Joy For Beginners (18 page)

HADLEY FOUND TO HER Surprise that as much as she liked the actual tending of plants, she liked learning about the creation of gardens even more. She was quickly absorbed in the intricate equation of soil and water and light, the constantly shifting dance of fragrance and color palettes. As she learned to see gardens as stories that unfurled over spring, summer, fall and winter, landscapes became fluid, the plants within them developing their own personalities over the course of a year or a decade. There were the annuals, blasting their way through the spring and summer with a blaze of color and produce, ramming straight into the wall of winter without any thought other than reproduction; the perennials, pulling back into the ground as cold approached, then reappearing again in an elaborate game of horticultural hide-and-seek; the weeds, their desire for life so strong that daily growth had to be measured in feet, not inches. Creating an aesthetic harmony in the midst of such abundance was far more complicated than she had ever imagined, yet she dove into the particulars with the first real happiness she had felt since Sean died, tumbling into the beauty of a tall blue iris set against a pink rose, the soft, feathery grace of pale yellow columbine draping over the edge of a shaded stone walkway.

At the end of the day, she would come home to her own garden and walk into its lush green, the cool white of its flowers. If the day had been warm, she would turn on a sprinkler and sit outside as the evening air softened around her and the plants stretched up, green and alive. Afterward, she would move along the narrow walkways of her garden, artemisia and sweet woodruff brushing wet against her ankles as she leaned over to cut a huge teacup of a rose for her kitchen table.

One evening she noticed that a vine growing along the back fence had developed what looked like long green tubes. The vine had shown up one day, seemingly out of nowhere, but it had quickly and conveniently covered the rough edges of the chopped ivy and she had let it be. Now she looked at it, wondering what would come next. As she watched, the moon came out and one of the pale green tubes rose as if to music, unwinding slowly like a pinwheel, spreading, extending, opening into a great white flower the size of her outstretched hand.

 

AND THEN THE HEAT wave came, unexpected and out of character for the Pacific Northwest. Without air-conditioning, people made do with portable fans, propping them on kitchen counters and in windows, anything to push the molten air.

Gardens gasped. The days were too long, the length of time between water seemingly infinite. The regal stems of her daisy plants were dragged to the ground by the weight of their flowers. The leaves on the plum tree curled up in fetal positions.

People retreated into more primal behaviors as well—etiquette and good humor pitched aside like candy wrappers. Clothes became just another trap to hold the heat, and in the mornings Hadley found herself moving past the jeans and T-shirts in her closet to pull out sundresses she hadn’t worn in years. She would walk up the stairs to the school, the gauzy fabric whispering across the surface of her skin and fanning the air around her bare legs. After school she would buy a soda from the vending machine and drive home, holding the cold can between her breasts. She would return to a house that had soaked up the calidity of the day and then held it jealously long into the night. Even with every window open, the rooms seemed to vibrate. Hadley lay in her twin bed, her arms and legs outstretched beyond its boundaries. The heat hung about her and she was filled with a desire to take down the wall between the living room and bedroom, to make one open space where the air could move and she could see the garden from her bed.

On the third night, Hadley finally gave up on sleep and went outside. It was almost midnight and the city around her had grown quiet, a miraculous occurrence in a city that always had the growl of a freeway in the distance or the sound of children playing in the yards. Out on the street, a car went by, windows down, jazz music playing, and then nothing. The streetlamp out front flickered off, leaving only the moon.

It took a moment for Hadley’s eyes to adjust, the white of the tiny sweet woodruff flowers and the huge and luxurious petals of the roses coming first, and then the silver of the sage and lamb’s ears, and finally the deeper greens, the outline of leaves and lacy edges aided by the faint glow from the kitchen. The garden lay before her, waiting.

