The Wonder Garden (19 page)

“Do you hear that?” Roger asks. There is a thumping sound coming from above, the step of heavy boots. “It's in the attic. Maybe animals.”

Cheryl is frozen in place. Reverend Slater was a pious man, but not known as a kind one. He was notorious for his anger, for the violent outbursts that kept his family docile and his community subservient.

“Come,” says Roger, infused with some strange new energy. “Who knows what we'll find. Maybe it will help our case.”

He goes out of the bedroom with the poker. Cheryl senses a new, unpleasant charge in the air that prickles against her skin, compelling her to flee. Instead, she scurries after Roger like a nervous hunting dog. As they climb the narrow staircase to the attic, she sees a flickering form pass against the wall beside her, inches from her face. The shape, flat and phosphorescent, sweeps upward as Roger reaches the top of the stairs.

No sound comes from Cheryl's throat as he steps along a ceiling joist and raises the poker to the ceiling. Her scream emerges just as the rafters buckle. In the suspended moment before the crash, it seems as if someone has pulled a string, dropping the beams at a neat, choreographed diagonal. The next moment, Roger is sprawled upon the floorboards, pinned at the leg.

Dead. Martyred. Cheryl stands paralyzed on the stairs, awed by the swiftness of judgment.

Her husband lifts a hand. “Go,” he chokes. “What are you doing?”

As she rushes down through the house, electrified air spangles the back of her neck. Outside, her cloak blows open and she stumbles through the snow in her chemise. The shimmering shape appears again beside her, skimming close upon the snow, licking at her heels, tripping her. She scrambles over Cannonfield Road and falls through the door of her own house. The power is still out, the telephone dead. Upstairs, her children grumble awake.

Amos, thank heaven, is able to find a signal on his cell phone, and within moments an ambulance and fire engine arrive at the Slater house with spinning lights. A brigade of brawny, yellow-suited men storms the attic and lifts the mighty beam from Roger's leg. For the moment, no one asks who he is, why he is here.

Cheryl lets Rebekah drive the Jeep to the hospital. Amos sits in the passenger seat, Cheryl in the back.

“We were just turning off the water,” she mumbles in a flat voice, although no one has asked. “We just went in to make sure it was turned off. We were just turning off the water.”

They are fortunate, the doctors say, that Roger escaped with just a broken tibia. They will need to introduce a metal rod to align the bone, and he may walk with a permanent limp. His chair-making, at least, will not be affected.

“You look like a wounded soldier,” Cheryl tells him, patting his cast.

The questions come now, in an avalanche. A police detective questions them at the hospital. Cheryl answers, holds fast to her story. They were turning off the water. A neighborly favor. They did not forcibly enter, but came in with a key. They were doing what they hoped their own neighbors might do, had they been away from their home in a storm. They had gone to the attic to investigate animal sounds.

And the drainpipe? The windows?

“Strange, yes. We thought so, too.”

A blue tarp appears on the roof of the Slater house like a draped flag. Cheryl feels a nervous thrill each time it catches her eye through the window. It is an emblem of her victory—its healing presence the result of her actions alone. The house will be saved now, it is certain. Regardless of the cost, she has won. The Aston Martin pulls into the driveway one morning while she is at her button work. Her hands pause in midair as she watches from across the street, waiting for the car doors to open. She notices that she is holding her breath. After several moments, the car slides back out of the driveway and creeps away down Cannonfield Road.

The following week, the commission holds a special meeting with the homeowners about repairing the Slater house under its guidelines. Cheryl sits quietly at the table and lets Edward Drayton preside. The owners are what she'd pictured—the woman lithe and manicured, the husband skittish in modern glasses. They sit, as so many others have sat, on the flimsy folding chairs facing the oak table.

Cheryl is aware of the uneasy glances of the other commission members. The serenity she feels is that of a warrior who has completed her work, laid down her bayonet. Barbara Underhill and Gordon Cassava, Richard Darch and Lori Hatfield will never hear the shrill call of liberty the way she has, will never swim the current of history.

The homeowners have chosen not to press charges. They could easily have sued, Roger reminds her, for trespassing and vandalism. They could have fingerprinted the window sashes and drainpipe if they wanted. Perhaps deep down, Cheryl thinks, they know better than to do so. Perhaps they hear the boot-drop of Ezekiel in their dreams.

Edward Drayton announces that the commission's structural engineer has been contacted and will begin consultations without delay.

