I drove too fast the whole way home to release some tension, but actually this just made it worse. Having little faith in Rachel’s anti-sleepwalking regiment, I was still anxious about Maggie.
“Rachel,” I said, “what do you think about ‘thrownness’? The existentialist thing?”
“Oh, that’s important. It means that even though we’re free to create our own meaning and make our own choices, there are still certain things we are born into that we can’t change, and that determine parts of our lives. Like each person is born with a certain race, sex, social class…”
“I know what it is,” I said. “I mean what do you think about it?”
“I think it’s important,” she said. “I just told you.”
“Well,” I said, “how much can we overcome? Is there a limit? Just like for example, in my own life, how much freedom do I really have?”
“Don’t you think you’ve already overcome a lot?” she asked.
I didn’t answer. Rachel fell asleep in the passenger seat and we drove the rest of the way in silence.
“Jennie,” I called into the living room when we arrived at her house, “how’s it going? Where’s Maggie?”
“Oh, hey, guys!” Jennie said. “Back so soon? Did the club suck? It is Everett, after all. Maybe one of these days we can go to Seattle—”
“It was fine. We had a good time in spite of it all. Where’s Maggie?”
“Okay, jeez. She’s in my room, sleeping in my bed, while I sit out here watching The Price is Right and waiting for you to come pick her up so I can go to sleep. You’re welcome.”
“I’m sorry, Jennie. I’m just stressed. I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. I really appreciate you watching her.”
“Okay, yeah, no problem.” Jennie turned her head away from me, back to the TV.
Jennie lived on a small lake.
I went to her room and switched on the light. No Maggie. I went outside and ran towards the water.
“Jade, where are you going?” Rachel called after me, holding her shoes in one hand. “Wait, I’m coming!” She followed me, barefoot in the mud.
I saw the red-bearded man wading in the dark water. The lake flopped calmly as his big legs moved. Maggie was next to him. “Maggie, what are you doing?” I ran to them, and Rachel caught up with us.
“Mommy! Hi. We’re swimming!” She wasn’t asleep.
“Maggie, get away from him right now.”
“He’s my friend, Mommy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I met him the other day while I was playing in the backyard. Mom was on the phone inside. He said it would be easier if I didn’t tell her.”
“Maggie, you should always tell me everything,” Rachel said.
“Rachel, take Maggie inside,” I said.
“Who is that man?” she asked. “Jade, do you know him? Who is—”
“Rachel, just do it.”
She did it.
“Look, lady, you should really stop working for those people,” he said.
“What were you doing with my daughter?” I said. “And why have you been following me around?”
“She said she wanted to go swimming. I didn’t see a problem with that.”
“But what were you doing?” I pulled out my cell phone. “I swear I will call the police right now. What are you doing here and what were you doing in my yard the other day?”
“Just doing my job, lady, okay? Just like you. Put that phone away, you know you can’t call the cops. I know about you.”
I put the phone down, and pulled out a knife that I carried with me these days. “Tell me who you are, you fuck.”
“Oh, a knife, you really think I don’t have a—” he patted his pockets. “Oh. I really don’t have anything.” He hit his forehead. “Stupid!”
“Talk to me.”
He sighed. “Okay. If I tell you the truth, will you promise not to tell anyone?”
“Will I promise? Are you in third grade?”
He sighed again. “Honestly,” he said, “I’m supposed to bring her down here to scare you. Same thing with following you around. They know she sleepwalks by the pond and you have a thing about her drowning now. Except you weren’t supposed to see me. I was supposed to leave her down here and put a note in her pocket that said, ‘We are watching you.’ And somehow I was supposed to make it clear that I meant the people I work for are watching you, not the people you work for. Honestly, I hadn’t gotten far enough to figure out how to make that clear. Also, your daughter was supposed to be asleep, but I had to knock on the bedroom window to get her to wake up and come outside. I managed to get your daughter outside without that other lady noticing, but you two got back too soon. I’m not very good at this job. But don’t worry, I wouldn’t really let her drown or anything.”
“Don’t worry?”
“Look, I’m sorry. I’m just trying to make money, like you. I have a kid too, and a wife. So, what do you say, I won’t tell if you won’t tell?”
Rachel stomped back out of the house. “Jade, what the fuck?”
I sighed. What to say to her?
“Oh, hello, ma’am!” said the red-bearded man. “Nothing to see, nothing to worry about here, just a slight misunderstanding.”
I sighed again. “Rachel,” I said, “okay. I’m sorry. I’ve been working for some people to make extra money, just doing odd jobs, you know. I want to make enough for us and for Maggie, to help her stop sleepwalking and for you to have the things you want.”
Rachel frowned, then smiled, then frowned. “You mean, are you like cleaning houses or something?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“What does this have to do with this guy?” she asked.
“She’s working for basically the mafia,” he said.
I turned to him. “What the fuck!” I said. “Let me explain to my own wife!”
