Garden of Stones (26 page)

“So,” Ruby said, setting the well-thumbed scrapbook down on the step next to her. “What happened to
you?
”

* * *

Lucy spent Saturday afternoon in her tiny hidden garden. She cleared an area several feet square and began creating a low wall by setting oblong stones into the dirt. As she worked, memories of Reg’s hands on her body warred with thoughts of the long-running battle between Mrs. Sloat and Garvey. This job was supposed to be an escape, a way to put the pain of her mother’s death behind her; instead, she found herself right back in the crossfire of human emotion. Was there nowhere on earth for Lucy to escape, to start a life free of anguish?

When the sun began to set, she washed her hands under the spigot by the shed and wiped them on her dress. Feeling the coins in her pocket, she took them out and counted; today had netted her another eighty-five cents. Weekends seemed to mean bigger tips. Mrs. Sloat said she was keeping Lucy’s account for her, but Lucy had her doubts. She had no leverage, no way to ensure she was paid for her work. She had to assume it would be up to her to save enough for a fresh start.

That night in her room she found a loose section of floorboard that could be eased up to reveal a small hole in the wall where the plaster had crumbled away. She put the money there and dreamed of her little stash growing, stacks of shiny coins filling the wall.

Sunday dawned warm and clear, but her hopes for getting back into her rock garden were dashed when Mrs. Sloat met her on the way back from the motel.

“Don’t put that cart away yet. It’s high time you got started on Garvey’s room. Here,” she added, pulling a key from her pocket. “Keep this. Now you can go in there anytime you want, and you won’t have to wait for him to get to the door.”

Lucy pocketed the key wordlessly, afraid that anything she said would provoke Mrs. Sloat.

She wolfed down the plate of ham and biscuits Ruby made for her, then dragged her cart around the side of the house and up the ramp. When knocking brought no response, she used her key, entering the room cautiously, not surprised to see Garvey working at his desk under the light of a bright Tensor lamp.

“Who said you could come in here?” he growled, turning his chair around to face her. Today he was wearing a blue plaid shirt with short sleeves that strained around his biceps. His arms were far more muscular than she’d realized, sculpted by the effort of wheeling himself up and down the ramps and over the uneven grounds, the gravel and sunburned sod. He wore pressed canvas trousers, a snowy-white undershirt under his shirt. Someone was keeping his laundry nice. Lucy kept expecting it to show up in her pile, but so far it hadn’t.

“No one said. But I need to get started on your room. Mrs. Sloat wants it done today.”

“She can’t tell me what to do in my own house. I don’t want you in my room.”

Lucy dragged the cart into the room and took the folding step stool from its hook. “I’m just going to start on the walls,” she said as calmly as she could, hoping he wouldn’t see the way her hands were shaking. “You won’t even know I’m here.”

She set up the ladder in the corner farthest from Garvey’s desk and fetched a rag and the bucket of sudsy water. She had purposely put on her longest dress, the only one that was too big rather than too small, so that it wouldn’t ride up high on her legs as she worked, but she still felt self-conscious as she started on the wall. Her first swipe at the plaster coated the rag with grime, and the water quickly turned black. Water sluiced down her arms and onto her dress, her bodice getting uncomfortably damp so that it clung to her body. When she got down off the ladder, she’d only cleaned a couple square feet of the wall.

Garvey hadn’t budged. He was staring at her unabashedly, his arms crossed over his chest. “They teach you that in that place? How to do the shit work no American’ll touch?”

I’m American,
Lucy thought, but she refused to let him rattle her. “May I please use your sink? If I have to fill this from the hose, it’s going to take me a lot longer.”

Garvey only snorted, so Lucy emptied the bucket out the front door and crossed in front of Garvey to get to his private quarters, feeling his eyes on her the whole time. His bedroom was spotless, the bed precisely made up with the plaid spread she’d glimpsed that first day. A tall stack of books teetered on his nightstand, and she wished she could read the spines, but she didn’t dare.

The bathroom had a curious shower attachment and a steel bench; the tiled lip of the shower was only a few inches tall. Lucy caught herself wondering how he got from the chair to the bench and felt her face flame with embarrassment. She filled the bucket and carried it back to the ladder. Still, he stared.

