The Night Garden: A Novel

by Lisa Van Allen

  The Night Garden is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Ballantine Books eBook Edition

  Copyright © 2014 by Lisa Van Allen

  Reading group guide copyright © 2014 by Random House LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  RANDOM HOUSE READER’S CIRCLE & Design is a registered trademark of Random House LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-345-53783-6

  eBook ISBN 978-0-345-53757-7

  Cover images: © Jessica Boone/The Image Bank/Getty Images (garden), © Shutterstock (woman)

  www.randomhousereaderscircle.com

  v3.1

  “And down he hastened into the Eden of poisonous flowers.”

  —from “Rappaccini’s Daughter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Up the Garden Path

  An Olive Branch

  In the Bud

  Touch Wood

  The Wrong Tree

  The Forest for the Trees

  A New Leaf

  Consider the Lilies

  Garden-Variety Magic

  Pushing Daisies

  Greener Pastures

  Off the Rose

  Old Chestnut

  Wild Oats

  Make Hay

  A Thorn in Her Side

  Gilding the Lily

  Shrinking Violet

  Bet the Farm

  The Cherry

  Rose-Colored Glasses

  About the Bush

  Late Bloomer

  What You Sow

  Coming Up Roses

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments and Author’s Note

  A Reader’s Guide

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  Up the Garden Path

  Gloria Wallace Zeiger had been peering through her binoculars for such a long time that when she turned to her husband to speak to him, two red indentations had appeared on the bridge of her nose.

  “They’re watering. They’re definitely watering,” she said.

  Her husband of forty years, Richard Zeiger, did not look away from his television show though it had gone to a commercial. “Can you see sprinklers?”

  “No,” Gloria said. “But I know they’re doing it.” She made a noise that was halfway between a sigh and a huff, and then dropped her binoculars on the nylon strap around her neck. Her hair scrolled into two perfect blond commas under her earlobes, and her makeup was unsmudged. “They’re probably doing it at night so that nobody sees them. But they are doing it. They have to be. Nobody can have a garden like that in the middle of the worst drought in twenty years unless they’re watering.”

  Outside the window, the gentle hills of the northwestern Catskills looked dusty and tired. Rows of corn that should have been ebullient emerald were instead a resigned color between yellow and green. Cats had begun taking dust baths like birds, and birds began lazing on porch stairs like cats, and the black bears that frequently wandered through the hamlet of Green Valley lumbered about shaking their massive heads disapprovingly from side to side. In nearby White Lake—where hundreds of thousands of hippies had once flocked for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair—the usually abundant lake waters had shriveled away from the shores. The paint on the old mom-and-pop bait shops and motels blistered and pruned in the sun. The crossing guard near Rick’s Hardware—who first showed up in White Lake for what everyone called “the Concert” and who had manned her post year-round by sheer force of habit ever since—swore that she’d had to hold up her sign and stop traffic because a tumbleweed had rolled across the intersection on a scorching, windless Wednesday at high noon.

  And yet, below the Zeigers’ picture window in Green Valley, the sunbaked terrain was interrupted, preposterously, by the wild, lush, profligate, effusive green of the Pennyworts’ private gardens, blooming ferociously despite the water ration laws.

  Although the gardens were not world famous, they were locally famous (infamous, Gloria told her friends back home in the city) because a whole acre of the Pennywort farm had been devoted to a dozen or so small, individual garden “rooms” that were joined together by tangled pathways of tall evergreen hedges. The whole thing might have reminded Gloria of the garden maze she’d seen on her honeymoon in France, but that diversion had been mild-mannered, neat, and austere, while the maze on the Pennywort farm looked like it sprang directly from the earth: toothy, rambunctious, and snarled as climbing vines.

  Every year, the Pennyworts expanded the maze to be one or two rooms bigger. Flowers grew out of season, and plants that should not have bloomed in western Catskills soil were hardy and flamboyant. Dog violets that were the size of pennies in most yards grew to the size of small dogs. Trumpet vines with their horns of bright orange and yellow were nearly the size of actual trumpets. Gloria had taken a stroll through the gardens only twice: The first time had been more than three years ago, when she’d visited the garden maze as an excuse to meet her new neighbors. She remembered everything, each individual garden that made her eyes go wide and her breath catch in her lungs. She remembered the soft-as-cloud lamb’s ear and prickly cones of teasel in the Petting Garden. She remembered the large orange koi fish from the Rock Garden that wagged their golden tails in happy greeting, and the children who reached into the pond to tickle their bellies as if the fish were dogs. She remembered bright walls of bougainvillea standing neighborly beside creeping, spidery Venus flytraps—how such exotic species grew in the Catskills seemed halfway between a miracle and an abomination. And she remembered the bright sentinel sunflowers that lined a long corridor of tall green hedges; if she didn’t know better, she might have sworn they followed her with their big drooping heads when she passed by.

  But mostly what she remembered was the thing she wanted most to forget: the Remembering Garden. The maze, some people said, could bring on a kind of mental or emotional clarity—if a person was open to it. The things a woman didn’t understand about herself might become clearer; the difficult choice a man had to make would not become less difficult—but he might feel more confident about making it after a visit to the garden.

