Twenty

DAVID REACHED ANNA’S HOUSE at ten the next morning. A slight rain had fallen; the street was cool.

He pressed the bell. A woman came to the door that he didn’t know.

“Is Grace here?” he asked.

Jen looked at him speculatively, wiping her hands on a cloth. “She’s at the store,” she said.

“I’m David Mortimer,” he said; and, seeing her blank reaction, “I wanted to speak to Grace. I’ve come from the hospital.”

She let him in, leading him through to the kitchen. There was a coffeepot on the table, a set of used dishes, a cut loaf of bread. “We just finished breakfast,” she said. “Would you like some coffee?”

“No, thanks,” he said. His head was buzzing from the coffee he had drunk during the night. He sat down heavily.

“How is Anna?” Jen asked.

He paused, not knowing who this woman was. Exhaustion was making the world blurred; taking the taxi just now had been almost surreal. It had suddenly seemed strange to him how the world was revolving in its persistent way. He couldn’t fathom why there was so much traffic. From the ICU to the street was too far, stepping off one planet and onto another.

“I’m sorry,” he said. And he rubbed his face with one hand. “Are you a friend of Anna’s?”

She sat down opposite him, and held out her hand. “I’m Jen Ashton,” she told him. “I live next door.”

He shook the proffered hand. “You’ve known Anna long?” he asked.

“About three years.”

He looked at her expectant face. “Something happened today,” she said. He noticed she had folded the cloth, and put it down on the tabletop. She sat straight-backed, looking into his eyes. He realized that she was steeling herself for the worst. “Is it Anna?” she asked.

“Not Anna,” David told her. “A boy. He was sixteen.”

“This is a boy in the ICU?”

“Yes,” he told her. “He died there an hour ago.”

About five-thirty, as it was getting light, David had left the room for a few minutes. When he came back, the boy’s mother was standing in the center of the corridor. She was alone for a second; she held out her hands from her sides, as if she were trying not to touch anything. Almost as soon as he noticed her, he saw the two other women come out after her; they took hold of her arms, and tried to pull her to one side, talking to her. He heard the broken tone in their voices.

As David got closer, the woman started to walk. She came right up to him, pulling away from the grasp of the others. He stared at her. Her eyes were wide. She said nothing to him, only looked at him with that flat glare. Just for a second, he thought she was going to hit him, such was the heat in that look.

When he got to the door of the ICU, he saw the movement around the boy’s bed; he looked behind him, and saw the women trying to persuade her to come back inside. The nurses were slowly disengaging the lines. He stepped back in horror and embarrassment, realizing he had waded through grief at the door without recognizing it.

He took a chair in the corner, backed up from Anna’s bedside. He saw the boy’s hands and arms, grazed by the road where he had been dragged. The marks showed as gray lines, no longer livid. He saw the fingers of the nearest hand, loosely cupped. He looked at Anna’s hands, in the same faintly curled position on the sheet.

Garrett had arrived at eight o’clock.

He looked fresh. Almost jaunty. He was wearing a dark suit and white shirt, and a tie with a silver-and-black pattern. As soon as David had seen him, he had thought, You look like the fucking undertaker.

By then, the boy’s bed was empty.

Garrett had held out his hand. For a second, David recoiled. It was something to do with the flesh of the palm and fingers; he had to steel himself to respond. He had not touched Anna since the boy’s death, the handling of the inert body.

“You look tired,” Garrett had said.

They had spoken for a minute or so, Garrett offering him the apartment. He had taken the spare key that Garrett gave him, and walked out of the hospital, fully intending to go to the Beacon Hill address. But, just as he stood at the crossing, everything about Garrett’s tone, and the way he dressed, and the cool ease of the conversation, overwhelmed him. He thought of the paintings in the apartment and the smell of the icy air-conditioning, and, suddenly, he had wanted to see Grace. He had hailed the first taxi that came along.

Jen Ashton, he realized, was still looking at him.

“David Mortimer,” she said.

