Trecie nods her head. I wonder if it’s a mistake, if I’m crossing some sort of boundary—my own—but I’m not clever enough to think of another way.
“Would you like to see my flowers?”
She smiles. Her cheeks seem almost full and there’s the implication of a dimple along her chin. In this cold room, on this cold night, I begin to feel an ember of hope glow within me.
CHAPTER TEN
Her presence, inches away as I fumble with the lock to my patio door, is oddly comforting. It’s near six, night falls early this time of year, close to four o’clock, yet she seems in no hurry to be anywhere but with me. I wonder if she’s hungry, how long it’s been since her last meal. There’s fruit in my refrigerator, a splash of milk, and some cheese. There are crackers in the pantry, along with a box of cereal, and a can of soup in the cabinet. That’s all. A roast? Sliced carrots in dill sauce? Twice-baked potatoes? I should have brought her to Alma’s kitchen instead. If only they were home.
“It’s so pretty,” Trecie says, stepping into my living room, her face aglow.
I look at the simplicity of my space and wonder what about it could be attractive to a child. There’s nothing bold about the colors or style of furniture. No whimsical mementos to enchant the eye. But there is a general softness to the textures, a bland palette that’s restful. And the greenery always warms me.
She pushes past me and walks over to the bookcases. Her fingers glide along the spines of the hardcovers as she walks the length of the shelves. “You have a lot of books.”
“Do you like to read?” I scan my memory for something appropriate I could share with her. I wonder if she’s too young for the collection of Nancy Drew I keep tucked away on my bedroom shelves. Nancy, Bess, and George were my only friends in the early years. I bought the complete collection with my first paycheck from Linus.
Trecie lingers over a Sibley Guide to Birds. “I don’t know how.”
“You can take that if you like,” I say, motioning to the book. “It has lovely pictures.”
It’s too much to contemplate the entirety of this girl’s life. When I first went to live with my grandmother, she enrolled me in the local elementary school. My vagabond life with my mother hadn’t included classrooms and children my own age. With their colorful lunch boxes and sensible department store clothes, my classmates appeared to be characters from the picture books Mrs. Morrison read aloud to us, books the other kids could already read on their own. Trecie’s prison is even worse than I first realized; it seems her only escape is this underworld of mine.
I feel like a tomcat stalking a flightless chick, every muscle flexed, every movement stilled. “Aren’t they teaching you to read at school? Where is it you go?”
She stops fingering the book and walks toward the kitchen. “I don’t go to school.”
I remain motionless. “Does your mom home-school you?”
Trecie stops and turns to me, smiling. Her face is wan, reminding me of Mrs. Molina offering her prayers to me. Between us my ficus wilts in its corner, and I reach for a leaf. How did it grow yellowed at its edges without my noticing? Its roots must be straining along the sides of the ceramic pot, a mass of guts rolled into themselves at the bottom. I’ve neglected it; without attention, a larger container and fresh soil, a chance to stretch beyond it limitations, it will smother and die.
“Do you have any pictures of when you were a child?” she asks.
“Sorry.” There are no baby books, no detailed records of my first steps or first words, no school pictures marking my life through the years with adoring captions underneath. I pluck the leaf from the tree and put it in my pocket. Tomorrow I’ll go to the nursery.
“What did you look like?” Trecie’s standing so close now, this wisp of a girl, and I feel in every hair and fiber just how much she yearns for me to reach out and lay my hands upon her head, cup her chin, give her a careless hug. Something playful and affectionate. I finger the leaf instead.
“I don’t really know. My hair was long, like it is now, just as dark, but thinner. I was always small for my age, I guess, skinny. In the summer, I’d turn brown as a nut.”
“Like me.”
“Yes, I suppose I looked a lot like you.”
She tilts her face and she is beautiful. Without intending to, my arms begin to lift, reach of their own volition for her, but then she takes a step backward and hurries toward the other side of the living room, swiveling her head as she moves. I wrap my arms around myself instead.
