The Wicked Garden

by Henson, Lenora

  “This is where we get a lot of our food,” Will said as he gestured toward the neat rows of vegetables and herbs that took up most of the backyard. “It’s hard work, but it’s worth it. All three of us are paying our own way through school, so this place has been, like, a lifesaver, man. Gretchel claims to be an expert at canning. She’s just a sophomore, so she has to go back to the dorms in August, but she said she’ll come back and help with the fall harvest. We’ll see.”

  They followed a narrow stone path leading back to the greenhouse. Will hesitated before they went in. “Now, don’t get sucked in by her looks, ‘cause when she starts screaming tonight, you’ll feel like strangling her.”

  “She shot you down, didn’t she?” Eli asked.

  “Took an arrow to the chest first day she was here,” Will concurred. “She said I was too tame for her wild heart. Can you believe that shit? Me, too tame?” Will shook his head. “Of course she’s probably right, freaking nutcase.”

  “Of course.”

  When he opened the door to the greenhouse, Eli saw Gretchel bent over a sink. She was barefoot, wearing faded, old Levis that were ragged at the bottom with a Grateful Dead patch on the butt saying We Will Survive. Her shoulders and forearms were covered in a field of freckles. She wore a gray tank top and no bra, which revealed every detail of her full chest. Her dark red hair was pulled up in a messy pile on her head. She was extremely tall and toned, and the most beautiful thing Eli had ever seen.

  “Hey, Red. This is the new roomie, Eli,” Will called.

  Gretchel wiped wet hands on her jeans. When her eyes met Eli’s she gasped. Eli understood. It was like lightning had struck between them.

  None of this was lost on Will. “Why did I bother?” he asked himself as he relit the joint and walked out of the greenhouse.

  It seemed like an eternity before Eli could speak, but he forced himself to make words. “I’m Eli, but I guess you know that already,” he said, feeling completely tongue-tied.

  “Gretchel,” she said, holding out her hand, “but I guess you know that.” Their hands were caught in a time warp. After a moment, her fingers loosened and slid along his palm as she let go.

  They left the greenhouse, and he took a seat next to her under a big oak tree.

  “What are you going to school for, Eli?”

  “Photography,” he smiled.

  She smiled back at him, showing a perfect set of white teeth. “You have my stamp of approval, which I’m sure you’ve been waiting on,” she laughed. “I’m an art student, currently having a love affair with botanicals. How do you feel about getting your hands dirty, Eli?”

  “I’m really good at getting my hands dirty.” Doofus! Eli thought to himself. But Gretchel just grinned.

  “Good. This is Pan’s garden and we mustn’t anger him, lest he slip into our rooms in the dead of night and ravage us silly. He won’t hesitate to take a man in bed, Eli. Just warning you. Though he took me once as a young girl, and I rather enjoyed it,” she smiled and tapped an index finger to her lip. “On second thought, maybe I shall anger him.”

  Eli laughed and shook his curly mane. He liked this girl’s style. “I’ve tended gardens all my life. I think I can appease the great god Pan.”

  Gretchel took his hands in hers and looked them over. “Yes. I can see that these hands have played in the dirt quite a bit. This is good. We all need to get our hands dirty to stay connected to the Green Man and the Mother."

  “The Mother? As in Gaia?”

  “Yes, but not just Gaia. I think there are lots of mothers or goddesses that go by different names, but they’re all just a manifestation of the same Great Wild Mother—the feminine energy of the universe. Maybe the goddesses we know are like her children, an extension of herself. And we’re her children, too: creative energy birthed from the womb of the Goddess and shaped into carbon-based matter. I was raised to see the Mother as a whole, but also as a triple entity—the maiden and crone emanate from the Mother as the source of all life.

  “Then there are the gods—like the Horned One, Cernunnos. The playful man who has the heart of a child. We find him in Peter Pan or Pan himself. I pray to the Horned One as well as the Mother. I often imagine Cernunnos walking beside me, helping me grow spiritually, but protecting me from growing up and from taking myself too seriously. I’ve entered into a covenant with him that I renew every April Fools’ Day.

