The Girl in the Garden

by Melanie Wallace

  Have you known him a long time?

  Just a few days.

  Oh, she says.

  Oldman is my friend, Luke remarks in great seriousness.

  You’re very lucky, Sam tells him. And the boy lets his hand wander, traces Sam’s eyepatch, his scarred skin and shattered cheekbone, the face no one has touched since Rita, Sam unmoving beneath the child’s gentle touch and immobile thereafter, June holding her breath, her tongue—she’d almost said Luke, don’t, but thought better of it because Sam hadn’t reacted, hadn’t recoiled—until Luke drops his hand. When she found her voice, she asked if Sam wanted coffee or tea, but he said no thanks, it was nice to just sit in front of a fire, telling Luke that he didn’t have a fireplace and that where he was from, most people didn’t, then laughed when Luke responded, That’s all right.

  They sat for a long time without speaking. And maybe, June found herself thinking, this is what it could have been like had Ward not been who he was, if he had wanted the baby, if he had wanted to work things out and stay for Luke’s sake: they could have managed the empty spaces between them, could have loved Luke if not each other; she’d never learned to be demanding, would never be because she saw herself as neutral, passive—it was safer that way, she’d learned that early on—and thought she could have been content to be unloved if only Ward had made a go of it for their child’s sake. She can no longer remember exactly what Ward looked like, recalls him in a fractured way, knows his eyes were gray and that his chin was cleft, his hair straight, his fingertips blunt; there was a blue-black tattoo of a snake curled around a cross on his right forearm, but the whole of him is now beyond memory, for which she’s become grateful, there’s a softening to loss that occurs over time, people still living but gone fading away like the dead; and she gazes into the fire and thinks to summon the faces of those who’ve passed out of her life but can’t, Auntie and her mother are shadows, June can’t conjure them or Bo or his kind girlfriend or the college dropout. And she’s never dreamed them; her dreams—when peopled, which is seldom—are of strangers she has never met, never known, who are oddly incidental and remain speechless and hold no meaning for her. Not unlike this stranger holding Luke, who’s lost to his own thoughts, perhaps his own past; she has no way of knowing and doesn’t ask and is pleased that he hasn’t tried to engage her in any way, she doesn’t know how she’d talk about what she was thinking, she’s never known how to talk to any man but Oldman. When she finally stirs, she glances over at Luke, sees that he’s asleep—how translucent, how fine, a child’s eyelids, a child’s skin—and whispers: Let me take him from you, he must be heavy, but Sam shakes his head slightly, shushes her. And they remain like that, June in one armchair, the boy sleeping and Sam holding him in the other, the fire diminishing and the daylight waning, until Claire knocks on the door and opens it, enters before June is on her feet to flick on the light, closes the door behind her as Luke starts, squirms in Sam’s arms, looks in surprise at the stranger who says: I’ve come to talk about Iris.

  Luke slides off Sam’s lap, stands beside him. Is she your grandma too?

  No, Claire says, but I’ve known her all my life.

  Me too.

  I’m going to be staying with her for a while.

  Why?

  Because I want to.

  Me too.

  Me first, Claire tells him, and Luke frowns in confusion, leans back against Sam’s thigh, looks at his mother. But Claire is already speaking quietly to June, not explaining the situation but stating simply that she—Claire—would appreciate June’s cooperation, that what she—Claire—needs is for June to leave Iris to Claire. And, no, Claire can’t say for how long. And, yes, she knows that Iris and Luke are together every morning; as a matter of fact, Iris has insisted on continuing to see the child although she’s agreed to limit his visit to an hour each day, from ten to eleven. I’ll come for him and bring him back, Claire tells her, beginning tomorrow.

  And there’s nothing I can do—

  You could help Sam find his way to Oldman’s—actually, Oldman said you’d be doing him a favor by having dinner there—and then guide him back here. Oldman will put my things in the car, Sam, to drop off here. I won’t be needing the car, by the way.

