The Phone Booth in the Garden
The first thing I planted in my garden was an old phone booth, the kind with a bi-fold door you could slide open and closed. Its shining glass reflected the wildflowers my neighbor across the street grew in bean-shaped beds of pillowy loam. Passersby would stop, lingering an extra second to inspect the adjacent telephone pole and search the wires above for a connection.
One cool spring morning, a woman wearing a brightly checkered head scarf opened the door and stepped inside. I pulled my curtains shut; I didn’t have to intrude on the conversation to imagine her lifting the receiver and placing its cold plastic against her ear. She probably flicked the hook switch to test the line before whispering into the mouthpiece. Twice she would say a name, first as a question, then in recognition.
Within a month I could look out my window and see people in the booth at any hour of the day. They usually arrived alone, always on foot, intuiting the act of walking in silence as the coin required to place a call. If a group showed up at the same time, they would muddle into line, hands in pockets and eyes on the pavement, waiting for their turn.
My neighbors complained. The disapproving looks had grown palpable, and so it wasn’t a surprise when three of them mustered up a visit.
“We can’t have these crazy people and their imaginary conversations all night,” the wildflower woman said.
The man from two houses down, whose cherry trees had just begun to blossom, fidgeted with his sleeve as he added, “These folks really could be anyone.”
“There are safety concerns you haven’t considered,” said the crew-cut retiree with the immaculate lawn next door. “Not only to do with these strangers you’re introducing to our neighborhood, but also the possibility of a child becoming stuck without proper supervision.”
Several years ago my partner, Alice, had dubbed our neighbor Lieutenant Lawnmower. She would have laughed in his face at such a ridiculous scolding, but I held myself to a thin smile.
I shrugged and pointed out that the buckets of chemicals I’d watched them unload into the soil and air were literally packaged with skulls and crossbones. “Besides,” I said, “nothing in this world is as safe as we like to pretend.”
Last fall Alice and I flew home from Lisbon, an eight-and-a-half-hour trip if you counted boarding and unloading. That’s probably what did it, the doctor said. A blood clot could form in a person’s leg after a period of inactivity, but would only prove fatal if it broke free. Like a guided missile, this scabby little bundle had launched itself from her thigh into her pulmonary artery.
I spoke to her right before it happened. Not for any particular reason, just as a habit we had of sometimes calling one another during lunch breaks. I asked why she was short of breath and she said she’d taken the stairs up to her office. “With each flight of stairs, I remind myself of another pastel de nata, and you know what? Every single one: worth it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m running late for a department meeting. Maybe the jog over to Bailey will burn off the bottle of Aguardente de Medronhos you talked us into finishing—”
“I had no idea the stuff was so strong,” I said. We’d spent an afternoon in a cafe overlooking the houses of Alfama, toasting the vibrant red roof tiles and the cool blue ocean. It was the most drunk either of us had been in twenty years.
“Do you remember what I told you before we went upstairs that night?”
“You told me…” I paused to make sure no one was outside my office door, “I had an ass like John Updike. Listen, at the time I thought it was a compliment, but I looked at a picture and I’m not—”
She laughed a big, wheezy laugh, and we said goodbye.
And then, I suppose, she hung up the phone and fell over in her chair. Thirty minutes, give or take, from the first symptoms to her final breath. She was long gone by the time I arrived at the hospital.
The doctor met me beside Alice’s gurney, which had been wheeled into a sort of limbo between the ER and the morgue downstairs. She asked if I wanted to see my wife. I said yes, but as she revealed Alice’s face, my eyes couldn’t make it past the hem of the pale blue blanket. I nodded sharply and the doctor pulled the cover back up.
“It’s the same way that famous children’s author passed away,” the doctor said. “What was her name? Runaway Bunny, Goodnight Moon…” The hospital floor shifted, and the walls withdrew, and the overhead lights swelled like dying stars. And all the while this doctor ticked off titles as though confident the complete works of Margaret Wise Brown would provide a sufficient salve to comfort me.