  “Sometimes I pray to Hermes and Aphrodite, too, simply because, together, they make me feel a sensual love for the universe that I can’t find anywhere else. When I pray to them I’m completely open to potential, allowing a creative give-and-take to occur.”

  Having been raised by a transpersonal psychologist and a hippie mystic, Eli had grown used to tuning out talk of archetypes and cosmic energy. But, now, he was rapt. He could happily sit beneath this tree, listening to Gretchel talk like this forever.

  “Sometimes I pray for rescue, for a god or a goddess or someone to save me from my shadows because I don’t have the courage or the strength to save myself.”

  Gretchel stopped talking long enough for Eli to realize that some kind of response was required. “And what form would this rescue take?”

  “Love, of course.” Her smile was radiant.

  “Of course.”

  “Yes, I think that love is the only thing that can save me from myself, and I know that the universe is holding that love for me, and anyone else who wants to claim it. Can you imagine a love so pure that it’s infinite, Eli? Doesn’t that just blow your mind?” He thought about how she was blowing his mind.

  “I don’t know if I can imagine it, really, but I’d like to try.”

  “I feel closest to that love when I’m outside, in the elements. When I’m connected to the earth, I feel like I’m free, like my wild heart is open, like my bare feet can dance. I feel like I’m truly awake and alive. I guess I feel like I’m home.”

  “That’s beautiful.” Eli wasn’t sure if he was talking about the girl, her words, or both. “My parents raised me to believe a lot of the same things you believe, but I’ve never heard them express their beliefs quite so passionately.”

  “I’m extremely high,” she chuckled. “I really do feel like that. I just wouldn’t have pontificated quite so, um, expressively if What’s-His-Nuts hadn’t come out with a joint earlier.” Gretchel narrowed her eyes at Eli. “You’re not from here, are you?”

  “Nope. Pacific Northwest.”

  “Why are you in Illinois?”

  “I have a date with destiny,” he said.

  She looked deep into his eyes, and Eli felt certain that she could see his soul.

  “Gretchel, do you believe in fate?”

  “I believe in possibility and potential,” she smiled, still looking straight into Eli’s eyes. Then she lifted her gaze. “And I do believe I’m falling deeply in love with your curly hair.” She reached up and ran a gentle hand through his unruly mop. Her touch raised goose bumps on his arms.

  Eli had resented his mother’s insistence that her crazy prophecy had anything to do with him, but now he believed. He was meant to be with this girl. If he knew nothing else, of this he was absolutely certain.

  ∞

  It was Sunday night in Carbondale, and Eli was sleeping peacefully in his room when the screaming began. He lay staring at the ceiling, listening to Gretchel’s obvious distress, trying to make out what she was saying. After about an hour, he couldn’t take it anymore.

  Eli tiptoed down the hall and slowly opened Gretchel’s unlocked door. He could see her thrashing around in the moonlight. This is not normal, he thought. Gently, he sat on the edge of her bed. He didn’t want to frighten her, or even wake her. He just wanted to help her if he could. He placed his hand on the small of her back. His touch seemed to calm her.

  Eli couldn’t see Gretchel’s face, but he could tell that she was awake after all.

  “Tell me everything’s going to be okay.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper.

 
; Eli lay down next to Gretchel and wrapped his arm around her waist. His hand found what felt like a rag doll pressed against Gretchel’s belly.

  “Everything’s going to be okay. I promise,” he whispered back. She slept quietly the rest of the night.

  It was still dark when her alarm clock sounded. Gretchel looked at Eli, who was clearly unsure of what he should do after waking up in Gretchel’s bed. She pushed back a tangle of runaway curls, kissed his forehead, whispered “Thank you,” and was on her way.

  ∞

  Oregon, 2010s

  Eli puffed from a small pipe as he stared at the picture of Gretchel with her children. He hadn’t let himself revisit these memories for a long time, but it felt good—like a kind of therapy. He worried, for a moment, that going back to his memories of Carbondale was going in the wrong direction, but he couldn’t help himself. He needed to remember that, once upon a time, his life had been beautiful, or the snake that stalked his dreams would swallow him whole.

