Aiden lives with his grandmother while his mother is in a psychiatric hospital, and he believes that his late grandfather’s ghost visits him at night. On a summer day he goes to see Rita, his grandmother’s friend, to confess a lie the two of them told her and to ask for her help.
I arrived at Rita’s house about noon. Her blue eyes widened when she opened the door. She patted the sides of her red hair and smoothed her pleated cotton nightdress, a pattern of honeybees. She was always donning unusual clothing or changing the color of her hair, which was ash blond a month ago.
“Aiden, I’m a mess. I fell asleep on the couch. Come in.” She held a book entitled Audrey Rose.
She saw me looking at the cover. A girl in a red dress stood in front of a grave. The ground was on fire.
“Junk. I hope you’re reading better things in school. Let’s sit in the backyard. It’s such a lovely day.”
We walked through the hallway and kitchen to a brick patio covered by a pergola. She led me to a black wrought-iron table. Sunlight glimmered through the red cedar lattice above us, dappling her face. The air smelled grassy and pungent. Cat urine? Then a scent of roses reached my nose.
“Will ya have a cup of tea?” She pulled out a rusted chair.
“Sure.”
“Sit here. I’ll be back in a jiff.”
A blue jay lapped the greenish water of a fluted cement birdbath, then shook its wings, cawed, and flew away. Along one side of the patio, potted plants moved in the breeze; a few swayed in macramé holders—lush ferns, the yellow and green spider plant, the wandering Jew with its purple and green heart-shaped leaves, and others I could not name. Children laughed on the other side of the tall hedge.
“Come grab the door.” Rita elbowed the screen door. She held a small tray with a teapot and two cups.
As I hurried towards her, a chipmunk darted in front of me.
“Thank you, Aiden.”
When we were seated, she said, “Isn’t this peaceful?” She looked around. “Sometimes I sit here from morning until evening, watching the birds lift their wings or listening ’til the crickets sing.” She laughed. “That rhymed. I’m a poet.” She poured tea into a cup with milk and sugar. “Here you go.” Then she poured her own. A small pot of azaleas cast a purple glow under her chin.
From The Weight of Small Mercies.
The passage tries to build the backyard through more than one sense: sunlight through a lattice, a blue jay at the birdbath, ferns in macramé holders, children laughing beyond the hedge, and a smell that is first “grassy and pungent” and then roses. A few details are a little off, a rusted chair and greenish water, so that Rita’s “Isn’t this peaceful?” is true and not the whole truth. The birdbath is placed here so that a cardinal can land on it later in the scene.
A suggestion. If a setting in your draft is described all at once, you might try giving it through two or three senses and one detail that does not quite fit, spread across the scene.