The Night Garden (19 page)

Olivia waited for an opportunity to talk again in private with Mei. At around eleven thirty, the Penny Loafers left the garden maze and headed into the barn to make sandwiches for lunch, heaping fresh meats and cheeses on bread, filling their plates with colorful salad and their glasses with lemonade. After Mei had made her own sandwich, Olivia pulled her aside to sit in a private corner of the barn. Olivia’s excuse for the conversation was that she needed to give Mei a more detailed rundown of the farm now that it was clear the girl was going to stay. But instead of talking about work, Olivia asked questions about Mei. And to her surprise, she found that Mei was pleased to answer.

Mei was originally from Newburgh, on the Hudson River, but had moved to Green Valley last year because of an ex-boyfriend that she no longer saw. Early on in the conversation, she managed to mention that the things she missed most since
being pregnant were drinking and smoking pot. She’d apparently done some time in juvenile detention after she’d accidentally crashed her neighbor’s car, which she’d borrowed without asking when she was sixteen. The father of her child was an on-again, off-again boyfriend in Newburgh who didn’t officially have a job but who drove a Mustang and wore a diamond watch. Mei’s parents wanted her to give the baby up for adoption; she wanted to keep it—maybe—even though she was supposed to be going to community college for a degree. At some point, Olivia had the sense that Mei wanted Olivia to be disgusted by her, as if she expected to be reprimanded, frowned upon, kicked out—and wouldn’t be happy until it happened. When Olivia didn’t react with judgment, shock, or disapproval, the details of Mei’s story only became more lurid—but Olivia refused to play the game. She was as gentle as she could be:
You can tell me anything you want, Mei.

There was, however, one small point that she needed to bring up with the girl. A couple of the other boarders had approached her earlier to complain that Mei wasn’t pulling her weight, that she was lazing about all day drinking iced tea, playing with the half-feral, all-white cats that lived in the outbuildings, and hovering about the women who
were
actually working while she did nothing but talk incessantly and give the occasional opinion on what needed to be done.

“I’m wondering if you’re finding the work in the garden to be too much,” Olivia said to her, her hands folded on the old wooden table between them.

“Why?” Mei asked. “What have people been saying?”

“Just that you don’t seem to like working in the maze. And I don’t blame you. It’s hot. And I can’t imagine you’re very comfortable right now.”

“So, what? That’s it? If I don’t work like a slave, I’m gone?”

“Not at all,” Olivia said. “But let’s find something that you
can do. Something you’ll enjoy doing. Is there anything you’d like to work on besides the garden maze?”

Mei crossed her arms. “No. Probably not.”

Olivia glanced outside; the flagpole’s shadow was small, the sun high. It was time to meet Sam. “I have to go. But think about what you might be interested in working on. In the meantime, you can help me cook in the silo later instead of working in the maze.”

“Where you going?” Mei asked.

“Out,” Olivia said. “I’ll come get you when it’s time to cook dinner. For now, you just relax.”

“You’re going to meet that guy, aren’t you?”

Olivia brushed a random piece of grass off her skirt.

“Kinda pointless, if you ask me. How is he going to be your boyfriend if he can’t touch you?”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“But you want him to be. And I’m telling you, you might as well forget it. If you don’t put out he’ll find someone who will.”

Olivia shook her head. She knew that Mei’s view of men had been skewed, and yet there was something unnerving about the warning. She left the girl in the slightly cooler shadows of the old barn. Outside, the sky was a hot, burning white, the air so humid the hills were a distant blur. Everything—the powerful heat that seemed to echo her inner state, Mei’s big belly that made her so secretly jealous, the persistent fruitfulness of summer raging on—made her think of Sam, as if his presence had infiltrated every nook and corner of her life, even those things that had nothing to do with him.

