Chapter Twenty-Five #2
When he lowers the gate to the ground, I see right away that this garden is brighter, with a feeling that is more elemental, more familiar in a way that I feel deep within my bones, than any of the others.
Sunlight pours into it as though filling a bowl.
Wide gravel paths meander through beds of overgrown plants that I recognize as native to California—blue elderberries, paintbrush, nightshades, wild morning glories, golden poppies, phlox, loosestrife, yarrow, and miner’s lettuce all jostle for room to grow.
Everything is crowded, raucous, biologically adapted to and for this very environment.
“It’s a native garden,” I tell Adam. “All of these plants are native to California. I’m sure it was spectacular in its prime.”
“Thanks to you,” he says, “it will see its prime again.”
I sigh. “But no one here will be given very much time to enjoy it.”
Adam looks around. “I guess we should enjoy it now, while we can.”
I nod and we set off side by side along one of the gravel paths. “Those Pinterest boards that your clients send you,” I say. “What are they like?”
“Oh, they’re fascinating.” He catches my amused expression and smiles, saying, “I actually mean that, believe it or not. They are fascinating. They’re all so different. Every person’s dream home is so specific to who they are.”
He thinks for a moment, then goes on. “When clients show my brother, Rob, and me images of a crafting room, or a dedicated space for brewing beer, or a gym with a ballet barre, I start peppering them with questions about how they got into whatever they’re into, and what inspires them.
I love hearing all of the terminology related to a certain hobby that I’d previously known nothing about.
All of the interesting quirks that shape a particular person’s concept of home.
” Adam shrugs and then adds, with faux solemnity, “Rob now insists on doing most of the talking in those meetings.”
As I listen to Adam, I understand for the first time how intimate it is to create a home for someone, that it involves learning about how a person lives now…
and the sort of life they aspire to have in the future.
I wonder if this might be part of the reason he’s having trouble working on his own house.
Maybe he can’t quite envision how he wants his life, and Sophie’s, to look and feel now that Beth is no longer with them.
“I know what you mean,” I say. “Every garden I design is a reflection of the homeowner—the way they hope to use the space, their favorite colors, their personalities.”
Adam nods. “So no two gardens are ever the same.”
“Never. And actually, just like the homeowners themselves, I guess, a garden isn’t even the same from one season to the next. Change is constant… but also, nothing really dies… Nutrients remain, helping new growth that will always contain a bit of the old.”
Adam looks over at me, his gaze thoughtful. “Have you always known that this is what you wanted to do?”
“Since I was young,” I say, nodding. “My mother used to take me to the Garden of Fragrance in the botanical garden in San Francisco. I loved it—the scents, the flowers. The way it felt both peaceful and mysterious.” I run my hand over a long frond of loosestrife, and the purple blooms deepen in color, their strong, herbal aroma swimming around us.
“What about you?” I ask. “Is construction a family business?”
“No, not exactly. My parents were professors before they retired. My mom was a philosophy professor and my dad was an art history professor. But my dad is a woodworker, too; he makes furniture. When we were growing up, Rob and I would spend hours messing around with his tools, making things with him in the garage. I’m still up to the same old tricks, I guess.
My mom says I get my curiosity from her, and my tolerance of splinters from my dad. ”
I laugh. “Oh!” I say then. “Look.” I point to the gate to the cottage garden that is visible along the eastern wall. “I hadn’t found it yet on the other side; it’s covered with rock roses over there.”
“It looks like it’s in pretty good shape,” Adam says. With a little coaxing, he pushes the gate open, and the scents of honeysuckle and rock rose and peonies pour toward us. “There you go, you old beauty,” Adam tells the gate. “You’ve still got it.”
I smile. “Are you absolutely sure inanimate objects have stopped communicating with you?”
“Well,” he says, reddening a little and grinning, “I never said I stopped talking to them.”
We go on walking through the California garden, talking a little bit about nothing and everything.
I steal glances at him every now and then, thinking of madeleines dipped into tea, forgotten memories, the mysterious folds of time.
I think of how he used to believe that homes spoke to him, that he could sense their history and what they needed in the present.
Maybe, I allow myself to imagine, Adam is the sort of person who is not scared away by the inexplicable.
Maybe he is even willing to embrace it.