The Wonder Garden (9 page)

Harold returns to the waiting room, feeling conspicuous, oversized. Most of his neighbors are still there, largely unchanged. One man now holds his head in his hands, perhaps coping with bad news, or taking a nap. A mother and daughter play cards together cheerfully, as if this were their living room. The receptionist sits at her desk quietly, with hair like coral, pasted in solid swirls against her head. No one approaches her to ask after anyone. It isn't like the movies. There is no urgency here, no tears.

Harold takes a seat among the others, clutching his secret. As he sits, a wheelchair passes through the room slowly, bearing a very elderly man with thin, bare legs and feet in beige ped socks. An IV drip rolls along with him, and a glum nurse. The man gazes straight ahead, as if looking upon an enthralling, faraway place. It comes to Harold in a sudden dart that he will be like that someday. Carol will push him in a wheelchair just like that.
Maybe,
he thinks. If he is lucky, she'll still be there to push him.

The nurse wheels the old man out of sight, her wide rump emphatically not belonging to Carol. Harold feels a horrible, baffling loss as he watches the man disappear.

Later, a nurse comes out to the waiting room and calls for him. He rises expectantly, and the nurse approaches and hands him Carol's necklace. For a moment he feels certain, deep in his bones, that his wife is dead. He teeters on the lip of that canyon, feeling its cold wind rise up to his face. But then the nurse grins and tells him that Carol is ready to see him.

The recovery room is small with wood paneling, like a sauna. Carol sits up in a cot, looking small in her yellow nightgown. Her legs are bare up to the knees. Harold pulls up a chair and gives her a loving smile. There is a white bandage, cartoonlike, around her head. Nothing can improve on the old-fashioned bandage, he supposes, wrapped around heads for millennia.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“Weak, but all right. A little woozy.”

Her face is blurred, like a child waking from a long sleep. Her eyes focus slowly on him, and she smiles back at him—that same impish smile that had stolen his balance twenty-five years ago. At this moment, he wants desperately to tell her about the incredible thing that has happened, the secret inside him that threatens to pop. He is suddenly hit by the full truth of it: the strange new closeness that they share, profound and singular. Even unspoken, he imagines she might already be able to sense it. It is a miracle, an uncanny dream. It is as deep as anything else in their lives.

“I brought your necklace,” Harold says gently, and Carol's eyes travel down to the gleam in his hand. They register the necklace. In her brain, she still stores a picture of it. She remembers Harold, too, amazingly; the shapes that make up the face of her husband.

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

Harold stands. He comes close, brings the chain around her neck to the front, and fastens the clasp.

T
HE
U
MBRELLA
B
IRD

I
T HAD
been a touch of incredible fortune to find David one spring night at a dive on Houston Street. He'd been attending a coworker's farewell gathering, an anomalous outing for him. He was short-haired and clean against the peeling paint and graffiti. That he'd been there that night nursing a Stella Artois, and had needed the restroom at the same time as she, had upended statistical logic. He was taller than everyone, and thinner, as if streamlined for air travel. Not conventionally handsome, but with a narrow, austere face. His green irises seemed lit, like dappled leaves on a forest floor. When he looked at Madeleine, she was briefly paralyzed, a field mouse in a clearing. He bought her a vodka tonic and left a three-dollar tip for the bartender. As he handed the glass to her, turning the tiny straw in her direction, she'd felt the dizzy euphoria of a traveler who has turned onto the right road, the easy expansion of lungs as the horizon opens before her.

He was an account supervisor at a big advertising firm in midtown, he explained breezily, coordinating campaigns for sneakers and tortilla chips. But later, over a series of ardent dinner dates, she learned that he'd grown up in the country—on a farm, no less—and had never felt truly at peace in an apartment building. Lately he felt that he was being gradually drawn back to Nature, and now that he'd found her, he suggested with elaborate, soft-forested eyes, perhaps his quest was complete. Within six months, they were married and looking at real estate listings.

The house has been sweepingly renovated, the front door framed by columns and topped by a counterfeit balcony. It's what the real estate agent had termed a
center-hall colonial
, with the kind of timeless architecture and rigorous symmetry designed to leverage a calming effect on its inhabitants. Paired with precise, harmonious details, she implied, a house like this had the power to transform its owners' experience of the world, to render any obstacle—any boiler failure or termite siege—surmountable.

Nearly all their money has gone to the down payment, and with the little that remains, Madeleine is scrambling to furnish. With a Sharpie, she circles furniture in soft-lit catalogs: a sectional sofa, a leather armchair, a mirrored console table. Deliverymen put them in place. Still, the rooms echo.

