Shadow Garden

by Alexandra Burt

  I’m always looking forward to Vera’s readings, her novels have garnered critical acclaim in Europe, there’s a lot of loathing and suffering and I feel an instant kinship with her characters as they seem to be in a constant state of existential threat.

  A podium has been set up, staff in black pants and white shirts pass trays around. The hors d’oeuvres leave a lot to be desired, avocado and crab toast and some shrimp on a stick. I must mention this to Vera, she relies on me to tell her such things, her head is always in the clouds and I’m her voice of reason in these matters as she is mine when it comes to my emotions.

  Vera takes the podium. She commands it, her oval tortoiseshell glasses high on the bridge of her nose, pausing intermittently for maximum impact, the breaks arranged so perfectly that her words connect instantly with the audience.

  Vera reads an excerpt of one of her novels. Ludvig, a boy from a remote farm in Sweden, is expected to slaughter a pig but he dreads the blood, the taking of a life. To teach him a lesson, his family abandons him in a vast and surreal landscape. He sets out on a path, past rolling hills, a setting as dramatic as his feelings about nature, and ends up in the mountains, where he encounters a sounder of starving boars and witnesses a wolf devour them. He could intervene but he doesn’t and so the boars meet their fate.

  I watch the people seated in front of me, the way their heads snap sideways, making eye contact during the gory parts. Throats are clearing, there’s twitching and sneezing, not everyone enjoys this violent and dark tale. In front of me a couple exchanges glances during the grisly tearing apart of the boars, behind me I hear nervous tappings of feet, and a couple of people get up and leave the room. Two women talk too loudly—their voices travel in the large space—and are asked to leave. There’s a loud huff from a woman behind me. “Why is she doing this?” she asks, and the person next to her whispers in her ear. I throw a dismissive look at them, then focus my attention on Vera.

  I’m captivated by the story, and the abandonment of a child, though clearly fictional, stirs up something inside of me. I imagine Penelope being lost in the dark of night, endlessly wandering in unfamiliar surroundings. But I see myself in Ludvig’s resolve and like a needle scratching off a record, my instincts are roused: the drawing in that book, who put it there, what was it meant to convey? I’m unwavering and being unwavering is one of my strong suits. Edward will tell you that. Something is afoot. A blind woman could see that.

  * * *

  • • •

  The alarm clock LED display is the only light in the room. Marleen’s nightly preparation of the house plays out: doors close, cabinets bang, the venetian blinds go krrr-krrr-krrr-krrr. Footsteps approach.

  8:45.

  Marleen presents the small porcelain dish with my medication. I scoop up the four pills but instead of dropping them into my mouth, I tuck them underneath my thumb, pressing them into the soft part of my palm. I tilt my head back and take a sip of water. As Marleen pulls the duvet taut at the end of the bed, I stow the pills underneath my pillow.

  8:46

  Marleen’s heels click on the hardwood floors. In the parlor, she closes the drapes and slides the metal hook of the tassels back on the tieback. Her heels make their way through the apartment with long strides and intermittent pauses. The hinges of the linen closet shriek.

  8:58.

  The toilet in the powder room flushes and the lid clanks shut. From the kitchen familiar sounds of putting away dishes fill the house. Marleen’s shadow passes by my bedroom twice—she has turned off the lights in the hallway by then—her keys clink, a sign she’s about to leave.

  I do something I’ve never done before. I stand by the bedroom door and watch her.

  Marleen places something on the fireplace mantel, slides it toward the back, where her hands pause, fiddle around as if she’s making sure it sits in a very specific spot. Keys jingle again and weather stripping sweeps across the marble floor. The front door lock snaps in place. A gate slams in the distance and for a long time there are no sounds.

  9:08.

  Sliding my fingers underneath the pillow, I dig until I hold the four pills in my hand. There’s a tiny orange pill, a statin. The white oval is an anti-inflammatory for my hip. The round pale yellow one is an allergy pill I was prescribed after I complained about itchy eyes. The pastel green round pill, I have no idea what it is.

  9:09.

  I wait.

  9:14.

