He upended his bag of puffs and dumped the last nuclear orange crumbs into his mouth. The ring that Arthur had given him sat in a box on the end table beside him, its gemstones staring at him like a cluster of unblinking eyes. Just before he’d passed out in the field, his last thought had been of Olivia, of how if he died, his death wasn’t going to prove that she could believe in him, just that he’d done something stupid. Now that he was home again, he wanted to see her—if only to know that the world was just as he’d left it, and that he hadn’t missed anything, and that the fragile happiness they’d found together before he’d decided to propose to her wasn’t going to change.
By 2 A.M., he was as awake as if it were midday. He felt sort of hyper, like he could run a marathon or ride a wild bull. He also felt a little crazed with loneliness. He tugged on clean shorts and running shoes, then took himself outside for a brisk walk. He meant to head down the quiet road, but when his feet angled him toward the garden maze he did not stop them.
Inside, he walked the corridors that circled like eddies and the straightaways that were as stiff as flumes. Some flowers were closed tight against the night; others were open, and he felt like they were watching him. The night was dark; if there was a moon in the sky, it was obscured by clouds.
He did not know he was looking for Olivia until he found her. She was in the Moss Garden, one of the oldest rooms in the maze, and she was sleeping. The garden was a soft green pond of moss that smoothed over the stones in the ground, obscuring edges and bumps, creating a thick, soft blanket underfoot. He and Olivia used to lie on it with their storybooks spread around them. Supposedly, people who fell asleep in the Moss Garden dreamed only good dreams, but if he and Olivia had ever dozed there, Sam didn’t remember.
Olivia slept on her side, her head pillowed on a mossy lump, her hands curled under chin. He sat down beside her, the thick green ground cover seeming to sigh beneath him. Her long hair flowed and puddled. Her lips were parted, her eyelids closed. She wore a dress that might have been pajamas or pajamas that might have been a dress, and the white, lacy cotton fell from one shoulder and exposed a collarbone. As he gazed on her, some of his anger toward her began to siphon away. He was disappointed in her for not being there when he’d needed her, when the hospital had illuminated his most nightmarish memories in the crisp white light of his sad little room. But he loved her, still. And when people loved each other, hurt was a given.
Though he had not made a sound, Olivia opened her eyes and inhaled as quickly as if a gun had gone off. She was startled for a second as he tried to assure her, then she cried out. “Sam!”
She sat up and almost threw her arms around him, then drew her hands into her chest in horror at what she’d nearly done. The noises she made were not quite words. She was sobbing. “Sam. Sam, you’re here. Thank God you’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” he said.
“I didn’t know what to do. We rolled you over and, oh, God, I had no idea. I had no idea what to do.” She was breathing hard, almost hyperventilating, as panicked as if she’d only just found him half dead in the field. “I saw you lying there, and I didn’t want to touch you and make it worse, and you weren’t breathing, and I thought—Oh God, what if he dies? What if I lose him?”
“Shh,” he said. “It’s okay. That’s over now.” He pushed her hair behind her ear, the only thing he could do. He was glad for the darkness because he knew he looked rough; he hadn’t shaved in days. The hives had done a number on his skin, and what sleep he did manage was troubled. She dropped her face into her hands and outright sobbed. It was the most he’d ever seen her cry, and all he could do was watch. Any thought he’d had of giving her a piece of his mind about her unwillingness to step off the Pennywort property was gone now, replaced by a need to console.
“I thought I lost you,” she said at last, her eyes full of water.
“You didn’t. Apparently I’m not that easy to kill.” He wanted to squeeze her as hard as he could, flatten her chest against his, bury his nose in her neck. He wanted to know she was real, alive, and vital. She seemed to understand this, and she leaned away.
“They said you got stung by a bee.”
“No.”
“Then what was it?”
He flexed his hand, then closed it again. There was no reason to keep the truth from her. “The honey.”
“My honey?”
He nodded.