As she crossed the fields toward the distant oak, her belly fluttered with nerves but also with the excitement of trying Arthur’s serum, of touching—however briefly—Sam’s skin. This morning before the sunrise, she’d set her hair in a pretty Dutch
braid around the crown of her head, put some essential oil of bergamot behind her earlobes, and added just the tiniest hint of gloss to her lips—before she undid her hair, washed behind her ears, and wiped her lips clean. She hated to remind herself: This was no date—no flirtation or mating dance. She had no need of pretty hair or pouty lips. No—she’d deliberately worn her same old clothes—a long skirt that skimmed her boots, her regulatory cotton tank, her garden key around her neck. She would accept Sam’s offer of friendship, rely on the notion that he couldn’t affect her any more than she let him, and try to hold him just enough away from her that she could be content with friendship and nothing more.

When she saw him standing beneath the Lightning Oak in the center of Stony Field, he waved and waited as she approached. His hair was a blue-black shadow, his face was newly shaved, his clothes were casual but nice. On a shaded gingham blanket he’d spread out a gorgeous picnic: dark red grapes, various white cheeses and caramelized nuts, fresh mozzarella and tomato sandwiches on crusty bread, wine in a galvanized bucket full of ice, and fresh green beans, her favorite food of summer. He remembered.

“You came,” he said.

“Of course I did. I’ve been looking forward to seeing—the oak. I haven’t been out here since we let this field go fallow.” She touched the tree, gave it a pat for good measure.

“I assure you the oak is very happy to see you,” he said. “You look wonderful.”

“I’m sure I don’t.” She touched her hair and thought she should have left it braided. “Oh! What a beautiful picnic! Is all of this for us?”

“I wouldn’t want you wasting away.”

She laughed. “No likelihood of that!”

She settled herself on the blanket and wondered as he lowered himself beside her if he was having difficulty reaching the ground. The wine that she’d seen in the bucket of ice had turned out to be sparkling cider; he figured she would not want to drink alcohol in the middle of a workday. The food was delicious, fresh, simple, and filling—just exactly what she would have made for herself. She forgot about her nervousness. They talked about the police force, Gloria’s forthcoming grand opening, the Penny Loafers, and—of course—the heat, the heat, the heat that would not relent.

After they’d finished eating, Sam dug into a bag and she was surprised to learn that he still had the ancient copy of his field guide to fungi after all these years. He handed it to her, and she flipped through it, exclaiming. He’d continued their tradition of labeling each specimen with the month, year, and location he’d found it. While a couple of dozen or so had been labeled “GV” for Green Valley, others were labeled Penobscot, Olympic State Park, Omaha, Salt Lake City, the Everglades.

“You’ve been to all of these places?”

He nodded and popped a fat green grape into his mouth.

“For work or pleasure?”

“Sometimes both. Flights can be cheap when you know people.”

She looked up from the book. “How on earth did you wind up flying planes?”

He lay sideways on the blanket, propping his head on his elbow, and it did her heart good to see him so relaxed. He talked about those moments when all the little mechanisms of a person’s life sync up, when he ran into a guy at an auto parts dealer who got talking to him about flying and eventually offered him a job. She had some trouble envisioning him as a pilot; he, like her, had always seemed to be so rooted to the earth. As a kid and then as a very young man, he had liked routine, to have
things just so, to stay in familiar places. To think of him wheeling around the sky—the image wouldn’t settle in her mind.

But … people changed.

Sam was no exception. Though he was cheerful and breezy on the surface, everything she might expect from a young man on a picnic on a summer day, there was something far down beneath his outward happiness that wasn’t really happy at all. Occasionally, hints of pessimism would leak into the conversation—just half a phrase slipped into a sentence here or there, like
Isn’t that the way of it?
or
Maybe in my dreams
—and she was shocked and concerned to hear it, for the Van Winkle men were known for their optimism, so much so that there had long been speculation that their perfect confidence was what gave them their talent for saving lives. If there was something that had upset Sam, she wanted him to know that she was not afraid to hear it. He knew the worst about her and he had not judged her. She would love to extend the same courtesy. But what was worst about him?

After a light lunch and lighter conversation, Sam told her he had a surprise for her and that she was to close her eyes. She did, and she heard him stand and move away from the blanket through the grass.

“Okay,” he said. “Open.”

When she looked up at him, she was so taken by the light shining on his face—a light that looked for all the world like pride—that she almost didn’t notice what he was holding: a kite. One of
their
kites—a little kinked and faded, but otherwise intact.

