The Garden of Lost and Found

by Dale Peck

  “It was so thin. She was always trying something to give it more body, henna and hot oil and sheep placenta and all that eighties shit. And the dye jobs. You cannot believe.”

  I thought about that—about the two shampoos and the three conditioners and the letter in the center drawer of the desk downstairs, and I thought of the thick black brush of K.’s hair. I had kissed that hair last night, I had actually licked the hair of the man who might very well be—

  “Jamie,” Claudia said, leaning forward and, itch ivy or no, catching both my hands in both of hers. “I want to make a deal with you.”

  “A deal.”

  “I’ve been coming here all my life, I know every nook and cranny in No. 1 like the back of my hand.”

  “The back of your hand.”

  “You can keep it. I don’t want it, whatever it is. I just want to live here.”

  “You want to live here.”

  “Jamie.” Claudia squeezed my hands tightly. “I’m thirty-two years old. I never thought I’d be thirty-two years old. Still living at home, still dating the same deadbeat Reggie Packman, still going out every night to some smoky club and taking a hit off whatever comes round my way. I am thirty-two years old. Don’t you think I can do better than that?”

  Her voice had taken on a pleading tone, as if she didn’t understand what she was saying and maybe I could explain.

  “But Claudia, we don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

  Claudia smiled slightly. She had heard it too. Not don’t know, but we.

  “Of course we do. We’re looking for buried treasure.” She sat back, settled her hands on her stomach. “I want to keep this baby, Jamie. I thought you of all people would understand that.”

  I looked at her until her gaze broke and her hands reached for the doilies and wadded them even more violently than they had before.

  “Tell me one thing, Claudia. No games, just give it to me straight. What would happen to Nellydean if I sold to Sonny?”

  “Sold?”

  “The building, Claudia, the building.”

  Claudia didn’t answer immediately. Then, shrugging, she picked up a circular doily and held it by its center. Folds of lace fell away from her hand in a loose cone and she twirled it in her fingers like a dress. Like Nellydean’s dress.

  “I mean, look at her,” she said, twirl-twirl. “The woman is, what…seventy-one? Eighty-one? Sometimes I think there’s nothing holding up that dress but these walls.” Claudia let the doily fall to the arm of the chair, silent and flat. “She doesn’t have any kin but me. No family, no money, nowhere to go. This building is her life.”

  “James!”

  The voice floated up from Dutch Street, tapping at the window like a lover’s pebble. And I sat in a pool of sweat in a dusty chair looking at Claudia, who sat in her own sweat and dust, and now it seemed as though her shod foot was the maimed one, its high heel tapping the floral carpet like a peg leg, but silently.

  “James!” the voice cut in again, more distinct now, distinctly masculine. Claudia sat silently as if she’d lost the conversation’s thread, twirl-twirl, tap-tap, and when the voice came a third time—“Ja-ames!”—she said,

  “Are you gonna see who it is?”

  I used my hands to sluice swirls of pink and brown sweat down my arms and legs and listened as the drops, unlike her heel, made audible plops as they stained my mother’s carpet.

  “I already know who it is.”

  “Whatever. Jesus Christ, you can be so obscure sometimes.” Claudia limped to the window on her single shoe and opened it wide. She poked her head out and pulled it back in. “It’s a man.”

  “I know that.”

  Claudia poked her head out again, pulled it back in again. “He looks kinda cute from here. A little old for you maybe, but cute.”

  “Maybe.”

  This time she let her head stay out. “He’s got flowers,” she said, then in a louder voice: “He’ll be right down! He’s got to change his clothes!” To me she said, again, “He’s cute. A little old for you, but cute.” She didn’t say old enough to be your father, but it didn’t matter. K. had told me that part himself.

  Johnson Montgomery Croft’s linen clothes, thick durable things that they were, hadn’t dried yet, which is why I met K. still wearing the uni-short. I looked at him, at his black hair, neatly combed, at his gray eyes, not so neatly focused, at the neat line of his buttondown shirt tucked into his belted khakis, but I didn’t see flowers anywhere. Only the Times, coned around the day’s bad news like a megaphone.