Alone, she wanders the house on the balls of her feet. It is preternaturally quiet, the walls themselves thick with insulation, sealing out the buzz of the world. A sliding glass door displays a wide lawn tumbling to a thumb-smudge of trees. She has reached it at last: this asylum, this glorious valve. Madeleine had first glimpsed this kind of life as a girl, visiting a friend who'd moved to a verdant nook of New Jersey. Entering that house had been like entering a palace: the soaring entrance hall, floors that didn't sag toward the middle, bay windows looking onto wanton grass and trees, the great yawn of sky. There, she'd learned to ride a bicycle. Pedaling back and forth on that wide blacktop driveway, she'd felt the first ecstasy of flight.

She has never lived anywhere but in a gerbil cage. She has never had money. Her father was a bag-eyed jazz musician—dead in middle age—her mother a schoolteacher who supported them all. Madeleine had diligently sidestepped adulthood in her parents' lopsided brownstone on Charles Street, among the aging socialists and drag queens. Before meeting David, she had acquired the habits of every cynical city girl: shutting down dirty bars, flattering scrawny musicians, waking Sundays on ripped Naugahyde couches.

Tonight, he is out in the woods, building a tree house for their daughter who is due in a month. Although she will not use it for years, he has thrown himself into the project as if on a deadline. Each evening, when he comes home from work, he puts on old jeans, disappears into the garage, and cuts lumber with a power saw. Madeleine has agreed not to visit the tree house until it is finished. She watches David carry wooden planks over the grass to the woods, the late-summer sun casting his long shadow before him. His hands have become splintered and raw, his forearms welted from the ash tree he has selected.

This is his nature, she knows, this kind of focused work ethic. He lugs home stacks of library books about tree house architecture. At night, he comes into the house with the look of an outdoorsman, in soiled plaid shirts and patch-kneed jeans. Perhaps he has reverted to a forgotten self, his childhood on the farm, when he'd spent whole days in the woods hunting for turtle shells, mouse skulls, snake skins. He works on the tree house later and later each night, until he is coming indoors well after dark. Madeleine does not want to complain. She wants him to feel free in his life with her. For years he has lived as an independent man—but now, with parenthood advancing upon him, perhaps he feels invisible ropes tightening. She wants to show that she understands. He can build a tree house if he wants to.

Alone, she watches the evening news, its galloping sound track bridging one bleak segment to the next. Beyond the glass door, she sees David cross slowly over the grass, his figure becoming part of the deepening evening. At last, his silhouette melts into the dark line of trees. The glass door frames a phantasmagoric reflection of the room's interior, of Madeleine's own bulging form. The news anchor begins a dirge about home foreclosures. There is talk of a stimulus package. People will be given old-fashioned things to do with their hands. Madeleine herself is fabulously idle, having finally quit her series of temp jobs. This had been David's idea. He'd encouraged her to enjoy her pregnancy, to not feel ashamed for staying home with their child if that was what she wanted to do.

She is not accustomed to so much aloneness. Nothing in her old life had ever approached this depth of quiet, this vacuum of night. She imagines animals in the woods surrounding the house, emerging when the sun sets to carry on their dark pursuits. She does not like to think of David out there, but restrains herself from going to retrieve him, from begging him to come inside and sit with her. She does not want to be that kind of woman.

At last, after she has gone to bed, she hears the sliding door. Moments later, he is with her beneath the blanket, whispering apologies. There is a chill in his touch, a suggestion of autumn. He slides up against her spine and a coil loosens inside her. What extraordinary luck, after all: this beautiful place, this wonderful man. At last, a real house with a mailbox and garden hose. A desirable suburb in a sterling school district, not too far from the city. A kind, intelligent husband with a lucrative career and domestic leanings. The child inside her settles itself, and she falls into dreamless sleep.

Over the summer weeks that follow, David returns from work earlier in the afternoon. “Light day,” he tells her, and disappears into the garage. He rushes into the trees with his planks. He comes in only to eat whatever dinner she has made, then goes back out until dark. One night, he does not come in for dinner at all, and Madeleine finds herself crying over turkey tetrazzini. Finally, she puts the food away and climbs into bed in her clothes. After midnight, she hears the sliding glass door. “I'm so sorry,” he tells her in bed. “Sometimes I just lose track of time out there.” Madeleine turns over, too spent to protest, and allows him to put an arm around her. “I know you're tired of this, but I'm almost done building, I promise. I can't wait to show it to you.”

She has been sleeping badly, staring through the skylight in the bedroom ceiling, convinced she can see the stars move. David has become progressively more restless at night, twitching his legs like a cricket, muttering garbled syllables. She listens closely, but is unable to decipher any meaning. Tonight, his vague murmurs become louder, insistent. He repeats a strange phrase that sounds like “Up a cat I kill
.
” His face tightens and he jerks upright, eyes open. A cold current passes through Madeleine's veins, and she turns on the bedside lamp. David stares at her for a moment without recognition. She rubs his arm tentatively.

“It's okay, honey. You were just dreaming.”

