The Wonder Garden (27 page)

Her father was a difficult person, she knew that. He complained stormily and often, and was not otherwise expressive. As far back as she could remember, whenever she was in any kind of pain it was her mother who rushed to her. Her father did not try to comfort, did not even ask what happened. In her memory, he stands blankly like an etherized animal. And yet, when she thinks of him alone in their house now—where? on the slip-covered couch beneath her framed baby photos?—she feels an intolerable scrabbling in her rib cage.

“Hey,” Rebekah says to her. “Hungry?”

Bethany shakes off her fugue state to accept a salami sandwich. The sunlight is suddenly dim through the trees, giving the campsite an aquatic tint. She hears someone say the word
gloaming
. The word is unfamiliar—perhaps festival terminology, or something to do with drugs? There is a swirl of activity in the campground, people yelling and laughing. Bethany stands, reenergized by the sandwich. All at once, she is aware of the passing time. Soon it will be night, and she has seen only one band.

“Let's go back out,” she says to Rebekah.

Rebekah looks crossly at her. She has been rambling to one of the men about the racial oppression of government surveillance, or something to that effect.

“You go,” she says. “I want to stay in case Rufus needs help getting ready.”

Bethany looks down at her friend, rooting for words. If all they were going to do was lounge at the campsite, she wouldn't have come to the festival. She wouldn't have lied to her mother. But she knows a confrontation will make matters worse.

“Okay, suit yourself,” Bethany makes herself say, and leaves Rebekah and the comatose men in their chairs.

Alone, she winds through the city of tents, looking for the way out. It is like wading through a dream world, the darkening blue air emblazoned with colored points of light, tinseled with bright voices. At this brief moment before nightfall, she lets herself imagine that she has come upon a ghostly settlement of her own people. This is how it might be, she muses, in the future they've been warned about, following the degradation of society, after the plastic infrastructure of school and shopping has melted and marooned her generation back upon the earth. Perhaps this is how they will all live, in wide-open settlements, vast tribal blocs.

At last, Bethany exits the campground and approaches the crowd at the main stage. The music is of another species now, wheeling electronic parabolas. The people around her are not swaying and wiggling anymore, but dancing acrobatically, aerobically, pantomiming elaborate sign language patterns. It is impossible to emulate this cold, from a standstill. As much as Bethany loves music, despite her confidence as an actress and singer, she has never been much for dancing, can't help fixating on how moronic she must look moving in these artificial ways. Here, though, no one seems to be looking at each other; they all face the same direction, transfixed on a solo DJ: a boy in a hooded sweatshirt hunched over a machine. It seems to take all of his concentration to plug this puzzle of beats into his device, making them skip and twist and weave.

Laser lights from the stage periodically wash the audience in green, blue, red. The lights swing down onto their heads, then lift to the sky to communicate with extraterrestrial entities. Glowing things are everywhere—necklaces, batons, body paint—as if the greatest fear of all, the surest route to death, is to not be seen.

The beat picks up and achieves a manic pace. The swinging lights quicken and the hive-mind dancing accelerates. Just standing in place, Bethany feels her heart jig in a way that is almost frightening. Then the hooded boy hunches lower over his box and the rhythm begins to slow, finally coming to a dead stop. The boy slumps, wound down. There is a breath of anticipation in the crowd, a moment of collective suspension. Then, like a thundercrack, the beat comes roaring back and the full spectrum of laser lights flares out. As if a string has been cut, the people fall back to dancing, possessed.

This time, Bethany cannot resist the current. Her body abandons her and goes into the music, finding caverns and waves and silver needles within. She is distantly aware of not making physical decisions, but following the motions of her limbs at a curious remove. When, at last, the DJ turns a knob that causes the crabby loops to join together in a final, booming tsunami, she feels as if she could lift off the ground. This, she understands, is the reason people flock here like pilgrims.

She thinks dimly of her father at home, her mother in the furnished condominium—all those cushioning, stifling trees around them, separating them from each other and from this. A stream of pity seeps through her euphoria like ink, shading it, giving it depth. Her parents are ruined children, stiffened in their bodies, ossified in their rituals. They are impossibly far from the sparkling truth that she is holding right now.

