Larry's Party (5 page)

In the towns the clipped hedges served as fences between houses, a stitching of fine green seams, and gave protection and privacy to tiny garden plots. Luxurious and shapely, they seemed pieces of tended sculpture, and now, late in a mild winter, their woody fullness was enveloped by a pale furred cloud of green. Buds in March. It seemed impossible. Young leaves unfolding.

Back home you hardly ever saw a hedge, or if you did it was only common spirea or the weedy, fernlike caragana, which was almost impossible to keep in trim. Larry’s father had surrounded the Ella Street house with a chainlink fence, top quality - that was years ago. Like the aluminum siding he’d put on top of the house’s old clapboard, it did the job and there was zero upkeep.

“What are all these hedges made of?” Larry asked Arthur, tossing back the hair he didn’t have anymore. “I mean, what kind of plants do they use?”

Arthur didn’t know. He knew history stuff, he knew his kings and queens, but he was a Londoner. He didn’t know green stuff.

In a brilliantly lit bookstore in Manchester Larry found a book about hedges. It was in a bargain bin. Over a hundred colored, badly bound illustrations instructed the reader on the varieties and uses of hornbeam, butcher’s broom, laurel, cypress, juniper, lime, whitethorn, privet, holly, hawthorn, yew, dwarf box, and sycamore. How to plant them, how to nourish them, and tricks to keep them trim and tidy. How certain plants can be intertwined with others to make a sturdier or more beautiful hedge; plashing, this artful mixing of varieties was called. Larry studied the pages of
Hedges of England and Scotland
while the coach made its way south, heading toward Devon and Cornwall. In a mere day or two he was able to distinguish from the bus window the various species. This easy mastery surprised him, but then he remembered how he had won the class prize back in his floral arts course, that one of his teachers had commented on his excellent memory and another on his observation skills.

The clues to identifying hedges lay in the density and distribution of thicket, the hue of the green foliage, and the form of the developing leaves. He pronounced the names out loud as he spotted them, and then he wrote them on the inside of the book’s cover. He’d forgotten in the last two or three years that he was like this, always wanting to know things he didn’t need to know.

Dorrie, seated next to him on the coach, had fallen into the doldrums. She was homesick, she said. And tired of being stuck with all these old biddies. Their teasing at breakfast, always the same old thing, it was getting on her nerves, it was driving her bananas.

 

Each day was greener than the one before. One morning, halfway through the two-week tour, Arthur leapt from his seat at the front of the coach and excitedly pointed out a long sloping field of daffodils. “Didn’t I promise you, ladies and gents, that we’d be seeing daffodils on this holiday!” Everyone crowded to the windows for a look, everyone except for Mrs. Edwards, who was sleeping soundly with her head thrown straight back and her mouth open.

Dorrie pulled her diary out of her purse and wrote a single word on the page: “Daffodils.” (Years later when Larry came across the little book, he found three-quarters of the pages empty. “Daffodils” was the final entry.)

On the same day that they saw the daffodils Dr. Edwards bought Larry a pint of beer - this was in a pub early in the evening, a ten minutes’ rest stop - and said, out of the blue, “Our sabbatical leave doesn’t actually come up for another two years, but Mrs. Edwards has a problem with prescription drugs, also over-the-counter drugs. It’s a terrible business and getting worse, and so it seemed a good idea for us to get away.”

Larry peered into the remains of his dark foamless beer. He wished he were standing at the other end of the polished bar where the New Zealand and Australian couples were laughing loudly and arguing about how many miles it was to the hotel in Bath. Full of rivalrous good feeling, they liked to joke back and forth, shouting out about the relative merits of kiwis and kangaroos, soccer teams and politics. Larry was drawn to their good spirits, but felt shy in their presence, especially the men with their bluff, hearty conviviality, so different from Dr. Edwards’ sly, stiff questioning.

And yet Dr. Edwards, Robin, had seen fit to divulge his unhappy situation to Larry, to a stranger young enough to be his son.

“She hides them. They’re so small, you see. The pills. So easy to conceal.”

“Is she addicted to them?” This seemed to Larry a foolish, obvious question, but he felt a response of some kind was required.