“An appropriate plan for restoration will be determined,” he drones, “with an architect approved by the commission. All critical structural problems will be addressed in addition to repairing the roof, including repointing the foundation and replacing aged timber sill plates. The full cost, naturally, will be borne by the property owners, to bring the house in line with the standards of the commission. With our guidance, the Ezekiel Slater house will be returned to its former grandeur
.
”

Cheryl is grateful that her children are home for one more night, that she can declare this final triumph in person. They sit at the table, their faces in candlelight, as she repeats Edward Drayton's words. Cheryl wants to capture this moment, their features gilded in this way, their eyes mirroring twin flames. She would like to visit this image in her mind for years to come, on those winter nights when her children are far away, doing things she will never know with people she has never met. She finishes speaking and smiles in anticipation. Her children do not reply at once. After a moment, Amos mutters, “Congratulations,”
to a focal point near Cheryl's ear, then excuses himself and goes upstairs. Rebekah blinks her eyes, smiles in her supercilious new way, and returns to her plate of leftover bread pudding.

The next morning, Cheryl and Roger drive them to the airport. They embrace at the security gate. Both parents resist the itch to remind and advise, to command their son to complete the semester, to tell their daughter to skip Afrikaans. Instead, they let their children pull out of their arms and join the security line. They watch them remove their shoes and put their backpacks on the conveyor belt. They see Amos place his pocket watch into a plastic bucket and send it through the X-ray machine. They watch their children pass through the metal detector's trellis and, on the other side, give a brief wave and disappear around a corner. They will sit together for the six-hour flight, then part ways in San Francisco, one aimed south, the other east. By the time the sun sets in New England, they will be speeding over freeways their parents have never driven, along the lurid blue coastline at the edge of America. They will charge through dark belts of sequoias, close and brooding, toward the brightening valleys and swells of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Sierra Nevada.

Cheryl and Roger drive home in silence. There will be plenty to do these next few months. The springtime circuit is on the horizon: Fort Frederick in April, Ticonderoga in June. There will be another tavern dance, and several Ordinary Evenings with games and ale. Cheryl will have twilights at her virginals. And, of course, there are buttons to be sewn. As many as she can manage.

F
LOORTIME

S
UZANNE IS
supposed to be playing with Elliot. He sits on the rug with a stacking toy, donut-shaped rings on a rod. When finished, the tower should represent the colors of the rainbow in sequence, but Suzanne is happy if he can just fit a ring on the pole. When he fails, when a ring tumbles to the floor, she can't resist the urge to pick it up and slide it on for him. She is not supposed to do this, she knows. It is important to observe and encourage without assisting. It is important to make frequent eye contact, to use an upbeat and affectionate tone of voice. If he will not look at her when she speaks, she is supposed to tilt his chin with her fingers, to insist that their eyes meet. She has never actually done this.

It is Saturday, the first true spring day. Carlota is off, and Brian is on the boat. She had not dissuaded him from going, had not played the guilt card. There is no need for both of them to stay home today. If she is bad at playing with their son, Brian is worse.

Elliot drops a red ring, and it rolls under the coffee table. Suzanne lets it go, places a larger yellow ring into his blunt little hands. She looks at the time: only 11:45. Her watch strikes her at this moment as ludicrously fine—an anniversary gift marking five years of marriage—the Ebel she'd been hinting for, with a gray satin dial ringed with diamonds. It is expertly engineered, exquisitely beautiful, splintering the overhead lights into a thousand blazing fragments.

It has been three weeks since Elliot's diagnosis. For months, Suzanne had been lying at pediatrician appointments. When the doctor had asked about Elliot's physical and verbal development, she forced a smile and said that, yes, he was running and jumping; yes, he had at least ten words. The truth was that she had never heard him speak. He had never muttered “Mama” or “Dada.” He was just a late bloomer, she'd assumed. He was an introverted, thoughtful child with quiet considerations of his own. It was true that she rarely spent time with other children Elliot's age, and had little basis for comparison. Only once had she observed him alongside a boy of the same size, at a restaurant. That child had pointed at Suzanne's hoop earrings and said a word that sounded like “bubble.” Suzanne had smiled in surprise and studied the boy's face for a discreet moment—his eyes blue and keen, blinking with attention—before looking to his mother, a woman younger than herself and not remarkable in any way, and asking, “Did you hear that?”

“Oh, I know,” the woman had said, laughing and chewing. “He loves jewelry.”

Suzanne had looked back at the boy, who was now spooning clam chowder into his mouth. Slumped in the highchair beside her, Elliot gravely and repeatedly raked a fork over a paper napkin.

After that, Suzanne avoided taking her son into public. Brian hadn't yet been awakened to Elliot's differences, and she did not bring them to his attention. Then, at Elliot's eighteen-month checkup, she couldn't make him sit up. He screamed when the nurse put him on the baby scale and arched his back like a swordfish. When the doctor came in, Elliot was squirming belly-down on the examining table, kicking his legs. Suzanne smiled and shrugged. She had dressed for the appointment in a tweed pencil skirt and black turtleneck, as if to convince the doctor of her competence.

