The Garden Path (24 page)

Duke nodded and hugged her briefly across the shoulders. She had a sudden whimsical impulse to tell him everything, the story of her life—not just amusing stories about her schools but the bitter, intimate tales she had stored up about her early childhood, her parents' enmity, her wasted years, her doubts about Ivan—up to and including her twilight drive to Rosie's and her distasteful fantasies. But she stayed silent, feeling pleasantly self-righteous. Her refusal to be tempted was a point scored off Ivan. She imagined him at that very moment unburdening himself to some nubile teenager. She looked up the street at the elderly, hand-holding couple, talking with their heads close together. But
that's
what I want, she said to herself before she ducked out from under Duke's encircling arm.

They caught up with the twins, who had found an ice-cream parlor. The twins and Duke had cones, Susannah had ginger ale and an aspirin. They sat at a small round table, on wire chairs. Through the window Susannah could see straw poking from behind the grille on a lamppost. As she watched, a sparrow flew to the post, perched, disappeared behind the wire—it was a nest. She pointed it out to the twins, feeling depressed; every damn thing, every last little bird, had babies. She looked enviously at Duke, who ate ice cream with such perfect happiness because he had two—two!—adored children who hung on his words and said “Daddy” in that loving tone of voice. Her stomach hurt. She went to the ladies room to change her Tampax. “
I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed
,” she thought as she flushed the toilet, smiling grimly. She was thinking of Ivan. For a moment—she looked at her braids and her flushed face in the mirror—she felt the bitter desire to keep the pregnancy to herself when it came, not tell Ivan—to pretend to menstruate, cover up morning sickness, suck in her stomach and wear baggy dresses to hide an enlarging waist. The idea cheered her up.

“Rapunzel!” the twins cried when she returned, their round faces beaming, ice cream on their chins.

“Are you all right?” Duke asked.

“I'm fine,” she said. “I was just thinking I might like a cone after all.”

The twins were overjoyed; they seemed to have inherited from Duke a delight in feeding people, and they insisted on taking the money up to the counter and getting her ice cream themselves. “Pick me out a flavor,” Susannah told them, and they brought back Rocky Road, a flavor she particularly loathed, but she ate it gamely while the twins finished her ginger ale. Ivan receded from her mind, like bad news on the radio. She felt perfectly happy. “Please don't worry,” she said to Duke. “It's temporary, this thing with Ivan. Wait till we open, he'll be all over the place.” He nodded, and took a sip of ginger ale.

The afternoon had clouded over by the time they found Virgil's Antiques, where the cash register reposed in a lightless back room. Susannah played the minuet from
Don Giovanni
on a rickety upright piano in one corner of the shop while Virgil and Duke dragged the cash register out where they could see it. Virgil dusted it off with an old undershirt, and they gathered around it. It was a turn-of-the-century brass-plated model, with a raised design of flowers and leaves; the keys were white porcelain with curly black numbers, and it did indeed ring musically when the drawer opened. It was so splendid Duke bought it immediately, without haggling, but it was too big to go into the Volkswagen's tiny trunk.

“Put it in the back seat,” suggested Virgil. “Let the little ones sit either side of it.”

They tried it, but Duke couldn't get the twins' seatbelts to fasten. He shook his head. “I'll have to come back for it. I don't let them go without seatbelts.” The twins looked solemn; they knew their mother had died unbelted. “I'll drive back tomorrow and get it.” He and Virgil lugged the cash register back into the shop.

“Maybe you could come with me, Susannah?” he asked her as they got back into the car.

“I don't think I'd better, Duke,” she said, giving no reason, thinking of her head on his shoulder. Duke seemed to understand. She half-wished he would press her to go, but he nodded.

“I suppose not.” And then, after a minute, “I didn't know you played the piano.” He turned his head to give her a grin. “Is there no end to your talents?”

“I only know that one piece. One more relic of my variegated education.” She was silent. It had begun to rain; drops fell from a dull white sky like bits of light. In the distance, farther than they were going, the sky was blue. “I suppose it's appropriate that I should remember that particular piece. From
Don Giovanni.
” She had meant it as a joke, but it came out sounding querulous, and when she chuckled to indicate good humor the chuckle sounded forced. She closed her eyes; her cramps had returned, and the heavy, tugging feeling in her womb.