“Yes, addicted, of course. She can’t help herself.” “That’s terrible. It must be awfully difficult -” “It’s heartening to see a couple like yourself,” Dr. Edwards said, steering the conversation in a more positive direction. “Just starting off in your life, free as a pair of birds.”

Larry swallowed down the rest of his beer. “We’re going to have a baby,” he said. “My wife, I mean.”

Dr. Edwards received the news politely: “I see,” he said. His fingers twirled a button on his raincoat.

“Maybe you’ve noticed that she’s not feeling all that great,” Larry said. “In the mornings especially.”

“I hadn’t actually noticed.”

“Morning sickness.”

He and Dorrie had agreed that the baby was going to be a secret, at least until they got back home and told their families. It startled him now to hear the words running so loosely out of his mouth: the baby. He’d scarcely thought of “the baby” since leaving home. It was hard enough to remember he was a husband, much less a father. He had to remind himself, announcing the fact to the mirror every morning as he blinked away the ghost of his father’s face.
Husband, husband -
one husband face pushing its way through another, blunt, self-satisfied, but never quite losing its look of surprise.

Lately he’d found he could dispel the face by filling up his head with the greenness of hedgerows. It was like switching channels. Holly, lime, whitethorn, box, a string of names like the chorus of a popular song. He let their shrubby patterns press down on his brain, their smooth stiff dignified shapes and rounded perfection.

“We were going to wait and get married in June. But then - this happened — so here we are. March.”

He could see he had lost Dr. Edwards’ interest, and certainly the opportunity to offer comforting remarks about Mrs. Edwards’ problems.

“Well,” Dr. Edwards said. He spoke briskly now, more like a sportscaster than a sociology teacher. “Time we got back on the coach or we’ll be left behind.”

“We’ve been going together for over a year,” Larry explained. He hung on to his beer glass. “We’d already talked about marriage. We’d already made up our minds, so this didn’t make any real difference.”

Dr. Edwards’ face had pulled into a frown. He put his hand on Larry’s shoulder, bearing down heavily with his fingertips. “About my wife?” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you regarded what I said as confidential.”

 

“Why?” Dorrie yelled at Larry. “Why would you go and tell that old professor jerk about us?”

They were in Devon, in the town of Barnstable, the King’s Inn. Their room was at the front of the hotel overlooking a street of busy shops.

“I don’t know,” Larry said.

“We fucking decided we weren’t going to tell anyone. And don’t tell me not to say fuck. I’ll say fuck all I fucking want.”

“It just came out. We were talking, and it slipped out.”

“My mother doesn’t even know. My own mother. And you had to go and tell that jerk. Did you honestly think he wasn’t going to tell that snot of a wife? My ‘condition’ she said to me, I shouldn’t be having a beer in my ‘condition.’ And now the whole bus is going to know. I’ll bet you anything they already do.”

“What does it matter?”

“We’re on our honeymoon, that’s why it matters. We’re the lovey-dovey honeymooners, for God’s sake, only now the little bride person is pregnant.”

“No one even thinks like that anymore.”

“Oh yeah? What about your mother and father? They think like that.”

“How do you know what they think?”

“They think no one’s good enough for their precious little Larry, that’s what they think. Especially girls dumb enough to go and get themselves preggo.”

“They’ll get used to it.”

“Like it’s my fault. Like you didn’t have one little thing to do with it, right?” She sank down on the bed, moaning, her head rolling back and forth. “I can just see your dad looking at me. That look of his, oh boy. Like don’t I have any brains? Like why wasn’t I on the pill?”

“We’ll tell them as soon as we get back. It’ll take them a day or two, that’s all. Then they’ll get used to it.”

She turned and gave him a shrewd look. “What about you? When are you going to get used to it?”

“I am used to it.”

“Oh yeah, sure. I’m like sitting there on the bus, day after day, thinking up names. Girls’ names. Boys’ names. That’s what’s in my head. I like Victoria for a girl. For a boy I like Troy. Those kinds of thoughts. And you’re jumping up and down looking at bushes. Writing them down. That’s all you care about. Goddamn fucking bushes.”

He pulled her close to him, rocking her back and forth, patting her hair.

