The Night Garden (15 page)

“So,” she said. “What have you been doing since you left Green Valley?”

“Flying,” he said. “Small planes. Mostly cargo.”

“Whereabouts?”

“The Northeast. I flew over your farm once.”

“You did?”

“You wouldn’t believe what it looked like from above.” He described for her the long fields, the swath of Chickadee Woods and Solomon’s Ravine, and the maze—a tangle of gnarled brambles from above. He saw her relax, just a little, as he spoke. She asked him what had brought him back to Green Valley, and he’d told her only that he’d felt it was time to take up the family banner and join the police force. His parents had moved to Florida two years ago, leaving the house empty in hopes that he might return to claim it. At some point, he figured he might as well.

He did not mention the accident; he didn’t want her to know how broken down he was, how rain made his bones ache, how his skin might as well have been a thick canvas, how he was the only Van Winkle who apparently didn’t have the hero gene. He kept the conversation light, asking about her farm and maze and boarders. Anything that would prevent her from having to talk about herself. People said she had stopped leaving the farm; he couldn’t imagine why. As children, they’d played many
games that involved exploring—pretending Soldier’s Hill was Everest, or that Stony Field was the Serengeti. He knew her heart would always be firmly rooted in Green Valley, but he thought she might have traveled at least a little, even if she didn’t leave the east coast. But here she was—nine years having not stepped off the Pennywort farm. He couldn’t ask her about it, not yet. She would shut him down.

And so he resolved to be patient as he talked about one inconsequential thing after another, until the set of her shoulders had softened, the stiffness of her spine had mellowed ever so slightly, and the line that flickered between her brows had ceased making appearances. Only when she got up and said
I’ve really got to get going
did he decide to take a risk.

“Come over later and let me make you dinner,” he said, his voice light.

“Oh, Sam—I—”

He hauled himself to his feet. “I’ve got these rosebushes my mother planted that I just can’t get to bloom. The woman calls once a day—and do you think she wants to know about her son? Nope. It’s the rosebushes. She wants to know about her roses. I could really use your help.”

Her eyes had been bright, open, friendly—like what he remembered. But now a darkness so complete and opaque fell over her face, it was as if someone had dropped a heavy curtain between them. She set her hat on her head and pulled it down. “I can’t.”

“It’s okay. I get it.”

“You do?”

“You’re afraid of my cooking. But I haven’t poisoned anyone yet …”

Her lips nearly curved into a smile. “I’m not afraid of being poisoned.”

“Then what?”

“I have … things to do.”

“What things?” he asked in a tone that was almost sweet. “Anything I can help with?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Olivia … Tell me the truth,” he said softly. “Is it that you don’t want to have dinner with me? Or just that you don’t leave the property anymore?”

Her eyes went wide.

“Whatever the truth is, I can handle it. But I’d like to know.”

She looked away from him. “Sam, things in my life are complicated. I can’t even begin to explain. And even if I could … Well … No—no, I couldn’t. I
can’t.
”

“Hey,” he said. He’d upset her. He reached out. He meant to squeeze her arm—in his mind he intended the gesture to be brotherly and comforting. It wasn’t as if he could feel her anyway. But everything happened so fast he couldn’t take it all in.

He touched the curve of her upper arm just beneath her shoulder, ran his palm down.

“Sam! No!” She jerked away from him. “Oh no. Oh no, Sam. Why would you do that?”

He looked down into his open hand, his tingling, open hand. He’d
felt
her. Hadn’t he? Her skin was smooth and warm, her muscle firm beneath. He needed to touch her again—to be sure he hadn’t imagined it. The craving for strawberries had vanished; it was her he wanted now. He looked up to find her breathing hard, one hand covering the spot on her arm that he’d touched. “What’s wrong?”

“You … you shouldn’t have done that.”

“But I did. Olivia, you’re going pale. You should sit down.”

A tendon shifted in her neck. “Don’t worry about me. You’ve got to worry about yourself.”

He took a step toward her. He wanted a reason to put his hands on her again—to brush her hair behind her ear, or draw
her to him to steady her. But when he reached out—he wasn’t even sure what he meant to do—she moved away.

