The Devil_s Garden

THIRTY

Sondra Arsenault stared at the television, an icy hand squeezing her heart. In the past twenty-four hours she had not eaten, had not left the house, except to get the mail, and even then she had all but run back to the front porch and slammed and locked the door, as if being chased by invisible demons. She had not slept a single minute. She had alternated between pots of black coffee, vitamins, scalding showers, and runs on the treadmill. She had taken her blood pressure a dozen times, each time registering a higher reading. She had cleaned the refrigerator. Twice.

Now, watching this news report, she realized her fears had not only been justified, but horribly understated. There was a good chance that, before the day was over, her world would end.

At six o’clock James walked through the door, his briefcase bulging at the seams, a pile of papers under his arm. As one of the newer teachers at Franklin Middle School he not only taught English but also a fourth-grade civics class, and served as the school’s soccer coach. In the past three months he had lost fifteen pounds from his already tall and lanky frame. At fifty-one, he was beginning to walk with an old man’s slouch.

James kissed Sondra on the top of her head – Sondra was nearly a foot shorter, and they had fallen into this routine years earlier – put his case and papers on the dining-room table, and crossed into the kitchen.

The kids were staying with Sondra’s mother in Mamaroneck for a few days, and the house was preternaturally quiet, a state made even more pronounced to Sondra by the savage beating of her heart. She could swear she heard her diastolic pressure rise and fall.

James reached into the cupboard over the stove, took down a bottle of Maker’s Mark. It had become a ritual for him. One drink before retiring to what passed for a den in their three-bedroom colonial. He would mark papers for an hour before dinner, catch up on his e-mail. If something unusual happened at school that day, this would be the ten-minute window in which he told his wife.

This was one of those days.

“You’re not going to believe what happened today,” James began. “One of the kids in my civics class, this big fourth-grader who thought it would be a good idea to bring a pair of chameleons to school -”

“I have something to tell you.”

James stopped pouring his drink, his shoulders sagging. All the dark possibilities of what might be coming his way danced across his face – an affair, a disease, a divorce, something happened to the kids. As long as Sondra had known him, he had never faced adversity well. He was a good husband, a great father, but a warrior he was not. It was Sondra who was always on point in every conflict they had faced as a couple, as a family. It was Sondra who stared down the dangers and misfortunes of their lives.

This was one of the reasons she had not said anything about what had happened. Now she had no choice.

“Is everything okay?” James asked, his voice trembling. “I mean, the kids… are the kids -?”

“They’re fine, James,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“Your mom?”

“She’s good. Everybody’s good.”

Sondra walked over to the sink, eyed the coffeemaker. She couldn’t have another cup. Her nerves were frayed as it was. Her veins felt like electrified copper wire. She began to make a pot anyway. She needed to do something with her hands.

As she circled an entry point to the story she had to tell her husband – a challenge that had run through her mind constantly for the past twenty-four hours – she considered how she had gotten to this moment.

The only child of Laotian immigrants, the cherished daughter of a celebrated mathematician and a forensic anthropologist, Sondra had grown up in the rarefied world of academia and applied science. Fall in New England, summer in North Carolina, at least three birthdays spent in Washington DC.

She met James at an all-nighter on the campus of Smith College, where he was one of the younger teaching assistants, and she was a grad student coasting to her MISW. At first she found him bookish and a little too passive, but after their third date she rooted out his charm, and found herself falling for this quiet young man from Wooster, Ohio. They married a year later, and although both would admit privately that their courtship and marriage did not burn with the heat of any grand passion, and that their inability to conceive was a source of sadness and disappointment, they both staked out, and claimed, contentment.

In the eighteenth year of their marriage, when they decided to adopt, the two little girls from Uzbekistan who bubbled into their lives caused a reaffirmation – perhaps even a true discovery – of love for each other. Life was good.

Until this moment.

James floated slowly over to the dinette table, pulled out a chair, drifted down to the seat, as if he were weightless. He had not yet taken a sip of his bourbon.

Sondra sat across from her husband. Her hands began to shake. She put them in her lap. “Something happened last night,” she said.

James just stared at her. For some odd reason Sondra noticed that he had missed a large spot on his neck when he shaved that morning.

Despite all her careful preparation, she just told him what had happened in one long sentence. She told him how she had been doing the laundry, how she had just put the towels in the linen closet on the second-floor landing. She told him how, at that moment, she had been thinking about their upcoming trip to Colonial Williamsburg, and whether or not the girls would like it. They were bright, inquisitive children. When it came down to a trip to Disney World, or a trip to a place with real history attached to it, it hadn’t taken long for them to decide.

When she opened the door to the girls’ room, it suddenly seemed as if all the air in the world had changed, had become red and overheated. The girls were sleeping, the nightlight was on, and everything was where it was supposed to be. Except for one thing.

“There was a man standing in their room,” Sondra said.

James looked gut-punched. “My God!” he said. He began to rise to his feet, but it seemed his legs would not support him. He eased back down to the chair. His skin turned the color of dried bones. “He didn’t…”

“No. I told you. The girls are fine. I’m fine.”

She told him what the man said, and how he had slipped out of the window like a wraith in the night. One moment there, the next moment gone. She went on to tell James what she had seen on the news. The Russian lawyer was dead. Their Russian lawyer. Murdered in his office. And it looked like files had been stolen.

For what seemed like hours, but was in reality only a minute or so, James Arsenault did not say a word. Then: “Oh no.”

“I’m going to call the police,” Sondra said. She had rehearsed these six words all day, concocting what seemed like an infinite variety of phrases, and now that she’d said them she felt an enormous sense of relief. Although, as soon as the words crossed her lips, she wondered if she had spoken them in English or Laotian.

A few moments later, when Sondra Savang Arsenault picked up the phone, her husband was still sitting at the table, his drink untouched.

In the background, the coffeemaker began to brew.