Startled, he recognized that pat, its cruel economy and monumental detachment. It was the sign of someone who was distracted, weary. A husband’s pat. He’d seen his father touch his mother in exactly the same way when she fell into one of her blue days. Only patting wasn’t really the same thing as touching. Patting a person was like going on automatic pilot, you just reached out and did it. There, there. Looking covertly at his watch. Almost dinnertime. Pat, stroke, pat.

It calmed her. She collapsed against him. They lay back on the bed, hanging on to each other limply and not saying anything. In ten minutes it would be time to go down to the dining room. He was ravenous.

 

A single day remained - and one more major historical site to take in: Hampton Court.

“This palace is unrivaled,” Arthur said, gathering his charges in a tight circle around him, “for its high state of preservation.” He pointed out Anne Boleyn’s Gateway, the Astronomical Clock (electrified two years ago), the Great Hall, the Fountain Court, the Chapel Royal with its intricately carved roof. “Note the quality of the workmanship,” he said. “What you behold is a monument to the finest artists and artisans in the land.”

The members of the tour group had taken up a collection, and the evening before they’d presented Arthur with a set of silver cufflinks. He had blinked when he opened the jeweler’s box, blinked and looked up into their waiting faces. “For he’s a jolly good fellow,” one of the Australians sang out, trying to get a round going. The man’s name was Brian. He was large, kindly, and elegantly bald. It was he who had taken up the collection for Arthur and passed around a thank-you card for everyone to sign. But he launched the song in a faltering key that no one could follow.

Surprisingly, it was Dorrie who moved forward and picked up the melody, drawing in the others with her strong, clear voice. She came from a musical family; her father sang baritone with the Police Chorale; her mother, after a few drinks, belted out a torchy rendition of “You Light Up My Life.” And Dorrie’s voice, despite her size, a mere one hundred pounds, was true and forceful.

At that moment Larry loved her terribly. His helpless Dorrie. He froze the frame in his mind. This was something he needed to remember. The upward tilt of her chin as she risked a minor feat of descant on the final words. The way her hands curled inside her raincoat pockets, plunging straight forward into a second chorus, as though she’d been anointed, for a brief second or two, Miss Harmony of Sunbrite Tours.

Mrs. Edwards had wondered aloud about the appropriateness of cufflinks for Arthur. “He doesn’t look like a man who is particularly intimate with French cuffs,” she whispered to her husband and to Larry and Dorrie. But this morning, following Arthur into Hampton Court gardens, Larry glimpsed a flash of silver at Arthur’s wrist. “Before you,” Arthur said, pointing, “is the oldest surviving hedge maze in England.”

A what? Larry had never heard of a hedge maze.

“We’ve got three-quarters of an hour,” Arthur announced in his jolly voice. “If you get lost, just give us a shout and we’ll come and rescue you.”

Later, Larry memorized the formula for getting through the maze. He could recite it easily for anyone who cared to listen. Turn left as you enter the maze, then right, right again, then left, left, left and yet another left. That brings you to the centre. To get out, you unwind, turning right, then three more rights, then a left at the next two turnings, and you’re home free.

But on the day he first visited the Hampton Court maze, March 24, 1978, a young, untraveled floral designer from the middle of Canada, the newly married husband of Dorrie Shaw who was four months pregnant with his son Ryan - on that day he took every wrong turning. He was, in fact, the last of the tour group to come stumbling out of the maze’s exit.

Dorrie in her perky blue raincoat was standing, waiting. “We were worried,” she said to him crossly. Then, “You look dizzy.”

It was true. The interior of the maze
had
made him dizzy. It was very early in the morning, a frosty day, so cold he could see his breath as it left his mouth and widened out in the air. It seemed a wonder that the tender needlelike leaves could withstand such cold. The green walls rose about him, too high to see over. Who would have expected such height and density? And he hadn’t anticipated the sensation of feeling unplugged from the world or the heightened state of panicked awareness that was, nevertheless, repairable. Without thinking, he had slowed his pace, falling behind the others, willing himself to be lost, to be alone. He could see Mrs. Edwards ahead of him on the narrow path, walking side by side with Dorrie, their heads together, talking, and Mr. Edwards following close behind. Larry watched the three of them take a right-hand turn and disappear behind a bank of foliage.