Joy For Beginners (17 page)

The voices became louder, laughing.

She pulled on her bathrobe, wincing when she reached her left arm back to find the sleeve, and then walked gingerly to the kitchen door.

They were all there—Sara and Dan and Tyler and the twins, Kate and Caroline, Marion and her husband, Terry, Daria and Henry. Marion held up a machete, Dan a chain saw.

“We’re bringing in the big guns,” Tyler said stoutly.

 

IT WAS AS if she had been gardening with fingernail scissors the day before. As she watched, the sharp blade of the machete flung aside curtains of ivy while the chain saw ripped through branches. The ivy, so invulnerable the day before, seemed to melt in the face of so much concerted energy. In front of her eyes, the climate of her backyard was changing from shade to sunshine.

They worked in pairs, cutting and bagging. They took turns filling water bottles and passing them around, or taking care of the twins, who, unlike Tyler, were not enthralled with the scream of motorized tools. At one point Caroline convinced Dan to let her use the chain saw, wielding it with great satisfaction against the trunk of one of the ivy trees.

When she was done she passed the chain saw into Hadley’s hands. “Try it,” she shouted over the noise of the machine. “It feels great.”

The machine vibrated and bucked slightly, just barely in control; it was like holding on to the handlebars of a mountain bike while flying down a steep and rutted trail. Dan slapped a pair of goggles over Hadley’s eyes and pointed to another ivy tree, giving her a thumbs-up.

She put the edge of the blade against the trunk of the tree and felt it buck back.

“You gotta commit,” Caroline yelled, laughing.

Hadley tried again and felt the blade dig into the hard surface, chewing its way through. As she reached the far side of the trunk, a canopy of branches and limbs fell to the side and sunlight rushed into the opening.

Dan took the saw back and turned it off. The garden vibrated in the sudden silence.

“Come on,” Caroline said to Hadley, “let’s pull this sucker out of here.” And they grabbed two of the larger branches and dragged their prize out to the truck Terry had waiting at the curb.

 

SIX HOURS LATER, they all stopped and gazed about them.

“It looks great,” Marion declared.

“It looks like a clear-cut,” Daria snorted.

“Let’s call it a clean slate,” Caroline corrected with a smile. Looking at her, Hadley thought how much Caroline had changed in the past months, her hair short now, her eyes clear and honest.

That said, Hadley had to admit that Daria had a point about the clear-cut. It was hard even to guess the names of the pitiful combination of bushes and bedraggled plants that had emerged from under the ivy.

“There’s a whole world still in there,” Marion said. “You’ll be amazed what you find when you get into the details. See the roses in the back?” She pointed toward the fence. Sure enough, Hadley could see the leggy stems of a rose, climbing up the post.

“Dinnertime!” Sara came to the open gate, Max on her hip.

“It smells fantastic,” Caroline said. The scent of butter and truffles drifted across the yard from Sara’s house.

“You should see our dinners since Sara got back from Italy,” Dan commented happily.

 

“HERE’S TO A DAY well spent,” Kate toasted, lifting her glass of red wine.

Platters of pasta and bowls of salad were passed around the table along with the twins, who traveled from one lap to the next, mouths ready to catch the bites that were sent in their direction. Tyler had chosen a permanent seat next to Hadley, who sat, still slightly in shock from the accomplishment and affection of the day.

“Mom’s been reading me
The Secret Garden
,” Tyler said to her.

“Really? I loved that story when I was a kid.” Hadley had a sudden image of the backyard of her childhood, its hidden alcoves and the woods that rambled away from its edge.

“Usually secret gardens are for kids,” Tyler noted sagely.

“Secret gardens are for whoever finds them,” Sara commented from the other side of the table. “But I’m sure Hadley will share.”

 

MARION CAME OVER a few days after the clear-cut. Hadley watched as Marion’s eyes gazed about the yard, detecting patterns.

“How old was the woman who lived here?” Marion asked.

“Eighty or so, I think. The agent told me she’d been here forty years.”

Marion smiled. “You can tell. It’s an old garden. There’s a lot more roses than I thought.”

Hadley looked closely and saw the browned, curled edges of a rose blossom.

“And there’s her kitchen garden.” Marion pointed to the corner closest to the house where Hadley could just make out a rectangle, about five feet by ten feet, bordered by smooth, round rocks the size of her fist. And that was a tomato cage, she realized, lolled up against the side of the house.

“The plants would get the southern sun there,” Marion continued. “Now, I would bet . . .” She made her way toward the kitchen garden along a brick path, almost invisible under a coating of black mold, then stopped abruptly. “Yes! I figured she’d put herbs along the walkway. See?”

Hadley bent down. It was all a mass of seemingly dead sticks and stems, a leaf here or there, no two the same. But as Marion’s fingers moved from one to the next, pointing out distinctions, Hadley saw the tiny pointed leaves of thyme and a broad silvery oval of sage. Hadley touched first one, then another, laughing softly as the scents were released into the air.

 

HADLEY SANK HER SPADE into the soil, loosening the roots of the weeds that had taken hold around the base of the plum tree. She wondered sometimes what she was doing, digging up the insistent survivors, the dandelions whose roots sank down like surveyors’ stakes into the ground, the frothy green lace that suddenly appeared, floating tenaciously over the surface of everything, turning red as it established its reign. But there were green shoots sprouting as well—tulips and hyacinths and irises. She wanted to give them room.

The garden was taking shape. A few days after the clear-cut, Hadley and Tyler had cleaned the mold from the brick pathway. Tyler had pretended he was a pirate prisoner, forced to scrub the decks. Hadley claimed the role of Cinderella, left behind by her cruel stepsisters to wash the kitchen floors. As their brushes worked down into the cracks of the bricks, a warm red color appeared, lightening to a friendly orange as it dried.