  “Claudia said you had—”

  “Bye, Jamie! I’ll see you tonight!”

  I looked up to see her waving from the window, then she disappeared.

  When I turned back to K. his face was practically on top of mine, and I jumped back before he could kiss me.

  “Why didn’t you come in?”

  “That old lady? Nellydean? She said I should just holler.”

  We walked north, east, north again. As we walked K. brushed my hand with his, and I had to tell myself it was okay. It was completely chaste I told myself, but when he steered me into a deep alcove in a deserted street and began kissing me the only thing I could tell myself was Don’t run. K. stepped back, looked at me funny, and some urge I didn’t examine too closely made me pull him close again. But I steered his face to one side and just held him, my cheek next to his, the double thump of our hearts beating off each other.

  Again K. backed away, and this time I saw the pink smears on the arms of his shirt.

  “Oh shit. Calamine lotion, sorry.” But K. was still looking at me with a skeptical expression, and I realized it was my outfit he was staring at. I said, “I had to wash my other clothes.” I mustered my best spooky voice: “Violence was in the air on Dutch Street last night.”

  K. laughed and shook his head. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I could hear it in his tone: confusion of course, but beneath that indignation, possessiveness, protectiveness. K. was playing a role as much as I was. He was playing the man, and I, eager to oblige, played the boy. But even though I threw myself into the part I still gave him an edited version of last night’s events—by which I mean I edited out Justine and told him simply that Sonny Dinadio had left me alone after roughing me up a bit—and from there I ended up giving him an edited version of No. 1’s history, by which I mean I left out my mother’s treasure, real or imaginary, and told him simply that Sonny Dinadio had offered to buy No. 1 and that if I didn’t sell then the building would probably be seized for back taxes, but that if I did sell Nellydean would end up on the street. As I spoke I could sense K.’s protectiveness give way, first to incredulity, then to belief, then to something that was probably just greed. Not avaricious money lust, but the simple if base fascination with the prospect of unearned—undeserved—wealth. By which I mean his first question was:

  “How much did he offer?”

  “Enough,” I said, waving the question away, although for the first time I found myself wondering how much he had offered.

  “But James, this sounds like the opportunity of a lifetime. You could sell the building, get yourself out of the city. The lot alone must be worth millions.”

  “I just got here.”

  “And look where it’s gotten you.”

  “To a dingy alley with some dirty old man pawing at me?”

  K. laughed a little, but uneasily, and he neatened the line of his trousers as we started walking again. “It must seem fascinating.” He tapped his paper. “Fun City: murder, thugs, and of course your own proclivities toward adventure. But I’m telling you, James. New York is a cut flower. Its days are numbered. You should really consider this offer seriously.”

  “Didn’t you say you were thinking of moving away?”

  “I am thinking about moving away.”

  “You’re also painting your apartment.”

  “I am also painting my apartment. What do you think of something brown fo
r the bedroom?”

  I thought it sounded like shit but I didn’t say that. Instead I said, “Millions?”

  K. actually licked his lips. “I’m not a broker or anything, but I’d say at least five. Probably a lot more.”

  I saw then that we’d come to another bridge: the Manhattan, here and there blue or gray but mostly rusty brown, and as we looked at one of the city’s emergency exits I said, “Where would you go? If you left?”

  “Not that way. Long Island’s a fishbowl like Manhattan. It’s just a little bigger.” K. turned and pointed with a finger whose line curved over the city like a shooting star. “Up there. Upstate.”

  “That’s still New York, right? Just further up the Hudson?”

  K. looked at me. “Are you kidding?” But he saw I wasn’t, and he said, “Can I show you something?”

  “Sure,” I said, and some time passed, and we were in the Metropolitan Museum of Art looking at a painting by someone called Sanford Gifford. It was all blues and grays and browns, some green, some gold, some red too, but mostly blues and grays and browns. It was trees under a big sky, a little white house under the trees, a mountain in the background that looked a lot like God. It was about ten inches wide and six inches tall, and it was so real it was hard to believe in—so real I wanted to stand in it, to test the truth of what it depicted. And of course it was the same colors as K.’s apartment, the same colors as the Manhattan Bridge, and I wanted to know which of those associations was real too.

