The Night Garden (9 page)

“Hello?” Olivia called as she walked. “Hello? Where are my two old goats?”

The goat, which had never been given a name, got to its hooves and went bounding toward Olivia. She reached down to
pet the wiry white hair between its brown horns. Unlike humans, goats were not allergic to the particular chemical makeup of Olivia’s skin, and Arthur sometimes suspected that if the beast would only follow Olivia up the side of the ravine one day, she would be more than happy to spoil him rotten. But, of course, the dumb animal didn’t know what was good for it, and it remained at Arthur’s side in the ravine’s murky gloom.

Arthur got up from the rock where he’d been sitting and pondering the world as it went by. His bones ached with age. “At last!” he cried. “Olivia! Come—look at this!”

He motioned for her to follow. With the goat between them nipping at Olivia’s cotton skirt, they walked down to the streambed. One little meandering finger of water hobbled down the center of the rocky bed. “Look,” he said.

Olivia bent toward a patch of moss growing on the side of an old tree. It was called British soldier, red-tipped and uniform as its colonial namesake. She stood. “So?”

“So …” He shook his hands in front of him. “So? It’s on the wrong side of the tree.”

She stared at him blankly.

“Something’s coming,” he told her. “We have to be careful.”

Had she been a different woman she might have patted him on the back to reassure him. Instead, she adjusted her bag. “Have you been doing nothing but waiting for me all day?”

“What time is it?”

“Two.”

“Then, no.”

“Good.”

“I couldn’t have been waiting for you
all
day, because all day hasn’t passed yet.”

The goat head-butted her leg and she reached down to scratch it. “I just don’t know how you put up with him.”

“I don’t know, either.”

“I was talking to the goat,” she said.

Arthur laughed; he was glad to see her smiling.

He followed her as best he could over the blue, shadow-speckled rocks along the streambed and back toward his shack. Solomon’s Ravine was a shady swath of bottomland that cut a jagged interruption through the center of the Pennywort property. It was inaccessible to all but the most intrepid of intruders. Arthur’s two-room hovel hunkered at the flat, narrow bottom of the ravine, so organic and ramshackle that unless a person passing through happened to know where to look, the structure was virtually invisible to the naked eye, perfectly blended with the tumbled bluestone rocks, poplars, and elms around it. Only the occasional curl of smoke catching in the high green canopy suggested to the people of Green Valley that some fire-making animal lived in the gorge.

Arthur himself had the same kind of natural camouflage as his home—an air of organic dereliction that made him blend in. His natty gray beard caught cockleburs in the summer and frost in the winter, his floppy hat was the mottled white and brown of an old-man-of-the-woods mushroom, and he rarely smelled better than the tiny green carrion flowers that bloomed not far from his shack in early June. His skin had an undeniable greenish tint that only augmented his green eyes; people said he had spent so much time beneath the diffused light of the canopy that his skin had taken on the color, absorbed it, the same way that a person turns brown and spotty if he stays too long in the sun.

Olivia was walking a bit faster than Arthur. He watched as she sat down on one of the large, spotty rocks that marked his front door and pulled her bag onto her lap. The goat was at her feet, waiting for a treat. She retrieved a bruised potato and began to feed him, petting him all the while.

“Olivia,” Arthur said, joining her on the rocks when he caught up. “You’ve got to listen to me.”

“I’m listening, Professor.”

“No, you’re not. You’re not listening.”

She looked at him with put-on patience as the goat ate a carrot noisily out of her hand. “Dad. I’m listening. I can do two things at once.”

“The mushrooms. And the wind? Hear it?”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly.”

She sighed. “How’s your hand?”

He frowned down at it. “The splinters?”

She nodded.

Yesterday when she’d come, she brought latex gloves so she could tweeze a half dozen splinters out of his palm. He’d got them from tripping and falling face-first on a rotting nurse log, but he’d told her they were from running his hand over the side of his shack. “Much better. No problems at all.”

“Why don’t we see what I brought for you today?”

