The end of magic (July 2, 1982)

One of Jimmy's gardens 1982

July 2, 1982

I had traveled the road between Lake Valhalla where Garrick lived and Jimmy’s mountain top retreat so often, I could have driven it in my sleep.

And before that, I had driven to the place many times with Jimmy from Passaic when Ginger still lived there with her mother and sisters.

These were old roads slowing succumbing to the threat of progress, Route 287, long stalled with a stop sign at the end of its four lanes, plunging ahead behind bulldozers to rip up old farms in order to make it easier for someone to get from New York to New Jersey when most of us preferred the winding ways of Route 202 that my grandparents would have recognized as contemporary – full of those road side fruit and vegetable stands that had helped give New Jersey its name as the Garden State.

The rolling landscape was full of magic, the kind I always imagined when reading “Lord of the Rings,” or any of those books on Merlin Jimmy gobbled up at the Passaic Library, always too subtle to put my finger on, even when I was well-aware of its being here.

This was a special place that embraced me each time I passed through it, stirring up some primitive need in me, and always filled with special surprises I could not have possibly anticipated – such as that one Christmas Eve when weather forecasters predicted only rain, yet dusted the top of his hill with white so coming up on the old house with its Dickens-like appearance, I felt as if I had travelled back in time.

Garrick had dragged me out of the house even when all I wanted was to bask in my own misery back home, still stung over the break up with Louise even though more than a year had passed (the fact that she is beside me now scares me a little and threatens to tear open scars of wounds I thought long healed).

“Jimmy will be mad at you if you don’t come,” Garrick told me in Passaic that Christmas. “And he’ll blame me.”

So, I went, dragged through a series of social engagements both Garrick and I were required to make on that evening, as if we were in the employ of Santa Claus and were required to spread good cheer, rain pouring down on us the whole way, this world soon to become obsolete, this road so narrow as to risk our slipping off the side of the mountain the way Jimmy and Bob once did in Bob’s Volkswagen, Garrick gripping the wheel through each twist and turn as if riding the back of a snake, then finally reaching that straight place where we came to the top and drives to either side illuminated by imitation gas lamps, and the air thick with the scent of burning logs many of the families had mounted in their fire places, with me expecting an elf or a hobbit to pop out from behind any tree at any moment.

It was as if someone had taken this image off a Christmas card and brought it to life, a scene so vivid I still carry it around in my head, a memory engrained inside of me, instantly recalled.

Now, as I drove with Louise in the passenger side of my car, and my pre-teen daughter, Ruby in the back seat, the magic struck me again, even though this was the height of summer and the trees barren on that Christmas Eve (save for the dusting of snow on each limb) were filled with green, the feeling of a cast spell struck me again – as if my reunion with these two was created by magic, and this scared me into believing it could vanish as quickly as it had come.

The house Jimmy lived in belonged to Ginger’s mother and stood as much a monument to time as the landscape itself, bearing this certain sense of permanence even the bulldozing highway builders in the valley below could not shake, as if the earth itself a created it, carving it out of some essential element that humanity had no ability to overcome.

The wood, glass and stucco bore scars of time, and seemed to reflect the greater history of similar buildings that had once lined that road but had vanished to the illusive pursuit of progress. Vines rose along one side, wisteria on the other. Yellowed rust stained those parts of wall unoccupied by windows.

Anyone looking out of those windows in the past had seen a valley filled with trees, leaves or farms, thick with green in summer, golden or red in fall, bare, brutally white in winter.

An old painting hung in the living room showing the elder view of the land and more than once, I stood looking at it, and then out the window at what the valley had become, seeing glimpse through the trees of the new hospital, the telephone company headquarters, the shopping center, and condos, each taking a bit out of the world, making this house on this hill a refuge. One small slice remained the same as in the painting and I most often concentrated on that, though always on the ride from the other side, I took note of the old fashioned library, fire house, post office and general store – to which Jimmy sometimes walked when he could not get a ride – an ironic twist from his days in Passaic where he would not even walk two blocks to the Quick Chek.

I spent nights here alone with Jimmy in the heart of winter, stoned before a roaring fire, contemplating the universe and the long years from when we’d first met and those things we’d done, the search of land, the desperate pursuit of happiness we knew we might ever find. At other times, Jimmy would bring me out to look at his gardens on the south and west sides, and the huge pink dogwood trees bursting over us like sunset, pedals falling at our feet like those of pink roses, a breathless expression of love I will always feel.

