The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [18]
You, however, loved the experience. The speed. The vistas. The peace. Later you would understand the physics of flying, but that never lessened the magic. Even when the plane would be cruising on autopilot and you were swapping out Jepp charts in your binder—tedious work you seemed to be doing at least twice a month—you would occasionally glance out the window and find yourself a little awed by the beauty of the world so very, very far below you.
Ten-year-old Hallie Linton thought their new greenhouse in Bethel was a bit like the walled garden in that story The Secret Garden. It was an enchanted place, but—just like in the novel and the movie—right now you couldn’t see its possibilities. It was wintry in there at the moment and empty, except for those four tables and the stacks of flimsy plastic pots, and it smelled musty. There was so much black dirt on some of the big glass panes that a person could write her name in it. But she loved the building. Even now, the sun six weeks shy of the equinox and much of the glass opaque with grime, the greenhouse glowed with a bluish tint at the right time of the day. Hallie studied the way the long metal beams sparkled at noon, especially after she and Garnet had taken some Windex and paper towels yesterday and gingerly stood on the tables and scrubbed a few of the windowpanes. (Cleaning all of the windows was going to be a major project, both because there were so many and because the dirt, in this temperature, seemed to have been quilted over with glue. Nevertheless, she had every intention of making the effort when the days had gotten a little longer and the sun had started thawing the grime.)
She knew Garnet didn’t have quite as much interest in the building as she did, but dutifully she had helped cart out their dolls and the doll furniture; she seemed to appreciate the idea that at some point this was going to be their playhouse—or, at least, a playhouse that they might share with their mom and dad’s plants. Their parents had not evidenced a particular interest in gardening in West Chester, but recently their mother had said something about starting tomato seedlings in here. She had said she might even take up flowers as a hobby. It didn’t matter to Hallie. How much time could a grown-up really spend in a building like this? Besides, their mom had taken a job with a couple of other lawyers in Littleton. And their dad? Hallie couldn’t begin to imagine what was going to interest Dad now that he was no longer a pilot. She was pretty sure that planes were all he knew and all that interested him. He liked to fly—or had once. She certainly didn’t see him gardening or growing flowers in here.
Of course, she wasn’t precisely sure what was going to interest her either in New Hampshire. She knew that she was outgrowing her dolls, but she had no idea what might replace them here in the mountains. Probably not ballet and probably not the flute. Though she was only ten, Hallie grasped the reality that these would be just hobbies for her, even if she pursued them vigorously; she was no prodigy and there was no point in approaching either ballet or music with passion. This revelation neither saddened nor slowed her. She presumed someday she would find something else, and in the meantime she would go to dance class and practice her flute with the same dogged acceptance that compelled her to attend to her homework.
She had noticed already that she didn’t seem to have quite as much homework in Bethel. That might change. But at least over their first few days here, her new teacher hadn’t assigned nearly as much math or spelling or reading as Mrs. Leeds had in West Chester.
Moreover, there weren’t the massive shopping malls here that there were in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Or the community theater groups for their mom. Or even the Phillies—which, she had to admit, interested her mostly because they had interested her dad and some of