Garden Spells

by Sarah Addison Allen

  “Life is about experience, Claire,” Sydney finally said. “You can’t hold on to everything.”

  Claire shook her head. “I think it might be too late for me.”

  “No, it’s not.” Sydney suddenly slapped the quilt beside her angrily. “How could Mom ever think that was the kind of life for a child? It’s inexcusable. I’m ashamed of myself for envying her, and there are times I think I’ve turned out just like her, but I’m not leaving you. Never. Look at me, Claire. I’m not leaving.”

  “Sometimes I wonder what her reason was. She was a smart woman. Evanelle told me she was a crackerjack student before she dropped out. Something had to have happened.”

  “Whatever the reason, there’s no excuse for her messing up our lives like she did. We can get past this, Claire. We can’t let her win. Okay?”

  Words were easier said than implemented, so Claire said, “Okay.” Then she wondered how in the world she was going to get past something that had taken her decades to perfect.

  They stared at the water for a while. Bay had grown tired of the splashing game, and she swam back to the beach and walked over to Claire and Sydney. Henry and Tyler were still splashing at each other, each trying to make the biggest splash with his hand.

  “Look at those two,” Sydney said. “Boys, the both of them.”

  “This is nice,” Claire said.

  Sydney put her arm around her. “Yes, it is.”

  At the same time Sydney and Claire were enjoying the reservoir, Emma Clark Matteson was getting ready to spend some quality time with her husband.

  Hunter John’s desk in his office at work wasn’t as comfortable as his desk in his office at home. The dark paneling on the walls and the ugly metal desk had been there since Hunter John’s father ran the business. Emma found herself laughing at the thought of Hunter John’s mother, Lillian, coming to the plant and greeting John Senior this way.

  Lillian definitely would have changed the desk if she had. The metal was damn uncomfortable on one’s bare bottom.

  Hunter John’s receptionist said that he was giving a tour of one of the plants and would be back in a few minutes. Perfect. It gave Emma enough time to undress and drape herself across his desk, wearing only stockings, garters, and a pink ribbon tied around her neck.

  She’d never surprised him at his office like this. Oh, she’d come by to bring him lunch and they’d neck a little sometimes, but they’d never actually had sex at work. There were very few places she and Hunter John hadn’t done it. It was a lot of work trying to keep things interesting, trying to keep Hunter John’s attention focused only on her so he wouldn’t think of Sydney or maybe how his life hadn’t turned out quite like he wanted. Emma would never tire of trying to make her husband happy. She liked sex, after all. No, she loved sex. It was just difficult sometimes to keep going when she didn’t know if this was really what he wanted. She wanted Hunter John to love her. But in the end, if he didn’t, she didn’t want to know. She would take this over not having him at all. She wondered if her mother settled like this. She wondered if love mattered to Ariel at all.

  She heard Hunter John’s voice approaching his office and opened her legs a little wider.

  And in walked Hunter John’s father.

  “Whoa Nelly,” John Senior said.

  Emma screamed and rolled off the far side of the desk.

  “What’s wrong?” She heard Hunter John enter the office as she scooted into the recess of the desk and hugged her knees to her chest.

  “I think I’ll just leave you and your wife alone for a while,” John Senior said.

  “My wife? Where is she?”

  “Under the desk. Her clothes, however, are over there on the chair. Really, son, this is no way to run my business.”

  Emma heard the door close. Then Hunter John’s footsteps approached, and he knelt facing her. “Damn it, Emma, what are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to surprise you.”

  “You never come here for this. Why now? Why, on the day my father decides to show up without warning for a tour to see if I’m running the place right? My father just saw you naked! I can’t believe this.”

  She crawled out from under the desk. What his father thought meant the world to Hunter John. And she’d just embarrassed them both. How did things go so wrong so fast?

