The Night Garden (23 page)

And yet, the thought of that false distance was depressing, maddening, and intensely unsatisfying. In his youth, no one had understood him the way Olivia had. No one had been more fun. Now he’d found himself telling Olivia things that not even his parents knew. To fall back into unguarded intimacy with her had been so easy. The prospect of loving her again felt not like a thing he would need to make happen so much as a thing that would happen, unchecked, on its own unless he stopped it. But under the circumstances, where could such feelings go except to a place of wonderful but miserable frustration?

The questions bothered him as he moved like an automaton through the last remaining hours of the day’s shift. Like so much of Green Valley, the police department had seen very few changes since Sam used to walk through the doors holding his father’s hand. The “Do you know where your children are?” posters on the wall were sun-faded and curling at the edges. The water fountain in the lobby was a foot too low, but seemed even lower now than in Sam’s memory. And the current chief of police, Roddy Carlson, coming toward him down the hall, still
wore his same beige plastic glasses that hadn’t been all that flattering in the eighties and weren’t flattering now.

Roddy’s people were still considered newcomers in Green Valley, since they hadn’t arrived until after the Concert. But the Carlsons had done their time appearing at community cookouts and ice hockey tournaments in the winter, and Roddy Carlson had been the first of the Carlsons to be elevated to Green Valley native status. He was the type of guy who could talk a person’s ear off—and then talk the other one off, too—if you caught him on the wrong day. And so when Sam was getting ready to leave and saw Roddy coming toward him, he gave no more encouragement than a nod.

But Roddy called, “Hey! Good Sam! Where you going?”

Sam made a joke about asking himself the same question every day, and Roddy laughed in his generous way like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Roddy’s large head was shaved bald, his skin was peachy and shiny, and his nose, chin, and cheekbones were prominent and splotchy as cooked bratwurst.

“C’mon back with me for a sec,” Roddy said.

Roddy gestured for Sam to fall into step with him, and Sam had to comply. As they walked down the hall together, he talked incessantly in his good-natured and oblivious way, about his son costing him a fortune because he was playing baseball at some fancy college, about his wife’s terrible meat loaf, which gave him indigestion, about his daughter’s vicious house cat named Pookie. But when they were tucked away inside the office, Roddy’s cheerful tone took a forty-five-degree nosedive into formality. He said, “Why don’t you have a seat there, Sam?” And Sam recognized this to be an order, not a suggestion. He lowered his sore bones into a not especially welcoming wooden chair. “Tell me. How’s everything been going?”

Sam told him it was fine.

“Everybody treating you okay?”

“Perfect.”

Roddy sat back in his seat and steepled his fingers. “No problems?”

“No problems.”

Sam adjusted his feet beneath him, preparing himself for the inevitable: a discussion about his job performance. He reminded himself that he’d done nothing wrong. And yet, for a Van Winkle in Green Valley, not doing anything dazzlingly right was about the same thing as doing something wrong. Since he’d been back, one of his cousins—a Van Winkle in the fire department—had saved a family of six who had been living in an illegal apartment under the liquor store. A second cousin with the paramedics had been in the paper three times. But Sam had done nothing. Not one thing. Except run away when people needed him.

“Listen—” Roddy said.

“Roddy—” Sam said at the same time. He laughed. “You go ahead.”

Roddy was making a face that wasn’t quite a frown but could at any moment sink into one. “How long have I known you, Sam?”

“You bought my dad a cigar when I was born.”

“That’s right,” Roddy said, a glint of pleasure in his eye. “Your father told me to keep an eye on you, and I said I would. I plan to stay true to that promise.”

Sam said nothing.

Roddy looked at him over the tops of his fingers. “Word is you been spending some time at the Pennyworts’.”

“They’re my neighbors.”

“I know, I know,” Roddy said. He loosened the cuffs of his shirt around his wrists. “Your family and the Pennyworts go back together since before the Concert. But I feel it’s my responsibility
to your father to warn you. You’d do right to steer clear of that girl.”

“And why’s that, exactly?”

“Things have changed around here since you left,” Roddy said, a note of wistfulness in his voice. “People just come bulldozing into the valley like they own the place. And then money gets involved. And politics. And next thing you know, people are bending over backward to kiss other people’s behinds—and, well—everything can’t always stay the same.”

“What exactly are you trying to warn me about?”

