The Garden of Last Days (29 page)

AJ began unbuttoning his shirt with two fingers, a task he was glad to see he didn’t need two hands for. He went back into the dark hallway and as quietly as he could slid open the bifold door to the closet Mama’d emptied for his clothes. He tried to slip out of his shirt without lowering his hurt arm, but the collar got held up at his shoulders so he had to drop both hands and clench his teeth and let the shirt fall behind him.

But the pants were the hardest yet. They were his cotton Dockers Deena’d bought for him, a silver clasp holding them closed above the zipper. If it was a simple button or snap, he could get it loose with a couple of fingers, which he tried, but it was no good; the left side had to be held still for the right to be pushed to the left, then out. That would put pressure on his wrist just where that big prick had broken it.

For a half second he thought of leaving them on, put on a work shirt and his steel-toed boots and hope Cap Jr. didn’t notice. But no. This one had nice pleats in it, which is why he saved them for the Puma. If he left those pants on, he may as well shitcan his plan. Could he ask Mama? Get her to help him? No, it wasn’t quite three and she needed her sleep.

He was alone. It’s what he was used to anyway, wasn’t he? He gripped his pants between his pulsing thumb and forefinger, squeezed his eyes shut, took a breath, clenched his teeth, and pushed what felt like a molten sword up his arm into his brain and the air around his head. He let out a cry, he must have, because the room seemed to be in echo and his head felt too light. The smell of fresh coffee filled his nose like a reprieve from God himself.

“Alan? That you?” Her voice was muffled, then clear, like she’d talked into her pillow, then lifted her head.

He waited. Maybe she’d think she dreamt the sound he had to’ve made. But he was sure she could see the stove light now, and smell the coffee too.

“Alan?”

He heard the squeeze and release of her bedsprings. With his good hand he held his pants up and hurried over to the open doorway. “It’s me, Mama. Go back to sleep.” Her room smelled like cigarette smoke—old, new, and future.

“What’s wrong, honey? Were you hollering?”

“No.” His arm hurt more now than it had all night. He pictured the fracture in the bone opened wider by what he’d just done. “You must’ve dreamed it.”

A pale light from one of the security lights outside shone through the curtains. In it Mama looked small and old. Her head was bent low, and the oxygen tube ran from her face down into the darkness of the floor and the air-on-wheels tank.

“Why you making coffee? It’s three in the morning, hon.”

“Pipeline broke over in Sarasota. I got called in for overtime.”

“Oh.” She reached for her cigarettes, shook one out, and lit up with her lighter. It was a motion he’d seen her perform ten thousand times, as much a part of her as her voice and hair, her eyes and smell. Still, he never liked seeing that open flame around the oxygen.

“I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

“My cell phone, Mama.” He reached for her doorknob. “Want me to shut this so you can sleep?”

She exhaled a blue stream in the dark air in front of her. She shook her head and stubbed out her cigarette. “No, I’ll make you something to eat.”

“No time, Mama. I’ll get something later. Go back to sleep.” He walked into her room over the vacuumed wall-to-wall, holding his pants up and letting his hurt arm down like there was nothing wrong with it. He kissed the top of her head, her once-black hair gray and white now, thin and dry. “Go on back to sleep.”

“You be careful.”

“G’night, Mama.”

“That wife of yours know how hard you work?”

“She does.”

She slid back under the covers, her oxygen tube slapping the bedside table. “I hope so, son. I hope so.”

JEAN SAT IN
the dark under the mango sipping Shiraz. She’d gulped the first glass and half of the second, and this and the high walls around her garden and the garden itself—its night-blooming fragrances, its dim tangle of beauty laid out before her, calmed her enough that she could breathe more easily now, the weight momentarily lifted from her chest. But she kept seeing the face of the man on the motorcycle, his whiskers and vacant eyes, and she shuddered at the thought of being naked on a stage in front of such men. How did April do it?

Of course it might be easier if you weren’t ashamed of your body—as Jean was, as she’d always been—then it wouldn’t be so hard to flaunt. But still, they had to show everything, didn’t they? Their breasts and bottom, their
crotch
? She’d never done that even for Harry, and it had pained her whenever they made love in daylight and he would peek down there as he positioned himself between her legs. The shame
she’d always felt. Why? But she shoved the question away as if it were an errant fly: she didn’t deserve the right to this kind of introspection; she’d set out to bring Franny home and failed. Jean knew April liked her money, that she had nice outfits and plans for a home, but she couldn’t have called in sick just this
once
?

Jean’s heart was beating dull and quick in her chest. She made herself lean back and breathe deeply through her nose. She tried to relax her shoulders and upper back. Her arm was sore from where the IV had gone, and while she knew she hadn’t had a heart attack today she did have two of the other kind and how many more could her old heart take?

Though for all her fears, the ease with which she slipped into a panic, death itself did not frighten her so much; when she was ten or eleven years old in Kansas City, Papa would let her ride out with him to the plains where he went to deliver the babies of farm women. All those fields of wheat, the big barns and farm machinery, some of it horse-drawn, the unpainted clapboard houses under the trees, the smells of pig manure and the chicken houses, her father’s sweet pipe tobacco smoke as she followed him in her pride and happiness up porch steps to wait while he climbed to the room where the women were.

