The Wishing Garden (13 page)

“Are you concentrating, Dad?” Savannah asked, because he had stopped swirling the cards. He started up again and thought about the only question he really wanted answered: How much more time would he have with the woman who couldn’t hide the soil beneath her fingernails, who resorted to midnight trickery in order to protect him from grief? How much more time would he have with Maggie?

“All right.” Savannah took back the cards, sat down on the bed and laid them out.

They looked all right to him. No Death card, no Devil. Savannah’s hat dipped over her eyes as she studied them.

“This is the Hierophant.” She pointed to the first card she’d drawn. “It can mean a spiritual leader, or too much reserve and timidity.”

“Ha!” Maggie said from the corner, but she did not turn around.

“You see this?” Savannah pointed to the second card. “This is the Four of Cups. This is what crosses you. It is the card of weariness. A struggle.”

“What about that?” Doug indicated the card to the right of the four, a man sitting on a throne, the King of Swords.

“That’s your distant past. You’ve been exposed to a controlling person. That is what has shaped you.”

They both looked up at Maggie. “So now I’m to blame,” she said.

“Look at this, Dad,” Savannah continued. “Your future is the Knight of Wands. I’ve always loved that card. It’s the card of journeys. Advancement into the unknown without fear. It is a card of risk.”

Doug looked over Savannah’s shoulder at his wife. She stood stiff as stone. He knew, if he tried to touch her, she would pull away. She would tell him she didn’t need his pity and it would only be later, when she thought he was asleep, that she would sneak into the bathroom and turn on the water so she could cry in peace.

She would have planted nothing but common, spiky juniper if it had been up to her; she abhorred softness and anything she had to work too hard to know. She believed he had kept something from her all these years, that his feelings were some kind of buried treasure in his garden. He had never refuted this, because it was better than the truth: He was not a deep man. He didn’t want to be. He didn’t philosophize or analyze his feelings. The only time he’d ever thought things through was when he wrote his poetry, and he’d given that up years ago. He had not liked those midnight sessions, when he’d surprised himself with his own ferocity. When he realized there were parts of himself he didn’t own. He hadn’t liked the way loving someone that much had turned his stomach inside out, made him almost angry. Better were the mornings when the desert sun seemed capable of burning the passion out of anyone. Better to plant a strawberry tree and watch it grow slowly, rising just ten feet a lifetime, and taking so little water it wasn’t a drain on anything.

Maggie turned suddenly and stared at him. Her eyes were so dry he knew they stung her.

“What’s there to risk,” she asked, “if you’re already dying?”

Doug leaned back. The doctors said the cancer had gone from his skin to his lymph nodes to his brain. They said it was unclear how much radiation and chemotherapy could do at this point, but there was no alternative, save letting him die. Treatment, however, would be a kind of poison. It would eat up the good cells along with the bad. There was the potential for horrendous side effects, including damage to the heart, kidney, bladder, lung and nervous system, nausea, vomiting, and debilitating fatigue.

What they hadn’t told him was that the cancer would also spread to the coating around his heart. His ventricles fluttered now when he least expected it, when he was doing nothing more than looking at his wife. His aorta flip-flopped when he thought of leaving her behind with no one to be strong for, his pulse stopped cold when she got up beside him at dawn and watched the sun rise over his garden, tilting her head back, so her tears wouldn’t run down.

Radiation had burned a hole right through the trapdoor at the back of his throat. Maggie was absolutely right: What did he have to risk when he was already dying, except those few things that cancer could not devour, the bittersweet poetry of his soul?

He breathed deeply, and his voice didn’t break until halfway through, and by then it didn’t matter. If he was already dying, then the least he could do was go about it flying through thin air.

He began:

He could hear his daughter crying, but Doug didn’t take his eyes from his wife. He wondered if she would laugh, if she would even believe it of him. He hadn’t shown any sign of passion or raised his voice in years. But now, he found himself thinking everything depended on whether or not Maggie thought him capable of poetry. All of a sudden, he had a million ways to say he loved her, and he had to get them all down on paper.

