Elly In Bloom

by Colleen Oakes

  Brooke’s mother was wearing some sort of prairie garb – a long brown skirt with brown loafers and a neon blue short sleeved button-down shirt with what appeared to be a mustang running across the chest. Elly held her face together with an act of impressive will.

  “Mom, please! You’re ruining my wedding!” howled Brooke.

  Elly firmly grasped Brooke’s shoulders and turned her toward her the mirror area with strict authority.

  “Go put your dress on and get ready. I’ll talk to your mom.”

  Brooke flounced away, her bridesmaids trailing behind her like ducklings. Elly approached her mother gingerly.

  “Ma’am, I’m just here to help. Can you tell me why you don’t like the dress that Brooke has picked out for you?”

  The woman looked at Elly, obviously annoyed.

  “Look at this thing. This looks like it cost over a hundred dollars!”

  More like five hundred, Elly thought, but I’ll keep that to myself.

  “Who in their right mind would spend that much on a dress? I buy all my clothes at the thrift store in town, and I never spend more than three dollars on pants or shirts.” She looked around the empty room and lowered her voice to a pleading whisper. “I never wear dresses. I ride horses all day. All my friends from the ranch are here, and they’re going to laugh at me wearing that, I just know it. I don’t understand why I can’t wear my church clothes. This outfit is just fine for church at home– but she’s not interested in that, oh no, with her uppity fiancé and his fancy parents...”

  She looked ready to cry. “My daughter does whatever they want. She had this fancy city wedding because his Mom wanted it. I wanted her to get married on the ranch, under the stars, wearing her grandmother’s cowboy boots, with our pastor there... But no, no one cares what I say anymore…”

  Elly instantly saw the underlying issue. This wasn’t about the dress. This was about a mother’s pride. She put her arms around the mother’s shoulders.

  “Your daughter will always be your daughter. No matter how much money or swank the new in-laws come with, you will always be HER mother. Nothing can ever change that. No one can ever take your place in her life.” Elly’s voice caught in her throat. “I think about my mother every day. She is always with me.” She tried to gain control of her unexpected surge of emotion.

  “What I’m saying is, this is one dress. One day. It’s not a surrender, or a grand statement. It’s just a dress, and it would make your daughter happy if you wore it. You might not know this, but your daughter is kind of high maintenance.”

  The mother laughed and put her hand on Elly’s shoulder. “She really is.” She looked at the dress pensively. “It’s just a dress?”

  Elly nodded and looked into the woman’s kind, worried brown eyes. “It’s just a dress.”

  The mother grabbed the hanger on the back of the door and backed into the restroom. Elly smiled happily. Her work here was done. Brooke emerged from the bridal suite, looking resplendent in an elegant A-line dress, with fabric swaging that cinched at the waist with delicate pearl embroidery. She saw Elly inching towards the door and rushed over to her.

  “Thank you so much, I knew you could convince her! So, I just have one more question. My hair person just told me that muscari can cause some people to have an allergic reaction, and so I was wondering if it is too late to change that.”

  Elly looked at her. “Brooke,” she said sternly. “GO. GET. MARRIED. No more worrying, no more questions.”

  Brooke gave a shy smile and mouthed. “Okay.”

  In that moment, Elly saw a mature woman behind the frantic bridezilla who had driven her crazy for the past few months. She gave Brooke a quick hug and dashed for the door, before the bride could find anything else to complain about.

  Ten minutes later – the time it took to coax Snarky Teenager away from six adoring groomsmen – the Posies van roared up Wydown. Snarky Teenager, to her credit, sensed the sudden change in Elly’s mood and was oddly silent for the drive. Elly rode in the passenger seat, watching lights smear out the rain-drenched window. She silently wiped a tear off her face as they turned up the drive to Posies. Missing her mother was like this; a stray thought, and then she was drowning in grief, drifting in a sea of grey memory.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  Sarah Jordan had been an anomaly in many ways. First of all, she was both strikingly beautiful and quite plump. Elly had seen men gaze at her, totally confused, wondering why they were drawn to this woman who was fleshy and soft, not unlike their own mother.