Where nature left off, Jimmy’s spells began, his hands often stained with paint, while under his fingernails, bits of dirt from digging holes in which to plant his flowers. He painted the grounds with flowers the way he painted with paint on canvas, pink here, yellow or red as he saw the need, this one-acre lot his great canvas he applied color to generously.

“It’s beautiful,” Louise said, staring out at it through the windshield once I pulled the car into the gravel driveway.

“What is this place?” Ruby asked, twisting around the glimpse out all the windows of the car as if unable to take it all in.

“This is where Jimmy lives,” I said.

We didn’t move; we just stared.

Always in the past, Jimmy seemed to sense my coming and so I expected as much now. I studied the stucco face of the building for some sign, the faceted windows framed by wood, shuttered to keep the north wind out, even sometimes like this in summer. It all looked so old and weary.

Then, Jimmy appeared, slipping out of the front door vestibule like a ghost, wearing his usual kaki colored military shirt and jeans, white sneakers stained with earth. He glided over the pedal-strewn walk to the pedal-strewn drive, wearing his usual expression of impatience.

“So, what took you so long?” he asked when he reached my side of the car.

Louise and Ruby glanced at each other, then at Jimmy.

“How did you know we were coming?” Louise asked. “Did Garrick call you?”

“That dead beat?” Jimmy said. “No, he didn’t call. I just know things. But if I stand here and explain everything, I know to you, we’ll be here for an eternity.”

“We were held up by a dragon.” I said. “We had to stop and slay it.”

“You shouldn’t joke about such things,” Jimmy said. “You’ll call down something bad on yourselves.”

“Certainly not a dragon,” I said.

“A dragon is a metaphor,” Jimmy said. “There are many ills things in the world that might be called dragons.”

“What are you two talking about?” the confused Louise asked.

“Magic,” Jimmy said.

“Jimmy is scolding me for evoking a magical being needlessly,” I told Louise. “He believes it will bring me back luck.”

“Karma,” Jimmy corrected. “Not luck.”

“You’re mixing your metaphors,” I said.

“It’s my metaphor to mix,” Jimmy said. “Let’s talk about something else, something safer.”

Then he leaned down to look passed me at Louise and Ruby.

“How the hell are you two anyway?” he asked, looking more closely at Ruby. “Are you the young lady I last saw crying in her crib in Parsippany? You know you kept me up at night for a whole week.”

Ruby blushed.

“I-I didn’t mean to,” she said.

“Of course, you didn’t,” Jimmy said.

“We stayed at his and Ginger’s apartment briefly,” I explained. “And it was for three days, not a week, and despite his denials, Jimmy actually sat up and played games with you.”

“I did not!” Jimmy said indignantly.

“You did, too,” I said. “I know because I woke up several times and caught you at it.”

“I remember that, too,” Louise said. “We’d wake up and find you standing next to the crib making bubbly noises.”

“And the minute you saw we were awake, you started to grumble and tell us how we ought to keep our daughter quiet,” I said.

“So, I was supposed to hang your baby up by her thumbs to keep her quiet?” Jimmy asked. “But let’s not dwell on the past. There’s tea on the stove. Come in out of the sun.”

I climbed out the car, feeling stiff, as if I had driven the whole way from Scranton to get here, my sneakers stirring up dust from the graven drive. Louise and Ruby climbed out the other side of the car, pausing to look at some of Jimmy’s many small flower beds – one of which he called Half Moon Garden because it was in the shape of a crescent moon. Then they followed me as I followed Jimmy into the house.

There were signs of another time on the house, anti-hex symbols in worn tiles that Jimmy would be aware of, but most people would have mistaken for some kind of design, testimony to another era when people feared curses more than they did today. A rusted horseshoe hung near the front door vestibule, a wood-framed space that had a string of small windows like those that decorated one corner of the house, small two by two-inch windows that brought in gold light each morning. There was a small round hole in one of the windowpanes from a bullet that someone had fired from far away and which had crashed through the window one day while Jimmy was sitting near the fireplace.

The front door faced out towards the road, but the door to the vestibule did not, facing the driveway instead so that we are following Jimmy into the house went in the outer and made an immediate left into the house itself.

