The Garden Path (29 page)

“Could we, do you think? Could we really do it, Ivan? Just pack up and go?”

“I don't see why not. Later this summer? We could go to England. Or we could go to California. Let me take you to the Coast, Rosie. We could go up to San Francisco—it's pretty hot in Los Angeles right now, and it gets worse, but we could go up the coast a little bit, give you a look at the other ocean—the
real
ocean, not this tame little trout stream you've got over here.”

“I thought you were a true blue New Englander, Ivan,” she teased him, but she had to force a lightness of tone. She didn't want him to be missing California. “Weren't you born someplace like East Oshkosh Junction, Maine?”

“I'm homesick for the West Coast, Rosie.” He was serious all of a sudden. He stood before her with his hands in his pockets, his face lifted away from her, up to the blank sky. “I don't know what it is. The weather, maybe. Everything outdoors. The space. I'll tell you, sometimes Duke's place really gets to me, all those little boxy rooms, all those doors to shut. And then the backyard. Except for a few scraggly apple trees and the vegetable garden, it's all bare ground. Grass won't grow, nothing grows but weeds. It's just old, worn-out dirt. And I stand out there and I feel as if I'm being pulled back, like a magnet. I miss the look of the place, Rosie. The look of it, the smell of it—I don't know. It's another world.”

He stopped, and she stood silent too, possessed by the fear that he would hop into his van this minute, seduced by his own words to head back west where things grew and there was real ocean. It would be better, she thought to herself, if they haven't separated, if he has a wife to tie him here.
Don't go
, she thought.
Don't leave
. She squeezed her lips shut, afraid she would say the words aloud; better not to beg, she told herself, or to give orders.

He raised both his hands, suddenly, and ran them through his hair, scratching his scalp, rubbing his neck, running one hand down through his beard to his side and embracing her with the other. “But what the hell,” he said in her ear. “Here I am, and I'm not going anywhere. Unless you and I take a trip out to the Coast. You say when, Rosie. Any time.”

She leaned against him, amorous with relief. Her bear, her lovely, shaggy bear, with his bear hugs. But it was England she wanted to go to. California was for movie stars, for crackpot religions, for Edwin and his dreadful women. She and Ivan would go to England, maybe later in the summer after the royal wedding had absorbed the bulk of the tourists, maybe in August when England would be quieter, a paradise of gardens, a Garden of Eden. We'd have that, she thought, no matter what. (That refrain was beginning to figure prominently in her thoughts:
no matter what.)
We'd have those weeks together visiting gardens and drinking in pubs and walking in the lanes. And Silvergate: she imagined being there with Ivan at her side, and the more she thought about it the more certain it seemed that she could never visit Silvergate without him—the place all her memories ran back to, the place she would consider until she died to be her true home, the one she was exiled from. With Ivan, she could bear it. Even in the rose garden; even seeing how the ivy, with birds nesting in it, covered the side of the gardener's cottage; even going down the broad stone steps to the terrace where she used to run with the old dog—even there, detachment would be possible, but only with Ivan at her side. He was the one thing dearer to her than those memories. Ivan at her side—she'd have that, at least, no matter what.

She went to the library, and found one of Susannah's stories reprinted in something called
Sci-Fi Feast: Best Stories of 1979
. The cover was dark blue, printed with stars and, in silver, a row of names in alphabetical order down one side:
Susannah M. Cord
was there. The story was called “Songs Forever New.” Rosie watched the librarian stamp the book and run it under a light that coded her card number and the book's number into a computer—the closest she and Susannah had come in years, she thought, first with mild amusement and then with an insane desire to laugh aloud. She carried the book gingerly to the parking lot, as if it were alive, or might explode.

