A Helping Hand
Mrs. Pillsbury’s Guide to Proper Pruning
Mrs. Pillsbury was not at all well. A regular bout of the sniffles or a summer fever—like the one she had now—might weaken her for a few days, but such maladies could easily be managed with a nip of brandy before bedtime. The strange hand—the extra one—that caught her mid-faint and entirely by surprise was something else, though.
Holding her upright, Mrs. Pillsbury forgot all about fainting for a moment as she blinked, staring at the strong, delicate fingers gripping the wooden towel rack of her modest bathroom. Grateful not to have met the tile up close—it was unforgivingly hard—she turned to offer a whisper of thanks, but no one was there.
Looking again at the fingers, her eyes followed the line of the wrist and forearm down, only to discover that the arm terminated—or, more accurately, emanated—from her own stomach.
At this, she was overwhelmed by the sight and, owing to her poor health, lost consciousness. In those darkening fractions of a second before she passed out, a name floated to mind: Lottie Carmichael.
A few days earlier the display table at the outdoor market was in shambles. Mrs. Pillsbury huffed under her breath as she attempted to hold fast to the guild’s showcased items. In the blustery summer rain, Mrs. Ebert’s elegantly grazing fawn had toppled and now dangled from the edge of the table as if clinging to a cliffside by its teeth. Mrs. McGuire’s penguin rolled sideways in its pot, the once effortless slide of the beast becoming a tracking missile pointed at destinations unknown.
None of the other ladies made any move to help, too preoccupied with seeking shelter from the spitting rain.
Mrs. Pillsbury’s own creation—a simple giraffe, plain and unadorned—precariously tottered off the table before snapping its skyward neck. Mrs. Pillsbury did her best to corral them, but she no longer moved with the swiftness she once had. As she was righting the leafy sculptures, gathering them in her soaked arms, Mrs. Pillsbury overheard Mrs. Ebert whisper how the sudden death of the giraffe might have been “a mercy killing.” To this, Mrs. Pillsbury could only reserve a side-eye, which she promptly saved for another time when she wasn’t being pelted with rain.
Only Mrs. Carmichael came to her aid, albeit primarily to protect the plumage of her outrageously perfect peacock. Mrs. Pillsbury watched her work, the rain sliding effortlessly off her jacket, her limbs—only a few years younger than Mrs. Pillsbury’s—seemingly immune to the usual maladies of their generation. Mrs. Carmichael seemed to always have a spring in her step, a concentration in her gaze, that the other ladies did not.
The ladies, instead, glanced up from beneath their dry perch, tisking at the sky, dabbing at their temples before tying gentle bows in the scarves now draped over permed hair.
Mrs. Pillsbury watched them as her own shoes filled with rainwater. It wasn’t that Mrs. Pillsbury disliked the ladies of the topiary guild, but they were of little help in… Mrs. Pillsbury stopped. They were of little help with anything but their own pecking at one another for approval. Hens, she thought, and left it at that, picking up the giraffe, its neck slack and draping over her arm.
The other ladies, huddled beneath their scarves, didn’t so much as glance at her struggling creation. It wasn’t as though they expected much from Mrs. Pillsbury’s work—her shapes were always ‘too plain,’ too simple, ‘lacking artistic vision,’ as Mrs. Engle once put it over tea. A woman whose idea of artistry involved precariously balanced peacocks, Mrs. Pillsbury thought, had little ground to judge.
Later, at the cafe, Mrs. Pillsbury thanked Mrs. Carmichael for her help.
“Ramona, I’ve always liked you and I hope you won’t mind me saying that you’re getting on in years,” Mrs. Carmichael said, adding, “accepting help is nothing to be ashamed of.” She smiled faintly, stirring her tea, adding something about modern science. But Mrs. Pillsbury had tuned out detesting both the sound of her own first name being invoked, which Mrs. Carmichael did with regularity, and a prepositional ending to sentences. Still, she reasoned, the guild’s plants had been saved, mostly unscathed, and with some speed. Though Mrs. Pillsbury couldn’t quite reason how, since Mrs. Carmichael, the always perfectly coiffed and implacable Lottie Carmichael, was barely younger than she.
Through pursed lips, Mrs. Pillsbury said, “I manage my affairs just fine–” but stopped short of more words as her body flinched forward in a great aa-choo.