  My bare feet don’t cause so much as a creak on the hardwood floors. The bedroom door swings open without a sound. In the parlor, I push up the dimmer and the light fixture spreads a soft shimmer across the room. The drapes are closed.

  On top of the fireplace sits an array of items that don’t quite go together. A vase, candlesticks, a statue—I’ve developed a fondness for the depiction of the woman cradling a child in her arms—and as I run my finger down it, I am surprised it is cold to the touch. It’s not resin after all, is it? Off the cuff, I push it aside a few inches. It’s heavy but it budges though it bumps the bottom of the vase which I barely keep from tumbling to the ground. A key is tucked behind it, a gold key with long teeth and I am not sure if this is the item Marleen was placing so perfectly. Is it one of the spare keys she leaves in the house in case she misplaces hers? I have told her a copy in a kitchen drawer would suffice.

  Marleen misplaced her set of keys before and once locked herself out of the house. There were meltdowns during which she was almost in tears, once pounding on the front door. Another time she rapped on the window. I didn’t question her theatrical behavior nor did I try to understand it though I thought it to be overly dramatic. She does get worked up about things a lot, I wish she didn’t but that’s part of her constitution.

  I attempt to insert the key into the front door but it doesn’t fit. The only other door with a lock is the one leading out of the storage room.

  There, boxes are stacked on top of one another. Though the room is a mess, it seems methodical somehow as if the boxes are supposed to create a path. The light entering from the hallway is enough for me to look around, and though I’ve been in here many times—usually poring over a box Marleen has picked out—this time the shadows are different, the chaos seems to be held at bay by the limited light. There’s the door behind a tower of boxes, but it is not an interior door, it looks sturdy, and once I make my way down what feels like an aisle in a grocery store, I put my hand on it. It’s made of metal, like an exterior door. I slide the key into the keyhole without resistance. It grips and unlocks.

  The opening leads outside, into the breezeway where the dead birds were. As I peer around the doorframe, moths as large as humming birds whir around electric lanterns emitting a faint glow. Oscillating carbon filament bulbs swing rapidly from side to side, mimicking a flame. Lampposts cast shadows, elongated, dark, and menacing. There’s a flashlight in the kitchen drawer but using it would only draw attention to myself.

  I step into the night and look up into the starry sky.

  Edward and I own a cabin in Angel Fire, New Mexico. We spent a week there now and then, whenever he could make the time. I called it a dip into the mountains and at night it was so dark we once observed the zodiacal light. One must understand how uncommon such an occasion is during which millions of light particles combine to create a cone so long it touches the horizon like a worldly connection to the stars above.

  Just look, Edward said, one arm wrapped tightly around me as he pointed at the band of light in the night sky. Do you know how rare this is? he added.

  Almost as if we’re chosen, isn’t it? I asked and meant it.

  The sky is for everyone, Donna, he said.

  We are chosen, I insisted and Edward didn’t object.

  My thoughts are caught up in the memories of the cabin when on the other side of the courtyard, beyond the lawn, I hear a clacking sound. I step behind a large myrtle. A woman is co
ming down the walkway across the lawn, dragging a bag behind her. A clacking of bottles on the lawn, all the louder for the absence of daylight and people. I recognize her. I don’t want to embarrass her and remain in the shadows.

  Vera has mentioned her peculiar fascination with people’s garbage—but don’t go around gossiping about it, I don’t need people talking; she uses it for inspiration for her writing, her exact words were, I can tell a lot from people’s garbage—but I imagined her retrieving papers or discarded mail. I never so much as thought that she’d go through garbage like a raccoon in the middle of the night. Vera tows the bag to her front door, then slogs it over the threshold, a key scrapes in the lock, and her front porch goes dark.

  That’s what you get for snooping, I think. You see things you can’t unsee.

  A light comes on in what seems like my foyer. I rush across the lawn. My blinds are shut only halfway. Are people talking inside? I step closer but there’s a concrete stoop below the window and I misjudge its height. My right foot, muddy and wet and smeared with filth, taps against it. I stumble, hit the ground, and break the fall with my left knee. I manage to get up. With my heart pounding, I shoot around the corner but before I can slip back into the breezeway and the storage room, I hear footsteps. They sound out of nowhere, there isn’t a buildup in volume or a quickening of pace, they are just suddenly there.

