The Garden Path

by Kitty Burns Florey

  “I thought I saw him over in Chiswick yesterday,” he said. “On the street. Then I thought I saw the van, I thought it passed me down by the turnpike entrance.”

  “Oh, damn.” She gripped his arm, pulling away the apple he had halfway to his mouth. He dropped it. “Damn Ivan. I really can’t see how it affects us, Duke—where he goes or what he does.”

  “Don’t you think he’s here for a reason, Susannah? Don’t you think he’s here to see you, and talk things over?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” she said fiercely, but she could feel it sneaking up on her, like a monster in one of her old stories: the thing that would happen. How could she think it would be over so easily between her and Ivan? That she could slip from one man to another like a library book?

  “Well,” Duke said again, started to reach for another apple and thought better of it.

  I’ll have to put him in a story, Susannah thought. The rescuer, the prince, the strong man. I’ll just have to beef him up a bit. And then, seeing the look in his gray eyes, the double crease between his eyebrows, the tense set of his head, as if his neck hurt—the way he was grappling with it, trying to incorporate her, his dead wife, his children, Ivan, the unborn baby, and God knew what else into his scheme of life—instantly she was full of love for him. She touched his sleeve again, rubbed her hand up and down the tweedy sweater. “You’re right, Duke.”

  His face lost some of its tenseness. “I am?”

  “I’ll see Ivan. I’ll search him out if he doesn’t get in touch with me. It simply never occurred to me, Duke,” she said, with a hesitant laugh. “You know me. I never—” She was afraid he would think her selfish, unrealistic; all the faults she knew Ivan had laid out for his old friend would come back to Duke and cancel out love. Who could love a dipshit, a dingbat, a woman who couldn’t keep her mind on the situation at hand? “I was so busy forgetting him. I was so busy with the relief of it all finally happening. I didn’t think it through.” She looked closely at him, found nothing in his eyes but love and concern, and saw that she could tell him anything, be guilty of any number of faults, and the look in his eyes wouldn’t substantially change. “I’ll settle it with him,” she said. “Tell him about the baby, work something out. I want him out of my life, Duke.”

  He drew her to him, and they stood a while under the apple trees, and then they walked arm in arm to the house. Duke pulled her down beside him on the step. “Talk to me, then,” he said. “Be my Susannah.” He kissed her and undid her shaggy braid, and pulled her hair around her shoulders. “Carpe diem,” he said, like Peter.

  So they talked—talked on and on, there on the step, and not about Ivan. Susannah told Duke about the innkeeper in Chiddingstone who thought Connecticut was Cleveland, and Duke told Susannah about Simon’s recipe for red chili muffins, and Susannah told Duke about the royal wedding panties she had seen in an English shop, on sale, and Duke told Susannah about a bar out on Route One that had opened and closed since she’d been gone, called Topless Towers, and Susannah told Duke about Jane Austen’s grave, and Duke told Susannah about Seymour’s, the ailing seafood restaurant he had his eye on. They went over the books for the Café and decided maybe they could think of moving the place after the first of the year—maybe in the spring. Duke told Susannah about the root cellar he wanted to dig out in the basement, and Susannah told Duke about a girl she and Rosie met at a country fair who was first runner-up for Miss Cheddar Cheese. After a while they went inside and ate bread with English jam on it, and Susannah made a phone call to California; Edwin’s strong voice disconcerted her. “He’s been doing well, Mrs. Cord,” the nurse told her, “but it’s nothing to hope on. Just be grateful for it while it lasts.”

  When the twins got home, bounding off the school bus like puppies from a kennel, they all went out and raked leaves and picked apples, and then Susannah took them to Pizza Heaven for dinner. As they passed a bar on Route One called Smokey José’s Susannah saw a van like Ivan’s parked in the lot, but she said nothing. The world was full of vans like Ivan’s. The twins carried their stuffed dolphin and whale and wore their bead necklaces, and chattered to Susannah and Duke about Mrs. Curtis, their teacher, who was on a diet and who promised to take them all out to McDonald’s when she lost twenty pounds. Over pizza, they asked again where the baby would sleep. In the little room next to theirs? So they would hear it if it cried?

  “I think that would be a perfect place,” Susannah said.

