Sam didn’t want to think about all that went unsaid between him and Freddie, didn’t want to think about Freddie or Gloria or Rita, didn’t want to be reminded of the last time he drove, and now on the road with Claire cannot help but remember, again feels the blow he suffered when Freddie died; Claire’s silence, the driving, has left Sam vulnerable, sorrow grips him, twists a fist into his solar plexus, pains him the way it did for months after Freddie was gone, and rather than weep—he is on the verge—Sam forces himself to concentrate on the broken lines that separate his from the passing lane, on the engine’s sound, on the highway; at least this route isn’t familiar, he’s never been this far north, still can’t believe he agreed to leave the soup kitchen behind without knowing where he was going, where he’d stay, frets that he’s trusting this day and this evening and maybe tomorrow and the next two weeks to this woman who rides silently in the bucket seat next to him. It again strikes him hard that he has no idea of who she is, glances at her almost angrily; and although Claire doesn’t appear to notice, she reaches for her camera, leans back, raises it, quickly points it at him. Before his hand comes off the wheel to ward her off, she turns and focuses through the windshield, adjusts the lens but doesn’t click the shutter, simply keeps the camera to her eye. As though, he almost immediately comes to consider, to dismiss him.
They make one longish stop after the day is more than half gone, after they’d left the highway and were traveling secondary routes, Claire directing them through decaying mill towns, hamlets with the inevitable steepled church to one or the other side of the inevitable village green, seaside resorts whose arcades were already shuttered for the season. Inland, again, in a town that looked much like some they’d already passed through, she had Sam pull over and park before a bookstore he wouldn’t likely have noticed, as it was housed in a home replete with columns and porch and curtained windows, with only a small sign in its door window that announced used and rare books. Once inside, to Sam’s surprise, Claire asked whether there were any cookbooks; Sam had never consulted any, he’d learned what he knew from Leonard in terms of preparing simple meals for a hundred people a day, none of whom ever complained about what was put on their plates. They were led to one of the bookstore’s niches, where Sam watched Claire peruse old cookbooks, some of whose covers were leather, taking her time looking through the contents of several before choosing Goodwife Mullen’s Pilgrim Recipes—a reprint dated 1894—and paying what Sam considered to be a small fortune for it. After it was wrapped in brown paper and string, she carried it like a schoolgirl, crooked in one arm, with that camera slung over a shoulder. In a restaurant just steps beyond the bookstore, she led Sam to a back table and placed the book on her lap, the camera on the table next to her.
The place was dimly lit. She regarded Sam intently as she ate, as though she could see through those sunglasses he hadn’t removed, wouldn’t dream of removing. He tried to not be uneasy; his shades, he knew, were so dark she couldn’t possibly see that damaged, misshapen eye, but he avoided her gaze anyway and concentrated on his food, the coffee, eventually the camera on the table. You know, he remarked, you use that like a shield.
She paused in surprise, held her sandwich in midair, thought for a moment. Not really, she countered, though it’s true that holding a camera to the eye changes your relationship to whatever’s in front of you, you get to edit out everything except what you’re focused on, and that process creates a dissociation because you’re not part of any picture. Also true: it’s incredibly liberating, because the camera is like a window between you and anything taking place, and you’re responsible for nothing except deciding when or whether to press the shutter button. Every photographer I know admits that the act of photographing allows them to witness what at times they’d otherwise turn away from if they didn’t have a camera between them and what they’re seeing. When I’m looking through that viewfinder, I feel like I’ve been granted absolution, that I’ve granted myself absolution, that I’m no longer quite human. I might suffer what everyone else in the world does—loneliness, unrequited love, regrets—or be the happiest of sentimental slobs, but the moment I focus a lens, choose what to frame, I’m utterly freed from both past and future because I’m caught up in an instant that will never have either as soon as that shutter is pressed. I feel absolutely nothing when that happens, and when it’s over, I just want to repeat that perfect sensation of separation, of power, for at least a split second. This camera, she continued thoughtfully, is my addiction. Those shades—she gestured with her sandwich—and that eyepatch: those are shields.
When he didn’t respond—she’d turned the tables on him, and she wasn’t wrong—she smiled at him, and they finished lunch without speaking and returned to the car, continued wordlessly on. Her silence bothered him because it somehow beguiled—she wasn’t, he again realized, like any woman he’d ever known, she had no need to chat or banter or, like his mother, those high school girls, Gloria and Rita, annoyingly ask what he was thinking, a question that so infringed on what he considered to be the privacy of his thoughts that most of the time he replied he wasn’t thinking anything at all. Her silence chafed, but intrigued: it was all he could do to keep his mind on the driving, wondering as he did where they were going, when they would arrive, what arrangements had been made, why—while she’d made clear she didn’t want to be questioned—Claire trusted him to respect her wishes, ask nothing of her.
