Читать книгу Blind Shady Bend - Adina Sara - Страница 13

CALLIE WAS EAGER to head back across the road. There were threats of rain and she had all these seed packets that needed to go in soon. Ralph had hung around this morning longer than she wanted, said he had some business to take care of on the computer. She wished she knew how to use the thing so she could find out what he was plotting. It seemed like plotting, how he never told her anything specific, and next thing she knew, he had her and the baby moved into this place where there was absolutely nothing for her to do. He installed the big TV satellite dish ‘to keep her occupied’ is what he said, that’s how little he knew her.

If she hadn’t discovered that wonderland across the road she’d be going crazy here. Callie knew she was supposed to thank him for buying them this great deal of an investment, at a steal he reminded her, and she did thank him. But she didn’t mean it. Not a word.

Callie waited until Ralph pulled out, waited until the last rumble of gravel echoed its way down their driveway, making sure there were no sounds left, no chance he might have decided to flip into reverse and wheel back again, maybe he forgot a phone number, his notebook, a chance to snag another kiss, grab her ass which he managed to do any excuse he could get.

She put Daphne in the stroller and off they went to that empty plot of land across the road that she discovered not long after they moved in. The dilapidated shack at the end of the driveway looked abandoned, no trace of anyone living in it, the floors littered with dust and broken glass, no signs of life.

But she had only poked her head in. She was much more interested in the spaces along the edges of the driveway that bent every which way, interrupted by snags of wild roses and juniper bushes and that horrid wild weed that nicked her legs and got caught up inside the stroller wheels. Really nothing on this land but a gnarl of undergrowth. But for the penstemon that grew wild and thick, waiving their red and purple shoots, and occasional bursts of golden honeysuckle, there wasn’t much in the way of color.

That ground cover drove her crazy. Shoots ripped through the delicate mat of thyme that she had carefully planted last spring but this ground cover was ruining all her plans. So much for the soft aromatic carpet she imagined trailing along the driveway. Even if the thyme grew, it would be overpowered by the acrid smell of the ground cover, something like skunk but not quite as horrid. It reminded her of her dad—that mixture of Aqua Velva and vomit that suffused the laundry basket because he just threw his shirts in there as though no one would notice.

Well maybe that’s where she learned her sloppy ways. Her grandpa used to tell her she was impossible to teach, but he said it with a smile so she didn’t care. She used to follow him around his garden every chance she got. He taught her the names of plants and let her use his tools, even the sharp ones, and never cared how dirty she got. It was the best way she knew to stay out of her house and not get in trouble.

The woman at the plant store had told Callie all about the rough ground cover that permeated the surface of the landscape. The Miwok who used to live on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada range called it Kit-kit-dizze. According to the woman, it grew nowhere else in the world. The pungent aroma of this prickly mountain weed reminded her of nothing she could name, but when the sun and breeze hit it just right, the bitterness dissolved into something deliriously sweet, as though someone covered it over with a crust of pure sugar. The locals called it Mountain Misery and in a few months of trying to extricate its roots to make room for seedbeds, Callie figured out why. She tried washing her clothes with bleach but the smell stuck. She needed to allow time, before Ralph came home, to rinse off the smell.

It wasn’t like she didn’t have her own garden to work in. Ralph had installed a perfect rectangular lawn and had laid the water lines for flower boxes designed to disguise the sprinkler heads he had installed. “You can plant whatever you’d like” he allowed her, “just nothing messy. It wrecks the system.”

But Callie wasn’t a neat gardener and begonias in pots reminded her of sick people, her great-aunt Daphne stuck in a hospital bed surrounded by thick dark green waxy leaf plants that seemed to thrive on fever and the smell of decay.

It’s not as if Ralph would care that she was gardening across the road. He had bought her all those garden tools. He remembered all the things she told him about her grandpa and he was thoughtful that way. Ralph tried to get her interested in his little projects, and he even brought plants home for her once in a while, boring pansies and daisies that she left to wither. Callie sometimes wondered if he even cared what she did all day, as long as she was happy to see him when he came home.

And she enjoyed the secrecy, the feeling that she had a life without him, even if it was something as silly as poking around in an old abandoned pile of weeds. The place was all hers as long as he didn’t know about it. That’s what mattered.

Callie had worked things out pretty well for herself, she was proud to acknowledge. Her ears were well tuned to the smooth sound of Ralph’s engine making the hard turn at the end of the road. By the time he approached their driveway, she always managed to meet him out front, like she was just coming in from a walk, and it was a lot like the old days, him honking, her whirling into his car and off they’d go to nowhere in particular. She used to love those days back in high school, and this was as close as they came lately, meeting him outside their house with the baby in the late afternoon. She still felt the thrill of his truck hitting its brakes when he’d pick her up, so she could lift her skirt high and hoist herself in, swinging her legs around, her hair a bit tousled from the jump. She could still do that, even with a baby in her arms.