At this moment, she sees Amos. She thrusts herself through the crowd to where he is dancing, throwing his arms down as if ridding them of fire ants. She catches his eye and smiles, seizing his hand. He smiles back, bewildered. There is nothing specific she wants to say to him, really. It is enough just to be with him now, in the middle of this. She begins dancing again, a little less freely, waiting for him to join her. When he doesn't, she yells, “What's wrong?”

He shrugs and shouts, “The set's almost over.”

He puts a hand in his pocket, and, suddenly, a look of terror darkens his face. He digs into the other pocket, then the pockets in the back. He looks at the ground, turns a circle in place. His eyes, when they meet Bethany's again, are panicked.

“What happened?” she yells.

He shakes his head, slaps his hands against the sides of his jeans. He turns a fast circle again, like a dog, scanning the ground. He pushes the person beside him away and examines the ground there.

“Did you lose something?”

He doesn't answer, but she sees him mouth the word
fuck
. He puts his head in his hands for a long moment, then looks at her again, glazed.

“Come on.” She pulls him through the crowd toward the back. “There's got to be a lost and found somewhere.”

He allows himself to be pulled. Once they are away from the crowd, he says, “It's my pocket watch.”

“You have a pocket watch?”

“It was from my mom.”

The simple way he says this makes it sound like his mother is dead, that no further explanation is needed.

“It's gone now,” he says bluntly. He flicks his hair to the side, dismissing it.

“Well, let's at least check the lost and found.”

“Forget it. It probably fell out in the crowd and it's trampled now. No one's going to see it in there.”

The music has stopped—Amos was right that the set was ending, the seemingly infinite galaxy of it—and the stage behind them has gone dark for the intermission.

“We should go back and look for it,” Bethany presses.

“Just never mind,” he says.

They wander away from the stage into a stand of trees, an area that has been sectioned off as a chill-out space. Here, there are things hanging from branches, beaded strings and helixes. Floodlights have been strategically placed to shine upon rubbery objects of art, sea creatures and amoeba-like globs that suction the tree trunks. In a clearing, they come upon an enormous, translucent brain lumped upon the ground, made of clear resin. There is a crevice in the frontal cortex wide enough for people to slide through, and silhouettes are visible inside. The surface of the brain is hard and smooth when Bethany puts her hand to it.

“Let's go in,” Amos says.

Bethany feels a clamp in her chest. There might not be complete privacy here, but it is comparatively isolated. He wouldn't suggest going in unless he wanted, at the very least, to talk closely with her. He stands back and lets her duck through first. She is aware of her backside directly in his line of vision and is glad she chose the long T-shirt. Inside, people are sitting on the ground. Amos has to stoop down low to get through the entrance and cannot stand fully straight once inside.

“Hey, Amos,” someone calls to him.

“What the hell? I've been looking all over for you guys,” he cries. He turns to Bethany. “These are my bandmates. We were supposed to meet up, but apparently they've been hiding in a brain.”

This will just be a quick hello, she hopes. They will find another, more secluded place to go. She waits patiently, smiling at the bandmates, some of whom apparently have traveled from other states. To her dismay, Amos settles down upon the ground with them. They talk about music, using cryptic language. After fifteen minutes or an hour of this, Amos has made no sign of decamping, and Bethany stretches her arms meaningfully.

“Time to go back to the campsite, I think,” she says.

He looks carefully at her. “Yeah, you look tired. Rest up for tomorrow, it's a great lineup. I'm gonna hang with these guys awhile, maybe crash at their site tonight.”

She sits for a moment as the boys continue their prattle. Then she rises and exits the brain. She stands outside, dazed. After counting slowly to ten, she makes herself walk away.

Tramping through the woods, she feels newly irritated with the people gallivanting through the trees like elves. Off to one side a great number of neon hammocks dangle like cocoons. Here, she comes across the boys from Old Cranbury, each seated awkwardly in a hammock with an unfamiliar girl. These are girls of the skimpy clothing set, each thoroughly groomed and less-than-beautiful in her own way. They peer suspiciously at her. Kurt already has an arm around the hip of the girl beside him, the hammock swaying. Noah looks as guilty as a puppy caught digging in the yard. He inches away from his companion, but she quickly scoots back against him. Bethany, feeling an odd spike of betrayal, turns away.

When she arrives back at the campsite, she finds Rufus leading the others in a drumming session. Rebekah slinks over and whispers, “We're about to start.”

“Are you going to do it, too?”

