The Night Garden (18 page)

Sam pulled his legs more tightly beneath him. In a way, Olivia was not so different than the poison ivy that she grew in her garden. Arthur had told him that poison ivy was poisonous to human beings—and no other animals. Somewhere along the line, somehow, the plant developed an allergen called urushiol, which irritated the skin of most humans. But the urushiol itself wasn’t harmful—it did nothing to the eerie-eyed goats that lived in Green Valley, who grazed on it as if the vines were a salad bar. Its self-defense system had evolved specifically to deter human beings from getting near it; Olivia was talking as if she thought of herself the same way.

She stirred the still fountain with her long fingers, looking for all the world as ethereal as a beam of moonlight. His heart ached with memories of her. “Olivia, what was the reason you broke things off with us?”

“Does it matter now?”

“I’d like you to tell me.” She was quiet, but he resolved to wait her out. The fireflies flurried about in the bushes; in the woods, some night bird cried. “Olivia …”

Her words were hushed. “You must know the reason. Please don’t ask.”

“You were afraid you would hurt me,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

And yet, she had hurt him anyway. He thought:
I should have known something was wrong.
He’d been eighteen when he decided to leave Green Valley. But leaving had never been what he’d wanted. He’d meant to stay forever, to get a job doing something suitably heroic, to build a house next to his parents’ on their subdivided lot, to marry Olivia in the apple orchard on her farm. He’d figured that his future with her was as much a part of his fate as his future as a Van Winkle, Saver of Human Lives. When she’d rejected him, it hadn’t just broken his heart. It had annihilated his faith in the life he’d been so certain was before him. He hadn’t realized she’d sacrificed her own happiness, her own future, for his.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize.”

She shrugged. “You couldn’t have known.”

“Still. I wish I had.”

“Don’t say that,” she said. “I know you and I were, oh,
close
at one point. But the best thing that you could have done was to go out there and live your life and be happy about it in every way possible. And that’s exactly what you did.” She turned to him, and for the first time all evening, she held his eye. Though
she didn’t touch him, he warmed as if she’d put a hand on his chest. “I was glad you left, Sam. I liked to think of you somewhere, living a good life. I used to picture you hunting truffles in France or golden chanterelles in Oregon. Maybe you were out there sailing, or climbing mountains, or chasing your kids around on bicycles in some city park. I don’t know. I guessed I just liked the thought that you were happy in a way that—” She bit her lower lip, glanced at the fountain. Her fingers dripped.

“In a way that you aren’t?”

“That’s not what I meant. Just that you might have been happy in your own way.”

He was quiet for a long moment. The crickets’ songs filled the night air. He thought of his years away from Green Valley, years that had felt so empty and drifting to him, though he had not known why. He’d gone to college primarily to kill time; he hadn’t known what else to do. He’d made the kind of friends who are lively company for a few years and who then become part of the still-life of memory. In all the time since he’d been away, he did not think he’d had a single conversation as intimate as what was passing between him and Olivia now.

“I don’t think I was happy,” he admitted. “Not since I left.”

“And now? That you’re back?”

His heartbeat was plodding and crude, his palms sweating. Olivia beside him, limned by moonlight, her fingers on the surface of the fountain, called up desires in him that were far too animal and ravenous for this delicate and dreamy garden room. If she’d asked him this morning if he was happy to be back, he would have said he was on top of the world. But in this moment, he could not touch that place where her jaw met her neck, nor could he even consider brushing his fingers over her lips or her hair. He’d been given the gift of feeling again—only to be robbed of touching the thing he most wanted to touch.
So, no—he was not especially happy. But he couldn’t tell her; he didn’t want to lay his misery at her feet when she had enough of her own.

“I’m doing okay,” he said.

“Good,” she said.

They were quiet for a long time. Occasionally, they heard the sounds of the boarders in the distance, laughing. She took a few steps toward him where he sat; he felt horribly, painfully aware of every part of her, the space she moved through. She said, “This is when you’re supposed to run away.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Aren’t you afraid of me?”

“Afraid?”

