The Crazy Garden

Chapter 1

   Later she would think of it as the last happy day. It was a breathless, giddy dream: Margot's laugh receding ahead of her; the narrow ashy path; Sophy's own pounding feet and laughter; jagged glimpses of Margot's trailing hair and jacket; and the thick, obscuring hedges, dull and dark. Margot was ahead. Margot had started running first. Sophy was a fine runner but it was impossible to build up speed amid the hooking and redoubling of paths. The distance between them had not changed since Margot had ducked into the maze ahead of her.

   From above George yelled. “Catch her, Sophy!”

   And Yves joined in, amused: “Sophy!”

   Margot shrieked an uncontainable laugh.

   “Oh, girls,” murmured their mother, above. Sophy heard it, barely, above the noise of air in her lungs and ash-path at her feet; she didn't care. She rounded a corner, heard Margot exclaim “Oh! Entschuldigung,” and saw her older sister slide crabwise past an elderly couple who were walking single-file. They looked at Sophy as if for explanation. The old man had watery eyes, and a black hat crushed atop his head. Margot slipped around the next corner. Sophy smiled at the man—her lips were taut with panting—and ducked past.

   “Entschuldigung,” she managed, before breaking back into her run.

   He gave her a smile that seemed to have been building since Margot's passage, and touched the brim of his hat.

   She saw Margot's heels fling up a fine spray of gravel, recognized a stone by her own feet, and knew—with a quickness that surprised her—that Margot had taken the wrong turn. George's sucked Oh! from the observation deck confirmed it. Midstride she twisted left—a muscle in her side protested—and then the long path was before her, empty, with only one last false-looking corner between her and the end.

   From somewhere else in the layers of hedgerows Margot squealed. Sophy made herself run harder. Her side felt as though it had been slashed open; the cool air hurt her lips. Margot's steps thudded behind her. Sophy rounded the last corner, laughing now because she had won, because her older sister could never catch up, and dashed out into the sun and dirt of the Ausgang.

   She drew up short: a broad-bottomed woman in black capri pants stood there, contemplating the hedges and the ticket booth. Sophy bent to catch her breath, resting her hands on her kneecaps. Margot, pelting out of the maze, nearly collided with her, and they laughed, gasping.

   The woman in the capri pants—which showed plainly where her underwear cut into her bottom—glanced at Sophy. “I don't know,” she said to her companion, a smaller woman with straight blond hair and a thin-lipped face. “Do you really want to?”

   The blonde woman looked at Sophy too, and envy was plain on her face. “I think it'd be fun,” she said.

   “It costs money,” said the fat one. There was a midwestern flatness to her vowels.

   Sophy wondered if she and Margot could pretend to be Austrian. Then Margot said, “All right, you win this time, but you'll pay,” and all was lost.

   “Are you American?” said the fat one, stepping closer.

   Sophy pretended still to be catching her breath. “Yes,” said Margot, after a moment.

   “So are we!” said the fat one, as though they could not have known otherwise. “What brings you to Vienna?”

   “We're just on a family trip, really,” said Margot, flushing, looking down at the gravel. “My fiancé's from Paris, so we went there to meet his family, and now we're here.”

   “Mm,” said the blonde woman, cocking her head, her face softening at the word fiancé. “That must be nice.”

   At the same time the one in the black capri pants, in an affected singsong, said: “Where ya from?”

   Margot flicked her eyes over at Sophy. “Maryland,” said Sophy.

   “Where are you from?” said Margot, after a moment.

   “Joliet,” said the fat one, and the blonde one nodded corroboration. “Illinois.”

   “We're here for some operas,” said the blonde one.

   “Fledermaus,” said the fat one. “And Ariadne auf Naxos.” She pronounced Naxos with a broad A, like grass.

   “And a few others,” said the blonde one. “And some chamber music, if we can.”

   “Oh,” said Sophy, trying to reconcile her previous contempt with the jealousy now burning in her stomach.

   “That's nice,” said Margot.

   Behind them came three sets of footsteps in the ash-gravel. “Girls,” said their mother. “Did you really have to run like that?”

   “Yes,” said Sophy, before she could stop herself. Her mother pursed her lips, withdrew her chin, wrinkled all over with disapproval. George let out a quiet snicker.

   Yves put his arm around Margot's waist. “Don't kiss me,” she said, without a trace of malice. “I heard you rooting for Sophy.”

   “Only,” he said, kissing her anyway, “because I think she must get tired of seeing you do everything first. Yes, Sophy?”

   “I guess,” said Sophy, squirming under his gaze. Yves had a way of looking at her that made her feel as though she were much younger than 16 and yet supposed to know much more than she did.

   “Oh,” said the blonde woman, “this must be your—”

   “Yes,” said Margot, flushing again, and Sophy realized they would all have to introduce themselves now. It was fine for Margot and Yves; they could speak French and avoid Americans that way. Sophy felt trapped every time they encountered a fellow citizen. In these cities she wanted to be the sole American, the first seer of views, the discoverer of secrets, not a tourist but an explorer. In fact it was not so much that she wanted to be the sole American, as that she did not want to be American at all. She wanted to vanish beneath the surface of the city as into a lake ; she wanted to forget what she was in favor of what she could be. But everywhere they encountered people who at a single overheard syllable jerked her back to the surface, where she bobbed, wet and ridiculous.

   The blonde woman was Caroline. The fat one was Helena. Sophy's mother was Isobel. Her children were Sophy, Margot, and George. They were from Silver Spring. But Sophy's mother's family was from France, originally, so this had been like a homecoming for her, this trip. Her husband was Max. He was not with them today. He was not feeling well.

   Sophy met Margot's eyes and knew they were thinking the same thing: how many times could their mother go through this introduction before she got tired of saying it? The French homecoming—they had expected this to lose some luster once they actually went to France. But to their surprise it had not. Then again, she had been mentioning her French background since before they were born; it was why there was a T at the end of Margot's name, and there would have been an S at the end of George's had their father not lobbied against it, on the grounds that anyone who'd been through American public schools would assume the boy was plural.

   “Have you taken the tour of the palace?” said Caroline.

   Sophy shook her head.

   “Oh, you have to.”

   “Yes,” said fat Helena, “it's marvelous. Just breathtaking. The rooms—”

   “Well, perhaps we can go now,” said Mrs. Heller. “We've seen enough of the grounds, haven't we?” By this she meant: You were acting like bored, rambunctious children in the hedge maze. Margot cast an unrepentant look at Sophy.

   “I wanted to climb up to the fountain,” said Sophy.

   “Do you really need to?”

   “I'd just like to; that's all.”

   “Maybe after the tour,” said her mother. “Anyway it looks like rain, so we should try to get inside while we can. It was nice to meet you.”

   “Nice to meet you,” said Caroline.

   They trooped down the same path they had entered on. “Oh,” said George, pointing at a sign in several languages, “I hadn't seen that before.”

   “What?” said Sophy.

   “Irrgarten ,” he said. “Crazy garden. For hedge maze. That's nice.”

   “All I know,” said their mother, “is that if my bottom were that large, I hope I would never wear pants that tight.”

Copyright 2006 E. A. Bagby