“No, I'm going to stay with Rufus while he does it. I'll be his sitter, kind of. Well, kind of the sitter for the whole group. Somebody has to stay sober, to keep people calm and make sure they have what they need.”

“Do you think people will throw up? I mean, aren't the neighbors kind of close?”

“Believe me, we won't be the only ones vomiting tonight.”

The drumming ceases and the drummers enter one of the tents—a yellow one—in single file. Rufus comes back out with a big insulated jug. He pours the contents into a stock pot and lights the propane stove.

“He's edgy,” Rebekah confides in Bethany's ear. “He's been fasting for a couple days, including sex.”

“Aha.”

“Anyway, you can stay if you want. You can try it yourself, or you can help me sit. We have blankets ready in case people get chills, and a bunch of pails. We're going to put on a recording of the kind of stuff a
curandero
would play during the ceremony. There's an instrument he shakes, like a bunch of dry twigs.”

“A
chakapa
,” Rufus calls out.

“Right. We're going to play a recording of a
chakapa
.”

“Okay. Well, good luck.” Bethany backs away. “I'll see you when it's done, I guess.”

The ecstasy of the dance music has completely receded from her veins now. The rejection from Amos has fuzzied her brain, and the bizarre, umbrous doings at the campsite exhaust her. She retreats aimlessly from the yellow tent as Rebekah and Rufus disappear inside.

“Hey,” someone calls, and she turns to see Chris sitting on a log with a beer and a cigarette, the sunglasses still in his hair. She is unaccountably happy to see him.

“Aren't you going to do it, too?” she asks.

“No fuckin' way. I'm not going near any of that jungle shit.” He smiles at her and shifts over on the log, patting the place next to him. He reaches into his pocket and offers her a flask of bourbon.

“I thought we weren't allowed to bring our own liquor in?”

“Shh.” He holds a finger to his lips.

She takes the flask. The first sip burns. It ignites a new indignation at Amos's behavior, the giant brain and the juvenile hammocks, all the silly toys provided for them as if they were infants. A reckless flame travels through her. She tilts the flask and drinks in quick little gulps. Chris, pleased by this, moves closer and puts a hand on her back.

She finishes the bourbon. “Sorry,” she murmurs, turning to him. His face looms very near. The first kiss is surprisingly gentle, then more insistent but still soft, causing a confused flutter inside her. “C'mon,” he says, lifting her from the log. She steps behind him on rubberized legs toward a dirty white tent.

He has a slow-motion way about him, moving with his eyes closed like someone sleepwalking, acting out a dream. She finds herself lulled into unthinking response, mirroring his movements. Maybe because his eyes are closed, she has the sense that she could be anyone—that she is a temporary body in his arms. She is not even sure that he remembers her name. There could be something liberating about this, but the bourbon flame has died down and been replaced by her usual, maddening caution. She watches Chris's face as he moves his hands over her body like a blind person.

She thinks of Amos, wills back to mind the sharp immediacy of the look on his face when he noticed his pocket watch was missing. She feels an ache, a pining for the bright and precise black-and-white lines of this face. She understands exactly, painfully, who he is.

A rhythmic rattle comes through the walls of the tent from outside. An instrument being shaken in another continent. A rising moan.

Chris is at the zipper of her shorts now. It is a ridiculous zipper, no more than an inch long, but he fumbles at it regardless. Instinctively, she stops him, puts a hand over his hand, and he withdraws it obediently like a redirected animal. Now he is at his own zipper. It is suffocatingly hot, and the ground has begun to rock. More mysterious sounds drift over from the yellow tent—lower moans and strange barking noises. More than anything, Bethany does not want to go outside. She would rather be done with this and go to sleep right here. Whatever caused her to follow this man into this tent she doesn't remember, but now it is a job she has gotten herself into. It seems absurd, even funny, that she should put her face near this stranger's open zipper, a ridiculous posture for any person. But once she has consented, once she has begun, she realizes that she can't exactly, politely, just stop. Slowly, a tickle develops in her throat. It creeps down through her esophagus and grows, until she comes up for air, gasping. Chris puts a hand to the back of her head, pressing gently. She braces her hands on either side of his hips and takes shallow breaths. A drop of sweat falls from the tip of her nose. Unmistakable sounds of violent heaving are now entering the tent from outside. All at once a dirty wave swoons up in her and she retches and vomits in place.