At the ER, there was much commotion, little talk. People either pulled Bea forward by her hand like a child or repeatedly dropped her hand, she couldn’t remember. She knew when she saw him on the grass near the garden that he was dead. She’d seen enough corpses on TV. She had no religious beliefs, so she didn’t think Artigan was anywhere but there, and as she dialed 911, she knew he’d only be on the ground a few minutes longer. So much for their wedding.
I quit my other job waiting tables at the York Harbor Inn and stepped in full-time to join Tracy at the greenhouse at the end of July, when it became clear Bea wasn’t going to be able to work anymore. It wasn’t just grief, it was morning sickness. She wouldn’t have to borrow a child from Fresh Air to play with on the beach the following summer. Of course she wasn’t going to be able to afford to live in town anymore. She’d only been able to do it because a former college roommate had offered Artigan his cousin’s house for the summer while the estate was being settled. In exchange for gardening and lawn mowing, Artigan and Bea had briefly seemed like everybody else, sitting on the front lawn in the Adirondack chairs, admiring the bobbly headed peonies that dowsed the ground, drinking a G and T in the evening (which, for them, meant eight o’clock). When Bea’s mother and father came to take her home, they stripped the beds and wrote thank-you notes to the family (strangely, using no salutation). They also turned the Adirondack chairs upside down on the front lawn as if they were boats that needed to drain. My aunt and uncle, who had a lot more money than my parents, once had a maid who was intent on showing you that she’d cleaned the rugs, so she put them back upside down. Sometimes the colors were surprisingly bright. Once or twice they were left wrong side up.
At the Heppendales’ greenhouse, Tracy and I were really the also-rans. I was always tripping over the hose or putting a plant down too hard and cracking the clay pot. She fainted, on a hot August day, loading a ten-pound bag of soil into some old guy’s trunk. After that she made sure to hydrate and wore the big canvas sun hat with the annoying chin strap. She told me later it was weird to have felt the way Artigan might have just before he died. We’d both gone to the funeral, though Bea wasn’t there. It was my second and Tracy’s first. It was a hot day and Mrs. Heppendale hadn’t been there because she’d had an allergic reaction to something she ate the night before. For one reason or another, Mrs. Heppendale was hardly ever anywhere.
It was the turned-over chairs at Artigan and Bea’s that really stopped Tracy and me when we went over to the house to see if Bea and her parents needed any help. When we got there, though, they’d already left. We pulled up the steep driveway and went in through the back, so we didn’t see the chairs at first, though we did see and read the notes from Bea’s mother and father, with a box of Kleenex weighing down the corner of one and a conch shell as a paperweight over the other, both smack in the middle of the dining room table, bracketed by silver candlesticks. What was going to happen to Bea? She was almost certainly going to be okay, we figured, but that was before we knew about the pregnancy and before scuzzy Winston Bales blabbed that she’d been known to do a little coke. The Zappos boots, in a striped pattern with the stripes filled in with paisley, sat by the back door. Another empty box had been discarded in the trash: stilettos, said the print on the box, black patent, size 71/2. She must have taken them. To do what? Stumble around in her pregnancy? Bea’s family lived in Jersey City, New Jersey. Her mother worked for a dry cleaner. Her father was an accountant. One of his clients had been Big Pussy, from The Sopranos.
Shortly after Bea’s departure, Mrs. Heppendale also left. She told people she was going to visit her sister in London, but both Alex and Mr. Heppendale said that it was a made-up story, that she was simply walking out on them. Part of her reason was that they were obsessed with Bea, and inconsolably distraught about Artigan, while they’d paid no attention to her when she had the flu, or when her migraines began (she’d had to get a cab to the ER). Also, her husband and daughter danced outside on the terrace under the stars to big-band music piped out through those excellent Bose speakers they had everywhere, and she was worried that anyone seeing such a thing would think something incestuous was going on.
I was the last one to see Mrs. Heppendale. I was at the transportation center in Portsmouth, waiting for my best friend since first grade to arrive by bus from Logan airport. She’d just been given a Tiffany engagement ring. She was coming for a visit to show it off and to take me to dinner with her fiancé’s American Express card, to which she’d been added. Things were going to work out for Stella. Hers wasn’t going to be any tragic situation. I’d gotten my hair highlighted and was wearing new ballet flats. Stella had the same shoes — everybody that summer had those shoes — but hers were bright yellow.
Suddenly out of nowhere came Mrs. Heppendale, as the bus was visible in the distance. Well, she came from inside, but she just appeared, big zippered bag slung over one shoulder (she traveled light), purse in hand. “How interesting that, as I exit, I encounter the budding writer,” she said to me. “I’m going to England and not coming back. I’ve got a sister there who loves me, and I love the theater. It hasn’t been easy, seeing summer productions in barns full of mosquitoes and minor TV actresses at the Ogunquit Playhouse in revivals of The Sound of Music. There’s not much of a story in my running away, because once you say I drink, no one’s going to be interested or sympathetic. I thought you were a nice girl, though seriously lacking in self-confidence. I never understood why you hung on Bea’s every word. You and everybody else thought she was so great. I thought she was scared of her own shadow and that she tried to cover that by being outgoing. Did she and Arty ever really seem to be in love? I never thought so. But I’m quite a bit older than you girls, so I’m not preoccupied with love. All I care about anymore is mysteries and crossword puzzles. And by the way, I know more about orchids than any of them. I kept telling them to stop repotting. Orchids are best grown in the smallest possible pot, you know. All they care is that they’re fashionable and that they’ll sell well. That’s why we stocked those ceramic kissing frog couples and hoses made to look like cobra skin.” She gave a little snort.
How had she gotten to the transportation center? Had she driven and left her car in the parking lot, or had someone dropped her off? She said, “There’s a species of orchid in Australia — only in Australia — a subterranean species that blooms underground. It has no chlorophyll, but it flowers beneath the soil. It’s a perfect metaphor for something, isn’t it? Use it sometime, and think of me.”
“Mrs. Heppendale. You’re really leaving? Right now?”
“If the bus ever arrives,” she said.
The bus was swinging around the curve to pull into its bay. An announcement of its arrival came over the PA system.
“I’m sorry we never really got to know each other,” I said. “You know, Bea and I liked working at the greenhouse. I think you would have liked Bea if, you know, you’d known her. Better, I mean.”
“I don’t like people who flirt. I know people enjoy flirting and being flirted with. It’s just not my thing.”
“Bea flirted?” I said.
“With Alex! She was quite intent on getting something going with Alex. I was the one who had to point it out to my own daughter. What do you girls notice? Pain concentrates the mind, I suppose. When I have migraines I have to remember to breathe and to focus through them. You squint whether you want to or not. Nobody could be more surprised than me that sometimes I can see right to the heart of things. That’s no doubt what made me think to tell you about that orchid.”