Home, she got herself a cold beer and, sitting on the bench in the garden, opened the book immediately. Susannah's story began with an epigraph from a poem by Keats:

Ah, happy, happy boughs: that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

For ever panting and for ever young.…

She didn't recognize the lines, but she recalled, vaguely, having had to read the poem in high school. The lines reminded her of Ivan, and she wondered if Susannah had chosen them for that reason. She wondered if Susannah read poetry, if using poetry as an epigraph was a sign of pretentiousness, if Ivan had read the story, what he had thought of it, of the lines from Keats. It came to her, suddenly, that Ivan and Susannah must once have been in love, if they weren't now. She remembered how he had helped her out of the church that horrible day of the funeral, with his arm around her, protective, the two of them hunched together like old people, shuffling out the door. They took drugs, Ivan said—pills. Speed. But they must have done other things as well, laughed and made love and talked together as she and Ivan did. And other things? She wondered. Ivan might be a different person altogether, with Susannah. She pictured them—it must have been a scene from some movie, transposed—picnicking together by a picturesque river, Susannah all in white, Ivan with a crown of daisies in his hair, Susannah braiding daisies while Ivan read aloud from an old calf-bound volume of Keats.

She snapped the book shut, afraid that by reading Susannah's story she would learn more than she wanted to know. She sat in the heat drinking beer until the bright blossoms, and the bees traveling in and out of them with their metallic noise, and the sun beating on her head and arms, comforted her and made her drowsy. She was roused by Kiki Sheffield coming across from her yard with a plastic container.

“Pesto, Rose. I made you a batch.” She set it down on the bench. “Don't you look comfortable. Isn't it hot?” She looked with admiration at the striped Rosa Mundi in full bloom against the fence, and put out one finger to touch a petal, a thorn. “Look at that. I've never seen anything like your roses. What's this one again? I can't keep them all straight.”

“Rosa Mundi—rose of the world. It's supposed to have been Henry II's favorite rose. Henry II of England.”

“Is that so?” Kiki's nut brown hands reached out again to cup a blossom, and she leaned forward to sniff it, then sighed and smiled at Rosie. “Your garden is amazing this year. I wish I had more time to put into ours. Margaret's having her baby, you know, in October, and I've just been on pins and needles.”

“The first grandchild, Kiki,” said Rosie, rising from her bench with the beer bottle in her hand. She took a swallow, emptied it. “You'll get used to it. Or so they tell me.” She started toward the house; she didn't want to talk to Kiki.

“Lord, I hope so. I'm a bundle of nerves. And there's so much to get ready, I'm worn out. Margaret can't do much, she's just huge.” There was pride in her voice, and a dash of triumph over Rosie's grandchildlessness. She put out a hand to keep Rosie there. “You know, I've been meaning to tell you, Rose. I ate at that restaurant—the one your daughter and her husband run? Twice, in fact. And it's
just fantastic.
” She had a way of emphasizing and prolonging certain phrases: she got her lips into position for the
j
before she uttered it, and drew out the
a
's in
fantastic
. “Truly a marvelous little place,” and the
m
in
marvelous
buzzed like a bee.

“So I've heard,” Rosie said shortly, continuing toward the house, then remembering the book and the pesto. She retrieved them from the bench while Kiki went on.

“And such a handsome waiter. Lord, a regular movie star. Is that your son-in-law, Rose? Or is he the cook? I saw another fellow out in the kitchen, just a glimpse through this sort of serving counter they have—really an ingenious arrangement, and so tastefully decorated. And a pale blonde woman? Would that be your daughter?”

“I don't think so, Kiki. I don't think she actually works there.” Even that was more than she wanted to say, and she headed resolutely—rudely, probably—toward her back door again.

“Well, you're missing a treat if you don't eat there,” Kiki said. “Try the soups. And they have the
creamiest quiche.
” The last word rose and fell on two notes as Rosie reached the door. “When can we get you over for Scrabble, Rose?” Kiki asked her as she turned to say good-bye. “Ralphie keeps asking for you.” A mischievous grin across the peonies.

“Oh, one of these days,” she said. “I'm really working well on my book, and I hate to commit myself. I never know when the mood will strike.”

“Rose, that's wonderful.” Kiki trotted with tiny steps up to the door. “You never told me that you'd conquered your writer's block.”

“It comes and goes,” Rosie said. She felt uneasy with any lie, even this tiny, necessary, wishful one.

Kiki was nodding, still smiling. “It comes and goes, I suppose, like the fellow in the van.” Rosie started to say something—her chest tightening up, the sweat coming out on her forehead—but Kiki reached a hand out and touched her shoulder and said, “Oh, Rosie, you're blushing like a teenager. Listen, I'm glad you're happy. I don't want to butt in. When you get some free time you let us know. Meanwhile, I'll give Ralphie your love. No, not that.” She laughed. “Your
regards
. Meanwhile, enjoy the pesto.”