“Can I see the flowers now?”
Yes, of course, the flowers.
No one has seen my secret garden. Well, that’s not true. I asked Linus and Alma’s permission before starting construction, and when the greenhouse room was finished, they brought me the ficus to celebrate. But I intended the room for flowers. Once they left, I moved the ficus to my living room, where it could thrive against my bookcase, exposed only to filtered light, where it could weep its teardrop leaves in private.
Linus insisted on sharing the expense, since it increased the value of his property, but I refused. An undertaker makes a healthy living, and I’ve nothing else to do with my savings. Initially, Alma would stop by with lemon bars and her desire to help with my flowers. Sometimes I’m stricken when I think of how I discouraged her, never even inviting her in for a cup of tea. Still, I don’t try.
My garden is tucked away off the lone bedroom, in the back of the cottage, where a wall once obscured the southern light. It’s not something a guest passing my room would notice; no, one must be present to see it. And if for some reason a repairman needs access, I have the option of obscuring it with drapes. My bed is positioned with a view of the glass doors across the room leading to the greenhouse. On clear days, both rooms are bathed in sunshine. No one can see my garden from the parking lot, hidden as it is by the fence and privet that encircle my side yard. I doubt even Trecie has noticed it in spite of her prying ways.
I stumble over the edge of my bedroom area rug, steady myself against my chest of drawers. Trecie’s eyebrows lift and she reaches for me without actually touching. Having her walk through this room with its odd assortment of tag sale furniture and plain white bedding, with books lying askew across my pillows, a robe cast off onto an upholstered chair, more bookcases . . . It’s too intimate a step. I usher her over to the French doors and move aside the drapes as my hand searches in the dark for a light switch. I leave behind my anxiety when the bulbs catch and we step into my haven. I can’t help but look at her face when, after several seconds, her eyes adjust.
“It’s beautiful,” she gasps.
Though it’s a simple structure of sheer glass and a fieldstone base, it houses wonders. Like the prep room in the funeral home’s basement, there are drains in the tile floor. Here they’re for water to nourish my flowers. Here, bright lights nurture growth and warm the living. In this room, the scents are only kind: rolling waves of citrus and butter, wet sugar and subtle musk, the promise of contentment. Instead of the thermostat being set at an intemperate fifty-five to prevent further decomposition, in my greenhouse it’s an ardent eighty-three for seeds to compose themselves into roots and stems; leaves and buds; and then blossoms of petals or spathes, and the comely pistils. This room favors life.
In the far corner is a galaxy of dazzling sunflowers (you are splendid). In another, with a filter covering the glass panel above, is a party of elegantly dressed orchids (flattery), frozen midwaltz, curtsying and bowing. On benches and along the floor azaleas, primroses, dahlias, aster, lupines, morning glories, pansies, asphodels, marigolds, narcissis, a color wheel of roses, daisies (a complete palette of gerber and the virgin white Shasta), cosmos, lilacs, and on and on, with only narrow pathways for me to navigate a hose. The one bit of true furniture is a potting table with my supplies. There are no chairs. I’ve found that when I’m here, I want only to wander, to touch and to marvel.
“Let’s close the door before the heat escapes,” I say.
Tre
cie begins to make her way into the room. Soon she turns the corner and is hidden by a cluster of lavender zinnias and Indian jasmine.
“Why did you do this?” I can hear her voice though no longer see her. She’s lost in the dense thicket.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Everyone has a hobby.”
“Which flower is your favorite?” Her head is now visible through towering hollyhocks (ambition), their cowbells pink, droplets of water still hovering in the flowers’ cuffs.
“I don’t think I could pick.” Overcome by my garden, I’ve forgotten why we’re here. I reach into my pocket for Mike’s card and instead find the leaf, a stark reminder of my carelessness for the lives in my charge. I wonder if he would be home on a weekend night or out somewhere, with someone.
“Just tell me.”