Duke's rough fingers patted the back of her hand. “Cheer up, Susannah. It's not that bad.” She looked over at him. “Is it?” he asked. He had eyes the color of sidewalk, a curved scar like a scimitar on one cheek, the beginnings of a double chin. The brim of his squashed-in hat shaded his face.

“No,” she said. “Don't mind me, Duke. I get melodramatic.” The twins, in the back seat, began to sing “Home on the Range,” their childish voices missing the high notes. Duke joined in—badly off key—with an apologetic smile, and so did Susannah. The happiness she had experienced at the ice-cream parlor returned to her, and she thought to herself—singing as loudly as she could, to keep the others on pitch—how nice she would be to Ivan, how she would overpower him with kindness when they returned. She would behave as if they'd never had their quarrel, as if she hadn't enjoyed quite so much her Ivanless day out, as if she hadn't called him a bastard to Duke, cried on Duke's shoulder, asked for pity in a thousand little ways, fancied herself a Rapunzel.

But he wasn't home, of course. He came in late, after she was in bed—but not asleep. She lay still while he undressed and got into bed. He turned his back to her and sighed deeply: a sigh of satisfaction? dejection? fatigue? She didn't want to know, didn't want him to discover her wakefulness, and speak to her, and tell lies. She heard him go to sleep—in, out, in—and she turned over, gingerly, feeling her womb nip sharply at her, pulled the sheet to her chin and tried to doze off. But she had nothing to think about, nothing to clear her mind after the miserable hour of waiting for Ivan. She had always, drowsy in bed, enjoyed looking ahead and planning, thinking:
next year, next month, on Wednesday I'll
… But that pleasure had been taken from her, or been lost en route from California to Connecticut, and with it her effortless sleep.

Somewhere, not far off, a train was passing. She could hear its hollow, eerie whistle in the dark, and, closer, the patter of rain.
Next year at this time …
She couldn't complete the sentence. It used to be the past that wouldn't bear thinking of; now it was the present as well, and the future. She closed her eyes tightly and thought of her story, of sunlight coming through glass to make a space filled with light that was as thick and frightening as darkness.

The Silvergate Café was jammed on opening day. It opened at 11:00 on Wednesday morning; by 11:15 people were trickling in, and by noon they were waiting in line for tables. Ginger and Ivan dashed from table to table, to the cash register, and back to the serving counter, while Susannah helped Duke in the kitchen. They had filled the long delays with speculations about every contingency and elaborate plans for super-efficiency, absorbing Duke's lode of learning from the restaurants he had worked in. They even practiced carrying trays and assembling salads. But nothing had prepared them for the chaos—for people who changed their minds, who had to have the menu explained to them, who wanted cucumbers left out of their salads or cream served with their rose hip tea, and who poked their heads into the kitchen with compliments and good-luck wishes. Ginger came into the kitchen at one point, sweaty and disheveled, her green and white checked apron spotted with spills, and said, “Who would have suspected such a craving for rabbit food in these parts? It looks like every vegetarian in southern Connecticut came out of the closet today.” And Ivan burst in, kissed Susannah and clapped Duke on the back, and said, “Fame and fortune—I just hope there's some more of that broccoli soup in the fridge,” and sprinted out again.

Duke heated more soup, sliced more red onions, chopped up more green peppers; Susannah cleared the trays Ivan and Ginger returned, and washed plates and teapots and forks. The old-fashioned cash register rang cheerily. Periodically, Susannah went out front to the blackboard menu posted over the counter and crossed something off: the quiches went first, then the mushroom caviare, the fresh strawberries and Carla's zucchini cake. When she looked around the room at the jaunty plants and green and white checked curtains and wood-topped tables filled with people eating Duke's food, she returned to the kitchen and said to Duke, “It looks exactly like a restaurant out there.”

“What did you expect it to look like? A nursery school?” He was in high spirits, his face red and his fresh-cut hair sticking up, but he stayed calm, and moved without haste from stove to counter, keeping the orders miraculously straight, smiling his crooked smile. “An opera house? An animal shelter? Here,” he said, holding out a big spoon. “Did I get this soup too salty?”

