Not to be overlooked was Ted Bailey. He had on a black tuxedo, black shirt and a black cummerbund and bow tie. His chest was puffed out as he escorted Gracie to the table. They were guests seven and eight respectively.
A titter started rumbling in the group and then became out and out laughter as Barb Shire and Barry Frederickson sauntered in the garden wearing matching outfits. Each had a top hat, a bow tie, a suit jacket, a shirt and a pair of walking shorts and black sneakers. They also carried a fancy walking stick, which they twirled and used to point for no particular reason other than to create more laughter. They also wore the biggest white corsages anyone had ever seen.
They were guests nine and ten.
The next two guests created a stir as well, as their bickering could be heard before they were seen.
Byron Eggplant was fussing over the length of Fred Downton’s tie.
“Not past the belt for heaven sakes! Here let me re-tie it.”
“Oh stop your fussing. You’re like a little old man.”
“It’s not even a Windsor knot! Here, let me do it.”
All bickering stopped when Jasmine Summan walked in. She was determined to wear something as far from her regular scrubs as possible and she succeeded.
She wore a black mermaid dress that had seemingly acres of lace pooled at the bottom. The dress had a sweetheart neckline and hugged her voluptuous figure. It also had tiny sequins that twinkled with every step she took. Every step that was being watched by every person present. She was a dream.
When everyone was seated, Julia held her hand up like a school child. When she was encouraged to speak, she said tentatively, “I have number one, so I guess I give my speech first?”
More nods. She opened her little purse and pulled out some notes.
“I was asleep most of my life until death woke me. It was like waking up to a nightmare. Death took the only people I cared about and thrust me into a life I didn’t want. What I wanted was to go back to sleep.” She looked at the group. “Death promised that sleep.”
Julia shuddered as she thought back. How she sat and read the warning on the box of rat poison. How she decided to try one more time to stand up to Brett before ending her life. How she waited for Brett to come home so she could confront him. But he never did.
“And then death changed the rules,” she continued. “Death visits you when you least expect it. Death is unpredictable, capricious, sometimes welcomed sometimes not. I am awake now and I do not want to meet death anytime soon. Thank you.”
Conrad smiled a quick smiled and showed the other guests his card.
“I’m here tonight to thank death. I didn’t know my Mom until she died, and I spent weeks going through her things as I cleared out her house.” He cleared his throat several times. “Just as she was trapped inside her disease of mental illness I was trapped inside my anger and resentment. I found many letters and poems she wrote. Most of them didn’t make any sense, but some were beautiful. This is one I found with a copy of my Sister’s death certificate:
“I wasn’t allowed to love you;
they said in whispers only I could hear,
“Don’t go near, don’t go near.”
I wasn’t allowed to hug you;
They said I would poison you with my fear,
“Don’t go near, don’t go near.”
Conrad was crying openly now, tears streaming down his face. He took a deep breath and continued,
“And when I die, I’ll join you my dear
And I will fight and rage against the whispers,
With my sword I’ll protect you my dear
Don’t go near, don’t go near.”
Conrad raised his glass. “So I’d like to thank Death for giving me back my Mom. To death!”
The other twelve raised their glasses and toasted death. Julia poured some of her wine into Mr. Pitre’s glass so he could join in the toast.
Trudy-Faye Gervais looked around the table. She didn’t say anything but gripped her wine glass tightly. The silence went on and on. Some present wondered if they should just jump the queue and get their speech over with. Finally Trudy-Faye bellowed, “Death is a jerk,” and slammed her wine glass down so hard it broke. She waved away any attempt to help her. “That’s it,” she said. “Next!”
Maureen said with a giggle, “I guess that’s me.” She paused and became more somber. “Death made me powerless when my Mom died. Mom was my best friend. I was lost and angry and came up with a plan. I would go out and get pregnant by the first boy that came along and then I would raise that child to be my best friend and I would never let my child out of my sight, ever.
“Somewhere along the line, probably around my second trimester, I realized that I needed grown up friends to help and support me. So I worked hard at being a friend and soon was surrounded with good friends and of course, my number one fan, my Dad. But, like Julia said, Death changed the rules. In one year, two of my friends died of cancer and then my Dad died. But I was determined not to be powerless. I can eat right, exercise, take time to love those precious to me and cherish the memories of those that have died. I can still be afraid of death, but I can be powerful.”
“Here, here!” said Ted.
The neatly folded sheets in front of Anderson Payne rippled with a sudden breeze. His hand darted out and held them fast. Carefully, he opened the sheets and began reading from the first one.
“I am not a happy man by nature,” he began, “But the one quality that gave me some solace was logic. By happenstance, I saw a blueprint and decided that not only would I pursue drafting, I would draft a life plan for myself and then follow it. Logical.
“I became like a compass, with one point stuck in a rut, going around and around in the same circle. The death of my marriage knocked me out of one rut and into another. Death has recently visited me again and in so doing, has murdered my apathy. I am now trying new things, new experiences.” Anderson raised his eyes and also raised his voice from a monotone recitation of his prepared speech, to a spontaneous disclosure.
