“Don’t worry about her,” Mrs. Sheffield said. She was out working in her yard, too, though without Rosie’s ferocity. They watched Rosie dump a barrowful of peat moss at the feet of the Rosa Mundi. “She’s normal when she’s being obsessive. Worry about her when she slows down and puts her feet up.” But she called over, “Take it easy with that shoulder, Rose.”
Susannah wandered back inside. She thought she should probably clean the place up—it was dusty after three weeks, not that she and Rosie had left it all that clean anyway. After she ran the vacuum cleaner in the bedrooms she sat down with her notebook to catch the thread of a story she’d begun to construct in England. She jotted down an idea, the image of a particularly grotesque gargoyle she’d seen somewhere, on the front of one of the cathedrals, and that led to a scrap of dialogue and the aimless doodling out of a plot line, and she forgot to finish the vacuuming. Rosie wouldn’t notice anyway. Susannah had been reassured, when she came to stay at Rosie’s, to find the place in a state of what appeared to be chronic untidiness—a surprise after the picture Ivan had built up, from her television image, of a woman formidably in control, someone Susannah should model herself on. Her own early memories were of a woman who valued glove boxes and silver polish. Seeing the shoes left under the table, the coffee cups on the windowsills, the old magazines stacked in corners, Susannah felt a real kinship with her mother, a real sense of daughterliness.
“Did you used to be neater when I was a kid?” Susannah had demanded.
“Aren’t I neat now?” Rosie had asked.
Susannah took a bath after the washer stopped, and dressed carefully. She put on the blouse Carla had made for her when, briefly and intensely, she took up sewing during her pregnancy with Tyler. Susannah, whose only skill was putting words on paper, used to envy Carla the ease with which she mastered what she dabbled in—not just sewing and typing—which she did rapidly, errorlessly, giving it only half her attention—but knitting, basket-making, macramé; arts that involved the skillful weaving together of various elements, things that surrounded Carla in heaps on the floor, that she drew into her hands and, magically, transformed into useful objects. Carla said she would trade all her small talents to write like Susannah, but Susannah didn’t believe her.
The blouse was heavy white cotton, meant to be worn unironed, with big sleeves that stood up at the shoulders, a high banded collar, a very small tomato stain on the front, and—most remarkably—tiny buttons marching down the front that were pea-sized faces, people’s heads that Carla had clipped from old photographs and sealed, somehow, under plastic: a mustachioed man, and one with slicked-back patent-leather hair, a sweet-faced woman in a pompadour, a stern little girl whose round face filled the button precisely, another child with wispy ringlets and a big grin. Susannah loved these people. “What’ll I do when the blouse wears out?” she had asked Carla, imagining all those wonderful faces banished away in a drawer full of old clothes. “Take the buttons off, and I’ll make you something else to put them on,” Carla had said. Susannah hadn’t thought of that.
She put on her Chinese slippers and a shin-length denim skirt with an elastic waist, and arranged her hair in one long, frayed braid.
Rosie smiled when she saw her. “I’m glad you’re going out with Duke.”
“I’m not exactly going out.” Susannah had told Rosie she’d be gone all night, had stuck her toothbrush in her skirt pocket.
“Well, whatever,” Rosie said. “It makes me feel young, anyway, to sit here with you waiting for your date—as if I have a teenage daughter. I missed all that, with you. Oh, I know—” She raised both hands in playful protest. “It was my own fault.”
“But it wasn’t.” They had been over that before: whose fault was it—who had deserted whom?
“And Peter’s teenage years were so …” She looked for the right word. “Irregular,” she said finally, and then frowned as if that wasn’t quite it.
Duke arrived just before ten. He had rushed home to shower and change, and his hair was still wet. Susannah was touched by this, how he had hurried. He had on his squashed fishing hat. He looked thinner, she thought. He didn’t kiss her at first, just took her hand, and they chatted for a few minutes with Rosie until—very much the teenager’s mother—she said, “You two get along now, it’s late,” as if they had to catch a movie. They left her chuckling over a Monty Python rerun on television, and in the car Duke pulled Susannah close to him, and they kissed.
