The Wonder Garden (22 page)

At such moments she is overtaken by a nebulous sense of regret. She is revisited primarily, curiously, by contrition for having discouraged his interest years ago in the professor-neighbors' daughter. At the time, Helen had considered the girl unfeminine and coarse-featured, of mediocre breeding. Now, she would be delighted, overjoyed—she would give almost anything—to see him with a woman like that.

She and Avis watch television on the bed until the sun goes down. At the start of a show about whales, Avis begins to wiggle and whine. Helen realizes she has eaten nothing more than an apple since noon.

“Would you like to help me cook dinner? What should we make?” Helen asks, hearing the nervous edge in her voice. She hasn't thought this far, hasn't considered dinner. She hasn't considered Gene's return from work.

Hastily, she helps Avis change back into her own clothing. Downstairs, they look in the kitchen cupboard together. Avis selects an ancient box of wagon wheel pasta, and Helen finds ingredients for brown gravy. She allows herself a glance at the house next door, sees the windows lit yellow. There is a falling feeling inside her, a kind of accelerating confusion, that she attributes to hunger.

When Gene comes in the door, Helen flashes a smile. She stirs the gravy with one hand, gesturing with the other to the girl standing stone-faced beside her.

“This is Avis from next door,” she says brightly. “Her mother asked us to watch her tonight. Just a little favor.”

Gene pauses in midstep, hugging a paper grocery bag. “What next door?”

“That house.” Helen gestures briskly to the side. “We're making pasta for dinner. Right, honey?”

Avis stares dolefully at Gene, who comes in and puts the grocery bag into the refrigerator, minus one bottle. He loosens the cap with a claw-shaped toggle and takes a drink.

“What's this now? We're babysitting?”

“Just for tonight.” Helen looks at Avis. “We've been having a lot of fun, right?”

Gene grumbles and retreats to the den. A moment later, Helen hears the sound of the television, rough male voices and gunshots.

When Helen turns around again, she sees that Avis has climbed onto a chair and is looking out the window toward her house. Helen comes up beside her, for a moment expecting to see police cars next door, and reaches to unhook the curtains.

“Come, honey, let's make the gravy together.”

“Where's my mommy?”

Helen puts a hand to Avis's shoulder, feels the warmth of skin beneath the shirt. The girl flinches, pulls away.

“She'll be back tomorrow. She told me that you should stay here, just for tonight.” Helen breathes in. “Don't worry, I'm going to take care of you.”

Helen feels a tingle of pride as she says this, as if she has won some private contest. She thinks of the woman next door, hurriedly dialing the telephone right now, or perhaps sitting quietly by herself. Is there any chance that she is reviewing the course of her actions, narrowing them down, pinpointing the careless decisions that have led here? Most likely not, Helen concludes. She feels that she understands women like this. Avis's mother will not pause to examine her own role, but hasten to place blame. She will call the mother of the babysitter, Olivia, who'd left her daughter alone. She will blame that girl, that mother. Still, Helen feels a twist of pity. It is a harsh lesson for any parent, no matter how deserving.

When the gravy is done, the pasta cooked, Helen shows Avis where to place the cloth napkins on the table, where to put the forks and water glasses. This may be, as far as Helen knows, her first encounter with a fully set table, a family dinner. She calls Gene, who slouches out of the den and opens a new bottle. There is no booster seat in the house, so Avis sits sunken on a full-sized chair. Gene, at the head of the table, shifts uncomfortably. They eat quietly for a few minutes, the table trembling from some repetitive movement of Avis's. As Helen watches the girl spear her wagon wheels, one by one, she sways with the sudden premonition of a knock at the door. For a moment she waits—breathing deeply, composing herself—but the knock does not come.

It is good, Helen reminds herself, for the girl to be here, in a house like this. Her home is an extension of her own self as she would present it to the world. The structure, once a single-story ranch, the stylistic peer of its 1950s neighbors, is now indistinguishable from the newly built houses on teardown lots. She has added a second story, adorned it with arched-eyebrow gables. She has overlaid the concrete porch with bluestone, rebuilt the steps with ashlar risers. And, in keeping with the prevailing aesthetic, she has added craftsman-style columns and a vaulted beadboard ceiling.