“I even went on a garden tour!” he said enthusiastically. He carefully tucked his first sheet of paper in his pocket while he held the second sheet securely. The wind was picking up.
“I got the courage to experiment with a type of drawing I always wanted to try.” He held up the second sheet that had a black and white finely detailed picture of a fish. “I made this with an old typewriter!”
Maureen reached for the drawing. “It’s all letters and brackets and such that somehow make up a fish. Unbelievable! Here, look at this,” she said as she handed the drawing across the table to Gracie.
Anderson stood up and reverted to his monotone. “In summation, I did not want to attend this garden party for death. I thought it in poor taste and a waste of time that could be better spent working. But the more I considered the impact death has made in my life, I wanted to let people know, your life will be changed by death. It’s evitable and logical. You can however reshape your view of these changes. They can, in fact be positive.” He sat down as his drawing went from hand to hand around the table.
“Amazing.”
“All this from a typewriter? Hard to believe.”
“Look at the detail on the fish scales. Fascinating!”
Julia nudged Leon Pitre. “Your turn.”
“My wife wants to kill me, plain and simple.” He leaned on the table, his chin in his hand. “I’ve been a terrible husband, it’s true. And speaking of true, I haven’t been true to her and she knows it. We fight like cats and dogs. But, I always thought it was fun.”
“Don’t you mean in fun?” Trudy-Faye asked.
“Oh yea, that too,” Leon continued. “She’d throw insults at me and I’d throw them right back. It was fun! We did that our whole marriage. Now, a little birdie told me, she’s trying to kill me. I can’t wrap my brain around it.” Leon looked up in the sky. “Here I am death, do your damndest.”
“But not anytime soon,” Ted said
, “I’m off duty.”
Everyone laughed.
Ted began his speech without notes. “Death. I’ve seen a lot of it. The one that impacted me the most was when my Grandma died. I loved her. She was just a little bitty thing. I can still see her standing by the sideboard in her parlor shaking her finger at me and saying, “One day, Theodore, you are going to be old like me and you are going to look back on your life and you are going to ask yourself, “Was I a good person?”
“You see, Grandma had just caught me stealing another piece of her pie. She went on to tell me to take a really hard look at my life and to set goals for myself. “Do something that makes the world a better place,” she told me.
“The thing was, I was only eight and I thought she was silly to talk about me being old. I was a kid; I didn’t have to think about stuff like goals and jobs for years. She died that week. I wish she could see the direction my life has taken. She would be proud of me, I think.”
Gracie reached over and patted his hand in agreement.
“It’s interesting, though,” Ted added, “She didn’t know she was going to die that week, yet she used every day of her life to help instruct and guide others to be a better version of themselves. Therefore, this is my commitment to intensify my efforts to be a force for good before I am silenced by death.”
The breeze had loosened the curls in Gracie hair, and she pushed them out of her eyes.
“Like these curls, death was something to be brushed out of the way. It had never touched me. It was always out there happening to other people,” she said with a sad smile. “Until it happened to my late husband. The worst part though, was before he died. It was terrifying to hold in my heart the concept of his impending death. Everything was moving too fast, but at the same time, our life stagnated. We couldn’t plan or dream. Everything was on hold while we waited for his death. We would be watching television and see an ad for a dream vacation. Then we would catch that look on each other’s face; the wry look of ‘not us’.
“After he died; after I rediscovered me, I became a better person. I could understand and empathize with other people’s pain to a depth I didn’t have before. I cried more often and more easily. I made friends quicker. Some of those bonds have been broken by death. Oddly enough, I now chose to be surrounded by death. I’m not terrified by death any longer. It helps me to separate the dross from the gold.”
She started to push her curls out of the way again but stopped and shook her head vigorously. Her curls bounced around her head and gently fell down, framing her face. The pieces of lace lifted with the breeze and danced with the abandoned peony petals.
“Most of what’s in my head isn’t real,” Barbara Shire said. “Ugh, let me start again. This past year I learned that most of what I thought was reality, wasn’t. Like Julia, my parents died when I was young. No, that isn’t true either. I don’t know my parents, never did, but to me, it was as if they died when I was young. I wasn’t found on the steps of a church in a basket but just left at the hospital. The woman who birthed me forgot to collect me. She showed up at emergency, gave a false name, had a baby and left.
“I just invented things all my life and then drifted into believing what I invented. Fortunately, death changed all that. It didn’t just rip the bandage off, it tore me apart. I’m still recovering, still working on what’s real and what isn’t, but I do have a message for everyone. Things can turn out even better than you hoped.”
Barry kissed her on the forehead as opposed to her cheek, as Barb had inadvertently burped at the end of her speech.
“I don’t have too much to add to what Barb said, except I had the opposite problem. Instead of making up stories in my head and believing them, I just didn’t say what was in my head and thought everybody knew what I meant. For example, when I did all those gardening favors for Barb, like pruning her maple, I thought she knew I liked her and wanted to get to know her romantically.”
Gracie smirked and looked at Ted. “Who knew?” she asked.
