“He’s just some guy who’s living with us,” Connor told her. His face was burning hot, and he held his glass of lemonade up to his forehead.
“He’s gorgeous,” Lydia said, and when she saw Connor’s face fall, she almost laughed out loud. He felt the same way that she did, whether he knew it or not. “For someone his age,” she added tactfully.
Miriam Carson was pretty much saying the same thing to Robin as she sliced a pecan pie.
“His cheekbones,” Miriam whispered. “Those eyes.” She turned to Stephen and handed him a fork and a plateful of pie. “Slavic blood?” she guessed. “Ukrainian?”
Stephen balanced the plate in one hand and looked to Robin for help.
“The Midwest,” Robin said. “Napkin?” she asked Stephen, because the pie was still warm and the filling dripped over the edge of the plate.
Stephen had already begun to eat the pie, since it seemed that Miriam wanted him to. It was disgusting, pure sugar, but he had to chew what was already in his mouth and swallow it.
“I baked that,” Miriam told him.
“Ah,” Stephen said.
Robin forced herself to keep a straight face. As soon as Miriam went to look for more paper plates, she pulled Stephen aside, behind the mimosa.
“If you don’t like something you don’t have to eat it,” she said.
“No, thank you,” Stephen said, hesitant.
“Exactly,” Robin agreed.
Most of the neighbors were already there, including Stuart and Kay, who always surprised everyone with how good-natured they were toward each other since their divorce. George Tenney and Al Flynn were organizing a softball game, as they did every year, insisting the young people move their picnic blankets to give the ballplayers most of the yard, shouting at Matthew to fan the smoke from the grill in another direction.
Robin smoothed down the hem of her dress; she was actually a nervous wreck. In the past week, she and Connor had taken Stephen on several dry runs, to the bakery and the market and finally all the way to Westbury, where the fluorescent lights and the jostling crowds in Macy’s had driven Stephen into the try-on room in the men’s department. It had taken Connor twenty minutes to talk Stephen into coming out from behind the curtain to continue the search for a sports jacket. They all realized that it was Stuart who really mattered. If he didn’t recognize Stephen, if he accepted him as just another guest, then they had done their work well. Someday, long after Stephen disappeared, Robin planned to tell her brother the truth. The young man he’d met at the Dixons’ and the patient who’d been handcuffed and forgotten were one and the same. He had stood beside him in the sunlight, and Stuart hadn’t suspected a thing.
And now, just when it all seemed to be going so well they could almost relax, Robin saw her soon-to-be ex-husband’s shadow fall across the lawn. One thing she had never figured on was that Patty Dixon would invite Roy, but there he was, headed straight for the barrel of ice and beer, until he spotted Robin.
“Bad luck,” she said to Stephen. “Roy.”
He looked great, even Robin had to admit that. His dark hair was combed back; he had the same blue-green eyes as Connor and, to anyone who’d never been married to him, just about the best smile in the world. He joined them behind the mimosa tree and looked Stephen over carefully.
“Terrific party,” he said to Robin, and then, almost as an afterthought, “Who’s this?”
“Stephen.” The first introduction and it had to be with Roy. “He’s an exchange student.”
“Oh, yeah?” Roy said. “A little old for that, aren’t you?” Roy reached out to shake hands, and Stephen had to shift his plate of sticky pie. “Roy Moore,” he said.
His voice sounded friendly, but Stephen had the urge to back away from him. Stephen lowered his eyes, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t ready if he had to be.
“He’s studying horticulture with me,” Robin said.
“With you?” Roy laughed. “That’s a good one. My father will get a kick out of that.”
“Why don’t you get yourself one of those hamburgers?” Robin suggested to Stephen, but he didn’t move. “Why don’t you get one for Roy, too,” she urged him, wanting to keep him as far away from Roy as possible.
“You’re sure?” Stephen asked her. “That’s what you want?”
Of course it wasn’t, but Robin nodded, and then she smiled when Stephen looked confused.
