supposed to play?

“Suspicious?” you say, scanning the shelf until you find a home for the book you’re tired of holding. You make a hole for it and nestle it in with its fellows, the Dewey Decimal stickers along the spines lining up neatly. 

“That’s right!” Laura leans in. “She did something. She’s not even secretive about it, you know. I saw her browsing in that strange section with the books about mushrooms and magic.” 

“Oh, the junior high school girls love that section,” you say off-handedly. “We got a new book in about North American folklore and it just flies off the shelf.”

Laura says, “It’s okay for children to be curious about those things,” in a manner that suggests it’s not actually okay at all, “but a grown woman should know better. She should know how it looks.”

At about that moment, your watch beeps, signaling the end of your stint in the stacks. It’s the best segue out of this conversation that you could have hoped for. 

“I’m going to returns,” you say apologetically. You don’t flat-out run away, but it’s a pretty close thing. 

Taylor relieves you of your cart, smiling in his quiet way as he takes over the shelving, and you slink readily back into the isolated oasis of the returns room. It’s a little backed up already, and school lets out in the next hour, so it’s only going to get worse. But it’s the mindless sort of work you can sink into while your mind wanders someplace else. 

That woman occupies your thoughts, for all that all you know about her is limited to ‘house in the country, kids, interesting taste in reading material.’ You wonder what it must be like to be such an intrinsic part of a place that people discuss you like the weather or sports. Even if you’re a gossiped-about piece of a not-very-compelling puzzle, you still belong to it. There’s still a hole that’s only yours to fill, like those books on the shelf with their meticulously-numbered spine labels.

You think of your own unasked-for anonymity. Your quiet apartment with only your cats to greet you, your isolated way of life made even more-so by the pandemic, when all of your friends and chosen family left you here in favor of their real homes. You can’t decide if your unobtrusive existence is better or worse than that woman’s. She doesn’t seem to be known for anything good, but at least she’s known. 

There’s a thunder of books hitting the bin, courtesy of the outdoor drop box. You push your wheeled office chair across the room, the thin carpeting underfoot not impeding your journey in the slightest, and bang to a stop against the back counter. 

As you reach in to make sense of the jumble of returned items, color catches your eye. 

There’s a little white flower sitting in the bin, a soft, pretty thing that blushes into faint pink along the edges. One of the petals is crushed beneath an English-Italian dictionary, and you move it quickly, rescuing the blossom and smoothing the crease in its velvety leaf with the pad of your thumb. 

You’re reminded, suddenly, of being twelve years old and kneeling in the itchy grass in your best friend’s mother’s garden, how the sun held you in its golden hands and your hair clung to the nape of your neck. You hated weeding but you loved the garden, your best friend’s sweat-sticky arm pressed against yours as she complained about the unfairness of child labor and snuck samples of honeysuckle, her mother singing along badly to the radio on the back porch. 

You’re almost thirty now and you don’t remember the last time you held a flower. 

The sound of the phone ringing behind you is sudden and intrusive. You jump, heart leaping, and remember that you’re standing in the returns room, at your job, daydreaming about people you haven’t thought of in years. Setting the flower on the counter and picking the phone up, you give the canned greeting and reach over to wiggle the computer mouse until the screensaver goes away. You bring up the management software and answer the caller’s questions about the items he has on hold. By the time you wrap the call up, you’ve entirely forgotten about that magic moment with the flower, and picking it up to put it out of the way next to your water bottle doesn’t elicit any further nostalgia. 

Turning back to the bin, you reach in to pull out the rest of the returns. Tucked alongside the audiobooks and DVDs you pull out is an item that decidedly does not belong to your library or consortium—a wallet. 

It’s a leather clutch in light buttercup yellow, worn soft to the touch. This happens more often than one might think, people dumping their billfold or keys or, on one memorable occasion, their iPhone into the drop box alongside their books. At least the guy with the phone came sprinting inside not even two minutes later. 

With a sigh, you stack the returns on the counter and open the wallet, looking for an I.D. If you can find the owner’s name, you can look up their patron account and call the number on file, hopefully before the panic sets in. 

The I.D. is in one of two plastic sleeves at the front, displaying a curly-haired woman with a strong nose and heavy eyebrows. It’s not a flattering picture, through no fault of her own. You have never had a flattering Driver’s License photo in your life and you understand the struggle. But there is something compelling about her regardless. The wry twist of her mouth, maybe, or the thick ringlet of dark hair that flops directly over her left eye, or the birthmark on her chin. There’s a lot of character packed into that tiny picture, and it takes you a moment to remember that you’re looking for a name. 

Francesca Harper. 

“Of course you don’t have a phone number on file,” you say aloud, scrolling through her account. “Or an email address. That would make it too easy.”

There’s a lost and found for these types of things, kept under lock and key. But you couldn’t help but notice the insurance cards, and the crayon drawing in place of pride in the plastic sleeve next to the I.D. You find yourself Googling the address listed on Francesca’s account, tracing the route with your eyes. It’s about fifteen miles outside of town.

You aren’t familiar with the neighborhood, and you make the mistake of asking Taylor about it within Laura’s earshot as you’re about to leave for the day. 

His helpful directions are cut off by her incredulous, “You have that woman’s wallet?”

Ah, you think, glancing down at the I.D. So you’re the witch. Francesca’s expression in the photo seems to be daring you to do something about it. 