She had watered earlier that evening, the sprinkler head still at the end of the long black hose that ran in sinuous curves across the thyme and along the path between the lilies to the plum tree. The plants didn’t really need any more water, but she could feel the desire for it in her skin and the heaviness of her limbs. She turned on the faucet and then breathed in the smell of thyme that was released by the water, a scent of evergreen and citrus and innocence, a cool green place in the midst of the heat. Hadley stepped into the arcs of flying drops, feeling them land and slide across her skin. She stretched her arms up into the branches of the plum tree and let the water fall down the long, straight column that was her body.

W
hen Marion had been a teenager, she wanted a tattoo. As an oldest child who did mostly what was expected of her, she had been fascinated by the abandon tattoos implied, the willing, blind leap into commitment. Whether or not she was the type to make such a bold declaration was, in the end, inconsequential. Her parents had forbidden her to get one, a decision that would not have changed even with the most passionate or logical of defenses, which she didn’t mount in any case. Perhaps that was a sign. Perhaps, as her mother said, she simply didn’t understand the concept of permanence.

Her sister Daria, of course, had done it differently when she reached adolescence, had gotten tattoos even before she left home for good. She had told Marion about walking defiantly in the door, designs uncovered, the skin still red and inflamed. Daria’s tattoos were always a little unsettling—a butterfly, sweet until you saw the torn wing. A snake’s head sneaking out from the edge of her T-shirt sleeve. She collected tattoos like personal journal entries, a constantly updating record of her life. When Marion asked her what it was like to have strangers read your diary, Daria declared she didn’t care who saw them. That was Daria, Marion thought, putting secrets on the outside to distract you from the ones within.

But Marion had never wanted a gallery of ink. She had always wanted the one image, the one that was, in fact, her essence, but that image had never settled, never stayed, which made her parents’ refusal to let her get a tattoo a relief as much as anything—and before she had even noticed, life sped up and the idea of a tattoo had been lost in the chaos of college and Terry and marriage.

After the children arrived, it seemed as if life became its own skin artist—the scar on Marion’s knee where she had caught it on a carpet tack while chasing after her crawling baby daughter, their laughter flying after them like flags. The cut on Terry’s hand from the slip of a knife while showing the children how to make marshmallow roasting sticks on a camping trip that they all agreed was bloodier and more exciting than the
Die Hard
movie the kids had wanted to stay home and watch. The little white line, still hiding in the soft curve under her son’s lip, from the time he had tripped while learning how to walk, doing the toddler-stagger down a sidewalk that suddenly felt far more like a hill as he spun forward, his small, perfect teeth cutting through the tender skin. The memory the sight of the scar always invoked in Marion—the way she had held him, the two of them nestled in the big living room chair until the small shivers of fright and worry relaxed and the sound of her voice reading a book became a river they could float down until he fell asleep.

She knew some people who railed against the marks that experience left on their bodies. To Marion, they were comforting—signs of dangers survived and past, a visual history of their family life together.

She didn’t need a self-inflicted record, Marion had said when Daria showed her her newest creation. But she wondered sometimes, now that the children were gone, if that one tattoo still existed, if she would know if she saw it after so many years of not looking.

 

WHEN KATE ASSIGNED MARION the challenge of getting a tattoo, that night of Kate’s victory party, Marion had been surprised, but mostly because Kate had guessed at something that Marion had only been playing with in her mind. Marion wondered at the time about Kate’s ability to figure out what each of the women in the group seemed to need. They had all spent so much time taking care of Kate—but maybe, Marion had thought as she observed Kate handing out the challenges, the watching hadn’t been all one way.

 

 

“OF COURSE YOU ARE writing an article about tattoos,” Daria said. It was an evening in late June. The two sisters were sitting on the deck of Henry’s houseboat, looking out over the water.

“What do you mean?”

“You wouldn’t just get a tattoo; you’d have to write about it. Besides, it’s a great way to stall.” Daria sent a good-natured grin flying out toward the small lights visible across the water.

Marion looked over at her appraisingly.