Over the winter I came to regret my cowardice in that strange little hospital alcove, a room created with temporary curtains and screens for walls. It seemed to me like the kind of place a person might get lost, and I realized I should have stayed with her longer, should have looked her in the eyes to say goodbye. I’d never been superstitious or sentimental, but then I’d also never been so careless as the day Alice died.
Next I put down a row of mirrors. The mirrors broke when people stepped on them, and this worked even better. The bed was wide enough that two people could pass each other, crinkling along, their eyes cast straight down into the jumping daggers of sunlight. Every once in a while, someone would take off their shoes to walk barefoot, and then the rain would come and wash their blood down into the earth.
When it was warm, I would sit outside in an old Adirondack chair. I only said hi to the people who said hi to me first. Out of respect, but also because in the previous year I had built up calluses from certain predictable and recurring conversations. Here, any time I discovered a tedious social convention growing in my garden, I weeded it quickly and without mercy. The book I brought home from the library said you had to be careful about invasive species.
More people came, and some of the regulars asked if they could help maintain the garden. They would polish the sides of the phone booth. They would dig up shards of mirror pushed too far into the ground and lay them on the surface again. They would shoo away pests like the Lieutenant and Wildflower Woman.
At work I endured the glances of my colleagues, and for their sake I would perform what I thought to be the appropriate level of resilient sadness. There were expectations in these situations. People needed to see that such a blow had not shattered you, that some greater equilibrium had held. What they didn’t want was a window into your loneliness and doubt—because the thing about windows was that even a simple shift of the light could turn one into a reflective surface.
The cherry trees shed their leaves into a red and gold carpet, which the wind plucked and carried down the street. Fall hardened into winter; the grass browned and the flowers went to seed. When people stood inside the phone booth for a long time, their breath would paint fog ghosts across the glass.
I’d never been fond of winter, but hadn’t given my distaste much thought. Was this how Wildflower Woman felt when the snow’s whiteness washed out the colors she’d gazed upon throughout the year? Was this how the Lieutenant felt when the ice froze his lawn in months-long stasis? Or did they, like Mr. Cherry Tree, acknowledge the quiet hope slumbering just beneath the surface?
Her friends, family, and colleagues knew her as Allie, but I called her Alice. She said I was too formal but she liked it, and so she’d allowed me to continue. She would visit me at the library and goose my rear when people were almost looking. It occurred to me that while I didn’t feel guilty about taking the aisle seat on our last plane ride (she preferred the middle over having to accommodate my frequent lavatory trips), I longed to have been more fun for her. Everyone says they love to laugh, but I find this only to be the case for those few people capable of unencumbered, bellowing guffaws. Laughter churns things to the surface, lets you see the truth behind the carefully constructed faces we wear. I wondered if Alice ever saw me the way I saw her. During our phone booth conversations now, I tried to remember the jokes she used to tell. I’d say them over and over until I was crying so hard I laughed.
“Why didn’t the librarian care about his job anymore?” I asked. “He was checked out.”
“Please tell me last year’s garden was a one-off,” the Lieutenant said. “I’m not sure my blood pressure can handle another season of looking out the window to find your friends lining up for games of make believe.”
We were both in the road, shoveling the frozen slush from the ends of our driveways. Technically it was spring, but an overnight storm had veered in from the Atlantic to dump a mixture of wet snow and ice across the city.
“You’d do well to look more closely at the things that upset you,” I told him.
He stood up straight and examined me with a long stare. “How have I lived next to you all these years to only learn now what a stubborn donkey you are?”
“I’m guessing you’d prefer I replace the garden with a putting green,” I said. “But people like the phone so I think I’ll keep it.”
“Ha!” he barked, like this was the most preposterous thing in the world. “The weak constitution of the masses expresses itself through a fondness for quirk and frivolity. But communities thrive upon the elegant discipline of well-groomed lawns.” He shifted his gaze to his own yard, no doubt imagining the promise of lush grasses hidden beneath the snow.