Unlike Rufus, she has welcomed the changes around her. She appreciates the care that the town's meticulous new families have exhibited in their renovations and landscaping, bespeaking a larger set of kindred values. Rather than threatened, Helen feels comforted by this influx of discriminating young people, flush with money and beauty, who have chosen to live here. The appreciation is mutual, she imagines. As a longtime resident, she deserves part of the credit for making Old Cranbury so attractive to newcomers, a place with a well-rooted citizenry, upholders of community standards.

The interior of her home is equally reflective of her taste and character, and potentially instructive to a child. The living room is formal in the old style, with a Persian rug, Louis XVI settee, damask curtains edged with tassels. A large, gilt-lined table displays her most prized dollhouse, a three-story Victorian. A satinwood display cabinet showcases her family heirlooms—porcelain bells, plates, beer steins—emblazoned with the coat of arms of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. These are objects with roots in proven, time-tested culture. We are the stewards of our culture, Helen believes, responsible for shepherding it safely into the future. Helen feels pity for children of parents with no understanding of this, who dispose of the past like so much used toilet tissue.

Her own son has disparaged her concern for appearances. As she notes of so many American youths, he has learned to prize individual freedom above all else, even at the expense of civilized manners and common decency. It is, at the core, a sad misunderstanding. He has never been able to hear her, or has willfully blocked her out, when she tries to explain that her attention to dress, to housekeeping, to the front shrubs and flower boxes, is not about impressing others. There is no such servility in it. On the contrary, it is a matter of self-regard, a concerted lifting of the individual in example to the many. This is the way the world works, she has tried to tell him, the way it has always worked since the beginning. Those who miss this truth, or ignore it, will lose—and always have.

She looks at Avis in her gravy-dripped shirt, poking at a wagon wheel with her finger. The exertions of the day descend upon Helen all at once, make her posture begin to hunch. Still, she forces herself to make conversation with Gene, to ask about Cannonfield Road, pretend to listen. When there is a pause, she smiles at Avis and says, “And what did
we
do today?”

The girl looks down at her plate.

“Did we paint together? Did you help me paint furniture for the dollhouse?”

There is a quiver at the sides of the girl's lips, but she does not answer. Helen rises to clear the table. She goes into the kitchen with the stack of dishes and runs the water over them.

“Helen,” Gene calls.

She comes back in and sees that Avis is crying, her face crumpled pink.

Gene stays in the den as Helen helps Avis wash her face and brush her teeth. Through the floor, she hears the jangling sound track of another 1970s vigilante film. She puts Avis back in the Block Island T-shirt and sits with her in Rufus's room. There are no longer any children's books in the house, so she retells the events of their day together. The girl looks at her without expression, then her face crumples again. The alarming pink color returns, the tears mingling with mucous and dripping into her mouth. Helen sits and waits, watching the contortions of the little girl's face until she finally expends herself. Within moments, she has dropped to the pillow, asleep.

Helen, too, feels ready to collapse. As she is pulling on her nightgown, Gene creaks up the stairs and puts his head into the bedroom.

“You didn't tell me she was
sleeping
here.”

“It's just for one night.”

“Who are these people again? I've never heard you mention them.”

“The next-door neighbors. The mother couldn't find a babysitter.” This is true in a way, Helen thinks.

“Well, you didn't ask me.”

“Don't worry, you don't have to do anything. Just watch your
Death Wish
.” She turns away.

Helen wakes early. She lies quietly, feeling an unidentified spark, and after a few moments remembers Avis. Slipping out of bed and into the hallway, she turns the knob of Rufus's bedroom. The girl's head is still there, resting on the pillow. From this distance, the unfamiliar mass of hair looks to Helen like the fur of a small animal. She closes the door and retreats, lets the girl sleep.

