Free The Ghost Orchid by Carol Goodman Page A

Saratoga —”
    “ Sacandaga, ” Nat corrects, his hand trembling slightly as he puts down his coffee cup.
    “Yes, Sacandaga. What in Sacandaga explodes the form? If I recall, it’s about a boy staying at his grandfather’s cottage for the summer—”
    “You’ve read it?” Nat asks with barely disguised surprise. His voice is calm, but his hand, still touching the rim of his coffee cup, is trembling. I can hear the faint ring of china rattling against china and the wings of the bluebirds painted on the cup are fluttering. “I didn’t realize your reading extended beyond Burpee’s seed catalog.”
    “Boys,” Bethesda says reprovingly, but Nat and David both smile at her as if they each had no idea what her problem might be. They’re engaged in a friendly discussion, their faces say, but only a fool—or someone as innocent of envy and malice as Zalman Bronsky—wouldn’t feel the tension in the room. I can’t help but feel partly responsible, since David started this to protect me, and, oddly, I feel sorry for Nat. When he gets angry or scared, I’ve noticed, his ears quiver and you can imagine what he looked like as a kid. I can picture him as that boy in his first novel, hiding in the woods behind his grandfather’s cottage, scared of the old man and trying to get a moment to himself to read instead of having to go out again on those dreaded fishing trips. I can almost hear his grandfather’s stern voice calling him, Nathaniel —
    “Oh, I like a novel now and again,” David drawls. He’s from Texas, I’ve learned, but only sounds that way when it suits him. “And I liked yours fine. Especially the fishing parts. Only I don’t really see what makes it any different from any other boy-growing-up story, say The Catcher in the Rye, or Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories—”
    “I’d be happy to include myself in that company,” Nat says, his ears twitching. I get another clear picture of him as a boy, leaning against a tree, reading—
    “Of course,” I say, “those are classic influences. It’s not as if Nat modeled his book on the Hardy Boys—”
    A crashing sound cuts short my ill-conceived intervention. Nat’s coffee cup lies in its saucer, in a mess of blue and white splinters and black coffee. Nat himself is already out the door, Bethesda following close behind him. Zalman looks up surprised and then begins mopping up the black coffee with his napkin. David looks at me and laughs.
    “What’s so funny?” I say.
    “Don’t you see?” he says. “Nat’s just exploded his form!”

    I head outside after breakfast. I feel that I need a breath of fresh air after the altercation between Nat and David, but it’s colder than I expected. Indian summer, which had lingered through the first weeks of October, has come to an abrupt end. The ilex trees are still green, but much of the surrounding foliage has turned color and fallen. Having grown up in northwest New York, the abruptness of autumn shouldn’t surprise me and yet, when I first saw the gardens in all their overgrown greenery, I imagined them staying like that throughout the winter. Now, though, there are denuded spots in the hillside where statues that lay hidden through the summer peer out, their lichen-stained faces and broken limbs appearing trapped in the tangle of bare branches. I remember the demonic face of the Green Man that David showed me weeks ago and wonder what else lies beneath the underbrush waiting to be uncovered.
    Although it’s definitely too cold to work outside in the garden today, I can’t bear the thought of going back to my room. It’s a perfectly nice room—certainly the most luxurious one I’ve ever slept in—but I’ve been feeling increasingly uneasy in it, especially in the mornings, when the sound of Nat’s manual typewriter beats a maddening rhythm in my skull and the image of him at his desk seems to invade my room. I especially don’t want to listen to it today after what happened in the