“I bet he got them after Mom left,” I said. “Don’t you think that’s kind of sad?”
“No, I do not!” Jude said, sitting up. “And I hope you’re not starting to go all soft on him now. God, he remains so fucking sanctimonious. Do you know what he said to—”
“Oh, Jude, sorry—,” Cal interrupted. He’d come around to the back of the house by way of the side lawn, so we hadn’t heard him approach. He and Jude have kept their distance since the funeral. Betsy’s death so overshadowed my sister’s return that my earlier worries about how Cal would react to the news came to nothing in the end. He’d simply nodded and said “okay” when I told him Jude planned to stay on for a while. But I sense he still isn’t particularly comfortable when she’s around. That’s one reason I try to limit her visits to times when I know he’ll be working. I wondered what had brought him home this early on a Thursday afternoon. Then I realized he wasn’t alone.
The man who’d come up to stand beside Cal was about my husband’s height, but slighter. His dark hair, longer than I’m used to, was going gray at the temples and starting to recede. He wore sunglasses, so I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew he was looking at me. Then his chin tilted toward Jude, who was slowly pulling a T-shirt on over her head. You could tell that she knew she was being watched and that she enjoyed the attention. I don’t think she can help herself, but it doesn’t make her behavior any more acceptable. Even now, in front of me and Cal, whose relationship she’d nearly ruined by her impulsive actions, my sister needed to put herself on display.
“I was hoping to make this a surprise,” Cal said, looking fixedly over Jude’s head at me. He was clearly put off by her being there. “But, okay. Here goes: I’d like to introduce Daniel Brandt. He’s going to be your birthday present. It’s a week or two early, I know. But Daniel was up at the site today, and I wanted you two to meet and have a chance to talk.”
“What? No ribbon?” Jude said, standing up. She walked right over to Brandt and held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Jude. The prodigal sister.”
“Hello,” he said, taking her hand, but he didn’t keep it long. He looked over at me. “And, hello, Mrs. Horigan. Your husband tells me you’re trying to renovate these gardens on your own. It looks like quite an undertaking. He thought I could help you with some design suggestions, if you’re interested.”
I understood now why Cal called Daniel Brandt cool. Except for the longer hair, he didn’t come across as particularly hip or edgy; if anything he seemed a little conservative and reserved. He was wearing a checkered oxford shirt, a sports jacket, and a pair of chinos that looked as though they’d been ironed. No, he was cool in the sense that he seemed so contained and self-confident, so at ease within himself. Only his voice was a little jarring: froggy and hoarse, breaking in places like a pubescent boy’s.
I was wearing my usual gardening outfit: leggings tucked into white socks, work boots, and an old shirt of Cal’s knotted at my waist. I hadn’t bothered to shower yet, and my hair was matted down under my wide-brimmed gardening hat. It didn’t really bother me that they’d found me covered in mud and looking like a wreck. That wasn’t what upset me so much. It was the fact that this interruption—Cal’s decision to bring in this stranger, a professional landscape architect, no less—forced me to step back and take stock of what I had actually been doing.
The rubble of the old patio lay scattered around us. There were oddly shaped indentations where the flagstones used to be, outlined by a maze of grass strips that had grown up between the slabs. The day before, I’d divided and cut back the bearded irises that ran along the back porch, so that now the front of the border looked as though it had been attacked by a weed whacker. I’d dug up plants and shrubs and had them waiting in black plastic tubs to be resettled, leaving gaping holes throughout the garden and yard.
Though I had an overall sense of where everything should eventually end up, in truth my plans were really nothing more than vague yearnings. Distant and shapeless. All I really wanted was to feel my hands in the earth, to be digging, pulling, uprooting. I’d assumed that Cal understood this. And now I was taken aback by what I considered to be his obtuseness. It alarmed me that he might have been secretly questioning what I’d been doing these past weeks, that he might have actually been viewing all my activity in the garden the same way I imagined Brandt must be doing now: the work of a crazy person—or someone crazy from grief.
