Eventually Sophie noticed my distressed face and sprang to her feet, calling for the cook and the housemaid, both of whom had already gone home for the day. I think Father caught the drift and went for the telephone. Evelyn slid into the doctor’s hands only a few hours later, just under eight pounds, and a nurse came by arrangement to see us through the first two weeks.
But an unknown, disapproving, tight-lipped nurse from a Manhattan service is not a mother, is she? How can you tell her about your absolute unfamiliarity with babies and their ways, your paralytic terror at every sneeze and hiccup and change of color? How can you describe your fear and your ineptitude and your adoration? When it’s two o’clock in the morning and your baby fusses and fusses at your breast, and you’re weeping silently into her hair, shuddering chest, aching eyes, no idea what’s wrong, not the faintest clue why she won’t nurse and won’t sleep, who is there to embrace you and assure you that everything will be just fine? Who is there to take the baby into her warm, grandmotherly arms and ease your burden for a minute or two, so you’re not alone on this earth? Two o’clock in the morning with a newborn is the loneliest hour in world.
And then again, who is there to share your inexpressible joy when she sleeps at last, when her velvet cheeks go still and her tiny petal lips twitch, as if she’s dreaming of milk? Who is there to share this love that is more than love, this love that allows you—at last—to glimpse the nature of God’s love for the universe?
No one.
And I am reflecting on all this, remembering those feverish early weeks, as I recline on a picnic cloth and watch Miss Bertram play with Evelyn in Simon’s garden at Maitland. Some sort of counting game, I think; I’m too drowsy and content to investigate. Evelyn’s laughing and so is Miss Bertram, and now they rise and chase each other between the trees. No urgency requires me to follow them. For once, I don’t feel the familiar stir of uneasiness as Evelyn leaves me, in the company of another woman. The sweet floral scent of the orchard hangs in the hot air. Beneath the picnic cloth, the grass tickles my skin. I suppose I’m falling asleep, and I tell myself it’s a good thing, because my head is healing, my brain is healing from a serious blow.
When I waken, the sun’s hardly budged from its fierce quadrant in the sky. Maybe it was only a few minutes. It seems like hours, though. It seems like I’m a different person from the woman who went to sleep. I sit up and draw my knees to my chin, gazing at the neat row of boxwoods before me, and it occurs to me that boxwoods aren’t the sort of shrubbery you expect to find in the middle of tropical Florida. Although I’m no expert, am I?
So I rise and shake out my dress, and I wander toward the boxwoods, which reach nearly to my waist, clipped to a square, straight edge. A gap in the middle pleads to be stepped through, and though my head and my limbs weigh heavy with lassitude, drenched in the drowsiness that follows an afternoon nap, I make my way to the opening to discover what lies beyond. I find myself wandering past spicy eucalyptus, past verbena, past rows of densely blooming roses and flowers I can’t name, all arranged in a kind of tantalizing succession, so that you step past one charming planting and another one beckons around a gap, or the corner of a stone wall, until you arrive at a sunken oval edged in boxwood, planted in that natural, overgrown English style with a thousand blooming perennials engaged in intricate cohabitation. A low curved bench occupies the turf on the other end. I descend a few stone steps and tread into the center of the oval, thinking that I must be Alice and this is Wonderland, or else I’m still asleep on the picnic cloth. But do dreams smell like this? A succession of perfumes, one after another. The heady mixture of citrus and eucalyptus and warm, damp earth; the green scent of plants growing rampant. And I think, this is Simon’s garden; Simon planned and planted this.
I’ve entered the oval on its long side, and I’ve almost reached the center before I see the long, tranquil pool stretching from top to bottom. Almost like a canal, and at both ends—I can see them now—a pair of small stone fountains play softly. If you sit at that bench on the other side, I believe you can watch them.
“It’s lovely, isn’t it?”
How I jump! But it’s only Miss Bertram, speaking gently from the entrance behind me, wearing her long, low-waisted dress of blue cotton that I admired earlier. I smile in relief and agree that it’s a lovely garden indeed.
“He started plotting it out right away.” She folds her arms and follows the curving line of boxwoods with her eyes. “Mr. Fitzwilliam. He has a real love for gardening.”
“Yes, he does. Since he was a boy.”
She nods. “So he told me. It looks almost wild, doesn’t it? The flower beds, I mean. As if they just grew up there naturally. But I can tell you, he planned every detail. Dug each hole with his own hands. Wouldn’t let another man touch this part of the garden.”
“I can’t imagine where he found the time.”
“I guess he just wanted what he wanted. You know how it is, when you want something bad enough.”
“Who looks after it now?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Now that Simon’s gone. Who takes care of this garden?”
Miss Bertram hesitates. Her eyes flicker to one of the fountains and back again. I can hear them now, those fountains, rattling softly into the miniature canal, like the patter of a never-ending rain.
“My mama does,” she says, in a way that makes me think she didn’t want to have to say it.
“Your mother’s a gardener, too?”
“She always loved her flowers. And her house is close by.” Miss Bertram nods at some point over the boxwood hedge. “I know Mr. Fitzwilliam wouldn’t want any old gardener to look after his secret garden.”
The words secret garden strike a strange little chord inside me. “If it’s a secret, it’s not very well hidden,” I say. “I found it pretty easily, in fact.”
“Well, he would have wanted you to, wouldn’t he?”
Instead of answering her, I cross the canal in an awkward leap and walk to the bench. It’s longer and deeper than I thought; the kind of furniture on which you could lie down and take a nap, if you didn’t mind the stone mattress. Behind me, I hear the rustle of vegetation that betrays Miss Bertram’s approach.
“Where’s Evelyn?” I ask.
“My mama took her into the house for cookies.”
“Your mama?”
“Yes. Mama wanted to meet her. She’s Mr. Fitzwilliam’s daughter, after all. We’ve been just dying to see her.”
“Yes, she is.” I’m not really paying attention to her words, in fact, because in staring down at the surface of the bench I’ve noticed a set of small initials carved into marble at one end: my own.
And, at the other end, Simon’s.
“Do you like it?” asks Miss Bertram.
“He went to a lot of expense, that’s for certain.”
“I guess he did. He used to tell me that was why he worked so hard, to provide for you. So you wouldn’t be giving anything up, moving from your father’s house to his.”
“That wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t about the money, at least on my side.”