Helen first met CK because they both witnessed a woman losing an argument with a parking meter. The meter had accepted three quarters and then announced that payment could only be completed through an app. The woman objected. The meter remained unmoved. Helen was waiting behind her and had reached the stage where sympathy was being overtaken by the desire to get on with her day.
"There is a sign," the woman said, pointing at it. "It says coins or cards."
It did.
"I put in coins."
She had.
"And now it wants me to download something."
It did. Helen privately agreed that this was stupid. She also privately wished the woman would stop explaining it. The woman's dog was standing in the sun beside her, panting. Helen noticed that too. The woman began explaining the matter again, this time to someone on the telephone. Helen moved into the narrow shade of the building. After another minute the woman gave up, collected her dog and marched away. The meter kept her seventy-five cents.
"Well," Helen said to no one in particular. "That was exhausting."
"Mostly for the dog."
Helen looked around. A man several feet away was putting something into his pocket. He wore a hat despite the heat. Helen had noticed him earlier but only as another person trapped within the parking meter's sphere of influence.
"Yes," she said. "I kept wishing she'd move him into the shade."
The man nodded. Neither said anything else. Helen went to the meter and tried her card. The meter rejected it. She stared at the machine.
"Careful," said the man.
Helen looked at him. "I beg your pardon?"
"It knows you're vulnerable."
She laughed. Helen tried the card again. This time the meter accepted it.
"That was close."
"Very."
Helen headed toward the bank. The man went in the opposite direction. By the time Helen finished at the bank, she had forgotten about him. She was putting the receipt into her bag when she noticed a squirrel beside the curb. A car passed. The squirrel retreated approximately six inches and reconsidered his options. Helen stopped. She took a dog cookie from her bag, broke off a small piece and tossed it toward him. The squirrel collected it.
The next piece landed several feet farther from the road. The squirrel followed. It followed the next piece several feet farther still.
"What are you doing?"
Helen turned. The man in the hat had returned. He was carrying a paper bakery bag.
"Moving him."
She tossed another piece. The squirrel was now beneath the tree.
"He'll probably go straight back."
"Probably."
Helen returned the remains of the cookie to her bag.
"Then why move him?"
She looked at the squirrel.
"Because he was at the curb now."
The man considered this. The squirrel sat up and ate.
"You carry cookies for squirrels?"
"Not specifically for squirrels. They're dog cookies. They survive amazingly well in bags."
"That's reassuring."
"I helped rehab one once. It ruined me."
He smiled. "Permanently?"
"Apparently."
She glanced toward the parking lot.
"Although I suppose I'm in no position to criticize the meter woman now."
"How so?"
"I just spent five minutes trying to persuade a squirrel not to behave like a squirrel."
"You were quieter."
"That is something."
"And the squirrel benefited."
"For approximately thirty seconds."
"Possibly thirty-one."
Helen looked at him.
"Are you making fun of me?"
"Not yet."
The squirrel ran back toward the curb. Helen winced and looked away. The man said nothing.
"No commentary, please."
"I haven't said anything."
"You have a very talkative face."
"I've been told."
They began walking in the same direction. Helen wasn't entirely sure when this happened. The conversation simply continued. She told him about the squirrel she had helped rehab years earlier. He asked for details, which she was happy to supply, including several stories involving sleepless nights and increasingly unreasonable arrangements for one squirrel. Somewhere during the story he finally introduced himself as CK. They returned briefly to the parking-meter woman, and Helen admitted that the woman's complaint had been perfectly legitimate.
"She was still annoying," Helen said.
"Those conditions can coexist," CK replied.
"Yes, but I didn't think that until I was the one feeding a squirrel with no realistic expectation of changing its long-term behavior."
CK nodded.
"I suppose everybody looks more reasonable from inside their own explanation," Helen said.
"That sounded suspiciously like something you've thought about before."
"Most things have been thought about before."
"That's disappointing."
"Time saving."
Helen smiled. They reached a place where she would have continued straight. CK turned onto a narrower path.
"Where are you going?"
"For tea."
Helen looked at the bakery bag.
"Scones?"
"Yes."
"That explains the bakery bag."
CK looked down the path.
"You're welcome to come."
"Where?"
"The Conservatory."
Helen looked ahead. The path disappeared between two hedges and seemed to lead nowhere in particular.
"Is that a bring-your-own-scones café?"
"No."
"A garden center?"
"No."
"What is it?"
CK considered the question.
"A good place for tea."
This did not answer it. Helen followed him anyway. The path narrowed before it widened. For several minutes Helen could see little beyond shrubs, trees and occasional openings into grass. The garden was not wild, exactly. Someone had made decisions here. They simply had not made all of them. Fruit trees stood farther down the slope. Mown lawn surrounded the Conservatory and threaded between beds and paths before giving way to meadow, shrubs and wilder ground at the edges. A couple of old utility buildings sat farther along, partly screened by trees.
