Broken Homes & Gardens Read online

  It was late in the afternoon before they picked up Melissa to deliver her to her new place. Melissa rode up front to navigate, and Joanna was stuck in the back next to Melissa’s bedding and a wiry tangle of hangers. They traversed the city again. The apartment was on the other side of town, over a highway, past downtown Seattle, the Space Needle gleaming in the distance. It wasn’t raining. She could see the clouds billowing up over the Puget Sound, the Olympics jagged and blue, dotted with snow. Postcard perfect.

  If Malcolm were still in Kazakhstan, she’d stop by a drugstore and buy the best postcard—funny or beautiful, it depended on her mood—and send it. After Malcolm had returned to Portland, the letters had stopped. This struck Joanna as unfair, somehow. They lived in the same city but didn’t pour themselves out to each other anymore.

  No more letters. But she could text him. She took out her phone. “Why am I here?” she wrote.

  A minute passed, but then a message appeared: “Existential crisis?”

  “Here, in Seattle. Here, stuck in the back seat of the car like a kid on a road trip,” she said.

  “Jump out at a stoplight,” he wrote.

  She wondered what they’d do if she did. Would they even notice? She could slip out, quietly, at a stop sign or red light. They’d keep driving.

  They unloaded everything from the trailer and moved Melissa into her new place. Nate looked at his watch. “Okay, we’ve got to return the trailer before they close tonight.” Nate looked over at Joanna. “You know where you want to go to dinner?”

  Melissa walked over to the window. “Not much of a view,” she said. It was dark, but you could see lights in the apartments across the way.

  “First night in your new place,” Joanna said to fill the silence.

  Melissa let out a fluttery breath. “You guys, I’m so, so grateful for your help today. I mean, my own parents didn’t—” She stopped because she was choking back tears. “I just don’t know what I would have done—”

  Nate went up to Melissa and put his arm around her shoulders. Melissa gave a stoic little smile. “You two have dinner plans.”

  Nate and Joanna exchanged glances. “We can stay for a little bit, help you get settled,” Joanna said.

  Melissa nodded.

  “I still have to take that trailer back—” Nate said.

  “I can stay with her,” Joanna said.

  Nate promised to return with Thai takeout, leaving Joanna and Melissa alone in the apartment.

  Joanna suggested they make up Melissa’s bed with the sheets Nate’s mother had bought and washed for her. “Thanks for staying with me, Joanna,” Melissa said, adjusting the fitted sheet over the mattress.

  “You don’t have to keep thanking me,” Joanna said. “I wanted to come.”

  “You must think I’m a mess.”

  Joanna didn’t know how to respond. Every time she looked at Melissa, she tried to reconcile the stories Nate had told her with the woman standing before her. The flirtatious college girl who mesmerized every guy she talked to. The heartbreaker who got pregnant with another man’s baby and still managed to keep Nate in her thrall. Today Melissa was wearing a pair of patterned scrubs, bright fuchsia, scattered with cartoon molars. This was the woman who made another man so jealous he wouldn’t let her leave the house without him. “What happened to you?” Joanna asked. As soon as she said it, she regretted it. “Sorry—”

  Melissa smoothed the blankets over the bed and sat down on top of it. Joanna sat down, too. “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “It just happened.”

  Later that night, after Nate had returned, and they’d stored the leftover takeout containers in the fridge, Melissa asked if they would stay just a little bit longer. “Just until I fall asleep.” And Melissa shut the door of the bedroom behind her, leaving Joanna and Nate with nothing to do but assemble her furniture. “We can’t leave her like this,” Nate whispered, one hour and a completed coffee table later.

  “We can’t stay here all night!” Joanna whispered back. It wouldn’t surprise her if Nate suggested it. They could sleep curled up in boxes like cats, warming themselves with recycled packing materials.

  “Let’s at least finish the dresser.”

  It was past midnight by the time Joanna was tucked into the sofa bed at Nate’s parents’ house. She was exhausted. Before she went to sleep, she sent Malcolm a text: “Am I an idiot for coming on this trip?”

