Which left me alone in the quiet of Stella's garden. I was about to get into my car, then changed my mind, dropping my purse through my open window and instead starting down through the sunflowers and into the thick of the dark, fragrant foliage.
Everything in the garden felt so alive. From the bright white flowers that reached out like trailing fingers from dipping branches overhead all the way down to the short, squat berry bushes that lined the trail like stones, it was like you could feel everything growing, right before your eyes. I kept walking, taking in clumps of zinnias, petunias, a cluster of rosebushes, their bases flecked with white speckles of eggshells. I could see the roof of the doublewide over to my right, the road to my left, but the garden seemed thick enough to have pushed them back even farther on the periphery, as if once you entered it moved in to surround you, crowding up close to hold you there.
I could see something else up ahead, something metallic, catching the moonlight: there was a clearing around it, rimmed by bobbing rambler roses. Stepping through them, I found myself at the back of a sculpture. It was a woman; her arms were outstretched to the side, palms facing the sky, and lying across them were slim pieces of pipe, the ends curving downwards. I moved around it and stood in its shadow, looking up at the figure's head, which was also covered in the thin, twisted pipes, and crowned with a garland made of the same. Of course this was one of Wes's, that much was obvious. But there was something different, something I couldn't quite put my finger on. Then, I realized that the sculpture's hair and those bits of pipe it was holding all ended in a washer bisected by a tiny piece of metal: every one was a flower. Looking at it from the top, where the moonlight illuminated those curling pipes, to the bottom, where the sculpture's feet met the ground, I finally got it that this was Stella, the entire figure showing the evolution of that thick, loamy dirt moving through her hands to emerge in bloom after bloom after bloom.
"Macy?"
It was the gotcha of all gotchas. The gotcha of all time, even. Which somewhat justified the shriek that came out of my mouth, the way my heart leaped in my chest, and how these two events then repeated themselves when a flock of tiny sparrows, startled by my startling, burst forth from the sculpture's base and flew in dizzy circles, rising over the rosebushes and disappearing into the dark.
"Oh," I said, swallowing, "my God."
"Wow," Wes said. He was standing by the path, his hands in his pockets. "You really screamed."
"You scared the shit out of me!" I said. "What are you doing out here, lurking around in the dark?"
"I wasn't lurking," he said. "I've been calling your name for five minutes at least, ever since you walked in here."
"You have not."
"I really have been," he said.
"You have not," I said. "You snuck up and got your big gotcha and now you're just so happy."
"No," he replied slowly, as if I were a toddler having a totally unjustified tantrum, "I was on my way out and I saw you dropping your purse through the window. I called your name. You didn't hear me."
I looked down at the ground, my heart calming now. And then a breeze gusted up over us, the flowers behind Wes leaning one way, then the other. I heard a whirring noise above me and looked up at the sculpture. As the wind blew, the curved flowers in the figure's hands began spinning, first slowly, then faster, as the garland on her head began to do the same.
Wes and I just stood there, watching it, until the wind died down again. "You really scared me," I said to Wes, almost embarrassed now.
"I didn't mean to."
"I know."
Everything was settling back to how it had been: my heart, the flowers in the figure's hand and her garland, even the sparrows, which were now clustered on the rosebushes behind me, waiting to come back home. I started back over to the path, Wes holding aside one trailing branch so I could step through.
"Let me make it up to you," he said, as he fell in step behind me.
"You don't have to," I said.
"I know I don't have to. I want to. And I know just the way."
I turned back and looked at him. "Yeah?" I asked.
He nodded. "Come on."
Apologies come in all shapes and sizes. You can give diamonds, candy, flowers, or just your deepest heartfelt sentiment. Never before, though, had I gotten a pencil that smelled like syrup. But I had to admit, it worked.
"Okay," I said. "You're forgiven."