Leaning on my shovel, I said, “And yet people don’t kneel down onto your grass and whisper into it their most delicate secrets.”
His reverie broken, he shot me a disgusted look, threw up his hands in frustration, and marched back into his house. It was the most spontaneous emotion I’d ever witnessed him display, and for a moment his little outburst reassured my faith in his humanity. Someone had recently told me about a thing that happened to him when he was in the Marines, as though any one event could explain forty years lived in humorless condescension.
Once I finished the driveway, I set about uncovering the mirror bed. It was spring, and it was time. I shoveled to just above the ground level, then brought warm water in a watering can to spill over its surface. The shards emerged hidden from the snow, permanent against the melt around them.
The phone booth door had frozen shut so I chiseled the hinges free with a butter knife. Once inside, I took off my gloves and breathed into my palms before picking up the receiver.
“Hi,” I said. “It’s me.”
I waited a long time with the phone pressed against my ear. From the other end of the line came a hollow sound I hadn’t heard in our previous conversations. No, I listened closer. It wasn’t empty so much as vast and deep, like an underground lake walled off by rock formations that had spent four thousand years cooling in the perfect dark.
“I’ll try,” I answered.
Mr. Cherry Tree had come out to clear his porch. The ice-encased tree branches glinted pristine in the morning sun. He gave me a hesitant wave, and I waved back.
Wildflower Woman, I learned, had started growing flowers when her husband passed away eight years ago. I’d never paid much attention, but now I vaguely remembered them being lawn people. The husband, baseball cap steepled over his face, would ride his mower in circles over their little plot every Sunday morning at an unconscionably early hour. It was easy to backfill my memory with scenes of him and the Lieutenant troubleshooting sprinklers and debating pH levels—or whatever it is such people do. There was no way he wanted all these flowers, but she told everyone she grew them as a tribute.
That probably wasn’t fair. Maybe he’d made her happy and she grew flowers because they made her happy too. I only wished she’d stop coming over to complain about the garden. We’d have so much else to talk about.
When the weather warmed, I took a shovel to the unused part of my yard. The soil was wet with snowmelt, and the blade cut into it easily. I removed the first layer of grass and placed each clump in a neat pile. People returned to visit the booth and the mirror bed, and once they were finished, they went home to retrieve their own tools.
We were meticulous with each strike of the earth, delicate in the way we formed the dirt into a growing mound. There were pipes for sewage and water and gas, but we dug around them and let them hang in the air beside us as we worked. When we came upon very large stones, we excavated them as best we could or let them be. Some things you couldn’t move.
April brought rain, and the others’ enthusiasm waned. I, too, was tempted to slink inside the house, wash away the layers of mud, and wrap myself in the aroma of lemon balm tea. Surely no one would hold it against me—if anything it might come as a relief. The neighbors would probably conspire over backyard fences to say things like, “He lost his mind and just about caught pneumonia before he could pull himself back together.”
With water spilling over the rims of my Bean boots and pruning my toes, I churned the muck until the muscles in my arms cramped with fatigue. My lower back ached and stiffened, but I had the sheets of rain to massage by body until everything went numb. Alone in the flood, I watched the murk of day give way to streetlamps veiled in cascading water.
The next morning I spotted the smudged silhouette of a person shuffling up the road, then another, then more. All storms end and so did this one, withered by an increasingly brazen sun above. The last pools evaporated into clouds or drained toward the sea.
Mr. Cherry Tree asked if we were digging to find something, or to bury something. I told him I didn’t know everyone’s motives. Maybe some of us were digging for different reasons. He said he still had the gardening spade his dad had given him when they bought their place, part of a set of tools the old man had deemed necessary for maintaining a home. I said that sounded perfect, and he returned an hour later.
The next afternoon it was Wildflower Woman in the phone booth. She looked embarrassed, but continued her call another five minutes. “I’m sorry,” she told me. “It seemed so silly.”