  He wrote back almost immediately. “Probably.”

  “I thought I was being helpful.”

  “No, you thought you were keeping an eye on him.” Joanna wanted to deny it. No, no, she should write back. That wasn’t it at all.

  “What a romantic weekend in Seattle,” she wrote instead.

  “You deserve it.”

  “Look, this isn’t working,” Nate said, a week after returning home. They’d fought every day after their weekend in Seattle—talking in circles, neither one willing to back down.

  “What?”

  “We always said we’d end it if we weren’t happy.”

  “You’re not happy?”

  Nate’s face answered her question. “Are you?”

  “Do you care if I’m happy?” Now she was mad. “No, Nate, I wasn’t happy. I spent last weekend helping your ex-girlfriend move. Do you think that made me happy?”

  He shrugged. They argued for another hour, and at last they agreed to go to bed, lying side by side without touching. By then she had stopped crying; she was no longer angry or sad.

  Her dominant feeling was relief, like stepping out of shoes two sizes too small.

  7

  the sound of rain

  After two weeks of looking for a new place, she finally settled for a small efficiency apartment with industrial carpeting. It was in Southeast Portland, right across the river alongside warehouses and other old cement block buildings. It had two redeeming features: immediate availability and a view of the Portland skyline over the river, once you looked past the tarred rooftop directly below.

  The apartment was too small to accommodate more than a bed and an upholstered armchair, which stood awkwardly on the linoleum next to the strip of kitchen where a table and chairs were probably supposed to go. She ate her meals sitting on her bed, looking out at the city. Malcolm had brought over a large jade plant in a heavy glazed ceramic pot for her birthday/housewarming present. It rested on the floor next to the chair, under the window. She spent perhaps a little too much time dusting each smooth, dark green fleshy leaf until it shone and pruning branches with her gardening shears. She kept it on a strict ten-day watering cycle. It did not escape Joanna’s notice that she was once again funneling her love and attention to a plant.

  Malcolm kept his distance after she moved; she told him she needed time to be on her own. They talked on the phone sometimes. She would lie on her bed and look out at the weird view of the Portland skyline and they would talk until she got too sleepy to form sentences.

  She was living in an efficiency; her whole life had become efficient. She ate the same things every day, mostly shelf-stable foods. Instead of feeling pathetic she felt self-reliant. The depressing apartment turned out to be a blessing in disguise. She went out more, stayed longer after work, and joined colleagues for drinks afterwards. She became reacquainted with a few of her old friends from graduate school. She ran into Allison Chalmers at one of the community colleges where Joanna taught Introduction to the College Essay. She and Allison had gone to grad school together. She’d been working toward an MA in English with hopes of applying to PhD programs in postcolonial literature. But there she was, still in Portland, picking up adjunct positions.

  “How’s it going with Nate?” was the first thing Allison asked Joanna when they met each other at the coffee shop down the street from the community college. Allison had worked with Nate in the admissions office at the university and had, in fact, been the one to introduce Joanna to him in the first place. Allison had out-of-control curly brown hair that stuck out six inches f
rom her head and big, blue eyes that gazed intently as she talked, as if she were concentrating very hard on what Joanna had to say. Her narrow, serious face somehow balanced out the unruly curls. Joanna had waved her hands and smiled. Long story, she’d said. But it’s all for the best.

  Allison and Joanna—along with Malcolm and three friends from graduate school—made plans to spend spring break on the coast. Over the years Joanna had learned to adjust to the Oregonian mindset, and now she, too, could get excited about bundling up and walking along the shore through a persistent gray cloud. She had to shuffle from the house, up some dunes tufted with grass, and then mime her way towards the loud crashing of waves to get to the ocean.

  Elaine and Tracy owned the beach house. They were gourmet cooks and planned to make elaborate meals for everyone all weekend. Malcolm hung out with them in the kitchen, acting as their sous-chef. From Joanna’s vantage point in front of the fire, everyone seemed to be having a marvelous time. She’d hear him mumbling something in his low voice, then outraged peals of laughter emit from the two women. More murmurs, then laughter, strident exclamations, and then his voice again, more animated this time.