  “Let me tell you something,” K. said in the Met’s gallery of the Hudson River School, paintings stuck to its curved walls like barnacles on the side of a ship. “This city was an afterthought. When the Europeans first got here they sailed all the way up the Hudson, and when they got there they found this.”

  “A little house in the woods?”

  “They built the house, okay. But everything else was as you see it.” He took me from painting to painting, more Gifford, and Frederic Church, and Thomas Cole. My sense of the paintings’ saturated hues was that an impressionist had focused his camera, but K.’s story was blurry as a Monet.

  He’d just gone up weekends at first, he said, like everyone else. He was dating a guy named Rafael then—in New York, he said, everyone had a Rafael at some point—but after they broke up he continued to go alone, staying at one friend’s house or another’s, then one weekend he had no place to stay but he went up anyway. He slept in his car. Not because he had to, he said, God knows there are plenty of Jewish hacienda motels Upstate (he didn’t explain that one either) but because he wanted to spend as much time on the road as possible. He drove all weekend, he said, said he didn’t know what he was looking for until he found it: a little white house at the terminal tip of a dead end road called Old Snake. Old Snake curved along the edge of a creek also called Old Snake, and creek and road ran in the low place between two hills, it was too shallow to be called a valley, K. said. He said the house at the end of the road was little and white and had settled under its weight but still stood in its shaded glen, and high up under the peaked eaves was a faded date: 1792.

  “And you bought it?”

  “Not exactly,” K. said.

  “Not exactly?”

  “Someone already lives there. His name’s Johanus Peeke.”

  “He sounds prehistoric.”

  “He’s a very old man who’s had the great misfortune to outlive his children.”

  “And you’re what? Waiting for him to topple over so you can get his property?”

  “Well, not exactly,” K. said again.

  “Well, what exactly?”

  “I bought it from him, but I don’t take possession until he passes away.” We’d done the circuit by then, stood in front of the original painting. “I kept my distance at first, but over time I started spending the weekend with him. Just sometimes. We’ve gotten to be friends, sort of. We go fishing and he tells me stories about the old days, or I mow the grass for him, or mend fence. He’s promised to teach me how to milk a cow the next time I go up.”

  I had to stop him there.

  “You’re accusing me of a sentimental attachment to No. 1 when you’re knee deep in shit squeezing milk out of an udder? Give me a fucking break.”

  Before I could continue a voice interrupted us.

  “Nice talk! Very nice talk for a museum!”

  I looked down to see a little old woman. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall and despite the heat outside she wore a ratty fox stole wrapped around her neck.

  “All this beauty and you have to bring in the gutter! You’re no better than the animals out there! Look!” she said, and at the same time she waved a hand at the paintings and smacked K.’s paper. “Look!” she said again. “And you!” She pointed at me. “Put some clothes on!”

  I looked at K. then, and he looked at me. We waited until the old lady was out of the room before we let our laughter out and, still laughing, made our way through the network of galleries to the exit. It had been just after noon when we hooked up and now it was just before nightfall, and we started walking, east and south, south and east, when suddenly I realized we were walking toward K.’s apartment, where everything had started in earnest yesterday. My brief euphoria evaporated as I remembered who I was, who K. was, who we were together, and I practically reeled away from him. I stepped into the middle of the street and waved wildly at an approaching cab. K. reached for me and I evaded his grasp.

  “James? Where are you going?”

  “Claudia.” It was the first thing that popped into my head. “I promised I’d help her pack.” I jumped inside the cab and yanked the door closed before K. could get in, but the window was open and K. stuck his head into the cab.

  “I don’t understand you, James.”

  Sometimes when people say that what they’re really saying is they do understand you, and I looked at K. in the hope that he could explain me to myself. But he was telling the truth. He didn’t understand me, didn’t understand anything at all. He put his hand on my chest—no, not my chest, but on the key hanging there.

