Beloved (31 page)

He got back on the tractor and began to control the process of lifting the holly from the patch of earth that had prot
ected and nourished it for the
past half century. Jane listened in agony to the sound of the last of its roots tearing and breaking and understood, at last, what Mac had been trying so hard to make her see: that some things in life are irreplaceable.

And inseparable. The two hollies had grown old together, had slowly reached out over the years to one another across the expanse of her front porch. Together they
'
d sloughed off rain and snow and fog. Together they
'
d watched Mac grow up. And now, because she said so, the male holly was going to be torn away from its mate and forced to exist in dreary isolation, out of sight, out of harmony with its universe.

"
I
'
ll move the door!
"
Jane cried over the chugging din of the tractor. She was wringing her bands with remorse.
"
I
'
ll move it, I promise, I
'
ll move it.
"

Mac turned off the engine. The uprooting of the holly was now a fait accompli; anyone could see that. The root ball had been cut completely away from its larger root system and the holly lifted a foot or so out of the ground. She was too late.

Mac walked over to her and stared at the uprooted tree.
"
So now you want to move the door.
"
He said it completely without emotion, which made Jane extremely uneasy. She edged away from him an extra foot or so.

"
I should have done it in the first place,
"
she said in a tremulous voice.
"
It
'
s not a big-deal doorway. It has no pediment, no sidelights. I should have done it in the first place. I
'
m so sorry, Mac,
" she said, biting her
lower lip.
"
I wasn
'
t thinking.
"

"
You were thinking, all right,
"
he said in the same lifeless tone.
"
You just weren
'
t feeling.
"

It hurt, the way a slap across her face would hurt. The one thing in life she never wanted to be accused of was not feeling.
"
Can we put it back?
"
she asked in an impossibly tiny voice.

"
Of course we can put it back. We can put it anywhere now. It doesn
'
t make any difference. Now.
"

"
It does make a difference! It will mend better here. It
'
s
u
sed
to being
here. Used to the exposure ..
. the soil
...
used to
her,
"
Jane said, pointing to its berry-laden mate. She sounded like an idiot, projecting human feelings onto the holly that way. But she didn
'
t care. All she cared about was putting things back the way they were, before she
'
d come and turned them upside-down.

"
This is so typical,
"
Mac said tiredly, more to himself than to her. He climbed back onto the seat of his tractor.

"I ..
. what do you mean?
"

He folded his forearms across the steering wheel the way a cowboy would fold them over the horn of his saddle.
"
You people can
'
t sit still, and you can
'
t seem to let anything else sit still, either. If something
'
s in your way, hell, knock it down. Tear it out. So what if it
'
s been around longer than you have. You have a
vision,
"
he said derisively.
"
And nothing can get in the way of your vision.
"

"
I said I was sorry,
"
she said humbly.

"
Right.
"
He pushed a button and the diesel sprang back to life.

Jane wanted to run and hide under a bushel basket, but she forced herself to stay and watch while Mac lowered the holly carefully back into its hole. That done, he used the spade to tamp down the earth around the replanted root ball. He was finished. The holly was on its own.

"
Is there anything I can do to help it live?
"
she asked, feeling miserable.

"
Water. Plenty of it. Then leave it alone. You can do more harm than good at this point.
"

He backed the tractor away from her house and headed back to his nursery. Jane ran to her aunt
'
s potting shed with all the urgency of a surgeon in triage and emerged with an old galvanized sprinkling can. She made half a dozen trips to the bathtub to fill the can before she realized there was an outside spigot on the side of the cottage. Presumably there was a hose around, too.

Gawd. A gardener I
'
m not,
she thought morosely. Really,
it amazed her how little she
'
d learned in life. Ten-year-old Jerry knew more about nature and survival than she did. Part of the problem was that, like Cissy, she was a city girl thrown into a semirural setting on a remote island. There were no building supers to call when the faucets leaked; no all-night drugstores around to buy Robitussin from when she was sick. No discos, no Wal-Marts, no Dunkin
'
Donuts. It was disorienting.

Still, she was learning, even if slowly. She sat on the steps next to the holly as if she were sitting next to a hospital bed comforting a patient in intensive care.
"
I
'
ll make a deal with you,
"
she whispered, leaning close to the glossy green leaves.
"
Promise not to die, and I
'
ll promise to decorate both of you with white lights this Christmas.
"

As soon as she made the promise, she realized that she wouldn
'
t
be
on the island this Christmas.
"
No problem,
"
she added.
"
I
'
ll mak
e it a condition of the sale."

