The Box Garden

  “How do you do,” Louis and I chorus. Louis gives me a quick, quizzing look, and I manage to flash him the smallest of smiles.

  “Hey,” the young man says, squinting at me, “hey, aren’t you Charleen Forrest?”

  Run, I cry, bolt. Now. Make for the road. Leap in the car, run. “Yes,” I say, “I am.”

  “Well, for Pete’s sake,” the smiling girl says, showing a place in her lower jaw where a tooth is missing.

  “Can you beat that,” her husband mutters with awe-some gentleness. The baby stops whimpering and holds herself suddenly rigid. Then she wets herself; a surprisingly wide stream of pale baby pee creams off her mother’s hip and splashes to the porch floor.

  “Oh hell,” the girl says with equanimity, stepping sideways out of the puddle.

  “Charleen Forrest,” her husband murmurs again. He sends me a warm, slow smile.

  “How do you know who I am?” I ask, thinking: Watson, he must keep a picture of me, imagine that, who would have thought it of Watson?

  “I’ve got all your books,” he says. “And your picture’s on the back. I would have recognized you anywhere.”

  “Oh,” I say, disappointed.

  “And then, of course, knowing Watson—” he shrugs and smiles, “not that that matters. We really dig your stuff. Cheryl and I.”

  “That’s for sure,” Cheryl says.

  “Thank you,” I say absurdly. Sweetly?

  “Don’t suppose you’ve seen Watson lately?” he asks me.

  I stare.

  “We sure miss him,” Cheryl says in tones soft with regret. “It’s just not the same here without Watson. Is it, Rob?”

  “He was a beautiful guy,” Rob says mournfully. “One real beautiful guy, that’s all I can say.”

  “But look,” I say to the two of them in a sharply raised voice, “he still lives here? Doesn’t he?”

  “Gosh, no,” the gap-toothed Cheryl says. “Gee, it’s been—what Rob?—two years now?”

  “Yeah. More than two years. He split—let’s see—it was round the end of March, wasn’t it, Cheryl? Two years ago March. We haven’t had a postcard from him even.”

  “But that’s impossible,” I tell them firmly. “It can’t be true.”

  A look of concern passes between them, a look which firmly shuts me out, and I feel a nudge of suspicion. Are they trying to protect Watson, pretending he isn’t here, trying to fool me like this?

  “You see,” Rob says, taking the baby from his wife, “Watson sort of, well, I guess you could say he got disenchanted. You know, with the whole scene, the whole group thing, what we were trying to do here.”

  “And the others,” Cheryl prompts him.

  He nods. “That was part of it too, I guess. There were about eight of us, Cheryl and me and the others. All of them younger than Watson. Mostly kids who’d dropped out of the whole city thing. Younger kids. Watson kept saying they were getting younger and younger all the time. He finally got to thinking, I guess, that it was time to move on to another scene.”

  “He was forty,” I tell them abruptly. “Two years ago he had his fortieth birthday. In March.”

  “Gee,” Cheryl says, “Forty!”

  “But he must be here,” I insist, “because every month he sends me a cheque from here. The child support money. For our son. He sends it every month. Always right on the fifteenth and it comes from here. Weedham. I know because I always check the postmark.”

  They laugh softly as if I’d said something outlandishly amusing. “That’s Rob,” Cheryl explains grinning. “Rob’s the one who sends off the cheque.”

  “You mail me the cheque?” I ask dazed.

  “It was the one thing Watson wanted me to do. He left, Christ, I don’t know how many postdated cheques. Enough ‘til the boy’s eighteen, I think, isn’t it Cheryl?”

  “And enough money in the bank to cover them. That’s what’s important, I guess, eh?”

  Rob continues, “He wrote a note, left it on the back-door, this door here. All about the cheques, like where to send them and all. And I haven’t forgotten one, not so far anyways.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” I say, feeling my mouth freeze with etiquette and sorrow.