“How did you? I’ve got it hidden.”
“Olivia. You hid it in the old root cellar. That was the first place I went to look. It’s where we always used to put things we didn’t want people to find.”
“But the lock?”
“I picked it.”
“Why would you do that?” she asked, her voice rising. “I told you the honey is toxic. You knew it was. You could have died!”
He rubbed the back of his neck. When she’d turned down his proposal, he’d been filled with an angry energy—not that he was angry at her, though that was part of it, but he was angry in general. If the only impediment to their marriage was her condition, then he would find a way to take that out of the equation—with or without Arthur’s blessing or help. Once he set his mind on finding her honey stores by himself instead of relying on Arthur, he found the job to be surprisingly easy. In hindsight, he supposed they’d both wronged each other: he, by breaking into the root cellar; she, by not coming to see him in the hospital. They both had a right to be mad.
He told her, “I went to see your father. He said the honey might make me less allergic to you.”
He couldn’t quite see her face, but he heard a small intake of breath that suggested surprise. Apparently, she hadn’t considered the possibility of a honey cure for their problem. “But it can’t work … can it? Your system is too sensitive.”
“We’ll try again.”
“No.”
“At a smaller dose.”
“No, Sam! No.” She lifted herself a little higher where she sat. “It’s too dangerous. Maybe if you weren’t born so especially sensitive to things—but we can’t now. Your reaction will only get more severe if we keep trying, not less. And I’m not going to lose you. I’m not.” She put her hand down in the moss beside her. He heard the tears in her voice again. “Please. Don’t scare me like that. I love you so much. I want you to be here with me forever.”
“I love you, too,” he said softly. “And that’s why I want to keep trying.”
She punched her hand down. “No! You shouldn’t even be here right now.”
“Shouldn’t be here?”
“You should be home. Alone. Resting. That’s what you need.”
“I’m the only one who knows what I need. If I need rest, I’ll rest. And if I want to try to figure this cure thing out, I’ll do that, too.”
“No.”
“Yes! Olivia—it’s the best way.”
“But do you think it’s necessary?”
“What do you mean, necessary?”
“Exactly that,” she said. “Is it necessary that you figure out a cure for us to be together? Or can’t you be happy with how things are?”
“Of course I’m happy.”
“You don’t sound happy.”
“Right now, I’m ticked off,” he said. “Being able to touch you isn’t necessary. But I want to, Olivia. God do I want to. You’ve got to know that!”
She crossed her arms. “I don’t think so.”
“Sorry?”
“I won’t let you try again.”
“You won’t let me?”
“I’ll throw away every last damn jar of honey I have,” she said. “I’ll send the bees away.”
“You’re completely overreacting.”
She started to get to her feet. “Do you see what’s happening here? You see? This is why I couldn’t agree to marry you. My father was right.”
“That’s a first.”
“How could I make you swear to love me forever if you’re never going to give up trying to change me? Or
change things between us? It is what it is, Sam. The fact that you’re still trying to make it something else …”
“What?”
Her shoulders fell forward. “I don’t know.”
They were both standing now; Sam had no idea why what should have been a warm reunion was turning into a fight. And though he desperately wanted to stop it he didn’t know how. The momentum was bigger than both of them. “I’m not trying to change you,” he said. “I’m just trying to make something happen that we both want. I want to be able to touch you.”
“Well, you can’t,” she said. “And I’m not going to accept it if you’re going to spend the rest of your life exposing yourself to all kinds of dangers just so you can. It’s not worth it.”
He pressed his lips together.
“What I mean is, losing you is not a risk I’m willing to take.”
He was quiet. He meant to tell her about Arthur’s requirement that Sam propose—a wedding in exchange for a jar of Pennywort honey. But if he added that bit of information now, there was no telling how furious she might be.