  I step behind a tree but the thin trunk leaves me exposed. I crawl into the mulch behind the shrubs but this isn’t a sufficient place to hide either. I listen into the dark night but hear nothing, not a footstep, not the opening or the closing of a door. Nothing but a hum in the air, an anticipation of something I can’t put my finger on. The hum intensifies. A whisk and a tick. With a sssssssh-chk-chk-chk sssssssh-chk-chk-chk, sprinkler heads emerge from the ground. In an instant my clothes cleave to my body like a second layer of skin.

  Voices. They linger, nameless at first, then my mind shifts into reality. I recognize the silhouette. I think I recognize the silhouette. The way he walks, moves. It’s Edward. As peculiar as this is, on the borders of my consciousness, there’s another voice. Marleen’s. Then they’re gone.

  I root the lawn, scan the courtyard, then the breezeway. I part the bushes and shrubs. I turn around quickly as if I’m attempting to catch someone standing behind me. There’s no one, not in the breezeway where the man swept up the dead birds, not down the path. I turn again, just to make sure, but the walkways remain deserted and not a soul is about this time of night. Farther down, the silvery sidewalk fades between the buildings, disappearing into complete and utter darkness. I make a run for the breezeway and go back inside. I lock the door behind me.

  I should have followed the voice. Should have confronted Edward right then and there. Should have. Could have. Would have. Was it Edward after all? I’m reminded of the night I woke and thought I was still living with Edward at Hawthorne Court. It was a bewildering feeling, like memories competing for priority. Getting out of bed there was a straight shot, but here the bathroom door is off to the side and so I stood with my hands pressed against the wall and felt my way around. A moment of confusion, like feeling disorientated by accidentally getting out of a hotel elevator on the wrong floor.

  I must admit at times I jostle with recollections of Hawthorne Court and Shadow Garden. They overlap. My brain plays with both before settling on the correct one. Losing my former life is a difficult thing to come to terms with and sometimes I struggle to find the right memory but in the end my brain resolves the conflict.

  Marleen’s voice? While I’ve been busy organizing and moving in, getting my life down to a schedule that resembles some sort of existence, the voices I heard have confirmed what I’ve been thinking for a while: I no longer trust her.

  When I allow myself to state it so matter-of-factly, it sounds menacing. I wonder what’s easier: to be confronted with the facts or to forever imagine the worst.

  * * *

  • • •

  The next morning, to occupy my mind, I look around the living room as if I’m seeing it for the first time. My apartment at Shadow Garden is a beautiful place, I have to admit as much; the fireplace to my right, carved marble with soft beige undertones and veins swirling together, is slightly too small for the room but that’s not what bothers me: the mantel appears disjointed, off balance. A vase. The one I nearly dropped last night. It’s a tacky thing I don’t recall purchasing or having received as a gift. It sits on the left side, shoved to the back, throwing off the symmetry of the pillar candles on the right. It’s ugly and maybe I ought to get rid of it altogether.

  A leather-bound book on the coffee table strikes me as foreign, an intruder in my familiar surroundings like a visitor’s forgotten umbrella leaning in a corner, but then I recognize it, the cover embossed with a golden globe. I open it and a sudden rush of excitement surges through me as the veillike glassine sheet crumbles, then comes to rest.

  The pictures are decades old: in one my hair is long and parted in the middle, before Penelope was born, on our honeymoon; the cabin in New Mexico; sitting on a rock at the edge of a lake, snowcapped mountains in the back, Colorado maybe? Some photographs have a bluish tint to them, taken before there was digital photography, when pictures came out the way they came out and you got what you got and you didn’t complain. We had a camera with so many functions it boggled my mind and I eventually bought a point-and-shoot camera.

