The Infinite Onion

by Alice Archer

  Most of the mural consisted of wild nature, details gleaned from the stacks of botanical reference books beside me on the floor, fetched from the library I’d inherited. I’d also printed images from my digital reference library of nature photos taken on our property over the years.

  Honeysuckle blossoms tickled the man’s toes.

  The blare of an incoming text made me jump and wish I’d thought to turn off my phone.

  The text was from Grant. I’m in the workshop. Want to stop by? Some kids from art camp are eager to meet you. Apparently, the Vashon tween set considers you a celebrity.

  Within a few minutes of receiving the text, I’d cleaned my brushes and changed into dark green pants and a brown T-shirt. On my way out the front door, I grabbed a large pair of binoculars from a coat peg.

  The driveway spur behind the hedge Grant had recently trimmed continued past Dad’s garage as an overgrown track. I veered right onto the spur, then right again onto the path that circled the yard from the cover of the woods, didn’t slow until I neared the small offshoot trail I wanted. When it petered out in thick underbrush, I stopped to peek through the leaves at the back of the toolshed, which butted up against the woods. The shed’s tin roof drew the day’s heat inside. As I’d expected, Grant had opened the windows.

  I could hear voices.

  A few minutes of careful progress took me to a perch on my favorite tree limb for spying into the toolshed. I’d discovered the spot the spring I turned eight, when Dad and Granddad banned me from the toolshed for a few days to build a collapsible easel for me. Weeks later, they’d presented it to me on my birthday and I’d acted surprised.

  During the twenty-seven years since then, the tree limb had grown, but so had I. I settled in and lifted the binoculars. Through the foliage and the open window, I had a decent view of most of the interior.

  A surge of distress over the state of the toolshed made me take a deep breath. Maybe Grant had the right idea about cracking the seal on that time capsule.

  “What’s this thing?” The pale girl held up something I couldn’t get a good look at. She wore a sleeveless orange-and-white striped shirt, and her shoulders looked like they’d never met a sunray. I could tell from her voice and manner she wasn’t as young as she looked.

  “It’s a spud wrench,” the taller girl said.

  Grant laughed. “Huh. I had no idea. What’s it for? If your potato gets stuck?”

  “Ha ha. No, it’s for plumbing stuff,” the tall girl said.

  “How the heck do you know that?” Grant asked.

  The girl shrugged. “My dad and brother like to fix things. I like to help.” She turned away, but Grant kept his eyes on her, followed her to the other side of the table. They stood with their sides toward me.

  “Jill?” Grant didn’t lean down to make eye contact, like Dad would have, and he folded his arms. Grant was a big guy. He loomed with a scowl. “Is something wrong?”

  I would have thought his stance would be intimidating, but Jill didn’t seem to take it that way. She slumped toward him. I looked closer, trying to see what she saw, and it hit me all of a sudden that Grant’s stance wasn’t threatening but protective.

  “I like helping Tony in the garage,” Jill finally said.

  “Tony is your brother?”

  Jill nodded. “But only when no one else is around.”

  “What do you mean? Who else?” Grant asked.

  She looked nervous, and what she said next came out so soft I couldn’t hear it. Luckily, Grant hadn’t heard either.

  “Sorry. Say that again,” Grant said.

  “Like his friends.”

  “What about his friends?”

  The other two kids, Kai and the pale girl, had migrated to Grant and Jill. Kai leaned against Grant’s hip. I expected Grant to reassure Kai, but he didn’t take his focus off Jill.

  “Listen, kid,” Grant said, “I don’t know much, but I know you’re not happy about something. Spill it and I’ll share my hummus and cucumber sticks.”

  “Can I have the hummus first?” Jill asked.

  “Nope. It’s at my campsite, and I’m not going back until I’ve made a dent in the mess here.”

  Jill narrowed her eyes at Grant. “Are you calling me a mess?”

  With what seemed like a parody of Jill’s earlier shrug, Grant said, “You tell me.”