He gazes for another blank moment, until something in his eyes folds inward and he softens into himself again. He shakes his head. “I'm sorry.”

She keeps rubbing his arm. “What were you dreaming about?”

He is quiet for a moment. “The same dream I've been having all week. I'm in the tree house and a strange bird lands on a branch and talks to me.”

“It talks to you? What does it say?”

“Nothing, really. Nonsense.”

“You've been having the same dream every night?”

“More or less.”

“Anxiety, I guess,” Madeleine says.

“Probably.”

She turns the light off, and David is silent for the rest of the night. But she stays awake, watching the vibrations of stars through the skylight until they vanish into dawn. It is impractical to have a skylight in the bedroom, of course. Uncovered like this, it allows the morning light into the room—but Madeleine has not yet found an elegant shade for it.

When the alarm rings, David unfolds himself from bed and lurches into the bathroom, pale and dazed as if hungover. Still, he emerges showered and shaven, and in a white button-down shirt and pressed chinos he is an advertising executive again. He kisses Madeleine and goes out to catch the 7:09 to the city.

That afternoon, Madeleine shops for baby clothes and returns to find David lying on the couch with an arm over his face. She feels a primal rush of alarm, as if she has walked in on an intruder. She rests the shopping bag on the mirrored console table.

“What's wrong?”

“Terrible headache,” he says drily. “It's been happening a lot lately, but today I just couldn't get through it.”

Madeleine sits on the edge of a cushion, puts a hand to his forehead.

“You never said anything about headaches. Why didn't you say something?”

“It was just a headache before. Now it's worse.”

“You're warm. Did you take something?”

He blinks at her. “Of course. Nothing helps. It's like an ache in my whole body. Even my scalp hurts.”

“You need to see a doctor.”

He closes his eyes again. “We don't have a doctor here.”

“We'll find one.”

“Just let me rest right now.”

She kisses his forehead and retreats. While she is upstairs arranging the baby clothes in dresser drawers, she hears the sound of the sliding glass door. Outside the nursery window, she sees David go over the grass toward the woods.

* * *

“I can't help myself,” he says, when he comes to bed after midnight again. “It's like the woods are calling me. The only time I feel all right is when I'm up in that ash tree. At work, I can't sit near the computer. There's no air in the building.”

“Honey, what's going on? You never had this problem before,” Madeleine says.

He looks at her for a long moment, then asks quietly, “Do you remember the bird in my dreams?”

She nods.

“My mother used to talk about things like that. Dream visitors. I remember she used to have recurring dreams of a mountain lion. It was her guardian animal, she said. She used to ask me if I ever had animal friends in my dreams. I told her I didn't know what she was talking about.” David smiles weakly. “I used to think she was crazy, or pretending to be eccentric. Once, she made a big papier-mâché sculpture in the yard, a big yellow mountain lion. It was supposed to be a totem to her animal.”

Madeleine does not respond. The sky is clouded tonight, and there is no moon through the skylight, no stars. David's face is just a shifting patchwork of shadows.

“Anyway, I've been thinking about that,” David continues. “I took some books out from the library, just for the heck of it. New Age stuff, about animal dreams and their meanings. There's a lot out there.”

“I'm sure,” Madeleine says.

He props himself up on an elbow.

“Can I read you something?”

He turns on the bedside lamp, and Madeleine squeezes her eyes shut. She hears him slide out of bed. When he returns, he is holding a book with a cover illustration of a neon figure shooting laser beams from its fingers and toes. “This one has a whole section about physical symptoms like the ones I've been having.” David glances at her with flashing eyes. “Listen to this.”

An individual may be chosen by the spirits to act as a go-between, a kind of messenger between worlds, entrusted with the role of community healer. The chosen individual may be awakened to his calling in a number of ways. He may hear voices or encounter animal spirits in his dreams. He may undergo a profound trial in Nature, characterized by physical symptoms such as headaches, general numbness, and tingling in the scalp. Often, the chosen individual is initially fearful or confused by these signals from the spirit world. He may feel cursed, angry, and resistant to adopting such responsibility. But the alternative is typically worse; rejecting the spirits' calling may put him at risk of severe depression, even suicide.

Madeleine listens quietly, unable to absorb the words. They arch over her head, as if she is standing behind a waterfall. As she watches David's face, his latticed irises, a memory comes to her of their first date, when they'd walked downtown along the Hudson. When they'd reached Trinity Church, he had led her through the gate to its weathered graveyard, and they'd wandered among the mildewed headstones. She remembers the way he'd run his hand over the grave markers. As a boy, he told her, he'd spent hours in the old cemetery near his house. He'd made grave rubbings, memorized names, birth dates, death dates. He'd devised detailed life stories for those people: the wives who'd died in childbirth, the grieving husbands who remarried only to be left again. At the time, this had not struck her as peculiar, but as exquisitely sensitive, the mark of a man with untold depths.