Barb overheard the comment. “Well not me. Not really,” she said. “But look at my maple now, it’s grown back beautifully!” She passed around her phone opened to several before photos that naturally included Barry, shirtless with a pair of loppers and after photos, of a luxuriant Crimson King maple tree.
Barry continued. “And when my ex-wife kept insisting we get married; in my head I was saying I think it’s too soon, but I didn’t actually say that, so I just went along with everything. Death made me bolder. Initially I felt such an incredible sense of betrayal, but that quickly changed to fear. Fear that I was going to die without ever having lived.”
He turned to Barb who was tucking her phone away in the pocket of her shorts. “Did you hear what I said?”
She looked like she was caught chewing gum in school. “You were frightened you were going to die?” she asked.
Barry got up and dropped to one knee. “I said EX-WIFE! Barbara Shire, will you marry me?”
Barb started bawling loudly. “See!” she yelled, “Things turn out even better than you think they will! I thought we were just going to shack up!”
Leon shouted, “Is that a yes woman? If so, say it, the man is breaking his knee for you!”
“YES!”
The couple, naturally, began a passionate embrace until Trudy-Faye barked out, “Oh for Pete’s sake, get a room already!”
“I’m number eleven. To break the ice, I’m Byron Eggplant. Yes, I see your raised eyebrows. Eggplant is my last name. I purposely chose that name because I wanted to stand out from the crowd. I’m an author you see and while I’ve only written one book, well, it’s more of a novella, I plan to have a long career as a novelist.
I killed somebody once. It was entirely my fault of course but the police didn’t see it that way. They said the person who kidnapped me and stuff, certainly had it coming, and I was just a kid, so at six how did I know how to form the intent or some such phrase, when I plunged the knife in the kidnapper.” Byron smoothed his eyebrows and added, “Several times.”
The entire garden party seemed to hold their breath, waiting for the rest of the story.
“So yes. Death changed my life. It brought me freedom of a sort; but then I was caged by overprotective parents. Too bad they didn’t adopt that role a few months before! But now I’m caged by my own insecurities. I write stuff, but I think it’s drivel. So I sought out this famous author; Mr. Fred Downton ladies and gentlemen!”
Fred bowed his head slightly. His wine glass was entirely untouched during the preceding speeches.
“Maybe you’ve read my book, Grandma’s House?” Fred asked. “I see some people nodding. Thank you. But what you probably don’t know, is that all those characters in the treatment center were based on one person in my life. Yes, my Mother is the original amalgam of all those twisted personalities. To better understand her, I took her apart, piece by piece.
“I couldn’t write the book until she died. In truth, I still haven’t written the book I wanted to. Somehow my identity shifted from Frederick, Mommy’s little slave to Fred the famous Author. I didn’t have an intermediate identity. My current identity is Fred the drunk.” He picked up the wine glass and threw the contents out on the ground.
Leon groaned loudly.
Fred Downton continued, “I’m putting you all on notice that I intend to kill Fred the drunk and find Freddy Downton the author.” He raised his glass. “To Death; may you find me quickly my friend.”
Jasmine’s voice could be heard echoing Fred’s toast.
“To Death; may you find me quickly my friend,” she repeated. “Yes, death and I are old frenemies. Death has eased the suffering of those that are not going quietly into that good night, but death has been known to take young girls before they have even received their first kiss. Death took my little sister when she was just ten. Before she was even out of braids.
“At certain times, I see my little sister’s face in every elder I care for.
“I h
ate death and I will honor her no longer. This party is now over.” Jasmine got up, threw her card on the table and walked out of the garden.
Each of the remaining twelve attendee’s threw their card on the table and left the garden without saying a word. Death too left this garden but found another garden close by and lingered.
Dropping Beets
Flynn was ecstatic. His new restaurant, Las Vegans, was filling up. Just wait until Liv walked in for her shift; she was going to be totally surprised. He checked his watch and frowned; she was already late.
Who would have thought a little backwater town like Huckleberry would accept a vegan restaurant? Let alone one that was only open for lunch? Let alone one that operated with a restrictive business model!
Las Vegans only allowed twenty-four diners in. Not at a time, but total. Plus, the ones fortunate to be let in for lunch had no say in what they were going to eat. They would eat what they were served.
Of course, it was all organic.
Flynn was stressed. Where the hell was Liv?
“Saffron! I need you to start plating the meal. Can you do that for me?”
Saffron was not amused. She thought this gig would be easy- peasy working for some airy-fairy hipsters but they were, like rude! They wanted the vegetables peeled before they went in the juicer or stew or whatever. And you couldn’t even smoke on your break! That Liv would totally get on your case about contaminating the food with nicotine fingers and nicotine breath.
Saffron was going to go try the burger joint once her friend Nate was the assistant manager. He’d hire her no problem. Working in prep there had to be way easier; everything was frozen.
She stared at the huge pot of roasted butternut squash soup. It actually smelled delish but there was no way she was going to eat here. The great Liv didn’t believe in mouse traps; more often than not, Saffron saw a mouse run by. Plus there was poop under the counter where the pots were stored. Saffron even found poop in the pots.
Gore in the Garden Page 14