“Maybe not,” Joanna said. He dropped his hand. She sat up straight, struggling to assert some dignity despite the stifling heat, her damp and wrinkled clothes.
So this was how it was supposed to go. She should thank Charlie for his honesty, for cutting things off and moving on. She would still throw her first party on Saturday, and it would be a smashing success. Instead of showing off her landscape architect boyfriend, she would just have to dazzle everyone with her spirit of independence, her gutsy determination. She was enjoying thinking of herself as forty, fifty, sixty years old—never married, no children. She would instead devote herself to some great cause, travel around the world in crisp wool suits and shiny shoes, winning worldwide admiration, fame, and a few prestigious awards. The Nobel Peace Prize and the Pulitzer Prize, for example. Maybe a MacArthur Genius Grant.
With this newly acquired gutsy determination, she set about surviving the heat wave alone. Who needed a man? She could pick up her own fan off the floor. She could hoist the warped, paint-flecked double-hung windows up by herself, letting a hot breeze whoosh in like a hairdryer blasting directly on her face. She could tromp out back to the garden wearing an old tank top and a flimsy cotton skirt and pick tomatoes, parsley, and cucumbers. Without consulting a recipe, she would throw everything in the blender and, voila, out would come gazpacho. She would eat dinner alone, but it wouldn’t bother her a bit. In fact, she preferred it this way.
The day of the party, the temperature had dropped to a respectable eighty-five degrees. Laura said that she knew of a store with unbeatable prices on cheese where they could go to pick up all their party supplies. “There are four stores within walking distance of my house,” Joanna said. Laura argued that this store was worth the trek. They’d save so much money that she truly had to insist that they go there. “I go there before all of my parties,” she said. “To stock up.” Laura seemed to be relishing her role of party planner, even if she had originally tried to talk Joanna out of hosting a party in an unfurnished house with a cardboard-covered backyard.
Laura drove all over town, got on a highway, then took a bridge over the river. “Laura, where are we going? We’re in Washington. We’ll have to pay sales tax!” She was regretting asking her sister for help, although she admitted that her original idea of handing her guests a bowl and letting them tromp out to the garden to pick their own vegetables—kind of like the ultimate salad bar—hadn’t been exactly practical. But now they were spending half the day cheese shopping.
“I don’t think they tax cheese,” Laura said. “Here, you navigate.” She handed Joanna a printed sheet of instructions. “I don’t really know my way around Vancouver.” By the time they loaded up with cheese and crackers and crossed the river back to Portland, two hours had transpired. It took Laura another two and a half hours to zigzag all over town for other sundry items—wine, brandy, citrus fruits, citronella candles, biodegradable paper plates made from recycled materials, a new table cloth, some tiki torches, a box of tiny cocktail umbrellas. When they finally rolled up to the curb by the house, Joanna jumped out before the car had come to a complete stop.
“Calm down, Joanna,” Laura said.
Allison was waiting at the front porch, wearing a turquoise sundress. “You’re early,” Joanna said. She unlocked the front door.
“I thought I’d help out.”
In the kitchen, Joanna unloaded their wares on the counter. “Thank you,” she said to Allison, directing a pointed look at her sister. “Laura took us across state lines to buy eight pounds of cheese and now we’re running behind schedule. I’m going to go out and pick some more carrots for the vegetable platter—”
“I’ll get them!” Laura almost shouted. “Just—carrots?” She took off to the back of the house.
“So I finally get to meet the elusive Charlie Wu,” Allison said.
“No,” Joanna said. “You don’t.”
Allison stopped unwrapping the Gouda. “What happened?”
“He’s going camping. With another girl.”
“Huh.”
“Well, I’ll always have the memories.”
Allison looked skeptical. “You aren’t upset?”
Before she could answer, Laura came back holding a bunch of carrots by the leaves. “Okay, everything’s ready. Come out and look.”
Joanna took the carrots and ran them under water. “I’m busy.”
Laura reached over and took the carrots out of Joanna’s hand, tossing them into the colander with the green beans and cherry tomatoes. “Just come and look at how we’ve set things up.”