“I don’t know. Hydrangea, I suppose. Shasta daisies. Poppies are nice, but they wither so quickly.”
“Mine are the daisies. I like roses, too. Yellow ones.”
My guess is she chose the daisy and rose because they’re the only flowers she knows by name. She’s been given no education in life. She must recall the one of Mr. MacDonnell’s I let her keep. The one she left behind.
“Would you like a drink? Something to eat?” The chrysanthemums, all the way toward the back of the room, shudder; she must be kneeling there.
“No.”
“I’m going to get a glass of water. I’ll be right back.” I close the French door behind me, hoping she doesn’t mind, expecting she’ll be lulled by the serenity. The kitchen is just a bit away and I pull the card from my pocket as I hurry there. Reaching for the phone, I dial the number. He answers on the second ring.
“Mike Sullivan.” I can’t tell if I’ve disturbed his dinner out or roused him from a sandwich in front of the television.
I try to make my voice firm as I speak. “It’s Clara, Clara Marsh from the Bartholomew Funeral Home.”
“Yes, I know who you are, Clara.”
Is he smiling? The phone cord twists in my fingers, weaving itself into an intricate knot. “Trecie’s here. She’s at my house. Can you come get her?”
“Don’t let her leave. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” His voice becomes sharp, but still it reassures me.
When I hang up the phone, the cord snakes back into place. Looking to my fingers, I realize it’s not the cord at all, but my hair that’s knotted. I want to let go, gently uncoil the mass of kinks. I want to. But as I think of Mike driving here, imagining his hands on the wheel, what his profile would be like in the cabin of his car, I pull hard and moan. I brace myself against the counter until the panting quiets. Shoving it all into my sweater pocket—too much this time—I briefly finger the coarser strands. Later—right now I must hurry. I fill a glass from the tap, sloshing it onto the floor as I rush back toward my bedroom and the greenhouse beyond. I pause before opening the door to face her. Steadying my hand, I step into the greenhouse.
“Are you sure I can’t get you something?” There’s no response. “Trecie?”
I follow the paths around the room, looking under stands and pushing back flowers as I go. “Trecie?”
I’m at my potting table and place the glass there while I walk on. It feels as though the barometer has dropped; there’s that odd sense of stillness after a storm’s raged. I reach into my pocket for a reassuring touch, but the hair is no longer there. I’m at the French doors; I’ve come full circle. Though I call her name again, I know she won’t scamper out from beneath the gladioli. For now, all I can be certain of is that she’s gone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He’s a bull, pacing with nostrils flared, neck muscles bulging. My living room is too small to contain him. I lean against the wall, hoping to fade, but his anger—or his disappointment—commands me to stay.
“I’m sorry.” My wool cardigan is my terrapin shell. I pull myself into it, drawing the collar up along my neck, just over my chin, my hands receding into the sleeves.
“I know.” Mike’s feet pound back and forth along the floorboards, wrenching a moan from the same swollen plank with each pass. One hand is curled around the back of his neck; the other gestures as he speaks. He stops, looks at me, into me, and so I tuck my mouth under the wool collar.
His hands move to lie astride his hips. His voice is tight, each word carefully spoken, controlled. His complexion turns from its usual alabaster to a molten flush. “Where was the last place you saw her?”
I don’t want to share my secret garden with Mike. It’s enough that Trecie saw it. I don’t know what I expected, showing it to her. No, that’s not true. I expected my special place to be a wonderland for Trecie, too, that it would somehow ease her pain. I hoped that transplanted in that world, warmed by the lights and quenched by a fine mist, she would unfold, extend herself like a blossoming crocus.
But she didn’t, and now there isn’t a way to say no to Mike.
“Here,” I say, and feather-step my way to the bedroom.
I can feel him behind me, the heat radiating from his body. I slip deeper into my sweater as I reach for the light in my room. I walk across to the far side, keeping my eyes fixed on the French doors before me and not on the bed that blurs in my peripheral vision. I will him to do the same. The handle is suddenly in my hand and I pull it open, switching on the greenhouse lights.
