The Wonder Garden (5 page)

“You're probably right,” she says.

When she wakes in the morning, Halloween has rotted away. There is a string of bright, hard days ahead of her leading up to the school board meeting. While the kids are out, she burrows into the budget numbers, taps them into her calculator. Michael returns home after dark each night and seems to avoid looking directly at her. Perhaps this is not strange, she thinks. Perhaps he never did.

For the board meeting, Rosalie chooses a charcoal pantsuit. She puts on a string of pearls and paints her nails with opaline polish. The message, she hopes, is elegant austerity. She is the newest member and the only woman on the board. Her fellow members are businessmen, financiers, lawyers, and accountants, or think they are. They wear the set jowls of stoic beleaguerment. They are accustomed to daily, unsentimental spinning of numbers and whiteboard presentations. John Duffy is in his habitual undertaker's suit. As the attendees convene in the high school library, Rosalie sits calmly behind her microphone, sipping at her water cup. All at once, she feels that she understands the plight of the politician, burdened with the expectations of an untutored public.

A group of adorable first graders, up past their bedtimes, leads the group in the Pledge of Allegiance. Their parents snap pictures, then usher the children home, vacating the front rows of seats. No one moves up to fill these, so that there is a yawning gap between the board and the seated public. All at once, Rosalie feels a sharp longing for her own children.

Gary Tighe leans toward his microphone and launches into the preliminary budget discussion. When he mentions the projected rise in expenses, there is audible rumbling. Rosalie makes eye contact with a fleshy, slit-mouthed woman she doesn't know, most likely a woman with no children of her own in the schools. The woman's hair is gray and frizzed, and she wears glasses that are too small for her face. This is exactly the type of person who comes religiously to board meetings. Rosalie can already predict her grievances: Property taxes are already too high—who can afford living here anymore?

When Gary finishes, he glances at Rosalie. She feels her shoulders contract into an involuntary shrug as she breathes into her microphone.

“I'm proud of the budget that we've been putting together,” she says in a squeaking falsetto. “Given the restrictions we're facing, that every district is facing, I think we've done a fantastic job of putting our students first.”

She grasps a sheet of paper and waves it in panicked illustration.

“I'm especially proud of the cost cutting we're going to do through retirement buyouts. It's a great way to infuse the district with fresh blood, and the only way to avoid losing extracurriculars.”

John Duffy clears his throat. “If I may respectfully interject,” he says in a voice like a sludge-filled river. “It's just not enough, Rosalie.”

There is a whisper of fabric in the audience, as people shift in their seats.

“We can't expect the community to accept another tax hike. The high school was irresponsible, and it's time to pay the piper.”

Gary Tighe begins to mutter something in defense, but John continues. His eyes are trained only on Rosalie.

“The taxpayers have sacrificed enough. Now it's time for our students to sacrifice. They've been coddled, they've never been told
no.
It won't kill them to go a few years without new sports uniforms, without another school psychologist.”

“John,” Rosalie begins, fighting to keep her voice level, “our job as adults is to make sure our students don't
have
to sacrifice.” As she speaks, she thinks of him on her lawn in his pink polo shirt, eating from a paper plate, and hates herself for having fed him.

“Rosalie, that's just not realistic. I know you're new to the board, but you're not
that
young.”

There is a rumble of laughter from the public.

“It's not just about sports games and bake sales,” John continues. “Really, sometimes I think this board needs to be clearer about its expectations for candidacy. If you don't understand business, you can't understand budgets, and you're not qualified for a seat. It's a disservice to our students and to our community.”

“Okay,” Gary interjects. “Thank you, John. I think that's enough. Why don't we go ahead and open the public forum.”

Rosalie's mouth is dry. She lifts her water cup and maintains a wry smile directed at the far wall of the library. She stares at the display of periodicals, crammed with arguments and opinion, words printed in aggressive black text, the voices of everyone but herself.

