Lonely Nightmare III: Barren Garden
by Justin Glasser
Notes and dedication in section 0
***
“Because it’s barren in your garden, let me in.”
***
They were on the road by ten, driving west on highway 94 toward Madison. Mulder drove, only half listening to the hum of voices from NPR. Scully looked out the window. They would be in the car for about three hours today. Lisa Nelson was expecting them to meet her at the diner (“the only one in town” she’d said on the phone when Mulder asked for a name) at five. They had reservations at the Onowani Lodge (“the only motel in town” Lisa had said when he asked her where they should stay) right off the highway. Mulder suspected that the accommodations would be somewhat less glamorous than they had been at the Marriott.
“Remember when we were here before?” Scully asked.
Mulder nodded. “Yep. Couple of times.”
“I never told you our family came here one summer camping.”
He glanced over at her. “No, you never did.” He wondered what that had been like, camping with Scully’s family. They had probably had picnics and made smores and sung campfire songs in six-part harmony. He knew he had an idealized picture of Scully’s childhood, but he couldn’t stop himself from imagining that she had grown up in the Navy equivalent of the Cleaver family. Somehow, it made him feel better about his own tortured youth to think that Scully had escaped some of that, that she’d been normal until she met him.
“Did you like it?” he asked.
“I did, mostly. But at night, it was strange. We were up north, much further than we’re going today, almost to Canada, and the forest there . . . It’s old, Mulder.”
“Are you saying it was *spooky*, Scully?”
She shot him a disgusted glance. “I’m saying that there was so much there, so much vegetation, so thick and green. The forest seemed alive, Mulder, not necessarily in a bad way, but I was nine. It was a little scary, especially at night.”
“And now?” he asked, waving his hand at the window. The hills sloped away from the car, and trees seemed removed, as if they were prevented from reaching the road, which seemed to stretch on in front of them forever. It snaked like a black line through the gentle white humps of the hills, and Mulder imagined that life out here between Milwaukee and Madison on bright empty winter days was quieter, somehow, than the one he had been leading in D.C. He knew people out here had the same problems as they did in the city, but looking at the placid landscape, white, black, evergreen, it didn’t seem the same.
“I was a girl, Mulder. Now it seems empty.”
He nodded, unsure of what to say.
“I miss him, Mulder,” Scully said, and there was something in her voice that told Mulder he should not look at her, not if he wanted to preserve her dignity. Not if he wanted to pretend that their partnership was all right. “I don’t want to anymore, but I do.”
He cleared his throat. “We don’t get to choose,” he said, not sure if she could hear him.
She did not answer.
***
They stopped and had lunch in Madison at some chic college-town restaurant that served “world cuisine” and micro-brews, and Mulder had two with his hamburger, which he had had to special order by talking to the cook specifically (the hamburger being some strange and exotic food outside of the U.S. and pretentious world cuisine restaurants), so Scully drove the rest of the way to Onowani, not talking, and somewhere along the way Mulder fell asleep and didn’t wake up until he felt the car slowing down to take a curve.
He opened his eyes, and realized that he was hearing Scully sing, not along with the radio, which was off, but just to herself, kind of out of tune and mostly under her breath.
“--sister golden hair surprise, and I just can’t live without you--“
He didn’t smile, but stretched, so that she would know he was up.
“Hey,” she said, giving the impression that she was looking both at him and the road at the same time. “Perfect timing.”
“Hmm?” He pulled his seat back upright and looked around.
“Welcome to lovely Onowani, Mulder.” Scully stopped at a stop sign. They were at an intersection surrounded by pines and other evergreens. There was nothing else in sight except a sign: Onowani Township, population 171.
“Where’s the town?” he asked.
The town, such as it was, was ahead about a half a mile, buried in the coniferous forest. A general store, a gas station, the diner, a hair salon, a bar and a couple of miscellaneous store fronts lined the block that was the main street. Mulder could see about two blocks more of houses, some fairly large with big porches, others nothing more than double wide trailer homes. Further down he saw a long low building he figured was the high school.
“Well, Disneyland it ain’t, Scully,” he said.
“This was your idea,” she answered, opening the car door before he could even pull his coat closed.
***
The diner was decorated in a fifties style, not, Mulder suspected, out of any desire to capitalize on the retro appeal of a fifties restaurant, but because the diner had, in fact, been decorated in the fifties. The posters and record album covers on the wall seemed slightly yellow with either age or grease, and the linoleum was cracked and warped, but the formica speckled counters were clean as far as he could tell and it was both bright and warm inside, so he had no complaints. They even had an Elvis clock, his pelvis ticking back and forth like a metronome.
When he was young, before Samantha . . . went, his parents would take them on road trips up and down the coast. Sometimes they would visit relatives, or historical sites, or sometimes they would just head to the beach. And they would stop at this type of place, the roadside diner, and his mother would order for them, hamburgers and shakes, or tuna salad sandwiches with pickles and chips, or meatloaf and mashed potatoes with gravy, and he would always be delighted when the food came. “These places always have the best food,” she would explain, and his dad would lean over and hug her to him and say she just knew what to pick. They had been happy once.
As he followed Scully, who followed the heavy set waitress to a booth, he thought of her and her family, driving the rolling Wisconsin highways further and further north where there were no McDonald’s or Wendy’s, eating what her mother picked out from a plastic covered menu.
“When was our summer?” he asked.
Scully turned, her coat half off her shoulders.
“What did you say, Mulder?”
The waitress was looking at him, too, but she wasn’t really interested. She was waiting for them to sit down so that she could ask them whether they wanted coffee.
“Nothing.” He shed his coat and sat.
“What did you say, Mulder?” she asked, after the waitress had gone to get them coffee and soup.
“Nothing important, Scully,” he said. “I wonder where Lisa is.” He glanced at his watch. 5:01.
Nothing important, he thought, but he sometimes wondered about that, especially since he had come back from his vacation wishing he had never left. The trip to Graceland was supposed to have been fun, whimsical, stupid, and it had been all those things until he had called Scully from the King’s house and realized the depths of his error. He had let her go--forced her to go--to Philadelphia alone, and she hadn’t wanted to. She had wanted him to stay. To say something. And he wondered now when his and Scully’s summer had been, when they had had the halcyon days of their partnership without his noticing, and when those days had ended, never to return. When had they had their summer, and would it ever be warm again?
Scully said something about the girl being on her way, probably.
“Scully,” Mulder said, knowing that he couldn’t let this moment pass. Something was happening to their partnership, and he had to say something now, or there would be a case and the case would get in the way, or their wouldn’t be a case and the return trip would get in the way, or he would lose his nerve, or something.
She looked up from her menu.
“I just wanted to say that I’m glad you came. This is probably nothing, and I’m glad you came.” The words sounded stupid when he strung them together like that, but at least he had done something. He had taken steps. She opened her mouth to speak, but her reply was lost, because at that moment a young blond girl stopped at the table and said:
“Mr. Mulder, I’m Lisa Nelson. I wrote you?”
***end 3/13***
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