“I left her in here.”
“Jesus,” Mike says. He pushes past me, a hand at the small of my back, before taking the two slate steps down into the greenhouse.
My teeth settle around my thumbnail, my gaze focusing on the corner of the floor nearest the slider. A garden spider with graceful legs rests among a scattering of fruit flies caught in its web. I wonder if the tiny flies are still alive and have simply tired of struggling, if they’re simply waiting for the spider to sink its trocarlike fangs into their rigid thoraxes and suck their lives away. After a certain point, they must welcome death, a preferable alternative to the angst of waiting for the spider to decide their fate.
“What is this?” Mike says, wending his way around the greenhouse, his gaze springing from my face to the flowers and then back again. He crouches to look under the gardening table, pauses to touch a dark red geranium (melancholy), and then continues on, watching me. “Are all these flowers for the funeral home?”
“No.”
“You just do this? For no reason?” He’s at the back of the room, finally turned away, jiggling the knob of the door that leads outside.
“She must have gone out that way,” I say, thankful for the distraction. It’s a simple door with a deadbolt and outer storm door. In the summer, I replace the Plexiglas with a screen, locking the main door when I’m away. At night, I like to lie in bed with the French doors open, listening to the peepers’ hopeful calls to lovers while a warm breeze flows through my greenhouse, carrying with it the cacophonous perfume of my garden.
Mike turns the doorknob and pulls, but the lock is set. “Was this open before?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe.”
“Where are your other exits?” He strides toward me, brushing aside a dense thicket of cosmos (longing), and walks headlong into my bedroom. I follow, closing the greenhouse door behind us. He seems larger here in this room. His reflection passes in the mirror that hangs over my chest of drawers, and it staggers me to have two of him so near.
“There’re only two exits,” I say, smoothing a wisp that’s come free of my ponytail. “That’s all the fire code requires.”
“Tell me again where you were.”
“I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, to call you, but wouldn’t I have seen her pass me?” I lead him through the living room and point to the French doors just off the kitchen. “How could I have missed her?” There were those moments of distraction; I don’t tell him. I can’t.
“She must have followed and heard you talking to me, slipped out while your back was turned. Unless . . .,” Mike says, looking around the sparsity of my living area, “she’s still
here. There’s no place for her to hide in this room. Have you checked all the closets, under your bed?”
I shake my head and he walks back toward the bedroom. “Wait,” I say. “I’ll do it.”
He nods as we make our way. I head for my closet and he moves back to the greenhouse. Pulling open the closet’s louvered doors, I know there isn’t a little girl hidden among my black suits and white oxfords. There are the usual three pairs of black loafers, but no soiled white sneakers with faded cartoon characters. I check under the bed, but only because Mike might be watching.
“Clara!” Mike left open the greenhouse door, and I can feel the warm air wafting out, carrying with it the fragrance of my garden. I hurry to him.
He’s standing at the back of the room, next to my rainbow of daisies. When he bends, only the crown of his head is visible behind the rows of flowers. I take the two steps down and stop when I reach the ruins he’s crouched over.
“Did you do this?” Mike picks up a Shasta daisy and holds it to me. There are more on the floor, an enormous bunch, all snapped from their planters with only shredded stems remaining in the soil.
“Trecie,” is all I can manage. It will take months to grow more.
“What the hell?” He sifts through the carnage and lifts a length of curls tied up with a stem. “Is this yours?”
No, though it could be. It’s long like mine, just as dark, and there are the familiar white tips where hair meets scalp. But this is finer, lovely. It can’t be mine. He must see the difference.
I can’t explain any of this to Mike, so I shake my head. He springs to my potting table, snaps free a plastic sandwich bag, something normally used for storing seeds, now meant for evidence. Mike tucks the sample into his breast pocket and strides back to me.
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