A Regular Guy by Mona Simpson Page B

you’re not supposed to do. Norbert Kaskie had been an amateur botanist all his life and never once had a gardening job for pay. This time, he’d tried to be good.
    It turned out that Noah’s sister was the artist, a photographer, and Owens also planned to commission a triptych from her for the conference room. Noah worked as go-between, because Michelle was currently traveling the East Coast, following the fall.
    “Can she photograph things other than people?” Owens asked. “For example, if I were a photographer, I think I’d take pictures of the California landscape.”
    It was the “can” that got Noah, the way Owens raised his eyebrows as if he suspected some flaw in Michelle’s education, about which she was, in fact, touchy.
    “She could,” Noah said. “It’s just a matter of wanting to.”
    “Some of the sequoias are three thousand years old, Noah. They’re the oldest living things on the planet.”
    “So. They don’t need Michelle.”
    “Of course they do, because who knows how long they’ll be around? Somebody’ll blast them down or there could be an earthquake; anything could happen. You know what they did to the biggest one? They chopped it down to make a dance floor. Oh, and I think with what was left, they carved out a bowling alley.”
    “Now, that I’d like to see,” Noah said.
    “Anyway, if I were her, I’d make California landscapes.”
    Noah rolled off in a huff, thinking, So that’s what my sister’s talent is supposed to be for—a documentary record of trees.
    Actually, Noah loved trees. As a child, he’d made a workbook, with labeled sketches of branches, glued-in samples of leaves, flowering seeds and bark tracings. Even then he found himself drawn to old, broken-down oaks, ancient cottonwoods, the close rather than the majestic. Noah wasn’t sentimental about big redwoods. He considered refusing the project without telling his sister.
    “I’ve got a problem with Kaskie,” Owens told Olivia, in the car. “I don’t think I can keep his dad’s garden.”
    “Why? What’s wrong with it?”
    That night, they walked through it on the bare footpaths.
    Olivia shrugged. “I kind of like it.”
    “But I don’t think it’s a question of whether you like it or I like it. I just don’t think it’s great. And I can’t be having gardens that are kind of interesting but might be junk. I have a responsibility to the people who work here to give them something inspiring outside their windows.”
    Olivia laughed. “This could inspire them.”
    “Well, maybe somebody, but not everybody or even most people. Whereas great art, like Shakespeare or Ansel Adams, would—and I consider the best gardens to be art. I guess I’ll just have to tell him.”
    “Does that make them better than Kafka or Schiele. Or the desert, for that matter?”
    Owens had never read Kafka, and he didn’t know who the other one was, but he said, “Yes, it does. There’s a reason deserts are sparsely populated.” He snapped his fingers. “Sissinghurst, that’s the name.”
    “Are you going to pay him anyway?”
    “That’s a good question.” He sighed. “I suppose so.”
    But as it turned out, Norbert Kaskie turned down the payment. Privately, he blamed himself. He knew he’d been unable to replicate the public garden. No more was ever said of it, and six months later the area was sodded and a volleyball net was erected.
    But now Noah was receiving an extraordinary gift, out of the blue. He thought maybe it was the consolation prize for the million dollars he’d lost, though in fact the van had been ordered months earlier. Olivia believed it was her doing. She constantly nudged Owens’ generosity. She understood it was essential to his vision of her that she not want bounty for herself, so she felt most animated in her fight for others’ portions. Under her influence, Owens’ parents received two cruise trips and her cousin Huck got a suit for his birthday. And ever since Noah’s father