  Gloria had dismissed the rumors and ducked into the Remembering Garden. The little green room of tall hedges was classical and poetic: elegant ivory columns, a pretty marble fountain of a woman pouring water, and words chiseled simply in a stone architrave: SIT A WHILE AND REMEMBER WHAT’S FORGOT. The plump honeybees were buzzing, the fountain was singing, and the garden was gently landscaped with champagne-colored roses, cascading green ivy, and hummocks of forget-me-nots. Gloria thought of nothing special. People passed by. Thoughts of an old friend that she had not spoken to in a long time popped into her head; she could only assume this was the power of suggestion. Later, after she’d spent a sleepless night wrestling with fitful dreams that were full of apologies she had no intention of making to her long-lost friend, she blamed the Pennyworts for the annoying crookedness of the bumper of her car, which had happened as a direct result of both the Remembering Garden and the guardrail that had kept her from going into a rocky Catskill ravine when she’d fallen asleep at the wheel. This was not magic, mind you; it was simply a thing that happened because it’s never a good idea to sit and ponder the past too
long.

  Although most people in the vicinity of Green Valley did not like to say much about the Pennyworts and got an odd look on their faces whenever Gloria tried to tease out a little harmless gossip, no one denied that the family was a bit different, if not strange. At the very center of the Pennyworts’ garden maze was a squared-off area, no more than the size of a one-car garage, surrounded on all sides by heavy stone walls and accessible only by a locked, opaque wooden gate. Dented metal signs were posted every six feet on the wall at varying heights and in multiple languages: Mantener fuera. Hålla ut. Keep out.

  All of the little plots in the Pennyworts’ garden maze looked healthier than they should under the tinder-dry circumstances, but it was this walled-in center garden that was blooming most voraciously in the summer drought. Gloria could see down into it from her vantage point on a hill that overlooked Green Valley, and the garden’s reds, yellows, pinks, whites, oranges, and purples seemed to be frothing out over the tops of the stone walls in certain places and spilling effulgently over the sides like a sloshing, heady beer. Once, on a neighborly trip to see if the Pennyworts could make use of her old dehumidifier before she threw it out, Gloria had asked why no one was allowed in the walled garden at the heart of the maze—no one except for Olivia Pennywort, who apparently made her ingress and egress as she pleased. But the answer Gloria got was so noncommittal and vague that within an hour of hearing it she could no longer even recall what it was.

  Now, it annoyed her that the Pennyworts were not only watering their gardens illegally, but they seemed to be squandering community resources on a garden that nobody from the public was even allowed to see.

  “Maybe there’s a loophole,” Richard Zeiger said from his armchair, his remaining hairs shivering in the blow of the air conditioner. “Maybe they’re allowed to water because they’re a commercial enterprise.”

  “They’re not a commercial enterprise,” Gloria said. “Or at least, they’re not supposed to be. They don’t charge anything for people to get in.”

  She didn’t need to raise her binoculars to see that two women, clasping hands and wearing gauzy, matching skirts, had stopped by the Pennywort farm to tour the gardens and divert themselves a little from the doldrums of a rainless summer, as people were known to do.

  “I’m calling,” Gloria said.

  Her husband was quiet.

  “I am.”

  He looked at her, his formidable eyebrows raised.

  “If they were watering their peas and carrots or something, I wouldn’t care. But the fact that they get to water their enormous maze of a garden just to keep it pretty, while my two hanging baskets of phlox have just about turned into ashes—it just isn’t fair.”

  Her husband was quiet still.

  “It’s our civic duty,” Gloria said. “Don’t you think it’s our civic duty to report somebody who’s abusing the water supply? The very limited water supply?”

  She held the phone up listening to the dial tone with exasperation. She and Richard had retired up to Green Valley three winters ago. The landscape had been the very picture of peace: deer tracks in snow, bare trees and pale sky, just a sliver of smoke coming from the chimney of some distant, hidden house. They’d had no idea what summertime in the valley would be: Cars lined up and down the road as people stopped to buy vegetables or walk the “magic” maze, homeless people sleeping in a falling-down barn, immigrants from obscure Central American countries milling about in hopes of work, the noise of tractors and yelling men, the stink of manure hanging like a putrid-sweet cloud on muggy days, the horrid flies that descended on the valley like a biblical plague and just as suddenly were gone—there was no peace and quiet whatsoever from thaw to frost. Gloria had come to Green Valley seeking an Eden—her reward for many long years of sitting in a window-less city cubicle. Instead, she had found a dry, noisy, dusty, backwoods, stinky, fly-infested hell. She couldn’t fight against the weather or flies, but there were things to be done about bad neighbors.

  Her knuckles turned white from her grip on the phone.

  “Okay, okay,” Richard said from his armchair. “You don’t have to convince me. If you’re going to call the police, call the police. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

  “Watch me,” Gloria said. “I am.”