“Henry’s been good for you,” she commented.

“So what do you want to ask?” Daria held up her arm and pulled back her sleeve. Marion could just barely see the black and red and green markings on her sister’s skin, the designs blurred in the dim light.

“Is why too obvious a question?”

Daria nodded. “And everybody’s got a different answer, anyway.”

“You aren’t the only person I’ll ask.”

“I know.” Daria’s fingers played over the design on her right forearm, tracing loops and spirals.

Marion waited. As a journalist, she was used to this part, the way some people circled around an answer like a dog getting ready to sleep. She had learned to sit quietly, letting the space around her question expand. Beyond the edge of the dock, the water lapped against the boats moored nearby.

“You know,” Daria said finally, “the first time the needles went into me, I remember thinking they felt just like Mom.”

 

 

“SO, HOW WAS DARIA?” Terry asked as he and Marion lay in bed that night.

Marion just picked up one of his hands and kissed it.

“Is there anything you can do?” Terry’s voice was supportive, genuine, but Marion noted with an inward smile how his hand moved down to her hip as he spoke, pulling her protectively closer to him. It was one of the things she loved about Terry, all the different messages he could send at one time, the many languages they could speak to each other. She leaned into what he wasn’t saying and saw his eyes light in response.

Marion had first met Terry at a college friend’s wedding, more than thirty years before. She had flown west, to a city of lakes and mountains she had never seen before. Her friend had been nervous, suddenly unsure of her decision; the idea of marriage, which had appeared so alluring on the brink of the uncertain future of college graduation, suddenly looking more like the longest textbook ever assigned in a freshman seminar. But Marion and the other bridesmaids had calmed her down with the confident näiveté of women who had never been married themselves and got her to the altar to become part of a couple who would, in fact, divorce ten years later.

But no one knew that then, and on the walk back up the aisle, out of the church, Marion had seen a man looking at her with such clear and honest intensity that it was all she could do not to step out of line and walk over to put her hand in his.

Thirty-three years, three children, four dogs, and one thousand three hundred thirty-five batches of Saturday pancakes later, they could still hear each other.

It all could have been different, Marion knew. She and Terry had watched so many couples fall apart after their children left, as if the ever-present urgency of their offsprings’ needs had been ropes that held the boats of their separate lives together. How easy it would be, without the children’s presence, to float out on currents you hadn’t even realized existed, drifting idly away from each other. How easy to lock your eyes on the back of your departing child, or turn them toward the job you had always wanted, the graceful movement of a body you didn’t know—sweeping your gaze over and past the spouse standing next to you.

“So,” Terry said, sliding his hand up to the soft skin under her collarbone, “did Daria give you any good ideas for tattoos?”

 

 

IT WAS JUST LIKE Seattle to have the only heat wave in its history on the day of a tattoo convention, Marion thought, sweating already at ten in the morning. She put on a flowing skirt that would, she hoped, cover as much of the skin on her legs as possible. There was nothing she could do about the pristine surface of her arms; it was too hot for sleeves, although it would have been nice to maintain some feeling of mystery. No secrets today; her bare arms screamed bystander, voyeur.

As far as advertising went, the tattoo convention was a bit mysterious itself, the location more hinted at than described in the literature, situated somewhere in one of the dozens of buildings at the Seattle Center, a sprawling mix of park and fountains, opera and ballet and theater auditoriums, mostly left over from a World’s Fair decades before. Marion wandered about, looking for directional signs.

Coming toward her was a young man with an orange and black tiger, teeth bared, running down the length of his bicep, black metal gauges in his earlobes creating huge round holes. Marion wondered if a faraway object would look larger if she viewed it through one of them, like a telescope, but decided not to try. The young man gazed about him, slightly confused.

“Are you looking for the tattoo convention?” Marion asked.

He turned to her. Marion readied herself for sarcasm, the cynicism of the indoctrinated for the novice, but his face was merely curious.