“Look,” he said to me. He sat down on a log. “What are you doing? Your daughter is clearly neglected or something, you’re lying to your wife,” he said, gesturing at Rachel, who was fuming, “when really you’re working for these terrible people, I mean that’s a pretty big deal, and it doesn’t seem like your relationship is all that healthy, and you leave your daughter with this crazy lady who didn’t even notice she was no longer in the bedroom.”
I glared at him.
Rachel glared, then slapped me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She stormed off, back into the house.
The man pulled out his pack of cigarettes. “Do you smoke?”
“I guess,” I said. He lit mine, and we sat on the edge of the water.
“Why’d you do it?” he asked.
“What?”
“Move in with her and have a child. Why’d you do that? I mean, you’re not even a lesbian, right?”
“How do you know what I am?”
“I told you, I know about you. That’s what we do.”
“Okay, well, first of all, I’m not a lesbian, but...I mean I never thought I’d date a woman, but then I fell in love with Rachel. Big deal.”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean. You’re not a lesbian.”
“Okay, whatever,” I said. “I don’t know why I did it. I guess I didn’t have anything else going for me. And I wanted things to change for the better.”
“So, you moved to Marysville?”
“Well, we lived in Seattle originally. But then we had some idea about how we hated people and nature was beautiful so we just came here. And Rachel’s cousin was here and could get me a job.”
“Um, Marysville isn’t really the best place for nature lovers,” he said. “Or lesbians. You should go to Boulder or something. It’s kind of shitty here.”
“How did you start working for the mafia?”
“I don�
��t work for the mafia. I just told you to stop working for them, remember?
I work for the other people, like the anti-mafia, the good guys. Or at least, the better guys. Still illegal I think. But I kind of just fell into it. It doesn’t matter. I love my family and I love my life. The difference is, you don’t.”
“Do you really think you know the first thing about me?” I asked. “I love my daughter more than anything. And I love Rachel. She’s beautiful, and she’s so much smarter than I will ever be.”
“That’s not true,” he said. “She’s just educated. Rich people always seem smarter. They talk fancy, and they know a lot about food, enough to ask for special things at restaurants, like undercooked meat and lemons in their water. And they have all those long books on their shelves. But have they even read those books? I doubt it.”
“Rachel has,” I said.
“Just think about it,” he said. “Your life, I mean. You’re still young. You don’t have to do this forever.”
“That would be nice,” I said. It would be nice for Maggie to get better. It would be nice to get a different job, something I liked. It would be nice to live somewhere else, maybe Seattle after all...did I really hate people? Did Rachel? And it would be nice for Rachel to look at me sometimes, just hold my hands in hers and look at me and love me, because I didn’t really hate her, I just hated certain things about her. Because I was jealous.
“As for what’s in the bags,” he said, “there’s guns and drugs, but also organs. But don’t worry, they don’t do murders, not anymore. It was too risky. My people gave them trouble. It’s just the organ trade.”
“You say I should stop working for them,” I said. “How do I get out of it?”
“You just leave,” he said. “They’ll never want to let you go. They’ll do anything to keep you. But you have to try. It’ll be easier if you move far away, and never, under any circumstances, tell the cops anything. Just leave.”
We shook hands, and he started to leave, but turned back.
“It's like you’re sleepwalking yourself.”
The rest of my life can go one of two ways.
No, of course, it can go more than two ways. It can go more ways than I can imagine. For example, I never imagined to live in Marysville, but here I am. But for now, I can think of only two truly conceivable possibilities, only two ways out of the place I am now.
Possible Life Number 1:
I never see the red-bearded man again. I put Maggie in psychotherapy and make a point of playing outside with her each day after work. Sometimes we go swimming, while we are awake. All the exercise tires her out so that her body cannot possibly want to swim at night, though she might still sleepwalk. Perhaps it is not the absence of stimuli she needs, but the presence of the correct stimuli. Somehow, with the help of Jennie, I undo my involvement with the Mason family. Maybe I hear from them once in a while in the future, maybe I get a call or see one of them watching me from the edge of the playground, the edge of Maggie’s college campus. But they never hurt us. They just keep tabs.
I think about the red-bearded man on occasion. I consider leaving Rachel and going somewhere else. Maybe Colorado. I think about working in one of those ski resorts at a nice restaurant where people tip a lot. I could meet someone else, maybe someone who understands the first thing about me. I consider leaving, but I don’t actually leave. I watch Maggie as she completes her first kindergarten homework assignment, which is to draw a picture of her mother, and she has two, and I know she will have her first experience of bullying as soon as she shows it to her classmates.
I call my own mother. I talk to her one last time. She won’t die immediately afterward, but she won’t forgive me for what I’ve done, marrying a woman. What I’ve done.
And what she did to me, I won’t do to Maggie.