Lucy couldn’t stand it. “You just going to watch me all day?”

“If you’re going to come in here against my wishes, disrupt my work, make it impossible for me to concentrate, I guess I’ll do whatever I damn well want.”

Lucy dipped her rag and started on the wall again. At this rate, it would take all afternoon to get halfway around the room. “Well, I’m not stopping you. If you don’t want to work, I guess that’s your choice.”

She scrubbed until the water was filthy. This time when she returned with a bucket of fresh water, she paused before climbing the ladder. “If you’re just going to sit there, you could at least talk to me.”

Garvey laughed bitterly. “About what? Trust me, the only thing you and I have in common is the misfortune of living on this cursed patch of land. You just do your work, think your pathetic little thoughts, and leave me in peace.”

He was silent after that, and eventually he turned back to his work, but throughout the long afternoon, Lucy felt him watching her. When evening approached and the light grew too dim to keep working, she had done all but the wall above his desk. Her arms ached and her back hurt, but as she pushed the cart out the door, she took a final look around the room and felt a sense of accomplishment. “I’ll finish the rest soon,” she said.

“I really wish you wouldn’t bother,” Garvey sighed.

But some of the vitriol had left his voice, as though the effort of despising Lucy had softened him.

* * *

Despite her weariness, Lucy felt unaccountably buoyed, and after dinner she set about cleaning her own room.

After pulling nails and clearing cobwebs and sweeping, Lucy looked around the tiny space and wondered if there was any hope for it. In Manzanar she learned to be on the lookout for spiders and mice and rats and lizards, even scorpions that found their way through cracks in the floors and walls. Somehow, the threat in this old house seemed even worse. In the night, it seemed likely that things were hiding behind the wall. Things that skittered and slithered and beat their papery wings, things with claws and teeth and hairless tails, tiny ears and gaping mouths and a dozen legs and slimy tongues.

The last thing she did before turning in was to take the pile of nails and broken lath and plaster out to the fence, stumbling in the darkness. She tossed it on top of the junk pile and turned back to the house. A light was on in Garvey’s apartment and she stared at the window for a moment, seeking his silhouette through the shade.

At the back door, Mrs. Sloat waited, bracing herself with one hand against the frame, watching Lucy approach. She smelled like liquor even from several feet away, and Lucy wondered where she’d gone all afternoon. Yesterday’s errand to see the fish man had taken far longer than a forty-mile round-trip ought to require.

“Now, how would you have gotten back in if I locked the door?” Mrs. Sloat said mockingly, holding up her ring of keys. They made a pretty tinkling sound.

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

“You coming from Garvey’s? Having a little fun?”

“No!”

They stared at each other, Lucy shivering under Mrs. Sloat’s drunken scrutiny. Finally the woman sighed and pushed away from the door. “Well, come on, now. I don’t have all night.”

Inside, the house still smelled of frying. Mrs. Sloat staggered toward the stairs, and Lucy headed for her room, finding her way in the dark.

30

In the morning she found a tin picnic chest in the kitchen sink. Inside, a string of fish, silver scaled and gape mouthed, lay on a bed of melting ice.

“Mr. Dang caught smallmouth bass yesterday,” Mrs. Sloat said blandly. She was sitting at the table, a glass of water resting on top of the folded newspaper. Lucy wondered if she even remembered their exchange of the evening before. “We can do these with cornmeal tonight.”

Lucy started to gather the breakfast things, but Mrs. Sloat stopped her.

“I’ll take care of breakfast this morning,” she said, getting up slowly, her hand to her temple. She went to the counter and poured coffee into a thermos. “You take this to Garvey. Spend a little time with him. Keep him company.”

“I don’t think I should,” Lucy said carefully. “I was there all day yesterday—I’m not sure he wants to see me again so soon.”

“We’ve spoken. He understands that your responsibilities include attending to him,” Mrs. Sloat said impatiently. “You shouldn’t have any more trouble from him.”

“But I don’t...”

“You’re here to make his life easier,” Mrs. Sloat said shortly. “He should be grateful. Besides, you’re still a woman, despite—” She waved her hand in the direction of Lucy’s face. “And he’s still a man, though not much of one, unfortunately.”