“Of course you do, dear,” Mrs. Carmichael said as she sipped her tea, lipstick leaving a pink crescent on the cup, “but couldn’t we all use an extra hand?” Mrs. Carmichael extended her manicured hand onto the table and pushed forward a lily-white handkerchief, “Let me send around a care package.”
Mrs. Pillsbury bristled at this. She was not of the same means. Mister Carmichael, Mrs. Pillsbury had overheard, made a “whopper of a fortune” investing in new companies—ones she couldn’t be bothered to remember, or their incredibly silly names. The Carmichaels lived in a large, well-to-do estate with gardeners and the like. If there were any doubt about their wealth, the guild’s remaining topiaries, now stowed away in the trunk of their spotless, yellow Cadillac, surely settled the matter.
And if she knew one thing about Lottie Carmichael, it was that “no” was never an answer she would accept.
As Mrs. Pillsbury unpacked the parcel, she found a small tin with a hand-written label: Thumbs Up Soup—Carmichael’s Kitchen Essentials, alongside a packet of biscuits. Too tired to question the gesture, she warmed the soup on the stove. There was a faintly herbal flavor she couldn’t place—likely some modern addition—but it was soothing enough that she finished the bowl and thought no more of it as she fell asleep in her most comfortable chair.
Some hours later, she awoke, her neck sore and body woozy. Before taking her feverish body to bed, Mrs. Pillsbury visited the bathroom. It was there, where the pink hue of the tile reflected on her face and on the arm holding her aloft.
Sometime later, unsure how much time had elapsed, Mrs. Pillsbury found herself in her own bed, duvet tucked gently under her chin. She moved a hand gently under the blanket, hoping, perhaps praying, to find nothing but her squishy midsection. Instead, she found her other hand was being held, cupped gently by this new one—its warm thumb stroking the back of her hand.
Over the next few hours, dozing on and off, soothed, she finally decided the bed was not at all the place she wanted to greet a stranger. Mrs. Pillsbury stood, turning in a circle, looking left then right, but there was no hand. Patting her stomach also revealed nothing, leaving her quite vexed. But as she pulled a heavy pitcher of water from the refrigerator, the hand returned, holding the glass steady as she poured.
“Hmm… a helping hand,” Mrs. Pillsbury remarked, recalling Mrs. Carmichael’s words, as the hand set the glass gently on the counter and formed a fist, its thumb turned up. She nodded, understanding the gesture of agreement as the hand disappeared again beneath her gown.
And so it went on like this for some time, the hand making an appearance when needed and disappearing again when not. It alerted her when the mail came through the slot in the door, or pointing emphatically at the stove when the water was near boiling. It–she hadn’t quite reasoned if the hand was male or female, was equally as proficient at more precise things like chopping vegetables or maneuvering the vacuum. On the whole she found it quite useful, even liberating—if its origin perplexing and the sight of it, perhaps, ghastly.
Other things left her guessing, though. Like when she noticed a package of cookies in her shopping cart. Or when Mrs. Grabel’s wallet was found in the pocket of her raincoat. Those things, she reasoned, could be simple mistakes. The wallet looked like her own and, well, the cookies were her favorite but she’d sworn them off some time ago. All the same, she kept the hand, it, out of sight.
“Two weeks, ladies!” Mrs. Carmichael said to the assembly of women, her voice echoing in the sitting room of their home, “This exhibit requires your best work. We’ll make space available to each of you…”
A cloud of smugness draped over the women as they tittered to one another.
Mrs. McGuire whispered as she motioned toward Mrs. Pillsbury, “Or outside by the trash can.” Heads dipped to stifle laughter. Mrs. Grabel smirked–quickly turning it to a mock-frown when she saw Mrs. Pillsbury listening. That’s fine, Mrs. Pillsbury thought, she already knew Mrs. Grabel thought her work was “fine for backyard hedges, but hardly worthy of display.” Others nodded along—polite smiles, gentle tilts of the head—as if Mrs. Pillsbury’s efforts were something to be forgiven rather than appreciated, if only for their simplicity.
Only two women seemed otherwise occupied: Mrs. Engle, who discreetly tipped another dollop of whiskey into her tea, and Mrs. Rutana, who was busy devouring a plate of petit four.
Sitting in the back, as she always did, Mrs. Pillsbury watched. Her pencil hovered for a moment, then pressed firmly to the page underlining: Grand prize. Of course she’d neither created anything grand nor won a prize for the effort. But she was not a soul without ideas. Manifesting them, however, could be tricky. Mrs. Carmichael was right, she was getting on in years.