Possible Life Number 2:
I seriously consider leaving Rachel, and I do. I don’t love her. Rachel moves back to Boston, with Maggie. She gets Maggie, because she is the birth mother and that’s what the court cares about. I see Maggie when I can. I do move to Colorado and work in a nice ski resort restaurant. I meet someone else. I love that person, maybe. If I’m lucky. At the very least, I can stand that person, and I like some of the things they do. We enjoy some of the same activities, and we have fun on the weekends. I move up to management at the restaurant so I can make more money and see Maggie more often. I get old. Some other things happen, such as new friendships and hobbies.
But:
There is a third way my life could go.
This is only if I can be really brave. But it is also my best shot at happiness.
To achieve this life, I will have to admit to myself a series of truths, all of which scareme.
1)My father does not matter. He never did, and I have nothing to gain by thinking of him.
2)My mother does not matter, either. She gave birth to me, and I am grateful. They say you should love and call your mother, no matter what. But this is not true, not for me.
3)I am not actually stupid.
4)I am more than just a victim.
5)All those things Rachel said about existentialism, she was right. I can change. We can change. We can move.
6)Maybe what Maggie needs is a change of environment, not a yoga video.
7)Maybe what Maggie needs is her mothers.
8)I can understand existentialism, and I always have. I understand lots of books.
9)There are things that I like. There are things that I dislike. For example, I like to read, and to write, and to think. I like children. I want to be a teacher, and I always have.
10)I can still go back to school. I can still become a teacher.
11)This will take a lot of work, and some logistical and financial reorganizing. But I can do it.
12)Rachel is not evil just because she grew up rich.
13)Maybe I can teach her some things, too. If I only open up to her.
14)What my mother said about being a dyke, it doesn’t matter.
15)Did I ever have a boyfriend I loved more than Rachel? I did not.
16)I have wasted time. But I still have more.
17)When I see her, my body relaxes, even now. Something breaks inside of me, but it’s something that needs to be broken so that something better might grow there.
18)I really do love Rachel.
19)I really do love Rachel.
20)I really am capable of love.
the paper garden
I was never able to remember the names of flowers. I could only remember those names that also have other meanings: bleeding hearts, bluebells, foxglove. My mother had all of these in her garden and when I helped her in the yard I’d only want to water those, not the other flowers. My mother humored me for a while, thinking this was cute, thankful for the help, even planting extra bluebells for me. She watered the other flowers. But as I got a little older, this was no longer cute; it was silly, then irritating. I tried to tell her I didn’t like doing things I didn’t understand. It would be like saying words in a language I didn’t know or letting a stranger into my bedroom. She jerked the watering can out of my hands and said then go play your games inside.
Around that same time, that summer when I was eight, something happened between my mother and father that I didn’t understand, something that changed my mother, making her sad and a bit mean, and we had to move someplace else without Dad. This new place was an apartment complex that had a pool but didn’t have a garden or any space to make one. Sometimes I’d hear my mother whispering and sort of crying into the phone in the middle of the night, but I’d pretend to be asleep, because I knew that if I went to her, it would only make things worse. When I cried about missing my dad, she only cried harder.
One morning shortly after moving there, I went over to the window and carefully peered behind the curtains, keeping my whole face hidde
n except for my eyes. Outside I saw a girl a few years older than me holding something long and thin like a cigarette. Two smaller girls, maybe her sisters, rolled in a square of dirt like baby pigs, laughing. She said something to them that I couldn’t hear, then rolled her eyes and turned away. She seemed to think they were idiots, and so did I.
The older girl’s name was Leah. She was ten, but she was the closest child to my age in the apartment complex. We became friends. The smaller girls were her sisters, five-year old twins. Leah liked to abuse her sisters in any way she could think of, because they were younger and it was easy. The twins were always around, because Leah’s mother made her take them everywhere. It was as if Leah was a babysitter, although she was not a very good one. Sometimes I thought the twins would be better off if they had no babysitter at all.
Leah stole cigarettes from her mother’s purse and smoked them. The twins realized stealing was wrong, but they didn’t realize it was a problem for a child to smoke. “Give back Mom’s cigarettes!” they said to Leah. “You didn’t ask first!” The twins’ names were Morgan and Emma, and they were not identical.
“Quiet,” Leah said, pushing Morgan down with her foot. “She wouldn’t share if I asked her to. I’m only taking what’s coming to me.” I wondered how old you had to be to get cancer.
Every time Leah and the twins came over, my own mother would crinkle her nose like she smelled something bad, but she must have assumed Leah stunk because of her mother’s smoking. She kept letting me hang around her.
Once, we all walked to 7-11 to buy candy bars, but when we got there, Leah turned out her pockets to demonstrate she had no money. She shrugged and took three candy bars and put them in her pockets.
“Bad Leah!” the twins said. She shoved the twins and they shut up.
“Um,” I said. I turned out my own pockets and found the dollar my mother had given me. It was only enough for one candy bar. “We could share?” I said. Leah laughed like this was a stupid idea. She walked out of the store and the twins followed. I went up to the counter to pay.
The Paper Garden Page 13