Something mechanical moved behind a row of currant bushes. A moment later an autonomous mower emerged onto the lawn.
A fox was sitting on top. Helen stopped. The mower changed direction to avoid a fallen branch. The fox shifted slightly and remained aboard. Helen looked at CK. CK had continued walking.
"Is that a fox on a lawn mower?"
CK turned.
"Yes."
He waited for her to catch up. Helen looked back. The fox looked back too. CK resumed walking. The Conservatory appeared a little farther along the path. Helen understood the name then. It was an old glass building, larger than she had expected, joined to a low brick structure on one side. Some panes were newer than others. The brick showed its age. Roses and climbing plants had been given considerable freedom around the exterior without being permitted to take possession of it.
Beyond the glass stretched enough lawn to explain the mower.
"Has this always been here?" Helen asked.
"The building has."
"The rest?"
"Ask Phoebe."
Phoebe was repotting something when they entered. There was soil on the table, soil on the floor and a small amount on Phoebe herself. At the far end of the table, a man was reading several handwritten pages. At the sound of the door he marked his place, stood and went toward the kettle. Two other people occupied chairs near the windows. An older woman was doing a crossword. Beside her, a gentleman was reading the newspaper.
Nobody appeared to find Helen's arrival particularly surprising. Phoebe looked up.
"Hello."
"I've brought Helen," CK said.
Helen looked at him.
"I don't remember telling you my name."
"You told the squirrel."
"I did not."
"You introduced yourself while explaining that the cookie wasn't nutritionally ideal."
Helen thought about it.
"Oh."
CK removed his hat and hung it carefully beside the door, then his jacket, smoothing one sleeve before placing it on the neighboring hook. He placed the bakery bag on the table.
"Scones."
Arthur lowered his newspaper.
"Excellent."
Phoebe looked toward the man at the kettle.
"Jules, this is Helen."
Jules turned.
"Hello, Helen."
CK made the remaining introductions. Margaret lifted her crossword pencil in greeting. Arthur nodded and began investigating the bakery bag. Helen sat down. Jules brought over another cup. Phoebe returned to the plant.
No one asked Helen why she was there. The parking meter entered the conversation a little later when Phoebe asked how she and CK had met.
"A parking meter and a squirrel," Helen said.
Phoebe stopped packing soil around the plant.
"Which came first?"
"The parking meter."
Jules set down the teapot.
"What happened?"
Helen gave them the short version: the sign, the quarters, the app, the dog in the sun, and her own increasingly uncharitable desire for the whole thing to end. Arthur laughed behind his newspaper.
"I sympathize with the woman."
"So did I," Helen said. "I just wanted her to stop."
"And then?" Jules asked.
"The machine rejected my card next."
"That seems relevant."
"It was."
Phoebe looked up from the plant.
"But shouting wasn't going to make it take the coins."
"Exactly."
Margaret erased something in her crossword.
"I shouted at my printer on Saturday."
Phoebe laughed.
"Did it help?"
"No. But I felt briefly influential."
That loosened something in the room. Helen told them about the squirrel. CK corrected her estimate of thirty seconds to thirty-one. She accused him of padding the data. Jules asked why she had moved the squirrel if she expected it to return to the curb.
"Because he was at the curb then."
Jules considered that for a moment.
"So you weren't trying to solve squirrels."
"No."
"Traffic?"
"Not that either."
"What, then?"
Helen thought.
"That squirrel. That car. Right then."
Jules nodded. This time Helen noticed that he did not write anything down. For some reason she had expected him to. The conversation wandered. The parking meter became a discussion about whether being correct justified every response to being correct. That became something about rules. Arthur contributed a story about a town council meeting twenty years earlier. Margaret disagreed with his recollection of it. They spent several minutes establishing that Margaret had not actually attended the meeting.
"This has never prevented you correcting me before," Arthur said.
"It hasn't."
Phoebe finished with the plant and carried it to a shelf. Helen gradually stopped worrying about whether she had anything useful to say. Nobody else seemed worried about it either. Sometimes a question was answered. Sometimes it produced another question. Sometimes Arthur ate a scone. The conversation wandered completely away from its original point when Fox came through the door. Helen stopped talking. Fox crossed the room, circled once beneath the table and lay down.
She looked at CK. He was listening to Arthur. She looked at Phoebe. Phoebe was pouring more tea. Finally Helen said, "The fox is inside."
"Yes," Phoebe said.
Fox opened one eye. Helen waited. Nothing happened.
"Does he always come in?"