“It was in the returns bin,” you say at length. 

“You’re not going to go out there, are you?” Laura demands. “All by yourself in the middle of nowhere, with that—her?”

“I have pepper spray.”

Laura touches your shoulder. She’s a perfect product of her generation, but you think she does mean well most of the time. It just tends to gets buried under all the bullshit. You can tell her worry is genuine in this case, as silly as it feels to you. 

“You ought to just call the police and let them deal with it,” Laura says. “Any excuse to get the authorities out to her property is a good one. God knows what she’s up to out there.”

“Okay, thanks, Laura,” you say by way of goodbye, shouldering your bag. Taylor looks at you meaningfully, which you take as a request to text him later. You bump past him in a friendly manner, which is as good as saying, “Message received.”

The yellow clutch is tucked safely inside your bag, along with that flower from returns. It’s gray outside, overcast with the promise of rain, but it’s the first of June and the daylight won’t be gone for hours yet. 

You walk home and make quick work of feeding the cats and closing the windows and turning on the little window unit air conditioner in deference to the muggy summer heat, so hopefully your bedroom will be cool by the time you get back. Then you distribute kisses to the only members of your family that have always stuck beside you, their whiskered faces pressing forward eagerly for your attention. 

That finished, you head back downstairs, around the back of the building to the parking lot, and climb into your tiny 2009 Kia Rio. The engine rumbles to life, as reliable as ever. You prop your phone in the cupholder, letting the GPS guide you in the right direction.

After three minutes of driving, the last row of cookie-cutter bungalows disappears behind a copse of trees, and then it’s an endless stretch of patchwork soybean fields, hemmed in by neat wooden fences and bright clusters of goldenrod. Apple Music is playing your favorites, Of Monsters and Men’s Mountain Sound spilling triumphantly from your Kia’s tired speakers. The AC has never worked, so the windows are down, and all of it—the summer heat and the wind and your music and a silly, self-made quest—makes you feel better than you have all week. Maybe all month. Maybe since the last time your friend came to visit from North Carolina, back in March. 

Too soon, the music volume lowers in deference to Siri’s guidance, as she informs you that your destination is coming up on the right. 

You pull into a gravel drive, let it lead you on a long, winding path up to a two and a half-story farmhouse. You notice, right away, the riot of plants—ivy climbs the house on all sides, the porch is consumed by hydrangeas, and the drive itself is lined with tall greenery bearing little white flowers. There are children shrieking with laughter somewhere nearby, and the deep, playful bellowing of a large dog. 

The front door opens before you’ve come to a full stop. By the time you climb out of the car, that woman is standing on the stoop, gazing at you with those wide, dark eyes. Francesca Harper, with her riot of curly hair, the half-smile on her lips. She doesn’t look surprised to see you.

“Francesca?” you say, lingering beside your car uncertainly. 

“For better or worse,” she says. “Call me Frankie.”

“Frankie,” you agree, and add, “My name’s Simone. I’m sorry to bother you.” Anxiety is an old friend, wrapping its arms around you as you stand on the uncomfortable threshold of initiating conversation with a stranger. “I work at the library. You left your wallet there. I wanted to call, but I couldn’t find your number.”

You dig into your bag for the wallet, feeling clumsy and too big in your skin. The soft leather finds your fingers, sliding into your grasp helpfully, and you yank it out with a little too much force. You feel like you’re twelve years old again, weeding in your best friend’s mother’s garden. This time there’s no honeysuckle to make the task sweeter. 

“I just wanted to return it to you,” you say, holding it out. “In case—you know. In case.”

She approaches you, and it makes the three or four inches of height that you have on her more obvious. She still seems to tower over you, even as the crooked line of her mouth blooms into a proper smile, and her calloused hands take the wallet from your softer ones gratefully. 

Then she glances down towards your feet. You look, too, and find that the little white flower that you kept from work must have fallen from your bag. Flustered, you stoop to snatch it off the driveway quickly, shoving it back into your bag.

Frankie is still smiling at you, but the expression is somehow warmer than before. 

“Can you keep a secret?” Frankie says. 

When you nod dumbly, she reaches over your shoulder for something behind you. She withdraws her hand and one of the white flowers from the plants lining the drive is sitting in her palm. From this close, you can see the way its edges blush pink. It looks exactly like the one you found in the returns room earlier today. 

You look past it, finding Frankie’s eyes through her dark curls of hair. 

Frankie tells you, low and conspiratorial, “These flowers only grow wild in one place in the whole world, a little island in the Kankakee. They’re endangered now, but I’ve been growing them everywhere I can.”

You think about Laura’s condemnation of Frankie for browsing through the section of the library about plants and magic derived from plants. You think of Linden as a whole, of the puzzle pieces that make up the town, and how boring and colorless it would be without someone around to grow flowers. You think of the spot of beauty and softness the little blossom afforded you earlier today, a pocket memory of another summer day from what feels like another lifetime; your best friend with her skinned knees and freckled face and stubborn scowl, your best friend’s mother with her tone-deaf singing voice and endless patience for little girls with big ideas. It’s been years since you remembered how much you loved them. It hurts to think you might have gone another day without remembering that. 

You look down at Frankie, at the little miracle in her hands, and say, “My lips are sealed.”