The Garden of Last Days

by Andre Dubus III

  The woman sniffled, shook her head, drank more wine. She swallowed and looked down. “I couldn’t even drive into the parking area; I had an attack and I—I just couldn’t. Oh God, do they think she was taken? How in the world did this house mother lose her? How does that happen? Please, tell me!”

  “I don’t know the details.”

  The cat stepped over her hand. Her fingers were stubby, her nails clipped. Her eyes passed over the lettering across his chest and he felt guilty of something he may have done without knowing it.

  “What do you do there? If you don’t mind.” She poured more wine into her glass.

  “I’m a floor host.”

  “A host?”

  “Bouncer.”

  She nodded. “You’re there to protect the women.”

  “Yes.” He felt like a liar. “What kind of car’s she driving?”

  “My Cadillac.”

  “I should go look for her.”

  “Please don’t go just yet. I haven’t been well.”

  She didn’t look well; her wide, wrinkled face was pasty and there were dull splotches under her chin, her fingers trembling against the stem of her glass. The calico jumped to the floor and walked indifferently down the hallway.

  “I’m worried. I don’t know, I—”

  “Maybe you should lie down.”

  “No, I—not until—no, I can’t. Would you like coffee? Are you hungry?” She breathed deeply through her nose, patted her unbrushed hair. “Can I fix you something to eat?”

  “I really should get going.”

  “Please, not yet. Please.”

  “Coffee’d be fine. Thank you.” And he sat on the counter stool and watched Spring’s landlady, sick and worried in her robe and slippers, drop a filter into her coffee machine and ask in a slightly wavering voice if he liked eggs. She’d be happy to fry him some eggs.

  APRIL WAS DRIVING too fast up Washington Boulevard in Jean’s Cadillac.

  I’ll go with you, April. I’ll drive you.

  No, somebody has to be here so please just give them to me.

  Jean’s round face as she handed over the keys, no more judgment in her eyes, just fear and distrust.

  The car felt stolen, its brights on, bits of broken glass glittering on both shoulders, then the high weeds of Florida, but no Franny, no Franny, and that picture of the two of them they’d taken together in the Walgreen’s photo booth—why had it been faceup in her seat, the hole for the yarn ripped through like it was left behind by somebody who knew her? Somebody angry. In the kitchen’s fluorescent light at three in the morning, her mother in her T.J. Maxx nightgown, smoking a cigarette, April telling her where she really worked and what she did there, that she made more in one shift than a week at Subway’s, that this was just temporary, just till she could save enough for a down payment on a house for her and Franny.

  “Temporary.” Her mother took a deep drag and shook her head and blew smoke out her nose. “You won’t quit. Not after such easy money.” She stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray. “I want you gone.”

  Then McGuiness’s Christmas party. Her waking naked under a wool blanket. Everything sore. Everything hurting.

  Calling in sick and that one night at Stephanie’s, April and Franny sleeping on her foldout couch, the walls covered with framed prints from the mall: airbrushed mountains, forests, rivers. The one above the TV was of a sunset over water, the Gulf of Mexico, and waking up to it the morning after she’d left her mother’s, Franny sleeping half off the pillow beside her, April stared at it a long time, heard her mother’s voice over and over: You won’t quit. You won’t quit. I want you gone.

  She had four thousand dollars in the bank, would’ve had a lot more if it weren’t for McGuiness raising the house fees so girls who didn’t do as well as she did had to have a Saturday night every night they worked, which they wouldn’t so their house debt would rise and rise and some of those poor bitches had to make a video for him to break even. But she was paid up and she wasn’t going back. She had money and two credit cards and nothing here to hold her.

  Except Glenn.

