The Garden Path (14 page)

She lay curled against Ivan, listening to the sound of the wind whipping past outside their window, and the cats purring themselves to sleep at her feet. She had never stopped being grateful for silence to sleep by—this kind of silence. For a long time after she and Edwin had moved out to New Mexico, Susannah had fallen asleep to the echoes, from the depths and crannies of her mind, of her parents arguing. They had begun to argue, with brutal suddenness, one summer evening, and hadn't stopped until Edwin left the house for good in the autumn—a couple of hard months that had finally brought her together with Peter in fearful horror. Their parents had never argued, all those years—had long since, in fact, stopped speaking to each other. The children had become used to the cold silence in their house—had become part of it, so that when the noisy fights began, on hot summer nights after they had gone up to bed, they hadn't known what to do. Susannah sometimes crept into Peter's room, and they sat in the dim light staring at each other, wordless and frightened, listening to the long, noisy, heedless battles downstairs, the angry words bouncing off the walls. The words had struck Susannah and her brother with their violence, their ugliness, like actual blows, her mother's shrill voice going on and on, her father's hard and strained, as if saved up for the long, almost guttural speeches that hit and hit and hit until her mother's protest came. And now and then a blow, or something thrown. And then a horrible silence out of which Susannah and Peter would try to salvage sleep.

Sleep came easily to her now, and had for years—but never, she thought as she drifted off, never so easily as it did in this old, cold Connecticut house. She sank into it thankfully, receptive to any and all dreams, ready to examine each of those that remained in her memory when she awoke, in case there was anything there to learn.

February became March; the weather stayed cold. While Duke and Ivan worked on the restaurant, Susannah worked on her story. It had changed drastically from the form it had been taking back in California and on the road. It no longer involved a star settlement; it had somehow located itself inside Ivan's painting and she had titled it “Cloud House” in acknowledgment. It was funny how different the painting, with its colored mists and vague presences, looked in their bedroom here. Maybe it was the cold. Could it be the cold? Susannah pondered the question, trying to be rational. What on earth could
cold
do to a painting to change its appearance—no, its
aura
. She winced at the California word, wished it weren't so accurate.
Pull yourself together, Susannah
. It was the light, not the temperature, that made the difference, surely. The light here was so much less intense. And yet she couldn't help feeling some urgency, to get the story done before the weather warmed up and the painting lost its—what? Its mysterious cold thrilling
chill
. And with it the muse that inspired her—some new muse, for the story was better and more moving than anything she had done before.

It frightened her. Calling it “Cloud House” frightened her, as if she were stealing from Ivan, though she knew he would be delighted and flattered. But mostly it was the fact that the twins had somehow got into her story, first on the fringes, then as the inhabitants of the mysterious house of mist. She had never put anyone real into her stories—just, sometimes, strangers glimpsed and given life in her imagination. But she felt a large, peaceful conviction that Mary Claire and Mary Grace had to be in “Cloud House,” and whenever she contemplated the little girls in her story, in that shivery space where its events took place, she was happy; in the midst of her panic she was secure in the knowledge that it was right. She wondered whether her happiness was artistic or personal. She had vowed to be happy here, had been exhorted to, had sensed she would be, and she was. Her happiness grew from a fine tangle of causes: being in Connecticut, whose hard brown and white winters she remembered with pleased surprise; her father's continuing to hang on; Ivan's fidelity apparently a fact, at least for the moment; Duke invariably kind; the continual possibility that she might be pregnant; the growing friendship with the little twins; and her story taking this strange, exhilarating turn.

She was downstairs early every morning, in spite of the cold. The cold, she sometimes thought, got her going as the more languid California air never could. Or maybe it was the morning routine with Ivan, their own private fertility rites: the taking of her temperature while she lay flat on her back, still half asleep; the graphing of her fertile days; the pacing of their sex life to the workings of her body. When the time was right, they made love sleepily, warming their cold skin when they embraced, curling their toes together and murmuring softly while everyone else slept. They dozed off, still entwined, until Susannah heard the twins' alarm clock go off next door and slipped out of bed and downstairs, followed by the gentle footsteps of the cats. The house was freezing, but in the kitchen, where Duke already had the stove going, it was almost too hot. Once fed, the cats clustered around it—“stove worship,” Duke called their invariable early-morning gathering at its feet—and the children dressed there while Susannah made oatmeal or pancakes and Duke prepared sandwiches and cut apples into slices for the lunchboxes. The radio station Duke listened to always began with bird song at seven, followed by Baroque music. The announcer's slow, gravelly reading of the news, the trills and twitters of birds, the trumpets and violins of Vivaldi mingled pleasantly with the voices of the twins as they dressed. Susannah and Duke did their tasks in silence, smiling now and then at the chatter, watching the two identical little bodies pull on overalls, turtlenecks, wool socks, boots, leaving their long underwear and sleepers on the floor in a pile that Susannah would take upstairs later, and then they watched them eat, Mary Claire daintily, Mary Grace with gusto, both of them ending up with milk mustaches.

