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Beautiful in Autumn

2024; Duke University Press; Volume: 2024; Issue: 102 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00265667-11047017

2157-4189

Emily Pegg,

The moment before you know: the smell of tomato stalks in the garden, the network of pulsing earthworms. Summer hangs over the neighborhood like a piñata about to burst. It is Tuesday and the children are on the coast with their nanny, Meredith. Won't be back for three days. Your gloves have gone mucky inside from sweat. A sparrow skips across the lawn.The moment you know: the wind lifts suddenly, sparkling the wind chime hung over the porch. The backdoor opens, and Mrs. Peterson steps out of the house, her thighs rigid in linen slacks, her ankles thin like a doll's. She smiles, and it is like the photograph you have seen of her in college, the navy swimsuit, medal clutched in her hand, her mouth curled like she's about to laugh. Looking at her numbs the tips of your fingers. She does not call to you, doesn't say your name. She steps onto the porch and descends into the garden, and in a moment that feels outside of time the wind blows into her, her hair spins out from her head. You see, only at first you think you imagine it, a small purple mark on her neck like a bruise, just under the jaw.The Petersons pay you well to keep a beautiful garden. This time of year, you bring them handfuls of cherry tomatoes, dark zucchinis, bouquets of stiff-necked garlic from their own backyard. Some nights they invite you to take dinner with them. Little Jeremy always tugging at the cuffs of your shirt, asking to look at your fingernails. All summer they cannot believe your talent, your green thumb. All summer you tell them, just wait. The garden will be beautiful in autumn.She has a plan. Her perfume has notes of jasmine in it. For the first time she touches you, fingertips grazing your elbow briefly, which is more than enough. Mr. Peterson comes home from work at precisely six forty-five. When he does, she is waiting in the kitchen, chicken soup rolling on the stove, the smell of celery stalks and meat almost unbearable. The back of her neck glitters with sweat. You stand with your spine pressed against the wall, out of sight to him through the tall archway. Barely breathing. The square shovel slippery in your hands. When the front door opens he calls through the house, My god, that smells incredible.Mrs. Peterson keeps her back turned, even as you take the swing. Her husband lets out a small, wet sound and folds to the floor. A leak inches out from his head.Mrs. Peterson shuts off the stove.Just three hours until sunset—you wait inside the house, the curtains drawn. Mrs. Peterson goes upstairs and returns in jeans you've never seen before. They have one small hole, not fashionable, on the left knee. You tuck a black towel patterned with red surfboards—a favorite of the children, always taken to the lake—under his head to protect the floors. Despite the heat, the two of you drink soup from clammy spoons, chew sinews of chicken. Mrs. Peterson touches the inside of her wrist when she catches you looking, the spot where a gold watch usually sits. But she has taken it all off now, all her usual decorations, even the ring.You have built your body for this, unknowingly. Seasons of labor hardened to muscle, strength formed like layers of a tree. In the darkness your two shadows slink into the garden, down the pebbled path that winds through arches of well-trained ivy, wisteria, and sweet peas. The air is thick and wet, a physical thing you have to push through, even with the wind still blowing to the east. In a few weeks the okra will be ready, the cucumber, the heirloom tomatoes.The shed stands like a ghost at the end of the garden, patient and pale. Mrs. Peterson steps inside before you, and you reach around her for the light. Yellow shudders over everything. A thread of shame tugs in your stomach to see the mess you've left, the look on her face as she surveys the cluttered room.There is another shovel, she says. Yes?You point it out and she yanks it from behind the rake.You start the hole. Behind the shed, sheltered by hedges. From the neighboring windows you are nearly invisible—that is what you tell her when she hesitates. With the square lip of your shovel, you knife the soil apart, forcing space into the packed dirt. The smell of earth becomes overwhelming, nearly sour. For some time you square out the length of the plot, the same way you dug the trenches for the beds last spring. Mrs. Peterson clears her throat when it seems big enough, and you step to the side so that she can dig half while you dig the other. After only a few minutes she has to stop to stretch out her hands.She asks, how much further? And even in the darkness you can see the front of her shirt has gone translucent, the air muggy and mosquito ridden. You say, a few more feet. Because sometimes raccoons come by. A few times a year, someone spots