  But that wasn’t even real; that was just a memory kept alive now by a weakening hope that he’d change, that one day he’d just show up a man instead of a handsome stoned boy, still in love with her, holding a toy for the daughter he never claimed and never helped pay for. She could go after him for that. If she hadn’t started working at the Empire, she would have. But something had changed. Something in her. She thought it was her body or how she regarded it—from being hers to being theirs. How easy it is to get used to that; how easy it is to get used to being naked and go deep inside yourself and shut the door and stay there till your body, face, and eyes are done for the night. How easy it is on the drive home to simply leave it behind by looking ahead, always by looking ahead: to a hot shower or bath, to kissing her fingers and touching them to her sleeping daughter’s forehead, to curling up in the clean sheets of the bed of her childhood knowing this is just till she’s set: and Stephanie said in Florida you could buy a house not far from the water for cheap; the club fees were reasonable and business was always good, every night a Saturday night if you worked the floor for the VIP. She said the customers were classier, the only thing she’d been wrong about. But April was making ten thousand dollars a month every month and had grown to love, need, and depend on that. Not for the money itself but for the feeling it gave her, that with each deposit into her account she was gathering more strength and independence and respect. She had over fifty thousand dollars, already a down payment on any two-bedroom house for sale up and down the coast. But why stop at one house? She could work another six months and buy two, then rent it out for enough to pay both mortgages. She could work another year and buy a third or a fourth. And then she’d just be Franny’s mom. She’d be like Jean, collecting rent, her days and nights her own. She’d be rich then and wouldn’t need anything from anybody ever.

  “You lie.” His fingers on her scar, that look of total certainty in his face. “Even if you had no children, you would sell this.”

  “Oh Franny, Franny!” She was talking now, talking out loud in Jean’s Cadillac, and she told herself to slow down. The club was only a mile away. Franny could’ve gotten this far. She could. April fumbled for the window buttons, pressing whatever her fingertips touched.

  There was an electric moan in the doors, the windows sliding down, warm air skimming across the side of her face, and now her throat and arms prickled with anger because she’d always been disciplined and careful and in complete control and this shouldn’t’ve happened. Over a year at the Empire and six months here and she hadn’t met anyone as disciplined as she was. Nobody. None of them looked ahead the way she did, not one, not even Stephanie, who spent all her money on clothes and jewelry, on facials and manicures and pedicures, on a new convertible, on her tits, lips, and ass. But April was better than all those weak bitches who drank every night and would give blow jobs in hundred-dollar VIP booths for a week’s worth of Oxy, those rude, shiftless women who were so ignorant they couldn’t even see the hole they were falling into.

  She peered out the driver’s window past the swath of the headlights into the trees. At the side of the road was the curved spine of a small body, her heart plummeting into a black nowhere, but the body was covered with fur, one ear sticking up, the rib cage collapsed. “It’s a dog. It’s just a dog.”

  And she rolled up the window and drove faster up Washington Boulevard.

  IT WASN’T EASY getting her back into the truck. She was deep asleep against the shoulder of his good arm, the other stiff and useless at his side. Once he got the door open with the hand that held her, he leaned back so she’d stay against him, then fumbled for the lever under his driver’s seat till he gripped and pulled it and the seat slid up to the wheel. There was a pinch in his lower back that wasn’t even close to the dulled but still jagged heat in his wrist. He was breathing harder, his heart pounding against the girl’s. He r
aised his knee up to the cab floor, rested his elbow on the cushion, then pulled his other knee up and leaned over and set the child into Cole’s car seat. Her head fell back against the padded upholstery. He stayed there on his knees a second or two and stared at her. Her head was tilted back, her mouth open, her hair away from her face. Tiny cookie crumbs still clung to the corners of her lips and he took the chance and lightly flicked them off. He held his breath and put two fingers behind her neck, running them along the back of her head till her face wasn’t pointing up so much. He lowered the plastic tray into place, but with one damn hand he couldn’t get the male end of the belt into the female buckle, which kept dropping away from the web of his thumb, and twice the male end missed and his knuckles were pressing against her and he was afraid he might wake her up, and finally the male end slid and clicked into place—shit.

