Amy & Roger's Epic Detour

“Get through it?”

“Something like that,” I said, and we drove on in silence. “It was a car accident,” I added after a moment, just so Lucien wouldn’t ask and the how wouldn’t hang between us.

“Is that why you’re not driving?” he asked after a small pause.

“Yeah,” I said. We drove on, and I felt the threat of tears recede a little. I closed my eyes for a moment and felt the warm night air on my face.

“Are you ever going to drive again?” he asked.

I opened my eyes and looked over at him. “Well, probably someday,” I said, realizing that I hadn’t thought about an end point. Just as I hadn’t realized until this morning that if I didn’t go to Graceland with my father, I would never get there. “I just … every time I think about driving, I start to panic.”

“I can see that. But you can’t let it stop you, right?”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to answer that, so I looked out at the scenery. We seemed to be somewhat closer to the main house, but I was so turned around at this point, I couldn’t be sure. “Where are we headed?” I asked.

“Almost there,” he said. “You’ll see.” We hit a pothole, and both of us were jolted in our seats. I grabbed onto the roll bar tightly. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve got it under control.” He smiled. “But you might want to hold on for this next part.” With that, he swung the Jeep off the road and onto the grass.

“Um, can we do this?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “All the way back here, my mother doesn’t care what the grass looks like.”

We crossed the field, hitting some very deep holes that Lucien explained had been made by gophers. He pulled to a stop at the edge of what was probably properly called a meadow, a huge open expanse of grass. But it wasn’t empty. It was filled with a menagerie of the animal-shaped topiaries we’d seen along the roads and then closer to the house. There were at least fifteen that I could see, and some that seemed to still be in hedge form, with pieces of what they would become beginning to take shape.

“Wow,” I murmured, getting out of the car as Lucien killed the engine. I walked up to the nearest one, which was a life-size horse with a garland around his neck.

“That one was for the Derby last month,” Lucien said. “It made the paper.”

“These are incredible,” I said, looking around at the creatures surrounding us.

“You really like them?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said, then registered his tone of voice. I crouched down to look at an alligator that had its jaws wide open, a tiny bird perched on its teeth. “How long did this one take you?” I asked, looking up at him.

He gave a short, embarrassed laugh. “Is it obvious?”

“You just seemed a little invested in what I thought,” I said, smiling at him. “But I can’t believe you can do this. It’s amazing.”

“It’s just a hobby,” he said, following along a few steps behind me as I walked around, watching my expression as I looked at all of them.

“This isn’t a hobby,” I said. “It’s like you’re a sculptor. You should be proud of these.” I saw a small handsaw lying next to a piece that was still half in hedge form, and something clicked into place. “Are these why you were carrying a chain saw earlier?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I was working on a few around back when I heard a car. I didn’t scare you, did I?”

I pretended to be very interested in a duck and a line of ducklings behind her. “Maybe just a little.” The ducks were incredibly detailed—they even had ridges for feathers carved into them. “How does this even happen?” I asked, looking around at all of them. “How did you learn to do this?”

“It’s not a very interesting story,” he said. “Like I told you, they’re kind of a tradition around here. I’d always liked them. And then a few years ago, we hired a gardener who was really great at it. He taught me what he knew, and that was that.” He rested his hand on the back of a wildcat with one paw raised. “There’s this quote by Michelangelo that I always liked. He said that he could see the angel in the marble, and was carving to set him free. I guess it’s the same thing with me. Except I see the wildcat in the shrubbery.” He smiled, but then shrugged. “But like I said, it’s just a hobby.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think people spend this much time or energy on their hobbies.” I turned away from a bear—bears seemed to be a motif—and looked at him, shoulders hunched in the moonlight. “You’re an artist,” I said.

He gave a short laugh. “Artists don’t make money. And gardeners certainly don’t make money. My parents put up with this as long as they think it’s just for fun. I looked at a few colleges that had landscaping programs, and you should have heard them. It was like I had betrayed them.”

“But you can’t let that stop you,” I said. “I mean, if you have a gift for something, I think it’s wrong not to work at it, just because it gets hard, or because you’re scared.” I paused after saying this, wondering why these words sounded so familiar.

“Look, never mind,” said Lucien, his face, what I could see of it in the dark, more closed off than I’d yet seen it. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected you to understand.”

“God,” I said, getting frustrated. Getting mad. I could feel my pulse quickening, but it didn’t feel scary and out of control, like when I’d been talking to my mother. Weirdly, it felt good. “I do understand. You think my parents want me to be an actress?” I paused, a little stunned, when I realized I’d used the plural—and the present tense. “I mean, they didn’t. My mother still doesn’t. Whatever,” I said, trying to push on past this and get back to what was at hand. “My father was a history professor.” I stumbled over the “was” for just a moment. “My mother’s a PhD in English. They don’t understand. They think that what I want to do is crazy. And maybe it is, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop because they don’t want me to do it. Because they didn’t want me to….” I sighed, giving up on trying to make my tenses match. “I’m just saying,” I said.