  And then Claire is gone, Sam rising and saying, Well, it’s true, I could use some help finding my way to Oldman’s if you wouldn’t mind. And June wasn’t sure whether she did; she was disturbed by Claire’s brusque manner, felt threatened by this sudden interruption, perhaps even the cessation, of the rhythm her life—and Iris’s, and Luke’s—had, until this moment, flowed with. She barely recovered her equilibrium at Oldman’s, despite the fact that he acted as though nothing were out of the ordinary, riposting that Sam, despite being a soup kitchen cook, was a natural, and that if he’d only stay he and Oldman would be able to work through, in the order in which they were presented, the 102 recipes in the Pilgrim cookbook Claire had given him. Enough recipes to see winter through, Oldman told Sam.

  You can’t be serious, came Sam’s response. I mean, how long does winter last here?

  A good while, Oldman said. Seriously, it’s a monster you have to make room for, there’s no keeping it at bay. Some years it snows and snows, and every year the cold seems deeper. Strange to say, I missed that in Europe. And Oldman went on, as they were eating, to tell them how stunned he’d been to find the French side of the English Channel verdant in winter, how the myth of Demeter and Persephone was stood on its head in that northern clime; not that it wasn’t cold, there were the incessant rains, the damp, the winds, those buffeted clouds and wild seas, but no snow, no freeze, no likeness to the winters here. And Sam reflected aloud that it was hard to adjust in Nam, that there were the monsoons and then no rain at all—those were the seasons—but the worst was, there were no dawns or dusk, just twelve hours of light and then twelve of dark, with about two minutes of gray between the two.

  Huh, Oldman commented. Claire said exactly the same thing.

  She was there? Sam asked. And June noted the incredulous expression on Sam’s face, the surprise in his voice, and for the first time wondered how well he and Claire knew each other.

  On a junket for journalists, Oldman replied, organized by the powers that be to prove god knows what, that we were winning? that we weren’t losing? Claire hated the whole show, chafed at having her hands tied, despised the patent propaganda, but at least it made her reconsider what she was doing, what she wanted to do, because toward the end of the tour they were herded into a U.S.-run hospital for the South Vietnamese—she described the place as jarring, because most everyone there, including kids, had terrible wounds, horrible burns, missing limbs—and that, she said, got her to thinking about tracking down GIs recuperating in VA hospitals around the country. No one was paying them much mind, and when her editors nixed her suggestion that the paper do a story on them, she decided to quit. And then went out on her own, taking the portraits that became her first solo exhibit, War Wounded. Which, actually, I thought was a terrible idea until I saw what she’d done. There’s a dignity, a gravity—

  I know what gravity is, Luke interrupted.

  Luke, June interjected, it’s not polite to speak when—

  You do? Sam asked Luke.

  It’s why we don’t go floating off into the air.

  And why we fall down instead of up, Sam added, Oldman catching June’s eye and June suddenly realizing that Sam was relieved by Luke’s interruption, that his scars, that eyepatch, weren’t the result of an accident, which is what she’d assumed, for she’d never met anyone who’d been in a war that hadn’t started and ended before she was born. Oldman motioned for her to stay seated as he scraped his chair back and stood, began to clear the plates, but she rose as well and tousled her son’s hair as he tried to best Sam by coming up with more and more outrageous examples of gravity’s meaning, Sam relaxing back in his chair, Sam relaxed again, Sam suggesting that he and Luke take themselves into the other room unless Luke wanted to help wit
h the dishes. Next time it’ll be your turn, Oldman told the boy, and June said: Go on.

  They worked side by side, June drying. Oldman finally asked whether Claire had spoken to her.

  Not for very long. Only to say she’d be staying with Iris and wouldn’t need my help.

  You okay with that?

  She shrugged, hesitated, confessed: A bit confused. I mean, she doesn’t know how much help Iris actually needs. She didn’t ask me that, didn’t give me the chance to tell her.

  Iris will tell her.