"When he wants to."
Fox closed his eye. Helen decided that, for the moment, this was sufficient information. Later, while Arthur and CK were discussing whether a rule could be sensible in general and foolish in one particular circumstance, Helen wandered toward the brick wall. Several photographs hung there. The oldest showed the Conservatory before it had been repaired. Some panes were missing. The grounds had grown almost to the doors. One section of roof looked doubtful. Another showed scaffolding. Another showed the same room Helen was standing in, but with far less furniture.
Phoebe was in that photograph. Younger. Tired-looking. Jules stood beside her. Helen looked from the photograph to the other end of the room. Jules was listening to Margaret. He appeared to be wearing exactly the same clothes. Helen looked back at the photograph. Phoebe joined her.
"That was a long time ago."
"How long?"
"Nearly eleven years."
"Was this yours?"
"The Conservatory?"
"Yes."
Phoebe shook her head.
"Not then."
"How did you find it?"
Phoebe considered the photographs.
"I was having a very bad year."
Helen waited.
"I'd got myself into the habit of noticing everything that needed help."
Phoebe looked through the glass toward the grounds.
"Animals mostly. Injured ones. Hungry ones. Things eating other things. Things I could fix. Things I couldn't. Unfortunately, once you've decided suffering is your department, the hours are dreadful."
Helen smiled.
"What happened?"
"I got overwhelmed."
"That's all?"
"No. But it's the useful part."
Phoebe pointed toward Jules in the photograph.
"I found him around then."
Helen looked toward the table. Jules glanced over.
"She was attempting to take personal responsibility for several ecosystems."
"I was not."
"You had lists."
"I like lists."
"You had separate lists for squirrels, deer, groundhogs and oak trees."
Phoebe looked at Helen.
"There were circumstances."
Jules returned to Margaret. Helen laughed.
"And he brought you here?"
"Eventually."
"What was it like?"
"Quieter."
Phoebe looked around the room.
"For a while it was mostly Jules and me. I needed somewhere I could release the things I couldn't fix."
Helen looked again at the photographs.
"And then?"
"People came."
Phoebe pointed to another picture.
"That's Margaret. Arthur came later. CK started appearing so regularly that we gave up pretending he was visiting."
Across the room CK said, "I heard that."
"You were intended to."
Phoebe moved to another photograph.
"Evelyn. She lives in Maine now. Comes every Christmas and complains that we moved the table."
"We moved one table," Jules said.
Phoebe added, "In 2021."
"She remains opposed," Jules said.
Helen smiled.
"So this is a club?"
"Not really."
"A salon?"
Jules looked over.
"That would imply considerably better clothes."
Helen looked at the old photograph. Then at Jules.
"Apparently not for everyone."
Jules followed her gaze.
"Reliable tailoring."
Phoebe laughed.
"We used to call it a book club without books."
"That makes no sense."
"It made enough."
Outside, the mower passed the window with Fox aboard. Helen watched them.
"Who makes the mower?"
"Harold," Phoebe said.
Helen looked at her.
"It has a name?"
"Yes."
Helen looked back through the window.
"Of course it does."
The afternoon went on longer than Helen intended. Arthur left after his third scone. Margaret finished her crossword and immediately began another one. Someone arrived carrying a bag of tomatoes, stayed long enough for a cup of tea and left half the tomatoes behind. CK disappeared outside for a while and returned with a branch he said had been blocking the path. No one asked Helen to explain why she was still there. By late afternoon the sunlight had moved across the glass and the room had become warmer.
Helen looked at the time.
"Oh."
Phoebe glanced over.
"Problem?"
"I was going to be home an hour ago."
"Ah."
Helen gathered her bag. At the door she stopped.
"Do you meet here regularly?"
"Thursdays are the crowded day," Phoebe said.
Helen looked back at Margaret.
"This isn't crowded?"
Margaret glanced up.
"No."
Helen laughed.
"And otherwise?"
"Quieter. Usually Jules and me. Fox comes and goes. CK is here more often than he admits."
CK, still seated, said, "I admit nothing." Helen looked down the path.
"I don't think I could find my way back."
"You could," CK said.
"How?"
"You've been once."
Helen wasn't entirely convinced. CK picked up the bakery bag and looked inside.
"One left."
He wrapped the remaining scone and handed it to Helen.
"For the road."
Helen took it.
"For me or the squirrel?"
"You," said CK.
Phoebe glanced at Helen's bag.
"The squirrel has already had a cookie."
"Part of one."
"Quite enough."
Helen put the scone carefully into her bag. CK got up and held the door for her. Outside, Harold moved across the lawn. Fox rode on top. Helen watched for only a moment, then looked toward the path. It seemed less hidden from this side. She headed home.