“I found it in my parents’ shed,” he said. The kite was a red diamond, with a few tattered ribbons running down. “I don’t think they even knew it was in there.”

She got to her feet, tentatively touched a newly repaired wooden dowel.

“What do you think?” he said. “Are you up for it?”

“I don’t see how we’ll get this thing to fly,” she said, laughing. “There’s not a hint of a breeze.”

Sam’s smile faltered. The both looked around: The valley was stagnant with heat.

“You’re right,” Sam said.

But Olivia rallied: “Let’s try anyway.” And as soon as she said the words, a strong gust of wind riffled the tips of the grass around them, as if it had swooped in to rescue them from their plight, and Sam looked at her and grinned. Together, and with a great deal of laughing and quite a bit more sweating, they worked out the mechanics. Olivia held the cord, Sam ran, and after just two tries the kite got its teeth into the wind and made a tentative, shaky ascension.

“Woo-hoo!” Sam shouted. “I still
got
it!”

“We still got it,” Olivia said.

He walked toward her, out of breath. The kite tugged on its tether in Olivia’s hands, a crisp diamond of red pinned against the blue sky. Sam’s fists were on his narrow hips, his shoulders bent with the work of heavy breathing.

“You okay?”

“As it turns out, I’m not a teenager anymore,” he said, winded but smiling. “Sit?”

“Sure.”

They walked back to the blanket in the shade, the kite trailing behind them some distance from the oak. Olivia sat and then watched Sam do the same. He definitely seemed stiff. Maybe aching. She didn’t get to ask him about it. He held out his empty hand.

“Here. Let me see that.” He took the kite string from Olivia. It was an old kite, cobbled together with bits of found canvas and fibrous brown garden twine. “Hold out your wrist.”

She hesitated.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll be careful. I promise.”

Wary, she extended her arm toward him, palm up. He smiled at her, but it wasn’t so much a friendly smile as a mischievous one. She was nervous and uncertain, and she didn’t particularly want to feel that way. He began to talk as he tied the kite string around her wrist, setting the knot a few inches from her skin, careful not to touch her.

“One day a couple of kids had chartered a flight at the airport where I was working at the time. They were pretty young, early twenties maybe. And this guy pulls me aside and says, ‘Look. I want to propose to my girlfriend. Can you fly over this one field where I’m going to have
WILL YOU MARRY ME?
spelled out?’ So, you know, I say, ‘Sure.’ ”

He finished tying the twine and then, with extreme care, pushed the knot so it slid down, settling not quite flush against Olivia’s wrist. When he let go, she felt the strong pull of scratchy twine. It was a surprisingly tough tug, and she liked it—the bite of the brown twine that was almost but not quite painful, the nearly muscular pull of the kite as the sky tried to take it away. Sam smiled at her, then lay down on his back. He put his forearm over his eyes.

“So we go up,” he said, continuing his story. “And everything’s going great. And we get over the field where it’s supposed to say
WILL YOU MARRY ME?
And you know what it says?”

“What?”

“
YES
.”

She let her weight down onto her elbows, her ankles crossed in front of her. “Yes?”

“Yes. The girl had found out what the kid was up to from his friends, and she had
her
friends change his letters. I’ve never seen a guy happier or more surprised.”

She looked at him, taking in her fill since he could not see her doing it from beneath the crook of his arm. In the sunlight his
black hair, shorn so close to his head, had almost no luster. Around his mouth a few not unattractive lines had begun to form. He was not especially muscular—not like Tom, who was all brawn. But he was trim and pleasing to look at, so pleasing that she made herself look away.

She thought of how he seemed so tired, so uncomfortable at times. “Sam, are you … are you
hurt
?”

He was quiet for a long moment. Finally he sighed and mumbled something about an accident.

“A car accident?”

“A plane accident.”

“Oh. God. How bad was it? Are you okay?”

He sighed. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“You can be here without being okay,” she said. “Have the guys at the station heard about the crash?”

“No. And I need to keep it that way. I don’t want them to—they don’t need to be thinking there’s anything I can’t do.”