“Oh—yes—I will.
Thanks
,” Rosie called belatedly, but Kiki was already on her way to her own yard. She raised one mahogany arm in a jaunty wave.

Rosie went inside. The heat—the heat was getting to her. And she should never drink beer in the afternoon.

She wandered around the house, drowsy, agitated, hot. God, the place was getting shabby, she thought. The rose slipcovers were faded, the woodwork chipped, the windows grimy, there was a hole in the bathroom screen. She should hire someone—get the place properly cleaned, at least. Her cleaning lady had quit six months ago, and she hadn't bothered to find another. She hated having people come to do things. Peasant ancestry, she thought, smiling, straightening the old Redouté prints in the living room, thinking of her father, her grandparents. Miserliness: that was Peter's joke diagnosis; she'd rather do things herself than pay. Well, maybe. But whatever the reason, she disliked hiring people. Even the Chiswick Garden Center men who had been coming for years to mow, prune, spray for gypsy moths, made her uncomfortable. She stayed inside when they came, restless, watching through a window to see that they didn't trample her perennials. And when she had a cleaning lady, she followed her around, making nervous conversation, giving orders that came out either too brusque or too diffident: that was why Mrs. Wells had quit, she was sure—not because of her back.

Still, the house needed work. She was letting things go, she realized. Barney used to do a lot; he would have painted woodwork for her, they would have washed windows together one Saturday afternoon.
It's so hard when you're alone:
the whine of self-pity in the thought horrified her, and the pang of nostalgia for Barney was a surprise. She dragged out the vacuum cleaner and did the rugs, and she dusted the mantel and stuck a wad of paper into the hole in the screen to keep the bugs out. Then she swept the kitchen floor, stopping in the middle to recall Kiki's words,
the fellow in the van
. Did Kiki connect him with the handsome waiter at the Café? Did Kiki know the awful truth? Was the truth awful? Kiki would surely think so. Rosie was fond of Kiki, but now and then she reminded her of her cousin Debbie. Boring, conventional, conservative, dull—the words paraded through her head, but at the end of them there remained the suspicion that the truth was, in fact, awful.

What am I doing
? she thought. She left the pile of crumbs and dust on the kitchen floor and went upstairs to look at herself again in the bathroom mirror.
I spend more time here than the wicked queen:
the half-hearted joke didn't cheer her up. Its implications, in fact, added to her depression. Susannah as Sleeping Beauty, herself the evil mother who wanted the handsome prince for herself—a new twist on the old story. She looked at her face—tanned, lightly freckled, not so wicked. Harmless, in fact. Old? She stretched the skin back on each side toward her ears. She looked younger, slightly Oriental, fish-mouthed. She let it go, and the furrows returned from nostrils to mouth, the skin on her cheeks showed its pores, the corners of her lips drooped. She felt, tentatively, with the backs of two fingers, the faint droopy thickening under her chin, and tears came to her eyes:
it's not fair
. But it was, of course; it came to everyone, this face. It was just that she wasn't ready:
not yet, please, not yet, not me, not
now. The tears ran down her cheeks, blurred her vision; she looked better, blurred. Too bad Ivan has 20-20 vision, she thought. Ha ha. But the tears continued.

She made an appointment for a haircut. Her hair was too long, wild, weedy, and the length, she decided, dragged her poor face down further.

“Short,” she said to Sonya. “I don't care what you do. Just cut it off.”

She kept her eyes closed during the operation. “You want a color rinse?” Sonya asked her.

“No,” she said firmly. She refused to start
that
. She was proud of her few crisp gray hairs, considered them becoming. She kept her eyes squeezed tight, listening to Sonya snip while she told Rosie about her trip to Puerto Rico, her daughter's school triumphs, her puppy.
Concentrate on what you're doing
, Rosie said silently. Aloud, she told Sonya about her writer's block, her plans for a trip to England, her neighbor's pesto. The blow-dryer was hot on her neck; Sonya hummed over the noise.