  “But you know,” Rob rambles on, “I might forget sometime. Memory’s not my strong point, ask Cheryl here. What I should do, since you’re standing right here, is just give you the whole bunch of cheques. Right now. That way you’d have them right with you and you could just cash them as the dates roll round.”

  Cheryl nods enthusiastically at this piece of logic, and I feel suddenly flattened by confusion. Something inside me twists, something sour, something sharp, but I manage to smile and say, “Sure. Why not? While I’m here I might as well take them with me.”

  Cheryl goes into the house and comes back in a minute with a large brown envelope. “They’re in here. You can count them if you want.”

  “That’s okay,” I say. “I don’t have to count them. And thank you.”

  “No need to thank us,” Rob says. And then he adds wistfully, “We sure miss Watson. It’s not the same.”

  Should I ask them? I have to. “Where’s Watson living now?”

  “East,” Rob says. “He went east.”

  “You mean the Maritimes?”

  He laughs again. “No, not geographical east. Philosophical east. He was into the mysticism thing. Hindu mainly.

  “Buddha too,” Cheryl offers.

  “You don’t know where he went?” I can hear a shameful pleat in my voice. “Geographically, I mean?”

  “No. Like I said, we haven’t heard anything from Watson. Not in two years. Just that note stuck on the door. He didn’t say where he was going, just that he was going East. With a capital E. East.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “That’s all. The others, they kind of drifted off one by one too. After the baby was born. Some of them couldn’t really ride with the baby thing. So now there’s just Cheryl and me. And Mustard Seed here.” He blows a noisy kiss into the baby’s fat neck. “We’re just kind of a family now, you might say. We still do some farming but not like when Watson was here. But our bread baking operation is going along pretty well.”

  “And the nursery plants,” Cheryl adds.

  “Oh, yeah, the nursery plants. That’s what you folks were looking for, wasn’t it?”

  Behind the greenhouse in the spilled, late afternoon sunlight, Louis and I pick out some good healthy shrubs: six mock orange with their roots bound in sacking. And a flat of petunias, white and pink mixed. I pay Rob with a twenty-dollar bill, and he helps Louis put them in the trunk of the car. Then we shake hands all around and head for home.

  I sit beside Louis with the brown envelope on my lap and it occurs to me that I will never again receive a message from Watson, Watson my lapsed-bastard, first-love, phantom husband. The last link—a smudged, trea sonous postmark—has just been taken away from me. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. The arrival of Watson’s cheques—the regularity, the suppressed silence—offered me something: not hope, certainly not hope, I am not such a fool as that, but a pencil line of connecting sense in the poor tatter I’d made of my life. A portion of renewal. And a means by which the worth of other things might be tested. Damn you, Watson.

  “There, there,” Louis is saying. “There, there now.” The curving kindness of his voice—what a good man he is—makes me conscious of the tears falling out of my eyes.

  Chapter 6

  It takes us a long time to get back to Scarborough. For twenty minutes we’re stalled in traffic. An accident maybe; it could be anything. So many people in this city. Louis’s cautious driving style, so reassuring earlier in the day, is an irritant now that it’s five-thirty, five-forty-five, six o‘clock. A heavy rug of sky pushes down on the streaked sunlight; my head aches. At exactly six-thirty my mother will be placing her Pyrex casserole on the blue, crocheted hotpad in the middle of the kitchen table. I twitch with nerves. Doesn’t Lou
is know how punctual my mother is about meals? Well, he’ll soon learn.

  Louis tries to cheer me up by talking about his favourite poet, Robert Service. I wish he wouldn’t. Please, Louis, don’t. His voice cracks with strain and it’s disappointing to hear he hasn’t read Hopkins. But his lips smack with pleasure over a stanza of “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” and I chide myself for expecting more than I deserve.

  At last Scarborough, the shopping centre, the school where I went to kindergarten (I was the one whose socks were always sliding down), the grid of streets so minutely familiar but whose separate names now seem cunningly elusive. At seven o‘clock Louis pulls up in front of the house, and from the living room window a face (whose?) registers our return.

  “Aren’t you coming in, Louis?” I ask. “Aren’t you staying for supper?”