“With ketchup,” Roy called with a big grin as he watched Stephen walk away. “Lots.” He turned to Robin. “You wanted to talk to me alone,” he said. “Should I be flattered?”
“I need money,” Robin said. “You know I hate to ask you.”
Roy took out his wallet and made a show of giving her all the cash he had. “Life would be a lot simpler and cheaper if I moved back,” he said.
Stephen was waiting his turn at the barbecue; there was a mourning dove in the tree above him, a spoiled foolish bird, used to eating bread crumbs and crusts. If Stephen slowly moved one hand in front of the dove, he could snatch it up in a second, before it could hop to another branch or spread its wings.
“Chicken or burger?” Matthew Dixon said. He was wearing a white apron which didn’t quite fit across his wide body and there were smudgy charcoal streaks on his arms.
Stephen held his plate out, but he was staring past the barbecue. Robin was leaning up against the trunk of the tree now; she tied the strand of pearls she wore in a knot. Fat dripped into the flames, and when the smoke turned black Stephen couldn’t tell whether or not she was smiling.
Robin had turned to wave to Michelle, who was on her way over with Paul and their twelve-year-old, Jenny. Robin had been avoiding Michelle for weeks, and now Michelle raised her eyebrows and pointed at Roy, as if there was a chance in hell they’d gotten back together.
“No way,” Robin told her, and they both laughed while Paul and Roy exchanged a look.
“How do they know what they mean without talking?” Paul said.
“Well, you know women have ESP,” Roy said.
“Extra spending power?” Paul joked.
Roy laughed and took the bottle of beer Paul offered him. “Whatever they’ve got, it’s definitely extra.”
“Is that cute guy the one who’s living with you?” Jenny asked Robin.
Roy turned to Robin; his face had gone so white he looked as if he didn’t have a drop of blood inside.
“Excuse me?” Robin said. She would have liked to give Jenny a good shake; instead she smiled and reknotted her pearls.
“The guy at the table,” Jenny went on. “He’s living at your house.”
They all turned to look. There was Stephen pouring ketchup on a hamburger bun. When he glanced up and saw them all staring, he immediately put the ketchup down. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to pour it straight from the bottle; maybe it was like mayonnaise, which Connor scooped out with a knife or a spoon.
“That’s what Connor told Lydia,” Jenny said. She took a step backward when Robin glared at her. “Is it supposed to be a secret?”
Robin quickly scanned the yard. Connor and Lydia were beside the forsythia. They hadn’t even noticed the bees swarming around them.
“Robin?” Michelle said.
“He’s a horticulture student,” Robin explained.
No one seemed convinced that this was an answer.
Roy nodded to a secluded corner of the yard. “I want to talk to you.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk to you,” Robin told him.
“Well, too fucking bad,” Roy said.
Michelle put her hands over Jenny’s ears. “Do you two mind?”
“Let me guess,” Robin said coldly to Roy. “You’re trying to charm me.”
“Don’t do this in public,” Michelle whispered to Robin.
“He’s living with you?” Roy said. “Am I hearing this correctly?”
“Are you speaking to me?” Robin said. “Or are you interrogating a witness?”
This was not at all the wa
y she had planned it; everything she said sounded suspect and weak. Michelle seemed insulted, as if Robin had somehow intended to cloud their friendship by keeping Stephen from her. And Roy simply wouldn’t let it go. People were starting to stare at them. Stuart and Kay were being drawn over by their raised voices. George Tenney had stopped in midswing, and was holding up the ball game so he could see what was going on. Stephen had already begun to walk toward them, carrying the hamburgers; even from this distance Robin could see how cautious he was.
“What I do is none of your business,” Robin informed Roy.
“Go get ice cream,” Michelle told her daughter. “Now.”
“See, that’s where I think you’re wrong,” Roy told Robin.
Stuart came up behind Robin, and when he touched her arm she was startled, even after she’d turned to him. He seemed so rumpled and middle-aged it took Robin an instant to realize this was indeed her brother, the boy she used to protect in the schoolyard.