The wood and stone interior seemed to strike Louise and Ruby with the same awe as it always did with me, creating a very magical air which explained why Jimmy loved living and working here. The whole front section of the house had been constructed around one large file place that made up a majority of the south wall. Stairs near to the left coming in rose to the second floor, a portion of which created a kind of den below it, although the second floor and all of its bedrooms opened to a walkway that ran along it on two sides so that the heat from the fire place could rise and enter each room if the door was left open.

The section of the first floor partially roofed by the second floor had a couch, a TV and a piano. Planters hung in each of the windows all overflowing with green.

“Everything is growing well this year,” Jimmy said, noticing me noticing the plants. “Even the wisteria outside has come in – two years in a row. That’s unusual. It’s only supposed to bloom every seven years. Sit down. I hope you don’t mind. I’ve asked Ginger to have tea with us.”

“Ginger is here?” I said.

Jimmy picked up on my surprise; I thought they couple of ceased their romantic association several years earlier.

“This is her mother’s house after all,” Jimmy said. “She just happens to be off from school.”

I thought I heard a note of hope in Jimmy’s voice, but I tried not to let him know I noted it.

Ginger had always been a central figure in Jimmy’s life. He was 21 when he met and fell in love with the 17-year-old Ginger, and a short time later, they moved in together in the Parsippany apartment – although keeping this a secret from her mother, who thought she was living with a girlfriend.

I never got all the details straight as to why they broke up, only that Ginger had fled to San Francisco to see her sister and Jimmy drove out to get her back – he and the rest of us assuming they would be married when they got back to New Jersey.

Their car broke down in North Dakota on their way back, cementing what we believed would be a Camelot like romance.

They moved in together in an apartment on Pine Street in Montclair, not far from where I lived at the time. Jimmy got a job in a graphics design company in Oakland. She got a job at Madison’s bookstore. All seemed well with the world. Jimmy had even taken out a car loan and bought a new Dazun which he loved. Then life started to crumble. Jimmy lost his job and took a part time job in the bookstore with Ginger. A major magazine to which he had sent an idea, not only rejected him, but stole the idea. Ginger moved out. Jimmy’s had medical issues with his throat keeping him from singing with the band. He fell behind on car payments and sold the car to Bob Warren, who promptly wrecked it, and then, he fled Montclair to go live with Garrick in Passaic.

I don’t think Jimmy ever got over her, and apparently made attempts to reunite, but these never struck the right nerve.

“I’m surprised she’s here,” I said.

Jimmy pulled me aside to a quiet place near the stairs.

“Don’t say anything, but I think she has something important she want to tell me,” he said.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. But whatever it is, she’s scared to spring it on me.”

“Ginger? Afraid?”

“Who’s afraid?” Ruby asked, wandering into our space as if on the hunt for dragons. “Should we be afraid, too?”

“Nothing to worry about in this house,” Jimmy assured her, then pulled me even deeper into a dark corner. “I think Ginger has a new boyfriend.”

“Is it serious?” I asked.

“Serious enough for her to think marriage.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Do? What can I do?”

“I mean where are you going to live?”

“Here, of course,” Jimmy said.

“Won’t it be uncomfortable for you if Ginger has another lover.”

“Why should I be uncomfortable?” Jimmy asked, genuinely baffled.

“Never mind,” I said.

“Come on then, let’s get tea before it gets cold.”

He led us to the dinning room, which was a bit brighter than where we had been due to wide windows on two sides, and a door leading to a screened-in porch. The top half of the door to this was open to let air into the rest of the house. A huge rectangular table filled the dining room so that with the chairs and bookcases, it was difficult to squeeze around it. I glanced at some of the books which were authored by people like Emerson and Thoreau. The leather of some of the spines were so word from use the letters were unreadable. Magazines were piled on the top of the bookcases with National Geographic the only title I recognized.

On every wall, Jimmy’s brightly colored painting hung, cartoon-like works that might have been meant for children until you looked more closely at them and the deeper meanings they conveyed.

Louise studied the plants which were nearly as abundant indoors as out, spindly leaves flowing over the edges of their containers and onto the windowsills where they had bee place. They added an earthly scent to the whole house.

“So many plants,” Louise said. “What takes care of them all?”

“I do,” Jimmy said. “They’re part of my morning ritual. When I get up, I water them, cut them back and repot them if they need to be. I also play some Bach for them on the piano.”

“Bach?” Ruby said.

“Well, sometimes I play Mozart,” Jimmy said. “I would play Beethoven, only most of the plants don’t like it.”

“Plants don’t have ears,” Ruby said.

