Day 1: The Topiarist

They said he was mad. They said he was disturbed and obsessed. But Cecily, the schoolteacher in town, didn’t think so. She thought he must be only very sad. At least, that’s what she gathered from the stories he told.

The rumors started when he bought the old Mason mansion after Hammond Mason died the previous summer. They said his ghost still haunted the place. They said how odd it was that a young man should buy that big, creepy house for just himself. Then there was the fact that no one ever saw him go in or out, just a glimpse of his elaborately coiffed, blond hair as he passed by a window. Wouldn’t it be better—for the town, you know—to have a family living there? Or turn it into a school? Having it sit idly seemed a waste, they said.

He’d been in town about a month when the stories began to show up.

It wasn’t obvious that’s what they were at first. He started with one shrub, shaped skillfully into a woman’s face. Passers-by would stop and wonder at the nuance of expression he was able to elicit from a boxwood.

A few weeks later, the town woke to find another topiary: two figures this time. They recognized the same woman, only now she was embraced by a man with spectacularly sculpted hair. Cecily shuddered when she saw it. Such joy as was evident in their faces gave her an ominous feeling. If the topiaries were telling a story, as she suspected, only heartache could follow this.

By the time the next installment appeared, the topiarist had become something of a local legend. People flocked to see the delicately expressive figures carved into the greenery. They took pictures through the bars of the gate, slipped cards and interview requests into the mailbox, and a group of them set up camp on the lawn in front of the gate in hopes of catching a glimpse of the topiarist in action. They spent a week out there, singing songs and chanting for the man to come out and demonstrate for them. But eventually they always fell asleep. The topiarist was never caught at his work.

One morning the group woke to a shout that a great ship had appeared in the night, its sails unfurled, a green wave cresting at its bow. Cecily, squinting past the iron gate, noticed a lone figure on the back of the boat, looking wistfully into the distance. She followed his gaze and there, standing far off on a boxwood cliff, she spotted the same woman as before, this time holding a small bundle in her arms. Her moss hair blew across her face as she watched the man sail away.

The next four appeared in quick succession: the young man working at a mill, shining shoes, digging a ditch, bent over a desk with a pile of leafy papers stacked precariously in front of him. Finally another ship towered over the lawn, with the woman holding a little curly-haired girl up to peer over the side at the green grass sea below.

By now the rest of the town had caught on to the narrative, and for many weeks they kept watch for a reunion and a happy conclusion to the story. But the days passed, and no new sculpture appeared. Not all at once, anyway. Cecily noticed a row of shrubberies shifting with each day, gathering like a storm, steadily approaching the ship where the two hopeful figures looked forward to their future. Her heart gripped her the morning she passed by to see that the storm had overtaken the boat. Waves thrashed around it; the figures fled for shelter as the ship rocked and weaved for days, tossed helplessly by the ocean’s fury. Then came the day when the sea grew calm again. The ship was nowhere to be seen.

The young man appeared once more, waiting on the end of a dock. Each morning he was there, for many months, so long that the townspeople concluded this was the end of the story and began to grumble. They said it was a shame to leave such a tragic story in their midst. They said if he was going to make something so public, he might as well give it a happy ending.

Eventually Cecily was the only one who still passed by to see the topiaries. Every day for a year, she stopped on her way to the school and peeked past the iron bars to see if the man had left his post at the end of the dock. She still glimpsed the man himself sometimes, looking out a high window of the mansion. He ducked away as soon as she caught his eye, but if she stayed there long enough, she saw him glance out again, warily.

She slipped a note into his mailbox:

I’m so very sorry about your family. —Miss Cecily Mills

Six more months passed before another topiary appeared: an exact miniature replica of the Mason mansion. Breathless with a curious excitement, Cecily pressed her face against the iron gate to get a better look, but there were still details she couldn’t make out. When school let out that afternoon, she snagged a pair of binoculars from the classroom and brought them to the mansion. Every detail of the new topiary was perfect, down to the iron gate, the row of miniature sculptures, and—to her surprise—a woman standing before the gate, looking in. He’d fashioned a tiny moss Cecily. And if that was so, then—yes, she scanned the tiny mansion facade and found the man with his fantastical hair peeking out one of the top windows.

Lowering the binoculars, she waved up at the house to let him know she’d seen it. She couldn’t see him, but thought she glimpsed a curtain moving.

After that the carvings ventured closer to the gate—fanciful sculptures of dancing circus animals, fearsome sea creatures, men in top hats that stretched six feet into the air, women with peg legs who smoked long pipes. Cecily delighted in them, waving each day up at the house in appreciation. Some days the man gave the tiniest wave back, evidently pleased to know that his work satisfied.

One morning, she passed by to find another scene, this one quite near the gate. A table was laid for tea, and two figures sat sipping from cups and smiling at each other. Cecily recognized the figures at once. She nodded up at the window. All day she was caught up in nervous anticipation, so that as soon as school let out, she raced to the mansion.

The gate was open. She ducked inside, closing it after her, and found a pathway weaving through the yard and around the house to the back garden, which she had never seen before. At the top of a set of stone steps, she found herself on a patio almost entirely enclosed by a magnificent weeping willow. She parted the boughs and found a table set for two, just as she’d seen in the sculpture, the young man waiting for her and twisting a napkin nervously. He stood when she arrived, hands clasped behind his back, his blond hair immaculately sculpted and adding perhaps five inches to his already considerable height. He gestured for her to sit and poured her a cup of tea.

After a bashful silence, Cecily said, “I half expected you to to be made of twigs and leaves.”

The man smiled. It was a thin smile that stretched so wide it seemed to split his face in two. He held up a hand. “No leaves,” he said. “Just flesh and bone.”

Tentatively, Cecily held up her own hand. She pressed her palm against his and then nodded as if satisfied. “Flesh and bone,” she said.