  “I’m a little tired,” he says weakly. “This chest of mine.”

  “Are you sure you won’t come in? Just for a minute?”

  “I think I’ll have an early night,” he says. “You’ll explain to your mother, won’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll bring over the shrubs in the morning. Put them in first thing in the morning.”

  “Fine. And Louis ... thanks for everything.” I emphasize the word everything; suddenly I’m tired, too.

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  I’m late. Will my mother dare to scold me? Yes, she won’t be able to help herself. This in itself is alarming enough, but something else is even more frightening, something unnatural about the crouched, waiting house, or is it that strange car parked in front? Or perhaps there are such things as psychic waves, perhaps Greta Savage is right after all about telepathic electricity, perhaps tense, waving vibrations actually penetrate my skin as I walk around to the back door. I don’t know. But coming into this house alone at this hour makes me suddenly and ridiculously weak with fear.

  The first thing I see in the kitchen is my mother’s tuna fish casserole. Its tender breadcrumb crust is unbroken. A serving spoon lies tentatively by its side, but the table hasn’t been set. How odd.

  Eugene. What is he doing here? He is supposed to be at the Orthodontists’ banquet eating warmed-up roast beef and hard little scoops of mashed potato. He crosses the kitchen and presses me in his arms. Eugene, not here, really, can’t you see my mother’s standing right here?

  My mother is standing by the stove. Her hands can’t seem to find a resting place. They’re not clutched behind her back, they’re not clenched at her hips, not folded across her chest, not nervously laced beneath her chin; they are floating freely in a frightening pantomime of helplessness.

  Martin and Judith. They are standing in the doorway. How curious, they aren’t actually touching each other, so why do they seem to swim before me in blurry tandem unison like synchronized dancers. Married people grow to look alike—it must be true—just look at those two twin jaws slung in the same attitude of guarded concern. Concern? What is the matter with them?

  And then there are the two policemen. Why do policemen wear that dispirited shade of blue, snow-shovel blue, looseleaf notebook blue? Two policemen sitting at the kitchen table. Sitting there. But when I come in the door, they shuffle politely to their feet. A dream, of course.

  “Charleen,” Eugene holds me close.

  “Thank heavens you’re home,” Judith’s mordant contralto escapes in a gasp.

  “Now don’t get excited, Judith,” Martin says. “Give her a minute, everyone.”

  “Are you Mrs. Forrest?” one of the policemen demands.

  “Wouldn’t you like to go into the living room?” my mother frets.

  “You must be calm,” Eugene says into my shoulder. “You must try to remain calm.”

  “And your regular domicile is Vancouver?”

  “Just take it easy, take it easy now.”

  “Keep things in proportion ...”

  “You’ll find the living room more comfortable.”

  “We have one or two questions for you, Mrs. Forrest.”

  “Here, Charleen, sit down. Martin, get her to sit down.”

  “You’d better sit down; you must sit down.”

  “There, that’s better isn’t it?”

  “And when was your departure from Vancouver, Mrs. Forrest?”

  “Leave her alone for Christ’s sake, can’t you see she’s confused.”

  “Take it easy, Char, take it easy—”

  “ ... if you’ll just answer a few questions ...”

  “The living room is cooler and you could ...”

  “Keep your balance, that’s the important ...”

  “Your exact arrival in Toronto was ...?”

  “Hey, give her a chance ...”

  “You tell her.”

  “I’m only trying to help.”

  “I think Eugene should be the one. He’s ...”

  “We understand this is upsetting, Mrs. Forrest ...”

  “The living room ...”

  “ ... unfortunately they expect a complete report at headquarters.”

  “Charleen, listen to me. Are you listening?”

  “Yes.” Was that my voice? Was it?

  Eugene is sitting next to me with both my hands in his and he is saying the most preposterous things. Incredible things. How melodramatic—I wouldn’t have thought it of Eugene. Seth has disappeared, Eugene is saying that Seth has disappeared. What a joke. Is it a joke? It can’t be because these policemen are writing things down and besides my mother doesn’t like jokes. And neither, I realize for the first time in my life, neither do I.