She tapped the notepad then absently began to sketch a shape. Curves of a childish nature formed what might be a dolphin, its mouth open in a most unrealistic way like a pursed kiss. Mrs. Pillsbury scratched it out and started on another. Hand reached out, tapping the paper. Mrs. Pillsbury looked down, then back at the other women who paid her no mind. Hand opened its palm then put its thumb and index finger together, wiggling them at the tip: Can I draw?
Mrs. Pillsbury set the pencil in the palm. A quick check of the paper’s edge with another finger, Hand turned the pencil over erasing Mrs. Pillsbury’s drawing. It wiped the sheet clean of eraser rubber and set to creating a fine shape. Mrs. Pillsbury’s eyes widened as she saw the outline, then the shadow details came into focus with each stroke.
Mrs. Pillsbury watched, whispering, “What if…” and pointing at the drawing, her finger moving up then a swift curve down. Hand’s thumb went up in agreement as it erased and readjusted the shape.
After a few minutes, Hand paused, the wrist brushing extra graphite from the drawing: Something like this?
Mrs. Pillsbury gasped, “Yes!”
One afternoon some weeks before, sitting quietly in her garden and enjoying the scents of the gooseberry bushes and sage growing so verdantly, she thought to inquire of the hand about its intent. From her perspective, this had been mostly a one-way relationship, but she wondered if, too, the hand needed something of her.
“Hand…” she said aloud, not quite sure what to call it, “are you there?” It suddenly emerged, giving a slight wave before angling to hold her glass of lemonade. This caught her off guard—its willingness to help without being asked.
“I’ll hold the glass, thank you,” Mrs. Pillsbury said, apologetically. The hand gave a thumbs up, then began to retreat back to the folds of her blouse. “Please… don’t go. I have a question for you.” The hand emerged fully again and turned, palm up, as if to say, Yes? It occurred to Mrs. Pillsbury that hand gestures might be an imprecise way to communicate, so she asked if the hand could write if given paper and a pen. It responded with a thumbs up.
On the kitchen table, she set out a pen and a legal pad she found under the pile of mail in her makeshift office. The hand reached out, touching the edges of the pad to judge its size, Mrs. Pillsbury assumed, then felt around for the pen. Like a stenographer, the hand clicked the pen several times, scribbling at an edge to warm the ink, poised to write something. Though she thought quite a lot about the big questions to ask, she had never come around to how she might start the conversation. Mrs. Pillsbury and the hand sat quietly for quite a long moment, her own fingers tugging at her bottom lip, indecisive.
Mrs. Pillsbury thought about how children relate to one another and decided to ask something simpler: “Do you have a favorite color?”
Hand, she, Mrs. Pillsbury had decided since they were from the same body it was a she, hovered a moment. It seemed to sway a bit side-to-side before writing: What color do you like?
Mrs. Pillsbury huffed. This was not at all what she had expected, a question answered with a question. How rude. Then she considered the hand again, watching her finger tap against the side of the paper, stroking the corner, feeling the edge and it dawned on her: she had no eyes.
“Oh…” Mrs. Pillsbury paused to look out the window at the garden, “I like the color green. It’s a gardener’s color. Calm. Full of life.”
The hand perked up, one finger skyward, then wrote: Green it is.
Mrs. Pillsbury reflected on this. Colors were a good start but she still knew nothing more than when she had started. She decided the best course was to ask the impertinent: “You seem… young?”
The hand’s fingers pinched at the paper corner finding its margin again, and began to write. Mrs. Pillsbury read it aloud as the words appeared, in excellent penmanship: We are the same age.
Mrs. Pillsbury’s brow tightened a bit as she thought, turning her own spotty and wrinkled hands for another review, though she’d seen them every day for nearly eighty years.
“I find that hard to believe, but–” Mrs. Pillsbury stopped herself as the hand continued to write. Again, she found herself saying the words out loud: I - am - you.
The Carmichael estate was expertly decorated for the affair of the season. Partygoers in their summer linen strolled the grounds as servers in all black moved through the throng like dancing chess pieces. Mrs. Pillsbury clung tightly to her shouldered handbag as she made her way through the foyer and toward the veranda. Below, the garden was seemingly more full of people. There she saw the women of the guild, standing together circled by their draped creations.