He frowned. “Sorry?”

“You’re David Mortimer,” she said, and she laughed a little suddenly, and blushed. “You must think I’m stupid,” she said. “I heard your name, and I never connected.” She got to her feet. “Look, I’ll make some fresh,” she said, lifting the coffeepot. She started to smile all over again. “Can you believe that?” she asked. “I never connected.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “You’ve lost me.”

“You’ve come from England?”

“Yes. But—”

“You came from England…”

“Yesterday,” he said. “Grace rang me.”

Jen’s eyes widened. She put the coffeepot on the stove, and pressed both hands to her face, laughing and sighing at once. “She did? My God,” she murmured. She dropped her hands. “And you came. You came.”

“Yes, I—”

She looked at him; looked him over from head to foot, looked at his clothes, his hands, his face. “I’ve seen your picture,” she said. “Dozens of times. And here you are. You materialize.”

“My photograph?”

“No,” she said. “A drawing of you.”

“A drawing?”

“You don’t know,” she said. “Of course, you wouldn’t.”

“This is a drawing of Anna’s?”

“How long is it since you saw her?” Jen asked.

“Eleven years.”

She smiled again, shook her head, looked at the floor. “Oh, my,” she said to herself. “Imagine that.” Then, she looked back at him. “Did you see Rachel?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“She’s upstairs. Would you like to go to her?”

“No…”

“She’s drawing. Did you know she draws, like Anna?”

“Yes.”

“And you wouldn’t like to see her?” Jen persisted. “Go ahead. It’s just on the right, the room on the right at the top of the stairs.”

“Look, Gemma—”

“It’s Jen. Jennifer.”

He nodded an apology. “Jen. I can’t stay.”

“Oh,” she said. “You’re going back to the hospital.”

“No,” he said. “I’m going home.”

She stared at him. “Home?” she echoed. “Not to England? Not now?”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” he said. “I can’t help Anna, and I don’t know Rachel, and there’s no way I can get through to her, and that was the whole reason for coming here. To know her, and to have her know me. But that’s never going to happen.”

“Of course it will happen!” Jen protested.

He looked at her directly. “Let’s face it,” he said. “She won’t make any distinction between me and any other man.”

“Oh, you’re wrong,” Jen said. “If you just got to know her…”

“When all’s said and done, there’s nothing I can offer them.”

“There’s nothing you can offer?” she echoed.

He stared pointedly at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry to argue with you.”

“I shouldn’t have come at all,” he said.

“Maybe if you just stayed a few days, just for Rachel.”

“And what good would that be?” he answered shortly. “What the hell difference will it make to her?”

She watched him as he turned away. “It would make a lot of difference,” she murmured.

“I doubt it,” he said.

There was a long pause, during which Jen Ashton continued to stare at him. “You don’t know how much you’re needed here,” she said, eventually. She walked across the kitchen, opened the door, and stepped out into the hall. “Would you do something for me?” she asked.

“What is it?”

She held out her hand. “Just come with me,” she told him.

She walked up the stairs, past Rachel’s room, where he could hear the TV playing, and on up another flight to the third floor. Here, the landing was narrower, and the ceiling lower. Jen opened a door that faced them, and smiled at him as he ducked his head, went through the door, and into Anna’s studio.

It was a large room, as wide and long as the house. Two enormous windows set into the roof lighted the loft. In the center was a stripped pine table. On either side, storage had been built: low shelves ran around the outside of the space, deep enough to take whole sheets of cartridge paper, rolls of tissue and sugar cane paper, and canvases, with other fancy units at intervals, all sizes and shapes, to house the inks and pastels, paints and brushes. There were two easels, one open and one stacked, and a massive wooden structure, a kind of giant easel in itself, racked into the ceiling with bolts.

Jen had come in after him.

“James built this for Anna,” she said. She paused, raised her eyebrows. “She hated it.”

He looked at her, and started to smile. “She did?” he said. “It looks perfect.”