  CHAPTER ELVELEN

  Oregon, 2010s

  Eli was obsessed. He sat at the computer for days, looking at every picture, reading every post and comment on Ame’s Facebook page. His phone rang—calls from Rebecca, his mother, his father, and several friends. He ignored them all.

  He was surprised—and pleased—to see that Gretchel was living in her hometown. He had assumed that Troy would have dragged her to the Chicago suburb where he had grown up. That’s where she was headed the last time Eli saw her, the day she broke his heart.

  Eli watched to see if Ame was using chat. He wanted to talk to her, even if he had no idea what he was going to say. He just wanted some connection—however tenuous—to Gretchel.

  In the meantime, he just returned—again and again—to the photo of Gretchel with her children. Gretchel was squeezing them both lovingly, and Eli was sure she was the wonderful mother he had always known she would be.

  Other photos were more disturbing. She had aged well, but she looked different. She was too skinny—sickly, almost. She dressed like a soccer mom, and it didn’t suit her. When Eli thought of her, she always wore jeans and a tank top, or a wild hippie dress she had made for herself. Eli knew that seventeen years was a long time—he knew that all too well—but Gretchel looked uncomfortable and unhappy in this suburban persona. She didn’t look like herself, and Eli got the sense that she didn’t feel like herself, either. This woman he was seeing—she wasn’t Gretchel.

  When Eli peered into her photographed eyes, he felt like he was seeing all his fears for her come true. He had predicted this—or something like this—but he still couldn’t fathom why she felt she deserved the punishment a life with Troy was sure to bring her.

  Gretchel was still the woman for him, though. He didn’t care how much she had changed. He would never be able to imagine truly loving anyone else, no matter what his mother or an oracular crone from an acid trip might have to say about it.

  ∞

  Carbondale, 1990s

  Gretchel had already left the house by the time Eli got up on his second day in Carbondale. Will explained that she worked for a landscaper who liked to get an early start, and that she always went out for a run first thing in the morning.

  Eli holed up in his room all day long, writing to kill time. Shortly after three, he heard singing coming from the bathroom. He closed his notebook and waited for the right moment to approach Gretchel.

  Finally, he crept out of his room and walked slowly down the hall. The door to her room was open. He tried to seem casual, but he couldn’t help turning to look at her as he walked past.

  “Hey, Hermes,” she smiled.

  “Hermes?”

  “The Greek messenger god. I’ve always pictured him with wild, curly hair like yours.”

  Eli took a cautious step into her room, trying not to step on anything. Books and CDs mingled with sketchbooks all over the floor. An easel stood in the corner, surrounded by canvases in various stages of completion. Fabric was strewn about near a desk that supported an old sewing machine. An altar sat in the corner of the room, partnered with a prayer pillow. Gretchel’s altar tools were carefully arranged on top of a printed, violet piece of fabric.

  Houseplants and potted herbs flourished amongst the mess. Gretchel’s hippie lair smelled like sandalwood, and Eli noticed the incense burner on her nightstand, along with a rag doll and a tarnished silver cup.

  “That’s a beautiful quaich,” he said. Gretchel replied with a confused grin. He pointed to the two-handled cup.

  “Oh, yeah—the loving cup. It’s been in my family a long time. A really long time, I think. My grand mama gave it to my parents on their wedding day, and my mama gave it to me after my daddy died.”

  “My apologies,” he said quietly.

  She brushed at her quilt, smoothing out the wrinkles. “He’s been dead awhile now. It’s ancient history.” Then she started straightening the pillows on her bed. “Sorry about the mess. I have no great excuse, other than I work a lot, and when I come home I just want to chill. I haven’t wasted time like this since I was a kid.”

  “I love wasting time,” Eli said as he took a seat. She scooted herself against two big, fluffy paisley pillows as she dog-eared the book she was reading. He glanced down at the title and smiled. “You like Graham Duncan?”

