The Garden Tour Affair: A Gardening Mystery (27 page)

“Tell me the truth.”

He had avoided this moment, but at last it was here. “Sandy, dammit, there is no truth to tell.”

“Mark, I know now you’re not straight. You married me while living this great big terrible lie!”

He flailed his hands in the air, then slumped heavily onto the bed, wishing he could at least light up a cigarette. “I think you’ve gone crazy, girl. I am straight as they come.”

She stood in front of him, arms akimbo, muscular legs spread wide. “Friday night, you left this room—don’t tell me you didn’t.”

“Well, maybe I did, but what the hell do you think I was doing? I just couldn’t sleep, so I went downstairs—fortunately I didn’t nearly kill myself on them like our hostess—and then outdoors to take a little run down the road.”

Her blue eyes smoldered. “In the rain? I’ll bet. You can’t stand being married—admit it. You can’t even stand spending the night in the same room with me. Night after night. Now it’s been, what, three weeks in Italy, and two nights here, with no more excuses that you’re too tired because of climbing all over the Uffizi. I know what’s wrong. You just can’t bear the
proximity
.” She shook her golden head. “God, even in Florence you had to get out of the hotel; I’d wake up and find you gone.”

He bowed his head. “Sandy, I wish you wouldn’t think this about me.”

“I don’t think it—I feel it. It’s in your lovemaking. You’re not there, Mark. So, like, where the hell are you? And why did you marry me in the first place?”

She turned away angrily and paced the room—the room reserved for newlyweds, or those celebrating wedding anniversaries such as the twenty-fifth or maybe the fiftieth, if
anyone could imagine being married that long. Mark looked at his beautiful wife standing against the pink-and-mauve background and felt like screaming.

“Don’t answer. I think I know why,” she went on. She raised her hands in an imploring gesture, as if asking the gods to intervene. “A girl should listen to her father.” She paced for a moment longer. Finally, she pulled up short in front of him, running a hand through her short curls. “I guess I shouldn’t be so mad. Like, I should have known, the way you took after me at college, and then dropped me. God! That was like a challenge, since no man had ever dropped me.”

“You found lots of other guys during those years—why didn’t you marry one of them?”

“I
waited
, for you to finish grad school, and then ran after you until I finally captured you. What an utter, complete fool!”

“You did it on your own,” he said, in a low, defeated voice. “I didn’t force you down the aisle of that church.”

She reached over and touched him on the shoulder, and he flinched. “What happened back at NYU, Mark? Between you and Jeffrey? I wish you’d just admit it. I might even forgive you then.”

He looked up at her with pained eyes. “All right. I admit that occasionally I’ve been attracted to—guys. And believe me—it’s not a good place to be, because you’re not welcome in the straight world, and you’re not welcome in the gay world. But don’t be so naive, Sandy. It happens more than you think. Sure I had a thing for Jeffrey. I thought even in your innocence back then you might have recognized it. I still think you did.”

She straightened, angry again. “You were really fried, weren’t you, when he dated me instead of you?”

Mark was cooler now. He gulped once, then decided what to tell her. “I thought he … returned the feeling. But it turned out he was straight after all.”

She stepped back, and he could see she was trying to disguise her shock.

He stood up and confronted her. “You really believed we were lovers, didn’t you? That we had a history together. That he was gay, and so was I?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s wrong. And Friday night, what did you think? That Jeffrey and I were back at the old stand? That I sneaked away and went into his room, and …”

“Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. I even saw the two of you—”

“How do you know, Sandy? You may have seen two guys, but not Jeffrey and me—”

“Oh, God, don’t lie to me! How can I believe you?” Her mouth hung open in anguish.

“Sandy, you pushed Jeffrey off that summit, didn’t you? We both know you’re tough enough. It was really no problem, was it?” He stared into space. “Or was it during the CPR …”

She looked at him with fear etched sharply on her face. Then her eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute, Mark.
No
, you don’t. I didn’t push him off.
You
did, didn’t you? This is just another bluff. You’re the one who wanted him gone. You and he made love Friday night, and it was like old times, right? And then you realized how dangerous it was. You’d lose everything—because your father-in-law, for one, would never agree to bail out a nearly bankrupt husband of mine who was a complete liar!”

Mark shook his head. “I’m getting the hell out of here. I’ll get a cab to take me back to Stamford. You can take the car.”

“That’s generous of you,” she said bitterly, “seeing as it’s my car anyway. But I wouldn’t leave just now if I were you, Mark. You’re in enough trouble. Do you really need the entire Litchfield barracks chasing you home?”

P
LANTS HAVE INGENIOUS SEXUAL LIVES
. In fact, they are so blatantly sexual that some people are uncomfortable with close-up views of male anthers opening to shoot out their pollen, or female stigma lunging out to receive it. Immovable and unable to go to sexual partners, a plant cleverly dresses up, produces flowers in wild colors, stripes, or even polka dots, and lures a go-between—a bee, a bird, a small animal—to fertilize it. Thus, the plant achieves its goal of reproducing itself. Pines, ferns, and other cone-bearing gymnosperms don’t bother
with all that gimcrackery: They simply wear their old clothes and expose themselves to the wind to get pollinated. Some plants, failing to obtain pollen from their friends, self-pollinate, even though this is not as desirable genetically for the plant as getting its pollen from another.

