Their mother was in such a state when Jax came downstairs and entered the kitchen, still half-asleep, that she didn’t even say hello.
Butter, was what Margaret said. It’s the butter I’m out of, and how can I get some now with the garden so overrun? Oh. Darling—
Growing butter now, huh? Jax said cheekily, looking over at Georgina and rolling her eyes.
I wouldn’t go out there, Margaret said, noting Jax’s bathing suit. They’re everywhere.
And before Jax could reply, there was a knock on the door. And before Margaret could tell her not to, Jax had opened it.
The answer to what her mother was talking about was standing there: a late-middle-aged woman in a print sundress with sagging spaghetti straps, demanding a glass of iced water, stepping inside without being asked, glaring at Margaret, Jax and Georgina as if the heat was all their fault (how dare you), leaning against the counter, waiting to be handed a glass. Tapping—tapping—her foot.
They said there would be refreshments, the woman said. We were counting on that.
Jax looked helplessly at her mother, but Margaret was busy rooting through the refrigerator, her head and shoulders behind its open door and both arms inside pushing food around on the shelves, looking for butter.
Water? Georgina said. Yes, of course. It is hot out there, isn’t it?
But the woman wasn’t interested in small talk; she only wanted, after a moment to catch her breath, to unload all her grievances about how utterly mismanaged this day had been already and still three more gardens to go, assuming they could scare up a functioning bus to take them all … And as she gulped the cold water Georgina handed her, the comments became more expansive and she talked about the need for two buses because they’d been so overcrowded on that first one, and how she was sure it had broken down because of the sheer human weight it had been made to carry. Some of them, she said, were such heifers they took up two whole seats apiece.
She stared hard at each of them, making sure they’d heard, as if there was somehow something wrong with them that their garden, their property, should attract such grotesquery. And as if she was somehow separate from that.
Margaret and her two daughters felt passingly stunned by this woman’s barrage and they each stood there, dumb, thinking what came most naturally to them. Jax: what a delicious comedy. Georgina: what an unnecessary burden, on top of everything else. And Margaret: what a shambles from the start, and here was the proof.
And furthermore, the woman continued, holding her glass out to Georgina for more water, they refused to refund my husband’s ticket even though I told them he wasn’t—
But Georgina had snapped into action and with a single deft movement she ushered the woman out onto the porch and down to the drive and across the gravel to where the mown path started in, keeping up a steady patter of words in her effort to get this woman away from the house and back out where she must stay until the bus came to take her, and the rest of them, away. This, at least, was something that Georgina could control.
Near the weeping pussy willow they encountered two men bent right down to the ground, fiddling with the shrub’s base, and the woman realized an instant before Georgina that they were taking a cutting. She drew her breath in, incensed, and thrust her head forward like a chicken getting ready to peck at this outrageous liberty. Georgina, seizing the opportunity, backed away, because the woman had something new to fixate on now—either upbraiding or joining them in this bad behaviour. And anyway, Georgina thought, looking around, one hundred cuttings couldn’t decimate this.
But as she passed by the Yulan magnolia and moved through the circular herb garden with its brick walkways and around the tall stone obelisk, she began to wonder if the tour numbers were increasing because there were people everywhere. Ghosting through the property, lost in their own perceptions of it, some drifting en masse and others staring hard at a single bloom like herons waiting for a tremor of movement before striking. And many of them, she began to notice, were carrying bouquets of flowers they’d snapped off as if this tour had left them in the wilderness and they were free to pick what they liked. Pick, discard and pick again—because even the clearings, she saw, were strewn with dying blooms in every shade and colour. They were stripping things.
Her father would be livid when he saw this. And where was he? Wasn’t he meant to be leading them? This tour had no shape, and these people didn’t fit neatly in any one category. They weren’t a civic or special interest group—their behaviour was too erratic. They looked at the plants and they swatted them; they collected and discarded them; some were dressed for the midway and others for the mall. And most of them didn’t even look old enough to want to spend a morning doing this. It was a retirees’ game, these garden tours, but these people—she passed two near the asters—could have been plucked from the sidelines of a soccer match. Middle-aged men and women who seemed as bewildered to be there as Georgina was to encounter them.
And then she saw her father, back in the topiary, stalking the trimmed hedges. She could tell, by the rigid set of his shoulders, that he was furious and looking for a perpetrator, and Georgina knew she should help him because nobody else was going to, but instead she returned to the house. She could say she was there for Philippa. And wasn’t that the truth? She knew, from long experience, that her father’s trajectory was gaining speed and she didn’t want to be around when he ignited.
Margaret was still talking about the cake. Still rattling off the ingredients and saying she needed eggs and butter.
And your father—she levelled her eyes at Jax—is no help at all.
Tell me about it, Jax replied with exaggerated surrender, putting a mug of coffee into the microwave to reheat. My husband, she said, is useless too.
But Margaret wasn’t listening. She was distracted by the thought of David out there in the garden with that couple having sex, which she knew was where it was heading when she’d seen the man rip the girl’s top from her back. Nothing about sex was new to Margaret, but she was second-guessing having practically led her husband to it, because it could all swing back so horribly down on top of her.
