He hadn’t always been such a fraud. On their wedding night, he had made love to her like a man on fire. For weeks after, he’d left the office exactly at five and taken her straight to bed. He’d spent hours encircling her wrist with his thumb and forefinger, marveling out loud at her exquisiteness and his luck.
He had not been afraid of anything then. He’d run across a park during a summer lightning storm just to pick her a wild daisy. When lightning struck the mesquite tree behind him and melted the rubber off the bottom of his sandals, he ran his fingers through his charged hair and laughed. He left the gooey remainder of size eleven Birkenstocks on the grass and snapped his fingers, sending sparks six feet in the air.
And then Savannah was born. Maggie remembered the morning they brought her home, because it was the first time she heard Doug Dawson cry out loud. He sat in that nursery for an hour, his head in his hands, just bawling. Then he wrapped his daughter in three layers of bunting and went out to buy safety bolts for every door. From then on, he jumped at thunder and refused to watch the news. He never ran full speed again. He loved that child past the point of passion and straight on into immobility. He discovered the horror of loving something he could not bear to lose.
Doug had a soft spot for children and weeds; he didn’t have the heart to discipline either. He had never ripped out anything with his bare hands, and he figured he didn’t have to. As far as he could tell, his garden was a miracle—not a single morning glory or azalea had ever died. That was because Maggie never let them. She was at war with Doug’s garden, but she also knew what her husband could and could not stand. If it had been up to her, she would have planted a few fruit trees and been done with it, but nevertheless she found herself on her knees at three in the morning, replacing the blueberry climber that had suffered from an unusual frost with a new five-gallon transplant from Putnam’s Nursery. She filled in the bare patches in his walkway with plugs of chamomile and replaced every one of his wilting prize roses before he could see exactly how much damage had been done.
Her husband had never had to wake up to anything short of perfection. He drove her crazy and had never realized a woman needed as much tender loving care as a fussy rhododendron, but that didn’t mean she would break his heart. That didn’t mean she would stop shielding him from the truth only she could bear: Death came easy. It came all the time.
Years ago, Maggie had had many talents, but the best of these was fashion. She had become addicted to silk at the age of thirteen, when a momentary boyfriend bought her a topaz scarf. She didn’t give it back to him when she ditched him a week later. His awkward caresses hadn’t come close to the feel of silk against her skin.
Other teenagers spent their afternoons roaming the mall or having sex behind the new subdivisions going up on the east side of Phoenix; Maggie spent her free time at the fabric store, running her hands over bolts of silk the color of the things she wanted—the deep green of northern lawns and money, the glittering silver of skyscrapers built half a continent away.
She could dress, that’s what even the snobby cheerleaders said about her. Maggie designed and sewed her own silk dresses. She wore pantsuits of ebony velvet, regardless of the heat. She had one hundred designs in her portfolio. Slick, stunning dresses that could turn the mother of three children into a sexy woman again, silk skirts that even wild men would cling to.
As a senior, she was voted most likely to make a million dollars by thirty, and she accepted the award, even if it was a bit of an understatement. On the day of her high-school graduation, she had five thousand dollars in savings and a one-way ticket to New York, leaving in December.
Then she met Douglas, the best friend of her older brother, Michael, and right away she knew he was trouble. His fingers were the first things that felt better than silk; when he slipped his hand beneath her blouse and played with the lace hem of her bra, she couldn’t conjure up a single dress design, she couldn’t think of anything but him. In early summer, the two of them hiked to the top of Superstition Mountain and the gods took over. There was no other explanation. Maggie knew she was in the middle of her cycle. She knew she was risking every one of her plans, but love was a good-looking terrorist: He hijacked her whole life, then charmed her right out of her outrage. One kiss and she forgave him everything. One soft word and he got her thinking she’d been headed his way all along.
They were married in October, before she started to show. Doug was already working at the electronics firm he would stay at for the rest of his life, and had saved enough for the down payment on their tract house in Phoenix. Maggie sold the ticket to New York to a starry-eyed actor headed for Broadway, an actor who later went on to make action movies for two million dollars apiece.
She sold her one-way ticket, but the day before she went into labor, she boxed up her sketches and sent them off to Delorosa’s, her favorite East Coast designer. Exactly one week later, they came back unopened, and later on Maggie would remember that rejection as the only one that didn’t hurt. She was rocking Savannah to sleep when Doug brought the package in warily, and she felt a strange calm wash over her. She leaned down and kissed the top of Savannah’s silky head. She rubbed her cheek across a shoulder of smooth pink skin, and understood about what lasted and what didn’t, about the things that truly satisfied a soul.
The problem with epiphanies is that they have no staying power. By morning, she couldn’t believe what she’d been thinking. Was it so awful to want something of her own, something not every woman’s body could do, but a unique creation of her mind, of Maggie? She woke up to Savannah’s pre-dawn cries and took only half-breaths, painful little gasps in rhythm to her daughter’s tears. Her breasts were heavy and sore, she was bone tired, and it would be years before it got any better. A daughter was a ruthless blessing. From the start, Maggie felt so weak from devotion, she couldn’t hold on to the things that had once mattered most—time, quiet, order, solitude, even a subsistence level of self-respect.