I brushed my dirty hands against my leggings. Tucked a strand of hair that had fallen across my cheek behind my ear. I heard a buzzing—a bee or mosquito—close to my head. I needed to be on guard, I told myself. Watch how I reacted, what I said. I had to be careful not to let Cal see what a stupid thing he’d done or Daniel Brandt realize that the last thing I wanted was his professional advice. I had to try my best to protect whatever wild impulse had been helping me move forward.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, holding out my hand. “Excuse the mud. And my appearance—the garden’s, too. I’m afraid we’re not looking our best right now.” Though his fingers barely closed around mine before slipping free, I felt how rough and dry they were. An occupational hazard, I thought. Maybe because of this, I had the feeling that he didn’t much enjoy shaking hands.
“It’s a work in progress,” he said. “Like every good garden. Why don’t we walk around a little and you can tell me about what you’re hoping to achieve. Your husband told me that you haven’t been working them very long.”
Hoping to achieve? I wanted to laugh out loud. I had to lead the way through what looked like a minefield: sidestepping holes and pots, maneuvering past piles of earth and stone. Jude sat back down in the chair and picked up her iced tea, but Cal trailed behind me and Brandt as I pointed out what I considered some of the garden’s better features: the decades-old tree peonies and lilac bushes, the day lilies that would run riot behind the lichen-covered stone wall come July, the hostas and ferns that blanketed the shady bank leading down to our seasonal brook.
“Jenny put in this whole new area last summer,” Cal said, as we stopped in front of the sunny border on the south-facing side of the house. It was based on a garden I’d fallen in love with when I was working for Pellani’s Garden Center: massed groupings of allium, echinacea, monarda, phlox, and catmint. I was proud of the way it had turned out. Though it would take another month or two to produce its full effect, I knew a professional like Brandt would be able to visualize the bright primary colors splashing up against our white clapboard, the butterflies and hummingbirds drifting above the blooms.
“Very nice,” Brandt said.
“The monarda hasn’t begun to fill in yet,” I said. “It’ll be almost six feet by the end of July.”
“Yes, I can see that,” he said. “I’m curious why you went with the straight rectangular shape.”
“It’s a border. It runs alongside the house. It seemed appropriate to me. What would you have done?”
“Appropriate,” he said, turning to look down at me. I could see myself reflected in his sunglasses: the wide brim of my hat obscuring my eyes but highlighting my lips and chin, the pale slope of my neck. “That’s the perfect word for it. This bed—in fact the entire garden, really, is just that. Appropriate, expected, respectable.”
“And you’d probably go for the inappropriate and unexpected,” Cal said. Something about his tone—knowing but also ingratiating—irritated me a little. I remember Cal saying that he had felt an instant connection with Brandt. I recalled the admiring way he’d talked about the awards the landscape architect had won. How Cal felt he could learn a thing or two from him. It occurred to me that this visit wasn’t just about introducing me to Brandt. On some level, it was a way of showing off—me, the house, the property—to this man. But he was going about it in such an obvious, almost juvenile way, it seemed to me. I felt embarrassed for him when Brandt didn’t answer Cal right away. Instead, Brandt took off his sunglasses and met my gaze. I took a step back; he suddenly seemed to be standing too close
to me.
“No, that’s not really the case,” he said, turning slightly to include Cal in his answer, but he was really talking to me. He was older than I’d first thought: in his mid-forties, at least. His eyes were slightly pouched, heavy lidded; crow’s-feet were grooved into the skin. “I prefer gardens to flow against a landscape. In this case, you could follow the line of those fields in the distance. Or the up and down of that stand of hemlocks over there. I’m not a big fan of imposed shapes. Of strictures. Have you ever heard the expression ‘pathways of desire’?”
“No,” I said.
“It’s an architectural term. It refers to the tracks and paths we create naturally in our day-to-day lives. How we really get from place to place—from car to house, say, or across a vacant lot—rather than following the prescribed routes. I think a good gardener should be attuned to that as well. Think about how you move around your yard here. Where you sit, which way you like to face. When was the last time, for instance, you actually came to this side of the house other than to work? And yet you put so much effort into this. All that time.”