She produced a hand trowel and asked if it was big enough, and I said of course it was.
An inspector from the city came, following what she referred to as a series of complaints. In the crook of her arm she carried several binders and folders and a large metal clipboard.
“You can imagine how this would be difficult for some people to look at,” she said. “The city takes these matters very seriously.” Zones, regulations, permits, and codes were her concern, and this—she swept a finger across the growing hole—didn’t appear to be appropriately sanctioned.
I asked to see which code she was referencing.
“Hmm,” she said. She passed me her stack. “Many of them.”
I leafed through the top folder.
She continued, “Listen, sir. There’s a way to go about what you’re doing. The city has very specific guidelines and processes for any project. We’re all part of a community, and we just want everyone to be happy.”
Nothing in her materials spoke of communal happiness, but I nodded anyway. There would be penalties for failures of compliance, however it seemed to me the cost of filling in the hole and retreating inside were far greater. I asked if that was all for today.
“You might receive a visit from the phone company regarding the proximity of your decorative booth to their pole,” she said. She walked over for a closer look. “Wait, is this..?”
As more neighbors joined in, the mound of dirt grew higher than my house and the hole expanded like the oceans on maps describing climate change. Our palms blistered and wept pus. For an entire miserable week, I was laid up with a pulled abdominal muscle, but from my bed I could see the work continue around me. The hole crossed property lines into other yards as more neighbors joined in.
Wildflower Woman planted a sprawling ivy into the soil to slow the erosion around our foundations. Likewise, a rock pile begun out of convenience was put to use buttressing the slopes alongside the road. A woman I hadn’t realized lived only five houses down began crafting elaborate staircases and bridges that shuddered happily under the muddy boots of people crossing from front doors to the road and over to the mound. When I was finally able to return outside, I made my way to the summit passing tin sculptures, willow and birch saplings, and a humming beehive. Grass grew and its roots cemented the clods of dirt to one another, and our footsteps further shaped and solidified the terrain.
Mr. Cherry Tree asked if it would be OK for him to put in a phone like the one I had in my garden. I said sure, we could all have phones if we wanted. Wildflower Woman looked surprised.
“I thought yours was the only one,” she said.
I shrugged. It turned out nothing was so unique.
One overcast and windy morning, before anyone else arrived, the Lieutenant confronted me as I exited the phone booth. “Enough is enough,” he said. Judging from his bloodshot eyes, pallid skin, and the lingering scent of whiskey on his breath, he hadn’t slept. “The entire street lies in ruin. I would love nothing more than to move as far away as humanly possible, but you’ve torpedoed the property values with this little excavation.”
It turned my stomach to think a person could look at what we’d created and still see nothing more than a hole in the ground. Grief was the lens through which we viewed our world, but it was hard to know whether it sharpened your vision or distorted it. I looked over his shoulder to his lawn, a trim green square amid the riot of blossoming color.
“I think I can help you see it,” I said.
“Help me see what?” he asked. Then, “No, I’ll tell you what I expect to see. I want to see you shovel this pile of dirt back into your pit. And I then I want to see you seed the ground with a proper ryegrass and fescue mix.”
He punctuated his sentences by poking me in the chest, pushing me back until our boots crunched across the old mirrors.
With my heels overhanging the precipice, I told him I’d been waiting in the phone booth the other day when his brother called. The wind blew harder and the ceiling of clouds gathered momentum overhead.
“He said he was very sorry you were stationed overseas when he got sick, and that he’d struggled to hold on until you could get there. He tried to send a message in the morning sun reflected off the Gulf of Aden, but the light stung your eyes and you turned your head.”
The Lieutenant’s mouth gaped and he rushed forward to give me one giant shove backward into the hole. As he watched me fall, a sunbeam sliced its way through the clouds toward the mirror bed. I couldn’t help but notice that when the spots aligned over his face in a brilliant constellation of light, he didn’t shut his eyes or look away.