Page 3

Story: The Garden

3

The sun was up and the garden was dazzling. Evelyn stood for a moment on the doorstep and closed her eyes. The skin on her brow softened like wax under a warm thumb. She went to the toolshed and took down the spade and the fork and the largest of the wicker baskets. In the basket she put a smaller bucket of chicken manure, a plant pot full of broken eggshells, and a small paper packet of speckled beans and then set off for the beds at the bottom of the garden.

She took the long way around, to check all was still in order. She approached the beehives with some apprehension. She found them as she had left them the previous evening, the hive closest to the house a little skewed, despite her best efforts.

From there she passed through the green shade of the orchard, inspecting the swelling clusters of apples. Many were already windfallen and were lying in the grass, brown and spongy underfoot. The faint sweetness of rot in the air. The day for wassailing had not even come, and the harvest was already going to waste. She would have to consult their mother about that. The avenue of roses looked slightly better than she remembered, but there were fresh blooms inexplicably growing among others that were brown and limp. She would have to ask Mama about that, too. She wondered how she would take the news.

By the time Evelyn reached the bottom beds, the sun was high and the garden exhaling in the heat. The wall was perhaps a hundred paces away, but still she turned her back to it, just in case. She cleared the spinach of slugs, reprimanding them as she went, and scattered the soil with the broken eggshells to ward off their return. She heaved at the earth, plucked the weeds by the root, planted the beans in neat rows. Back to the toolshed, another handful of seeds, then on to the next bed. She hardly looked up from her work, sweat running down the sides of her nose, the shirt clinging to her bones underneath the heavy waxed coat. Not as fast as she used to be, but no less dogged. A dull ache bloomed in her knees and elbows that she always assumed was early-morning stiffness but that never left her these days, however warm she got. In between forkfuls of earth she heard only her blood thumping, and occasionally, distantly, the sound of Lily practicing her routine in the gazebo on the other side of the house.

She was glad to be working. When she was working, she was not thinking.

At midday her sister came down to the bottom of the garden with a pot of black tea and lemon. She was still wearing the sequined ball gown, as well as an enormous sun hat and almost all of their mother’s jewelry. She clinked like a chandelier when she walked, earlobes pulled so low that the earrings nearly rested on her shoulders.

Evelyn leaned on the fork. Lily smiled broadly and set the tray on the grass.

“Tea’s up,” she said.

“How did it go today?” asked Evelyn.

“Coming together nicely,” said Lily.

“I don’t suppose you’re ever going to let me watch, are you?”

“Oh, I daresay. One of these days. It’s not quite there yet.”

She perched on a stone by the edge of the vegetable plot and wiggled her toes. Then she looked up at Evelyn and pouted.

“Don’t say it,” said Evelyn.

“I wish I had my shoes,” said Lily.

Evelyn didn’t reply. Her sister had been lamenting the loss of her ballet shoes for as long as they had looked after the garden. She’d had them as a little girl, and by now they would be far too small, but Evelyn knew better than to remind Lily of that. Besides, the shoes were in the house along with everything else. And they never went into the rest of the house.

Lily sighed and bent over the teapot. She poured two cups and said: “A resounding victory against the slugs.”

“They gave as good as they got,” said Evelyn. “I still haven’t got the slime off me.” She scrubbed her palm against her hip.

“How’s the soil?”

“Heavy. I did my best. The beans are in, at least.”

“Well, hurrah for that.”

They drank their tea and then lay side by side on the hot lawn and watched the sky. Evelyn listened to the insects and the birds and the slow creak of things growing. She tried to make a list of all the things that she had to do: tasks left over from the day before; tasks yet to come; tasks that, according to the almanac, she wasn’t supposed to be doing at all but that were upon her nonetheless. She thought of the chickens and the roses and the apples already turning to mulch in the orchard. She thought about the beehive and tried to forget it but couldn’t. Eventually Lily squeezed her hand and rolled over and got slowly to her feet.

“So, then,” she said. “Are we playing a game, or aren’t we?”

“Now?” said Evelyn. She propped herself on an elbow. “I’m not halfway done here.”

“It’s too hot for work,” said Lily. “Even Mama would say that.”

That was not true, but Evelyn humored her. “What would you like to play?”

“I don’t know.”

“I fixed the croquet hammer.”

“No, not croquet. I need to use my body. Hide-and-seek.”

Evelyn looked at where she’d stuck the fork in the ground. There was so much to do, and Lily could happily make these games last for hours.

“We’ll play hide-and-seek as long as you help me with the watering afterward.”

“Deal.”

Lily stuck out her hand, fingers covered with their mother’s rings almost to their tips. Evelyn shook it.

“You’d better take all of that off or you’ll be ever so easy to find,” said Evelyn, gesturing at the jewelry.

“Yes, yes, I know,” said Lily, already unhooking the earrings and the necklaces and placing them one by one on the tea tray. She threw off the hat, too, and tied her long hair up in a gray bun so tight it looked like the whorl of a tree trunk. She stood to attention in front of Evelyn.

“What am I counting to?” said Evelyn.

“One hundred. And face the wall.”

“I won’t face the wall. But I’ll put my hands over my eyes.”

“You’ll look. You always look.”

“I promise I won’t.”

“Fine. And don’t count too fast.”

Evelyn placed her muddy hands over her eyes and started to count out loud. She listened to her sister’s footsteps recede over the grass and then opened her fingers slightly. She watched her go up the garden path. Always the same—Lily’s gleeful hobble to the back of the house, Evelyn’s terror at the thought that this time would be different, this time she would hide somewhere new and Evelyn would not be able to find her. She counted a little quicker, skipped the numbers from ninety to one hundred, announced she was coming.