PART I
HELL
There is no greater sorrow than to recall
happiness in times of misery.
—DANTE ALIGHIERI
1
DONNA
Through the thicket of trees, the faint amber lights of a building appear. The sign catches me by surprise as if it isn’t meant to be seen by just anyone. Like a hurried deer crossing the road it materializes, and below it, bushy sky-blue hydrangeas the size of human heads thrive.
Golden letters come into focus. Shadow Garden.
How strange. All these years I’ve lived here but I never knew this place existed.
“You think I’ll get better soon?”
I turn and look at Edward, my husband. I shouldn’t notice the heavy metal-alloy femoral head in my left hip but it weighs me down in more ways than one. Since the accident things have been difficult between us.
Edward stares straight ahead. His face hadn’t been touched by a razor in months, not until this morning, when he decided to stop hiding behind a full beard. I study the profile of the face that has emerged, exposed and on the verge of being unfamiliar. A spot by his upper lip, a small blood-speckled wound from the razor blade. His fitted suit is no longer snug and I resist telling him to have the garment altered. I have become good at swallowing my words by visualizing pulling an imaginary zipper across my mouth.
A gate shuts behind us. I search for words to accurately explain myself but I’m distracted by shiny kaleidoscopic grackles of purple, green, and blue iridescence foraging with long dark bills. They peck at shamrock-green grass blades, have taken over the walkways and the shrubberies, they dot the lawn, sit perched on rims of copper fountains, bobbing their heads. As we pass them, the flock scatters off into nearby trees. In the fading light, their yellow eyes stand out in the otherwise emerald landscape. They settle nearby, invisible to the eye, but their calls are unnerving, like the sound of buzzing power lines.
I look out the car window so Edward doesn’t see me tearing up. He hates tears. They unravel him, do him in. He’s been composed so far, at least on the outside, but that’s nothing to brag about; he’s a surgeon, it comes to him naturally.
That name. Shadow Garden. How overly dramatic, as if ripped from a Victorian horror novel. It isn’t until I’m shown the grounds that it grows on me. It has the feel of an Ivy League university surrounded by a vastness of jade, mint, olive, and sage—any hue of green the eye can imagine.
Shadow Garden is nothing to shake a stick at. It sits on a majestic estate of almost forty acres of hiking trails tucked away in the countryside at the end of a rural road. To call the estate a garden, even in a remote sense, is an understatement: The grounds are a burst of potted plants, bushes, shrubberies, and trees shading the paved walkways. Crape myrtles rise between the buildings, slender, with sinewy, fluted stems and mottled branches and bark that sheds like snakeskin.
“I guess I’ve turned into an old shrew, griping all day long,” I joke but to no avail. Earlier, when I struggled down the stairs and limped over to the car, his eyes were fixated on me, watching my every step. He hasn’t looked at me since. I wonder what he thinks of me shuffling around without any strength and confidence, and maybe he’s run out of compassion. Just look at him staring straight ahead as if I’m not even here. “Did you hear me?”
“Bones heal, dear. That’s what bones do. They fuse,” Edward says as the corners of his lips form the imitation of a smile.
“You’re the doctor, you ought to know,” I say with a slight hint of sarcasm, but truth be told, it isn’t my bones I’m worried about. I wish I could talk to Edward like I used to. I want to tell him how terrified I am. “I worry about Penelope,” I add, barely a whisper.
His head swivels toward me when I mention our daughter.
“Marleen will be with you. No need to worry.”
Marleen. My housekeeper. My steadfast soldier. Years ago, Edward and I traveled to Egypt. We toured a temple and the guide told us about a human entombed with nobility to serve them in the afterlife—a retainer sacrifice. Metaphorically speaking I’m a cast-off given a servant.
Later, Edward stands awkwardly blocking the front door. “I have to leave now,” he says, and I blink the tears away.
“I don’t understand why all this is happening,” I can’t help myself and before I know it, the words have escaped my mouth. They rest between us with all those other weighted things we have accumulated in the past.
Edward remains silent. I reach for his hand, which hangs lifeless and cold by his side. He seems jittery but maybe I’m reading too much into it.
“You’ll be back to your old self in no time,” Edward finally says without making eye contact.
Thirty years of marriage and I can read him like a book. Even he doesn’t believe the back-to-your-old-self thing. The fabric between him and the truth is nothing but a smokescreen. As thin as paper. An illusion. The truth is our marriage is over and Shadow Garden is my consolation prize. That’s the gist of it.
As I see Edward off, the lampposts flicker, and for a moment the night is so dark, it seems capable of devouring me. Like being swallowed whole.
2
DONNA
I tug at the crisp white sheet clinging to the corner of my vanity mirror. Yanking at it, I center the fabric. The sheet disturbs dust, which threatens to settle on every surface of my bedroom.
“I don’t understand what this is all about,” Marleen reprimands me as if I’m an unruly child. Her eyes pan back and forth between me and the mirror.
“This isn’t nearly as dramatic as it looks,” I say and reassure her I’m in great spirits. Just in case she thinks otherwise.
I’ve explained the entire mourning affair to Marleen but it must have gone over her head. My friend and neighbor, Vera Olmsted, told me about holding shiva for seven days, during which one shrouds all mirrors, but I’m Methodist and there’s no need to follow the rules exactly. Loss comes in many forms and my state of mourning has to do with my marriage. For the longest time I counted on a reconciliation but months have passed and not a single phone call from Edward. Not one visit. And my daughter, Penelope, I haven’t spoken to her either.
Voices drift toward me through the open window—a child, giggling, high-pitched, pit-a-patting, racing down the walkway with a joy that only children possess. A mother’s voice responds gently, wait, slow down, hold my hand. I crane my neck to get a good look at them—the girl is about five or so—and seeing her is comforting at first but then reality sinks in.
* * *
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