The Garden Path (30 page)

“You can open your eyes now, Mrs. Mortimer.”

She opened them, blinked: there she was, with hair too short, too trendy, too
done
-looking. She said nothing. Her face was red from the hot air.

“It looks real nice,” Sonya said. “Come and look at Mrs. Mortimer, Frank,” she said to a colleague. “Isn't this cute? For summer?”

Frank said it was nice and fresh, very becoming. “You look about twenty-one, Mrs. Mortimer,” he said, patting her shoulder.

Rosie smiled rigidly. The combined ages of Frank and Sonya didn't equal her own.

“You don't have to do a thing to it, Mrs. Mortimer. Just wash it, run your fingers through like this, and let it dry. You don't even have to comb it. You might want to blow it dry if you're going out, just to tame it down a little.”

“It's a little extreme,” Rosie said at last.

“You'll get used to it,” Sonya said cheerfully. Rosie tipped her, and Sonya kissed her cheek. “It really looks great.”

She drove home, patting her hair, pulling it down over her ears—in vain. She looked in the rearview mirror at stoplights. She didn't want to get used to it. She was afraid she
would
get used to it and not see any more how unbecoming it was. Surely that was how some women got their terrible hairdos. No! She would let it grow out, at least a little, enough to get some wave back, some fullness around the face.

But in the meantime there was Ivan: would it put him off? Did men abandon their mistresses for a haircut? She studied him closely the next time he showed up, two nights later. She hadn't seen him in nearly a week, but his face beamed instantly into a smile. “Rosie! It looks terrific. I can
see
you now. Before, all I could see was hair. Hey—you've got eyebrows, just like everyone else. You've got ears!”

He kissed ears, eyebrows, exposed neck, hugged her close, chased her up the stairs to bed. So that was all right. And it wasn't her haircut that had kept him away for six nights. What was it? He offered no excuse; one of their silent understandings was that he needn't account for his time. After he left, Rosie lay awake until morning, watching the sky turn pink, then blue, and thinking: what does it matter what I do to my hair? The days were dwindling down, she thought, to a precious few. Precious. Few.

July was fiercely hot, but Rosie tried to stay busy in the garden nonetheless. The trouble was, there was very little to do. She divided the early iris and fertilized the annuals. She watered things in the evenings, with a complicated arrangement of drip-hoses and sprinklers to suit the special needs of each area; she had once devoted an entire program to the subject, giving the pros and cons of drip irrigation versus overhead, and instructing her viewers, whichever system they used, to get out there and do it in the early morning. And here she was, sleeping through the cool morning hours, until ten, until eleven—until noon one horrifying day—worn out from the late hours she spent with Ivan; or, increasingly, waiting for Ivan.

He visited her less—erratically, unrealiably less at first but finally, as July pushed on, his visits stabilized at one a week. Usually. Once he appeared two nights in a row and then didn't show up for ten days, the last three of which Rosie spent crying, drinking gin, sitting in the garden in the sun—just sitting, until she felt sick from the heat, and tired enough to fall into a miserable sleep.

She kept trying to pull herself together. She washed a few windows, she picked herbs and lettuce and forced herself to make huge salads which she then couldn't eat. She returned Susannah's book to the library and took out a stack of murder mysteries which she read voraciously, retaining nothing, and left heaped up in a stack, forgotten until an overdue notice came from the library. She got up at dawn to watch the royal wedding on television, and cried; she was glad she was alone, sniveling over the pretty bride, the coach, the English accents, St. James's Park in bloom—and then, unexpectedly, she wished Barney was with her. She played Scrabble with the Sheffields one night, and when Ralphie grabbed her in the kitchen and kissed her she kissed him back, at length, desperately, tears filling her eyes, and then barely spoke to him the rest of the evening. She couldn't even look at him across the table. His fat pink lower lip was like a slice of some tropical fruit; his blunt, soft fingers were like the slugs that plagued her vegetable garden; his jokes and his risqué compliments sickened her. When he phoned her a few days later she told him she couldn't have dinner with him because she had strep throat, and when she recovered she was going to England.