“You two sound like you’re married,” Stuart said cheerfully. “We could hear you over by the dessert table.”
“We are married,” Roy said darkly.
“Well, there you go,” Stuart said, less cheerful now. “There you have it.”
“You don’t need to be rude to Stuart,” Kay said to Roy. She had just come back from a vacation in Mexico, and Robin noticed that she looked ten years younger than she had when she and Stuart were still married.
Stuart beamed, genuinely happy to be defended by his ex-wife. “Oh, don’t pay any attention to Roy,” he told her. “Nobody else does.”
“Let’s get ice cream,” Paul whispered to Michelle.
“And here he is,” Roy said. He was truly smooth when he wanted to be. There was that smile, for one thing. “The man who’s living with my wife.”
For a brief moment, Robin had the sense that something horrible could happen. Stephen’s eyes were hooded and cold; along his neck a line of veins rose up. He was face to face with Roy, and although his mouth was curled, he didn’t appear to be smiling.
“Hamburger,” Robin said. She took one of the plates from Stephen and shoved it at Roy. “This is Stephen,” she told Stuart. “He’s studying landscape design.”
Robin had drawn Stephen over to her brother, but he was still looking at Roy.
“Will you be working with the Doctor?” Stuart asked. “Roy’s father plotted out the arboretum for our grandfather.”
“I’m working with Robin,” Stephen said.
“You should come see the moon garden Robin did for me,” Kay suggested. Hers was an all-white garden: white hybrid tea roses, masses of white lilies and bearded iris, Miss Lingard’s icy phlox, clematis that opened to look like a handful of snow.
“Thank you,” Stephen said. Robin nodded at him, so he knew he was doing well, but his heart was pounding. “I will,” he told Kay. He could still feel the bad thing between him and Roy; if they were honest about it, they’d be circling each other right now. But men weren’t honest; they sipped beer and smiled and didn’t show their teeth.
“When did you plan to tell me about him?” Michelle whispered as Paul tried to guide her toward the dessert table.
“There’s nothing to tell,” Robin insisted. “Really,” she swore, but by that time no one was listening to her.
“Is the cat driving you crazy?” Stuart asked Stephen. “When I stayed at Robin’s the damned thing used to jump on me in the middle of the night. I’m convinced the sole purpose of its existence is to shed.”
“The cat doesn’t bother me,” Stephen said carefully. This was it, this small encounter was what they had practiced for. The true test, Robin had said, the real McCoy.
“You’re a tolerant man,” Stuart said. “Lemonade?”
And that was when Stephen knew they had actually accomplished it. Stuart had no idea that he’d talked to Stephen dozens of times in that room with bars on the windows. Just blink your eyes if you want to answer yes. Shake your head for no. All Stuart saw now was the sports jacket from Macy’s and the Nike sneakers and the sunlight, and what he saw he believed. Tell me anything at all, say one word, Stuart had pleaded, while Stephen sat across from him, in a hard-backed chair, considering how easy it would be to break his neck, then steal the ring of keys from his belt.
Bees buzzed around the pitchers on the table, and out in the rear of the yard a bat cracked against a ball and sent it flying. Robin glanced over at Stephen, pleased, as if their accomplishment had turned him, all at once, into the person he appeared to be on this one fine day in May. People all around them were talking, they sounded like birds, or water in a stream, unintelligible and constant. There were women in cotton dresses, and boys running through the new grass, and here he was, dressed like a man, accepting a tall glass of lemonade beneath a clear blue sky, more than a thousand miles from home.
In that first week of June, when the tide was so low that children went far out across the mud flats, collecting baskets of mussels, the roses bloomed all at once. People stopped at their own gates, openmouthed, surprised by the profusion in their own gardens. Everywhere on the island, roses spilled over lawns and climbed over rooftops, a glorious infestation. Thorns and brambles choked lawn mowers, allergy sufferers went crazy with sneezing, little girls complained they couldn’t sleep because the bees began buzzing long before dawn.