  Duke smiled. Susannah pictured him with the baby, cradling it in his square hands, pinning on diapers as neatly as he eased pie crust into a pan.

  She moved in on Halloween. “Do you mind, Rosie?” she asked. “Tell me honestly.”

  “A little,” Rosie said, but smiled over at her. It was early evening, and they were in the car, hauling Susannah’s things back to Duke’s—a suitcase, the green canvas bag, and a grocery bag full of notebooks and papers. “I like to see my children happy, though.”

  These statements, Susannah felt, were literally true. Rosie would miss her a little, not a lot; and she did rejoice in her happiness, and Peter’s; there was never a hint that she would have preferred more orthodox happinesses for them.

  Rosie helped her haul her things into the kitchen, then kissed her and left. She was going to a Halloween party dressed as a gypsy. “At my age, you go as something glamorous,” she said. “Lots of makeup and jewelry. No witches, no ghouls—too close to home.” She had a date with a man she had bought a tape recorder from. “I’ll see you bright and early Tuesday morning,” she said to Susannah as she left. With the new tape recorder, and Susannah’s pages of notes from England, and Rosie’s scribbled inspirations, they were going to work on the book in earnest.

  Susannah carried her bags up to Duke’s room and then walked down the road, in the twilight, to Ginger’s. The twins—dressed as witches—had gone to a sleep-over Halloween party. Susannah thought she might have a cup of tea with Ginger and then get Ginger to drive her over to the Café. She wanted to tell Ginger about her trip, about Rosie’s recovery, about the progress of her pregnancy. Ginger had been out of town herself, Susannah knew—taken a week’s vacation to see her harassed sister Sheila through a crisis. They had thought she would be home by now, but no one answered when she knocked, and there were no lights on. Susannah felt bereft. She had looked forward to an intimate, gossipy chat, to the latest word on Sheila, to talk of Ginger’s likes, dislikes, friends, feuds. Walking by herself back up the road, she halfheartedly planned out an evening, resigned to a lonely Halloween until Duke got home at ten. She considered phoning him at the Café, asking if someone could come and get her. She’d gladly cashier or chop onions or simply sit in a corner and stay out of the way; it was company she wanted. But it seemed presumptuously wifely of her, somehow, to call Duke and beg a ride. She would turn on the radio, read old Preventions and New Yorkers, stay alert for any stray witch or gypsy who ventured down Perkins Road. She would call Edwin—later, between his dinner and his sleeping pill.

  She leafed through two magazines. She ate a brownie and some sunflower seeds, and then, remembering little Rosetta, drank a glass of milk. She was playing the minuet from Don Giovanni on the old claw-foot piano in the living room when Duke called to ask her if she could come in to the Café and work. “Ginger was supposed to be back tonight,” he said. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her. Or she must have told me tomorrow, not tonight, I don’t know. I hate to ask a pregnant woman to come into this madhouse and actually work, but I’ve got Simon out there waiting on tables, and now I need someone to help me in the kitchen.”

  “I’d love to,” she said, so promptly he laughed.

  “You’re lonely.”

  “Everyone’s at a Halloween party but me.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call this a party, sweetie.”

  Simon picked her up. He was a tall, graceful black man, barely twenty, always in a shirt and tie, whose only interest seemed to be food. He made her tell him ab
out English food all the way to the Café.

  “It doesn’t sound like much,” he said when they pulled into the lot.

  “They have fabulous bakeries, Simon.”

  “Oh—bakeries,” he said scornfully. “Bakeries aren’t food.”

  The Café was busy. “I don’t know why all these people aren’t out ringing doorbells and bobbing for apples,” Duke said. “Who wants to eat out on Halloween?”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Lois, the part-time waitress, said. “Hi, Susannah. Good to have you back.”

  She found an apron and tied it around her middle, remembering her vision of herself arranging flowers, possibly in evening dress. She grinned, pulled her hair back tightly with string, and stuck it down the back of her shirt. “What do I do?” she asked Duke. She loved the kitchen, all stainless steel and shiny wood. Businesslike. She looked with affection at the big black stove; the fights over it seemed far, far away, years ago.