“That’s why she hated it,” she said.

He ran his finger down the nearest wall rack: it was wood, light oak; not melamine. “Expensive,” he said. He walked around, looking.

“She said she’d been straightened out,” Jen added.

He smiled. The Anna he had known was full of idiosyncratic economies. He remembered the rolled-up towel that she used to carry her paints in, with small pockets sewn into it for the tubes of color; and the piece of flannel and the sea sponge she used to get light-through and water-through effects; and what she called her cheating tape, a roll of masking tape that she could tear into strips or shapes, put on the paper, and use a watercolor wash over. Removing the tape would show a disc of sun through cloud, or white shadow on gray, like a photographic negative.

“Clever,” he had once said to her.

She’d shrugged. “Kind of a trick,” she’d said. “Cheating tape.”

“You could get masking fluid,” he’d suggested.

“Money, money,” she’d told him.

He walked the length of the room. At the far end was an old red leather armchair, its surface rather cracked, the brass beading on the armrests and the seat polished light by wear. He ran a hand over it.

“It was her grandfather’s,” Jen said.

He could feel her on this. He could feel her in the grain of the leather. He ran his index finger over the rounded right arm, where another hand had worn a small shiny patch, a tawny circle little bigger than a fingertip.

“Sit down,” Jen said.

But he couldn’t sit in the chair. It seemed too intimate. He sat down on the floor alongside it, drawing up his legs, resting his elbows on his knees, and his head on one hand.

“You’re tired,” Jen said.

“Yes.”

“Did you sleep at the hospital?”

“No,” he said. “I dozed a little.”

“Sometimes they give you a little room, or something…?”

“I couldn’t sleep in a room there,” he murmured. He put the hand over his eyes.

“You sit by the bed?”

“They told me…” He stopped, moving the hand from his eyes to his mouth.

Jen had moved closer to him. “Told you…?” she prompted.

He shook his head. “To help her. They gave me…these things…like a plastic ball you can squeeze, and a piece of cloth, it’s soft on one side, and it’s a kind of rubber, corrugated rubber on the other…”

“For sensation?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “To give different sensations.”

“To wake her.”

He frowned, looked at the floor, the skylights.

“Maybe it’s just sedation,” she said. “After the operation.”

He shook his head. “There’s no response,” he said. “They did a new test. Even her reflexes…”

“Oh, God,” Jen murmured. “Does Grace know?”

“Not yet.”

The two of them fell silent, each with their private picture in their head: a parody of sleep.

“She really doesn’t look that bad,” he whispered. “This boy, you could see the side of his face, his head…but Anna…” He looked up at her. “I’m no good at this,” he said. “Really no good.” He dropped his hand, glanced at the chair. “When they gave me this piece of material, this two-sided thing…” He sighed, grimacing at himself. “I couldn’t even pick it up,” he confessed. “Someone else should be there. That’s what she needs. Someone else.”

Jen looked at him for some seconds.

Then, she went to a desk on the other side of the room. She reached behind it, at floor level, and eased a key from underneath it. Then, standing, she unlocked a drawer and carefully took out a wooden tray. “David,” she said. “Come over here.”

He got off the floor, and walked toward her. When he got level with her, she pushed the tray toward him across the table.

There was a parcel in one corner of the tray, wrapped in an odd kind of checked tissue paper.

“What is it?” he asked, his eyes traveling over the remainder—sheaves of paper gripped by a thick elastic band; several drawing pads; other, smaller cardboard boxes.

“Go ahead,” Jen said. “Open the package.”

He did so, glancing at her, puzzled.

It turned out to be a book. It was large; about ten inches by eight, and two inches thick. The cover, lovingly protected under plastic, was a gold design on black, resembling the bark of a tree. The edges of the pages were gold leaf. He opened the cover to a similarly etched inner page, this time of brilliant orange and gold. He turned the title page. China, it read, Mother of Gardens. And the author, in a flowing, upright pen had signed it: E. H. Wilson, Keeper of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University.