“It was the rainy winter,” the Doctor told Robin when he stopped by for a cup of coffee. The bed of his parked truck was filled with branches and canes; wasps hovered above the pickup. “The ground never froze,” he went on. But still he seemed puzzled; there was no real explanation. Usually, roses demanded more care than other plants; they were tricky and cantankerous and had to be coaxed into growing with bonemeal and lime. “So how’s business?” he asked.
“I’m sort of behind,” Robin said.
In fact, she’d hardly worked all spring, and if she wasn’t careful she’d have to borrow money from Stuart or, far worse, ask Roy for help again. Stephen was out in the yard now, practicing what she’d taught him about pruning back roses. She was afraid to do the job she knew so well; gardening was a gift, after all, and what was given might be taken away. She didn’t believe in bad luck or curses, but just in case, each time she found a toad in someone’s garden she made certain to set it free.
“It seems that I have a black thumb these days. I don’t know what to do about it.”
“It’s the divorce,” the Doctor said as he spooned sugar into his coffee. “Planning a divorce can kill a garden.”
“That’s a dreadful thing to say,” Robin chided him, although she secretly believed he might be right.
She made a face at him, the way she used to when he was working for her grandfather and she would annoy him until he shooed her away. It was, indeed, a dreadful thing to say, but the Doctor didn’t give a damn. He had recently celebrated his sixty-third birthday, and although he could still lift a magnolia out of the bed of his truck with no help at all, he figured he was now old enough to say whatever he pleased, whether or not it was true. As far as he was concerned, Roy had made a lot of mistakes in his life, and now he had screwed up the one thing he’d done right. “Have pity on him,” the Doctor suggested.
“I don’t think that’s what you’re supposed to feel for your husband,” Robin said.
The Doctor laughed and went to the sink to wash out his coffee cup. He would never have let a girl like Robin get away from him. The problem with Roy was that he was too good-looking. His mother, the Doctor’s wife, had been that way, too, and in the years before she died, she grew colder and more distant, shocked that the world hadn’t offered her everything she’d wanted just because she was beautiful.
“The boy’s doing a good job,” the Doctor said as he watched Stephen through the window.
Robin came over and lifted the edge of the curtain, then made herself look away.
“He’s not a boy.” She laughed.
The Doctor put his cup on the drainboard. His point exactly.
“How’s my grandson?” he asked on his way to the door.
“Sixteen,” Robin said. A word synonymous with moody, and getting moodier all the time. Connor had taken to going out by himself at night. He needed to think, he said. He needed to be alone, and there was no point in her waiting up for him. There was no need to worry about him drinking, he’d stopped completely, she could trust him on that. Occasionally Robin would catch him grinning, and when she’d ask what was so funny, he’d clam up. Whatever it was, it was a serious business, but one that delighted him all the same.
“Your punishment for having once been a teenager yourself,” the Doctor told her. “Everything we do comes back to haunt us.”
Later that day, when the Doctor was working over at the Morrisons’, he saw Robin’s truck go by. He felt bad about throwing the breakup with Roy at her. He should have told her there was no such thing as a black thumb; if you believed something would grow it would, plain and simple. Anyone who knew gardens knew that. The Doctor let Angelo and Jim finish up the yard work so he could go to the curb and watch where his daughter-in-law was headed. The Feldmans’ place, one of the first of the old shingled houses. This was a job the Doctor had turned down, since Cheryl Feldman took no one’s advice but her own, and that was hardly worth heeding. Robin somehow managed to tolerate even the most obnoxious clients, but then, she’d had plenty of practice with her grandfather. If a client insisted on pansies or gladioli, Robin would nod, then go ahead and plant one or two in among the masses of lilies and cornflowers she’d suggested in the first place. The Doctor had taught Robin well, and he was proud of her. As his helpers raked up the cut grass, he decided that he’d better have a long talk with his son. He’d better do it soon, maybe as soon as tonight, because even from this distance, the Doctor could see that fellow who was staying with her didn’t mind the thorns on the Feldmans’ roses. He wouldn’t notice the blood on his hands.
Second Nature Page 6