“They don’t need ears. They feel the music,” Jimmy said. “But come, let me show you the kitchen.”

As with the rest of house, the kitchen bore the marks of another era, windows recessed with deep wooden sills, long counters upon which the scars of cutting showed, wood planks for flooring, a ceiling of tin, and a fire place mantle nearly as impressive as the one in the front room, black in the interior to suggest of the many meals that had been cooked in it over time.

Ginger was here, standing in front of one section of courter, chopping slices of celery, radishes and carrots for a platter nearby. She had already stacked on it various kinds of cheese as well as a variety of crackers.

She wore an apron decorated with daises, and for a moment I could have mistook her for an old-fashioned farm wife making a meal for her hard-working husband. She seemed frail, but she really wasn’t.

Jimmy frequently bragged about her dark eyes and pale face and was as much in love with her for being Irish as for who she was.

She no longer wore her hair long as when I first met her but in tight bun around her face, resembling the princess from Star Wars who we all loved.

“I haven’t seen you in ages, Al,” Ginger said. “How are you?”

“Well, I think,” I said, breathless as I always felt when around Ginger, perhaps too caught up in Jimmy’s mythology which made her over to be Guinevere and Jimmy as King Arthur, and nearly all the rest of Jimmy cronies wishing we were brave enough to play the part of Lancelot.

“And this is your family?” Ginger asked, looking at Louise and Ruby. “Your daughter has grown into a very pretty girl.”

Ruby blushed.

Louise edged up to my elbow and whispered, “I think we’re intruding on their lunch.”

“You’re not intruding at all,” Jimmy said. “Ginger made this for you.”

  “For us?” Louise said.

“Certainly,” Jimmy said. “But first, let me give you a tour of my garden in the back.”

“Whose garden?” Ginger asked.

“My garden. I planted it, I nurture it, there fore it is mine,” Jimmy said. “So, let’s not argue about it.”

“Me? Argue? Never,” Ginger said, pressing harder on the knife as it clipped through the last stick of celery.

Jimmy’s garden was an accumulation of islands separated from the lunch green lawn by chunks of firewood, all overflowing with flowers of so many colors they blinded me to look at. But he also had an area of vegetables.

“You grew these yourself?” Louise asked.

“Yes.”

“But the vegetables are huge.”

“What can I say?” Jimmy said with false modesty. “I have a gift.”

Then he led us down unevenly cut stone stairs that he had cleared of earth himself some time earlier, one of the many discoveries of the past had had sought out and preserved, stairs that at one time had connected another structure – perhaps a barn – with the house.

Jimmy spent most of his time exploring the property when he wasn’t up in his cubby hole painting. He was clearly proud of his efforts and looked forward to future discoveries. Then he led us back up the stairs. The slant of sun told me it was starting to get late.

But I was mostly thinking of Jimmy and how if what he said about Ginger was correct, his days as caretaker in this place would soon end, and I couldn’t imagine what he would do when he got told to leave, or how he would react.

When we got back into the house, Ginger had laid out the dinning room table for the meal, a large round platter sat in the center of the table like a huge flower. Gold light fell through the windows onto it, giving it a magical feeling.

Ginger asked what brought us out this way, and I told her we were headed back to Passaic and then in the morning to Pennsylvania to go camping. She seemed intrigued.

At the same time, we caught something unspoken between her and Jimmy, a silent argument in which we had no place, but which made me feel a little bit uncomfortable.

Jimmy after the meal invited back into the living room where he played several original songs on the piano. The sun was sinking

Finally, I looked at Louise and Ruby and suggested we needed to go.

“So soon?” Jimmy said, his reluctance a surprise, but perhaps it was because he really didn’t want to be alone with Ginger or to hear the news she was going to break. “When will be back this way?”

“We can stop back on our way out in the morning,” I said. “But not for long.”

“That would be great,” Jimmy said.

I got the feeling then he knew he would need to see me to comfort him.

Outside, I circled the car, checking the tires, oil and other fluids, delaying our departure out of kindness, knowing that the longer we stayed, the longer we delayed the inevitable.

Maybe she wouldn’t say anything today. Maybe Jimmy is anticipating something yet down the road, as definite as death, but not quite impending.

“See you,” I told him, and then waved to Ginger who stood near the door.

Then, as I drove off, I watched Jimmy cross the lawn to where Ginger stood, and then both were lost in the trees, and we slowly descended into the valley, back into the real world again.