David looked up at Jen.

“This is a first edition,” he said. “This is Wilson’s own signature.”

“Yes,” she said. “Anna bought it two years ago.”

“But it was out of print long ago,” he said. “You can’t get a modern version: these are all there are left. And I don’t know how many there would be…half a dozen? A dozen? Anywhere.”

“She knew,” Jen told him.

He returned her look for a moment, then carefully turned the pages.

This was Wilson’s preface, written on February 15, 1929. David had seen it only once before, quoted in the biography he had found in Oxford. The familiarity of the opening sentences struck him.

…from the bursting into blossom of the forsythias and Yulan magnolias in the early spring, to the peonies and roses in summer, China’s contribution to the floral wealth of gardens is in evidence…

It was in 1899 that I first set foot in China, to leave it finally in 1911…

“Where did she get it?” he asked.

“At an auction.”

“A book auction?” he repeated.

“Yes, antiquarian books.”

“But how did she find out about it?” He stared down at the pages. “I suppose Garrett bought it.”

“No, David,” Jen said softly. “James never knew she had it. He didn’t know about the auction. He didn’t know how much she paid. He doesn’t know now.”

He frowned at her. “You mean she was looking in antiquarian auctions…”

“For a long time,” Jen confirmed. “Ever since she started to break even, to make a little money.”

“For this one book?”

“For this book.”

He shook his head. Slowly, he turned the pale yellow pages with their uneven, hand-cut edges. Here were Wilson’s own photographs: Paulownia fargesii, 55 feet tall, in blossom…Sapindus muskorossi, 80 feet tall, girth 12 feet. This black-and-white plate showed the soapnut tree, curved in silhouette against a mountain slope; leaning at first to the left, a large branch, weighted by low-hanging leaves, spread forty feet parallel to the ground; then the crown soared upward, compensating for the lower growth by arching to the right another sixty feet. Underneath it, and standing in its shade, was a temple memorial with three pagoda roofs. To the left-hand side of the picture, a stone track undulated through fields.

Rice fields in the Red Basin…the market village of Tan-Chia-Tien.

Tan-Chia-Tien was crowded into the banks of a river, a collection of wide-eaved roofs hanging over a drop to the water. It looked like some kind of angular debris that had been washed into the shore by a flood. Above it, on either bank, vertical limestone walls rose out of view of the camera; only in the distance could a horizon be seen, a triangle of sky above another peak.

Chinese Tulip Tree…this on a tremendous incline. Below, clouds filled the valley; opposite it were line after line of mountains, each with serrated outlines, like well-used saws. Wind blurred the leaves of the tulip tree, a ninety-foot monster defying gravity. This was much larger than anything that grew in cultivation. The leaves that gave it its name, with their curious, indented tip exactly like the shape of a tulip flower, turned yellow in autumn and were almost blue underneath. He knew a cousin of this, the ordinary tulip tree, a hundred and fifty feet high, at a manor house in Wiltshire; and there was one at Kew Gardens, a hundred and ten feet at last measurement, brought to England for Charles the First from the rich deep soils of Virginia and Kentucky.

David glanced at the text opposite the photograph.

“…A rugged, precipitous, sparsely populated country is this, and I never wish to see it again…magnificent from the scenic point of view, but arduous beyond words…the final stage was through jungle…one mass of purest white was conspicuous from afar…walnut trees…varnish trees…”

The poisonous varnish tree, whose sap made the black Chinese lacquer. The leaves could be two feet long, and looked a little like bay. David liked these trees. They were beautiful, sensuous things, with a slender, sinuous stem holding these great green flags; shiny, seductive, and dangerous. David didn’t know if they grew on the eastern seaboard; but their sisters did, the dwarf sumacs, small dancers with a shape like a posy, tightly packed leaves on a short body, clustered with yellow flowers in summer.

He turned another page.