“I missed you.”
“I missed you.”
They drove straight to Duke’s, fast. “Who’s with the twins?” Susannah asked, happiness making her voice sound strange to her—higher, and fluttery.
“They have a new sitter, a friend of Ginger’s named Estelle. She stays with them evenings and weekends, and there’s a high school girl who fills in after school until Estelle gets there.”
“That’s a lot of sitters.”
“I don’t see the kids enough,” Duke admitted. “I’m teaching Simon to cook so he can take over the lunch shift on weekends and school holidays. He’s pretty good. He learns fast. I’d try to find a second cook, a professional, but I don’t think we should spend that much. I’ll give Simon a raise, of course, when I promote him.”
“And the place is doing well? Still?”
“I can’t believe how well, Susannah. We’ll sit down and look at the books tomorrow.” He stretched one hand out to touch her, and she leaned toward him. “Not tonight, though,” he said. She traced with her finger the silky white scars on the back of his hand.
The twins were asleep, and Estelle left in a hurry. “I have a date,” she said apologetically—a tiny woman in an upswept hairdo and dangling earrings. She looked as if she might be going dancing, but she said no, they were going bowling. “You’ve been away, I hear,” she said to Susannah, making conversation while she gathered her things. “Welcome back from wherever.”
“Thanks,” said Susannah. She heard three thumps as the cats jumped down from beds and windowsills upstairs.
“Oh, those cats,” said Estelle, sighed, hoisted her purse to her shoulder. “The twins were dolls,” she said, and with a wave at the door was gone. The cats rubbed around Susannah’s ankles, watching Duke. He shook cat food from a box into three bowls, and they bent over, crunching.
“They’ve forgotten me,” Susannah said. She leaned down to pet Shelley, who continued to eat.
“At dinnertime they forget everything but Little Friskies,” Duke said. “You remember that.”
“They never change.”
“Maybe that’s why you’re so fond of them.”
“No,” she said, watching him put the cat food away and fill their water bowls. “I have nothing against change.”
Upstairs, Duke lit the candle in his bedroom. Walden was still by the bed, along with a book called Root Cellaring and one of Susannah’s New Yorkers. She had to unbutton the little photo-buttons on her blouse—Duke couldn’t manage them—and she stepped out of her skirt and left it where it fell. The candlelight threw giant, jumping shadows on the walls. “I’ve imagined this so many times,” she said, smiling at Duke.
“So have I,” he said, and put his arms around her. “Every single blasted day since last August fifteenth.”
The candle eventually burned out, and the cats came in, one by one, and arranged themselves on the piles of clothes on the floor, waiting.
In the morning it was like old times. Susannah woke to hear Duke and the twins downstairs in the kitchen. The cats were gone, too, and pale sunlight came in around the sides of the green window shades and threw one fuzzy shaft across the foot of the bed. She stayed in bed a while, listening to the toast pop up, the refrigerator door close, Mary Grace ask for more oatmeal. She laid her head on Duke’s pillow. “Here Keatsie,” she heard one of the twins say. “Here Keatsie Weatsie, have some butter,” and Duke say, “Don’t feed the cat off your spoon, for Pete’s sake.”
Listening, she thought how she used to consid
er Duke and Ivan similar types, both forever vaguely aspiring to some shifting goal. But there was nothing vague about Duke; he was solid, sharp-focused. Her life with Ivan, the slippery texture of it, as fake as Ivan’s Ancestor Heritage paintings, returned vividly to her as she lay in bed. I’m happy enough, she used to say in the flat on Dimmick Street—as if happiness was like pie, and a little could fill you up.
She dressed in her skirt—creased and cross-hatched with cathair—and a flannel shirt of Duke’s she found hanging on the bedpost, and went downstairs. There was a fire in the stove. The kitchen smelled pleasantly of toast. Duke stood at the stove pouring boiling water into a coffee filter.
The twins jumped up to hug her. “Susannah! You slept over!”
“You’ve been gone so long.”