  Joanna was curled up on a couch with a book and a cup of tea, listening to the wind and rain and the crackling of the fire. It was dark outside, the windows rattled. Everything was right in her world at that moment. She could stay in this very spot for hours, for the rest of her life. But eventually her curiosity demanded she stand up and join the others in the kitchen.

  Dinner turned into one of those rare occasions when everyone feeds off everyone else’s ideas—where conversation manages to be somehow stimulating and self-affirming, as if they were voicing each other’s secret thoughts. As they opened a fourth bottle of wine, they vowed they’d return to the coast every year—the six of them.

  After dinner, Malcolm and Allison took off to pick up some ice cream for dessert while Joanna and John—a slight, bookish guy she and Allison knew from a Shakespeare seminar—cleaned the kitchen. With the table cleared and the dishwasher purring, they started up a Scrabble game with Elaine and Tracy. Allison and Malcolm still hadn’t returned. “Where are those two?” murmured Elaine. After an hour they began wondering if they had gotten lost. “Maybe they got in a car accident,” offered John.

  Ten minutes later, Malcolm and Allison burst through the door, holding up a plastic bag of ice cream like a trophy. “What happened to you guys?” Tracy asked, taking the ice cream into the kitchen and immediately spooning it into bowls. Both Malcolm and Allison insisted that they had no idea they’d been gone for over an hour. They’d just driven to the store, stood by the ice cream case debating the attributes of vanilla over mint chocolate chip, and come right back.

  “You spent an hour at the store and got vanilla?” The glow Joanna had felt with the beach house crowd during dinner had dimmed with her miserable performance during Scrabble and the prospect of vanilla ice cream for dessert.

  Malcolm stood behind Joanna and peered at her letters. “Ouch,” he said, eyeing her tray full of vowels—four of which were I’s—and a blank.

  He put his hands on her shoulders, bending over to get a better look at the Scrabble board, and she shrieked. His hands were freezing, as usual. He just laughed. She shrugged him off.

  “Ah, but vanilla is a blank canvas,” Allison remarked. “Put hot fudge on it, and you have a hot fudge sundae. Add caramel and pecans, and you have a tin roof—”

  “Yeah, but you guys didn’t get any toppings,” Joanna pointed out. “This is just vanilla.”

  “Vanilla’s good,” John said diplomatically.

  She pouted. “Not really.”

  “Hey,” Allison said. “Let us play.”

  Joanna frowned. “We’re kind of already in the middle of this game.”

  Elaine yawned and stood up. “You two can have my letters. I’m heading off to bed.”

  This was a personal pet peeve of Joanna’s: flaky Scrabble players. You knew going into it that it could take all night. To quit after forty-five minutes was ridiculous. She opened her mouth to protest, but Elaine was already shuffling off to bed, and Malcolm and Allison were bending over the same tray of letters, whispering to each other.

  It was almost one in the morning before everyone got to bed. Malcolm and John camped out in the living room. Allison and Joanna were sharing the second bedroom, each lying on a twin bed under matching homemade quilts. “So tell me how you know Malcolm again,” Allison said in a whisper as soon as they’d turned out the lights.

  “He was my brother-in-law’s old roommate.”

  “What’s the deal with you two?”

  “Allison.” Joanna sat up in bed to look over at her friend. It was too dark to make out her expression. “You don’t like Malcolm, do you?”

  “Why? What’s wrong with him?”

  “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with him. I just wouldn’t have thought he’d be your type.”

  “You have to admit he’s funny,” she said. “And there’s something weirdly sexy about him, too, don’t you think?”

  Joanna had not anticipated her two best friends falling for each other. Maybe they would hit it off. They’d date, fall in love, get married, have a brood of big-eyed kids, live happily ever after in a house Malcolm made with his own two hands. Meanwhile, Joanna, philosophically opposed to marriage, would remain single and childless. They’d ask her to tag along to readings held by obscure writers, make her the godmother of their children. They’d call her Aunt Joanna. She’d be knocked over to the periphery of their lives. At least they’d have to credit her with introducing them to each other. They’d owe her that much.