  In Sarah’s youth, she had thick curly strawberry blond hair that was tinged with wheat highlights. Her bright blue eyes – a mirror image of Elly’s, down to the thick black lashes that rimmed them – had sparkled with life and laughter. Sarah Jordan loved her daughter, practical jokes, funny television shows, and the ironic side of life. She was fond of pinching the bottoms of her friends when they stood, and Elly had sat on many whoopee cushions as a child.

  Elly’s most distinct memories, however, were of her mother in one of two places: church and her garden. Every Sunday and Wednesday night was spent at the Mt. Zion Baptist church just down the street from their home in Peachtree City. Sarah would lay out Elly’s dress for her the night before. Elly had a large collection of pastel dresses, many adorned with lace and ribbons that would cinch at the waist. On Sunday morning, Elly would be woken up at seven to the smell of pancakes and sound of sausages sizzling in the frying pan. She would take a bath, and then put on her Sunday dress, and slip her feet into her white Mary Janes. Down the hall, counting the steps and skipping the creaky one, she would skip into the kitchen where her mom would serve her breakfast on her special Sunday breakfast plate: a pale blue china plate with tiny white flowers painted across the middle in a wavy line. After breakfast, Elly and Sarah would walk, hand in hand, up the small hill to worship.

  Mt. Zion was a small church – about 200 congregants – but they were truly the salt of the earth; elderly women who smelled of hand lotion, grumbling old men who ushered visitors in with a grim smile, about ten young couples with children who always ran loose like wild zoo animals, and everyone in between. The church was led by the Revered Hein, a Red Sox fanatic with a boisterous voice and a love of all people great and small. Elly and her mother were among the few white people in the church, but they had been going since Elly was small, and she had never really noticed that they stuck out. They would always sit in the second pew, on the right side, and as soon as the organ started playing, all the women in the church would begin fanning themselves rapidly, their white fans fluttering like butterflies in the damp air.

  Elly remembered watching her mother in church. She would close her eyes, lean forward and mutter to herself, repeating whatever the pastor said. She would clutch Elly’s hand fiercely as the pastor yelled out about redemption, and she would hold her close when he talked about sin and death. Sarah Jordan also sang in the choir – a gift that had not been passed down to her daughter – and Elly loved watching her mother, clapping and swaying, alive in the spirit in every way. As the music barreled down from behind the pulpit, Elly’s eyes would sit fixated on her mother. Her hands raised to heavens, with her strawberry blond hair sweaty across her forehead, Elly would think how her mother looked like an angel. Elly would try to sway to the music, which once prompted an elderly black woman to call her “poor white child” and take her hand in hers.

  After church, Elly and Sarah would have warm morning buns – cinnamon and sugar, toasted and rolled up inside pecan bread with a cold glass of milk. After Sarah’s second shower of the day – church was an aerobic activity in Georgia – Elly would grab her tin bucket, her pink polka dot garden boots and together they would head out for their day of gardening as her mother hummed hymns to the roses.

  Sarah Jordan’s garden was the talk of Peachtree City. Her mother’s garden wrapped around the backyard and exploded out from both sides of the house. It lined the stone path to the door, and trickled up
the porch. Cotton candy pink laurel, pale yellow and tangerine azalea and white camellia blooms, hanging like tiny lanterns, shaded the rich quilt of flower beds. As Elly ran around with her butterfly net, stopping occasionally to sip sweet tea from the porch, Sarah would be perpetually bent over, her round behind peeking out from a Cherokee rose bush, with dirt furiously flying out from around her. All day, sometimes to Elly’s annoyance, her mother would tend, love and worship the garden. Orange tea-olive plants, pale winter wood berries – these were the things that were discussed around the dinner table, with grilled cheese sandwiches, a heart carved lovingly on the top.

  Elly’s father had never been in the picture. Her mother described the night she was conceived as, “the best worst night of my life.” He had found out she was pregnant, confessed he was still married back in Tennessee, and left her with money to “take care of it.” Sarah had taken the money, put a down payment on a small cottage home and bullied her way into a well-paying accounting position at the local law office. Over the next 20 years, she made a life, a beautiful life filled with flowers, faith and love for her and her funny, chubby daughter.