“Don’t,” she said.

He let his hand fall to his side. “Why don’t you want me to touch you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then, what is it?”

“You have to stay back.”

He put a few steps between them, though the last thing he wanted to do was stay away. He wanted to pull her hat from her head, touch his fingertips to her lips and see if he’d imagined the feeling of electricity passing between them, that lively, crackling shock. He wanted to run his hands along her collarbones until the straps of her overalls fell. He was sure she wanted him to do it as well; her chest and neck had flushed. And yet, she seemed afraid. “I’m missing something here. What’s going on?”

“I don’t even know how to begin telling you,” she said. Her eyes glinted with emotion, possibly even with tears. “Please. Just—listen to me. There’s not a lot of time. Go home, right away, and wash your hands.”

“I don’t understand …”

“I know you don’t,” she said, her voice taut with frustration. “But I’m asking you to just trust me, okay? Please. Go home, right now, and wash your hands with the harshest soap you’ve got. Then douse them in vinegar. Okay? You promise?”

Real worry gripped him. “Do you … are you sick?”

“No. Not exactly. But … there’s no time for that now. You have to go.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. He started walking away from her sideways, step by step, though it seemed she wanted him to run. His skin still felt the live charge of contact; he curled his hand into a fist. “I’m going. But I’ll be back. For an explanation.”

“Fine!” she called after him. “Just—go!”

He turned, trotting lightly toward the road, his head filled with the clanging of his thoughts. He couldn’t explain one thing about Olivia’s odd behavior; but he knew this—he’d felt her. He was sure of it. He’d touched her and he’d felt her. He let his trot turn into a jog, and his jog turn into a sprint, and then the ground was flying beneath him, and he wondered about how he could feel so happy when Olivia had seemed so afraid.

Consider the Lilies

After Sam had touched her, Olivia had started walking. She’d walked under the heat of a blazing afternoon sun until she was damp with sweat, until she couldn’t think. She’d walked across the features of the land that had been named long ago: Stony Field, the Trough, Chickadee Wood, and on up the steep, rocky climb of Soldier’s Hill, past humble woodland blooms of motherwort, yarrow, and enchanter’s nightshade, until she could see all the acres of her farm lying low in the belly of the valley before her, and the closed-up farmhouse sitting in the lee of the mountain by the road, and the Van Winkles’ faded blue colonial across the street, and on the hill above it, Gloria’s Tudoresque mansion. This high up, at some distance from the world below her, the breeze was refreshing on her overheated skin.

One of the side effects of having been so seldom touched during her lifetime was that when she was touched, her reaction was far bigger and more unwieldy than a normal person’s might have been. So few people had touched her in her adult lifetime that any innocent brush, bump, or graze could send her entire day into a dizzy tailspin of both guilt and exultation.

Because she could not touch other people, she’d long taken comfort in everything tactile. She did not walk through high
grasses without skimming her hands over the tops, or pass lamb’s ear without bending to rub its fuzzy leaves between her forefinger and thumb. Food was not merely sustenance. It transported her, lifted her out of her body. She loved all food so much that she sometimes liked to eat alone so she could fully focus her senses on the tastes that lit up her mouth. During the winter, she inevitably put on ten pounds, spending her days experimenting with whatever foods were on hand. By the end of May, the hard work of running her farm and maze reduced her back to her usual size again.

Her sense of touch, too, was blazingly accurate, hypersensitized in the extreme. She supposed this was a side effect of being so untouchable; she felt
everything.
When she guessed the temperature she was never off by more than a single degree. When the cicadas rattled in the trees during high summer, she felt the soft breath of wind fanning from many distant wings. She never ironed her sheets—not only because she didn’t have much use for fastidiousness, but because she liked the sensation of the bends and creases in the fabric running over her skin. She’d even embraced pain, to an extent. Once, in the bleak of winter, she’d held her hand so long over a candle that it blistered—but it had felt like heaven to rush outside and bury her burning skin in the snow. For all her untouchability, she was intensely keyed into, focused on, and obsessed with physical sensations of every kind.