Maggie walked across the room and knelt by the side of the bed. She laid her head in his lap. She hadn’t appeared to be crying, but immediately his pants were soaking wet. “You idiot,” she said. “You sweet, simple fool.”

After a few afternoons helping Jake at the Dawsons, Eli Malone had the place cased. The house itself was a fortress—deadbolts, security system, and that crazy woman who packed a stun gun in her purse. But the
garage apartment was another story. Savannah Dawson never locked the front door and often left the windows open at night. She let in total strangers who, more often than not, listened to their fortunes, then stiffed her.

At midnight, he sat in his car across Sage Street, smoking a joint. If he were a fortune-teller, you could bet he’d get his money up front. Hell, for twenty dollars a pop, he could tell the future too. Beware of love and marriage and rules, because they were all things just asking to be broken. Get the best dope you can find and never care for anyone, just in case it turns out they have something you want.

Eli was not in danger of that. He was a sieve when it came to people; they could pour their hearts out, and it would go right through him. His father was a sober brute and a drunk fool, and both had no effect on Eli whatsoever. The last time his father had beaten him, it had been one hundred and five degrees, but when Eli packed his bags and left for good, he didn’t sweat one drop.

He crushed the joint and stepped out of the car. The girl was in the garage; that might have stopped another guy, but it didn’t dissuade him. Emma Shaw was pretty, but what did he need with that? Look at him. He was a mess. He owned two pairs of jeans, three T-shirts, an aging Corvette and two-year-old Reeboks. He had a two-inch scar on his left cheek, compliments of one of his father’s sober rages, but which he told everyone was from a knifing. No decent person came within ten feet of him. He’d lived on his own since he was sixteen, in a shack up Boulder Creek, and not even deer came through his garden anymore, that’s the kind of stink he gave off. Other guys based their worthiness on grade point averages and touchdowns; he based his on how many hubcaps
he stole a night. Pretty girls were for Romeos and college boys. He’d slept with six girls, and they’d all been as ugly as he was.

So he wasn’t going to think about the girl, or anything else. He took a step toward the garage, then flew to the ground when the door suddenly opened. Savannah Dawson stepped out and walked through the garden. She wrapped her arms around her stomach and the lamplight exposed the tears that slipped down her cheeks.

He hadn’t expected that, but so what? So the woman was capable of sorrow. Big deal. She deserved a little; everyone did. She had been getting on his nerves anyway, with that really obnoxious good mood.

She headed out of the garden toward the corner, her dress swiping the neighbors’ lawns and sending up clouds of moths. Eli waited until she’d disappeared around Forest Drive, then he crept through Doug’s garden, a garden so well tended it was like a dressed-up baby, a garden he could not understand. He’d gotten up early one morning last week and crept into the perennial bed to toss salt through it, just to see how fast things could die. Unfortunately, that turned out to be the one day Doug felt well enough to get out of bed at dawn; the old man found him with the blue can still in his hand, the rock jasmine wilting at his feet but ready to rebound at the first hint of water. Instead of screaming, Doug had simply put an arm around Eli’s shoulders. “You know, son,” he’d said, “one day you’re going to tire of all this hate. It’ll seep right out of you, so it might not be a bad idea to have a backup plan.”

Eli had blinked and blinked and blinked. And then he’d looked at Doug like he was crazy.

Now, Eli tromped through the garden and didn’t breathe in. He wasn’t about to be swayed by the tender aromas of honeysuckle and sage, or tempted to softness
by the caress of velvet lilies. He put his hand around a shoot of beard tongue and yanked it right out of the ground. He tossed it in the mermaid fountain, then crept up to the garage door.

Of course it was unlocked. If the gypsy couldn’t figure out on her own that it was a bad world, then maybe she just had to be shown. Maybe he was doing her a favor.