The thought of tonight’s pot roast dissolving in tomatoes with sprigs of thyme she collected and dried from across the road made her feel pretty damned good about herself. She gathered up the baby’s pacifier and quilt with one arm, strutting about like someone with somewhere to go. She was wearing her bright pink polka dot t-shirt, the one that was too tight across her breasts so even with the thickness of her nursing bra, her bold nipples announced themselves through the fabric. The lavender shampoo had flavored the skin around her neck and shoulders and she felt proud of those huge, shameless nipples. The morning shower had done her a world of good.

“Come on pumpkin, we’re going for a walk,” she told the baby, and the two of them headed out, stroller wheels bumping along the gravel path, causing the baby’s head to bobble and bounce, while Callie’s hips swerved and turned to the beat of her own satisfaction. Callie didn’t much care about Ralph’s garden plans with this private field all to herself. The place was aching for her touch. She grabbed packets of nierembergia and phlox, they came free with either the twenty-five anemone bulbs or ibex-gloxinia mixture and she bought them both, unable to resist the colors in the catalogue. Ralph and his stupid lawn.

Today Callie planned to cut back more of the spindly ground cover and transplant (carefully) what green there was of the scented thyme bed over to more compatible ground. It would be an iffy job and depended on the baby sleeping. She remembered to bring the trowel this time, and the loppers, and a big plastic bag to store any stray seeds or other potential survivors. She even remembered the coping saw in case the madrone limbs were too thick for her loppers, and felt proud of herself, though there was nobody she could brag to. It was a private kind of pride. Something she was starting to get used to.

New circles of color surprised her every day in and around the scrub oaks and rock beds and tumbleweeds. The mixed seed packets should start opening by early spring if she got them in soon enough, and if the sunflowers ever opened, it seemed like this place would be more hers than the place she lived in. She spread her tools around, splayed her legs out so her skin absorbed every single scent and prickle of ground, and started clipping.

The Queen Anne’s lace came apart in her hand. She blew on the remaining tufts and made a wish. White dust flew wild into the air and a few droplets landed on Daphne’s head, seeping into her hairless fuzz.

“Let’s take a bunch of these,” she whispered to Daphne, who was reaching out with chubby hands to the free-floating pollen. Callie snapped off another stalk, then another. She stuffed them beneath the stroller on top of the extra blankets and plastic baby toys. She knew she was being silly, hiding them like she was afraid of getting caught. But that was part of the fun. She’d never seen another soul along this dusty stretch of road and who would miss a few sprays anyway? Besides, even if she was trespassing, the flowers were hers, she was the one who had scattered the seeds.

The stroller wheel crunched over a dead patch of columbine, one of her favorites. She wondered if they’d return next spring. So mysterious, what came up and what didn’t. Farther down the driveway, the path seemed to pull the wheels without her guidance, down into a clump of rocks and brush, at the porch steps now, farther than she usually strayed, trespassing now, no question about it. She had great plans for the coffins of planter boxes that were precariously balanced on the broken porch. Last year’s weeds had all but dissolved into a dust of dead leaves and she inspected them carefully, hoping to recognize them. Every day, either intentionally or by the whim of a wheel from Daphne’s stroller, some new green thing would announce its life, giving her more reasons to return.

Callie tested the porch steps carefully, glad the baby wasn’t old enough yet to move around. What would she do then, with splinters and rocks and rose thorns everywhere? She found the shaded front porch of the shack to be a perfect spot for nursing. She set down her tools, feeling at home in this abandoned refuge. The air was so sweet it made her close her eyes and breathe deep, in time with the squeaking satisfaction of Daphne suckling at her breast.

Ralph would definitely have a fit if he ever found her like this. He had made a point of warning her about this place. He said it used to belong to a dope dealer, the guy was supposedly in prison, but he could get out any time. Be careful, he had warned her, stay away. But Callie didn’t pay him any attention. There were all kinds of rumors about the abandoned property, not just from Ralph, but also at the market, the hardware store, people around here talked. The rumors came out in whispers mostly, about the drug guy and his friends. The motorcycles. But as far as she was concerned, that was so long ago it didn’t matter any more. You just had to look around to see nobody had been here forever. For her the land was a private paradise. Let them all talk.