  Everything had been fine—at least, things were pushed under the rug, where no one thought of them—until Sydney came back. Why couldn’t she have stayed away? “I’m sorry,” she said, going over to her clothes and starting to dress.

  “What has gotten into you lately? You are all over me. You never want to go out together. You call me sixteen times a day. Now you show up here like this.”

  She pulled her dress over her head and slid her feet into her heels. “I need to know…” She hesitated. That you love me.

  “Need to know what?”

  “That you’re going to stay with me.”

  Hunter John shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve been worried. Ever since Sydney came back…”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hunter John said. “You have got to be kidding me. This is about Sydney? Go home, Emma.” He went to the door without another look at her. “I have to catch up with my dad and try to explain this to him.”

  “Do you know what I heard today from Eliza Beaufort?” Emma said brightly at dinner that night. “Sydney and Claire Waverley went on a double date to Lunsford’s Reservoir. What does Sydney think she’s doing? No one our age goes out there. And Claire! Can you imagine Claire at the reservoir?”

  Hunter John didn’t look up from his dessert. It was his favorite chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. Emma had ordered it especially for him.

  Instead of answering her, Hunter John wiped his mouth and put down his napkin. “Come on, boys,” he said, and pushed back his chair. “Let’s go toss a football.”

  Josh and Payton immediately jumped up. They loved when their dad played with them, and Hunter John always made time for his boys.

  “I’ll come with you,” Emma said. “Wait for me, okay?”

  Emma rushed upstairs and changed into her red bikini, the one Hunter John liked, but when she came back down, they hadn’t waited. The pool was right off the tiled family room, so she walked out and to the balustrade that looked over the lawn below. Hunter John and the boys were playing in the yard, their hair already wet with sweat. It was seven-thirty in the evening but still light and still sweltering. Summer was a lady who didn’t give up her spotlight easily. Emma understood that. She liked summer. The boys were home, and there was so much daylight that there was still time to do things with Hunter John when he got home from work.

  There was no sense in getting her hair wet if Hunter John wasn’t going to watch her swim, so she put on a sarong and cheered on the boys from the patio. She couldn’t wait for football season. Going to the high-school games, sitting in front of the television on Sunday afternoons and Monday nights. It was something they did together as a family, something that Sydney had never done with Hunter John. Sydney had gone to football games when Hunter John played, but she didn’t really like the game. Emma loved it. She loved it because he loved it. But Hunter John gave up the game when he didn’t go to Notre Dame. He gave it up because of her.

  When the sun began to set, Emma brought out a pitcher of lemonade. Soon, the boys and Hunter John made their way up to the pool.

  “Lemona—” she said, but before she could finish, the boys had jumped in the pool to cool off.

  Emma shook her head indulgently. Hunter John was walking toward her. She smiled and held a glass out. “Lemona—”

  She didn’t even get the word out before he passed her and walked into the house. He hadn’t said a word to her since the incident in his office that afternoon.

  She didn’t want the boys to know anything was wrong, so she waited for them to play in the water awhile, then got them towels and made them get out. She shooed them to t
heir rooms to change and watch television, then she went to find Hunter John.

  He was in their steam shower, so Emma lifted herself to sit on the bathroom counter facing the stall and waited for him to come out.

  When the door opened and he emerged, her breath caught. He could still do this to her. He was so beautiful. He had just washed his hair, and she could see how much it was thinning, but that didn’t matter to her. She loved him so much.

  “We need to talk,” she said. “I need to know why you never want to discuss Sydney.”

  He looked up, startled to find her there. He grabbed a towel and dried his hair vigorously. “I think the more important question is why are you so obsessed with her? Have you noticed that Sydney isn’t actually in our lives? Has it escaped your attention that she hasn’t actually done anything to us?”

  “She’s done plenty, just by being back,” she said, and his movements stopped. His face was still hidden by the towel. “You won’t talk about her. How do I know you’re not talking about her because you still have feelings for her? How do I know you didn’t take one look at her and remember all the choices you had before I got pregnant? How do I know, if you went back, you would do the same thing? Would you sleep with me? Marry me?”

