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The Garden

Alain Marciano

    I.
    I spent 5 years in a psychic ward with therapy, out of the world. They had insisted on shaving my head — but I did not let them touch my beard, which was quite a bushy mess after all those years. We had a kind of deal. I let them give me pills, in the mornings and evenings, all kinds of pills. There were group sessions that I attended and they also sent me to the doctor. Doctor Jenkins, every week, twice a week. I did not know how that was supposed to affect my health condition. The collective sessions were hard enough, more difficult than the pills but less difficult than those meetings with Doc. We sat in his office in big leather, perfectly new, armchairs, and I was asked to tell Doc things, anything that crossed my mind, thoughts and feelings, facts and speculations. I remained silent, did not say a word. I did not dislike him. I just did not want to talk to him. What kind of decent man asks personal questions about someone else? Speaking to someone I had just met, even a doctor. It’s sick, I thought. Mum always warned me against strangers. My sisters told me, be autonomous, you don’t need anybody, they shouted to me and count on yourself and so on. They went to play with their dolls, left me with grand-pa who was deaf and mute and half-paralyzed. His whole life was cast in silence and immobility. We spent our days together. Every day! Both alone.
    Also, I was confused with the noises I heard and I had heard for years. The pills did not change a thing. It was like insects, a snake or a mouse or a rate rattling on a metallic grid. A machine, humming and going slowly dead. Blood rushing in my ears. My skull, the bones, cracking when I pressed my hands on my ears. Simply perhaps meaningless noise. A car in the street. Strangers walking pass me, I hated them. A radio broadcasting a program taped years ago and fading. Water in the pipes, gurgling. Someone peeing and flushing the toilets.
    When it stopped, I found myself seated in Doc’s office and back with the questions that I did not want to answer. I said “I’ll pass on this one” or “I think I see what you mean” and then “Thanks for asking”. I ignored why I had to thank him. I did it, out of politeness. And he would say, “Okay, we’ll see next Thursday” if we were one Tuesday or “Okay, we’ll see next Tuesday” if it was one Thursday. In the meantime, there were more pills, white and blue and orange and pink. And when I was back in Doc’s office, there were more questions about what I felt and again what I felt is not to talk about. Repetition was boring and tiring. My head ached. My stomach ached. My muscles, arms and legs were tense and aching too. Remaining seated was hard and harder each and every week.
    One day, I said that I’d write, if anything. I had never written much but I loved pens, all forms of pens and the sound they make on the paper. Doc liked the idea and he told me that he liked the stories too. He knew these were stories but he said they were full of the answers he had looked for. And, after a while, he said “You can leave, go back home”. I did not know what to say, except that “I don’t have a place to live”. He was pleased to see that I was ready to speak to him. Ready. His word and his explanation. I did not understand. I was not aware of what had changed in me. Old feelings were still there. Maybe more profound. Doc gave me some tricks to control them. He said it would never disappear. “They are part of you”, he said. But he trusted me and in all the time we had spent together. He trusted me enough to let me go and work and to attend daycare at the hospital.
    II.
    “The Walkers, they are friends of mine”, said Doctor Jenkins. “I am going to phone them and they’ll find something for you to do”, this is what he told me. It was the day I left. The day he gave me the keys of a one room apartment they had found me on Martin Luther King Jr driveway. It was close to the I-82 and just behind the railways. There was the constant murmur of the cars on the highway and the honking of the train that I listened to all night long.
    I wondered what kind of people friends of Doctor Jenkins could be. I wondered why they would offer me a job. Why they would trust me. Why I should go. But I went. It took me 2 buses, about one and a half hour to reach the place, Burbank Heights, where Professor Walker and his wife live. It is a swell place, on the top of the hill, east of town, where you find all kinds of rich people and big, impressive, beautiful houses hidden behind high fences and thick walls, with no names and no doorbell to ring. Classic music came from the Walker’s house. Cars were passing by very fast and very close, their drivers looking at me. Rain was falling and I had no umbrella, drops hitting me hard on the head and rolling into my eyes. My clothes were heavy with water. It was a different time zone. I felt insecure.