The doctor had kept Elliot for longer than expected. Her usual reassuring manner was gone, replaced by a disconcerting professional gravity. She gave Suzanne the name of a specialist and urged her to schedule an evaluation quickly. Later, she and Brian watched helplessly as the specialist sat across from their son, spoke his name, waited for eye contact. He rolled a ball to see if Elliot would reciprocate. He showed Elliot a book with a picture of a monkey, then put the book on his own head. Throughout all this, Elliot stared into the middle distance, unsmiling, periodically slapping the table in front of him.

Early intervention was important, the specialist said. They should find a support group. They should investigate which therapies their insurance might cover: home-based speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy. He recommended that they visit treatment centers in person, to determine which approach might be best for Elliot. And the most important intervention would have to come from the family itself. He smiled when he said this, rubbing his glasses. It would be optimal, of course, if one parent were able to stay home with the boy, to engage with him each day in a rigorous and focused manner.

Now, Suzanne's laptop computer rests on the kitchen table in the periphery of her vision, sleek and white, its little light pulsing with intelligence. She is conscious of its pull through every moment she spends on the floor, but girds herself against it. Finally, when Elliot wrangles the last ring onto his tower, she applauds, then rewards herself by getting up to check her e-mail. There is nothing of interest in her inbox, but she lingers anyway, browsing
Vogue
.

Elliot has abandoned the stacking toy and is now on his feet, turning circles on the carpet. Suzanne watches passively for a few moments, until he topples sideways onto the couch. The specialist has explained that such behavior is often caused by too little sensory input. Her fault, this time, for having left him alone. She goes to him, takes him gently by the shoulders, and pulls him into a bear hug, as instructed. After a moment of steady pressure, she feels his body relax. The next activity should be something physical, she knows, so she goes to retrieve the balance board. Her watch glitters. Noon. Brian won't be home until at least four. She is jealous of his being outdoors. The world shimmers with life, but she cannot muster the energy to shepherd Elliot into the yard.

Once he has begun on the balance board, Suzanne steps away again. She goes to the kitchen and pours a glass of lemonade, adding the ice afterward to avoid the clatter of the cubes, too harsh for Elliot's ears. Last, she adds a finger of chilled vodka from the freezer.

Outside the living room window, through the border of young pines, Suzanne sees a man cross the adjacent yard and disappear into the woods. Their next-door neighbor. She has often seen him skulking outside like this, even on the few weekdays she's been at home. It appears that he does not have a job.

She met his wife, Madeleine, after they first moved in. A pretty, bewildered pregnant woman. A few months later, pink balloons had appeared on the neighboring mailbox, and Suzanne had brought over a key lime pie. The husband had answered the door. He was tall and lean and not handsome, but his eyes were brazenly green and unapologetic, almost rude.

Suzanne had shaped her face into a neighborly smile. “Suzanne Crawford from next door.”

There had been a smell of something earthy, spicy, inside the house. Incense? Marijuana? She'd glimpsed Madeleine in the background, holding a bundle close to her body, perhaps breast-feeding. The husband apologized that his wife wasn't able to come to the door. His voice was soft and resonant, in contrast to the impolite stare.

She felt herself redden, handed him the pie. “Well, I don't want to disturb her. Just a little something from us to you.”

Walking home, she realized she'd neglected to ask the baby's name.

Since they moved in, the neighbors' front yard has become increasingly shaggy, the weeds in the grass growing hardy enough to flower, autumn leaves left to mulch beneath snowfall. Such neglect stands out in a neighborhood like this, and Suzanne chafes whenever she looks at the property. She has fleetingly considered leaving an anonymous note. Perhaps these are the distracted, dreamy kind of people who simply don't know, don't see; who just need a gentle nudge. It's true that she has sensed something different about Madeleine, something faltering and apologetic. There is something almost cowering about her, like a pursued animal.

Really, Suzanne would have preferred living somewhere with fewer neighbors, larger properties, more privacy. When she and Brian had first discussed moving to the country, she'd envisioned horse pastures, old farmhouses with original beams and barns. But the cost of rural living—the elegant kind—had proven higher than they'd guessed. For the price of their Chelsea apartment, they could afford only a midsized four-bedroom on a half acre. This did not seem to bother Brian, who was happy just to be near the water. Without asking, he'd taken a chunk of their remaining savings and bought the boat.