  When she left for college, Elly would count the hours until she could return to her mother’s house on Wright Street. She would pull up in her tiny Toyota Tercel, open the windows and let the sweet smell of hundreds of gardenias wash over her. Her mom would be waiting, hand on hip and a cheesy casserole in the oven. They would talk openly, without boundaries, until the early morning hours. Elly found herself waking many times, snuggled against her mom’s shoulder, smelling of earth and White Shoulders perfume, on the couch, fully dressed. Her mother was like her own skin. She was the rock which Elly’s life crashed against, water settling around it. She could never be moved. Like her garden, she was always there, growing with the seasons, returning in bloom every time Elly needed her.

  When Elly had married Aaron, her mom had donned a beautiful strapless pale yellow dress and walked her down the aisle, clutching her daughter’s arm tightly. Sarah had done the flowers for the entire wedding. Elly clutched peach garden roses, white magnolia blooms, pale pink parrot tulips, and chocolate artichokes with seeded eucalyptus. To this day, it was the most beautiful bouquet Elly had ever seen. At the end of the aisle, pale wisteria hung down from a hand-crafted pine arch decked with lemons and olive leaves. Elly hadn’t noticed it, since underneath Aaron had stood smiling at her as if she were the light in his life. He had reached out his hand – his beautiful, ink-stained hand – and took hers. Her mother gave her a concerned smile and walked alone to her seat.

  Looking back, Elly knew that the smile was more than motherly love. It was a warning. One of countless warnings that Elly had ignored in her fiery fall into Aaron-induced bliss. Three months after their wedding, her mother had told her that she had been diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. The next nine months were spent caring for her mother on one hand, and juggling a new marriage with Aaron on the other. Worn out and emotionally exhausted, Elly’s days and nights blended together into paintings, pills and work. While at work, she was calling her mother every hour to make sure she was feeling okay, and when she was with her mother, she was on the phone with Aaron, helping him organize his gallery showings. At 3 am, dressed in her flimsy nightgown – Aaron preferred nightgowns to pajama pants – she would be on the computer, a pint of Cherry Garcia in one hand and a notepad in the other, looking up holistic remedies, radical cures, symptoms, medicines, and statistics. She had been a ghost, drifting between bright sunlight that was Aaron, and the dark recesses of her mind where she was losing her mother. That year was the best and worst of Elly’s life, but no amount of marital joy had prepared her for the heart-wrenching loss of her mother.

  Sarah Jordan’s last day was on a Sunday. Unable to go to church, Elly read her mother her favorite bible verses while she cooked her mother’s favorite breakfast – granola pancakes with a cranberry-maple topping. Her mother was withered and small at that point, but her appetite had come back with ferocity in the last few weeks.

  She looked at Elly and smiled. “I’m so glad that I’m here with you, and not at the hospital.”

  Elly flipped a pancake.

  “Well, that’s good, because a hospital would never feed you this. Jell-O and celery are probably better for you.”

  Sarah smiled – weakly, but still a million watts at least.

  “Better for me, at this point? Please. If I’m going out, I’m going out how I came in. Fat and happy.”

  “Please don’t say that, Mom.”

  As Elly slid the pancakes onto her mother’s plate, Sarah weakly reached for her arm.

  “I feel like it’s today, honey.”

  Elly felt a strangled sob escape through her throat.

  “How can you know that? You don’t know. Your new medicine…”

  “Elly. I’m ready. I’m so tired. I want to go home.”

  Elly slammed her orange juice onto the table. “You are home. This is your home. Where I am.”

  Sarah laid her hand on Elly’s wrist. “Yes. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. But I’m ready for the next adventure. I’m ready to meet my Savior. You are going to be okay. Elly Jordan, my daughter, my beautiful daughter. Being your mother is the greatest gift God ever gave me – the most beautiful flower in my garden…and the most stubborn.” She patted Elly’s cheek. “I’m not worried about you. Not even for a day. You’re stronger than you know. And you have Aaron. You love him. He makes you happy.” She chuckled. “And he is so very pretty.”

