The Wonder Garden (15 page)

“You bet. Here's a pen.”

Camille studies the woman. She is petite and redheaded, with a bob cut and gray raincoat, like a little Joan of Arc. Her pretty, pointed chin is infuriating.

“I can't believe you people are serious.”

The woman tilts her head and smiles, as if Camille has said something sweet. “Well, obviously when this kind of thing happens, it's very bad for property values. Not to mention that it's against town zoning. There's a standard of appropriateness that homeowners have to abide by, otherwise people could construct gas stations on their properties, or raise pigs in the front yard.”

“God forbid,” Camille says, rounding her eyes. She can only imagine what the neighbors must say about her own, unmolested property. They would probably bring her to court, if they could, for the bald patches in her grass.

It occurs to her that she is in a unique position, with one foot already out of this place. Before she leaves, perhaps it is her duty to provoke a little self-reflection. She meets the woman's sparkling gaze and smiles. Then, with one motion, she reaches out and plucks the papers from her hand. They make a rude, guttural sound as she rips them in half.

She takes the long way home and drives past the art installation. The impression is, in fact, disconcerting. The house is gigantic, encrusted with a dark carapace, as if diseased. Her first reaction is, strangely, of shame for the house, as if it were the victim of some practical joke. Then, as she looks, it occurs to her that the artwork is a perfect metaphor for this whole place: a grand structure overrun by controlling, suffocating little bugs. She laughs to herself in the car. Perhaps the artist feels the same way she does. Perhaps this is his—or her?—portrait of the town. She honks the horn a few times in solidarity, and waves as she pulls away.

Entering her own home, she is met with a peculiar, constricted feeling. It is as if she has grown larger, or the rooms have shrunk. This house, like the preschool classroom, seems to have been built for children. Setting her purse down in its usual spot on the kitchen counter, a simple motion laden with habit, she feels a sudden urgency. It has become impossible, she understands, to remain here any longer.

Before she can change her mind, she calls the doctor on his cell phone.

“Hi,” she begins breathlessly. “I want to know, have you been thinking about Paris as much as I have?”

“Camille,” he answers, “hello.”

“I just wanted to say that I'm ready to go when you are.” She takes a breath, feels a weird dizziness. “Let's do it. Let's buy the tickets.”

There is an empty pause on the phone, as if the doctor is distracted. After a long moment, his voice comes back clear as the sky. “You're right,” he says, “we should buy them. I'll do it. I'll do it as soon as I have a better sense of my schedule coming up.”

Camille does not respond. It is as if she has been pushed gently into a seat like a little girl. She feels a slug of embarrassment. It had been childish of her to think he would drop everything, leave his patients on the operating table, and board an airplane.

“So,” he says in a different, quieter voice, “would you like to get together tonight?”

At once, her disappointment is flushed away by gratitude. She remembers how fortunate she is to have found this person. Among a colony of creeping carpet beetles, here is a creature with true wingspan, capable of traversing oceans at will.

Still, she does not want to be in the house, does not want to look at the dried paint on the window glass, the old nail holes in the wall that Nick never bothered to patch. With her two hours of freedom, she goes shopping. She bypasses the overpriced boutiques in town and enters the consignment shop. Without looking at the price tags, she holds Paris in mind. In the dressing room, she tries on a low-backed silver dress with a matte sheen. It is too fine for any occasion here, but something she might wear on a weeknight in Paris. This, she realizes, is what attracts her to the European way of life, this offhand glamour in the quotidian: flowers on the breakfast table, aged cheese for lunch.

She turns away from the mirror and views herself over her shoulder. Looking at her own face, she sees an echo of the doctor there. How has she never noticed the resemblance in their features? Now that she has caught it, it is unmistakable. She has heard it said that people tend to be attracted to those they resemble, whose looks are familiar in some way. This is why so many couples look like they could be siblings. It is, apparently, a vanity shared by all.

She buys the dress.

“Good choice,” the saleswoman says at the register. “A designer for the label lives here in town, you know.”

“I didn't look at the label,” Camille snips.

