The Red Garden (28 page)

Louise sent a formal letter to the dean’s office at Harvard. She wrote that she was an alumna, more or less. She didn’t mention dropping out or being so miserable in Cambridge. Before long she was connected to the paleontology experts at the Peabody Museum to whom she explained her situation. Three days later a graduate student named Brian Alter arrived in a Volvo station wagon filled with equipment. There were just a few stray flies around then and the days were getting hot.

“Beautiful area,” Brian said, after shaking Louise’s hand when she came out to the driveway to meet him. “Great house,” he enthused.

“Yes, except for the bones in my garden.” Louise led him around to the back.

“In my line of work, that’s great, too.”

They went up the stone steps, past the gardens Louise’s mother and aunt had planted in summers gone by, predictable plots of land where nothing unusual ever happened. The old garden, however, was a riot of red. Everything was blooming so fast and so hard that the white picket fence had nearly disappeared into a tangle of bean runners.

“Wow,” Brian asked. “What kind of vegetables are those?” He pointed to the blood-colored runners.

“Green beans,” Louise said.

When she showed him the soil and the piece of bone, Brian pursed his lips. He did not make jokes about basset hounds.
See!
Louise wanted to shout, had Johnny Mott been anywhere near.
He doesn’t think it’s ridiculous
. She wondered if perhaps her garden had become red for a reason, the way maps turn up in your glove compartment right before you get lost. She wondered if the reason was Brian, and if the garden had brought him to her, magicking him along the Mass Pike right up to her door. In many ways he was a perfect fit: nice looking, Harvard educated, a scientist, clearly a gentleman. Maybe fate had sent her one true love.

“Unfortunately this means we’re going to have to dig up the garden,” Brian said.

Louise felt like crying at the idea of the garden being deconstructed, but she had no other choice if she wanted to get to the bottom of things. She fixed a bedroom for Brian, put fresh linens on the bed, stored away her father’s collection of eelskin memorabilia, went to pick up some groceries at the AtoZ
Market, English muffins and coffee beans, since Brian would probably expect breakfast.

Although he was only a first-year graduate student, Brian was exceedingly professional. Soon enough the rear garden looked like a proper archaeological dig. It was roped off and divided into sections. The little white fence Louise had painted so carefully had been pulled down. She looked out her window and saw the roses and runner beans flipped over into a pile. Louise thought of all the money she’d spent on fertilizer as the mounds of dug earth began to collect. She counted all the hours she’d put in.

“Louise!” she heard Brian shout one day when she was sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea and reading a guidebook about Vancouver. In her plans to leave town she had begun to think the colder, the better. She had become interested in Canada and Scandinavia.

She ran outside in her pajamas and fishing boots when she heard Brian. He was covered with dirt, having been digging since 5:00 a.m. Actually, people in the neighborhood were beginning to be annoyed at the
chink clink
of his shovel so early in the day. He was standing in a hole six feet deep. Louise stepped over the dead roses and pepper plants and peered down. At the very bottom of the hole was a pile of bones, including several huge ribs.

“Hallelujah,” Brian said.

T
HEY WENT OUT
to celebrate at the Jack Straw Bar and Grill. This time, Louise had on a sundress and flip-flops and had run a brush through her hair.

“What an authentic place,” Brian said, glancing around at the knotty pine, the fireplace that was always roaring in winter, the dartboard, which could look picturesque if you didn’t know Tim Kelly was blind in one eye because of a fight with his brother Simon over whose dart had come closer to the bull’s-eye.

Brian went to the bar and pounded his fist joyfully. “Jack Daniel’s!”

“ID,” the bartender demanded. Brian looked like a punk to him and was definitely an out of towner. “Hey.” He nodded to Louise while Brian was thumbing through his wallet for his driver’s license.

“Hey,” she said back. “I’ll have the chardonnay.”

Louise gazed around. There were a few locals at the far end of the bar. Somebody was fooling around with the jukebox. If they punched in “When Doves Cry,” she’d take it as a sign that she should never come back.