Lucy left the kitchen, her face flaming with embarrassment. She needed a moment to think. Outside, the morning was cool, dew on the grass and wild poppies opening to the first rays of sun.

Mrs. Sloat wanted her to wait on her brother, to serve him—but why? Only to humiliate him further, to underscore her limitations? It was as if she wanted to taunt him, to taunt them both.
You’re still a woman, and he’s still a man
.

Lucy felt the flush creeping across her face. No man would want Lucy, not even a man like Garvey.

She stood at the bottom of the ramp, debating with herself. She could refuse, she could defy Mrs. Sloat. And Mrs. Sloat could send Lucy back to Manzanar with no notice. There would be no second chance after that; Sister Jeanne had made it clear that this was her one opportunity.

But if Lucy could save enough, she could set out for the east, some busy city where a strong back and a little luck would be all she needed to start a life. She just had to endure long enough.

She’d endured worse, hadn’t she?

Lucy walked past the oleander, up the ramp. She didn’t bother knocking, but fitted her key to the lock. It was warm from being carried in her pocket. The door swung open and she stepped inside.

Garvey was sitting at his worktable, as usual. “Why the hell can’t you just leave me the fuck alone,” he muttered, wheeling himself around.

Lucy set the thermos down on a small table in the bay window and reached for the broom and dustpan that were leaning next to the door, blushing furiously as she tried not to meet Garvey’s eyes.

“Mrs. Sloat wanted me to bring your coffee,” she said, not knowing what to say next. Another girl would know what to do. Even
she
would have known what to do, before. She thought of Jessie, those first sweet kisses. Lucy had marveled at the knowledge that lay inside her, dormant until the day he took her hand in his: how to walk with her hips gently swaying, how to turn and smile over her shoulder, how to lean into his neck so they fit together perfectly.

“The floors must be hard for you. I can have that done in no time. I can sweep today and then if you want, one day later this week I can wax. I’ll have to move the furniture but I can do half at a time, I don’t mind—”

“I don’t need you,” Garvey said, his voice hoarse and ragged. “I didn’t ask you to come here.”

Lucy took a small step closer. So he wasn’t going to make this any easier for her. “But I have to. Mrs. Sloat said she talked to you, she said...”

“Oh, God,” Garvey said, and turned back to his table. The pelt he’d been working on all week was now stretched over a wood-and-wire form, only its mouth still rolled back on itself. He stared at the thing’s gruesome, gaping face. “Oh,
God
.”

There was such revulsion in his voice. Was it so painful to look at her? She knew that her face twisted something inside him, provoked him. It had never been because she was Japanese—she saw that now as he clutched the edge of his worktable with both hands, the skin of his knuckles whitening at the power of his grip.

They were both damaged. Both unwanted. Was it the reflection of his own misery that Garvey saw when he looked at her? Couldn’t they forge some sort of alliance—the kindness of silence, the knowledge of kinship? Couldn’t some small bond be knitted from the strands of the terrible things that had happened to each of them?

But if the answer was no, she would not let Garvey intimidate her. She watched his quaking shoulders, his agonized face, and hated him for finding her wounds uglier than his.

“Please,” she said carefully. “Your sister sent me....”

Garvey’s fist crashed down onto the worktable, causing objects to jump and skitter. Something fell to the floor, and Lucy knelt to retrieve it. A small, pale, round thing, it rolled away from his chair and out of sight, into the small space between the cabinet and the floor.

“Don’t,” Garvey said sharply. But Lucy was already crawling after it on her knees.

As Lucy lowered her face to the floor, she saw the spinning spokes of the chair’s wheels out of the corner of her eye, catching the sunlight. There—all the way against the wall—the little object glowed milky-white.

Lucy’s dress had been clean this morning. She had done her own laundry on Friday, pressing her three dresses with care. The neat pleats and crisp collars mattered to her the way the sparkling mirrors and perfectly made beds and orderly kitchen cupboards mattered, as proof that Lucy was better than any task life put in front of her. But the dress could be laundered and pressed again.

She lay flat on her chest and extended her arm as far as she could under the cabinet. No good. Her fingers grasped at nothing as she strained against the lip of the cabinet, her shoulder blocking her reach.