They headed back toward the coast, and when they finally swung on to an old highway that paralleled it, the sun was low, leaden, the light diffuse. He’d never encountered such a landscape, bog and marshland and forest stretching infinite from one side of the road, on the opposite the ocean heaving below cliffs and promontories, breaking upon rocky beaches and sandy coves and beyond dunes that sometimes allowed no more than a glimpse of the water’s distant horizon. Nothing was familiar, nothing evocative of his past, and although still somewhat unnerved, beguiled, bothered, Sam also felt relieved to suddenly realize that his past had stopped erupting, his memories kept at bay. Claire rolled her window down at that moment—the rush of air was bracing—and surprisingly mused aloud, as if she had read his mind, Reminiscence is such a curious thing: I know this place like the back of my hand, I can conjure at will every curve of this road, every dune and cliff and cove, but what I can never recall is the way the world here smells; that’s something no photograph, no memory, can re-create. And Sam didn’t respond, just breathed in the air’s bite and tang and felt the cold caress the back of his neck, his face and hands; and shortly after she rolled the window up she directed him inland again, through farmlands bordered by farrowed fields or overgrown pastures and finally through areas not as thinly populated, the rural outskirts of what he imagined must be a nearby town. The narrow roads became streets, and he slowed to stay within the speed limit, then slowed again when she warned him that they’d be pulling in to a driveway to the right, not a hundred feet on.
When he parked, Claire didn’t move right away, just stayed where she was and took in the bunker-like, two-story structure that had no windows, the high, solid wall that joined it. This, she said after a moment, is where Iris—my mother—lives. I’m not going to introduce you, but I’d appreciate it if you’d come with me as far as her patio. I’ll be only a few minutes.
The book, he said, as she got out of the car with that camera slung over her shoulder.
It’s not for her.
The door that led through the wall wasn’t locked, and he followed Claire through it. He hadn’t expected paradise, but this world unto itself—perfectly enclosed—presented a Babylonian autumn of manicured trees and bushes and grasses and flowers and herbs through which wound paved pathways that ended, at the far end of the garden, in a long leanto and what seemed to be a shed, while to one side of the main house with its patio and wisteria’d pergola and French doors, halfway down the garden’s length, stood a cottage with its own porch. The size of the spread, the loveliness of the house and cottage a
nd garden, so engrossed him that, looking elsewhere and everywhere, he bumped into Claire when she stopped in her tracks at the sight of a child whom Sam heard before he saw, the boy calling out Are you here to see Grandma? and coming toward them at a run. Sorry, Sam murmured to Claire, who turned to him with a puzzled look on her face that gave way to a frown because a girl—how young or how old, Sam couldn’t tell—suddenly rose from a crouch at the far end of the garden and began to raise a hand in greeting, then dropped it as Claire turned her back on her and the child, on Sam, and determinedly strode onto the patio of the main house and let herself in.
The boy stopped where he was then, a short distance from Sam. He toed something on the path, looked up at Sam, asked again: Are you here to see Grandma?
Nope, Sam said.
Why not?
I don’t really know her.
Oh, the child replied with a shrug, again toeing the path, first with one foot, then the other, before asking Do you want to see some rosehips? as the girl at the garden’s end called out Luke! twice, the child turning around and looking in her direction and then back at Sam. They’re really big, the boy said. Okay, Sam replied, and the boy moved off and Sam followed to where rosebushes heavy with hips were pointed out, Luke then telling Sam that his turtle had dug a home beneath the rock ledge behind the bushes. You can’t see him now, he said solemnly, because turtles sleep for a long time when it’s cold.
Does he have a name? Sam asked.
Yes, and he knows it. But even if we call him, he won’t hear us now. He can’t wake up until spring.
Well, he’ll be pretty rested by then.
Yes, the boy agreed, looking at Sam very seriously. How come your face is funny?
Luke, the girl said gently in admonishment, her voice startling Sam, for she was very close, had come upon them quietly. I’m so sorry—
It’s okay, Sam interrupted her, feeling the color rise to his face, seeing her blush as well. He’s not even four yet, she apologized, looking squarely at Sam, Sam having the queer feeling that she hadn’t noticed or wouldn’t ever notice his deformity; she wasn’t staring but just gazing at him shyly, and there was a quiet shyness to the way she held herself, placed her hands on Luke’s shoulders. She didn’t seem to him old enough to be the mother of this or any child. She was willowy in the way of some girls on the cusp of adolescence, gracefully gangly, long-limbed and loose-wristed; and her plain face was so flawless, the color of her eyes so remarkable because so pale, so indistinct, her expression despite that blush so serene, she seemed ageless, like those classic depictions of angels. My name’s Luke, the boy said, as though to clarify any misunderstanding, and Sam solemnly reached out and shook the child’s hand and replied, I’m Sam. June, was all she said by way of introduction, but she extended her hand and Sam took it and something passed between them, or into him, and he felt himself so unsettled that he forgot to let go, and for an odd moment he, they, stood there like former lovers who were amazed to have found each other again. And then she broke the spell, her blush deepening, cupped Luke’s chin and looked down at him and said, C’mon now, I need help breaking up the squash vines before it gets dark, and the boy immediately spread his arms like wings and pretended to fly as he ran off down the path toward the back of the garden. Great kid, Sam said, but she was looking beyond him, and he turned to see Claire closing the door behind her and on the patio pausing, holding up a set of keys, indicating with a nod of her head the outside door and again ignoring June’s tentative wave. Sam said, Maybe next time, as June dropped her hand. He heard her soft Bye behind his back, caught up with Claire—who locked the outside door behind them—and got behind the wheel. He didn’t know whether there’d be a next time or why he’d said that to June, or why he wanted Claire to acknowledge the girl, the child; he never spoke impulsively and yet he had; he wasn’t one to fantasize and yet he might have imagined the current he’d thought, felt, had passed from her to him, back.
