She went about her own house now as though it were contested territory rigged with booby traps. Even the carpets seemed mined. The prospect of normality dimmed by the minute as she apprehended that the photo shoot would certainly not continue today. What about tomorrow?—that was the question that tortured her as she took refuge in the sewing room to avoid facing a painfully bright May morning. Even in this refuge of refuges, however, something—perhaps the strong English tea—kept her on the edge of panic and eventually drove her out of the house into the fresh air of the garden, where she determined to dig out and divide the perennials in the sunny bed beside the chicken coop.
She was thus laboring, in a pair of khaki shorts that displayed her tanned legs to good effect and an old denim shirt (once Kenneth’s) tied by the tails at her midriff, when Walter Fayerwether happened along on his way to the herb garden with a wheelbarrow full of granular lime. The lingering effects of all that rum caused her to startle.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Didn’t mean to frighten you.”
She hesitated to catch her breath before saying, “That’s all right. I’m a little jumpy today.”
“Haven’t seen you around much,” he said. The sun hung just above his right shoulder and she had to shield her eyes to see him. He loomed like some heroic proletarian figure in a 1930s WPA mural.
“I’m having a … a somewhat abnormal year,” Maggie said.
“I hope everything’s going all right.”
“Oh, sure, fine.”
“How about out here?” Walter said. “Satisfied with the work I’m doing?”
“Oh. Yes. Uh, well, there were a few things I thought we might discuss.”
“Fire away.”
“Yes, well …”
“I’ve got a few notes of my own. Let’s walk and talk.”
Maggie took half a clump of divided rudbeckia and wrapped the root bundle in wet burlap. Walter offered a hand to help her up. She was not sure whether the gesture was excessively gallant or merely polite. Not knowing the difference anymore rattled her nerves again and made her shudder despite the sunshine. She rubbed her own hands in the lush grass to get the dirt off and reached up to take one of his, which was remarkably soft, warm, and dry.
“You should wear gloves,” he said.
“I forget.”
They strolled awhile in silence past the fenced cutting garden with its trellis of sweet peas straining toward the sun.
“Bob used to get milfoil out of Candlewood Lake from a man up in Sherman. We kept it in a big heap beside the vegetable garden for mulching.”
“That must be why I keep turning up fishing lures with the rototiller.”
“Yes,” Maggie chuckled. “We’ve got quite a collection.”
“I’ll get a load down later in the week.”
They entered the arbor that led through the bosky dell that was Maggie’s shade garden, a recent project only partially complete. The new gardener’s stolid competence impressed her, and his botanical knowledge was encyclopedic. Just along the path they tread, he identified seven varieties of plantain lily by name. He made some diplomatic suggestions about changing things—quite a departure from the way Bob had simply discharged Maggie’s every wish and whim—but he was also willing to follow instructions. He recorded many notes in a little leather-covered minder as they wended back up from a bracken-filled slough along the banks of Kettle Creek to the graveled apron of the herb garden, where two of his laborers were setting out new sage plants to replace the winterkills.
“While we’re at it, let’s yank those spike lavenders for salvia,” Maggie said.
“I was thinking along the same lines.”
“And we must move the lovage. The damn things reached seven and a half feet last year. Shaded out all my marjoram.”
“How about sticking them in the border with the mulleins and hollyhocks?”
“Good idea. You know I’m losing patience with the borage. It’s crowding the fennel horribly.”
“I’d give all the anises their own bed,” he ventured.
“It would make for a nice scent zone.”
She was already beginning to feel better. From there they marched around the drying shed to the poppy beds. The big ragged plants drooped with fuzzy, silver-green flower buds the size of apricots. A few of the buds were beginning to crack open to reveal the vivid and fantastic red-petaled blossoms within.
“When we first came here in ’81 this spot was an automobile graveyard.”
“Hard to believe now.”
“It was hard to believe then. We hauled thirty-eight junkers out. The family that occupied the place had reached, shall we say, a low point in their dynastic fortunes. We called them the pig people—I know it’s elitist and all that, but honestly you’ve never seen such a low form of human life. They had dogs shitting in the house. It was shocking.”
“There are a lot of people out there who aren’t making it these days.”
“Of course. I don’t mean to be flippant. The country’s going to hell, isn’t it?”
“Well, I admire what you’re trying to do here, Mrs. Darling.”
Something like an electrical shock ran through Maggie. She was not sure for an instant whether he was being ironic. The warm air between them seemed positively charged with lucent emotion.
“I’m just trying to keep one little corner of the world in order,” she said
They strolled along the border toward a velvet purple smudge of irises in the distance.
“I suppose I’ll bump into Mr. Darling, one of these days,” Fayerwether said, sending another jolt through Maggie.
“I suppose you don’t read People magazine, Mr. Fayerwether.”
“Once in a while when I’m standing in the supermarket checkout line. Why? Are you in it?”
“You know, it would be awfully nice to have nasturtiums boiling out of these borders right into the path, like at Giverny.”
“I have to pick up a few things tonight at Safeway. Should I have a look?”
“Don’t bother. It was weeks ago. Anyway, to answer your question, Mr. Darling has not been living here for some time now. You won’t be seeing him around.”
“Oh?”
“And is there a Mrs. Fayerwether?”
“That ended some time ago.”
“I see.”
“If there’s nothing else, then maybe I’d better run along, Mrs. Darling. Get a few things done before lunch.”
“Sure,” she said, feeling a little cheated. Then he was gone and she was left in the bright spring sunshine with her ragged nerves and too many unaskable questions.