“Now,” Tyler had said, standing back proudly to survey their work, “you have a safe path to take you between the alligator-infested waters.”

And Hadley had started from the safe path, working back foot by foot into the garden. Over the weeks, the chaos had receded, giving way to soft dirt, small mysteries like welcome notes sent from the old woman who had once tended the garden. Day lilies and wild geraniums and tufted primroses, sage with its silvery leaves, the green spikes of rosemary and the blue-gray leaves of lavender, slowly, one by one, rising up out of the earth as Hadley cleared the way around them. She found she could spend hours filtering the clumps of dirt into smooth soil, cutting back the dead stalks of roses that grew gratefully, greedily after she had tended them. Life between her fingers.

She had come to love the soft spring rain, when the ground opened up to the water from the sky, and the roots of the weeds came out easily in her fingers. She bought a big rain hat and coat; Marion said it made her look like a yellow mushroom, but she didn’t care. She delighted in the feeling of being in her own dry shelter as the moisture slid across the slope of her hat and down the back of her rain slicker. She welcomed the sight of her green rain boots waiting for her on the back porch when she returned from the grocery store, like dogs anxious for a walk. Some days, when the rain came down soft around her, she felt as thirsty for it as the earth beneath her feet.

One day she found an old nest, tucked in a crook of the plum tree. She went and found the rock that Kate had given her and placed it in the nest, where it lay like a smooth black egg.

 

“HAVE YOU NOTICED SOMETHING odd about this garden?” Hadley commented to Marion one afternoon. Marion had come over, tools in hand, for a little “gardening therapy,” as she called it. Why Marion needed another garden Hadley could never quite determine, as Marion had a large and well-established one of her own, but Hadley chose not to point that out. As much as anything, Hadley realized, she wanted to stay near the maternal assurance that Marion radiated. Hadley’s own mother had come for the week after Sean’s death, but she had a job and the rest of the family on the East Coast. She had tried to convince Hadley to move home, but Hadley couldn’t bring herself to leave. Being with Marion helped her feel a bit more like here was home.

“What do you mean by odd?” Marion asked.

“Well, it seems like almost all the flowers that were planted in this garden are white.”

“Hmmm . . .” Marion smiled. “I think we may have a night garden on our hands.”

“A night garden?”

“It’s meant to be seen at night. Moonlight, in particular. Interesting choice in a rainy climate.”

“Do you ever wonder about her? The woman who planted this?”

“It’s hard not to.” Marion shook the extra dirt from her gloves. “She’s everywhere you look. You can tell so much about a person by the garden they plant.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I know she was thrifty and probably a good cook because of how much space she gave to her kitchen garden. On the other hand, what kind of woman grows a night garden? Did she work during the day? Was she an insomniac? Or maybe she was just a complete romantic.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“Once you start looking, it’s hard to stop. You can tell more about a person from their garden than you ever will from what they say about themselves.”

It was true, Hadley realized. She had taken Tyler and the twins for walks around the neighborhood for years now, but after her talk with Marion, Hadley began observing her neighbors’ gardens as she walked, a fascinating activity, as intimate as reading their mail. There was the woman on the corner, the quiet member of a large and noisy family, her house hidden by bowers of honeysuckle, surrounded by pale lavender and sage, pastel flowers asking only for sympathy. Next door was The Fence, imposing and blank; one day when the gate was mistakenly left open, however, Hadley had seen inside a garden of such abundance that she stopped, shocked. Some yards were planted as if with plans for long tenancy, others created with the impulse buys and on-sale annuals found near the checkout stands. Some people had their gardens taken care of for them, never feeling dirt between their fingers. The more time Hadley spent in her garden, the more she wondered what she would do without that feeling and the way it held her to the ground, gave her something to stand on.

Now, Hadley found herself taking walks simply to see the next garden, the next story, lives opening up before her. Tyler didn’t always come with her. He was busier now; his grandfather was staying with them for the summer and these days when Hadley worked in her garden she could hear the sounds of construction coming from the garage next door, the excited exchange of voices between grandfather and grandson. But Tyler still came with her on her walks sometimes, his insights filtering through his eight-year-old eyes.

“That one, for sure, was a pirate before he bought a house,” Tyler said, gesturing toward a tall, thin house set far back in a narrow lot, its top floor peering out above the tops of the trees. “And I bet that lady”—he pointed to a well-manicured lawn, its edges precise, the flower beds planted in rows of annuals—“makes cookies every night, but they don’t taste very good.”

 

HADLEY FOUND IT HARD to describe what she had been seeing in her walks, feeling in her garden. The way the roses in her arbor bent down to caress the top of her head as she walked underneath them to her door. The first frilly tops of the carrots in her kitchen garden coming up to greet her, each moment of green making her stand a little straighter with the knowledge that she could make her own food. The glow of the white palette that surrounded her house, pulling her outside as the sky began to fade, tempting her to sit or work in the yard and listen to the neighborhood around her, the families coming together, settling down. Sometimes her garden felt like a benevolent parent who seemed to know what she needed before she did.

She tried to explain to Marion as they sat on the porch steps one afternoon, fresh mint from the shady part of the garden flavoring their glasses of iced tea.

“I wonder what it would be like to design a garden to take care of a person,” Hadley commented.

Marion smiled. “Have you ever thought about becoming a landscape designer?”

Hadley shook her head, but the thought didn’t dislodge with the action. It stayed with her, insistent as a small child, leading her by the hand to the local community college where she signed up for summer classes.