That early hour belonged to the children, Susannah thought. She and Duke were half-awake, bemused by the radio, the heat from the stove, the sun that poured in without warmth through the east-facing window (with its paper cutout snowflakes taped on). They moved slowly, like animals coming out of hibernation. The twins by contrast were quick, noisy, full of energy. They loved school, loved Miss Ralston, their teacher, loved Monday because it was show-and-tell day, loved Wednesday because it was music day, loved riding the yellow bus, and leapt up when they heard its horn, wiping off the milk on their upper lips or leaving it, grabbing jackets and lunchboxes, and kissing not only Duke but the cats and Susannah good-bye—quick messy kisses that often brought tears to her eyes. And the house would seem instantly bigger, and empty, and she and Duke would sit down to coffee, and Ivan would come downstairs wet-haired from the shower, and they would eat breakfast, and the day would begin, with its talk of tile and lumber.

During those first weeks, nearly every day, Ivan and Duke went off to price supplies or oversee their delivery, or to work on the renovations. Susannah went with them twice, once out of curiosity, the second time dutifully. They drove here and there in the van; there were interminable waits. Ivan and Duke stuck their hands in their pockets and looked down at their shoes and held long conversations with men who did the same, conversations in which pipes and stoves could suddenly, inexplicably turn female: “She'll never go under there, Duke—you're going to have to knock off a couple inches,” Ivan might say, and Duke would reply, “You're right, old buddy—she's bigger than she looks.”

The empty restaurant, squashed between a liquor store and a tropical fish store, was dingy, unimaginable as an inviting place where people might come and eat. Susannah stood around, sat on an empty packing case, went to fetch pastries at a Polish bakery she discovered down the road, drove to a hardware store for a retractable measuring tape, waited alone in the empty store in case the stove was delivered, while Ivan and Duke went to check out an ad in the paper for cut-rate ceramic tile.

The man from the liquor store came over. “Health food, eh?” he asked, glancing around skeptically: fattish, oldish, with greasy strands of hair combed over a bald spot—glued down? Susannah wondered. “Doesn't look all that healthy right now.” He kicked at a swept-together pile of debris. They didn't have a dustpan yet.

“It'll take a few months,” Susannah said reluctantly. “One of these days it'll be all green and white and wood, with plants and good cooking. But there's a lot to do.”

“Sure is.” His shiny pants were tight across stomach and crotch. He had dashed over without a coat, and he rubbed his cold hands together. “Well, good luck with it. I'm Eliot Stang. All the merchants here are pretty friendly. You get tired of peppermint tea, come on over and have a quick one with me. All natural ingredients,” he said with a big grin. When he jerked his head in the direction of his shop a few strands of hair broke loose and flopped on his scalp. “And tell your boyfriends, too.”

“My husband,” Susannah said quickly. “I mean, one of them is my husband, the other is an old friend of ours.”

“Well, whatever,” he said, looking dubious, and after a last survey of the place he left, shaking his head and whistling tunelessly. In the window of his store there was a mechanical liquor sign—a metallic pink heart with a bottle shot through it like an arrow, pouring brown stuff into a glass: a leftover from Valentine's Day.

After those first couple of days, Susannah stayed home when Duke and Ivan went out to measure and negotiate and compare prices and argue tile. “I'm not much help,” she said apologetically.

“There's not a lot you can do at this stage,” Duke said, beaming at her through his glasses as if he was sure the time would come, and soon, when she would be their mainstay, their rallying point.

“We could use someone to run errands,” Ivan said.

“We're so well organized we aren't going to have any errands.” Duke laughed. “I'll tell you. If Susannah will stay home and keep the stoves going I'll gladly go get my own coffee—and yours too, you lazy bastard. It'll be nice to come home to a warm house.”