She did intend to go to England. She taped a map of the British Isles over the North America map Barney had put up, and she planned out their trip. They would rent a car at Heathrow and drive south and east to Kent, to Silvergate; that must come first. Then the inn-hopping, and the pubs. She visited a travel agent in Chiswick and got prices on air fare, car rental, hotels. She found a booklet listing historic inns, another with pubs and teashops: there they were, the leaded windows and down comforters and beamed ceilings, the funny pub signs, the high teas, scones and tarts, the bitter ales. “Now when shall we go to England?” she asked Ivan, but her tone must have been too playful, not serious enough, because he only laughed and said, “You must have a gypsy in your soul, Rosie. All you talk about lately is traveling.”

“I do mean it, Ivan,” she said another time. “I'd love to treat you to a trip to England. I need to go over and do some research for my book, and I'd really like some company.” She turned to him in the dim light. “
Your
company, love,” she said. He lay on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, and she snuggled beside him, ran her fingers over his chest and down to his flat stomach. “I'd love to travel with you, Ivan. Just the two of us. We've never been out in the sunshine together—do you realize that? Wouldn't it be lovely?”

He sighed. “It would, Rosie.” Her ear was against his cheek; the words reverberated. Then he turned his head to smile at her, and rose up on one elbow. “Hey—speaking of traveling, I've got to get going pretty soon. Do you know it's one o'clock in the morning? Are you going to lie there and talk about England, or—” He leaned down and kissed her, fiercely, covering her with himself. “Or are we going to do something else? Hmm? My little blossom?”

She didn't care what happened, whether they went to England or California or nowhere, so long as he kept coming to her bed, bringing her his body, his smile, his soft voice in the dark and what it said. But she thought about it still, those long hot August hours in the garden listening to the bees hum and the flowers grow and the Andrews kids play ball in their backyard: England, and Silvergate, and those two glorious weeks she'd mapped out for them. Lord, how she needed them, two weeks with Ivan to herself. She didn't see enough of him.
In two weeks
, she thought,
I'll get him out of my system
. She didn't believe it for a minute, but the notion seemed to justify the time he spent in her mind, the fantasies she spun out in the garden, the amount of gin she was drinking. This would be her last fling—England with Ivan. Once it was over she would buckle down, get seriously to work on the book, live on her memories. She smiled to herself. The Rosa Mundi had faded, she would fade, what did it matter? She would go to England with Ivan, and then—it didn't matter what then, not now, in the sun, with the memories still ahead of her, still prospects.

Peter went to Vermont. He had a cryptic postcard from Hollis: “I need to see you,” with an address in a little town near Montpelier.

“I don't expect anything,” Peter said. He had come for lunch; the next day he would drive north, to Hollis. He and Rosie sat on the porch eating salad, hard-boiled eggs, and the goat cheese Peter had brought. “I don't know what he wants, probably something totally unrelated to—you know—us. Probably wants to know what happened to his sweater.” He smiled in a way that was meant to be ironic, but the smile was so full of hopeful joy it brought tears to Rosie's eyes.

“You still love him, Peter?”

He nodded slowly, the smile faded. “Oh yes,” he said. “I most surely do.”

“Maybe he'll come back with you,” she said, and realized as she spoke that she had had, all those months, a glimmer of hope of her own, that with Hollis out of the picture Peter would, maybe—a foolish hope—but maybe he would settle down eventually with some woman. Grandchildren are all I have to hope for, she had said to herself in one of her tipsier, more melodramatic moments, thinking of her lost children. But she didn't communicate this futile, insane, insulting hope. She said, “I hope he will, Peter,” and closed her eyes, resigned herself for the twentieth time, and meant what she said.

“I can't even think about that,” Peter said. “It'll be good just to see him.”

Oh, yes, Rosie thought. I know all about that.

She liked the goat cheese; it was the kind they used at the Café Peter told her. They were getting classier and classier, he said; they were trying to get a liquor license so they could serve wine, and they would be expanding in the fall, if things continued to go well. “They want to serve dinners, and have a piano player,” Peter said. “I think they're going to make it. There's nothing else like the place around here. Though I think they'll need to move, eventually, out of that crummy shopping center.”