Claire’s expression was frozen, inscrutable, her body stiff with tension, her voice falsely modulated as she gave directions. He did not ask who the girl in the garden was, or the child who’d called Claire’s mother Grandma; if Claire even knew, she didn’t appear willing to acknowledge the existence of either, and that kept him from inquiring. They were on the road for less than half an hour, and before he’d cut the engine at the end of a long dirt drive that led to a farmhouse, Claire was out of the car and running toward the man who had stepped from the house and off the porch with open arms, catching her in an embrace that rocked them together solemnly until he pulled back to look at her, took her face in his hands, kissed her forehead as though in benediction, and then locked his arms around her again. They paid no mind to the dogs—both large, of indeterminable breed—that came from around back of the house and slipped through the split-rail fencing and circled the two joyfully, their harmless barking probably instigating the appearance of a pinto pony and dun-colored horse that appeared from whence the dogs had come and, aroused by canine ruckus, trotted to the fence where they stopped short and bobbed their heads—as if in agreement, or approval—over the topmost rail.
Sam waited where he was and exchanged the sunglasses for his eyepatch. The afternoon was already gone; if he were to drive much farther and at night, he’d have to do so with the patch up or take his chances without depth perception. He had no idea this was the end of the line until Claire and Oldman approached, Oldman quieting and shooing the dogs, his arm around Claire’s shoulders and hers about his waist until they reached the car and Oldman opened the door like a butler, Claire continuing to cling to him, saying, Oldman, Sam, Sam, Oldman. A handshake with Sam still behind the wheel, Oldman smiling broadly and telling him, C’mon, let’s get you both settled. And Sam took a moment to recover, both from the unwelcome realization that Claire had arranged for him, them, to stay in someone’s home, and from the shock of seeing that discolored scar that could in no way be ameliorated or hidden, streaking a lightning zigzag across Oldman’s face. Oldman had Sam’s duffel and Claire’s camera bag in hand before Sam got to his feet, and Claire, carrying a small suitcase, asked Sam in a whisper to reach in and retrieve the book. She didn’t look over her shoulder at the sound of him closing, almost slamming, the driver’s door.
Sam was settled onto a floor of his own, in a long, narrow alcove with two single beds that hugged the straight wall, a bureau between them; opposite the bureau a screened window sat within the steep slope of a beam-striated ceiling. He left his duffel unpacked, went back through the open landing whose walls were lined with bookcases, before which sat two armchairs—horsehide, Oldman had told him—each with a reading lamp. Across the landing, he entered what had been a master bedroom but was now what Oldman termed a museum; the walls were hung with old farm implements, bridle bits and horseshoes wrought for humongous creatures, wooden yokes, cowbells, tintype photographs; the furnishings included an adze-carved rocking cradle, a captain’s bed—its curved headrest and sculpted feet, and most likely its frame, of wrought iron, its mattress ticking stuffed with straw, its cover a hand-stitched quilt—and a rough-hewn rocking chair, one pedal-operated Singer sewing machine, a large oval-shaped rag rug, crocheted and knitted throws. The bathroom located off the museum room was, Sam realized, four times the size of the one in his—no, his brother’s—apartment: aside from the toilet, there was a tin bathtub, rigged for a shower as well as soaking; a porcelain sink set into what had once been a stand for a large washbasin; rough-planked shelves that held hatboxes, soaps, towels, stoneware water pitchers; free-standing towel racks.
He walked back to the alcove room, stood before the window. Leaves resembling whorling flocks of small misshapen birds spiraled sideways through the dusk’s graphite solidity, catching silently and stationary on the dark pasture grounds. Before long, night would press into being. Oldman had told Sam to come down—Claire echoing—whenever he wanted. But Sam didn’t want to socialize, couldn’t; he stood disoriented and ill at ease, tired; the driving, t
he memories, the halting, Claire’s silence, the driving on, this arrival: he hadn’t contemplated being settled in a home, he hadn’t come to know the woman he accompanied and had no idea who Oldman was. It’s his fault, he told himself, for convincing himself he could do Leonard this favor, and he couldn’t blame Claire for assuming—despite how alike he and Claire might be, each determined to remain unknowable, unassailable—that he’d be comfortable with a floor to himself, left to himself, left here. His fault, his fault: he didn’t know Claire well enough at all, hadn’t thought things through, and was now wrangling with how to admit that being here, in a stranger’s home, had flooded him with that deep sense of alienation he’d suffered when he first returned home from the hospital and realized himself stupefied, insensate, and for the longest time incapable of desiring anything other than nothingness.
The Girl in the Garden Page 14