    A woman opened the door and asked me what it was I wanted. She was skinny and dressed in black and she stared at me with great care while I explained what I was looking for. I said “Doctor J. believes that I am ready to work and he gave me your name and address and has probably phoned you”. She kept staring at me and did not reply, not a single word and then she turned and walked back inside the house. I heard her shout “Honey” in a very acid voice and, a few minutes later, a tall man came out. He had an open face and grey-white hair and a checked shirt, like grand-pa wore. He said that his wife did not believe that I could work for them but he had suggested that I could tend the garden. “How does it sound to you?”, he asked. “Yes, sure, no problem”, I replied but I was not sure at all. I know nothing about plants, flowers, trees, anything. I did not tell them. I had no reason to. I could learn. “OK, then, you can come back next Sunday morning”. We shook hands and I left.
    They immediately realized that I ain’t no gardener. On my first day, Professor Walker told me that I could begin with pruning the laurels that were close to the entrance door. He brought me tools – big scissors – and a pair of gloves and let me stay there with my questions. There was a big bush, a mass of green leaves and red and pink flowers on one side of the door. Were they the laurels? Or was he speaking of the one on the other side? A really big, impressive, mass of green leaves with pinkish flowers. They were different. Not knowing which one to do prune, I did both. Wrong choice. Mrs Walker blushed, red with anger. She could not believe that and was it possible to make errors like that and that now, now, it was awful, it had taken years to have a tree like this size and now it was destroyed, awful. Her eyes were glimmering with tears when she called her husband for help. But Professor Walker said it was no problem actually, just a tree you know, a living being for sure but—but and that I could come back, it was no problem. Really. He smiled at me. Mrs Walker did not smile. After that, she spied on me, following me in the garden, asking “Who told you to do that?”. I replied, “Professor Walker told me” and she asked “Are you sure?”. Of course, I was sure. What the hell.
    Sometimes, the Walkers went to the mass 3 blocks down the road. I would never have guessed that there was a church in that neighborhood. Professor Walker gave me instructions and tools and the gloves he had offered me and they left. But, I didn’t really feel like working when I was alone. I did not want to take risks. Making another mistake? No, thanks no. I sat on a white wooden bench. No one could see me from the street; it was very calm and quiet. Children playing in neighboring gardens, birds and squirrels flying from one green tree to another tree with a different green. The colors were cooling me down. I smoked a couple of joints and left, most of the time before they were back from the mass. It happened that the mass was shorter or something and here they were. Mrs Walker was the one who shouted, not pleased to see me sitting on the bench. She told her husband, look he has done nothing at all, look how slow he is and she added that we should get rid of him and that he is weird. She complained almost every time since I started working there. I did not care. Neither did Professor Walker. OK, OK, he said. He was always very calm. And he said also don’t worry darling and we are not paying him for the work he does or he does not do, you know that darling and then he came and proposed me, Do you want a lift? I have something to do in town. Whether or not he had something to do in town, I did not and it was none of my business. I accepted the offer, “Yes, yes, thank you”. It saved the bus fare. I am pretty sure he did not tell his wife about the extra bucks he gave me when he paid me in the car. He added to the $40 they paid me each week, even if I lived in a rent-free apartment in a house owned by a charity organization.
    I suppose I could have tried to find other jobs, perhaps ask Doc at the hospital for his help, again. It was tricky. I did not like going to the hospital and had not seen the Doctor since the end of the therapy. Better stay away from the other crazies and the nurses. I preferred calling the Walkers. I asked if there was not an extra-something I could do in the garden and they would give me extra-money and it would be very, very generous. When Mrs Walker answered the phone, it was very difficult. She was a tough woman. One of those devout who think that one has what one deserves. Always telling me that I made so many mistakes, that I should stop drinking and take the pills they prescribe and go to the hospital and stay there for a while, that they would hire me again after. It angered me and it made me cry too. I found that unjust. I said, “I take my pills. I go to the hospital to have my prescription renewed”. But I did not tell her that I didn’t take my pills. Not regularly, at least. There was a stack of boxes next to my bed. Some empty. Some as new, untouched. I forgot because I substituted booze and weed to normal medication. She added then that I should go to the church, they knew a priest who would be glad to help and after long minutes of preaching, she would eventually give the phone to her husband. I would hear her whispering, you know who it is and you know I no longer want him to work for us and also you have to kick him out of our garden. She knew I was listening. And her husband, professor Walker replied gently, OK, OK, don’t worry darling and then he told me that I could come. He gave me extra-work to do and extra-money. He was so cool.