  He slid the towel off his head. His expression was tight as he walked up close to her, which made her heart beat faster with both fear, because he looked so angry, and with anticipation, because he was so damn sexy. “How do you know?” he repeated incredulously, his voice low and vibrating. “How do you know?”

  “She’s been places. You always wanted to travel.”

  “What have you been thinking these past ten years, Emma? The sex and the boob job and the sexy clothes. The perfect dinners and the football games. Was all of that because you thought I didn’t want to be here? Was any of that because you loved me at all? Or have you been competing with Sydney all this time?”

  “I don’t know, Hunter John. Have I?”

  “That was the wrong answer, Emma,” he said, and walked out.

  “Claire, are you awake?” Sydney said from the doorway of Claire’s bedroom that night.

  She wasn’t surprised to hear Claire say, “Yes.”

  Claire never slept much when they were young. She used to stay out in the garden until their grandmother called her in. And Sydney remembered that Claire would clean the house or make bread while everyone else slept. This was the first and only place she’d felt any real security, and Sydney understood now that Claire had either been trying to make it her own or had been trying to earn her keep so she could stay. Either way, it hurt to think about how Sydney had thought Claire was just anal and odd, how she didn’t understand what Claire had been through.

  She walked into Claire’s room, the turret bedroom that had once been their grandmother’s. Grandma Waverley had covered the walls with her quilt hangings, but Claire had replaced them with framed black-and-white photos and a couple of old family prints. The walls were pastel yellow and the floors were covered with calico-colored throw rugs. Sydney’s eyes went right away to the place where Claire obviously spent most of her time in the room, the comfortable window seat. There were stacks of books on the floor beside it.

  Sydney went to the bed and looped her arm around one of the bottom posts. “I need to tell you something.”

  Claire sat up on her pillows.

  “About the past ten years.”

  “Okay,” Claire said quietly.

  There had been a chance, on the quilts at the beach, to tell Claire this, but she hadn’t been able to do it. She didn’t know it then, but she was waiting for night, because it was the sort of thing that needed darkness to tell. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind now that Claire would understand. And she owed it to Claire to tell her. David wasn’t going away. “I went to New York first, you know that. But after that, it was Chicago. Then San Francisco, Vegas…then Seattle. I’ve known a lot of men. And I did a lot of stealing. I changed my name to Cindy Watkins, an identity I stole.”

  “Mom did that too,” Claire said.

  “Do you think she did it for the thrill? Because it was thrilling, but it was exhausting too. Then Bay came along.” Sydney moved to sit at Claire’s feet, just to feel her near, to be able to touch her if Sydney got too scared. “Bay’s father lives in Seattle. That’s where I met him. David Leoni.” She swallowed, frightened by saying his name out loud. “Leoni is Bay’s real last name, but not mine. We never married. David was a scary man when I met him, but I’d known scary men before and I thought I could handle him. I was getting ready to leave him—that’s what I always did when things got too intense—but then I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t realize how having a baby could make you so vulnerable. David started hitting me, and he got more and more violent. When Bay turned one, I left him. I took Bay to Boise, went to beauty school, got a job. Everything seemed to be going so well. Then David found us. I lost a tooth and couldn’t see out of my left eye for weeks after his payback. What good would I be to Bay dead? So I went back with him, and he made my world smaller and smaller and more and more hellish until the only three things I knew were Bay, David, and his anger. Sometimes I used to think it was punishment for living the way I did before I met him. But then I met a woman at the park David let me take Bay to three times a week. She knew what was going on just by looking at me. She got me that car and helped me escape. David doesn’t know my real name, and he thinks I’m from New York, so this was the only place I knew to go, the only place he wouldn’t find me.”

  Claire sat up straighter and straighter the longer Sydney talked. It was dark, but she felt Claire’s assessing gaze.

