Free Sunshine Picklelime by Pamela Ferguson

“Whoa, Cardy just flew off. A lady cardinal was batting her eyelids at him outside the window.” She chuckled.
    PJ smiled. “Cardy won’t go too far away. Unlike Lemon Pie.”
    “Hmmm, we’ll have to keep our eyes open for little Cardinellas, won’t we?”
    After she hung up the phone, PJ closed her eyes and conjured up the sights and sounds of Ruth’s garden. She imagined the red splashes Cardy would make flying from branch to branch and
chirruping
after his soft brown lady love with her red plume. She pictured the lawn after a downpour of rain, covered with white rain lilies. There were huge, old sprawling live oaks, pecan trees, and hedges of sweet-smelling honeysuckle. Circular beds of tall, deep pink coneflowers waved in the wind. Water bubbled out of a graceful fountain sculpture of a girl carrying an earthenware pot. Frogs croaked nearby. When she opened her eyes again, she quickly sketched the garden in pastels.
    PJ’s thoughts also drifted over to Mrs. Patel’s garden. Then she looked out the window. Her mother hadn’tstarted to plant anything yet as she usually did in spring. PJ hadn’t even noticed until this moment. The yellow Lady Banks rosebush was beginning to drop its petals to the soft earth below. It had been a long time since its blooms flourished when Lemon Pie hid there. Even the lawn needed some care. If her mom was going away, perhaps Mrs. Patel would help her? She knew her dad wasn’t all that interested in the garden, except to complain when the friendly gulls pooped on the lawn.
    “PJ?” her mom called out.
    PJ opened her bedroom door. “I’m here, Mom!”
    “Let’s go for a walk, honey,” her mom said from the stairs. “Mrs. Patel’s invited us over for one of her special curries later.”
    PJ reached for a red fleecy pullover. A chilly, salty breeze had moved in from the sea, the sort of breeze that matted and tightened her growing crop of black curls. She joined her mom in the road. “Is Dad coming?”
    “No. I hear you and your dad have talked.”
    PJ nodded and shivered and dug her hands into her pockets.
    “I want to go back to work, PJ. I need to do some courses before renewing my counseling license. It won’t take long.”
    As they started to walk, PJ ran her hands across the top of a huge rosemary bush that bordered the sidewalk and then raised her fingertips to her nose to inhale the essence of the sprigs combined with sea salt. “Aren’t you really going away because you and Dad argue a lot?” PJ asked.
    Mrs. Picklelime shook her head. “We just need a little space.”
    “When are you going?”
    “Soon.”
    “Oh.” PJ listened. Breezes moved Ms. Naguri’s bamboo chimes on one side of the road, harmonizing with the deep resonance of Mrs. Patel’s metal chimes on the other side. Sometimes, depending which way the wind blew in from the sea, PJ could enjoy their comforting sounds at night. She loved them.
    PJ realized her mom was talking to her.
    “I wish things were different, but I really need this time and space for me. Even if your dad and I didn’t argue. Do you understand?”
    PJ nodded. “I do, Mom.” She watched her mother’s denim sneakers and her own fire-engine red sneakers move together along the sidewalk. “I want to be an architect so I can design funky tree houses or barns orhouseboats and gardens for people and animals so no one needs to ask anyone for space.”
    Mrs. Picklelime smiled at her daughter. “You do that. Find a soul mate with wonderfully crazy ideas just like yours!”
    PJ slipped her arm around her mom’s waist. “What happens when you stop being soul mates? Do moms and dads just stop loving one another? You know, just like that?” she asked, snapping her fingers.
    “Now the poet Keats would say,
‘At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth, Like to bubbles when rain pelteth,’
” whispered her mom. Then, “PJ, you know far too much for a girl of your age.”
    “Oh, Mom,
please!”
PJ said irritably. They stopped talking