But things are going on in the natural plant world that should concern us. One of our great pollinators, the honeybee, is threatened with extinction. Gardeners are beginning to notice and complain that their apple trees or their zucchini is not getting pollinated, because bees seem to be absent. And they are, both wild and managed bees. The beekeeping industry is in jeopardy, suffering a steep decline in the number of managed colonies. (Actually, bees don’t need management—they do very well on their own living in a hollow log. Beekeepers are essentially providers of luxury condos for these valuable creatures.) Man-made and natural forces are responsible for the problem:

• Two kinds of mites, which represent a devastating scourge to bees;
  

• Pesticides, which are twice as abundant today as when Rachel Carson wrote the disturbing book,
  Silent Spring;
  

• Loss of habitat, as more wilderness land with hollow logs and stumps to hold natural hives disappears.
  

While managed populations are dropping from disease despite the best efforts to prevent it, the wild honeybees have been almost completely wiped out. Other species of wild bees are a separate issue. Their numbers have been decreasing since colonists came to America, and they continue to disappear. When beekeepers lost an occasional swarm of bees, it was a good thing: These strays would “reseed” the wild honeybees—thus keeping a good supply of pollinators in existence. Now, the luxurious quantity of bees that existed in the United States for more than three hundred years is gone.

Some see no way out of the bee crisis until it seriously affects agriculture. Even now, some agricultural growers import masses of bees to pollinate plants. Eventually, perhaps, another pollinator may have to step in and take the place of the valuable bee. That won’t solve the problems, however, since some plants are “bee-specific,” and designed by nature to be pollinated only by this benevolent insect.

Genetic engineering is doing its best, creating new type “BT” corn seeds and cotton seeds that lessen the need for heavy pesticides on crops. (It is estimated
that fifty percent of all pesticides are used to treat U.S. cotton crops.) Pesticides, of course, affect not only bees, but the thousands of other plant pollinators as well: birds, butterflies, squirrels, foxes, mice, possums, bats, and lizards.

Many large growers and plant scientists scoff at organic farms and claim they can never fill the nation’s and the world’s need for food. But the price of using pesticides—and they are used heavily in farm fields the entire world over—is beginning to be understood.

Encouraging individual gardeners to raise bees is not considered a solution to the bee problem. Amateur beekeepers often lose their interest after a few years and neglect their hives: This can create a serious spread of disease to other neighborhood hives.

As it is, most of us don’t appreciate plant sexuality the way we should. The creative source is pollen. Great clouds of this life-giving substance swarm over fields of crops and flowers, landing randomly, but often in the right place to effect the beginning of a seed. Pollen is the very basis of our lives. It initiates the seed or fruit or grain, assuring the continuation of plant species, and thus the food we eat. A corn plant, alone, needs pollination in what will become each kernel; this takes an estimated 25,000 pollen grains.

Some plants that used to grow in vacant fields are becoming rarities in the United States, and their existence needs to be cultivated by backyard gardeners. Surely, America’s gardeners are committed, spending endless time and an average of about $400 per family each year. But percentage-wise, there are not that many devoted gardeners in the country. Witness the fact that on any given day at a botanic garden, a person may wander on the paths in complete solitude.

The USDA has a National Seed Storage Laboratory that attempts to preserve plant species. But it hasn’t been able to stockpile viable heirloom seeds. That makes it all the more important for backyard gardeners to raise these endangered plants. Native flowers, in fact, are both desirable and beneficial. They will attract bees back to our gardens faster than any fancy hybrid.

It may not be easy to establish fields or gardens of native wildflowers, but if each backyard gardener keeps a small patch going, there will always be a future supply. Like our grandparents, we should get in the habit of saving that life-producing seed that is another harvest from our gardens.

“I
S THIS EVER COOL,” SAID
J
ANIE, WALK
ing farther into the deep, tunnel-like pantry. It had a stone floor and was lined with shelves filled with canned and jarred foods and dried goods stored in square tin cans. At the end, where it turned the corner, there was a beat-up green recliner, sitting on a rectangle of gold shag carpet. “This chair is just like the one we got from my great-grandmother.”

Teddy grinned at her. “Probably yours isn’t quite so shabby—but I love it. This place is my lair. It’s actually an old cold cellar that, if you follow it all
the way, leads to the river where they used to have an ice house. But that’s closed up now with a good old six-foot-thick Connecticut rock wall.”

Janie examined his little bookshelf and the reading lamp on it. Under the lamp was an embroidered doily. “What a cute doily,” she said, fingering it and casting him a sideways glance, teasing him.

Teddy’s face turned red. “She gave it to me—Miss Seymour. Said it would refine the place. I told her I didn’t need a refined place.” Actually, Teddy thought, Miss Seymour would be surprised at how
unrefined
it could get down here.

The bookshelves held college textbooks he had picked up here and there. Between the bookshelves and the chair rested a keyboard. “Oh, a musician, too,” his guest commented. Along the other wall, there was a set of barbells. Janie scanned these possessions and then she slid down in the chair, stretching back in it like a pretty yellow cat, and every male fiber in his body was alerted. She said, “Wow, comfort. Bring on a book.” Happy for the distraction, he plucked one out and handed it to her.