But nothing, it seemed, was too salty, or too anything. The hungry crowds left satisfied, and at 2:30 when the last customers departed and the green shade was rolled down over the front door and the CLOSED sign went up, the four of them sank into chairs, looked at each other, and burst into exuberant laughter.

“I can't believe it,” Ivan said. “We're a hit. They were eating out of our hands.” He took off his apron and wiped his face with it. “They cleaned us out. Right? What's left out there? I'm starved.”

“Half a ricotta pie, a pile of sliced onions, and some cheese,” said Duke.

They ate the cheese with some wheat crackers and finished the pie, and talked about what had gone wrong and how it could be put right—all except Ginger, who wouldn't admit there had been a single flaw in the afternoon. Even the speed with which they had run out of things she interpreted as a tribute to the food rather than the amateurish bungling Duke insisted on calling it.

“If you're an amateur bungler, Dukey dear, then I'm Reggie Jackson,” Ginger said, taking a second hunk of pie. “You might even end up converting me to this stuff.”

Duke smiled happily at her. “That would be the equivalent of St. Patrick converting the heathen tribes of Ireland.”

After cleanup, and after they had helped Duke set things up for the next day—he already had a system, and already it was inflexible—Susannah and Ivan took him home and then went shopping. There were a few necessities they hadn't foreseen: paper towels, extra spatulas, a longer-handled ladle, more sponges—things they could pick up cheaply at one of the discount stores on the Post Road.

“Poor old Duke—he's dead beat,” Ivan said as they were backing down the driveway. They watched Duke go slowly up the porch steps, hanging on to the railing. His T-shirt clung to his back, his hair was shiny with sweat. He stopped to pet Keats, who was sitting on the doormat, then unlocked the door and went in. “Our spent and exhausted artiste must renew himself through rest and meditation for the labors to come,” said Ivan in a voice that had become, somewhere between triumph and cleanup, hard-edged with suppressed irritation. “Wearing himself out for his devoted followers, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty. In other words, he gets a shower and a beer while we browse through the housewares department at fucking K-Mart.”

Susannah, detecting malice behind the joking, laughed anyway, then felt she had to say something in Duke's defense. “He does work like a madman,” she said. “As if all the customers are starving and their lives depend on Duke getting food into them fast.”

Ivan looked over at her, then braked at the corner, looked left, shifted, turned the wheel. “I didn't realize the restaurant biz was like the medical biz—the waitress falls for the chef the way nurses fall for the doctors.”

“Oh, Ivan, for heaven's sake, I only meant—”

He put a hand on her knee, grinning. “I was kidding, honey. Joke.” Susannah experienced one of her brief flashes of hatred for him; they were rare, always a shock, always quickly over, but against her will they stayed in her memory. This moment would come back to her, his hand on her, his blue shirt, the bug-specked windshield, the mockery in his voice. “Remember jokes, Susie? Ha-ha?”

“Jokes are supposed to be funny,” she said. Her voice was prim and tight. I'm a humorless prune, she thought. He's made me that way. I will hate him forever. But even as she spoke and turned to glare at him, her anger was drying up, dying, he was so beautiful.

“Aw, Suse,” he said. His fond angel-smile lit the van. “I'm sorry. It's been a long day.” He touched her knee again, ran his hand up her thigh. “But I think we're going to make it—at the Café, I mean. If we can only keep our tempers.” He grinned at her, in complicity, marking the quarrel's official end. “I suppose it's too early to tell,” he said. “But it looks to me like we just might stay in business.”

Susannah remembered Duke's prediction—hadn't, actually, forgotten it for long since their talk—but the tense knot of worry it had produced in her began to unwind. “I hope so,” she said cautiously. “It certainly went well today.”

He laughed suddenly. “It's like opening night at a play, isn't it? We ought to be sitting in Sardi's waiting for the reviews. ‘The real star of the piece was Susannah Mortimer Cord in the small but eloquent role of the scullery maid.…'”

Her laughter sounded shrill and childish; she felt giddy with hope. Ivan caught the sound and reached over to tousle her hair. “You're so cute when you're happy,” he said.