  Iris doesn’t always remember, Oldman. It’s not just a matter of watching that she doesn’t fall. Iris can mistake a tube of anything for toothpaste, and I’m not sure she can tell hot from cold unless she sees steam, and she can barely manage to be on her feet except with a walker or cane or someone to steady her; her balance is gone. Will she tell Claire that, will she say anything? We’ve never spoken about what I do for her, she’s never asked anything of me, and if she doesn’t tell—

  Claire will manage. And she needs to be with Iris.

  For how long?

  I don’t think she knows. Until certain things between them are settled. Or maybe just broached.

  In the meanwhile, what should I do?

  Just leave them alone. Maybe show Sam around, go for drives. He doesn’t know the area, doesn’t know anyone here.

  I don’t know him either. I couldn’t possibly—

  I’ve told Sam to suggest it.

  She wiped her hands, placed the dish towel on a rack. I wouldn’t know how to be with him, wouldn’t know what to say.

  Just be yourself.

  June shook her head. Oldman reached for her wrists, held them, smiled. You’d be doing me—and Luke—a favor. With Sam around, the boy won’t be upset at not being able to run off to Iris’s a dozen times a day, and I’ll be able to cook to my heart’s content. It’s not often I have a guest every evening, and I intend to take full advantage of the opportunity.

  So he’ll be staying with you.

  He’s more than welcome, especially now that Claire isn’t here. I’d forgotten what it was like to have people stay, to hear footsteps and water running and feel someone else’s presence, to look forward to long conversations in the evening and early-morning greetings. I know I’m being selfish, but I’ve considered that if you showed him around, he’d likely be steered back here evenings rather than elsewhere.

  I’m sure he’d steer himself back, June said as Sam carried Luke into the kitchen, the boy’s arms around Sam’s neck and his head resting on Sam’s shoulder. I think someone’s tired, Sam said, but he shook his head as June approached, told her, I’ve got him. Oldman accompanied them to the car and put Claire’s things into the trunk as Sam placed Luke in June’s lap after seeing her into the car. Behind the wheel, he said, Don’t tell me the way, and he drove silently through the night, navigating thoughtfully, taking his time, and June felt easy with the silence, the untrafficked going. He touched Luke’s foot once, glancing at her, and she saw that he’d flipped the eyepatch up over his brow, glimpsed for the first time the enormity of the damage done to him, saw him fight the urge to duck his head, then turned his full attention again to the road. They didn’t speak, and he didn’t make one wrong turn. He pulled into Iris’s drive and braked, readjusted the eyepatch, then let the engine idle with his hands on the wheel and not looking at her, just gazing straight ahead, finally taking a deep breath and exhaling, saying, So Oldman says that we—you, me and Luke—should go for a drive tomorrow.

  And what do you say?

  I’d like that very much.

  Okay.

  Okay, he echoed, cutting the engine and lights as Claire came through the door. He told June to wait as he got out, and Claire said she didn’t need any help, hoisted her camera bag over a shoulder and carried her valise, half raised a hand in farewell before disappearing. He shut the trunk quietly, took Luke from June, and followed her into the garden and across a path illumined by the squares of light pooling through Iris’s upstairs windows, June thinking So Claire is staying upstairs, of course she must be, realizing too how long it had been since Iris had moved into the downstairs bedroom and how June had missed the glow from that second floor, the way light seeped from the windows to spill ghostly shapes on the ground. The night was moonless, starless, and June didn’t put on the porch light or the inside overhead, instead motioned for Sam to wait on the threshold as she went through the cottage and climbed into the loft and switched on a lamp next to her bed, then came down again, whereupon Sam placed the boy on the daybed. They undid the laces of his shoes, and she crooked Luke’s knees and rolled him onto his side and covered him with an afghan throw. Sam stood close to her, perhaps too close, for as she straightened she brushed against him and they each took a step back from the other, June bringing her hands behind her back and Sam standing with hands dangling, pensive, as if about to speak, and then Claire was at the door they hadn’t shut and Sam moved, herded her away from the porch and back to Iris’s house, their voices low and their heads bent toward each other when they stopped, June watching their hands meet as Claire passed him what June later realized were keys before Claire disappeared into the darkness of Iris’s downstairs and closed the door behind her. Sam turned back toward the cottage, halted before June on its porch, looked off and then at her, looked at his feet, shuffled a bit. So, he finally said, how’s noon tomorrow?

