Shadowboxing by Mai Rowan

Author:Mai, Rowan [Mai, Rowan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12: Light in the Forest

It was mid-November, an overcast Saturday, though not too cold. Eduardo and I were finishing up a job for a client, replacing a few beds of mums and late pansies with dwarf yews. It was easy, systematic work, spading up the clumps of flowers—personally I thought they’d been planted too shallowly, though now it only made my job easier—and pulling out the conical little evergreens from their flimsy plastic pots to dig in instead. My head stayed restfully thoughtless as the pair of us bent and dug. Sweat ran down my neck into my t-shirt, pleasantly icy when the wind ran over it, and the mound of discarded flowers in the wheelbarrow behind us grew. The pansies were still blooming, though straggly; I thought I might rescue one to repot for Asher, along with a yew that wasn’t fit to be planted.

As we neared the end of the last bed, the client, Mrs. Petersen, came out on her front doorstep to watch. She was thin, blonde, in her late twenties, and slightly pregnant. I guess “a few months in” was the phrase for it. She had on an oversized hoodie—I wondered vaguely if it were her husband’s—and leggings. There were purplish shadows under her eyes, and the corners of her mouth seemed naturally downturning. She said nothing after an initial exchange of hellos, and as Eduardo and I continued, I became uncomfortably aware of the intensity of her gaze.

After spading mulch over the base of a freshly planted yew, I stood up and paused to look at her. She was definitely watching us, both of us. Eduardo was a couple years younger than me, a Guatemalan immigrant, compact, wiry, with very black hair and intensely angled eyebrows over a small, serious face. He didn’t talk much, in English or in Spanish, which was of course fine by me—but his wife had recently had twins, and lately he began and ended every job we had together by showing me pictures of them on his phone. Kids I didn’t really get; but seeing him so happy, thumbing through snapshot after snapshot of his plump, shyly smiling wife with the two flush-faced bundles, made me happy.

Both of us had warmed up enough to have stripped down to t-shirts. As I looked at Mrs. Petersen, she made no effort to hide the fact that she was looking us over methodically: arms, chests, the arch of Eduardo’s back as he dug his spade in. Briefly she made eye contact with me, then resumed gazing without a change of facial expression. I shook my head slightly and returned to my work.

Fifteen minutes later, as I was reaching for the bills she’d counted out for us, she paused to extend one hand and clasp it around mine. “Thank you,” she said with unnecessary fervor; her facial expression still hadn’t changed. I removed my hand without saying anything, and waited for the money.

Finally she looked slightly disappointed, turning her face down and to one side.

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