It was the Realtor who told Ralph about the guy who got busted. Callie never trusted that Realtor, never trusted this fancy house he sold them in the middle of nowhere would amount to anything. He got them in for practically no money down. Some kind of low interest loan and property values were starting to go through the roof he said. Ralph showed her all the numbers, practically guaranteed to make them rich by the time they spruced it up a bit to sell. The lawn was the Realtor’s idea, come to think of it. He assured them they’d be long gone by the time the interest rates changed, with enough profit to buy something really big.

Daphne was sleeping quietly. This promised to be a productive afternoon. Callie snapped a few seeds from the Queen Anne’s lace and then noticed how the dirt was soft at the base. Using her five fingers as a trowel, she whittled away at the edge of the root ball, extricating a nice little hunk. She had no idea how it would take the transplant but decided to put it near the lavender. Something to surprise her when and if it decided to bloom.

Callie backed the stroller out of the dirt, thought she heard some footsteps off in the distance. The stroller was heavy, weighted down with Queen Anne’s lace plopping out from the side, and now the penstemon, heaped gingerly over a couple of salvia branches she had broken off a ways back. Bring peat pots, she reminded herself for next time, and maybe a bag of fertilizer.

Better get out of here, she decided, as she backed the stroller up toward the road, feeling guilty and giddy all at once. Hurrying up the hill she got snagged once again when the front stroller wheel slipped into a patch of soft earth, nearly tipping it on its side.

The man surprised her just as she managed to lift the wheels out of the dirt and back on to the road again.

“Are you OK?” he said, running toward her, “are you OK?” he called again.

Callie froze where she was, first from the sound of someone’s voice, and then with the shock of recognition.

“Robin? Robin Till?”

“How do you know my name?”

“Robin Till” she said again, not a question this time, because she absolutely knew the answer.

“Do I know you?” he asked and she took off her sun hat, pulled at her skirt. No time to check her t-shirt for milk stains so she leaned into the stroller for cover, and waited for him to approach.

“Mr. Murray’s homeroom. Miss Hayne’s history. Just about every class in tenth grade. Thorpe and Till. I always sat in front of you. Remember now?

“Callie? Callie Thorpe?”

He was looking straight at her now and his eyes were bluer than she remembered. Robin’s egg blue, she was thinking, almost translucent with the light shining into them.

He hadn’t changed much. Still looked like he looked in tenth grade, except for a shaggy beard, more like he forgot to shave, like he really didn’t care what he looked like. But he was cute, carried his cuteness like an innocent, like he had no idea. He hadn’t grown any. She didn’t think he was more than 5’8”. She tried to picture him back in their homeroom, always quiet, off to himself most of the time. No one she’d ever remember but somehow she remembered him anyway. He was a soft-spoken, shy kid, the kind that might have gotten bullied except no one noticed him enough to bother. Back then he didn’t have any muscles to speak of. That much certainly had changed.

“What in God’s name are you doing on this property?”

“Just picking some flowers. I live over there” and she pointed to the house across the road with the flowered mailbox and satellite dish and doublewide driveway.

“YOU live there?” and she could see he was fighting back laughter. “How long you been living there and I didn’t know it?”

“My husband bought it last year, right before the baby. I’ve been inside mostly, caring for her, but I started taking walks after we moved in, the air does her some good, and it does me too. What about you? What are you doing here?”

“I live just over there, at the end of the road, last house down, with my dad. He’s lived there forever.”

“Well, small world I guess.”

“You probably shouldn’t be trampling around on this place.”

“That’s what my husband tells me, but I don’t see why. Nothing here but a lot of weeds and quiet. Keeps me entertained since I’m home all day with the baby. It’s a great place to practice my gardening skills.”

“You can’t make a mistake, that’s for sure,” he said, grabbing at a stray branch that nicked his fingers, drawing a dot of blood.

“Maybe you’re the one that should be careful around here,” Callie quipped, prying the beginning of a smile out of him. “And what brings you on to this land?”

“I thought I saw some activity when I drove home, fresh dirt in the driveway. I heard there might be a new owner here so I wanted to check things out.”

A new owner. Callie didn’t like the sound of that at all.

“Well it was just me. Making a mess. No intruders.”

“Just wanted to be sure” he said, starting to turn back up the road, just like that, when she would have wanted him to stay a little longer.

“Maybe we’ll bump into each other again.” Her words came out flirty, she could hear it, the singsong, and she bet he heard it too. “I’m home all the time” she added, like a dollop of spice, she just couldn’t help herself.

Callie hurried now towards her house, the shakings of a million seeds stuck to her skin and clothes. The stink of Mountain Misery filled her shoes and the baby’s hair was shrouded in Queen Anne’s lace. She shook herself and the baby off on the porch, then swept all traces of her secret garden into Ralph’s neat little empty flower boxes, where they would be swallowed into the dark earth.