  A series of images on a beach. I can almost smell the salty air, feel the wind in my hair, my skin dry, my lips cracked. Penelope, about four, building a sand castle with her legs folded up under her. Edward is scooping sand in a bucket. They both look into the camera, happy, carefree. I don’t recall the moment but I probably said smile, or maybe I just caught them in a moment of happiness. Penelope’s mouth is open as if she is saying something to me.

  Most of the photographs are overexposed, the sun like a floodlight streaming in from the back, beaming rays not meant to be a special effect but a failure on my part. But still, the images are beautiful, anything but perfect, but beautiful. Look at those boats bobbing on the waves! The colors are striking, the pale sand and the waves whitecapped in the breeze, like brushstrokes placed by a painter. I’m not ready to abandon this scene to memory just yet, but a vibrant color catches my attention: the trip to a strawberry farm. Penelope clutches a basket full of berries, puny little things, barely a third the size of the ones in supermarkets. Red smudges around her mouth, smeared across her cheek with the back of her hand. Penelope’s outfit was ruined that day, but the fun we had.

  Like a gift from an unknown benefactor these photographs are conduits to the past, stuck to cardboard pages with glue, separated by flimsy paper to keep them from becoming worn and damaged.

  I’m not naïve. Photographs are a world of make-believe. You have to look beyond the colors and the setting, the smiles, to recognize what they’re really about. I turn the page and there it is. A portrait of Penelope. I stare at her face caught in a moment of perfection. Focusing on her eyes, I’m taken aback by how they glisten with the twinkle of laughter. The happiest memories hurt the most, cut the deepest. I clutch the album tight against my body.

  The photographs remind me of what I’ve lost and that’s all it takes for me to burst into tears. This is all that remains of those days, of our happiness. Marleen pries the album from my hands. Her eyes are wide and glaring, her eyebrows raised.

  If I didn’t know any better I’d say she’s mad at me.

  * * *

  • • •

  Later that afternoon, at my physical therapy appointment, I follow the instructions given to me. I stretch and extend, adduct, abduct. I complain about a lack of range of motion in my hip.

  “You’ve been making super progress compared to where you started,” the physical therapist, a stout blond man with a red beard, says and furrows his brows. His name is Jed and he wears L.L.Bean jackets. I feel compelled to roll m
y eyes every time he uses the word super.

  “I’m still not where I want to be,” I say as I turn on my side, knees bent to provide support. I straighten my top leg and slowly raise it. I hold for five, lower it, relax, and repeat. He doesn’t know how well I am. Keeping my recovery a secret, I wonder what the point of it is.

  My super recovery. The only thing I can imagine is I don’t want Edward to find out yet. Maintaining this secret gives me some sort of power I can’t quite put my finger on. My ace in a hole or up a sleeve, I forget how the saying goes.

  I think of the wristwatch I bought Edward for our anniversary a couple of years ago, the way the jeweler had explained the apparatus, how springs were regulated by more springs, unwinding into a controlled and periodic release of time. Gears oscillating back and forth, and with each swing of the balance wheel the hands move forward at a constant rate. He’d wanted the watch for a while, was giddy with anticipation, and that’s how it feels, my hidden recovery. Groundwork, I don’t know for what, but I hear a constant tick tick tick in the background.

  7

  EDWARD

  Edward Pryor, the scientist, believed in principles and reliable data which then led him to inevitable conclusions—that’s how problems were solved. But even the most perfectly laid-out plans derailed at times and here he was, stuck in traffic. The last operation of the day would have to be bumped off the schedule. The proverbial monkey wrench in his game plan.

  As he sat tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, an explosion sounded in the distance. The boom was followed by a ball of flame and a fist of gray smoke. Maybe he should offer his help, though the OR schedule would really be shot for the rest of the day, but it was the right thing to do. Just as he was about to reach for the door, an ambulance passed by him. Sirens and blinking lights, police cars and ambulances, they came and went and finally the traffic inched forward. He passed a car with a smashed hood, another fifty yards and a dented fender was left discarded by the side of the road. In a field a car sat reduced to a muddle of parts and broken glass, nothing but a skeletal burnt frame, the earth scorched around it.