She handed him the contents of her bag one item at a time: a new book of crossword puzzles; a knob of bread and hunk of cheese in foil; the batteries he needed for his radio; a cylinder of propane; two jars of peanut butter; a box of 12-gauge shotgun shells; and a handful of new pipettes, because he always broke them. Thanks to Olivia, he got along well enough in the ravine: He had a propane stove for cooking, a woodstove for heat, an outhouse, and a bubbling, natural spring. He also had Olivia, his only visitor, supporter, and friend.

“What about the glycerin?” he asked.

“It hasn’t come yet.”

“Oh, baloney.”

“
Language,
Dad.”

He looked at her and she smiled.

“What do you even need glycerin for?”

“What I always need things for.”

“Right—right. An experiment. But what kind of experiment?”

“It’s for soap. I’m making soap.”

“You have soap.”

“I’m making new soap. Or, I would be, if I had the glycerin.”

“If you moved back into the farmhouse, you would know the moment it arrived,” Olivia said.

Arthur raised his hands and dropped them. “Olivia. My love. Daughter. My moving into that old house is the
least
important thing when there’s moss growing on the wrong side of a tree.”

“We can have the house open for you again in half a day. And you would know the moment something you were waiting for came in the mail.”

“And if I moved back in, where would the mice go?”

“I don’t know … Disneyland?”

He smiled and shook his head.

“Dad, the questions you ask … I don’t know where you come up with this stuff.”

Arthur said nothing. Olivia was a good daughter, the best daughter a father could ask for. She’d been so young when Alice died that Arthur was sure she would grow up to have very little maternal instinct. He knew her memories of Alice were spotty. And yet, even though Olivia’s time with her mother had been short, Arthur saw so much of Alice in her—not necessarily in her look, but her nature. Almost as soon as Alice was gone, Olivia had started taking care of him, first in childish ways—like offering her favorite stuffed animal—then later on in more adult ways, like pulling a chair over to the stove so she could reach it to make him a grilled cheese, or always knowing where his slippers were when he’d misplaced them. He’d seen so many fellow
farming couples, husbands and wives, die in pairs: first one, then the other within a year—an accident, a heart attack, a freak cold. After Alice died, he was certain that Olivia’s existence was what had kept him alive. She was his reason for going on—but she was also the reason he
could
go on. Even now, her visits to the ravine were all that sustained him.

She sat beside him, not speaking. He wondered for the first time since she’d arrived if something was on her mind. With Olivia, it was always difficult to tell.

He cleared his throat. “Anything going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“Out of the ordinary?”

“No. No. Not at all.”

“All right,” Arthur said.

They talked about the farm, the drought, ideas for new recipes. Then Olivia bent to give the goat a scratch on his white-bearded chin, and she got to her feet. Arthur did the same. “Well,” she said. “If you don’t need anything else …” She knocked twice on the tree trunk beside her. That meant
Love you.
He reached out and did the same. It wasn’t a hug or a kiss, but it was something.

She smiled and started her climb out of the cool, dark shade of the ravine and into the bright hot sun. Already Arthur felt lonely without her. Ever since he had moved down into the ravine when she was sixteen years old—when they had realized she was poisonous—Olivia had been his only connection to the world. She had been patient with him, humored him, and tried to make him happy. She’d been his only source of joy since Alice had died. He simply didn’t know what he would do without her. Unfortunately, thanks in part to her condition, he would never have to know. Olivia was as tied into the farm as the old Lightning Oak in Stony Field, as tied into the garden maze as any flowering plant, as much a part of the valley as the land itself.

Of course, it was Arthur’s fault. The Poison Garden had been his idea. The potential for a garden of poisonous plants had been a small shot of excitement and adrenaline in the melancholy years that had followed Alice’s death. He wanted a garden unlike any Green Valley had seen before; he thought a poison garden would be an experiment only a true genius could handle and appreciate. Plus, he’d had the perfect accomplice: Olivia. Her uncanny abilities with plants of all kinds—as well as her complete lack of allergic reactions to plant-based alkaloids—made her a perfect partner. Day in, day out, he sent her to work among the poisonous vines and flowers, not thinking of what the work might be doing to her. And she always went, uncomplaining, unquestioning, because
his
enthusiasm carried her along. When the garden got too big and too dangerous for him, he donned his “bio-protector suit” while Olivia went in barefoot and gloveless. It was only a few weeks after he’d realized what had happened to Olivia that he banished himself to the ravine.