“Do you remember what your doctor said? That constant exposure to poison ivy could make you even more sensitive than you already are?”

“Yes. So?”

“So you shouldn’t be around me.”

He shook his head. “I’ve always been a little more susceptible than most people to poison ivy. But I think that summer with you was especially bad because—well, because I couldn’t keep my hands off you. As long as I don’t touch you, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“Still,” she said. “Even if being around me won’t make you more sensitive, there are still risks. What if I accidentally brush up against you or something? It’s probably better if you just stay away.”

“Better for me or better for you?”

“Maybe both,” she said.

He looked at her and began to understand how warped her perception of herself might have become over the years. “You know, you’re not as big and scary as you think you are.”

“I
am
dangerous, Sam. I might not look it, but I am.”

“No. You’re not. Believe me. Would you ever get behind the wheel of a car and play chicken with a bunch of teenagers just because you were annoyed at them for blasting their music?”

“No.”

“Mr. Hendershot did that today,” Sam said. “Would you ever get drunk and decide to use the side of an old camper for target practice and not think to check if there was somebody sleeping inside it first?”

“You know I wouldn’t.”

“That was Mag La Feir last week. She’s lucky she didn’t shoot her own kid.”

“I don’t understand what point you’re making.”

“I’m saying you’re
not
dangerous. Not in a way that really matters. You would never hurt anyone on purpose. And …” He stood. He was only a hand’s length from her, his whole body aware of the distance he couldn’t close. “For the record, I’m not afraid of you.”

A hint of a smile—there and gone—pulled at the corner of her lips. “So you still think we can be … friends?”

He nodded.

“Friends.” A funny look came over her face. “I’d like to say we should shake on it, but …”

“Maybe not the best idea ever,” he said.

“Actually—” She stopped. Looked away.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No way. I didn’t let you do that when we were kids and I won’t let you now.”

She took a half step back, gesturing nervously. “It’s nothing. My father made some kind of serum. It’s … it’s supposed to keep people from getting hurt if they touch me. It probably doesn’t work.”

“Do you have it?”

“Now? I … no. Not right at this second.”

“Do you want to go get it?”

“Get it? You want me to—? I’m sorry, but it’s getting late.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

“Sam—”

“It’s my day off. So I’ll pack a picnic for us. You can meet me at the Lightning Oak in the middle of Stony Field.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she said. “I mean … you’re incredibly allergic, to
everything.
For all we know, you might be exceptionally allergic to me. What if the serum doesn’t work? Your reaction might be severe.”

“I’m not saying we’ll strip down and go head-to-toe, skin-to-skin,” he said. “We’ll be really conservative. Just one little touch. C’mon, Ollie. Stop thinking and say yes.”

He was holding his breath; the possibility that she might try out Arthur’s new serum with him was thrilling. It might be the solution to all his fears—it could fix the problem of their future together—and he wanted her to test it out
with him.
He wanted her to trust him. He loved that she’d never told anyone about her condition, but that she’d told
him.
That meant something. Her eyes scanned his forehead, his cheeks, his mouth. He stood for it; he wanted her to see that he was serious and would not back down.

She shook her head, but her mouth had curved into an odd smile. “It’s not fair.”

“What’s not?”

“The garden doesn’t give me answers. I could sit here all day thinking about this, and it still wouldn’t tell me what to do.”

“You don’t need the garden for this,” Sam said. “Decide for yourself.”

He felt the air between them, warm and languid. Fireflies lit her face in passing white-green. He’d surprised himself. All day long, accompanied by the burning itch of his hand, he’d
assumed that any hope of building the life he’d wanted with Olivia was over. They had no future. But now he saw the faintest glimmer of happiness in the distance—a weak and wavering flame, but a flame nonetheless. And he meant to go after it, whatever it was, finding his footing one step at a time.

“Okay,” she said.

He smiled, and he did not drag his thumb across her lip, or push her hair behind her ear, or touch his palm to her cheek, though he wanted to do any or all of those things. A flash in the dark caught his attention. “Hey. Did you see that?”

“What was it?”

“I think it was lightning.”