“We took all your postcards to school, and Mrs. Curtis hung them up.”
“I bought presents for you two,” Susannah told them. “All kinds of little goodies.” She looked at Duke, over the heads of the twins. “I must have left them in the car last night.”
“We’ll go get them,” they said, and dashed for the door.
“A big green canvas bag in the back seat,” Susannah called. The door slammed.
“Our mornings-after seem destined to be chaotic,” she said to Duke.
He put down the teakettle and came over to the table to kiss her. “I was going to wake you when I got up but you looked so peaceful, with your hair all spread out.” He kissed her again. “You looked so beautiful, Susannah.”
“Ah, Duke.” She leaned sleepily against him. “I’m glad to be here with you.”
“Stay,” he whispered.
Had it become, then, so simple, after all? Stay. And yet Susannah could sense swarms of unsaid words lurking at the borders of that simple one. “Later,” she said. “We’ll talk later.”
The twins returned with the bag. “It is big,” said Mary Grace.
“We were too polite to open it,” Mary Claire said, handing it over, and Susannah laughed and hauled out the quilted whale and the dolphin, necklaces of blue beads, jars of jam with little cloth caps, dolls dressed like Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots, soap shaped like sheep, and A Colouring Book of English Rural Life.
“Look! They spelled coloring wrong,” said Mary Claire, shocked.
“That’s the English spelling,” Duke said.
“We knew that,” said Mary Grace. “Don’t you remember in that mouse book? And flavour—remember they spelled that wrong, too.”
“First grade seems to agree with you two,” Susannah said. She was amazed all over again at how beautiful they were, with their curly light hair, their chubby tanned cheeks, their tiny hands, deft like Duke’s. If I stayed they would be mine—my children, she thought, and folded her hands over the small swelling of her stomach. The twins hugged her, one on each side, and thanked her. She snapped the beads around their necks.
“Daddy says you’re having a baby.”
Susannah nodded. “Next spring.”
“It’s in there now?” Mary Claire spread her hand tentatively an inch above Susannah’s abdomen.
“Sure. Go ahead. You can feel it.”
Mary Claire lowered her hand. “It feels like you got fat.”
“Let me feel.” Mary Grace pushed her hand under her sister’s. “It doesn’t feel fat enough for a baby.”
The school bus honked, and the twins flew around the kitchen gathering jackets and lunchboxes. They kissed Duke, kissed Susannah, ran for the door.
“Maybe he could sleep in that little teeny room next to our bedroom,” Mary Grace called back, before the two of them clattered down the front steps. Susannah looked out the window to see them climb on the bus; two of the cats strolled idly down the path behind them and, when the bus left, sat down to wash in the sun.
“He could, you know,” said Duke. “Or she. It’s a nice little room.”
“Duke—”
“Later,” he said, and took her hand.
They stayed in bed until noon, and then they sat in the bright kitchen again, in the two rocking chairs, just as they used to. The sun had warmed the room, and Duke let the stove go out. Susannah made toast for them both, and Duke poured coffee. He picked up the quilted whale and stroked it, smiling. They sat in sunny silence until Susannah said, “Tell me—please. What you’ve been thinking all these weeks.”
He looked up in mock surprise. “I thought you’d know by now.”
“I mean—ultimately. About us. Tell me, Duke.”
He frowned down at the whale. “Just that I was wrong, Susannah. It’s you I love. You know that.”
The silence returned, the sun continued to shine in, Duke traced the tail of the whale with his fingertip.
“But what else?” Susannah asked finally.
“Ivan,” Duke said.
“Ivan?” It was like a hard blow to the head. She put down her coffee cup, pressed the bone between her eyes with two fingers. “Ivan seems about as relevant to this discussion as—I don’t know—cat yummies.”
“It’s his baby you’re pregnant with.”
“Oh Lord, Duke. For heaven’s sake.” She stood up and walked to the door. The sun shone on Duke’s apple trees. She could see red apples through the leaves. “For heaven’s sake.”
