The Gardener of Eden by David Downie

Author:David Downie
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781643131160
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2018-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

Where do we start,” James asked Maggie, watching Taz limp down the front steps of the house dressed like a space-age warrior in rubber armor carrying his wheeled steed. Mounting his unicycle, he waved to them, then rolled south on the Old Coast Highway toward his computer lab session.

“How about cutting your hair,” Maggie said with a laugh as light as a butterfly. “Your hair and your beard.” She stood with her arms wrapped around her body, brimming with contradictory emotions.

James uncrossed her arms gently, held her close for what seemed a lifetime but was only a few seconds, then took both her small hands in one of his. “Yes,” he said, pulling the pink envelope from his shirt pocket and giving it to her. “I guess there’s no point wearing the disguise now.” Pausing to watch her read the letter she had written a lifetime ago, he opened his mouth to speak but she finished his thought for him.

“Now?” she asked, stifling her emotions. “You mean, now that you’ve come home?”

“Am I home?”

She pulled him close again and hugged as hard as she could until his kidneys ached. “You are home, JP, and you’re never going to leave again, unless you want to.” She released him, pushed him back and looked up, unable to hide her revulsion. “But we’ve got to get rid of that hair and beard. They’re horrible. They’re downright repulsive, and your b.o. is pretty bad, too.”

Leading him into the echoing old tiled bathroom-cum-laundry room, she dragged out an antique folding stepladder and sat him down on the top tread. “Take off your shirt,” she commanded, sounding like a nurse. She dropped it in the washing machine in the corner of the vast room then draped a bath towel over his shoulders and pinned it together with a clothespin. “What are all the bandages for,” she asked, “and this patch?”

“Didn’t you hear about the cage and wire?”

She made a face and nodded and sucked at the air in empathy. “First things first,” she said, the slight southern twang he loved coming into her voice. “We shear you then we soap you up and do the fine trimming,” she added, a mothering note entering her pleasant soprano lilt. “Then we catch up on four decades, right up to the cage and wire. I watched the report on TV last night, and Alex filled me in.” James leaned forward, laying his head on her bosom, then reached up and gently cupped her breasts. “Whoa cowboy,” she said, gently pushing him back, “let’s get to know each other again.”

“Yes, ma’am,” James said. “We are virtual strangers.” But it felt to him as if he had seen her yesterday, as if she had always been with him over the years. He wondered if she felt the same. Could such things happen?

As the tufts rained down, James looked up surreptitiously to make sure he wasn’t imagining the scene, but Maggie scolded him and said he’d be sorry, he’d get hair in his eyes and regret it.

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