I can go, Jax said, stirring sugar into her coffee, leaning against the counter and watching her mother to gauge the morning’s temperament. To the store, she smiled innocently. She was thinking of the boy and their plans and that she might buy a new colour for her hair, or some lip gloss, or eyeliner—or any one of the many other frivolous purchases she used to add on to her mother’s credit card when sent to the grocery store as a teen.
What was that? Margaret murmured, because she was having trouble following any line of thought except the one involving her husband.
Uggh!
Margaret cried out as if she’d been hit, because behind Jax an enormous man stepped through from the family room.
Toilet, he said, like a caveman. Like someone for whom language was irrelevant.
Even Jax was startled. A sonic boom, right in her ear. What—?
He was all the way in now, and moving toward the sink.
Can we help you? Jax said, recovering. Her mother had fallen back against the stove.
Toilet, he repeated, his tone so low it scraped the ground and delivered itself up jammed with earth and rocks.
How did you get in? Margaret whispered.
He motioned behind him to deep inside the house, and Jax noticed the vinyl bag hanging from his arm like a purse. On anyone else it would have been a shoulder tote.
Yes, Jax said with a false brightness, painfully aware she was standing there in nothing but a two-piece bathing suit. Straight through and on your right.
And then they watched him leave, blocking out the sun for a moment, back the way he’d come. To the powder room he’d never fit into and then, presumably, out the front door that was beside it—beneath the oak lintel and over the ancient bluestone threshold that seemed just the right tread for a giant.
They looked at each other then, and Jax laughed.
Is
it a circus tour? she snorted, snapping the back of her bikini bottom against her legs.
I told him to cancel it, her mother said, looking fearful. Told him it would put us all at risk. He should have listened. I knew he should have listened.
13
There were four of them in the swimming pool now. They’d laid their hats and cameras on a table in the shade, and their walking shoes and socks were lined up beside the shallow end’s steps, and they were floating fully clothed—Pippa could see them—on their backs, like giant autumn leaves.
Who are they? Are they alive?
She watched them collect on the far side where the garden was closest to the pool’s edge and tip themselves upright, in a row, elbows on the concrete pool deck, their faces inches from the flowers which, she could tell, even from her room upstairs, were trembling with bees.
She leaned her forehead against the glass. Did she know them? They weren’t her sisters. Nor her mother, who didn’t even know how to swim … And as Pippa tried to work it out, two more flung themselves in, diving and twisting like porpoises. She watched as the four at the edge turned, in unison, and began pulling themselves hand over hand around the edge and back to the steps and out, like flotsam being pushed by this rogue tide that had risen from god knows where with a pull stronger than the sum of them.
They were lovers, these new ones. Pippa saw it immediately. And naked. She spread both hands out on the glass and her despair was sudden and physical. When was the last time she’d done anything like that? She watched them curl around each other and sink to the bottom, not even needing the air to breathe, existing just for that moment. Staying under longer than seemed possible.
Pippa turned away before they exploded through the surface, and so she missed the terror on one and the laughter on the other. She’d seen only the joy and abandon, and not the way the man had held his girl down to the point of drowning.
David decided that he needed a moment to take stock of things. He needed to get dressed, and he needed to take stock of things. Try to ascertain what exactly was going on with this tour turned romp and how he could make it serve him; that couple still out there, he knew, and captive for now with no transportation out.
He slipped along the back side of the woodland garden, along the fence line, crouching under limbs and stepping around shrubs and saplings, pressing wildflowers beneath his feet with each step and feeling, all in all, unfairly treated. That he should be reduced to this—to creeping through his own grounds and making a break for his own house—seemed fundamentally wrong. Everything was off-kilter and unreal. Was he hallucinating? Was this some sort of excessively vivid waking dream? He thought that if he could only get inside and up to his bedroom and out of these pyjamas and into his clothes, then he would feel normal again. Back on top, in charge, not like this—because these were the movements of a scavenger, not a predator. He was slick with sweat, his pyjamas bunching up between his legs and along his thighs as he walked. He felt his chest with both hands and that was damp too, even through his dressing gown—which would be ruined now, stained and puckering. Every weed he hadn’t pulled seemed to have thrown itself at him, and he could feel their bristling stickers all along his leg hairs.
It will be cool inside, he told himself. Impatient and eager, now that the house was in sight.
He broke from the perennials for the terrace (still no refreshments, he saw, irritated that he was still the only one working) and then, as quickly as he could, across to the door that led into the living room. Almost inside. He turned the knob and pushed but the door didn’t open. The blasted frame had swollen in the summer heat. Not until he put his hip and leg against it and tried again, with brute force, did it pop open, and he could step inside and push it shut behind himself. And it was then, after locking the door, that he heard the murmur of unfamiliar voices in the living room.