“This is one of my favorite spots,” Cal said, not understanding what Daniel was saying, or not paying enough attention.
“You’re just talking about shortcuts,” I said. I wanted to put him in his place, to put him down. He was absolutely right about my sunny border; I never spent any real time out here—except to garden. “The fastest way between two points.”
“Not really. I interpret the phrase a little more broadly than that. In fact, I think that sometimes it can actually be a much longer route. The scenic one, say. It’s ‘pathways of desire,’ not ‘expediency.’ In my mind, it means paying attention to where—unconsciously, perhaps—the body leads, where the eye follows. Which way the heart wants to go.”
7
Cal
“So” I asked Jenny as we watched Daniel, then Jude, pull out of the driveway. Jude had made a point of leaving at the same time Daniel did. She’d walked right beside him as they’d crossed the lawn to their cars, talking and looking up at him in that way she has.
“I guess I should say thank you,” Jenny replied, turning back inside the house. I’d been expecting a much bigger response from her. The Daniel Brandts of this world don’t come cheap—and they carry a professional cachet that I thought Jenny, being an amateur in the field, would really appreciate. But it seemed to me she’d been barely civil to him when I first introduced him and, toward the end, almost combative. But, as I’ve been doing so often these days, I told myself not to call her on it. Not to take any of this to heart.
“What did you make of him?” I asked, unable to let it rest completely. “That ‘pathways of desire’ business. I thought that idea alone was worth the price of admission, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, walking in front of me to the kitchen. “I did.” We haven’t made love since Betsy’s death. For the first couple of weeks, we held each other at night when we crawled into bed—and wept. But we aren’t even doing that anymore. The last week or so, I’ve been making little attempts to get her attention. I used to rub her shoulders after dinner as a signal that I was interested in heading upstairs, but when I tried that the other night she just shrugged me off.
“Don’t, Cal.”
“What? I can’t even touch you anymore?”
“That’s not what that was,” she replied. “I’m not ready, okay? I’m not anywhere near ready.”
What exactly is the appropriate amount of time, I wonder, before a husband and wife can make love again after losing their only child? There seems to be no good answer to that—or to any of the other questions that keep coming up for me. For one thing, I don’t know what to do with all my feelings about Betsy. I don’t know where to put them. There’s just no good resting place that I can see. So I carry the weight of her death—which seems to be getting heavier—around with me everywhere. But, as Edmund predicted, the grief is slowly starting to morph into anger. I’ve stopped talking to Jenny about the lawsuit because it only sets her off, but I haven’t stopped thinking about it.
“Do you know where the car seat ended up?” Edmund asked me a few days after Daniel’s visit. Edmund called me on my cell. I was up in Harringdale, meeting with one of the cement contractors who was bidding on the Ravitch job. “You’re going to need it as evidence. The sooner we get it to the lawyer, the better.”
“No, I don’t know where—,” I began, and then I caught myself. “I’m still not all that sure about going ahead with this, Eddie. I mean, you remember what Dad said: what’s the point of assigning blame?”
“But it isn’t about blame,” he replied. “It’s about restitution. It’s about someone destroying the most precious thing in your world—and you saying, ‘Guess what: that’s not okay.’ Listen, to tell you the truth, Dad’s just tired. You don’t work with him every day the way I do. He’s keeping up appearances most of the time. Getting by. He’s not interested in rocking any boats right now. But I’m totally convinced that if this thing happened two, three years ago? He’d be banging on that lawyer’s door louder than anybody.”
“Kurt’s against it, too,” I said. “At least as long as Jenny is—and I don’t see her changing her mind. I’ve stopped trying to even talk to her about it, honestly. It just seems to make an already bad situation worse.”
“Jenny—I don’t know what to say there. But Kurt? We both know the deal with him. I love the guy, but he’s just not a fighter. Not like you and me.”