Mrs. Pillsbury noted how voluminous some of them were, their width wider than two men and taller, too. She wondered what might be under each, no expense spared, of course, as they wrought whatever creation to life in laurel and arborvitae. She, too, had experimented with several of those species, though her own creation was seemingly smaller in scale and used mainly the cheaper boxwood varieties.
Mrs. Pillsbury ran her own hand over the cloth that covered her sculpture, the hand surreptitiously reaching out and tightening the cover. The women tittered at one another, their voices and cackles shrill in the crowd. As Mrs. Pillsbury approached, some of the voices turned to a whisper. Heavily made-up eyes, bronzer on their faces, and summer permanents angled toward her in a synchronized pattern, then quickly back to the nattering circle. Hens, Mrs. Pillsbury thought again as she approached, her smile as petite as her frame.
Mrs. Pillsbury had never worked with some of the materials Hand pointed out in the hardware store. There was so much the nice clerk needed help stuffing them all in the trunk of her car as well as the back seat, sweat dripping from his brow. When Hand appeared, offering a handkerchief he didn’t seem to notice but accepted it gratefully.
Packages, too, began to arrive daily of all shapes and sizes that her patio became littered with cardboard. No matter, she thought, it’ll make suitable mulch for the garden if she didn’t start a fire while learning how to weld first. And, at that, she didn’t think twice since Hand was so adept at so many things. She merely moved pieces around and held up the welding goggles to her own face while Hand did her thing in exacting detail. How she knew such things was beyond Mrs. Pillsbury.
Mr. Carmichael stood on a wooden box above the crowd gathered in the garden. Faces watched expectantly as he held his glass aloft and looked from his wife to the group, “Thank you all for coming! I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself…”
Mrs. Engle tottered, arms crossed, holding her drink close to her lips while Mrs. McGuire scanned the crowd. The others in the guild, too, had one eye on Mr. Carmichael and the other looking at the whos-who of the audience. Mrs. Pillsbury kept herself in the back as usual. She was older than most, perhaps, but not deaf and could hear his booming voice just fine.
When it came time for the unveiling of the art—just cleverly shaped bushes, Mrs. Pillsbury thought—Mrs. Carmichael positioned herself to one side while a member of the guild pulled the cloth off. With a flourish each woman did so, a photographer capturing the reveal as the audience clapped. Mrs. Pillsbury watched them one-by-one reveal: a trio of victorian Christmas carollers with spanish moss as falling snow from Mrs. McGuire. Then came the aquatic wonderland of dolphins, also in triplicate, with silver maple leaves as sprinkles of water from Mrs. Ebert. All very dramatic and spectacularly bedazzled and adorned. Mrs. Engle nearly threw herself to the ground unveiling an oversized martini glass with a silver hydrangea onion. The club sandwich from Mrs. Rutana was intricately layered with red coleus as tomato and lambs ear for the lettuce—of course it had a pickle on the top made chiefly of juniper.
Mrs. Pillsbury watched all this from her back row perch. The over-the-top designs were laid out exactly as she and Hand had thought. Their size and construction were, too, each reaching some eight or ten feet in height. Perfect, she thought. Hand agreed, giving a quick thumbs-up peeking out from the inside of Mrs. Pillsbury’s handbag.
Mrs. Pillsbury looked again at the words on the paper: I - am - you.
Then Hand continued to write as Mrs. Pillsbury watched: I feel what you feel.
Her aged eyes had to take another look. Blinking, she put on her readers, leaning back to make sure the paper was in focus. Feel? Almost immediately Hand wrote: Yes.
Mrs. Pillsbury was unsure how to react. Her face felt flush at the thought of something else knowing her feelings. Was it unsettling? She supposed it should have been. But, no, she didn’t feel that way. This helping hand felt like something else. It felt… empowering.
Mrs. Pillsbury began to wonder if Mrs. Carmichael knew all of this? Wasn’t she the source of the Thumbs Up soup that caused this to happen? But of course, Mrs. Pillsbury thought–Lottie Carmichael must have known this is exactly what would happen. Devilishly clever of her, wasn’t it? To give the older guild member a helping hand, this helping hand.
Mrs. Pillsbury looked to the hand for its thoughts and found it had already scribbled another note on the paper and was pointing: Tea is ready!
Steam rose in twisting spirals from the cup as Mrs. Pillsbury sipped, considering her new appendage and what they could do together.