She dresses in front of the full-length mirror. She pins her hair in an artful fashion, arranging a swag to cover the thinning place at the hairline. In a buttoned blouse and bias-cut skirt, she believes herself to look younger and more feminine than other women her age, those who wear robes and slippers in the house and sometimes in public. Even if she doesn't step outdoors all day, even if it's only to please herself when she passes a mirror in her own home, it is always worth the effort to look nice.

Today, before bringing her home, Helen might like to take Avis shopping, buy her some pretty clothes. She pictures a ­scallop-collared shirt with pearly buttons, a skirt with pleats. They will have to go quickly, before Gene awakes, before the lights come on in the house next door. If the clothing stores are not yet open for business, perhaps they will go for breakfast somewhere.

Helen rouses the girl, who whines and shrinks away. It takes a few struggling minutes to pull her into a sitting position and to squeeze her into her clothing. This is followed by a tumultuous visit to the bathroom, a discovery of wet underwear. This is all right, Helen thinks. They can buy new panties, too.

Downstairs, Helen helps Avis with her shoes, looping the laces in careful bows. Lastly, she tries to do something about the knotty hair—but when Helen applies her boar bristle hairbrush, the girl screeches and pulls away. Like a kitten, she bounds into the living room and climbs onto the settee, her shoe soles digging into the upholstery. Helen feels her blood ripple. So, here it is at last, true evidence of the girl's upbringing. She takes a breath. This is an important moment. It is crucial to control her response, to deliver her message correctly and firmly.

“Take your shoes off the sofa, please,” she commands.

Avis looks at her, thumb in mouth, and Helen detects a dark glimmer in her stare. It strikes her as the practiced gaze of the chronically guilty, which the girl's mother has allowed her to master. Helen lowers her voice, steadies its tremor.

“I said take your shoes off the sofa, please. Now.”

Avis scrambles off the settee altogether and begins a directionless sprint, crying, “No! I wan' my mommy!” Her sneakers slap through the hallway into the kitchen.

This is all theatrics, Helen understands. She knows the girl to be four years old, at least, and four-year-olds speak more fluently than this. She is positive that Rufus had composed complex sentences at this age.

Helen has just cornered the girl in the kitchen when the phone rings, and cannot risk going to answer it. She hears the vibrations of her husband's voice through the ceiling, then the drum of his footsteps on the stairs.

When he comes into the kitchen, Helen looks sternly at Avis. “Please say ‘good morning' to Mr. Tanner,” she commands.

Avis does not reply, but retreats farther into the corner, flanked by the trash can. Helen looks at her husband, the rigid mouth and scored forehead, and understands that something has happened.

“Rufus is in the hospital,” Gene says. “They're saying he lost consciousness at a party. I don't know. Maybe it was drugs.” Gene stands in the kitchen with his arms at his sides. “They said he's awake now. Being monitored.”

“What?”

Gene turns from her, his hands shaking as he fumbles in the drawer for the car keys.

“Goddamn it,”
he mumbles.

Helen stands in the kitchen in her buttoned blouse and skirt, watching her husband's movements.

“Get your coat,” he tells her.

It is May, of course, and getting a coat makes no sense. Helen does not move.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Nothing,” she answers.

Her voice is faint, as if coming from a faraway place. She feels strangely weightless, plucked out of time. She struggles to picture her son in a hospital room. With a poor understanding of drugs, of what they might do to a person, all she can imagine is jaundiced skin, chapped lips. She has a vision of the room itself, the speckled gray visitor's chairs, the glowing green numbers of a heart rate monitor. In her mind, her son lies in a narrow bed, strapped to an IV. He looks at her accusingly through sunken eyes. The eyes of an intruder. She does not, she realizes, want to see any of this.

She continues to stand in place, blocking the little girl in the corner. The thing that Gene has presented her with is too large, like a wall of water rushing toward her. She must be absolved, for the moment, of any responsibility but survival.

When Gene asks, “Are you coming or not?” she shakes her head. No words come.

After he leaves, Helen lowers herself to the chair by the kitchen window. Avis has forgotten her game now, vacated the corner. Helen can only hope that she is still somewhere in the house. She draws back the window curtain, returns it to its hook. The white Toyota is no longer in the driveway next door.