“I don’t want to fight,” he said. His voice, so strident a moment ago, now gave evidence of his sheer exhaustion, days of poor sleep and bad food and emotional fatigue. The freak energy burst that had propelled him into the garden maze had fizzled, and he was becoming very, very tired and wanted nothing more than to sleep. “We shouldn’t be fighting. We both want the same thing.”
“Do we?” she said. She sniffed.
He was quiet.
Olivia wiped at her cheeks and he knew she was still crying. “What if this is it? What if this is where things are going between us? If we’ve just got more and more and more fighting ahead of us? The snowball rolling down the hill.”
“We probably do have more to discuss. But don’t worry. We’ll work it out. I know we can.”
“You have to promise me you won’t try the honey again,” she said. “You have to promise that I’m enough for you, right now, just as I am. If I can’t make you happy like this, I can’t make you happy at all.”
He bowed his head and thought of how much he’d wished she had been with him in the hospital, when he’d thought he was still on the top of the mountain, dying in his plane. He had told Olivia that he understood what he was getting into when he asked to marry her, but he thought now that he hadn’t understood it. Not really. The hard, interminable knowing that she might never be touchable, that she might never be willing to leave the farm, that his life would have to shift and mold to accommodate hers—it was like facing down a hard brick wall that, until now, he’d been telling himself he could walk straight through. But he said, “I love you, Olivia. I’m not leaving you. Not for anything.”
She looked up into his face, her eyes obscured in shadow. Her voice trembled. “Will you stay with me tonight?”
“Here?”
“Why not? The mosquitoes won’t bother you. Not if you’re near me. It’s a side effect of being inherently toxic, I guess.”
She lowered herself onto the moss, her white dress making a dim circle around her, and his brain brimmed over with tormenting images, soft moss, warm air, discarded clothes, the possibility of things in the night they could not do. But he said, “Sure.” He lowered himself to the moss with some stiffness, but once he was off his feet and lying down, his head pillowed by moss that covered a stone, he felt as if he were cradled in warm water, weightless and painless. He’d never been so comfortable in his life.
She looked over at him from a few feet away, her head turned sideways on the moss. “Sam. For what it’s worth, I want to thank you. For trying.”
He didn’t think you’re welcome was the right thing to say, so he said nothing. He slid off to sleep, and as he did, he dreamed that he and she were floating on a sea of living green water, each on lifeboats, drifting in different directions.
The Cherry
In the morning Olivia woke in the Moss Garden alone and shivering. She’d been warm and comfortable all night, with the most exquisite sense of safety she’d ever known. And she’d had wonderful dreams of the feel of Sam’s body against hers, so perfectly familiar and right, so intense it felt as if he really were holding her, his hand around her waist, one knee nestled between hers. But just moments after the sun rose, a deep chill had stolen over her, the kind of chill that ices the bones, and she turned over to see that Sam was no longer beside her on the bed of moss. It was only the peacock there, jewel blue and gleaming in the morning light, blinking at her dumbly. Sam had gone home.
As the morning passed, she felt a strange sense of being outside her own body, floating through the hours. She visited her Poison Garden and was glad to see that it was once again beginning to grow as it normally did, so that she had to clip back her poison ivy with garden shears. She gathered the boarders just outside the maze entrance and gave them instructions for the day’s work, not quite sure if the Penny Loafers were looking at her a little differently or if it was all in her head. As Olivia gave out assignments, Mei stood with her arms crossed over her black tank top, a bored look on her face like a child at school. Her belly was more pronounced by the day, her face more rounded. All of the Penny Loafers had volunteered for various tasks in the maze—except for her.
“And what about you, Mei?” Olivia said in front of all of the other boarders. “Do you feel like working in the Swamp Garden today? It’s a little bit more shady and cool.”
Mei lifted a shoulder. “Nah. I don’t feel like it.”
“Are you doing okay?”
“Oh, fine. I just don’t feel like working. I’m going to go hang out in the barn. Unless …” She narrowed her eyes at Olivia. “Unless you’re going to tell me not to.”