  “Keep an eye on that soup, will you? And slice bread—that black bread. And I’m going to need some more tomatoes peeled. You know how? Take a slotted spoon and dunk them in that pan there—it should be boiling—and then peel them with a—here.” He flung down a knife. “Hell, of course you know how to do it, don’t mind me. And will you seed them, too? And when you get a chance we could use more walnuts chopped.” He kissed her quickly. “Please.”

  “No kissing,” she said, loving him in this role: how quickly he did everything, how he kept his good humor in the midst of the furor, how oddly handsome he looked in his white apron and his blue denim shirt. “Treat me like a regular employee or we’ll never get through this,” she said. “Pretend I’m Simon.”

  “Then I’ll have to keep the jalapeno peppers out of your reach. Simon thinks hot pepper is some kind of religion.”

  “It cleans out your insides,” Simon said, loading a tray. “It clears your brain. Also, it prevents colds.”

  “The Jalapeno Pepper Unification and Purification Church. Simon is the Reverend Moon of cold prevention.”

  Simon grinned and said, “You see how he can work and talk at the same time? He didn’t used to be able to do that. He’s coming along, this boy. One of these days he’s going to be a fine cook.”

  After work, Susannah and Duke drove home. There was a sharp bit of moon in a clear sky, and they sat outside for a while, close together on the steps. “That was fun,” Susannah said, though she was tired, and there was a very small ache, just beginning, at the base of her spine. “The craziness, the rushing around, the wonderful smells. And Simon—he’s so funny. And I love to look out and watch people wolf it down.”

  “Oh well,” Duke said, pleased. “I suppose it is. But this”—he put his arm around her; it was a cold night, with a wind—“this is more fun.”

  “It is,” she said, and then, hugging him, suddenly sat up straight with a little cry.

  “What is it?”

  He drew back to look at her in alarm, but she smiled and moved close to him again. It was what she’d thought she had felt, earlier, while she was chopping walnuts at the Café—a dreamlike tug, a flutter like a bird. “The baby,” she said. “Kicking. Here—feel.”

  They sat in silence, waiting, his hand warm on her stomach. “They never kick when you want them to,” Duke said.

  “Maybe she’d like a glass of milk.”

  “Try it.”

  They went inside, and Susannah drank a glass while Duke fed the cats. “It put her to sleep,” Susannah said, wiping her milk mustache on the sleeve of her shirt. She watched Duke lock the back door, put away the cat food, draw the gingham curtains on the kitchen windows; and she thought of her father, sitting up in bed, maybe watching television, thousands of miles away where it wasn’t even dark yet, at this hour, and where it wasn’t beginning to get cold and leaves weren’t falling. This must have been what he had in mind when he said be good, be happy—this dimly lit house, the baby curled asleep inside her, and Duke taking her hand to lead her upstairs.

  They made love with drowsy slowness, then slept and woke in the middle of the night with their arms around each other. Susannah looked at the clock—three. Her stomach rumbled, not a kick this time but hunger. “Little Rosetta wants something good.”

  Duke yawned and sat up. “You’ve seen too many cartoons. What does she want? Pickles? Banana ice cream with tomato sauce?”

  “Let’s do something daring and wicked,” Susannah said. He bent to kiss her, cupped her breasts in his two hands. “No, not that. I mean let’s go over to the Café and finish up that mushroom quiche. And the bread pudding.”

  He squinted at the clock. “At three A.M.?”

  “Wouldn’t it be fun? To sit there on Halloween night all by ourselves having a meal? Think how spooky it’ll be.”

  “Is your entire pregnancy going to be like this? Five more months of irrational behavior?” He got out of bed as he spoke, turned on a light, reached for a shirt. “Well? Come on. We’ll go trick-or-treating at the Café.”

  But someone had beaten them to it. They went in the back door and, for one confused moment, Susannah thought they had forgotten to clean up, and then she took it in fully and saw that this was no ordinary mess, not even a salvageable mess. The place had been wrecked.