  Her hair was so fine. So fine. He covered her again with his work T-shirt, tucking it first over one shoulder, then the other. Little thing was out deep now. Could he really just leave her someplace all alone? What if that temple was locked shut? Was he going to lay her down on the concrete landing in front of locked doors, then wait across the street in the marina’s parking lot for the county to show? Hope no dog came sniffing around first? No bats or bugs? No creep out for a dawn’s walk on Lido Key? How was he going to do this really? If they even responded fast to his call, could he just drive off in his truck without being noticed? And he pictured some patrol car chasing him down, maybe the same sonsabitches who shoved him out of his own house in front of Cole.

  How good it would be to lay this girl down in Cole’s bed. Plenty of room. And he’d just tell Deena the truth: this was a neglected child. We have an obligation to her. But he knew she’d never allow it. She’d think they’d stolen her. He knew this, so why keep thinking about it? Nope, he was just going to have to put aside how much he was growing to like this young girl and get her safe inside a building and he’d be gone before he made the call.

  He started his truck. He reached over his lap to pull the door shut and he was fifteen again, standing on the chum-smeared deck of the boat, the green Gulf out there, the sun in his eyes as he dropped an underweight snapper back over the side, the flick of its tail fin as it righted itself and dived deep, this fading hope in his chest it would live till he caught it again, Eddie drunk and red-faced and winking at him like he knew the end of that story already and AJ didn’t and never would.

  IT WAS FOUR in the morning, her son gone an hour, and Virginia poured herself some cold coffee, put the mug in the microwave, and pressed the button. She leaned one hand against the counter and smoked. Alan always made too much. In the mornings he’d drip a whole pot and drink only a third while she drank another and had to dump the rest down the drain. The oxygen flow in her nose tube was getting weak. She was going to have to switch to the backup tank soon. Later this morning, when the sun rose and businesses opened, she’d call the air people for a refill.

  The microwave beeped. She pulled out the hot mug, poured the steaming coffee into a cooler cup, then spooned in three sugars and laid her cigarette in the ashtray and carried it and her coffee out to the dark living room, her air hose dragging lightly behind her.

  Alan’s bed was untouched, the blanket and sheet pulled back from the pillow the way she did for him. Called into work early and he was still out doing Lord knows what, though two or three times she’d seen on the end table among his change and crumpled bills a wadded cocktail napkin, the black shape of a naked woman under the name of the place. She knew where it was. Years ago it’d been a pool hall she and Eddie would go to till they started fighting about his drinking.

  She shook her head and made her way around the foldout to her chair by the sliding glass door. She set her ashtray and coffee down on the end table and was about to sit, but the air tube pulled against her upper lip and she turned to see it snagged under the bed leg. Your own damn fault, Virginia. Don’t even start. It was a running conversation she had with herself. This ball and chain she had to wear so she could breathe because she never was able to quit. Even now.

  She nudged the tube free with her toe, pulled the slack behind her, sat in her easy chair. She took a deep drag of her cigarette and held the hot coffee under her nose. It was night still though the sky had lightened to a dark blue and soon she’d be able to see her patio and tiny lawn, the statue of the Virgin Mary that Alan had set for her against the fence. He’d done it on a Sunday, hadn’t he? Because she remembered sitting with his wife at the patio table while she breastfed the baby and the two of them had talked about God.

  “You going to christen him?”

  “We don’t think so.” The girl looked down at Baby Cole suckling her. She ran her fingers over his scant hair, blond as Alan’s had been. “God’s everywhere, isn’t he?”

  “So’s the devil, Deena. Have you thought about that?” Virginia’s voice had sounded more ornery than she’d intended, but who was this plump and plain girl with no fire in her eyes and never a smile on her face? What did Alan see in her anyway? And him over by the fence sinking a shovel into a wheelbarrow of crushed stone, lifting it out and dumping it into the box he’d set into the ground so carefully. Always a worker. Always working.

  “Do you really believe in the devil, Virginia?” Her daughter-in-law was looking down at the baby.