  Shoulders hunched, Jill turned away to face the workbench. “Tony’s friends call me pretty, but only when Tony’s not there, like if he has to go to the bathroom. I don’t like it. It feels bad.”

  “Do they do anything to you?”

  “They stare at me, I guess. I don’t know. It’s silly.”

  “What does Tony say about this?” Grant asked. “Or your dad?”

  Jill fiddled with something on the table.

  “Don’t you think it’s time to tell someone at home about this? How are things with your parents?”

  “Her mom and dad are really nice,” the pale girl said. “They pick her up at camp, both of them. And they don’t start the car until after they look at all the things Jill made.” The wistful way she spoke made me think she didn’t have the same type of parents.

  “Thanks, Clover,” Jill said. “But…”

  “But what?” Grant asked.

  “But Tony’s friends haven’t done anything,” Jill said. “And they’re Tony’s best friends.”

  “Ah.” Grant lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the floor with his back against a table leg, which put him below all three kids. He looked up at Jill. “Then you have a tough choice to make.”

  Jill stared at Grant for a while, then heaved a huge sigh and nodded.

  The tension of staying still tightened my grip on the binoculars. I would have gone ballistic at that point, like Dad would have, and launched a crusade against Tony’s friends.

  That wasn’t the tack Grant took.

  “So, what are your choices?” he asked her.

  When Jill made a quarter turn away from Grant, I saw that she was crying. Not making a production of it, but crying enough that tears fell off her chin.

  I moved the binoculars to study Grant, who didn’t respond to the tears, or not that I could tell.

  Clover nudged Grant on the shoulder to get his attention, then nodded toward Jill and put her fingers up to her own face to mimic tears falling.

  All Grant did was smile up at Clover. He didn’t reach for Jill to try to comfort her. Nor did he respond to Kai, who leaned sideways against Grant’s shoulder.

  Grant didn’t do much of anything. Sat there. Smiled. Waited. Fuck, the man was brilliant. Dad would have wanted the glory of being the one who solved the problem. The scene in the toolshed was more about Jill than Grant, and yet Grant held all three tweens in thrall. He gave the kids the space to be themselves, and he accomplished it by doing nothing more than being his own flawed, unfinished, surprisingly perceptive self.

  Clover broke first. She gave Jill’s shoulder an awkward pat, which seemed to make Jill take another huge breath. I sharpened the focus on the binoculars.

  Jill wiped her eyes and said in a strong voice, “I think it’s not right to choose my brother’s friends over myself.”

  All three kids looked down at Grant, as if for his reaction.

  Here it comes. Grant’s going to applaud, lay down the law about self-care, get all Papa Bear with the hugs.

  Instead, Grant stood—careful not to bump his head on the tabletop overhang—removed a tissue from his pocket, handed it to Jill, and turned to resume sorting tools the kids had brought to the central tables from my pile by the door. Tools I’d sprinted into the toolshed to fetch, then tossed onto the floor when I was done with them.

  I squirmed on the branch, disappointed in myself.

  Grant grouped similar types of tools into piles.

  N
one of the kids moved.

  All three kids stared at Grant’s back as he worked, until Jill wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and smiled at Clover. Clover smiled back and the two of them wandered away to pick up more tools from the floor to take to Grant.

  Kai took a while longer to move on. He didn’t unlatch from Grant until Grant put his big hand on Kai’s blond head and… left it there. Grant continued to sort tools with his other hand. After about thirty seconds, Kai scooted out from under Grant’s hand and went to help the girls.

  When they’d cleared everything off the floor around the door, Jill drifted to the workbench at the back of the building, away from the others but closer to me. I couldn’t see the surface of that workbench from my angle, but I knew it had been strewn with drill bits for a decade, ever since I’d dumped them from their drawers in a flying fury, on a mission to get what I needed to repair a shelving problem in the laundry closet.

  Head down, Jill moved her arms back and forth, maybe running her hands over the loose drill bits to roll them.

  I kept still and watched.