Here was Songpan, the town that Wilson loved so much, a highland fortress with a vast number of terraced fields outside the city walls, and the Min River curving through the city in a broad S bend. “The people are very fond of flowers,” Wilson had written, “China asters, and small-flowered poppies and Tiger Lilies.” He had visited Songpan three times, and left it each time with regret. Song-pan, in modern-day Jiuzhai Gou, a country of lakes and waterfalls. Sichuan, Emei Shan, Chengdu, Jiuzhai Gou, Leshan, Qingcheng Shan. Even the names were songs.

He ran his finger over the spine of the book, the red-and-gold binding just visible.

Other photographs.

Chinese dogwood, Mandarin Orange, China Fir…

Another.

Musk rose…Davidia involucrata…

He stopped, his hand flat on the page. Then, he raised his eyes to Jen.

She nodded toward the rest of the box. He glanced from the tray to her hand.

“She kept these under lock and key,” he murmured.

“She didn’t want James to find them,” she said.

He picked up the first thing that came to hand: a thick folder, held with an elastic band. Taking off the band, he saw that it was a collection of essays, seminar papers that she had written eleven years ago. He looked carefully at their titles, and at her own scribbled notes in some of the margins. In the same folder was a guidebook, much thumbed and creased. It was the kind for sale in every bookshop in Oxford; inside it was a map from the Information Centre, the colleges illustrated in a lurid cerise pink, the streets in blue. The great meadows ringed the northeast: Music, Angel, Magdalen, Merton, and Christ Church. He stared at the Magdalen Bridge by the Botanic Garden, and the Cherwell running so close to the Thames at Folly Bridge.

Also, inside the same cover, were four postcards: an aerial view looking over Merton and Oriel; Deadman’s Walk; the Cathedral Chancel of Christ Church, and, lastly, Magdalen itself—perhaps the most beautiful college, ran the description on the back. He put it down, his expression unreadable.

“Did she tell you about me?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jen answered. “A little.”

“Did she say why she left me?”

He met her eye; held her gaze.

“David,” she said, “I don’t know.”

“I tried to find her,” he said. “I went to the university; I gave them letters to forward to her. I even rang Grace.”

“I know,” Jen murmured. “She received the letters.”

“She did?”

Jen glanced at the box.

“You mean they’re in here?” He stared down at the cardboard boxes. “And she told you all this,” he said, “but she never told you the reason for leaving?”

“I guess she was afraid?” Jen suggested softly. “Panicked?”

“She said that?”

“Not in so many words,” she admitted. She watched him for a second longer, then lifted out the largest drawing pad. She held it out to him. “But she did say that this meant a lot,” she told him.

He looked at it: a sixteen-by-twelve Langton watercolor pad.

He opened the pad, knowing already what he would find. There on the third page was a copy of the sketch she had made of the regal lily, drawn from the color plates in the Wilson biography. An exact copy of the one that she had given to him, and that he had kept.

“Garrett said he didn’t know of my existence, didn’t know who I was,” David murmured. He looked again at Jen. “So he wouldn’t know that all this is here.…”

“No,” Jen said.

He looked up at her. “I would have come,” he said. “If she had talked to me once. Written me just one letter.”

Jen said nothing. She took out the smaller cardboard box. She pushed it across the tabletop. Inside was an envelope: opening it, he tipped out the contents.

Oak leaves, from Island Thorns.

He held them in his palm for a few seconds, remembering the night, and the following morning, when she had picked these up from the ground and put them in her pocket between the pages of the map. Oak leaves, once freshly opened, and the yellow-green catkins attached to the stem. But the flowers were gone now, and the color had faded.

He looked up again at Jen, at the friend to whom Anna had disclosed this secret. She was gazing at him with an almost apologetic smile.

“She never forgot,” she murmured.

He went back to the chair.

He tried not to close his hand over the leaves.

“When you say that there must be someone else,” Jen told him, “you’re wrong. I don’t think there’s anyone else who could bring Anna back.”

He sat down slowly in the red leather chair, in Anna’s silent embrace.