They went outside, not holding hands. How absurd, how stupid to be at war with the man she loved. I’m a peaceable person, she thought, not for the first time. “But it’s my baby,” Susannah said. They were on the path to the pond. A scrap of the twins’ kite from April still flapped high in a tree, yellower than the leaves. Here, last summer, she had walked after her writing hours. She had sat with her bare feet in the pond and thought of the years she had wasted with Ivan, all those blind years. “He has no claim on it,” she said to Duke. Leaves floated on the surface of the pond, and a dull green scum near their feet was laced all over with a tiny star pattern. “I don’t intend for him ever to know about it. And I told you, Duke, I’ll never take him back.”
“You said never never never never never. If I recall.”
“I meant it. I meant every one of those nevers.”
Duke threw a stone into the pond; the ripples rocked the leaves, rippled the scum. “It feels like stealing to me, Susannah. That’s all.”
“Oh crap, Duke. Dammit.” She didn’t have much of a bad-language repertoire. “What do we do, then? You say you love me. You invite me into your bed. You make suggestive remarks about where the baby can sleep. You ask me to stay—what do you mean by all that? And now you tell me I belong to Ivan, as if this was fifteenth-century Italy. Or Porgy and Bess. What do you want us to do? Where do we go from here, Duke?”
Do I want this man? she thought. Why won’t he just plunge in? Fierceness, Rosie had said. Maybe she was right.
He took her hands—fists—and held them to his chest. “Susannah. I want you to live with me. I want you to be a mother to my twins and I want to be a father to your baby. But I can’t see how it’s that easy, I don’t see how we can look at it as a permanent thing. It’s not because I don’t love you. I just don’t want to bind you down to anything yet.”
“Duke, I’m getting divorced. Give me time, can’t you? First there’s this thing with Ivan, then there’s my mother, then this trip. I’ll call a lawyer right now.” She pulled her hands away; he let her go. “Don’t you want me to get a divorce?”
“Of course—God, yes, Susannah. You know I do. But I get everything out of this. Don’t you see that? And I don’t want to have it unless we’re fair to Ivan.”
“You mean tell him I’m pregnant.”
“Well.”
She sighed, turned away from him, and walked back up the path. He followed. “He’ll want it, Duke,” she said. “Joint custody or something. I don’t want my child to grow up in California hanging around bars with Ivan while he picks up women.”
“I really don’t think that would be a problem, Susannah,” Duke said mildly.
“Oh, don’t you?” She walk
ed fast, talking over her shoulder. “You don’t know Ivan. When he’s in the mood, what he wants more than anything is children. He’d get lawyers—Duke, in California they have lawyers who specialize in wangling custody for the wrong parent. Ivan always gets what he wants.”
“It’s a pretty hard secret to keep all your life, Susannah.”
She stopped under an apple tree, and crushed a rotten apple on the ground with her foot. She remembered, that day in Stonington, telling herself she’d keep her pregnancy secret from Ivan. “I don’t want him involved,” she said, and kicked another apple away. One of the cats chased it briefly. What a child she had been that day—Rapunzel. As if life was something out of a book—magical and under control.
Duke, coming up beside her, picked an apple from the tree, polished it on his sleeve, and handed it to her with a courtly gesture.
“No, thanks,” she said. “They look good, though,” she added more amiably. Duke bit into the apple and chewed in silence, looking thoughtfully up into the tree. Oh, why couldn’t they just go back to bed, forget Ivan? This was what she had dreaded, these complications of honor, these subtleties and barriers. First Margie, now Ivan—ghosts. She wanted only to lay her tangled life down beside Duke’s and let them mingle, braid together like hair. She loved him because he was exactly what he seemed to be, and because he didn’t want to change her; the only way he could disappoint her would be by deviousness, or by lecturing her about hanging up her clothes. And she liked his gentleness, his cleverness, the way he could make things, fix anything, the way he would take on a project and see it through. The garden was all dug under and mulched, the twins’ playhouse freshly painted to protect it from the winter, the porch screens taken down. He never claimed he didn’t have time for things, he didn’t hang around bars and chase other men’s women.
The Garden Path Page 34