Roddy shook his head. “I can’t say much. But I am saying, it might be a good idea to stay away from the Pennyworts. Just for a while.”

“They’re in trouble?”

“I can’t say.”

“Come on, Rod.” Sam leaned forward in his chair. “Help me out here. Give me a clue.”

“Look, Sammy. I got memories as fond as anybody’s about the Pennyworts. First time I ever got to first base was in that garden with all the rainbow-colored stones. Hell, half the reason I’m a cop is because of an hour I spent in that maze. But it’s you I’m trying to look out for here. There are … forces at work. And if a fight breaks out, you don’t want to be on the wrong side.”

“Is it Gloria?”

Roddy said nothing. His mouth pulled to the side as if he were considering what he could or could not say.

“It’s Gloria, isn’t it?”

Roddy got to his feet, but Sam remained seated. “The woman doesn’t have a lot of friends. But she’s got the right ones.”

“Has she been at social services again?”

Roddy looked out the window into the parking lot. “Somebody, I won’t say who, filed an official tip about Arthur Pennywort
living back in the ravine. Now that it’s on paper, a whole lot of people have to get involved. Some of them are in Gloria’s pocket.”

“When will they come for him?”

“Can’t say. That is—I don’t know. But I’m guessing soon. Nobody wants to cause any trouble for Arty. He’s harmless. But Gloria’s right that he can’t be living down there like that anymore. It’s hard to believe Olivia let it go on so long.”

“It’s not her fault,” Sam said.

“Well, maybe this could be a good thing, then,” Roddy said, sighing. “Maybe she needs some help. She’s been on that farm alone for way too long.”

Sam felt a knot harden in his gut. “What’s Gloria got against Arthur?”

“Nothing. I think she feels like she’s doing some good. Getting an old man out of a bad situation. Getting all those Penny Loafers into a shelter that doesn’t leak or look like it’s about to fall down. And—who knows—maybe she wants the maze shut down because, really, the road can’t handle all the traffic sometimes. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying the woman is Mother Teresa. I’m just saying—”

“She
thinks
she is,” Sam said.

Roddy turned around and leaned his palms on the lip of his desk. “But this isn’t about Arthur. It’s about you, Sam. The Pennyworts have always had a lot of questionable things going on over there. And for all these years we’ve been able to look the other way. But those times are just about over. All these city types are buying their vacation homes up here and whatnot. Making over all our old farmhouses to look like pictures in magazines—as if any real farmer would decorate his own house with grain sacks and hand tools and bare bulbs hanging from a wire. Everything has to be so damn by-the-book with these people.
Everything’s got a paper trail—excuse me, an e-trail. It’s progress, you know.
Progress
.”

Sam sat back in his chair for how intensely Roddy was looking at him. Roddy adjusted his collar.

“Anyway, when things start happening at the Pennywort farm, I just don’t want to see you get caught up in it, Sam. I can’t promise to protect you if it does.” He picked up a framed photo of his wife and son from his desk. “I’ve got a kid in college, you know. I’ve got to keep this job. And if you do, too, it would be best to stay away from Pennyworts. Just till this all blows over.”

“Is that all you can tell me?”

“Hell, Sam. It’s already too much.”

Sam stood. He extended his hand, and Roddy took it and held it tight. “I appreciate the heads-up.”

Roddy’s eyes lit ever so slightly. “So you’ll stay away from the Pennyworts?”

Sam laughed. “Not a chance.”

Roddy smiled as if this wasn’t unexpected, as if it pleased him. “You’re a good egg. Just like your old man.” He clasped Sam on the back of the neck as he led him out of the office. “Now we just got to do a better job of getting you doing your Van Winkle hoodoo. This morning I thought you’da grabbed that tractor and flipped it off that kid with your bare hands.”

Sam reached for the closed door. “Maybe next time,” he said.

Old Chestnut

The next morning, Arthur woke to a godawful racket. He dreamed that an army of Revolutionary War soldiers was marching through Solomon’s Ravine on their way back from the Battle of Saratoga, and Arthur was trying to convince them they’d wandered out of their normal time. But the soldiers wouldn’t return to where they came from—they were banging and shouting and insisting it was Arthur who was in the wrong time—and when he stumbled out of the shack to see what mayhem had pulled him from his sleep, a dozen women were traipsing down the rocky hill, invading the stagnant peace of the hollow, with Olivia out in front. The goat was beside himself with agitation, bleating and stomping and being ignored.