To her relief, the petition woman is gone when she returns to school. Avis's teacher meets her eyes in a meaningful way, as if they share a lovers' secret. Camille takes her daughter's hand and leaves the building. For the rest of the day, she finds herself thinking about having a child with the doctor. She does not particularly want another child, of course, but finds that it is impossible not to consider it, not to imagine what might arise from such magnetic coupledom. How strikingly gray-eyed their offspring would be. It is a universal impulse, perhaps, to follow this preordained script—Nature's way of ensuring that humanity continues to invent ever-refined hybrids, lifting the species to new pinnacles.

Later that night on the futon, she lies with her head on the doctor's chest. Staring at the ceiling, she feels the assertion of his heartbeat, a hidden fist clenching and unclenching beneath her skull. Scanning the ceiling's blank expanse, her eyes catch on a cobweb in the corner of the room, too high to bother sweeping. This is not a man who would notice such things, she thinks gratefully, although perhaps Madeleine has.

Without bidding, her friend's warning returns and resonates in her mind. There is no need to know everything about this man, of course. She knows all that matters. Still, she finds herself humoring the question, following its direction lazily.

“So, tell me what you were like when you were a kid,” she asks him.

“I don't know,” he replies, with an undertone of something like distaste. “Like this, I guess, but smaller.”

“I can't picture you as a boy,” Camille says, shifting her body to look at him. It's true, she thinks, as she examines his face. The nose and jaw seem hardened from a permanent mold, as if he had been conceived a full-grown man.

For Halloween, Avis dresses as Sleeping Beauty. The costume is stiff from its packaging, with its crinoline petticoat and rough glittered designs, and she fusses with the white collar that projects from her shoulders. Camille has lost the battle over shoes and allows her to wear the transparent plastic mules that have come with the dress.

“You can wear them if you want, honey, but they won't be comfortable for trick-or-treating,” Camille reminds her.

“Yes, they will,” Avis says, clicking over the bare floor. She turns and looks at Camille, her hair limp over her shoulders, un-princess-like. The teacher reported that she pushed another little girl this morning, just for sitting too close. The reproach in the teacher's eyes, as she said this, had heated Camille's blood.

“You dress up, too, Mommy.”

“No, no,” Camille says with forced sweetness, “I want to make sure
you
get all the candy.”

“
Please
dress up!”

She is already exhausted. Being alone with her daughter has been draining lately, and it is only out of obligation that she has agreed to circle the neighborhood tonight at a toddler's pace. This is one of the times when being a mother feels like a form of slavery, this constant servitude to a tyrant's whims. Nothing can come fast enough for her daughter, nothing is enough.

“How about we watch a movie together before we go?” Camille offers. “What would you like to see?”

Avis chooses a DVD about Sleeping Beauty, or Beauty and the Beast, or whatever Beauty, and sinks to the rug as if tranquilized. On the screen, a golden-haired girl sits down at a spinning wheel and emits a perfect drop of ruby blood. Strangely, watching the horror dawn on the animated girl's face, Camille feels a sting of sympathy. It was just a simple, wrong motion that cannot be reversed. Before the creature understands the consequences, claws of sleep pull her under.

How smoothly Nick had slipped out of the yoke. Now, she supposes, he'll trap this new woman into it, who has no idea how thoroughly a strong woman can be bent and broken. Or maybe she does know. Maybe she has already made arrangements for exhaustive child care. Maybe Victoria is smarter than Camille will ever be.

“Are we going to the parade now?” Avis asks when the movie ends.

Camille looks at her daughter. She has forgotten the town parade. The tantrum comes immediately, subdued by an impulsive offer to have dinner at Gulliver's.

At the restaurant, Camille allows Avis to order whatever she wants. This, of course, is French fries and ice cream. Camille splurges on a fifteen-dollar grilled chicken salad for herself, in hopes of losing five pounds before Paris. The restaurant is full and loud. It was good, she tells herself, to take Avis out. It is something they should do more often. Perhaps Camille has failed her daughter in not orchestrating more contact with the world, not arranging the usual playdates or swim classes or story hours. She watches Avis across the table, bobbing for ice cubes in her water glass, and concedes that it would be nice for her to have some little friends of her own, little princes and princesses to accompany trick-or-treating. But not now. It makes more sense to start over in France. She hasn't told Avis about the plan, but perhaps she will tonight. This might be just the time for it.