As expected, the gray-haired woman is the first at the podium. Her words are more spat than spoken, like gun spray. Rosalie leans back into her seat and tries to relax her shoulders. No one is going to make her speak anymore. The other board members respond to the woman's speech with their masculine drones, extinguishing it. She listens, then, to the mothers who rise, one by one, and put their fears into the microphone, their voices transformed into overamplified bird chirps. She sits back and becomes like a coral reef, allowing the voices to mingle and wave over her. After the public has risen to go, after the A/V staff has dismantled the overhead projector, she rises and smooths down the creases in her charcoal pants. The wry smile has hardened on her face. She nods at her colleagues, collects her notebook, and drives home.

At dinner the next night, Rosalie detects tension at the table. Noah does not look up from his plate, and there is a slight distortion on Nayana's face. Rosalie has the sudden suspicion that the children know about the board meeting, that they've heard about it at school. She wonders whether the other parents might have criticized her by name. She does not taste her dinner.

Afterward, while Noah is helping in the kitchen, she asks lightly, “Is everything okay, honey?”

“Of course,” he says, wiping the counter. “Why wouldn't it be?”

These words are spoken frankly, with no note of sarcasm or accusation. Rosalie turns to look at her son, but he does not meet her eye, and his face reveals nothing.

That night, Rosalie adds another blanket to the bed. It is, incredibly, already November. Like every year, the autumn has swept past too quickly and been stripped bare. These unadorned days will soon be gone, too, cloaked by the holidays. Then the year will end and Nayana will fly away.

It would be right, Rosalie thinks, to secure some time alone with the girl while she can. She schedules a Saturday appointment at a salon. They can get manicures and have their hair done, and perhaps Nayana can have her eyebrows and facial hair waxed before Thanksgiving. It must be hard for her, Rosalie thinks, living with dark tufts over her lip and at the sides of her face. She wonders if there are opportunities for basic grooming in Bangladesh, of if girls just have to make the best of their lots.

At the salon, they sit together, their fingertips dipped in cuticle-softening solution.

“Are you close with your mother, at home?” Rosalie ventures.

“Yes, of course,” Nayana says in her forever lilting voice. “She has no one except me and my sisters.”

It is very difficult, Nayana explains, to be a widow in her country. There is virtually no chance of her mother finding another man to marry. Rosalie is impressed by the girl's unsentimental understanding of this, her poise in speaking about it. “That's very sad,” she comments.

“It's different here,” Nayana says, glancing at Rosalie. “People can find another chance. Women can marry again. Orphaned children can go to new families.”

Rosalie nods, enjoying the cool sensation of the solution at her knuckles. She lifts her fingertips from the bowl and admires the softened, pinkened skin. When she looks at Nayana, the girl's face is somber.

“Noah told me about his father,” she says. “I am very sorry.”

Rosalie holds her fingertips aloft, glistening.

“What about his father?”

The girl stares with her overlarge mongoose eyes. She speaks again in a softened voice. “That he was a victim of the terrible day, in the offices of the World Trade Center.”

Rosalie brings her hands into her lap and wipes the fingertips on her jeans. She feels the usual knife stab at the sound of the words
World Trade Center
, but it takes a long moment for her to parse the rest of the girl's sentence. She turns it over in her mind, but it still makes no sense. Michael, thank God, had been nowhere near the towers that day. This is something she has reflected upon innumerable times, and for which she has offered prayers of thanksgiving along with those of healing for the less fortunate.

“He showed me the name, the . . . plaque in the park,” Nayana continues. “He showed me his birth father's name.”

Rosalie stares at Nayana. “His birth father? What are you talking about?”

Nayana looks back in terror. “He told me how his birth mother died when he was a baby, and how, after 9/11, he was an orphan. You and Dr. Warren were very kind to take him in. Especially with so many children already.”

Rosalie feels the blood hammer in her eardrums. She forces a plastic smile.

“I see. You say that he showed you a name on a plaque? What was the name?”

“Thomas Callahan,” the girl whispers.