For a while, though, she refused to give up. A few days after that first rejection, she wrote out a new address label, this one to Robespierre’s, and sent off the package again.
She sent the designs off to the twelve biggest New York designers, and all twelve sent them back to her. Two didn’t even bother to look at her creations; they just scrawled Return to Sender on the box. The other ten sent her form-letter rejections. The last one came back on Savannah’s first birthday, and by then Maggie was wearing terry-cloth robes like every other mother on the block. By then, the room she’d once vowed would be her studio was Savannah’s playroom, decorated with Lincoln Log forts and Barbie’s spring collection ensemble. By then, she’d pushed her silk dresses to the back of the closet, because she refused to have them ruined by spit-up milk curds and regurgitated Fig Newtons, which meant she would never wear them again.
The afternoon of Savannah’s first birthday, after Maggie settled her daughter into her high chair with a chocolate cupcake topped with jelly beans, she read the last form letter. It didn’t take long.
Dear Sir or Madam:
We regret to inform you …
She tossed it into the garbage can beneath the sink. She tried to kiss the top of Savannah’s head, but her daughter pulled away to jam more cake in her mouth. Maggie left the room and went into her bedroom closet. She grabbed the whole lot of silk dresses and took them out to Doug’s Spanish moss lawn, the only moss in all of Phoenix. Then she went for the lighter fluid.
She saturated every scoop neckline and double-stitched hem. She stood a little too close when she threw the match, and the hem of her robe caught on fire. If she hadn’t heard Savannah crying in the house behind her, she might have just let it go. She was only twenty years old, after all, still young enough to do something dramatic, to give up and go up in flames. But she no longer had the right to do something deadly. She was a mother, her daughter might be choking on a jelly bean, and there was nothing to do but tear off the robe, toss it on the pile, and run back to her daughter
.
When she found Savannah simply banging her fists for another cupcake, Maggie knelt down in her stained nightgown and sobbed into her hands. Doug came in behind her, soiled gloves in his hands. He just stood there watching her cry.
“The mothers all flock to me because Savannah’s so pretty and sweet-natured,” she said. “But I want them to flock to me because of me. I can offer more than a good baby. Can you understand that?”
She could see he didn’t.
He went into his new garden and clipped the first rose of the season. “See now,” he said, bringing it back to her, “just take a whiff of that.”
She looked at him, incredulous. All she wanted was an extraordinary existence, while Doug was happy with an unacceptable life. Really, it was amazing they had anything to say to each other. Sometimes it was all she could do to keep from screaming, to remember he was not one of her regrets. She heard the rotten things that sometimes came out of her mouth, but that didn’t mean she had control of them. If she could force him to passion, perhaps even break his heart, then she could piece it back together. If she couldn’t have greatness, then at least she ought to have a life with some drama in it.
But Doug did not rise to the bait. He never got promoted, never made a million dollars, never fulfilled his dreams and got to Europe, and yet he walked into his garden every morning whistling. She had replaced half a dozen of his torch lilies over the years, but sometimes she thought the wilting plants would have survived anyway. Sometimes she thought plants grew in Doug’s garden simply to please him. If her husband had spent half as much effort on her, she would be a different woman. She might have forgotten the things she’d once wanted. Maybe she would have wanted only him. If he’d put in a few lemon trees and been done with it, if he’d stopped gardening before the wicked Phoenix sun got ahold of him, he might not have a hole in his forehead the size of a golf ball, and cancer running right into the core of his brain.
Her granddaughter, Maggie was glad to note, did not care about the garden. She was not listening to a thing Savannah said, but glancing back at Sasha, the psycho’s dog, who was still growling menacingly from the porch. Emma glanced at the front window and Maggie dropped the curtain. She breathed deeply and counted to ten, then opened it again.
Emma had disappeared and Savannah had reached the mermaid fountain Doug picked out right before his death sentence. Every time Maggie passed it, she spit into the copper bowl.
Savannah had gained a little weight over the last six years, padded her hips and stomach, and added an armload of bracelets. Nearly twenty years ago, when her body was still under Maggie’s control, Maggie had grounded her for getting her ears pierced without permission.
“I won’t let you ruin yourself,” Maggie had said. “You’ll thank me someday.”
Savannah had stared at her. “I’m absolutely certain that I will not.”
Maggie squinted at her daughter now. It was true, Savannah had not thanked her, not even when she turned out lovely, the one design that didn’t come back rejected. She had moved away and become a success in advertising. She pretended she was too busy to visit. Maggie told the young people in Prescott to consider not having children at all. She meant it; motherhood had wrecked her. Thirty-six years later, she’d ended up with one hand locked in a fist, the other reaching for the hair her daughter wouldn’t let her touch anymore. “Kids will suck you dry,” she told them.
She walked to the phone in the kitchen and pressed the Speed Dial button. All the numbers were listed—Wendy Ginger, Maggie’s best friend two doors down, Putnam’s Nursery, Ben Hiller, head of the MesaLand Homeowners Association. All except number 9, which Maggie pushed.
“Williams-Sonoma,” a friendly voice said. “How may I help you?”