  In the kitchen, pots and pans and implements had been pulled from their hooks, flung down, bent and dented. Food had been thrown at walls and in slimy heaps on the floor along with the shards of broken dishes. The trelliswork between kitchen and dining room was broken, jagged, pulled away from the walls and smashed, and the plants ripped apart and ground underfoot, dirt scattered everywhere. Even the black stove, indestructible, had been pelted with food, leftover quiche and whole-wheat flour and olive oil and melting butter running down its black sides, and one of the oven doors bent down and unhinged. In the dining room, chairs were smashed, tables overturned, the slate where the menu had been was broken to bits, the old cash register lay on its side, half its porcelain keys bent or cracked. Only the curtains at the windows and the door were intact, to hide what had happened.

  “Oh, Duke,” Susannah kept saying as they stood looking at the rubble. “Oh, God, Duke.” She put her hands to her hot cheeks, too stunned to weep, or to say anything further. All around them, the destruction cried: Hate.

  Duke walked around with his hands in his pockets, not speaking, a parody of his usual calm, kicking at things that had been broken and thrown to the floor. A pile of earthenware shards flew into the air, a bag of onions dropped with a loose thud. “You know who did this, don’t you,” he said at last in a quick tight voice.

  She hadn’t known until then, but she thought of course, and closed her eyes, dizzied.

  Duke walked through the wreckage, kitchen to dining room and back, prodding piles of debris with his foot. She had never seen him angry before, hadn’t realized at first that this quiet and controlled revulsion was anger. She felt a cold thrill, as if some dire, monumental fact had been revealed to her.

  “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch,” Duke said. “I’m going to find him and kill him.”

  She should protest, she was sure, but she stayed silent, and when, soon, he stopped pacing and turned to survey it all, and sighed harshly, she went to stand beside him. “That son of a bitch,” he whispered. She touched his arm; it felt tense, electric. He looked at her, his eyes distant. “I know where he is,” Duke said, and the muscles of his arm contracted sharply, as if he already had Ivan in his grip.

  He was just coming out of Ginger’s house when they pulled into the driveway: Ivan and Ginger, lit by the spotlight over the side door. Duke jerked his car to a stop beside Ivan’s van, opened the door and jumped out. He leapt at Ivan and clung to him, hitting. “You son of a bitch,” he kept saying. “You filthy bastard, you son of a bitch.”

  Ginger rushed forward and pulled him by the shoulders. “Stop it, Duke. Stop it. He’s going, he’s leaving, let him go.” Duke ignored her. Susannah got out of the car, slowly, feeling the baby’s fluttery k
ick. The two men fighting were indistinct, badly lit, like an old movie. Duke hung on like an animal, as if with claws, pounding into Ivan wherever he could reach his fist—awkward, unpracticed blows that nevertheless caused harm. Ivan’s nose began to bleed, and it was then that Susannah noticed Ivan wasn’t trying to hit back. His struggles with Duke were attempts to get loose, and the look on his face was the look of St. Sebastian pierced by a hundred arrows.

  “Duke!” Susannah cried, but he was already letting go, stepping back, panting, from Ivan’s silent endurance. Ivan covered his face with his hands and leaned against the van. No one spoke. There was only the sound of Duke’s hard breathing.

  It was a long moment, like a play stopped because no one knew their lines, like the wait for a prompter who had momentarily dropped off to sleep. They stood, the four of them, in the chilly driveway, the open fan of light casting their shadows far ahead of them on the ground—all but Ivan, whose shadow was compressed between himself and the van. Ginger’s frizzy hair looked transparent. A pair of tall oaks, not quite bare of leaves, reached across the road and almost obscured the sliver of moon. A small wind rustled invisible leaves over the ground. Susannah stood there, a long moment, but, still, a moment, during which Duke continued to pant beside her, Ginger continued to cross her two hands in horror over her mouth, Ivan to stand motionless against the bright blue van—and then Ginger walked over to where Ivan was and pulled his hands down from his face, first one, then the other. He had shaved off his beard, Susannah saw, and his face was bloody. He didn’t look at anyone; he looked down at his hands, streaked with blood from his nosebleed.

  “Ivan,” Ginger said to his bent head, in a voice of such tenderness Susannah flinched. “Ivan? Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” he said after a moment.

  “Ivan?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. His voice sounded as if he had a bad cold. He raised the back of his hand to his nose, and tipped his head back. The bleeding had stopped. He turned his head, slightly, toward Susannah. “I’m leaving,” he said. “And I won’t be back.”