So while she could have beaten herself up over her unnecessarily intense reaction to Sam’s touch, she decided instead to go easy. To breathe deep. To focus on the red hawk that was lazily riding a thermal over Soldier’s Hill, to think only about the burn of her legs from her climb. She would
not
think too hard about how she was still trembling, even now, in a deep and nonspecific way. Nor would she think about how when the snow began to fall and she inevitably began dreaming about the heat of summer, she would remember the feeling of Sam’s skin on hers, the
slight stickiness and salt between them, the pressure of his fingers, such a small moment, blown out of proportion by denial and memory.

The people of Green Valley and the Penny Loafers believed Olivia was strong because she was evenhanded and independent, because she didn’t blather and prattle and make idle chatter, because she wasn’t frivolous or wasteful but tried to be generous to those in need.
I wish I was more like
you, one of the Penny Loafers had said as she was leaving to return to her husband.
You don’t need anybody.

But only Olivia knew that none of the superficial claddings of her personality could make up for the hard truth: that deep down, she was afraid to be alone. She was so constantly in danger of self-pity or loneliness or despair over her lot in life that she needed to hold herself in a perfect posture of unshakable strength. She compensated for her desires by setting hard rules for herself: She would not regret, she would not be greedy for a life she would never have, she would not tolerate fear of being alone.

But the way Sam had smiled at her as she’d walked toward him from the beehives, smiled as if she were a bride behind her veil and he a groom ready to attend, gave her an unexpected and unsought glimpse into a kind of happiness that she would never normally have allowed herself to acknowledge. And the touch of his hand had literally made her tremble with a thing that felt, she had to admit, like her every hope and fear had been ignited into a wild burn.

She had thought, for a moment today when the sun had been so golden on her fields, that perhaps, just maybe, she might just find a real friend in Sam. She enjoyed his company, his conversation, and she felt a deep sense of curiosity to know more about him. Was he still so cerebral, as he’d been when they were children? Always analytical and impatient? Did he still strive for perfection
and get irritated when it was out of reach—or did his new slouch, his tired eyes, and his banged-up shoes indicate that he no longer cared about looking neat and tidy? And if so, why the change?

She looked down at her watch and was surprised to see it was so late in the day. She’d thought they’d been talking for fifteen minutes; it had actually been an hour, which was an excessively long break for her to take. While she’d sat with him under the tree, she’d been unable to withstand the great swell of hope and optimism that his aggressive friendliness made her feel.
Maybe,
she’d thought,
this will work. Maybe I’ll have a friend.

But then, he’d touched her. The feeling of his hand on her skin was still a distinct impression, like ice that holds the shape of a leaf long after the leaf has crumbled away. And two things changed: First, she knew she still wanted him in that same old way, on a level that was elemental and animal and chemical and utterly miserable and thrilling and miserable again. Second, in a matter of hours, depending on how quickly his skin reacted to her, he would know her for what she was. And in all likelihood, he would run away.

She stayed on the top of the hill, looking down on the valley, until she was breathing evenly again. Soon the sun would sink, the bats would begin to wake, the moon would appear over the edge of the horizon. She had just enough light to make her way down to Solomon’s Ravine to quickly check in with her father and return to her silo. By the time she climbed down the mountain and into the ravine, she was feeling no better—though she should have been.

“Dad.” She found Arthur bent over a beat-up silver pot set on the rock he referred to as his kitchen. The goat bleated at her loudly, dancing on its hooves, as she approached.

“Olivia! Care to join me for a bite?”

She said she would. She wanted to be distracted; her mind
was a whirlwind that she needed to slow down. She sat on a cut tree stump while Arthur went to fetch a second bowl and the goat nuzzled against her. The dish Arthur had made was nothing fancy: just blanched peppers and corn, tossed with black beans, cilantro, garlic, and oil. It was cool food for a hot day, and she was glad. They ate together in silence for a time, which was not unusual. The goat settled onto the ground. Arthur did not bring up moving out of the ravine, and neither did she. All the while, the imprint of Sam’s hand burned on her skin, and the urge to tell her father about what had happened was enormous. Arthur was the only person who knew of her condition—for the moment. But there was a chance that by morning, Sam would understand as well. And that terrified her.