a band of coyotes arrowing through the street.When it is done and you are standing in it, Mrs. Peterson's feet are in line with your eyes. You shove yourself out of the hole like a swimmer coming out of a pool. Mrs. Peterson offers her hand and her palm is swollen with blisters. She has been crying, you see now. But you aren't done yet. There is still Mr. Peterson inside.Will you get him, she asks.And you are imagining next week's harvest. How the dark opal basil has done so well this year. That you ought to pick the calendulas to whip the rich golden cream Mrs. Peterson likes to rub into her arms, her face. She turns toward the house and one panel of her buttoned shirt lifts from her stomach in the breeze.Across the skin, a belted stain runs up to her ribs. Her belly button is small as a coin slot.You tell her, Stay right here.The house waits in darkness. Every noise sucked out of it: no children or nanny or husband or wife. The furniture makes man-shaped silhouettes in the dark. Your blood shivers like a fish; your toes lose feeling. You have to think of the poppies and lavender outside, the rich smell of bush-like rosemary, to walk. He is where you left him, the lake towel under his head, his body fallen in a way that looks arranged. You have the feeling you are creeping up on him as he sleeps, that he might jolt awake. This man, who you almost never see. He has a moustache, you see now. Dark, bovine eyelashes.Mrs. Peterson was the one to put out the ad for a gardener. The memory of her then, sitting on her porch in a cream turtleneck stirring apple tea with a spoon, feels like a needle pressed into your chest between two ribs.There is a different memory, of course. Of Mr. Peterson, your first summer. When you were building trellises for snap peas to climb, and through the wide back windows of the house you thought you saw him move toward his wife like a snake. That evening when you were done she did not come downstairs to pay you. The cash was left in a soft blue envelope by the door. And for weeks the image of him lurching replayed like a projection over everything. And you never asked her about it, even when you were alone.Now he is something new to bury. Something to seed and pray it never grows. You tie a plastic bag from under the kitchen sink over the towel and his head to keep him from staining the floors and porch, and with great effort drag him outside.When you have him at the edge of the hole, you can no longer see the bottom. His feet hang over the edge. Mrs. Peterson hesitates, keeping the tip of her shovel planted between her feet.Together you lever your shovels under him, prepared to tip him in.Then Mrs. Peterson gasps and yanks back her shovel.Oh god, she says. And fear flutters through you again.Mr. Peterson is trying for air, the plastic bag sucking against his face.He is not moving, just struggling to breathe. You see his chest beg to expand. Your shovel is still in your hands, still lodged under one of his shoulders. Striking him in the kitchen had been one thing. Your limbs harden, fossilize.You think if she just reached for you, if her hand moved back to your elbow, that you could do it. You could lift the blade and swing it down with a great motivated force. But she does not move. She takes one step back. The plastic bag makes a terrible wheezing noise. Mr. Peterson groans like a dog. When his arm moves, you almost don't notice. It is a twitch, and then a swipe. You jump out of his reach just in time. His hand shakes toward the bag.Oh god, whispers Mrs. Peterson. Daniel?He stills at her voice. Mrs. Peterson loses her color and kneels beside him, her hands fluttering, trying to rip off the bag. You look back at the dim house, its ivory trim. Delicious green crawls up the porch posts, wide spades of field bindweed pirouetting into the eaves. You have a craving for wild rocket, yellow carrots, fistfuls of earthy dill. Next week you will begin planting again.Yes, it will be beautiful here in autumn.You bite the shovel under Mr. Peterson's shoulders and push down against the handle. Just as Mrs. Peterson splits the plastic bag and her husband breathes, his torso lifts, his calves fall over the edge, and gravity sucks him into the pit. His body lands with a thud.Mrs. Peterson says, No! And scuttles toward the edge of the hole.But you are planting. You hold out your shovel to block her, and she flinches back like she had that first summer, when you were watching through the windows. You have dug all year for this. Lifted mulch and dragged wheelbarrows and tugged rotten mats of weed from the ground. You dump dirt over Mr. Peterson as he makes small animal sounds. Then the weight is too heavy and he stills. Mrs. Peterson begins to cry and you hush softly to her, tell her all the crops that will feed on this spot, the vibrant, fertilized buds that will push up for air. Her breathing grows more panicked. But you are serene, working how your body has learned to work. Packing the soil, preparing the land.