“It’s Maggie. Is Angela in?”
They put her on hold to elevator music, and Maggie scanned her cupboards—gold-rimmed place settings, porcelain gravy boats, twelve crystal flutes, Lladro salt and pepper shakers for eighty bucks apiece. She’d been on a high for a week over the cappuccino cups she’d gotten at the Dansk outlet, but that was fading. It was unnerving how quickly her purchases now turned to junk. Sometimes within hours; occasionally, even, while she was still standing at the cash register. A salesperson would be wrapping her brandy glasses in tissue, and a cold hand would reach down Maggie’s throat and snatch the air from her lungs. Sometimes, in the middle of the housewares department, with everything she could possibly want within reach, Maggie Dawson couldn’t even breathe.
Finally, Angela came on the line. “What can I get for you today, Maggie?”
Maggie reached behind the phone book on the counter, where she stuffed her catalogs. She opened the Early Summer edition of Williams-Sonoma. Every page was dog-eared, two or three items circled in red, but believe it or not, she had some self-control. She would get only the essentials.
“I need towels. Page forty-eight. The flour-sack towels? Are those as good as they say?”
“Better,” Angela said. “Super-absorbent. You could pick up, like, a whole cup of spilt coffee with one.”
“All right then. Two sets of eight. And I was looking at that electric food slicer. Page twenty-seven? That’s something.”
“It’s a definite must. You can cut your meat delithin. You know, most stores will give you a discount if you buy a whole side of roast beef, rather than having them slice it. You’ll make the money back in no time.”
“The only thing is where I can put it. It’s not exactly something I can tell Doug we’ve had all along.”
“I’m telling you, Maggie, once you start making him paper-thin bologna and cheese, he won’t care how much you spent. And it’s only two hundred. That’s a steal, in my mind.”
Maggie thought it over, though she didn’t have to. Already her mind had cleared off the counter space. She hardly ever used that eight-slot toaster she’d bought two months ago, after Doug’s first round of chemotherapy turned him pale and breakable as chalk. He might be able to stare at an oozing mole on his head and think everything would turn out fine, but she needed an occasional pick-me-up. He could go in for radiation five days a week, for six weeks, come home every day slightly blue and too tired to trim a single, leggy daisy, and still laugh during his favorite Seinfeld rerun, but she felt better only after she bought something nice. Doug never woke up terrified because the person in bed beside him paused between breaths, but she did.
“Let’s do it,” Maggie said at last.
“By the way,” Angela said. “The crepe pan you wanted is still on back order. But let me read you the telephone specials.”
She rattled off a list of special-priced steamers and cutting boards, all of which Maggie was fairly certain she needed. She held back, though.
“Ship everything to Wendy, like always. Bill it to my—”
She heard a throat clearing behind her, and whirled around to find Emma leaning against the doorjamb, one sandaled foot crossed over the other.
Emma wore a stained T-shirt two sizes too small, showing off a concave stomach that made Maggie’s throat tighten. Her toenails were painted blue, her jeans ripped at the knees and flared at the bottom, and Maggie knew for a fact that if she’d made it to New York all those years ago, she could have saved this generation’s fashion debacle.
“—Discover card,” Maggie finished and hung up.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Emma said. “Can I get a glass of water?”
Maggie could see right away that Emma was trouble; from clear across the room, Maggie could smell the lingering aroma of clove cigarettes and tangy rebellion. Emma had cut her fingernails to a sharp point, and tracked in two sandals’ worth of mud without thinking twice. Her eyes were such a light silver, so heavily made up in blue, they’d give some people the heebie-jeebies. If she were her daughter, Maggie would force her into the bathroom and scrub her clean. She’d put her into some decent clothes and, while she was at it, go through her drawers for signs of marijuana.
But she also noti
ced that this fifteen-year-old girl didn’t have an ounce of fear in her bones, and that was something Maggie admired. She was coming to believe that fearlessness was the only attribute worth having, in the end.
Emma had already taken two steps into the kitchen without being asked, and was heading toward the sink.
“You heard nothing,” Maggie told her.
Emma looked at the phone, then at her. She tapped her right ear. “What? What’s that you said?” She smiled—a smile that made Maggie forget, for a moment, that a fifteen-year-old girl should not be wearing that much lipstick.
“Whatever she told you about me,” Maggie said, “don’t believe it. I’m actually quite nice.”
“Believe it or not, Mom’s never said a bad word about you. She never says a bad word about anyone. She’s, like, insane or something.”
Maggie laughed. She went to the cupboard Doug never looked in, the one with the new cut-glass stemware she’d bought at Dillard’s in Phoenix. She filled a crystal flute with water and handed it to Emma.
“There’s not much to do here for a fifteen-year-old,” she said, “except get into trouble. Let me warn you right now, I see all, hear all, know all about the children living under my roof.”
Emma drained the water, then put the glass in the sink, and raised her chin. “I’m not staying here.”
“Oh no?”
“You know what’s really pathetic about my mom? It has never occurred to her that I’ll run away.”
Maggie stepped back. She looked out the kitchen window, where Savannah was walking up the cobblestone path toward the kitchen door.
The Wishing Garden Page 4