  “I do. I think he’s a brilliant god, and I’m hopelessly in love with him.” She pretended to swoon. “Have you read any of his books, Hermes?”

  “I have."

  “I would love to meet the man, just to pick his brain. I’d hitch a ride and follow him across the country like a Deadhead if he ever did a book tour.”

  “You and every other fanatical reader. He’s a complete nutter if you ask me.”

  “But I didn’t ask you,” she replied with a laugh. “I wonder what he looks like. I hear he has a birthmark in the shape of a phallus on his ass.”

  Eli shook his head, trying to keep a straight face.

  Gretchel chuckled. “Duncan makes me laugh.”

  “Is a peculiar sense of humor all it takes for you to fall hopelessly in love with someone?” he asked.

  “It certainly doesn’t hurt,” she said as she coyly batted her eyelashes. “Duncan’s words make my own logic seem a little less bizarre.”

  “He definitely has a unique perspective on reality.”

  “I like his perspective. His characters are like Alice in Wonderland. They’re illogical in a normal social environment, but perfectly logical within the context of the story.”

  “A trip down the rabbit hole,” Eli said. He picked at the beautiful quilt on her bed. “What would you do if you went down the rabbit hole?”

  “I don’t know. Paint the roses red?” she shrugged. He laughed.

  “Actually I would do a lot more than that. I think that more people should explore the depths of the psyche like Duncan does. I think that the psyche holds incredible secrets, and I want to go there on an expedition. Have you ever read the book Deep-See Diving by Miranda Stewart?”

  Eli had to suppress another grin when he heard his maternal grandmother’s name. “Interestingly enough, I have. But most people don’t want to go that deep. The psyche is also where universal, archetypal pain resides.”

  Gretchel stared off into space for a moment, and Eli wondered what she was seeing. “Do you think a person can go there and bypass the pain?”

  “I don’t know. I think a person should try to go there in order to befriend the pain, to release it and use that transformed energy to create something else, something beautiful.”

  “Do you think a person could visit their raw pain and survive?”

  “Absolutely. I’ve...” and he stopped himself. He was going too far.

  “What would happen to a person if she went into the psyche, unlocked the wrong door, and got trapped by her own ghosts and shadows?”

  “Well, I think that person would need a guide, someone experienced, to escort her through the labyrinth,” he said. “Have you ever trie
d mushrooms or acid, Gretchel?”

  She shook her head with a tinge of disappointment in the gesture. “I want to. I’m just petrified by the thought of what I might encounter.”

  “I’ve tripped on many occasions,” Eli said. Too many times to count. “We could do it together sometime if you’d like.”

  “Can we do it now?” she asked, eyes sparkling with sudden anticipation.

  He laughed. “I don’t have any acid or ‘shrooms right now. Are you in that much of a hurry to meet your shadows?” he teased, and absentmindedly ran his fingers up and down her calf.

  “Maybe I’m just trying to befriend my pain,” she smiled. He wanted to reply, he wanted to ask her about the nightmares. He wanted to know what made her scream in the night. But the moment passed when she leapt from the bed and grabbed a tube of red paint and a brush. “Shall we paint the roses red?”

  Eli sat up. “Huh?”

  “I’m kidding.” She put the art supplies down and grabbed his hand. “Let’s tend to the garden, then I want to show you the fairy ring I found in the woods behind the house.” Eli raised his eyebrows again, but he followed her.

  He would have followed her anywhere.

  ∞

  Their days developed an easy rhythm. They spent the late afternoons talking on her bed, which led to tending the garden as the sun went down. Then they made dinner. Will could barely boil water and, left to her own devices, Patty would have subsisted on almond milk, cold tofu dogs, and weed. Gretchel, on the other hand, knew how to cook, and Eli was happy to serve as prep chef.

  After dinner, the residents of the house on Pringle Street would retire to the backyard. Gretchel and Patty would sit and listen to Eli and Will play their guitars. When Will and Patty had other plans for the evening, Eli and Gretchel would lie on a blanket, look at the stars, and talk.