The Night Garden: A Novel by Lisa Van Allen

Author:Lisa Van Allen [Van Allen, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780345537577
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

Greener Pastures

On late July evenings, the sunset often hit Green Valley at just such an angle that it bent people’s thoughts toward the things they wanted most but believed they could not have for fear of actually getting them. This particular psycho-meteorological summer phenomenon stood in direct contrast with a similar winter event on the year’s shortest days, when the small gray sun set so quietly and slowly that people failed to notice that the change between night and day had happened at all—and this made them sleepy, and lazy, and content with everything they had.

Of course, only the oldest survivors in Green Valley, those who could recognize the telltale patterns of pink and gold in the sky, sensed that an evening of heartsickness was imminent and shuttered their minds against the coming onslaught like someone preparing a house for a storm. So when the summer evening shone its last burnt-pink light on each person’s thorniest desires, most of Green Valley was defenseless against it, especially the young, the dreamy, and the newly in love.

Mei, the newest boarder to stake her claim on a cot in the Pennywort barn, told a captive audience of sleepy Penny Loafers how she had always wanted a child but never thought she would actually get one, which prompted one of the women to point out that she was about to have a baby, like it or not. In Briscoe, Tom was thinking of how he had such a terrible desire to eat the entire buttery pound cake that was displayed so seductively on a stand in the kitchen—but of course, the fat would be hell on his cholesterol levels and he couldn’t decide if he wanted to deal with the various consequences from his doctor and his partner and his own uncooperative arteries.

Arthur was slumped by the feeble stream in the glen and was daydreaming about the farmhouse where he’d grown up, got married, had his daughter—where he’d had all the things life in an actual house could give a man, like razors, and hot showers, and insulation, and window fans. And yet in spite of how badly he wanted to climb out of the ravine and back into the farmhouse, in spite of how he longed, yearned, and pined for the creature comforts of a normal life, he could not allow himself to return to the place he’d been happiest. He would not be able to live with himself if he ever caught himself being happy again.

Sam, in his parents’ faded blue colonial and surrounded by his parents’ old furniture, was supposed to be watching television but was instead faced with the most painful wish he’d ever faced in his life—because he knew that desire for Olivia could only be desire that wasn’t good for him, and he thought for a moment that the greatest failure of evolution was that human beings could not claim perfect mastery over their propensity to fall in love. Better to want something that was good for you and easy to accrue.

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