Near the rise of the ravine walls, Olivia paused with her hand on the trunk of a tree. Her forehead was deeply creased. “Oh, I forgot to tell you.”

He knew it; he knew there was something. He leaned forward.

“Sam Van Winkle’s back in town.”

It took a moment to place the name. But when his brain plugged into the proper circuitry that lit up his memory, he saw a milk-faced little boy with a dark buzz cut and a sincere but partially toothless smile.

“He’s a cop,” Olivia said.

Arthur took in a deep breath through his nostrils. “He’s back for you, you know. He came back for you.”

“Don’t be silly, Dad,” she said.

But Arthur knew it was true. He broke out into a cold, prickling
sweat. It was an old feeling, full of vinegar and rot. He reminded himself he had no use for it anymore. The fear of losing Olivia was as fresh as it had been when she was sixteen. But he was stronger than his fear now. He would no longer allow it to master him. “Has Sam … been by to see you?”

“Yes.”

“Because he’s back for you.”

“No. Because he stopped by on a call. Gloria again.”

“What this time?”

“She thinks I’m watering the garden maze.”

“Well, you’re not,” Arthur said. His voice sounded shaky. “You don’t need to.”

“Dad? Are you okay?”

“Yes, yes. Fine.” He waved her off.

“Are you sure? Because—”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I just need to sit.” He lowered himself to a fallen log. “Perhaps … perhaps you could send Sam down here to pay me a visit. Would be nice to see him all grown up. It’s been a long time.”

“If you want,” Olivia said.

“We could have dinner. The three of us. Like old times. What do you think?”

“You can eat whatever you want with him. But I won’t be around.”

“Why not?”

She was quiet a moment. “It just wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Olivia—the boy is going to want to spend time with you. Think of it! You were such good friends. And I always thought that someday he might—”

“Please, Dad. There’s no point. Just … 
stop.
”

Arthur dropped his fist onto his thigh. And all at once, he couldn’t help but see the thing he always tried not to see: how
very sad his daughter was under all her usual good cheer. How much older she was than her years. How such a lovely face could hide such pain.

When Arthur had first moved down into the ravine, they’d only just begun to understand the full ramifications of her condition. Arthur had felt guilty—guilty for having led her into the garden. He could not look at her without feeling sad, and he could not stand to be happy because
her
unhappiness was his fault. At sixteen, Olivia was more serious, responsible, and poised than all the other children in her class. Girls that age needed mothers, not fathers who no longer had anything to offer. He knew she would be better off without him. And so, down into the ravine he went.

The first year was an adjustment for them both: Arthur learned to do without modern conveniences. Olivia quit high school in the spring so that she could take on the work of running the farm. For years, Arthur had attempted curing her. He’d promised her, every day, he would find a way to undo what had happened. But as time went by, Olivia seemed less and less interested in his failed attempts at finding solutions. She seemed to grow comfortable in her own, toxic skin. Once, he almost felt reprimanded by her:
You don’t have to keep trying to fix me, Dad. There’s nothing wrong with me. I like my life just fine.

He wanted to think she’d found a way to be happy in spite of the Poison Garden. And some days, when the fields were growing and the birds were winging about, he could almost believe she was. But then he would catch her at times staring into the middle distance with such a hollow look in her eye that his heart would break. She wasn’t happy. No matter how she tried to convince him, or herself, that she was.

Now Sam Van Winkle was back. And maybe he could make Olivia happy again in a way Arthur never could. Arthur was nearly trembling with hope for his daughter—even as he
dreaded the idea of losing her attention even in the smallest way. She was his last, meager connection to happiness. Without her, he had nothing, not even a hint of joy, just a tumbledown shack and an ugly goat and the long, slogging hours.

He cleared his throat and pretended he was thinking of something entirely ordinary. “Well,” he said. “Don’t forget that glycerin when you come back, would you?”