    III.
    It was not the money I liked most in the job. Not even Professor Walker’s kindness. I loved being in the garden, it was the only spot in which I felt okay. Positive about the present. My mind wandered away from bad memories, away from why I went to the hospital, from the accident, the stove or something else that exploded and the house where we lived with my wife and our six-year old daughter that was burned to the ground. I forgot about the hospital and the therapy. The pills and Doctor Jenkins. It was just there and now. It was cool. I got the habit to go up there and, when the Walkers were absent and the house was closed, to enter the garden and spend time, seated on the big wooden bench. I smoked the joint I had prepared and drank 1 or 2 beers. I had this notebook with me, one left from the hospital, and I wrote. It was lists words such as ... TREE, THREE, trees (one tree, MANY trees) ..... Birds .... friends (birds are my friends) .... NO insects/insects .....NO/No/NO ... yes/YES ... a bench (a white bench/the bench is white). Capital letters are fun. The spaces left between the words were to be filled up later. It would make a story. It was the same kind of words I had put down for Doctor Jenkins at the hospital. And I was brought back to the therapy even in the garden. I threw the notebook in a trashcan. But I kept on going to the Walker’s garden.
    Once, it was one Sunday in May or June and the Walkers had told that there was no need to come, they were visiting one of their children in Seattle and they would be back late in the night. This sunday was beautiful, a day for being outside in a nice and calm place. I was upset because I needed the money but it was a good opportunity to propose Jenny to come. Jenny had been my girlfriend for a few weeks already. She was skinny and short, a face with big sad eyes, and a mind crazy like heaven and hell together. She had bursts of anger that were frightening but she could also be clever, capable of telling you something that looks like the truth, that you could simply disMrs and forget. I liked her very much. And I wanted to please her and to show who I really am
    The sun was already high when we took the buses to Burbank Heights and walked to the Walkers’ and went in the garden and sat on the bench. I said to Jenny, make no noise, do not let anyone know that we are here. And she did as I told her. We smoked and we had a great day, stoned and relax. It was dark when we left and Jenny said that I should put some pot somewhere in the garden, No one would notice, she said, they don’t know what it is, right? I did not reply.
    IV.
    A few days later, I asked Jenny again to spend some time in the garden of the Walkers and she mentioned again that I should plant some pot. And again some days later. I said, “Shut up, shut up”. I shouted. She seemed to have only that on her mind. Nothing else more interesting, like spending her time with me. I said “I just want to enjoy, keep cool and relax”. That was true. I did not want much more than that.
    Jenny did not get it, she laughed, said I was a loser. I said okay, but I don’t know where to get seeds to plant. This was not a problem. She brought seeds and we started to plant the stuff in the back of the garden. I knew where the tools and gloves were. I took them and did the job. Jenny was smiling, laughing out loud, calming down, shouting and laughing again and cooling down a little bit again. She was on the verge of one of her fits.
    Suddenly Mrs Walker was there, on us, shouting like a devil that it is not the proper way to treat people who treat you properly and rightly. Her voice was hard and aggressive. She said that she is going to call the police and so on and so on. I lied that her husband had asked to come and that since it was Sunday my girlfriend had came along. She did not buy it. She repeated that she would call the police and that she would call the police. Again and Again. She walked to the house, slammed the door and locked it. I thought of the days I spent in the garden alone. It was before Jenny and it was super cool then. Coolest place in the world. Jenny was probably thinking something else. She started crying and shouting and run for the house, following Mrs Walker. She banged the door. She insulted Mrs. Walker. “Open that door, you fucking bitch, open that fucking door”, she cried and she punched the door with her firsts and she kicked at the door with her feet. I grabbed Jenny before Mrs Walker could open the door. But she was actually not planning to do that. I understood that as soon as I heard sirens coming.
    VI.
    They sent Jenny to prison. I was sent back to the psychic ward. Professor Walker did not do anything for me. Doc said I was hopeless and he was disappointed and sad. I am sad now, too. I miss the garden very much.

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