****

The next morning Jane went wandering through the lanes of town again. Her walks past the colonial houses and their picket-fenced gardens were becoming a habit, almost an addiction. The old
"
runner
'
s high
"
was being replaced by the new stroller
'
s contentment.

Today Jane had a specific goal in mind: to find the Quaker Burial Ground and, with any luck, the Cursed Rose itself. She wondered what a Cursed Rose looked like. Did it grow gnarled and crooked? Was it massive and intimidating? Was there something that would make it stand out from the pack? Hopefully the caretaker at the Quaker Burial Ground would have some clues.

She started out for the cemetery with clear directions in her head, but after detouring down Fair Street past the old Quaker Meeting House (which was closed), and then meandering across Lucretia Mott and down Pleasant, then across Candle House Lane, up New Dollar Lane and across Milk Street, she ended up, at last, on Vesper, one of the streets which she remembered bordered the cemetery.

She walked a fair distance out of town before deciding she
'
d got it wrong after all. Disheartened, she was about to turn around when Mac McKenzie pulled up in his dark green truck.

"
You look lost,
"
he said, rolling down his window.

Jane reluctantly explained her problem.

"
You
'
re looking for
Vestal Street
, not Vesper,
"
he said. He reached over and opened the door to the passenger side.
"
Get in; I
'
ll take you there.
"

Jane climbed into the cab of his truck feeling less competent than ever. Mac didn
'
t allude to the holly fiasco, but after a little neutral chitchat about the weather, she felt obliged to bring it up herself.

"
I owe you some money for your time lifting and replanting my holly,
"
she said in a businesslike voice.
"
Please send me a bill.
"
She thought of Jerry
'
s four stitches and Mac
'
s fight with Celeste, all for nothing. She wanted to ask Mac how his son was doing but didn
'
t dare.

"
What
'
s doing at the Quaker Burial Ground?
"
Mac asked, not unpleasantly.

He honestly didn
'
t seem to guess why she wanted to go there.
"
I, ah, thought I
'd just look around ..
. see
what the rose situation was ... whether there was one ... u
h
...
that looked like the one on Judith
'
s grave.
"

Mac turned to her and laughed out loud; the surprise in his face was genuine.
"
Well, here we are,
"
he said, pulling up alongside a stile-fenced meadow.
"
See for yourself.
"

It was a lovely spot, on high ground the way cemeteries often are. The view was rural and expansive, marred only occasionally by new construction. As for the cemetery itself, there didn
'
t seem to be any: only a big grassy field, dotted by a couple of lonely headstones. Well over to one side, there were several dozen more headstones squeezed together. But mostly it was plain, mowed grass. All that was missing were the picnic tables.

"
I don
'
t get it,
"
Jane said, her voice a blank.
"
Where is everybody? This is supposed to be a major burial ground for the Quakers.
"

Mac was leaning against the front fender of his pickup, with his arms folded across his chest and a glint in his eye, watching her confusion. He was wearing his heavy canvas
barn
jacket, which made her wonder whether she was keeping him from a job somewhere.
"
They
'
re there,
"
he said at last.
"
Ten thousand Quakers
—
all the movers and shakers of old
Nantucket
.

"
It
'
s a funny thing,
"
he said, his voice becoming pensive.
"
The Quakers made
Nantucket
rich, made it a household name around the world. And in the end, they willed themselves into oblivion. What you see is almost symbolic.
"

"But ..
. but I don
'
t see
anything,
"
she said, as baffled as ever.
"
Including any roses
—
cursed
or
blessed.
"
There was nothing growing in the field except a few shrubs along one section of the stile fence. As for there being an actual caretaker on the premises
—
well, Cissy wasn
'
t the only naïf on the island.

"
Can we go in?
"
she asked.

Mac n
o
dded, and they climbed over the fence together and began walking toward the cluster of headstones at one end. A candy wrapper and a crumpled sheet of paper littered the field; Mac picked them up and stuffed them in his pocket.

"
Will you tell me about the Cursed Rose now?
"
she asked him softly.

He answered her question with a question.
"
And your shoulder?
"

She stooped down to pick up a bit of litter on her own.
"
I have to admit, it
'
s better.
"
If only she knew why.