“He’s not here,” the bartender said when he noticed her looking.

“Who?” Louise gulped some chardonnay. Lately she hadn’t been getting those hang-up phone calls.

Brian presented his ID and turned to Louise. “At this point, whatever’s in your garden could be just about anything,” he said, interrupting. He gulped down the first shot of whisky as soon as he was served. “We’ll have to collect the bones, clean them, then send them to Cambridge and have them carbon dated. I’ll have to call Professor Seymour in on this.” He laughed, delighted. “I’m in way over my head.”

When Brian turned away for a moment, the bartender leaned in. “He’s in the hospital,” he told Louise. “His appendix burst.”

“People don’t even need their appendixes,” Brian assured
Louise when he noticed she looked stricken. He was already pouring another shot. He planned on getting drunk. “I’m going to be famous. Your house is going to be famous.”

“It already is,” Louise said.

T
HERE WAS NO
chinking of the shovel the next day at 5:00 a.m. While Brian was sleeping off his hangover, Louise went out to the garden. She peered down at the pile of bones. She had a shivery feeling, as if they’d perhaps discovered something that was meant to be left alone. She gathered an armful of flowers from the piles that had been torn out, then set off in her mother’s Jeep. It wasn’t yet visiting hour at the hospital, but the floor nurse recognized her from all those weeks she’d spent at her mother’s bedside and let her in.

Louise had told herself she’d never walk into another hospital, but here she was. Johnny Mott was sharing a room with Mr. Hirsch, who was the principal of the high school. Mr. Hirsch had had a seizure the doctors thought might have been a stroke and was there for observation. Johnny looked aggravated over being trapped in a hospital bed, especially in a room with Mr. Hirsch, who had suspended him from high school three times for ridiculous infractions. Johnny had had his share of trouble as a kid and was headed in the wrong direction, then had straightened himself out. He still had scars and tattoos that seemed to belong to somebody else.

When he saw Louise Partridge with her half-dead flowers, he thought he was hallucinating. They’d been giving him Percocet for the pain.

“I hate hospitals,” she said.

“Agreed.” Johnny sat up in bed. He assumed he looked like an idiot—he was wearing a hospital gown—but actually Louise felt mutely and stupidly drawn to him. He was half naked and staring at her. She sat down on the edge of Mr. Hirsch’s bed. She thought she might have a hangover herself.

“Go ahead,” Mr. Hirsch said bitterly. “Don’t mind me. Make yourself comfortable.”

He’d spent forty years being sarcastic, but as Louise had gone to private school she took him at his word and said, “Thanks.”

“Allegra told me you’re living with someone. She said he drives a Volvo.” Johnny sneered. “Those cars are so overrated.”

“Your sister isn’t as observant as she thinks she is. Is that why you stopped calling and hanging up, because of the Volvo?”

“Calling?” Johnny said, feeling shifty, even if he was a police officer.

Louise rose off Mr. Hirsch’s bed and came to stand beside Johnny. She had something in her hand. A smooth white arc. She couldn’t help but notice that they kept the temperature much too hot in hospitals. They thought only of the dying, never of the living. But wasn’t that always the way?

Louise thought she might burn alive standing there.

“I don’t think a basset hound’s behind this,” she said, showing Johnny the bone she carried with her.

“You never know,” Johnny Mott said. People who knew him would have been shocked to hear just how thoughtful he sounded.

“Really?” Louise said. “Maybe that’s true for you, but I always do. I don’t have to think twice about things.”

A
FTER A TIME
, Brian had collected all of the bones and washed them in a bucket. They were then spread out on Louise’s porch, to dry in the sun. A spine, ribs, long femurs, knobby things that Louise assumed were some kind of elbows or knees. Everyone in town was talking about the dig. Brian had to chase groups of interested ten-year-old boys off the property. Skittish teenagers came creeping around at night, daring each other to walk past the bone house.

Then one Saturday morning the board of trustees from the museum unexpectedly came to call. The board consisted of Mrs. Gerri Partridge, who was a cousin of Louise’s, once removed; Hillary Jacob, who ran the faltering bookstore; and Allegra Mott, who seemed too young and snippy to be on the board of anything.