  “I guess I just want you to know that I understand how you felt when you came here when you were six. I took everything I had here for granted. But I’ve come to realize this is the only security I’ve ever known. I want that for Bay. I want to erase everything she’s seen, everything she’s known because of me. Do you think that’s possible?”

  Claire hesitated, and that was all the answer Sydney needed. No, it wasn’t possible. Claire never forgot.

  “So, those are my secrets.” Sydney sighed. “They don’t seem as big as I thought they were.”

  “Secrets never are. Do you smell that?” Claire suddenly asked. “I’ve smelled it before. It’s like cologne.”

  “It’s him,” Sydney whispered, as if he would hear her. “I brought that memory with me.”

  “Quick, get in bed,” Claire said, and threw back the sheet. Sydney darted in and Claire tucked the sheet around her. It was a humid night and all the upstairs windows were open, but Sydney was suddenly cold and she snuggled against her sister. Claire put her arm around her and held her close. “It’s okay,” Claire whispered, resting her cheek on the top of Sydney’s head. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “Mommy?”

  Sydney turned quickly to see Bay in the doorway. “Hurry, honey, get in bed with me and Claire,” Sydney said, throwing back the sheet as Claire had done.

  They held on to each other as thoughts of David drifted out the window.

  The next morning dawned bright and sweet, like ribbon candy. Claire opened her eyes and stared at the bedroom ceiling, the same ceiling her grandmother had woken up to and stared at every day of her life.

  She turned her head and saw Sydney and Bay, fast asleep, turned into each other. Sydney had been through and done more than Claire could ever imagine. That much experience, that much change, would devastate Claire.

  Or maybe, even as extraordinary as it was, it was life. Everyone had stories to tell.

  She looked back up at the ceiling.

  Even her grandmother.

  Sydney said that Grandma Waverley had gone to Lunsford’s Reservoir. As shocking as that was, Claire assumed she had gone there with her husband-to-be. But then Claire began to wonder about those old photos of her grandmother before she married her husband, when she was a pretty young woman with a joyful smile and hair that seemed perpetually in motion, as
if she’d been followed around by a lovesick breeze. The photos were of her with several different boys, all with the same looks of admiration on their faces. On the backs of the photos her grandmother had written In the garden with Tom and At homecoming with Josiah. Then there was the one with just the name Karl.

  Her grandmother had a life, a life Claire hadn’t known about or even imagined. She had tried so hard to know everything about Grandma Waverley, to be everything she was. But Grandma Waverley must have sensed something in Sydney, a kindred soul, with Sydney’s brightness and popularity. She gave Claire the wisdom of her old age, but she gave Sydney the secrets of her youth.

  Claire didn’t have a single photograph that someone years from now would see and think, That boy loved her.

  She got out of bed and made breakfast for Sydney and Bay. It was a nice morning, lots of chatter and good feelings, no scent of anything bad in the air. Sydney left for work by the back door, calling over her shoulder as she left, “There’s a whole bunch of apples out here!”

  So Claire took a box from the storeroom and she and Bay gathered the apples the tree had thrown at the back door.

  “Why did it do this?” Bay asked as they walked to the garden gate in the bright, wavy morning light.

  “That tree has a hard time minding its own business,” Claire said as she unlocked the gate. “We were all together last night, and it wanted to be a part of it.”

  The tree fluffed itself up when they entered the garden.

  “It must be kind of lonely.”

  Claire shook her head and went to the shed for a shovel. “It’s cranky and selfish, Bay. Don’t forget that. It wants to tell people things they shouldn’t know.”

  She dug a hole by the fence while Bay stood under the tree and laughed as it shed little green leaves all around her. “Look, Claire. It’s raining!”

  Claire had never seen the tree so affectionate. Bay was just innocent enough to be able to overlook the pall it cast. “It’s a good thing you don’t like apples.”