“I hear what you’re saying,” I told him. I was tempted, but there are so many things about moving ahead with the lawsuit that make me uncomfortable. Maybe top on my list is the idea that I’d be doing it under Edmund’s auspices. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me. But, honestly, I have to ask: what’s in this for you?”
“I’m really kind of hurt by that question, if you want to know the truth,” he said. “You think I don’t have any feelings? Betsy’s death did a number on all of us, Cal. I guess it’s because I’m more on the business side of things than the rest of you are, but as far as I’m concerned this lawsuit is just how the real world operates. Maybe not according to Kurt’s insular small-town rules. But, believe me, ask around: I’ll bet you most objective people would tell you that you’re crazy not to pursue this.”
I think that was probably in the back of my mind when I suggested to Daniel at the end of the week that we grab a drink together. He’d been up at the Ravitch site with his two-man crew most of the afternoon.
“Sure,” he said. “But I’m buying. You’re a client now.”
We agreed to meet at Ernie’s in Northridge. Daniel was renting an apartment not far from there. He was waiting at the bar when I arrived, talking to the bartender about the Yankees’ chances.
“Yeah, well, if A-Rod could only keep it in his pants for a night or two, we might begin—”
“Jesus, man,” I said, pulling up a stool. “You’re taking your life in your hands even discussing those bastards in here. Plenty of Red Sox fans in this neck of the woods.”
We went through the usual song and dance—weighing how many good games Mariano had left in him, whether Jeter was starting to fade, when Manny was going to hit that five hundredth—enough for me to appreciate the fact that Daniel is at least as knowledgeable as I am about the game. Then we moved on a little gingerly to the economy. What a mess the real estate market was in. How badly Wall Street had been trashing Main Street. I don’t think either one of us was about to give out the details of our own business prospects, but I did say at one point:
“Thank God for Phil Ravitch.”
“I’ll second that,” Daniel replied as he signaled the bartender for another round. “At least all this white-collar crime is keeping him in the clover.”
“Yeah,” I said, sipping the foam off my draft. The first beer had slaked my thirst; I hoped this one would start to ease the deep-seated pain between my shoulder blades that’s been with me since Betsy’s death. In
the little lull that followed, I could sense Daniel starting to wonder what this was all about. What did I want from him? On paper, we have so little in common: he’s ten or fifteen years older than me. A recent transplant from Manhattan, but still definitely citified: the sports jacket, the expensive haircut. He’s way better educated than me, a big deal in a competitive field, championed by the likes of Philip Ravitch. And yet, as I’d told Jenny when I first met Daniel, I felt that we had a kind of immediate rapport. Maybe it’s just that I’m having a harder and harder time communicating with Jenny these days, but for some reason I had this sense that Daniel was someone I could talk to.
“Things going okay with Jenny and the garden?” I asked him at last. “She said you came by yesterday for a while.”
“Yes. I took some photos. And we talked a little,” Daniel said. “I’m not sure—” He laughed to himself, shook his head, and went on: “This is going to sound a little egotistical, but I don’t usually get this reaction from women. I’m not sure she likes me. She seems very—what?—defensive? Defended? In any case, I should probably tell you that I don’t think she’s all that thrilled with your birthday present.”
“You don’t know what happened to us, do you?”
“Happened?” he said, turning on his stool to look at me. “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“I guess I assume everybody knows. This area—it’s really just a bunch of small towns. And it was all over the local news. We lost our baby daughter in a car accident about six weeks ago. I was driving. The Jeep rolled. I walked away without a scratch, but her car seat came loose and—”
“I’m sorry,” Daniel said. “I had no idea. You both must be going through hell.”
“Yeah,” I said, suddenly overcome. It was only then that I realized I had brought Daniel there to unburden myself. That I’d been longing to tell him the story. The whole story. From my point of view. I was as brutally honest as I could be. I told him about the pickup game, how we’d all been drinking. That even now I couldn’t swear how many beers I’d actually had. And I told him about my fight with Edmund. How that had really riled me up, distracted me. I was probably going too fast. It was a rough road, too, and it was beginning to get dark.
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