Hiding Out

"I wasn't hiding," I say, but my face blooms red as a peony. My sister's laugh is all gotcha, loud enough to turn heads. We're in a line that's at a standstill. Our destination, should we reach it, is a wedding cake that, when it was rolled onto the patio minutes ago, inspired wafts of genuine reverence. A teeny twosome snorkel amid turquoise and white meringue wavelets. Above a butterscotch beach and some plastic palms looms a 3-foot high caramel-frosted Mayan pyramid. As everyone knows or soon will, the wedded pair met in the Yucatan. Good taste prohibits mentioning it was at a fat farm.

"You wanted to join me," I say.

"I was the matron of honor. I couldn't go hide in the bushes."

These were not bushes. They were astonishing trees, no doubt of venerable age, ribbed and pulsing like three hot air balloons momentarily grounded at the borders of the lawn. I simply had an overwhelming desire to get a closer look.

Such was my line. I probably wouldn't have paid the trees any heed were not the ceremony riddled with longueurs. The minister, Sandy, (a lawyer procured through the internet), kept huddling with Rusty and Ellen, my brother and his bride. They were winging it. Naturally, attention wandered. The inspirational reading, when it finally came, was a parable about a hunter and a beautiful elk, culled from "native, indigenous texts." Most of it was inaudible to those of us in the back but Sandy theatrically got the gist, if not the point, across. Coming hard on the heels of the prancing elk, the recitation of the matrimonial vows provided an outlet for general hilarity.

"The Sufi dance was a unique touch," Sis remarks.

"Different, as Mom would say."

It's what sent me fleeing. While Rusty and Ellen smooched, Sandy urged all present to spin clockwise with hands upraised to create a "vortex of positive energy." I dove behind the green curtain, unwilling to be caught by a camcorder doing something so humiliating. Before I retreated deep into the gloom, I glimpsed my poor parents standing dumbfounded in the maelstrom.

By displacing a few branches I could slither my way to a junction where two limbs offered a seat of sorts. What were these trees? Arborvitae? Some kind of thuja? Possibly chamaecyparis. Soon the ribbons and balloons, the orchids numerous enough for Cleopatra, the elk and the "until death-do-us-part" were forgotten. I was in another world, hidden, intuitive and erotic, oxygenated by the smell of greenery and sap and dust. It did not matter what the trees were.

Every garden should have a hiding place. An area in my garden along the upper fence where oaks and wild plums wrestle a lemon verbena for sunlight had all the ingredients: seclusion, pungent smells, and a hint of raw nature and decay. Lassitude, not to mention my inability to keep up, had more to do with creating it than intent.

And if there's nobody to hide from? The hideaway doubles as a time machine. I am eleven, whisked back to my uncle's farm in Kansas---into the midst of a lilac bush, a squat, grandmotherly shrub, twice as tall as I and wide as the chicken coop. The lilac was a place to hide behind until the day I hit a tennis ball into its interior and discovered a space in the branches open enough to stand in. Within weeks, disregarding the harm I might be doing to the lilac, I could lie down comfortably in its center. Before that, my hiding places were the tops of trees. I could get snug in those leafy asylums, lulled by the limbs' oceanic swaying, but I knew better than to get too comfortable.

I didn't tell anyone about my hideaway, not even my cousin Jimmy. I was always afraid someone would see me sneaking in and out, feeling then, as today, as if something shameful were going on.

"Why isn't this line moving?" I ask.

"Pictures. The cake must be fully documented."

"Better take them to one-hour development, given Rusty's track record."

"You are too cynical."

"I can count."

I don't doubt Rusty is crazy about Ellen, and I'm pretty sure she is taken with him. I am touched by his evident happiness and admire his buoyant toodling port to port. I even wish I were more like him, able to steam ahead with nary a backward look. But I can't get even minutely sentimental about this wedding, despite the lavishness calculated to suggest it's a once-in-a-lifetime event.

I arrived late. I nearly didn't come at all, my resistance centered on getting a passable gift. A plant? For wedding #1 I presented him (them) a Korean fir, a 'Horstmann's Silberlocke.' This fir is to other firs what a panda is to other bears. White highlights on curled needles give it a flocked, cuddly look. The nursery tag said it would reach 15 feet high, ideal for smallish spaces. Precious in every way, I could justify the expense only if I gave the tree away. For two weeks it sat on my patio begging me to keep it. The day before the wedding I drove it over to Rusty's house, and planted it in his garden. At that reception much was made over the tree. When the divorce was played out and the house sold, I think I was the only one who wondered what would happen to it. Curiosity persisted and a few months later I drove by the house, and saw a basketball court in its place.

So this time I called Rusty and asked what kind of gift might be welcome. He and Ellen were registered here and there, he told me. Picking up a lack of spontaneous enthusiasm he said, "Hell, just show up, a gift isn't necessary."