And sometimes the babies were born dead. On the way home he drove quietly, reaching over now and then to squeeze her knee or pat her shoulder; he’d speak about nature, and Jean could feel his failure inside the car like thick air and she’d be grateful
she
hadn’t died coming into this world. He’d tell her how pioneer women used to have many children, partly because they knew some would die and so it was a constant cycle of hope and loss, hope and loss, though these were not the words he used.

For days or weeks after each stillborn, Jean would move through her afternoons in a state of wonder and gratitude. She’d look across her sliced pork roast and snap peas at her two brothers, both older, both heavy and obnoxious, and she’d be thankful that the worst for
her was simply having to put up with them, their calling her Jean the Jelly Bean, the way they both treated her as if she were some kind of mistake, nearly worthless. But she knew better: she had survived being born when so many did not.
She
had lived and, therefore, if for no other reason, she was special in a way, was meant for something in this world.

Now, decades later, pouring herself the last of the Shiraz under her own mango tree, the invisible bully’s weight temporarily off her, she had no idea what her purpose had been—raising money for parks and museums? being Harry Hanson’s companion and lover all those years? tending this garden and looking after Franny Connors? These were not silly pursuits really, especially the last—if it weren’t for that child, Jean believed she’d be almost ready to go. Before Franny there were really only objects to leave behind—her house and car, her investment portfolio, her lovely garden.

Even now, in the darkness, what she could see and smell was a feast for her; all along the wall were dozens of white flowers of her frangipani; at her feet, in cedar boxes, were the yellow hibiscus and trumpet-shaped allamanda, and beyond them, hanging from the palm trunk, were the dim orange flowers of the bougainvillea vine, the jacaranda. Before Franny Connors this was all she worried about leaving behind: Who would care for them? Would the new owners keep them or tear them up to put in a pool or lawn, toss them—roots and all—into a Dumpster somewhere? Just thinking this could bring on the fears, and for the past few months, as they got worse, she assumed it was partly because her garden had gotten more lush and breathtaking, that witnessing its zenith was already triggering in her the expectation of its demise.

The night was quiet now. Jean squinted at her watch, a useless exercise in the dark. Still, it had to be very late, close to two probably. Within an hour April would be home, lifting Franny from the car and carrying her up the back steps. Jean’s mornings with her—it was as if her body at this late stage had just discovered an organ it didn’t know
it had, one that made her feel more alive and necessary than before. It was a feeling she’d never completely had for anyone else: her father, her husband—love wasn’t a big enough word.

Far off on the Gulf came the low echoed blast of a freighter’s horn. Jean sipped her wine, its warmth spreading out in her chest, and she knew that if Franny’s life would be long and joyous if she, Jean, were to die in her dark aromatic garden right now, then let it come. Let Death come and find her happy to go. Happy to.

AJ HAD PICKED
out a pair of Wranglers he could snap with one hand. Untying his work boots had been one thing, but tying them back up would be another. Maybe after he’d iced his wrist awhile he’d be able to use it, though he doubted it. It hurt worse now than it had since Deena put her considerable weight on it. As soon as he got to the hospital he’d insist on some pain pills, the kind the pharmacist at Walgreen’s kept locked up.

He poured himself some coffee into one of Mama’s mugs. She had a collection from all the hotels and inns she’d ever worked. This one had an etching on it of an alligator, sailboat, and two crossed tennis rackets. He blew on the coffee and sipped it, strong and bitter the way he liked. The T-shirt he wore was clean and he decided to just leave it on and wear that with his jeans and boots he wasn’t going to bother trying to lace up just yet. He opened Mama’s front door, made sure
it was unlocked, then carried his coffee down the hallway and front stairs and outside to check on the girl, his bootlaces slapping along.

He walked around to the front of his truck. She was still out, her face pointing up at the ceiling, her mouth half-open. He could see the tiny soles of her feet, his T-shirt covering her legs. He shook his head and sipped his coffee. Fucking Spring. That chilly smile of hers and the way she walked through the club like everybody was beneath her. The way the child was crying when he found her, standing there all alone in the kitchen, lost and afraid of the bugs outside and the man inside. And that sonofabitch better not’ve done anything to her.

It was getting closer to three now. Three and a half hours till he could start up the CAT and climb down into the ditch. For all the fuck-off that Cap Jr. was, he was punctual about showing up when AJ’s shift started at six-thirty. Maybe he should get there fifteen or twenty minutes early in case Junior showed up first. There was no way to hide his hand otherwise. He
had
to get there first. And who knew how long it would take to get this girl someplace safe.

Safe
. Where the hell was that? Maybe a church wasn’t the place. There were all those stories in the news about priests fucking kids. Maybe a Jewish temple would be better. He’d seen one out on Lido Key. Some kind of synagogue. It had an arched entryway and if she stayed asleep he could lay her down in the dark inside corner where nobody’d see her from the road. Across it was the lot of the marina and that’s where he’d park till a cruiser pulled up to the temple and he’d drive slowly away and out to Lido Key. But even if it all went like that, even if she did stay asleep and he could drive off without getting stopped, where would the little girl go? Back to her fucking mother who loved her so well? Back to the Puma?

He drank the last of the coffee and went inside. He wanted his driving cup Deena had given him, a Nissan Stainless she always made him go back out to his truck for so she could wash and dry it for him. That’s where it was now. Back at his house clean and upside down in the cabinet over the sink. So much of what he wanted and needed at home. He never should’ve gone back to the Puma tonight.
He should’ve come here and tried to get some sleep. Now he had a whore’s child in his truck and if he got caught with her they’d arrest him for sure.