“And dinner,” said Ivan.

“Sure,” Susannah said. “I'll get dinner. Of course.” Only she and Ivan knew what a momentous statement this was. “And I'd be here when the twins come in,” she added defiantly. “You wouldn't have to rush back.”

“That would be great,” Duke said sincerely.

“Watch it with the stoves,” said Ivan. “I hope you've got smoke alarms, Duke.”

“Three of them,” Duke assured him. Susannah knew Ivan would check them later to see if they worked. “And don't worry, Ivan. You're worse than my mother. I've lived here for three years, and she's still sending me clippings about woodstove safety.”

“But your hands, Duke,” said Susannah, looking at the pink and purple scars.

“I don't even feel them—that's why I keep burning myself. But you wear gloves, Susannah. The ones hanging on the hook next to the stove. Promise?”

“I mean it, Susie. Be careful,” Ivan said in the morning when they left her alone. “Watch out for sparks.” He looked from her to the stove, as if calculating her chances of burning the place down. “And wear the gloves,” he added, shaking his head; his calculations obviously hadn't come out well.

Duke instructed her in the stove's use, the most efficient placement of the logs, when to open the vents and when to shut them down, how to use the tongs.

“I'll be fine,” she insisted.

She couldn't wait, most days, for them to leave. As soon as they did she went upstairs to the bedroom and huddled with her notebook under a quilt, leaving the stove to keep the kitchen cozy, to subside, to dwindle to coals, then to ashes, and grow cold, unless she remembered to go down and fill it up. Sometimes she did, often she didn't. Loading the stove both scared and excited her—the way it ate up the logs, reducing them in no time to a pile of bright coals, filled her with awe. She liked to toss into the stove the shriveled leaves that came in with the wood, and watch the fire expose their ribs and then consume them in a gulp—or bits of paper, junk mail, brown bags, so that the fire fluttered high, teasing them before it chewed them to bits.

But usually Susannah forgot the stove until it was nearly time for the twins to arrive—some sixth sense keeping her alert to four o'clock—and then with newspapers and twigs and gingerly manipulation of the vents and the judicious placement of small logs she got it roaring again, ending up flushed and hot and out of breath. Duke and Ivan caught her in delinquency only once, when they arrived home early to find the house stone cold and Susannah upstairs correcting her typescript, her hand cramped and sore, her teeth chattering.

“Susannah, for heaven's sake—”

She smiled a dazed smile. “I'm done, Ivan. I've finished it.”

So that was all right. He was proud of her dedication. Duke was impressed by it, that she could fail to notice the cold because she was so involved with her work.

“That's really something,” Duke said with respect.

Susannah laughed. “Read the story, Duke,” she said, coming out from under her quilt. “Then decide if it's really something.”

“Can I? Read it?”

It surprised her. “I guess so,” she said, and didn't know what to think when he held out his hand for it and took it downstairs to read then and there.

“The typing isn't very good,” she said, following him. “I've never done my own typing before. I haven't even finished proofreading it, really.”

“That's okay,” said Duke. He was sitting in the rocking chair by the stove, eating an apple while he read, taking large distracted bites. “It's fine.”

Susannah watched him while Ivan built a fire. It was the twins' late day; they stayed after school for gymnastics and were brought home by the mother of a friend. The big red thermometer on the wall said fifty-eight degrees. Duke read steadily through the sheaf of white typed pages. Once he paused, stopped chewing, and sat motionless for half a page while Susannah held her breath before, in slow motion, his jaws began to move again and the rocking chair to creak. Ivan puttered around the kitchen, poking the fire, putting the kettle on, sweeping ashes from the floor around the stove and depositing them tidily in the ash bucket. What a dear domestic creature he is, Susannah thought, only half taking it in; her other half watched Duke. No one ever read her stories in her presence. Ivan had, once or twice, when they were first married, but they seemed to embarrass him—he didn't like their strangeness, Susannah knew, and didn't know how to say so tactfully—and he'd soon stopped. Carla had, of course, when she typed them, but she had never commented much. Susannah couldn't even bring herself to read them over once they were typed. And now here was a complete stranger, nearly, who never, so far as Susannah had observed, read anything but
Prevention
and books with titles like
The Complete Guide to Solar Energy
and
Cooking With Whole Grains
. She didn't know if she was more scared or exhilarated—it was like making the fire.