  Over the next five minutes or so, Jill’s expression shifted from serious to thoughtful to peaceful. She began to lift drill bits to read their sizes, and made movements like she was putting them back into the labeled drawers in the storage units under the window.

  I remained perched in the tree for another hour as my ass fell asleep. All the while, as the kids helped Grant clean up my mess, they revolved like satellites around his steady gravity.

  Chapter 39

  Grant

  I finished cooking in Oliver’s kitchen on Friday and left with containers of warm lasagna and green bean salad. For a blissful hour, I sat on a log at my campsite and fed myself creamy, meaty lasagna with the wrong end of my spoon, to make it last as long as possible. Stuffed to the point of stupor, I fell into the tent and a hard night’s sleep, unbroken until the next morning when Kai and two new friends showed up on their bikes.

  “Sorry we woke you,” Kai said as he hugged me.

  “No problem. You’re my all-time favorite alarm clock.”

  I ran my hands through my sleep-mussed hair and smiled at the two girls. “Good morning. I’m Grant.”

  The taller girl held out her hand and said, “I know.”

  “Uncle Grant, this is Jill,” Kai said with shy formality. He pointed to the other girl. “And that’s Clover.”

  Though Clover hid behind Jill and didn’t speak, I detected a mischievous glint in her eye.

  “Penelope’s not with you?” I asked.

  “Not today,” Kai said. “She has a family event. What are you doing today?”

  “I thought I’d give Oliver’s workshop a makeover. You guys want to join me?” I grabbed a carrot and a cheese stick from the cooler to take along for breakfast. When I’d shopped for Oliver’s week of stocking up, I’d picked up my final paycheck at the post office and splurged on more journals and more food for my ice chest.

  The kids left their bikes at the campsite so we could walk together. As soon as we came out of the woods, I saw Freddie’s crapmobile in the driveway and the house took on a sinister air. I steered clear, tried not to imagine what Freddie and Oliver might be doing inside.

  Clover gravitated to the workshop’s small bathroom and began to clean it—a job I would have left until last, or never. Kai brought stuff from the floor to me at one of the central tables. Jill cruised the workbenches and cabinets, then went to help Clover.

  Outdoor living had heightened my awareness of the natural world. Out of the corner of my eye, through the greenery pressed against the back window, I picked out the unnatural colors of Oliver’s clothing, his skin, and the copper of his hair and beard. Flashes of reflected light probably meant he had binoculars.

  Hours later, when the kids and I left to go back to my campsite for hummus and veggies, Oliver was still there.

  There had to be a way to find out what Oliver problem was—why he’d let parts of his property go untended, and why he’d retreated so much. A devious idea came to me. Perhaps I’d get a closer look at his wound if I invaded his precious space with my unruly presence even more, bothered him enough to let his guard down, drew him into the open to tell me off.

  The prospect thrilled and scared me.

  I was beginning to suspect the tool of creativity was sharp at both ends, as troublesome for those of us who rejected it as for those who embraced it. Oliver’s project in his bedroom seemed to capture him for long stretches, like a descent into a vortex, only to eject him back into the real world haunted, paint-stained, and pensive.

  After the kids sped off from my campsite on their bikes, I took my journal out and wrote HIDING as my entry for the day, then idly flipped through the pages from the beginning. In a week and a half, I’d filled most of the book’s pages. The journal read like private investigator’s surveillance notes on Oliver.

  I stared down at a blank page and wondered where I fit in.

  That was the first day I wrote more than one word on a page. WHAT AM I HIDING FROM?

  The next day, a text message from Oliver woke me from an afternoon nap. Come over for an intro to the courtyard kitchen?

  I roused myself, stuffed my toiletries and a can of stew into my daypack, and took the path at a jog, livened by the prospect of another shower and warm food for dinner.

  Oliver smiled when we met in the courtyard, but he didn’t meet my eyes. He looked weary and moved like an old man.

  “Paint fumes getting to you?” I asked.