  “I never accused you of sentimental attachments,” he said, tapping the key lightly. “You accused yourself, remember?”

  Blame K. for touching the key. Blame the woman who’d given it to me in the first place. Blame Trucker for giving me the uni-short, blame the social worker at the clinic who’d filled its bib with plastic promises a month ago, blame my attachment to sentimental accusations. But when I bent my head to look down at K.’s hand I saw instead the overlapping sheen of a half dozen foil packages in the pocket over my chest, and all at once I knew what I was going to do. But this much I swear: I didn’t come up with my plan until K.’s finger tapped the condoms in my pocket.

  The words fairly flew from my mouth.

  “Let’s have lunch tomorrow. No, wait. I have to help Claudia move in. Let’s have dinner.”

  “Tomorrow?” K. said.

  “Saturday.”

  “Tomorrow is Saturday. Saturday the thirtieth.”

  “Fine. I’ll cook you fish for dinner on Saturday the thirtieth.” I looked up from the condoms. Looked K. straight in the eye. “And afterwards you can fuck me.”

  Even today I don’t know where the fish came from.

  K.’s fingers tightened their grip on the taxi’s door. “Promise me you’ll consider selling the building.”

  But I didn’t promise anything except to have sex with him, and when K. finally released the taxi it sprang forward as if he’d been holding it back. But as soon as it turned the corner I told the driver to stop, and I paid two dollars and stepped out of the cab and counted the rest of my money. I had enough for a hot dog or a subway token and…and how do I tell you this? I can’t remember what I spent my money on, but by the time I got home that night both my wallet and my stomach were, once again, empty.

  CLAUDIA EXPRESSED NO SURPRISE when I told her she could move in. She didn’t seem very enthused for that matter, merely nodded at her aunt—the do
or to Nellydean’s apartment stood open when I descended the stairs, and their low voices carried into the stairwell—and then we took the phone downstairs to Nellydean’s office and looked up the name of a moving service in the yellow pages.

  “Kevin From Heaven.” Claudia’s fingernail drew a wobbly crease under his name. “I like rhymes.”

  When we got back with her stuff Claudia attacked my mother’s old apartment with the kind of industry only the truly idle can muster. Away went the silver dress, out came the 50s, a pair of jeans with a fifty-inch waistband Claudia cinched in with a Gucci belt, “’Cause the girl got to look good no matter what she doin’.” Over the jeans she wore a faded blue T-shirt, “Reggie’s,” she told me, and at first I thought she meant the shirt but then I saw she was pointing at something that looked suspiciously like a come stain. She tied a do-rag with the knot over her forehead, “Mammy style or gangland style, depending on your point-a reference,” pulled on a pair of yellow rubber gloves, grabbed a mop and declared, “Sistah’s gone do some cleanin’ now. Yassuh, sistah’s gone make this here dust bucket shine like nobody’s bizness.”

  I left her then, headed upstairs to get my own apartment ready. But a half hour later I was back. I thought I’d see if Claudia had any pot—thought maybe that would calm the visions that danced before my eyes, or at least give me an excuse for them. But in the sparkling living room I found only a bucket of oily gray water: neither Claudia nor her mop was anywhere to be seen.

  “Claudia?” I called, wandering to the back bedrooms. But the only sign of her was the boxes we’d brought in earlier.

  I lifted the flaps on a couple. Her clothes smelled faintly of perfume, as did her bed linens, and her own face smiled at me from every one of the pictures she’d brought. Most were of her and someone I assumed was Reggie, but there were a few family shots as well. She was darker than her brothers, I saw, who favored the light-skinned, fragile-looking woman who figured in only one sun-blanched Polaroid. It had been taken in the garden behind the shop, and Nellydean was in the picture as well, as agelessly old then as she was now, a slight scowl on her face. The three teenagers were ranged between the two women like a bulwark, and I had to wonder if the old bag had ever liked anyone besides her niece.