Joanna narrowed her eyes at Laura, then Allison. “What’s going on?”
Laura led her through the house to the sliding glass door. When she opened the door, at first all she noticed were Ted, Malcolm, and Nina standing in a row, as if they’d been waiting for her appearance. “What are they doing here?” she mumbled to Allison. In the spirit of forgiveness and open-heartedness, Joanna had decided to invite Malcolm and Nina to her party. Or maybe it wasn’t the spirit of open-heartedness, exactly, but the spirit of reprisal. Of course she knew she was only inviting Malcolm to show off Charlie. She had moved on; what was wrong with demonstrating that? When things had ended with Charlie, she could hardly retract the invitation, but she hadn’t expected them to show up early.
“It’s not six o’clock—” She stepped down into the yard, then stopped. Joanna put her hand to her mouth. In the corner of her yard stood a structure, exactly as Malcolm had drawn it for her last Christmas: a deep covered bench made of rust-colored wood, topped with a corrugated tin roof. A bench-hut. She took a cautious step toward it. “I can’t believe it,” she said to no one in particular. It was beautiful, better than she’d imagined, smelling strongly of new cedar.
“Merry Christmas,” Malcolm said. Fine shavings of wood coated his hair, his clothes, his skin. He was squinting at her, unsmiling.
She looked back at him, trying to read his expression. “I didn’t think you remembered,” she said.
“I said I’d build you one.”
Joanna was suddenly aware that everyone was listening to their conversation. Ted—also grimy with sawdust and dirt—had an arm slung around Laura’s shoulders. Allison was watching her with curiosity. Even Nina had a strange little smile on her face.
“I love it,” Joanna said in a stilted, public voice. She clapped her hands and gazed up at the hut, already adjusting her vision of the backyard to showcase it. She caught Malcolm looking at her. Their eyes locked for a moment. She blinked hard, and turned back to admire the hut.
Over the next hour, more guests trickled in, many of them bearing food and drink. By eight o’clock it was almost dark—summer was coming to an end. A cool breeze rustled the tops of the neighbors’ trees, ushering out the last of the heat wave. She could almost taste the air, sweet and metallic, hinting of rain.
Joanna fixed herself a glass of sangria and walked back to the bench hut. All evening, her guests had oohed and aahed over it, scrambled inside it, trying it out. She hadn’t had a chance to sit in it herself, so she climbed in. The bench was so deep she had to clamber up and almost crawl to the back. When she sat down, her legs stretched out in front of her.
“I’ll get you a cushion for this,” Malcolm said, patting the bench. He stood at the edge of the hut and peered in at Joanna. “I didn’t have time for the finishing touches.”
“I could sleep out here,” Joanna said. “Or even live in here.”
Malcolm stepped inside and sat down beside her. They looked out at the party, not speaking. Laura and Ted had set out the tiki torches. The plants in the garden cast strange shadows over the rest of the yard. Ten or twelve of her friends—or Ted and Laura’s friends—were roaming about, grazing the food table, ladling sangria from the punchbowl into their glasses. “This is how we met,” Joanna said, breaking the silence.
Malcolm shook his head. “Nah. We met inside. I remember. By the bookshelves.”
“I know. But it was
that same night.”
Malcolm turned his face toward her, then nudged her so their arms were touching. They sat like that for a few minutes, not saying anything. He cleared his throat. “Okay,” he said. “Well, I’d better go find Nina.”
Malcolm started to leave, but Joanna put a hand on his sleeve. He looked back at her, but she didn’t have anything to say, really. “Never mind,” she said.
He opened his arms and she wrapped her arms around him, burying her face into his shoulder. With her fingertips, she felt along the bones in his back. Then they broke free from the embrace, and she hopped off the bench with a thud. She made her way over the lawn—a tangled assortment of weeds and grasses—and through the flickering shadows to rejoin the party.
