The rush of coffee had squeezed the blood out of her fingers.
Julie sat gazing at the water. Her lips were moving slowly.
“Are you tired?” Jane asked carefully. It actually meant I am tired, just so you know.
And Julie knew. She shook her head.
Jane took it further and said in a fluting voice, “Well then, we’ll have time for a little stroll in the botanical garden, won’t we?”
“Why?” Julie had earned the right to a little resistance.
“It’s so lovely at this time of year.”
Julie turned to look out through the window.
“Can we call Dad?”
“Of course.”
Jane tried to reach behind her back to hand over her cell phone and almost dislocated her shoulder. The pain felt so up-to-date somehow.
“Julie! Come on, take it.”
“Oh.”
When Greg answered, he seemed to be inside a cardboard box together with the entire editorial staff.
“Dad, you’re on loudspeaker.”
“Hiya, is that you?”
“We’re in the car.”
“Wait, let me…”
A drawn-out, scraping noise, then silence at last.
“There. Welcome to the copier room. What are you up to?”
“We’re going to the botanical garden,” Julie said. “It’s so lovely at this time of year.”
Thanks, Julie, Jane thought.
“Jane? Are you there?”
“I’m driving the car.”
“Do you know what Clive said?” Greg asked rhetorically.
They were driving through a tunnel. Jane and Julie stretched their necks like alert animals.
“He said from now on, there will be fewer feature articles. They’re no longer prioritized. Just as I thought,” Greg continued.
“What did you say to that?”
“That I don’t give a shit because I have a boat that’s perfect for perch fishing. With a rotating chair on deck.”
“Julie is here too, in case you had forgotten.”
“Says you?”
Compared to Greg, she had always been poor at controlling her speech in their daughter’s presence. She might make rude comments about strangers within Julie’s hearing. Why don’t you just fuck off? You look like it’d do you good. She had asked herself if, by sharing her bad as well as good sides, she was trying to get closer to Julie as she grew older. Best of luck! You’ll need it, with that hairstyle. Would she become the kind of mother who hung out with her daughter in the mall, both in matching pink hoodies?
There was just one other car in the parking lot in front of the grounded spaceship that was the Bolz Conservatory. Between the pillars at the main door, an older man stood, pointing at a sign that blocked the entrance to the greenhouses. He seemed deeply disappointed.
Jane rolled the window down.
“Closed for emergency repairs,” quoted the man. He spoke so loudly she had to retreat from the window.
She thanked him, drove on, and shouted to Julie in an old man’s cracked voice, “Under repair! Closed!”
There, she had done it again.
She suggested that they go for a walk in the open garden and the arboretum instead. Once more, Julie asked: Why? And got the answer: Why not? Julie climbed out of the car slowly and walked a few paces behind Jane across the parking lot. Jane felt that her day of sitting at her desk had left her bursting with pent-up energy. Walking along the gravel path leading to the Perennial Garden, they found themselves inside the dust stirred up by a noisy riding lawn mower. The gardens were either bleakly black or flowering desperately.
They arrived at the grassy slope where outdoor concerts were held during the summer. An empty Coke can was lying on the lawn and she could see that Julie was tempted to give it a kick. Impulsively, Jane ran to beat her to it. Julie stopped in her tracks, gave off a subdued howl, and started running. Jane had already reached the can and sent it across the grass in a fine arc. As they ran side by side to catch up with it, Jane managed to bump her hip into Julie’s side to gain ground but Julie came back with a mean leg-hook that tripped Jane up. Lying on the ground, she got hold of a sneaker that had come off and threw it after Julie, who avoided a direct hit with one graceful sideways move, picked the shoe up, and threw it among the pillars at the far end. Jane had to hobble along, shouting in annoyance. In front of her, Julie, very pleased with herself, was dribbling the can. When Jane had gotten close enough, she took aim at Julie’s thin ankles and lunged.
They both rolled around on the grass, trying to reach the can. Jane’s foot was closest but Julie lay on top of her and pushed her elbow into Jane’s thigh.
“I give up!” Jane cried.
“Loser.”
Afterward, they went to the Thai Pavilion and compared the greenish stains on their clothes. Julie eagerly went through a blow-by-blow account of the battle and Jane, who was looking at her daughter’s face, made the right noises to show that she was just as keen to relive the drama. Julie’s eyes were very wide, her nose was wrinkled, her lips moved ceaselessly. All this attracted Jane’s gaze, as did something else, both there and not there, that made her able to sense the shape of the young woman’s mind. The old saying that your child is only on loan annoyed her: Julie was her daughter and, just as irrevocably, she was Julie’s mother. No facile philosophizing could change that.
She thought she might write about the episode, turn it into a scene in a novel or perhaps a short story, but realized it wasn’t a good idea. These moments had no intrinsic structure, no problematic issue, no conflict. Only love.
While they sat there, the big lawn mower rolled past them on the cobbles below the pavilion. The man was relaxed in his seat, steering with one finger on the wheel. He got to where the path branched on either side of a statue of a lion, and, just before he might have disappeared behind the trees, he pulled a lever by his seat and swung the mower onto a grassy strip that ran parallel with the path. Jane watched with a vague sense of satisfaction as the rotating cutters created a lighter stripe in the grass. Suddenly, a squirrel leapt out of a bush and ran straight at the machine. Julie had her back turned and didn’t notice Jane’s gasp. The squirrel tried a few pointless escapes, jumping first to one side, then to the other, before it vanished under the blades. The man obviously hadn’t seen it. Jane held her breath while looking past Julie at the mower. When the squirrel emerged from underneath it, she thought at first that it had survived intact because it moved so quickly. It kept jumping up and down, as if the ground were red hot. Then she understood: the squirrel had been mutilated and the jumping was the effect of an instinctive flight response. A healthy leg kicked out and sent the body high up in the air where it somersaulted and fell back, landing on its side or its head or one of its damaged limbs. A hard-wired sequence; one could hear the processor spin.
The mower followed the curving path out of sight. The squirrel was still making its terrible leaps but had shifted sideways onto the cobbles and there was a noise each time it hit the ground. Jane faced Julie with a big, shaky grin but it was too late—Julie had already turned around to see what it was. In the short moment Julie needed to take in the strange sight, Jane had time to imagine a scenario: she had to hold the kicking, struggling squirrel in one hand while prodding it to get a grip and break its little neck as an act of mercy.
Initially, Julie shocked her by laughing.
“Look! What is it doing?” Julie pointed.
But then, if Jane hadn’t watched the whole sequence, she would probably have been just as baffled. Could they get away so easily? With luck, maybe the animal would bounce into the bushes, leaving her alone with a memory that would make her tell herself that “nature must take its course,” repeat it in the car on the way home and in bed before she fell asleep—but what nature? The kind of nature in which squirrels are carved up by lawn mowers?