  “Yes. How can I believe in God and the angels if I don’t believe in the dark one too?”

  “I just don’t believe in all that. Hell or a devil.”

  “Then what about heaven and God?”

  The girl glanced back up at her, the flash of a challenge in her eyes. “Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t. I don’t know.” She looked back down at Virginia’s grandson, pushed two fingers into her breast to give him more room to breathe, but it was Virginia who needed room to breathe; what kind of house was this child going to be raised in? Alan didn’t even like her to quote the Bible and it was her fault because she’d been in darkness till only recently; she’d done her best but she’d raised him with no guidance from above and now he was drinking and wasting his hard-earned money, locked out of his house away from his son, and she blamed that Godless fat ass he’d married for that. She did.

  Virginia stubbed her cigarette and tried not to light another for at least five minutes. She could see the clock radio on the kitchen counter on the other side of the room: 4:24 a.m.; everything else was going—her lungs, her leg strength, her bladder and bowels and hearing, but she could still see as well as she ever could. At least across a room. She needed her reading glasses, but who didn’t?

  She sipped more coffee. Every day she wanted to call her daughter-in-law and say just what she thought of her, and every day she prayed for the strength not to because she knew how that could hurt Alan’s case. But God forgive her, she never did like the woman, especially now that she’d sent her son into darkness. And the way that girl always looked at him, her dulled eyes narrowed, sizing him up, forever looking like he fell far short of her expectations. She didn’t even know how blessed she was to have a man like Alan James. A man who worked enough for three men. A man who didn’t lie or steal or cheat. A man who was kinder and sweeter to his son than any man had ever been to him.

  She could still see him sitting beside her in the front seat as she drove from one cleaning job to another, his feet not touching the floorboards, his blond hair and little face as he held his chin up so he could see over the dash and out the windshield. How many nights when he was young—when she was alone and not taking in the first man to give her a wink and a smile—had she lain in bed and tried to wish a father into her boy’s life? And how many nights—Admit it, Virginia; there were one or two—did she lie there and wonder why she’d kept that baby?

  She was already forty-one years old, cleaning rooms for the leisurely and the wealthy, content for the time being to put in her hours and live alone, knowing love always comes again somehow. Was she thinking that when it happened? Was she thinking at all?

>   It was a Sunday afternoon at the resort on Longboat Key. She was more than halfway through cleaning the weekend checkouts, the beach white under the sun, the Gulf a lovely deep green that stretched out blue to the horizon where there were no clouds. She was standing at the window, looking forward to a cigarette and admiring the view. She heard the door close behind her. She thought it was the other girl from housekeeping, but it was a man, standing there in a V-neck T-shirt and white tennis shorts, his thick forearms and legs covered with curly blond hair, his eyes a brighter blue than she’d yet seen, but he wasn’t handsome; his features were all scrunched down from forehead to chin, and she apologized, said she thought the room had been vacated, and she dropped her duster into her cleaning cart, something she remembered because he moved toward her just as the duster landed on dirty towels, and even before he got close to her she could see how drunk he was, could smell the liquor and his aftershave, one of those men from the tropical bar on the beach under the thatched roof drinking his morning away dressed for tennis.

  Her heart was beating so fast she felt sick and there was a flat light in his eyes that scared her more than his hands on her shoulders, more than the air she was now falling through, more than the bounce of the mattress against her back. She turned and tried to swing her legs off the bed but his hand squeezed her throat and she could feel all the strength he was withholding and she only looked at his face once more and had to look away because it was clear he’d made up his mind about this long ago, his hand reaching up her skirt and jerking down her underwear, her apron now raised up over her belly and breasts, and then he let go of her and she heard his zipper and you could’ve kicked him and run; for thirty years these words bled themselves into hundreds of quiet moments like this one, now ruined, as she herself had been ruined; dry and beginning to chafe, it took him such a long, long time, and when he was done she was bleeding, knew her blood was mixing with his seed, the early-afternoon sun beginning to slant itself into the room.