Olivia recognized a challenge when she heard it. She didn’t know whether Mei had told the others about the truth of her condition. After the ambulance had taken Sam away, Mei had found Olivia sitting on a stump near the peacock pen, and she’d said, So I guess now that I know your secret I’m a liability, huh? You going to kick me out of the barn? And Olivia had told her, Of course not! She’d thought briefly about lying—I only said I was poisonous because I would have said anything to get you to help him—but she found that she was exhausted from hiding and couldn’t bring herself to tell one more flimsy lie. Her poisonous condition seemed irrelevant when Sam had almost died in front of her just moments before, and she couldn’t give even another ounce of her energy to worrying about protecting her secret. At least, not then.
She did, however, ask Mei if she wouldn’t mind keeping the things Olivia had said to herself. Mei had looked at her and smiled: Sure. What’s it worth to you? And Olivia had laughed, and then Mei had laughed, and that was that. But in hindsight, Olivia wasn’t entirely sure that Mei was joking.
She took refuge in the idea that if Mei ever decided to tell the others about her condition—or if she’d told already—it was unlikely anyone would believe her. This was not Olivia’s first brush with exposure. There was always gossip of one kind or another about her swirling around Green Valley: Anything Mei might contribute would be a drop in the proverbial bucket, just one more wild speculation to go with all the wild speculations that went around. Plus, Mei would leave the barn, eventually. All the Penny Loafers would. New people would hear about the maze and come to stay. Stories would change hands. Facts and theories would morph and bend, an idea would disappear one moment and reemerge as something unrecognizable the next, and soon Olivia’s unplanned confession to Mei would become a thing that might as well have never happened at all.
Aware that the other boarders were paying close attention, she told Mei, “The rules are, if you want to stay, you’ve got to work. None of us care what work you do, just as long as you do something.”
Mei scowled deeply. Olivia felt the tense scrutiny of all of the boarders as they wanted to see how the scene would play out. “What if I don’t feel like working?”
“If you don’t want to help out as best you can, then that’s your choice.
But you’ll have to go stay somewhere else. Everyone here understands that. They prove it every single day when they head into the garden maze. Isn’t that right?”
The boarders were quiet.
Mei mumbled something under her breath that Olivia didn’t quite hear and chose to ignore. She didn’t know how much longer she could be patient with the girl. And yet, Mei seemed to believe that it was only a matter of time before Olivia turned on her—and Olivia wanted to prove otherwise. To show her that she didn’t need to be afraid of accepting help. As the boarders headed for the tool sheds and outbuildings, Olivia planned to take Mei aside to talk with her again—later, after they all had cooled down.
The hours of the day went slowly by. And as they did, Olivia found she could hardly muster any small sliver of worry about what the boarders might or might not be saying about her when she caught them looking in her direction. In the space between busy chores—the gaps in work that allowed her mind to wander—it became impossible not to feel how a person’s spirit could become so heavy that it made her body heavy, too. The moment was coming when she would see Sam again. But she felt no joy at the thought of the reunion. In the course of their night in the Moss Garden, something had changed.
By early evening—after she’d given up on work, taken a long shower, and slipped into a light-as-air sundress—she’d made up her mind. And the decision had come with a kind of anesthetized, dull acceptance. No more fighting with herself. No more roller coaster of hope and despair. She would fall back on her old, dreamless life, and it would have to be fine.
When at last she saw Sam striding across the barnyard toward her in the late afternoon, she stood still and waited near the door of her silo, vowing to herself that she felt nothing, that the sight of him did not make her heart speed, that her body was not already weeping with desire for him, and that the small pains she would cause him now would spare him big pains later on. She loved Sam. She wanted his happiness more than her own. She understood, on a practical level, that Sam had taken the risk of eating Pennywort honey for both their sakes. But his action had reinforced her fear that he would not be happy unless she was different than what she was. And more than that—there was no telling what prolonged exposure to her might do to him. She would not let him put himself at risk again.
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