“Hello,” Louise said when she opened the door.

Thankfully she was dressed in an A-line skirt and a blouse, both found in her mother’s closet. The outfit looked half decent if you didn’t notice the fraying seams. The women from the board had already turned their attention to the pile of bones. Brian was up in bed, sleeping it off. He had taken to visiting the Jack Straw Bar and Grill every night, not coming home till the wee hours.

“So you told your brother about the Volvo,” Louise remarked to Allegra.

“Sure,” Allegra said mildly. “Why not?”

“No reason,” Louise said. “None at all.”

The museum ladies informed Louise that due to the potential historical nature of the finding on her property, they would like to have the skeleton on permanent display in the Blackwell Museum.

“I don’t know about that,” Louise hedged. “The expedition’s being funded by Harvard.”

“What gets found in Blackwell stays in Blackwell,” Allegra Mott said. “You of all people should understand that.”

It sounded like some sort of veiled threat. But as a matter of fact, Louise had been experiencing a sinking feeling every time she saw the bones on the porch or heard the
click clack
of Brian Alter’s shovel. She was actually pleased the skull hadn’t yet been found.

“I’ll keep your request in mind,” she said.

Soon after, a professor from Harvard phoned looking for Brian. Dr. Seymour, the professor in charge of Brian’s research. Brian hadn’t checked in or sent a report in some time.

“I’m certain he’ll be in touch soon,” Louise assured the professor.

In fact, Brian had taken to sleeping all day, then getting up and going directly to the Jack Straw. Louise thought she had a budding alcoholic on her hands, maybe even a full-fledged drunk. One night she heard a ruckus on her porch. She ran downstairs in her nightgown and was met by the Motts, Johnny and his father, Frank, there on police business. They had brought home a sloshed, argumentative Brian, who tripped over his own feet as he attempted to take off and go back to the tavern for last call.

“Sorry to disturb you,” Frank Mott said to Louise. “This gentleman said he was staying with you. We’ll haul him up to bed if you like.”

“Your bedroom or his?” Johnny Mott asked.

“John,” his father warned.

“When you see the mess, you’ll know you’ve found the right
room,” Louise told Frank Mott. “Just throw him on top of the mattress.”

Louise went out on the porch. It was already the end of July. There were cicadas calling. In the Blackwell Museum there was a display of a dusty pile of cicada casings, including what was said to be the largest one ever found in the eastern United States.

“What does your expert say this thing is?”

Johnny had come outside while Frank went on to have a fatherly discussion with Brian upstairs, informing him that he was no longer welcome at the Jack Straw and that if he got caught drinking and driving in town, it would be good-bye to his license.

“Let me guess,” Johnny went on. “He doesn’t have a clue.”

“Why don’t you figure it out?” Louise said hotly.

She was furious. She’d been the one to write to Harvard, and now she resented the fact that her garden was a wreck. All the plants were dying. Even the poor lilacs, uprooted and replanted in a precarious row, had lost their leaves.

“Are you saying you want me to?” Johnny said. “Are you asking me to do it?”

Louise looked at him, secretly aghast that she was wearing her mother’s old nightgown, that her hair was in braids. She seemed to be crying over her ruined garden. She would have answered, but she was suddenly tongue-tied, her usual ferocity gone.

Frank Mott came out and shook Louise’s hand, apologizing for the bother in the middle of the night, suggesting that her boarder might need to be directed toward the AA meetings held every Thursday and Sunday at eight and at ten at the town hall.

That night Louise could barely sleep. She dreamed about her mother’s last day on earth. She was small as a bird in her
hospital bed, shivering, waiting patiently for the end. She said, “Maybe he’ll still be waiting for me.” Louise had no idea whom she was referring to; her husband, gone so many years, or God, or perhaps an angel. There had been so much that had been left unspoken between them. Louise didn’t know the first thing about her mother, not really, and now it was too late.