She waited for him to say something about Ivan, but his name didn't come up. She longed to confess. “Peter, I'm having an affair with him, with Susannah's husband. Isn't that dreadful? Isn't it awful? Is it?” As if she could say such a thing to her son, or to anyone. A priest, that was what she needed—and smiled, thinking of Ivan.

She gave Peter some cash for his trip. “An early birthday present,” she said, pressing it into his hand. He took it reluctantly. “Please,” she said. “Buy yourself some new clothes, at least. You've been going around all summer looking like a house painter. Look at you!” He looked down at his faded jeans and worn moccasins. “Hollis won't know you in this getup. And if he does recognize you he will turn and flee in horror.”

He grinned. “Ma.”

“Go. Right now. Get yourself something to wear. And have a good trip. Give my love to Hollis.” She hugged him, clinging tight.

“Are you all right, Ma?” he asked, hugging her back, patting her.

“Yes, yes,” she said, teary-eyed. “I'm all right, I really am. I just want
you
to be all right.”

“You look like you don't sleep enough,” he said, holding her away from him and examining her face.

She raised a hand to her cheek. “Have I aged this summer, Peter, do you think? A lot?”

He regarded her with amusement. “What a question. You? You never change. You know that.”

“But I'm fifty, Peter. I must
look
fifty.” She blinked back her tears and ran her hands through her hair—Ivan's gesture. “Do I? Do I look old?”

“What does it matter? You look like yourself, Ma. You look terrific, you always do. You always will, too. You've got the right bones, kid. What is this? Why the tears?” He hugged her again. “Come on, Ma. You look great. What's the matter? You don't have a boyfriend this summer?”

She sighed, and kissed his cheek. “I'm just worried about you, I guess, Peter. It makes me generally sappy. Call me when you get back from Vermont? Whatever happens?”

He promised he would, and left, swinging jauntily into his little car, tooting his horn three times as he pulled away, happier than he had been in months. She tried to comfort herself with Peter's happiness, and when the sound of his car died away she returned upstairs to the bathroom mirror and inspected her face in it. Not so bad, really. The tan, the freckles were becoming. She rubbed cream into her cheeks and under her chin, and dotted it into the spiderwebs around her eyes. She thought suddenly of Barney, of making love with him on the hearth rug, and she smiled into the mirror. How long ago it seemed, what leaps her life had taken since that cold day she'd said no to Barney. And what if she hadn't? Would Ivan be visiting her and her old, bald husband? And Barney would pull Susannah into it, too. There they'd all be: Ivan and Barney trading funny stories out on the porch, herself and Susannah struggling to be chummy over the dinner dishes in the kitchen. Rosie's smile widened. Instead, Ivan was hers.
Mine
, she thought, and went downstairs to make herself a drink. It was while she was sitting in the garden, later, that curiosity fired up in her once more, so violently she almost got into her car, again, and drove down Route One to the Café: what
was
Susannah like? what
would
they talk about over the dinner dishes? where, in fact, was Susannah? and what was she doing? It was only with an effort that she stayed where she was, drinking gin under the maple tree instead of going off on a mad, mistaken search for her daughter.

Ivan came over the next night. “You're a day early,” she said to him. She had heard the van—its own mild roar as it turned the corner, she'd know it anywhere—and had hurriedly combed her hair, pinked her cheeks, and run downstairs to meet him at the door. “It hasn't been a week.”

“I didn't know you kept track.” He held out a paper plate covered with plastic wrap. “Here's a piece of Duke's vegetable pâté I thought it was time you tried it.”

Her first impulse was to recoil in distaste. She wanted no part of the pâté, Duke, the restaurant—Ivan's other life. But she took it and thanked him. “Let's have it later, for our snack.” Their postcoital midnight snack—Ivan's, anyway—had become traditional.

“Just try a bite,” he insisted. “Here.” He reached under the plastic and broke off a piece. It crumbled in his fingers, and a stringy bit of spinach hung from it. She let him put it between her lips, and licked the last crumb from his fingertips with a smile, but she could hardly taste the pâté. The texture was slimy, and she thought it must contain pimento, which she didn't like. “Delicious.” She set the plate down, and raised his fingers to her lips again.