  Good, she said.

  Good, he echoed. And then he moved toward June, placed his unscarred cheek against one side of her unblemished face for a second, two, before straightening and telling her good night.

  Iris

  ALTHOUGH IRIS CHAFED at having Luke for only an hour each morning and missed June, she didn’t say as much to Claire. There was something in the way Claire watched her with the boy that made Iris suspect her daughter wondered whether Iris had ever been as loving with her, and Iris was not unaware that Claire was methodically rummaging through the upstairs each night after Iris went to bed and was, supposedly, asleep: but sleep did not claim her easily now that she wasn’t alone, although Iris did not mention that either. And had decided she wouldn’t, even if she could have said whether she suffered sleeplessness because she’d been alone for so many years that she was now incapable of adjusting to anyone else’s footfalls and rustlings and breathing, or whether her insomnia and intermittent wakefulness were specifically caused by Claire’s undeniable and intense presence.

  She merely told Claire, after several days of her daughter’s company, that she saw no reason for her to continue staying with her. They’d seen each other. Iris had said what she’d wanted to tell Claire in person: All of this, everything I have will be yours, but I’ve altered my will slightly and left something to June and the boy. Duncan—who will, of course, be the executor of the estate—has a copy for you. That, and: Until you sell the place—which is what I expect you’ll do—please allow June to continue living in the cottage, if she so chooses, in return for keeping up this house and the garden. And: There’ll be no funeral: Duncan has instructions as to how to dispose of my ashes.

  Claire made no response, just studied Iris silently with those dark eyes and inscrutable gaze that disturbed. Iris suspected it masked either calculation or consternation, and so decided to say more than she had. I am going to die soon, to my own relief, she informed Claire, and I’ll die here. I will not consider going into a nursing home or abide help here, I don’t want strangers in my house, it’s enough that June watches over my deterioration without making a fuss.

  And if I stayed, Claire said.

  You have no reason to. You never did.

  And Claire didn’t tell Iris I had a reason, I had the only reason I ever needed, but Duncan wouldn’t say the word; instead, she replied evenly: Actually, I do. I want to talk about Matthew.

  I don’t, Iris said, and I won’t.

  There was no rejoinder Claire could or would make. But she didn’t leave, and Iris grudgingly grew used to her presence—wh
ich was so unlike June’s; that girl was like a shadow, ethereal—and remained stalwart in her struggle to get through each day, to do as much as she could on her own, not protesting when Claire began to photograph, document, Iris’s rising and dressing, her use of the walker, her tremors, the way soup spilled from her spoon, the way food dribbled from her mouth, the way she slumped for long hours in an armchair facing the garden she could no longer walk through, walk into, work in. Claire did not spare Iris her privacy: she followed Iris into the bathroom, photographing her while she sat beneath the shower in a plastic chair to wash and rinse herself; and Iris succumbed to this intrusion, she who had never before been naked before her daughter. The beads of water pained Iris, and she pitied her now long-unfamiliar body, with its wasted muscles and large joints—Claire saw her mother’s shoulder blades and hips as angular protrusions seemingly about to break through skin; her spine as an unevenly strung set of knobs pushing out—and her planed belly, flattened chest, those tremulous limbs, gnarled with veins, that had become thinner than her elbows and knees. Nude, Iris no longer recognized, refused to recognize, herself, and so it did not matter that Claire witnessed and recorded the most private ritual left to her, for hidden from Claire’s lens were the pain and Iris’s self-pity. These, Iris kept safe within her.