  Oliver ignored my attempt at humor. “You’ll need to keep the panels closed and locked whenever you’re not here, even for a few minutes, or you’ll get wild visitors.”

  The panels folded and rolled to the sides to reveal a long counter, a single-basin sink, a two-burner stove, and cabinets above and below. Oliver ducked down and stuck his head into the cabinet beside the small fridge, to plug it in.

  I pointed to the narrow slot above the panels. “Awning?”

  Oliver’s answer was to show me the crank. When I turned it, a sturdy green awning slid out from the slot.

  “This is a great set-up,” I said. “Thanks so much for letting me use it.”

  “No oven, but you can thaw meals overnight in the fridge, then warm them on the stove.”

  The guy really didn’t want me in his house anymore. Message received. “Tough week?” I asked. “Vortex problems?”

  A blink and a frown were all I got in response. It was like we were on different planets.

  Oliver offered me the key to the panel doors. “I’ll tell you the assignment for week three tomorrow.”

  “Why not now?”

  “I’m not… ready.” He pivoted and sped away through the archway.

  After that brief interaction with the elusive creature, I only wanted more.

  In the shower, I handled my cock with some urgency, replayed Oliver’s crouch at the cabinet as I squeezed and pulled on my dick with soapy hands.

  Escaped tendrils of auburn hair trailed down Oliver’s back.

  Paint-splattered pants plastered his round ass.

  I came too fast to worry about wasting water.

  Chapter 40

  Oliver

  I should have asked Grant to show me his self-portrait for week two before I gave him access to the outdoor kitchen, but I was distracted by the painting, my conversation with Freddie, and the sleep creases on Grant’s cheek. I almost went back to the courtyard to ask him to show me his self-portrait, but Freddie called me from the grocery store.

  “Hey, if you’re in town, you’re already halfway here,” I said. “Do you have your writing stuff with you? The dining table is available.”

  “Hmm. No. I can come over if you want to hook up, but I’m going to write at Mom’s.”

  “That seems like a step in the wrong direction after our ta
lk yesterday.”

  “It’s that guy,” Freddie said. “He’s intrusive. I don’t want any interruptions while I’m writing.”

  “Don’t I interrupt you when you work here?” I asked.

  “Not really. You focus on your own stuff. I can ignore you. I can’t ignore him.”

  “Okay.” I had to stop and think about what I wanted. “I’m too involved in painting today to hook up.”

  “I understand. I’m pretty focused on my article.”

  We hung up, but I couldn’t get Freddie’s comment out of my mind. I can ignore you. It reverberated like a summary of why we were stuck.

  I put on headphones, pulled up a playlist from high school, picked up a paintbrush, and lost myself. The playlist repeated until way past bedtime. I finally stopped and cleaned up.

  Two hours later, I woke curled on the tarp-covered bed.

  The world had gone quiet. Moonlight seeped in around the curtains.

  Right there, a few feet away, a man slept in my bedroom.

  Time ticked by. My eyes turned gritty from staring at the mural.

  Even if Freddie didn’t change, I wasn’t stuck, I reminded myself. I had other options. After a life spent on Vashon, and with Talia’s propensity for gossip, I knew the island’s dating pool pretty well. Stewart Abernathy, for example. Ten years older than me. Owned a software development firm. Made me laugh. Very kind eyes.

  In my imagination, I took Stewart for a test drive. Over a lovely meal in a Seattle restaurant, he talked about his work and appreciated my creativity. We spent the ferry ride home in fits of giggles. When Stewart walked me up my porch steps at the end of the evening, he paused to see if I wanted to be kissed. My weary mind made his hair thicker and darker. His body bulked and morphed into a version of Grant with more meat on his bones, more peace on his face, more success in his life.

  That man, that hybrid concoction, stalked me up the front porch steps, reached around me to open the door, and walked me inside, certain he knew what I wanted. He pulled the band from my hair and laid me on the floor under the coat rack, too eager to appreciate me to wait another moment.