The blood has entered Rosalie's face now and fills the vessels behind her eyeballs. She nods and blinks slowly, spinning for a moment the way she had that cyclonic morning, grasping for new bearings. She remembers the name Thomas Callahan. He'd been a trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, she believes, one of the five local men incinerated that day. She knows the plaque, of course, though she hasn't looked at it for a long time. It's become part of the scenery, embedded in the boxwood shrubs, as invisible as the flagpole beside it. With the passing years, the names in the granite have lost their raw wrongness and assumed a permanent, fated quality.

Rosalie and Nayana are quiet while the manicurist girls dab their fingers dry and paint their nails with cool brushstrokes. As they are rising to leave, Rosalie looks at Nayana and sees that the girl has been transformed. Her eyebrows are thin and arched. Cleared of its brush, her face is arrestingly intelligent. A new pair of earrings catches the light at either side of her head, and there is an iridescent blue sheen to her hair, inimitable by any Caucasian. Her body is lithe and graceful as she stands and puts her purse over her shoulder.

“Thank you,” she says to Rosalie with a slight bow of the head.

Noah does not look up when his mother enters the room. He is seated on the braided rug in his underwear, examining some jarred specimen. There is a greasy cowlick at his hairline, exposing a set of blackheads. His mouth twitches as he peers into the jar.

“Noah, can I ask you a question? Nayana told me something strange today.”

“She's lying,” Noah says simply, after Rosalie has finished.

“Why would she lie?”

“How should I know? I don't know what makes her do things.” His eyes rise but stop short of his mother's face, somewhere near the clavicle. “I don't even know why she's here, to be honest.”

Rosalie blinks. “I thought you liked having her here.”

Noah scoffs quietly, in a way that makes her think of his father, then lowers his eyes again. “All I mean is that it's not like it's
helping
her, living here.”

Rosalie feels the floor spin beneath her feet. She has a momentary flash of the school board meeting, feels that whirlpool wanting to tug her under. She lifts her chin, breathes in.

“Why did you lie?” she asks firmly.

“I told you, she's making it up. Why would you believe her and not me?”

Rosalie does not answer. All at once, she wishes that Nayana had never come. She wishes she had never volunteered her home to any stranger.

“What difference does it make, anyway?” Noah says. “It might as well be true.”

“What might as well be true?”

“You know, about my
birth father
.” Noah's voice lowers, trembles. “He's never here anyway. It might as well have been him.”

“Pardon me?”

Noah is silent, holding the jar to his eye.

“What did you say?”

Noah shrugs, and his mouth squeezes to the size of a button.

Rosalie stands dumbly in the doorway for another second, a wax mold of a mother. Then, as if enough applied heat has melted her joints, she moves swiftly. In one fluent gesture, she takes the jar from her son's hand and catapults it to the wall. She is surprised by the momentum. The thick glass cracks cleanly on impact and shatters upon the hardwood floor, radiating shards onto the rug where Noah sits. His hand is still aloft, cupping air, and he raises his eyes to his mother in pale alarm.

The floor whirls as she turns and goes back through the door, closes it behind her and makes the latch snap shut.

When Michael comes home from the hospital, Rosalie sits mutely beside him as he watches the news. He leans back into the couch cushions and assumes a pose of relaxation, of a neuro­surgeon having met the demands of his day. She will never know what his eyes witness within hospital walls, what scans of clotted lobes they examine, what eddies of blighted tissue. She does not presume to fathom any of it, has learned not to ask. Tonight, he has disrobed to a black T-shirt. Sitting beside him, the spinning feeling, which had subsided during dinner, returns. There is something disruptive about his presence, as if he were a dark magnet with alternating charges, first attracting, then repelling.

Michael turns his head and looks at her. She wants to speak, to force the moment into normalcy, but her larynx is constricted. She should, she knows, tell him about their son's transgression, but there is something in the way he looks at her, something blunt in his eyes that muffles her. She scrambles to rationalize this. There are, of course, many things that she does not talk with Michael about, things too complicated to discuss in the short time they have together, things not worth unloading, not worth confusing or burdening him with. All she wants to do now is stand up. She just wants to stand from the couch and go somewhere else, into some other room. But she is strangely unable to move.