12
the house was coming undone at the seams
The first week of October, Joanna plucked all the tomatoes from their vines and spread them out on the counter in the kitchen. She picked the last of the beans and peppers but left the carrots in the ground to be sweetened by the upcoming frost. This was unusually early in the year for Portland to freeze over. Last year the tomatoes came in until Thanksgiving. She worked in the dark, pulling out plants, cutting them up with gardening shears, and dumping the tattered stems and leaves into the compost heap. The beds should get covered with straw for the winter, but her hands could barely function in the cold.
She opened the sliding glass door and stepped into the back room, kicking off her gardening shoes. She would make herself some tea and warm her hands on the mug. She walked through the house in the dark and snapped on the light in the kitchen. It took her eyes a moment to adjust, but then Joanna noticed, for the first time since she had moved in over three months ago, that she lived in a dump. The once white kitchen cabinets were grimy with grease and fingerprints. The vinyl floor curled up at the edges, creating a gathering place for crumbs and spills and little odds and ends like rubber bands and twist ties.
She walked into the living room, holding her mug of tea with both hands. The room was empty except for the jade plant by the window, the aloe vera plant on the mantle, and books on the built-in bookshelves on either side of the fireplace. Not a stick of furniture. If she wanted to sit down, she could sit in the chair in her room, or on her bed. She took her meals sitting up in bed, leaning against the wall.
But the fact that the room was unfurnished wasn’t the only problem—the house was coming undone at the seams. The ceiling had a series of concentric gray rings at two different spots, one over the fireplace, one by the chandelier where a dining table might go. The window sashes had been painted white, but the sun had baked the paint into hard, curling flakes, exposing the soft, worn wood underneath. And the wall opposite the fireplace could serve as a museum to the history of wallpaper: five layers of faded patterns were peeling off the walls, as if the previous owners had attempted to tear the sheets off with their bare hands and then given up after a few hours.
How was she going to survive the winter in this ramshackle place? Soon—very soon—it would rain and maybe even snow, and she would be trapped in a cold, empty house. She could almost hear the wind whistling under the cracks in the door, whooshing down the hall, rattling the lights.
Malcolm tapped on the window. She had been expecting him. Malcolm had called earlier that day, asking Joanna if he could crash at her place for a few nights. “It’s freezing out here.” Malcolm let himself in, bringing with him a cold gust of air. “It’s not much better inside.”
“I haven’t turned the heat on yet,” Joanna said.
“Why not?”
“I was outside.”
“You’re inside now.”
Joanna turned the thermostat up three degrees. A clinking sound, then a couple clunks, and soon warm air was blowing through the vents. The scent of burnt rubber and dust wafted through the room. “The heater works. Good to know.” Part of her terrified vision of living in this house through the winter involved a broken furnace. She didn’t even have any furniture to use as kindling for the fireplace—that’s how dire her situation had become. It was comforting to know that at least one thing functioned as it should.
Malcolm stood in the middle of the living room and dropped his suitcase to the floor. His hair looked dull and matted, and he had dark circles under his eyes. He took off his coat, unwound his scarf, and dropped those on the floor, too. “Joanna,” he said, “this place is a disaster.”
“It’s not that bad. Maybe I could get a couch or a chair or something.”
“That would be a start.”
“I just haven’t gotten around to it yet,” she said. “I’ve been so busy with the garden.”
“But where do you sit?”
“In my room. Here—” Joanna picked up his coat and scarf and hung them in the closet in the short hallway. “Go in there and sit down.”
Her mug was now cold. She put the kettle back on, took two tea bags from a box, and waited for the water to boil. She carried the hot tea into her room and handed Malcolm a mug. He was sitting against the wall, his legs crossed at the ankle. “God, Malcolm,” Joanna said, “What happened? You look horrible.”
He frowned into his mug. “What have you heard?”
She sat at the foot of the bed, across from him. “I haven’t heard anything.”
“Well, that contractor I’ve been working for basically told me he didn’t have any more work for me, so I’ve been out of a job for the last few weeks. I had to move out of my apartment, so I’m keeping my stuff in Ted and Laura’s garage. I stayed with them for a couple days. They didn’t tell you?”