This made me more nervous. Walking out of my house empty-handed this afternoon I succumbed to an impulse and filled a bucket with flowers and foliage, purple smokebush, the linaria called "three birds flying," Margaret Merril roses, variegated clary sage, pink penstemon, you name it. I raided the garden like a Hun.

The flowers are still in the bucket in my pickup. My vague notion that I would find a vase and a place for the flowers was torpedoed when I saw the acres of orchids. When would I learn? My sister will encourage me to get the flowers out of the pickup if I tell her so I won't.

"Hey Dad, how's the cake?" she calls to my father who has snagged a piece and is heading toward the lawn. "What's that turquoise stuff?"

"Haven't had a bite yet. Do you see a place to sit down?"

"Inside," my sister and I both say.

He moves closer to us. "That was no kind of wedding," he says. "What did you think?"

"I thought it was fine," I say.

"A little weird," my sister says.

He shrugs, "Your mother didn't think much of it either."

Once he goes inside, my sister chides. "You thought it was fine. And you go sneaking into the bushes."

* * * * *

Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest.
   ~ E. M. Forster, from Howard's End

Amazing what pyramid power can do, or perhaps it was the champagne. I'm not so eager to rush home. A man named Geoffrey, overhearing my sister and me talking about the garden, asked if we'd seen the "new garden," and offered to show it to us while the gifts were being opened---a good way, he said, "to avoid that nonsense." Suddenly the day looks more promising.

"If you're ready?" Geoffrey says as the guests begin to stream toward the living room and adjacent patio. My sister unaccountably chooses to forego the garden for the gifts.

"Are you kidding?" she says. "This is my favorite part. It's what love's all about."

Geoffrey says, "Through here," and for the second time today I enter the enshadowed world of the evergreens. "I love this smell. These are red cedars," he smiles, "Thuja plicata, native to the north coast where I grew up. My mother and aunt would take strips of bark and make baskets. Cedars were the best place to be when it was raining. You could go right to the middle and not get hit by a drop for hours. Good hiding place, too, huh?"

My blush returns. "So much for a clean getaway."

The path dawdles a little in the shadows before it makes a twist toward a sunny opening. He guffaws. "It's all on the wedding video. We watched it while you were waiting in line. I hate to say it but it's a classic."

The blush is a floribunda. The Sufi dance would have been less embarrassing. "I couldn't help it. I've seen plenty of California goofiness but that was way too California for me."

We pass through a rough wooden gate, beneath a cast-iron arch, and begin a fairly giddy descent. "This garden is all California. Natives. Not too goofy, I hope, though my wife thinks so."

I expect something austere, withered and crackling…it's mid-summer, after all, but the flank of this hill is sensuous, subtly pulsing with the movement of grasses and insects. The plants I recognize like monkeyflower and buckwheat are uncommonly lush, and then I notice a drip system peeking through here and there. Isn't summer irrigation cheating in a "natives-only" garden? Who's asking?

"The grasses with the golden heads…?" I ask.

"Calamagrostis foliosa. They're native to one small area up north. Also called Mendocino reed grass. Pale ale is how I describe their color this time of year. They're hard to find in the trade. I have starts in the greenhouse. I'll give you some." He points to a recently excavated channel. "We're going to put in a trickle of water to mimic a spring. It'll slide down these boulders, spread into a marsh down there, and finally end up in a pool at the bottom. It would be finished by now but the wedding put a serious dent in my budget. When Ellen said she wanted a garden wedding, I thought she meant something small and, you know, intimate. I look at all those white orchids and think of the lace ferns I want to get. You know the lace fern, gets to maybe eight inches, grows in rocky outcroppings?"

I noticed the salt-and-pepper in the goatee, the emerging bald spot, but he still seems too young. "You're Ellen's father?"

"I suppose I should be a better sport but this is her third go-around. As far as I'm concerned, she could have eloped. You look surprised."

Rusty told me she'd been married once before.

I say, "This is Rusty's third, too, you knew that?"

"We should be in the cake business. That pyramid thing cost over eight hundred bucks."

We weave through the garden, ever descending, and come to a fence beyond which there are live oaks, poison oak, manzanita. The cultivated garden and the uncultivated one stand next to each other like cousins, or brothers in which the resemblances become clearer after a bit of acquaintance.

Geoffrey says, "My wife can't understand why I want to spend all my time and money growing 'nothing but weeds'. Why don't I grow some flowers she could pick?" He bends over and pulls out some bunch grass. "Who knows," he pauses, "maybe three's a charm. Did you read about the couple in North Dakota who got divorced after being married 63 years? Unbelievable. I better get back. Stay longer if you want."

"Thanks. I will."

He climbs back up the earthen path and through the gate, and I am alone, in a bubble of euphoria under a robust sun, feeling as though I've made a great escape. But from what? A little unease trickles into my mood, and tadpole questions squiggle into being. Why do I so often seek out solitude and seclusion? Am I hiding from something? Shouldn't I be getting back? Why didn't I agree with my father? How can I get my hands on that video?