She watched the sky. A cloud lit up in silence as if a firefly had flashed from within, saturating it with interior light. Then the dark returned.

“Just heat lightning,” she said. “It’s lightning. But it doesn’t mean
rain.
”

He looked into her eyes and hoped his face could convey even half of what he was feeling. “I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

She nodded. “Do you need help finding your way out of the maze?”

“It’s a good night for wandering,” he said. He left her among the milky flowers, and as he wound and turned his way through the corridors he was once again beginning to recognize, he allowed his mind to churn and simmer on the question of whether it could even be possible to seduce a woman who couldn’t be touched.

Pushing Daisies

The morning broke hot—hot at sunrise, hotter as the sun climbed the sky. A man from Olivia’s crew told her that one of her eggplants had baked through on its stem, and he was planning to take it home to his wife so she could smother it in sauce and cheese. Olivia did not allow her boarders to work in the garden maze—the sun was simply too dangerous. Work would be limited to only the essential chores. Not one thing in the valley wanted to move in the heat. The birds hardly peeped. The plants slumped. Even the stones themselves seemed to have given up some of their stoniness, as if they’d tired in some way. Olivia resolved to spending the morning paying bills and making phone calls with Tom in his office. All through the summer, the Pennywort farm had battled mightily to remain stalwart in the heat. But it seemed the season was finally winning, and the farm was losing the fight.

All through Bethel, people talked about the heat, talked about it as incessantly as the sunbeams bore down. And after they were done talking about the heat, they inevitably talked about Gloria Zeiger’s homeless shelter, which had made the papers as funds were raised leading up to the grand opening. Some of the Penny Loafers had seen the article, which showed a large picture of their neighbor and the mayor standing in front
of big azaleas and holding an oversized pair of scissors together as if they might at any moment start a tug-of-war. In the humid heat of the barn, the boarders asked Olivia what she knew about it, what she’d heard. And Olivia could tell that they were fishing around to see if they would be forced to abandon their cots in the barn now that the shelter was about to open. Olivia assured them:
You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.
And yet, she knew there were laws and codes that she had been breaking for many years, and that if the town decided to give her a hard time about her boarders, it had the grounds. She could only hope that the strength of tradition and of Green Valley popular opinion would leave the workings of her farm unchanged.

She looked around at the women in the barn—her best company, her family—and felt an itch in the back of her throat. Only this morning they’d just lost Emmie, an older woman who had arrived at the maze one day wondering what to do with her retirement. Emmie had been cheerful and well liked during the three weeks she’d stayed in the barn; unlike so many of the boarders, she had not come to the maze in the grip of an especially dire problem or controversy. Instead, she simply waited, walking the maze once a day, taking her time, weighing her options, until finally she emerged from the Sundial Garden to announce that she knew what she would do with her life now that she was no longer working: She would devote herself to mentoring single mothers who came from difficult backgrounds. Olivia had liked her in the cautious and outlying way she’d liked so many of the Penny Loafers over the years, but she’d also steeled herself against liking her too much—for it was inevitable that the woman would someday go. Eventually, all of the boarders left the farm, just like all the people Olivia had loved had disappeared from it over the years. She could only hope that the Penny Loafers would not be harassed now that Gloria’s shelter
was open and was so glaringly obvious in its intention to move the Penny Loafers in.

Mei, the newest boarder, was no doubt a shining example of why the women on the Pennywort farm needed to be corralled and contained. Mei was a little rough around the edges: She had a mouth like a truck driver, an undercurrent of belligerence even when she was asking
Can you pass the bread?
She was nosy with the other boarders as they worked together in the garden maze, but she was especially prying with Olivia, asking pointed questions about why Olivia didn’t have a boyfriend, and how long it had been since she’d let anyone touch her, so that Olivia came to wonder if perhaps Mei had known full well what she was doing the night she’d tried to open the Poison Garden’s door. But then, just when Olivia was sure Mei was untrustworthy, Olivia would catch glimpses of deep vulnerability: Sometimes she seemed to drift off into thought, and the look on her face spoke of a girl who felt very, very alone.