  Seth has been taken somewhere by Greta Savage. Taken away. Several days ago. No one knows for sure when. Or how. But they have both been missing for several days. Now don’t get excited. No one knows where they are at this precise moment, but in all probability they are safe. Greta Savage has disappeared with my son and Doug Savage has called in the police, that is what has happened, Charleen.

  “Say something, Charleen,” Eugene commands.

  “Is she going to faint?” Judith’s arm is on my shoulder.

  “It looks like it. Someone get some water.”

  “Are you going to faint, Charleen?”

  “Darling.”

  “No,” I say distinctly. “No, I’m not going to faint.”

  All I have to do is hold on to consciousness. Nothing is more important than that, for the moment nothing more is required of me. But if I shut my eyes for even a second I will never see Seth again. I must sit still, I must pretend I am composed of dry, unjointed wood, if I move one inch from this table there will be an explosion.

  I must try to understand. Slowly, perfectly like a child memorizing the Twenty-third Psalm, He restoreth my soul for his something-or-other sake. Certain facts must be absorbed.

  Doug Savage has been trying to reach me all day. The last call came from Parry Sound. He phoned at least four times today. Finally he agreed to talk to Judith. Judith phoned downtown immediately and had Eugene paged at the conference. Eugene came home at once and since then he has been trying unsuccessfully to reach Doug Savage. But Doug Savage promised Judith he would phone back at eight o‘clock. That’s less than an hour, Judith says, only fifty minutes now, and until then there is nothing anyone can do.

  Seth and Greta have been missing all week. While I was eating English muffins on the train, while I was kissing Eugene in the back of a taxi and, Oh God, while I was chasing around the countryside with Louis Berceau on a foolish, pointless, private, childish quest Greta and Seth disappeared; they took the Savages’ car in the middle of the night—there is some confusion about which night it was, Sunday? Monday? The Vancouver police think—there is reason to believe—that Greta may have given Seth some sleeping pills. Sleeping pills!

  For the first two days Doug thought he could avoid calling in the police. He had a hunch that Greta might have taken Seth to a cottage they own in the mountains in Alberta. He borrowed a car and drove all night, but wh
en he got there, he found only rumpled beds and tire tracks. They must have spent the first night there. After that, he thought they might have gone to Winnipeg where Greta has old friends, but when he got there, twenty-four hours later, he couldn’t find any trace of her. So he phoned here last night—Can that possibly have been only last night?—hoping Greta had made some kind of contact; after that he phoned the police. There had been no alternative.

  The police: they are looking right across the country, but they have to move cautiously (are they dealing with a mad woman?). They don’t know. I don’t know. The situation has been judged too risky for public appeals, but they are making all sorts of inquiries. It seems Greta is driving mostly at night. A gas station attendant just outside Thunder Bay is almost certain they stopped there: a woman and boy resembling the police description stopped for gas and a hamburger. Did the woman appear dangerous? No. Had the boy appeared intimidated or drugged? No one had noticed. Which way were they headed? The attendant wasn’t sure. All he could remember was that they were in a hurry.

  There is nothing to do but wait until Doug calls again. The two police officers wait courteously in the living room. My mother frets about whether or not to offer them coffee. Eventually she decides against it. She is more confused than alarmed; her six-thirty supper has been disrupted and in some indefinable way the untouched casserole precludes the making of coffee. As always she is just outside of events, hovering—ghostlike but demanding—at the perimeter. “How could you leave him with people like that?” she scolds me sharply. “What kind of friends are they?”

  Judith tries to soothe her, but Martin flushes with anger. Martin is convinced that what I need is a stiff drink, but of course there is nothing, not in this house. “I’ve got some Scotch in my suitcase,” he says, suddenly assertive. He brings it out, and my mother, her hands still flapping wildy, finds a juice glass. But my stomach leaps and dissolves; I can’t even look at it; Martin picks up the glass, regards it mildly, and then drinks it off neat.