Five glorious and manicured topiary circled the garden courtyard, each more impressive than the one before. They towered over the audience as the guild ooh’d for each other in mock excitement. The last, Mrs. Pillsbury’s, sat covered as Mrs. Carmichael walked the length of the grass to its base. Through the crowd Mrs. Pillsbury strode, her stomach in a knot with anticipation. These last few weeks have been quite the journey she thought as she patted the side of the handbag. Her new friend, Hand, had changed everything, had given her a new lease on life and, maybe, a winning design, the Grand Prize. And after the ceremony, Mrs. Pillsbury thought, she would like to thank Mrs. Carmichael. The image made her smile: Hand reaching out to shake Mrs. Carmichael’s own. She couldn’t hide the joy of her, and Hand’s, creation.
“Our final entrant is from Ramona Pillsbury…” the audience applauded as Mrs. Carmichael read from a card, “Her piece is entitled ‘A Helping Hand.’” Mrs. Pillsbury looked to the audience and gave the widest smile any in the guild had seen. Mrs. McGuire sneered, whispering to Mrs. Grabel.
With a flourish that belied her age, Mrs. Pillsbury pulled down the drape. As it fluttered to the ground the crowd ooh’d as the afternoon light revealed a woman’s delicate hand made expertly of twisted boxwood with pale green nails rendered in ornamental kale. And inside the hand set a similarly-sized set of pruning shears fashioned of polished metal. The crowd clapped loudly at the fine detail of each finger, the perceived weight of the overall sculpture.
“Remarkable…” Mrs. Carmichael said aloud.
Mrs. Pillsbury took a breath, savoring the moment. The applause, the admiration—it had been so long since she’d felt it.
Then, she reached down and pulled the lever.
The fingers stirred, then slowly bloomed open—a delicate, deliberate motion, as if the hand itself were stretching awake. The crowd leaned in, marveling. Someone clapped.
Then the shears snapped shut with a metallic clap.
A hush fell over the garden.
The crowd moved forward to take a closer look as Mrs. Pillsbury stepped in front holding her own hand out to stop them. Another motor inside, wound up tightly, began to inch its gears forward. As they paused, the gigantic hand turned to the side, shears becoming level with the ground. The whole hand began to move to the side, massive shears starting to move faster–open, close, open, close. The entire base and the hand was moving closer to the next of the guild’s topiary.
Cream filling from the eclair in Mrs. Rutana’s mouth squeezed out the other end and onto her blouse. Mrs. Engel’s drink tipped forward, the contents spilling over the edge as she laughed aloud. Mrs. Grabel and Mrs. McGuire stood wide-eyed as they watched the giant hand trundle forward, gaining speed. Open, closed.
Shouts from the onlookers screamed, “watch out!”
One by one, the guild’s work was shredded by the hand and its massive shears. Carollers were decapitated, their songbooks flung into the garden like desperate confetti. The martini glass was cut in half, sending a tragically perfect silver hydrangea olive rolling into a guest’s feet. The sandwich, once a masterpiece, was now a crime scene of lettuce carnage and severed tomato rounds.
The dolphins lasted the longest— toppling in slow, majestic despair, heads and fins thrown into the koi pond before sinking beneath the surface.
Onward the hand rolled, shears snipping at the edge of the garden, partygoers scrambling for high ground. Off the terrace, the hand tumbled to the lower garden below, still opening and closing like a blinking eye—until, at last, it broke apart, scattering boxwood and metal everywhere.
The partygoers remained frozen, staring at the wreckage below—a landscape of torn greenery, broken metal, and traumatized topiaries. Someone sobbed. Someone else cheered.
Mrs. Pillsbury simply adjusted her handbag.
She looked down. From within, her own hand emerged, fingers flexing once before settling into a small but decisive thumbs-up.
Mrs. Pillsbury smiled, mirroring the gesture.
Music to read by:
Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47: I. Allegro Moderato
Without a doubt, the most bizarre story I have ever read outside of Alice in Wonderland. And I just loved this line, J.
"But Mrs. Pillsbury had tuned out detesting both the sound of her own first name being invoked, which Mrs. Carmichael did with regularity, and a prepositional ending to sentences."
Far out, J., very far out.:) I enjoyed the lightheartedness of this story. For example, "Like when she noticed a package of cookies in her shopping cart. Or when Mrs. Grabel’s wallet was found in the pocket of her raincoat." I kept expecting the hand to turn on Ramona, but it turned out to be a part of her. They made a great team. There were some hilarious characters in the guild, as well. The rampage at the end was totally unexpected, but it fit the story. You certainly are well versed in the art of topiary.