Silently, he opened the door and shut it behind him, then waited until his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He made out Emma’s shape on the bed in the corner, all curled up. He had told himself he’d go straight for Savannah’s jewelry which, after he pawned it, would bring in enough for a quarter of the latest Colombian. He had told himself he’d be in and out in seconds, but instead he walked over to Emma. Her back was to him, a wave of pine-colored hair swept over the pillow. He leaned over just enough to make out the sweep of her nose, the long, brown lashes on her skin, a funny red freckle in the center of her cheek.

He reached out, then snatched back his hand. He didn’t know what he was thinking. He was not about to start wanting anything now. Especially not a girl who would take one look at him and run.

He turned away. On the window ledge were half a dozen rings, and he slipped them all in his pockets. He scooped up the bracelets just lying on the nightstand, two dozen gold and silver strands. Then he walked into the makeshift kitchen to look for cash.

They had set out a Coleman stove for cooking, along with an old wood-paneled microwave. There was a bowl still half-full of popcorn, and Eli stuffed a handful in his mouth. Then he hit pay dirt. On the sink, ridiculously in plain sight, was a glass canister
filled with cash—ones, fives, and tons of change—as if the world wasn’t full of crooks.

The jar jingled when he lifted it, but Emma didn’t move. He slipped the canister beneath his arm and headed for the door. The jingling of the coins was loud, so he bolted. He managed to get his hand on the knob, but no farther.

“She works hard for that,” Emma said.

Eli went still. He had no luck. His father had started punching him when he was three, to toughen him up. It must have worked because, by third grade, not even the bullies would come near him. By the time he dropped out of school seven years later, there wasn’t a person in the city, besides Jake, who wasn’t afraid of him.

But toughness had nothing to do with luck. During a forest fire two years ago, his had been the only shack to get burned. He might as well wear a bull’s-eye; he was a disaster waiting to happen.

So it was no surprise that Emma caught him. She got out of bed and came up right behind him. She put a hand on his arm.

He turned around, his eyes blazing, not because he’d gotten caught, but because her hand was soft as silk, because it was just plain stupid for a guy like him to feel what he was feeling.

“Look, I need it, all right?” he said. “Your mom can just con some more people, but me …”

“You can’t just steal.”

“Oh, can’t I?” But what he was thinking was that no, he couldn’t, not anymore, not when she was looking at him like that. He was thinking her eyes were the color of river rock, and something deep inside him was breaking apart.

“Eli,” Emma said, stepping up to him, and he thought for a moment that she would kiss him, but all
she did was take the canister out of his hand. She walked back to the kitchen and put it on the counter. She flipped on the overhead light.

It was one of those long fluorescent tubes, and its intensity shocked them both. Eli jammed his hands in his pockets, where he still had Savannah’s rings and bracelets. He closed his fists around them.

“Are you gonna tell your mom?” he asked.

Emma looked away. She wore an oversized Mickey Mouse T-shirt that fell to her knees. Her hair was mussed, and she was so thin she looked like a child, but all he could think about was how she was going to have to push him to get him to leave now.

“No,” she said quietly. “I guess not.”

He stepped forward, then stopped. Everyone had assumed he’d moved out of his parents’ house at sixteen to escape his father’s beatings. But that hadn’t been it at all. Fists he could take. It was his mother’s crying every morning that had done him in. It was pity he’d run from. It was caring.

Nevertheless, he walked across the room. When he reached Emma, he lifted the jewelry out of his pockets and put it in her hand. He was still bad luck; probably he was bad all the way through. But for this one moment, for reasons unfathomable to himself, he found himself incapable of meanness. He was shocked by who he might become.

“Eli?” she said, but he was already out the door. He was through the garden in seconds, which was just as well, since it smelled sweeter than anything he’d come across in years.

Savannah watched the boy run through the garden and hop into his car. The Corvette peeled out, and Eli
Malone was halfway down the street before he remembered to turn his lights on.

She sat on the curb in front of Martha Williamson’s beige stone house. The woman was nearly deaf and Savannah could clearly hear Humphrey Bogart telling Katharine Hepburn to get the hell off his boat. The light was still on across the street, in her garage, then suddenly it went out. Savannah took a deep breath.