“Oh no,” he said aloud. “Oh, no no
no
!” But his protests incurred no more attention than if he were a blue jay squawking in a tree. He nearly grabbed his daughter by the arm before he realized what a mistake that would have been. “What on earth do you think you’re doing, Olivia?”

She’d been hammering a loose board on the side of his shack, and she took three nails from between her lips before she spoke. “We’re beating Gloria at her own game.”

“But … I don’t want all this.”

“It’s a compromise,” she said. “We’re not going to let anyone say I’m neglecting you. This is the only way.”

Arthur sat down amid the mayhem—the smell of paint, the whine of hacksaws—and felt utterly helpless. Young people understood so little about what it meant to get old. In his mind, he was still young enough to jump fences and catch wayward chickens. He still had all of a young man’s desires and a young man’s wishes—which was cruel, because his body could no longer support the ambitions of his mind. It hadn’t been the graying of his hair, or the lines deepening on his face, or the aches in his bones that had first convinced him he was beyond his prime. He’d seen the changes in his body and been able to dismiss them for many years as superficial, meaningless, in a way. Instead, he first realized he was truly getting old when people had started ignoring him, dismissing what he had to say, and writing him off as irrelevant—just like all the Penny Loafers were doing now. His opinions no longer held sway. But still, he couldn’t stop himself from trying.

“Hold up there! Don’t you touch that barrel. That’s for the rain!”

He watched two women drag it toward the back of his house, out of sight. Boarders began to materialize relics from his old life: the afghan that Alice had crocheted when Olivia was born, a rolled-up throw rug and small houseplants in nice pots, luxury items like spaghetti tongs and tablecloths, a comfortable-looking armchair carefully slid down the ravine with a rope, pulley, and pallet. The sight of his old headboard made him want to weep, and he’d had to hide himself behind a tree to keep the others from seeing.
Oh Alice,
he said.

He was so lost in thought he almost didn’t hear the boarders trying to get into the laboratory side of his shack, which he always kept locked. “I don’t think so,” he said, hurrying toward
the house. “I don’t care if you paint the whole damn place butterfly pink—the lab is off-limits.”

Olivia agreed with him; no one would go in his lab, provided that he would tidy it up himself. She put her fists on her hips and looked him up and down. “And now, as for you, Dad …”

One of the women was coming toward him with a towel, a bar of soap, a change of clothes, and a pair of scissors. She stopped a few feet away.

“I assume you can do the grooming part yourself?” Olivia said.

“I’m perfectly groomed.”

“This isn’t up for argument,” Olivia said. She took the bath things from the boarder and gestured for her father to follow her. As they walked away from the others, he wondered if she didn’t seem slightly tired. Her face would never be pale, thanks to the summer sun and her mother’s dark skin, but there was a blue tinge around her eyes, and a softness to the set of her shoulders, that made him wonder if she wasn’t sleeping. She stopped near a tree, leaning against it with her shoulder. When she spoke her voice was quiet. “You’re wondering why we’re doing all of this. Why
now
?”

“Naturally.”

“Sam stopped by for a minute last night.”

“Oh!” Arthur had almost forgotten. “Did he … stay?”

“No, he didn’t stay.”

“But you’ve been seeing a lot of him?”

“He came to tell me that Gloria officially reported us. They’re opening a case. I don’t know how all the legalities work, but I think somebody’s going to show up here asking questions about you. And when they do, you’ve got to look like you’ve got your act together. We can’t give them a reason to cart you away. I mean, you have to look impeccable.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said.

“Thank you. I knew you could be reasonable.”

“But nobody’s cutting my hair.”

She tipped her head and looked at him. “Not even a trim?”

“No.”

“You drive a hard bargain. But … okay.”

By afternoon, the whole thing was over. The boarders had swept into the ravine and then out again, and truth be told, the ravine did seem somewhat cheerier to Arthur than it had before. There was a bright white fence around his newly painted shack. His main living area was entirely transformed: There were actual tiles on a thing one of the women had called a “backsplash” but which he’d always just called a “wall.” There were now two chairs—as opposed to one—at his kitchen table, with a candle that smelled like apples in the center. The whole place had a lived-in but homey look. It was a place for a happy family, not a curmudgeonly hermit, and all in all, it made him appear to be very respectable. Arthur couldn’t help but be a little pleased.