  At the police station, the officer who heard the phone ring looked at the caller ID and rolled his eyes. Thanks to Gloria Zeiger, they’d already sent guys out to Green Valley twice this month, and it was only mid-July. The first time, they’d sent a car because Gloria had reported “strange purple smoke” coming from the property, but it was gone when they arrived. The second time, Gloria had ratted out her neighbors because one of the various squatters who lived in the Pennyworts’ old barn was doing her calisthenics routine. Topless. Again.

  Now Gloria was complaining about the gardens being watered, but nobody wanted to investigate. To visit the Pennywort farm was to be reminded of everything in the world that was beautiful, and bountiful, and luxurious, and endlessly good. And this was a terrible thing for a man to be reminded of, because it made his heart black with despair. Trips out to the Pennywort farm always followed the same emotional trajectory: the melancholy resolve of the drive into the valley, then the inevitable springing up of hope to see the garden maze with its promise of youth and rampant possibility, and then the absolute certainty that life could change, would change, that the thing a person most wanted and deserved was right around the corner, right there, just a moment away—and then, the lonely, empty drive back home.

  The problem, as most men of a certain age in Green Valley knew, was Olivia Pennywort. If a man could be guaranteed that he did not have to set eyes on her when he paid a visit to the farm, he might have felt less wary of his assignment. But old Arthur Pennywort was pretty much off his nut—living in a dilapidated shack in the woods like some kind of wild animal—and his twenty-nine-year-old daughter, Olivia, had been running the show since she’d dropped out of high school. These days, Olivia lived in the top of a tower that had once been a silo, and if any man could have coaxed her to let him in by climbing her hair like a ladder or slaying a dragon with a sword, he would have gladly done it. At all hours of the day, she could be seen working the farm that her family had owned since before she was born. Sometimes, bicyclists and Sunday drivers slowed down if they caught sight of her hoeing weeds or loading produce onto a truck. Sometimes people who came to visit the garden maze wandered away from it to watch her scrape paint off an old fence or chase away Green Valley’s horde of wild, obnoxious goats. In spite of the fact that Olivia tromped about in work boots and overalls, in spite of the fact that her apricot-red hair was always semi-undisciplined in a messy bun, in spite of the dirt under her nails, the dark freckles on her sun-brown skin, the metallic smell of soil or even fertilizer that wafted about her, she was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman in all of Green Valley, and perhaps beyond. She was young, and vigorous, and magnetic, and her hazel eyes were the luscious brown-gold-green of the Swamp Garden, which despite its lowly name was a high fantasy of dark pools of water, rich green lily pads, floating flowers, and sprays of blue-tinted vines that twined up the bark of delicate mandrakes.

  Part of Olivia’s particular allure was how mysterious she seemed, how kindhearted yet distant, how nurturing but withholding, how resistant to summary of any kind. Over the years, many men and a few women had rallied to win her affection. Bids were placed on bar tables, teenagers goaded one another into dares, rookie cops volunteered to go out to her place to try their hand. Some of the older guys on the force, who never ceased being amused by the yearnings and strivings of younger bucks, had to hold their tongues to keep from dishing out warnings: That girl isn’t just your everyday heartbreaker; she’s full-on dangerous. Watch out. Hopeful swains returned from the Pennywort farm with nothing but heartache and a grudging, sorrowful respect for their opponent; those who did dare to make a pass at her never did it again.

  Olivia Pennywort was like a bea
utiful but dangerous plant kept safely under glass, a thing to be admired only from afar. And though few people in Green Valley knew it, she had not come to be so standoffish for her own good, but for the good of everyone around her. Her natural inclination was to be affectionate, trusting, and warm. It had taken many years of careful practice for her to learn how to rein in her enthusiasm about making new friends, to act as if her personality fell in the precise center between friendly and aloof. There was no choice: Much as she loved her neighbors, she had to stay slightly away.

  To the cops who were regularly sent to check up on her, she was friendly, conversational, and patient—but she never let herself do anything that might be construed as flirting. To the children who came to her garden maze, she was generous and amusing, always offering them her homemade lemon drop candies or saying “catch!” and tossing them fresh strawberries until they’d caught one in their hands—and yet, she was always careful to stay a few feet away. To the tribe of transient women who slept in the Pennywort barn and took care of the gardens, Olivia strived to be a sympathetic leader, a good listener, and a patient caregiver—but because none of the women ever stayed on the farm very long, she was saved from the moral conundrum of becoming anyone’s actual friend. It was only with her father, the one person who knew what she was and loved her anyway, that she could truly be herself.

  Her summer days were as busy as days could be from sunup to sundown: Her farm crew needed constant direction and adjustment as they worked her fields; the boarders who lived in her barn and tended to her garden maze needed reassurance and TLC; her father needed regular monitoring and supervision to keep him from being an accidental danger to himself; and her garden—her private garden that housed her most personal and important plants—needed constant pruning and trimming; otherwise it would roil like bubbles blown in a glass of milk. She did not, and would never have, the things a normal woman could have: intimate friends who knew and accepted her innermost secrets, a husband to warm her on long winter nights, or children who would lift their arms to her and say Up! Up!