After Elliot's birth, Suzanne had not experienced the hormonal lift of new motherhood. Instead, she'd been pummeled by fatigue, bedeviled by a nagging melancholy. Brian had insisted that they hire help and had found Carlota himself. He'd encouraged Suzanne to use her maternity leave to get outside, meet the neighbors, find a network of like-minded women.
Join a book group,
he'd said. She'd resisted this idea—she was never much of a reader and feared sounding stupid in front of others—but had, finally, found a group and joined it. To her relief, the same few women dominated the discussions. Most of the women were fashionable in a subdued suburban way, with just a handful of unkempt, over-smiling types. Her husband had been right; it felt good to see these people in the supermarket, to greet them by name. There was a sense of potential, at least, for dinner parties and deepening friendship. A more cautious and formulaic sort of friendship, perhaps, but a version of friendship still. The seed of all this, of course, lay in their children who would attend the same schools, bring their mothers together through teachers and sports teams.

But now she doesn't know. Will Elliot attend a different kind of school? Perhaps the conversations she will have for the rest of her life will be unpleasant, taut with the discomfort and pity of others. Perhaps they will not be things to enjoy, but to be gotten through.

The night of Elliot's diagnosis, she and Brian had lain in bed in their separate whirlpools of thought, without speaking. What, Suzanne wondered privately, had gone wrong in this genetic experiment so clearly weighted toward success? She and Brian were both healthy, strong-boned, intelligent. Which of them had contributed the guilty gene? Which, hiding the dormant flaw of some great-grandparent, had dropped their end of the bargain? She had, after all, been careful in choosing her mate. She and Brian had met respectably, through a college friend. They had gone on proper dates, asked the right questions, discovered parallel values and preferences, complementary personality traits. They'd posed for a wedding announcement in the
Times
, their faces properly aligned.

She had never really felt the maternal craving that other women claimed to feel, but she knew her time was limited. If they didn't have a baby soon, they might end up a childless couple—that curiosity—to whom others give questioning, pitying looks. Is it possible, she wonders now, that she'd failed to transfer some vital maternal message to her son in utero? Is the fact that he does not meet her eyes, does not return her smile, evidence of some basic failure on her part? Babies sense truths about their parents, she believes. Her son has floated in her waters, absorbed them, known their makeup. There can be no greater, more frightening intimacy.

And she is horrified by the disappointment she sometimes feels, alternating with a helpless, almost violent love for her boy.
So what if he isn't normal?
she admonishes herself. Had she borne a child only to watch him succeed at the endeavors she values? Would she only prize a child who was like other people's children?

Elliot's features are delicate, symmetrical. The bridge of his nose is broad and thoughtful-seeming, but his hair is bran-colored and feral. Even when she manages to wrestle a comb through, it splits back into scrappy chunks. Her son pats his head compulsively while eating, so that his hair collects the juices of ham and salami and, by the end of the day, smells like a trash can. She is sorry to leave him each morning—she feels a cavity open in her chest as she kisses his indifferent head and closes the door—but once she is moving, once the terror of the train's velocity, the panic of physical distance, has diminished, her disorientation recedes and is replaced by a kind of light and floating relief. She closes her eyes. She goes to work.

This month's book selection is about an Ethiopian orphan adopted by Iowans. Suzanne has gotten through only twenty pages of it, but dresses in anticipation of the evening's meeting, to be hosted by Madeleine Gaines next door. She chooses a fawn-colored sheath with red slingback sandals. No accessories: just a stroke of ruby lipstick and an elastic for her hair. She girds herself for what she might encounter next door, what clutter or unseemliness—and is surprised to enter a house that is clean, sparsely furnished, nondescript. There is a mirrored console table in the entrance hall, imitation art deco. No one greets her at the door. Mingling voices lead her to the sunken living room, where women huddle near a card table with glasses of sangria. Madeleine herself shuttles to and from the kitchen, bringing out appetizer forks and little stacks of paper napkins.

Suzanne greets the other women and surveys the hors d'oeuvre table. Limp prosciutto rolls, pucks of bruschetta, stuffed mushrooms still on the baking sheet. As Suzanne pours herself sangria, a clump of messy fruit splashes into her glass. Sangria is a nice idea, but will never be as elegant as clean white wine.

“You know, I have to say, I feel bad for the children,” April Carlson remarks, when they are all sitting. “I know they're lucky to escape Africa, I know things would have been worse for them there, but I can't help thinking how hard it must be to look so different from their adoptive families.”

April is fresh and blond, in clam diggers and espadrilles, though it is barely Memorial Day. It is clear, just from hearing her glass-chime voice, that she has no real worries to speak of. But it is impossible to be sure. All these women guard the details of their lives. Like surfacing whales, they arch their smooth rounds only briefly into view. The great bulks remain underwater. Once a month, they appear, breathe one another in, then dive again. There are alcoholic husbands, certainly. There are prescription drugs, cosmetic surgeries, eating disorders. There must be shames in this room dark or darker than Suzanne's own.