  “I was with Nate for the last two years, remember?” Joanna said. “Malcolm and I are friends. You two should go out. You’d be good for him.” Allison didn’t respond, and Joanna closed her eyes.

  She awoke a couple hours later to the sound of rain splattering against the windows. She lay still for a few moments, just listening to it. She wanted to throw the windows open, let in a gust of sweet, wild air. “Allison?” she whispered. Her friend’s bed was empty. The room felt unbearably warm; the oxygen had been sucked right out of it. She ran to the window and opened it up. A gust of cool air blew in, and she took in a sharp, greedy breath. She leaned on the windowsill, looking out at the darkness and listening to the rain, until the room was cold.

  The next day, Allison and Malcolm were insufferable, nuzzling each other’s necks and giggling over the fifteen-egg frittata. Joanna pulled on her rubber boots, buttoned her raincoat over her pajamas, and headed out the door while everyone else was still drinking coffee. She ran through the dunes to the edge of the ocean. The weather hadn’t improved since the night before. She plodded through the sand along the shoreline, her face tucked down to fend off the spray of rain and saltwater. She was already soaking wet. The wind had blown her hood back, whipped through her hair. She was all alone—a tragic figure from a Brontë novel, wandering the moors, her eyes dark with pain and longing. Soon she’d fall onto the dunes, too weak to carry on. A handsome stranger on horseback would swoop her up, gallop back to his estate, where she would spend the next two months recovering from a vague and lingering illness.

  The sad thing was what appealed to her most about this fantasy was not the handsome man on horseback, but the thought of everyone’s reactions back at the beach house. What would they do if she never returned? As night fell they would begin to panic. They’d form a search party. Soon they’d lose all hope at finding her, assuming she’d slipped on a rock and drowned. Little would they know that she was less than a mile away in a magnificent seaside manor, suffering from amnesia.

  As she turned around and trudged back toward the beach house, she focused on Malcolm’s role in this narrative. He would blame himself for her death. He would never marry, never forgive himself. One day—ten, twenty years later—she would see Malcolm on the streets of Portland. He’d be older, disheveled, wild-eyed. But seeing him would unlock something inside her. H
er memory would flood back in an instant, and she’d call to him. He would cry tears of joy. But unfortunately for him, he would learn that she had married that man who had rescued her on the dunes all those years before. Malcolm would spend the rest of his days alone with his regrets.

  She arrived back at the beach house, so overcome by her own imagination that she was not only wet and shivering, but sobbing. Inside, no one appeared to have lost a moment’s relaxation with worry over her whereabouts. John and Allison had started another game of Scrabble at the table while Elaine and Tracy puttered around the kitchen. Malcolm was tending the fire. He looked up when she came in and a smile crept up on his face. She unzipped her coat and swept the wet tendrils of hair from her cheeks, counting on the rain to disguise her tears. She stood in a puddle of water in the tiled entryway, like a wet dog.

  “What possessed you to take a walk in this weather?” he asked. “Stop!” As she made a move to enter the living room, he gestured for her not to step onto the carpet. He darted into the hall and returned with a towel. “You’ll get the whole house wet.”

  He peeled off her coat, shook it twice, and hung it on a hook. Lifting the towel to her face, he began dabbing away her tears and rain. She stood still for a moment, looking up at him. He was concentrating on the act of drying her, pressing the towel to her hands, her hair. Then he handed her the towel. She took it silently and walked down the hall to the bathroom.

  Back in Portland, the land of puffball pink cherry trees and chirping birds, she sat alone in her apartment. At this very moment, Malcolm and Allison were out on the town, taking in a dinner and a movie. Joanna had more or less arranged the whole thing. It was the first Friday night of spring term. After a boring dinner of cheese melted on a piece of whole wheat bread, Joanna turned on the light over her bed and gazed out at the city as she went over her syllabi, devising ways to interest her students in the dreaded ten-page research paper.