As they are waiting for their food, a large family comes into the restaurant, all costumed in some kind of Arabic dress. Camille smiles wryly. This kind of team costume is perfect, so typical, just the kind of thing that people here think is cute. The mother of the clan—Jesus, how many kids are there, six?—wears a look of proud satisfaction, her eyes scanning the dining room as she steers her herd to their table. This is probably a major outing for her, a highlight of her year. Halloween, Camille thinks, is such an American holiday, so thoroughly geared to a country of frustrated adults desperate to play dress-up.

Her gaze travels over this family and freezes. What she is seeing does not register at first. Her eyes are telling her that her doctor is there, sitting down with this family, wearing some sort of tunic. Her breath stops. It is not unusual, she reminds herself, in times of infatuation, to see a man's face in all faces. She looks away, and then back. It is him, she is certain. But why is he with these people? Why is he dressed this way? He does not see her as the family settles around a table, and he takes a seat between two adolescent boys.

She does not notice her own food arrive. When she glances back at her daughter, who is methodically dipping French fries into apple juice, it is like viewing her through a glass wall. Her eyes return helplessly to the doctor and remain there, watching his movements. Finally, he looks up and sees her. There is a hollow instant before the glimmer of recognition, but that is all. There is no surprise on his face. Instead, his exquisite mouth forms a sly smile, as if they are sharing a joke. She goes cold.

His eyes slide away, and he laughs at something one of the boys is saying. Camille's ears fill with loud static, so that she can no longer hear the noise of the restaurant. The mother of the family glances toward her and gazes blankly for a moment. She is tragic in her sequined sari and painted eye makeup, her face round and overfed like a pink, all-American sow.

Camille forces herself to remain at the table until Avis has finished her ice cream. She leaves her own salad untouched, with its tight cranberries, baby oranges, and frilly wreath of greens, like a careful little Eden.

The static remains in her ears through the drive home and crackles as she climbs the chipped concrete steps of her house. Avis vanishes inside. Camille follows, closes the door, and sits. There on the battle-torn sofa that has served her through two decades, she sits very still and tries to unpuzzle the riddle.

“To what end?” is the phrase that comes to her.
To what end?
She is not upset, she tells herself, not really. Just mystified. The picture of Paris—the bed and windows, the little gilt breakfast tray with bread and cheese and honey, the silver dress—glides smoothly away. She looks down at her legs on the couch. She is still here, as she was before. She is still safe, intact, shod in calfskin Steve Madden boots.
To what end?

She finds a rumpled blanket at the end of the couch and pulls it over herself. The chill she'd felt in the restaurant is still with her. Even now, in her own house, she feels exposed, unsheltered, as if the walls were translucent and she were on display like a lab rat.

Avis comes running out of her bedroom and rushes to the front door holding a pumpkin pail. Her little pink gown is blotched with ketchup, and her hair has already snagged in her tiara. She clutches the doorknob with such naked hope that Camille feels a roll of nausea. The idea of taking her daughter outside, of holding her hand along the night-shaded, sinister streets of this town, of any town, is too much. It would be better for both of them to stay inside, it seems, to find a spot in the center of the house, far from the windows, and huddle together for a little while.

“Are you sure you want to go back out?” Camille asks lightly. “Maybe we could have some candy here and watch TV instead.”

“Mommy!” Avis shrieks.

“Come on, let's cuddle up on the couch together.”

Her daughter's dress puddles as she collapses to the floor.

“All right, all right,” Camille says, “let's go.”

She wears a scarf and hat, although the night is not cold enough to steam her breath. The house next door is darkened. The couple who lives there is older, she believes, probably pretending not to be home. Camille is envious tonight of their immunity. She and Avis keep walking through the unlit span to the next house. There are far-off sounds of children's voices, beams of flashlights sweeping through the trees. Camille walks quickly, battling an icy dread. She nearly jogs from house to house, trailing her child princess behind. It is rude, she knows, how curtly she responds to the fawning of the neighbors who answer their doors. She just wants this night to be over, this night of all nights, this never-ending night. Her heart keeps a crazed beat. When she wakes in the morning, she tells herself, the sky will be white, scraped clean. It will be the first day of November. The winter will loom close.