  Elly laughed, despite the tears rolling down her face. “Eat your pancakes you old fart.”

  Sarah Jordan looked deep into her daughter’s eyes. “I’m so proud of you. I have a feeling you are going to do something great in this life.”

  Elly kissed her mother’s forehead and handed her the syrup.

  That Sunday had been a wonderful day. Elly laid down a blanket in the yard, where Sarah could be surrounded by her garden, those flowers that she had loved and cared for. She made hibiscus tea and chocolate mocha cookies, and they had lain in the sun, alternately laughing and crying. There were no grand statements, no whispered secrets of wills or pasts; just a mother and her daughter, feet entwined, saying goodbye without needing to say a word. When the golden light of sunset illuminated the yard, making every blade of grass a sun-kissed wonder, Sarah had become very tired, very quickly. She cried out for her daughter and took her hand in her strong grip. Elly pulled her Mother into her arms and rocked her slowly to the edge of forever sleep.

  “Eleanor…” her mother put her fingers on her face. “I will love you forever.” She closed her eyes. “You will survive.”

  Elly sobbed. “Survive what?”

  She gave Elly one last smile and opened her eyes into the sun. And just like that, Sarah Jordan was gone. The scent of her gardenias drifted out of the yard into the warm Georgia air.

  Elly stayed with her mother until the stars and the katydids arrived. Later that night she wandered the garden with Aaron, reeling from the shock of it all. She pointed out every plant and every flower, touching each one of them, each one a result of her Mother’s love. She lay down with Aaron onto the soft white blanket, the blanket that she had laid on with her mother, just five hours earlier. Wrapped around each other, they fell into a deep sleep. When she awoke, the sun was rising. She looked at Aaron sleeping beside her, his beautiful hair matted against his forehead. Yes, she would survive, she assured herself. As long as she had Aaron, she would be fine. She watched a daffodil dance with the breeze and remembered her mother’s round behind peeking out from behind her garden bushes. Thank you for my mother, she prayed, Amen.

  That day, thought Elly, now back in the dark Posies studio, the day when her mother died, that day had been the beginning of Aaron’s betrayal. Elly angrily yanked the cooler door open. She grabbed some pale green kale roses, plum veronicas, baby blue agapanthus and bright pink poppies. Cadbury sat patiently by her feet. She leaned over and kissed
his furry head. In the back, there was a crackled old vase that was too delicate for everyday use. Moving carefully, she placed flower after flower into the vase, until she had created an overflowing garden arrangement. She stepped back and admired her work. Her mother would have adored this.

  She glanced down at Cadbury, who was snuffling around at the floor near her feet. She smiled. Her mother would have adored him too. Her cell phone vibrated, illuminating the massive pile of stems on the table. She glanced at it. Isaac. And just like that, her heart leapt up from the floor and settled itself back onto her sleeve. His voice, like warm caramel, dripped against her ear.

  “What are you doing?”

  Elly leaned against the counter. “Just thinking about my mother and making an arrangement for my kitchen table.”

  “That sounds…lonely.”

  Elly laughed. “It is. But I’m not alone. Cadbury is here with me.”

  “I think I can officially state that he is the worst guard dog ever.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I’m here.”

  Elly spun around. There was a figure standing in her doorway. She was instantly aware of her purple track pants and stained black camisole, as well as her hair, which was damp and in some sort of half-bun. She wiped her fingers under her eyes. They came away black with mascara. Great. She peered out the window.

  Isaac stood in the misty rain, looking dazedly handsome and dangerous, his dark brown hair jet black in the moonlight. Elly opened the door.

  “You know, that’s not romantic. It’s just kind of creepy.”

  Isaac stepped in the door and quickly cupped her face in his hands. “You’ve been crying.”

  “I have been. There was this mother at the wedding today….anyways, I get like this sometimes.” Please don’t notice the half-eaten bag of Oreos on the counter, she prayed.

  Isaac kissed her mouth quickly. “I’m sorry you’re sad.”

  Elly smiled. “That means a lot coming from a stalker.”