Joanna shook her head.
“Since then I’ve been staying at my friend Scott’s house.” He shuddered dramatically. “There are like five guys living there. I wake up stuck to the floor, covered in crumbs.”
“Right.” Joanna laughed, but Malcolm didn’t appear to be in a joking mood. “So why don’t you stay with Nina?”
He looked up at her, surprised. “I thought Laura would have told you.”
“I said I hadn’t heard anything.”
“Well, it’s over.” Malcolm set his mug on the T.V. tray Joanna used as a bedside table. Then he put his head in his hands.
“Poor Malcolm.” Joanna crawled across the bed and sat beside him. She tousled his hair with her fingers. “Wow, you weren’t kidding. Your hair is coated in … something.”
“Probably beer and potato chips.”
“You should have come here sooner.”
Malcolm offered up a pathetic little grin. “I didn’t know if you would want me here.” A lump forming in Joanna’s throat prevented her from answering. “And who would blame you—” Malcolm’s phone rang. He took it out of his pocket and stared at it. “It’s Nina.”
“You should answer it.” Joanna hopped off the bed and walked to the door. “Answer it!”
The ringing stopped as she shut the door behind her. Fifteen minutes later, he came out and joined her in the kitchen, where she had been passing time arranging tomatoes and peppers on plates. “How did it go?” she asked. He frowned in response. “That bad, huh?” She hesitated, then put a hand on his arm. “Come on Malcolm, it’s going to be okay.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Because we’re friends,” she said. “Right?”
“I hope so.”
She pushed him away, sensing her eyes about to well up again. “You need to take a shower before you can stay in my guest room, though.”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “I’d hate to bring the place down.”
While Malcolm showered, Joanna set up the camping mattress in the back room. The mattress popped into shape in under a minute with a loud hiss of air. When it finished, she heard the sound of angry knocking. In the living room, she peeked out the window and saw Nina standing on the porch, her arms crossed in front of her. Nina stomped inside as soon as Joanna opened the door. “Where is he?” she demanded.
Joanna was too surprised to answer.
�
��Nina?” Malcolm walked in wearing a clean T-shirt and pajama bottoms, his hair wet. “What are you doing here?”
Nina’s chest was heaving up and down. She looked right past Joanna, her eyes flashing at Malcolm. “We need to talk.” Her face was pale, her eyes dry, but puffy. And she was wearing lipstick. Lipstick, all by itself like that, at eleven o’clock at night, sent an unexpected pang of sympathy through Joanna.
Malcolm and Nina disappeared into Joanna’s room. Joanna didn’t know what to do with herself. What had she done to deserve this? Nina was shrill; Joanna couldn’t help but make out some of her complaints: of all places, just to spite me, are you fucking serious. Malcolm’s voice was low, his words unintelligible.
Great. Malcolm had left her for Nina, and now she was trapped in her own house, forced to listen to their lovers’ quarrel.
She was pacing around the living room when Nina burst out of the bedroom and tore past. She flung the door open wide, letting in a rush of cold air. Then she pointed right at Joanna. “He’s all yours, bitch,” Nina spat out, slamming the door behind her.
Joanna turned to Malcolm, her eyes wide. “Whoa,” she said. “What was that all about?” Malcolm appeared to be frozen in place. “What did I ever do to her?”
“Nothing.”
“She seemed mad at me.”
“She is. But don’t worry about it.”
Joanna said she would make them more tea and he could tell her the whole story. “Okay,” she said, back in her room. “Spill it.”
“Let’s just say Nina found out I was staying with you, and she wasn’t too happy about it.”
“Why not? What did you tell her? About us, I mean.”
Malcolm peered into his cup. Then he gave Joanna a sheepish look. “I didn’t lie to her. But I may have given her a false impression of the timeline. … Anyway, back when I started making that bench hut for you, she really lost it. I told her I’d promised you earlier, but she wouldn’t hear it. And then she got the idea that we were making out in there at your party—”
Broken Homes & Gardens Page 12