What the—
It was a family group seated comfortably on the furniture—father, mother, teenage son—so comfortable, so at ease, that David stood and stared at them as if it were he who’d blundered into their house. The son was hunched over five different remote control wands, which he’d picked up from various places about the room or possibly the house, and he was pushing buttons and trying to make the stereo turn on. Busily emptying out batteries, switching them around, trying to make them work. David watched as the boy placed a battery between his teeth and bit into it before putting the dented cylinder back into a remote to try again. He’d already rifled through David’s CD collection, even shifting the stereo and its custom-made cabinet away from the wall to check all the wires in the back, muttering that the rich old fuck who owned it, and had nothing but pretentious operas and violins on disc, probably hadn’t wired the thing properly at the get-go, because what could the owner of all this old shit know about electronics. And not even, he’d sneered, cutting-edge tech. Just top-of-the-line, run-of-the-mill bullshit.
Your house? the man asked David affably, taking in the pyjamas and slippers. Listen, buddy, I was looking over your accounts and you’re paying way too much for everything. I’m an accountant, he said—as if his credentials nullified the transgression.
You know, there’s a nursery, his wife interjected. Out past the highway. It sells plants marked down to half their price. Some sort of rehab program, I think, for retarded adults.
Developmentally delayed, the son corrected her. Smirking.
And you can claim certain improvements on your taxes every year, the man continued. That tennis court, pool and little garagey house out there—buddy, you could call it a country club. That sets you up for all kinds of savings right there. And that’s not even the half of it.
The man was in front of the fireplace now, an elbow resting on the mantel right next to the delicate clock whose timepiece was nested in whip-thin sprays of porcelain flowers. So baroque it was over the top. So fragile, a sudden movement would obliterate it. His blocky arm, squeezed out through the sleeve of his faded pink golf shirt, was moving like a windshield wiper as he used gestures to underline his message that David had been shovelling all his money onto a gigantic bonfire of unnecessary spending. And wasn’t it lucky for him that they’d come along when they had? That’s called added value for your money right there, he chuckled. Because sure—he sucked air through his teeth, indicating the room they were in—you’ve got a cushion, but that doesn’t mean you need to eat your capital. What are your taxes like? Bet they’re high, even with the exemption. Fucking taxman, eh? See now, he said, flexing his back against the fireplace. That’s where you’ll be able to claw your money back. Taxes. Do you have anyone doing your books? he asked, not missing a beat, because he’d had his start in timeshare sales and he’d been good at it, even if what he’d been selling were ski chalets on a modest hill eighty miles south of the snowbelt. “An all-season vacation home” was how he’d pitched them, which was also the defence he gave when his clients came back in January to nix the deal because the slopes were still green.
Blackford, isn’t it? I’ll call you David. Listen, David, it’s your solvency I’m worried about. Anyone with Accounting 101 can see that your liquidity’s all right but you need to be looking long-term. I mean—he snorted—we’re not getting any younger. Am I right?
Speak for yourself, dear, his wife said. He’s in excellent shape. Aren’t you, David? I’ll bet you can still run a six-minute mile—Oh, Christ, the son muttered—without even breaking a sweat, she continued.
She had twisted herself up against the couch’s arm so that her ample chest was pushed out and her narrow hips cocked to one side, but David wasn’t looking at her or the husband or the son. He was staring at the table and at his files, which had been shuffled and opened and spread out like a deck of cards.
I hope you don’t mind, the man said, tracking David’s gaze. I’m just trying to help, you know. Nice place like this—would be a shame to lose it because you weren’t adequately prepared.
And then he reached into the breast pocket of hi
s shirt and pulled out a business card from the small stack he’d put there that morning—you never know—and it was that single small fluid movement which finally broke David open.
He didn’t know what to address first, there were so many violations unravelling in front of him. He went to the table and methodically closed every single file folder and then he turned, squaring himself to the room, and blasted them with a volley of such foul language that only the teenage boy could actually appreciate the full arsenal.
The tour, David decreed loudly and in all directions, is over.
The tourists left just as they’d come. Silently. Vacuumed up by the shiny red bus that had backed down the entire length of the lane, clipping overhanging branches and dropping into potholes as if its tires had suddenly deflated, until it wedged itself between the gateposts. No one came to the house to ask for the garden’s owner, to extend a thank you or an apology or any other ritual of polite society. Rather, it was as if everyone involved wanted to sneak away, as if the whole thing had never happened—an embarrassment on both sides.
Except that it had happened, and the proof was everywhere. In the rutted ground, and the broken flower stems and blooms dropped willy-nilly across the landscape like offerings. Someone had made a chain of shasta daisies and tossed it high up over the obelisk, where it had caught jauntily, partway down on the granite, interrupting the water that usually sheeted the obelisk’s sides so that now it ran in pretty rivulets, arrhythmic and unpredictable. The pool was spotted with debris—leaves and twigs, a handful of grass clippings flung like confetti—and throughout the entire garden hung the feeling of a gathering just departed. The movement of bodies still present in the air, in the way the plants were slowly straightening themselves to the sun and the grass blades were springing back up, and in the absence of birds and tiny whirring things as the animals waited, just a few moments more, to make sure that the coast was clear.
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