by Jana Casale
“Stop it, Mom. You’re not old.”
“No, but I am getting fat. I need to go on a diet.”
“That’s crazy. You look great. I’m the one who needs to go on a diet. I need to lose weight for bikini season. Robert wants to go on a trip to the Bahamas.”
“That sounds nice!”
“I kind of wish he’d save his money for an engagement ring.”
“Do you want to marry him?”
Annabelle shrugged and looked away. “I don’t know.”
“If you don’t know, then why would you want him to buy an engagement ring?”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s been two years and that just seems like the next step. I’m getting older. I want kids.”
“You have plenty of time for that.”
“It’s hard working in the field I’m in. I don’t have a lot of time to meet people.”
“That is not a good reason to marry someone. Don’t do something you don’t want just because you think it’s something you should do.”
“But, the thing is, it is what I want.”
Leda wanted to tell her daughter more, but she wasn’t sure what there was to say, so she just said: “Give yourself time.”
Annabelle nodded and took a deep breath. She looked the same then as she had at six years old, putting together a beaded bracelet at the dining room table.
“How much longer do you think this wait will be?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sick of it.” She got up and walked over to the hostess.
“Hi, how much longer is the wait for Leda?”
“Let me check,” the hostess said, and looked down at her list.
Leda looked at her simple face and bright blond hair and over-pierced ear, and all she wanted was to tell her how much she hated everything about her.
“It’ll be about forty-five minutes.”
“You have got to be kidding. We’ve already been here an hour.”
“I’m so sorry. I can check about the bar if you like? It might be a shorter wait to sit there if you’re okay with it.”
“Fine, check. I’m definitely not waiting forty-five minutes. I can tell you that.”
“Okay, just one minute.” The hostess turned and walked off.
Leda returned to Annabelle. “Forty-five minutes.”
“Are you serious?! That’s insane.”
“I’m going to complain about the hostess, I swear it’s her fault,” Leda said.
“Maybe it’s ’cause she’s new.”
“New? Isn’t this the girl we see every week?”
“Jessica? The one you hate?”
“Yeah.”
“No, this isn’t Jessica. This is some girl I’ve never seen before.”
“Are you sure?”
“Definitely.”
Leda looked around the restaurant, as if Jessica would suddenly materialize and clarify her confusion.
“Well, I’ve been really rude to her all night because I thought she was Jessica.”
“Mom, she looks nothing like Jessica.”
“They look the same to me.”
“That’s crazy.” Annabelle shook her head and went back to texting Robert.
“Do you want to leave and go get pizza?” Leda asked.
“I’m totally fine with that.”
“Okay, let me just go tell the girl.”
She walked back up to the empty podium and waited for the hostess’s return. Poor thing, she thought. She doesn’t deserve all this anger. It’s Jessica who does. As soon as the girl was back within eye-shot, Leda smiled wildly at her in hopes that she would forgive her for the rest of the night.
“The bar is going to be forty-five minutes as well. I’m so sorry. Can I get you something to drink?”
“That’s okay!” She moved her hands enthusiastically to emphasize how okay it was. “We’re going to actually go and grab pizza, so you can take us off the list, but really it’s okay.”
“Oh, okay. Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I just haven’t eaten much all day, and I’m starving and I know you guys are very busy. You guys really do have the best potatoes in town.”
“Oh, thanks.” The hostess nodded with a confused earnestness, and Leda immediately regretted the potato comment.
“Anyway, we’ll definitely be back!”
“Okay, well, have a good night!”
“Thank you. Oh, and I just wanted to say, you’re doing an amazing job. I know it’s a busy night and you are just doing an amazing job.”
“Oh, thank you so much.” The hostess cocked her head in entitled acceptance of the compliment.
Leda imagined that this girl received many a compliment for the very little that she did in life. That will change when your face falls, she thought, but she still felt good about the exchange.
CHAPTER 54
The Last Innate Truth
John aged considerably faster than Leda did. It wasn’t so much his body, or even his hair, which hardly had any gray at all even as he waded into his late sixties (she had to start dyeing hers at thirty-five). The real aging happened in the ever-growing distance between them in their life together. John retired. He spent his mornings doing crossword puzzles and drinking coffee in the old chair by the window. Then he’d watch TV in the bedroom for a few hours. Then generally he’d take a nap. Then he’d wake and watch a little more TV. Sometimes he’d come in the dining room and work on a miniature ship model he’d started, or he’d go to the kitchen for a snack. After that he’d eat supper, watch a little more TV, and then head to bed at around nine. At first Leda didn’t realize how routine his day had become. She herself worked a few years after he retired, because she simply couldn’t bear the idea of being home all the time with so little purpose. When she finally did retire, she expected that the two of them would spend their days going on little day trips or trying the new restaurant in town, but John had no interest in any of it, really. On a rare occasion she would get him to leave the house on Saturday for brunch, but that was about it. He’d carved out a life and a routine for himself that was so vastly different from what she wanted for herself. Without her realizing it, he’d become old.
At around this time Leda and Anne rekindled their friendship. They spent dinners together and afternoons at the park. Anne’s husband, Bill, was the same as John. He too rarely wanted to do much and was happy napping and eating and aging. The women bonded over it, but it was more than that. They relied on each other now for something they’d formerly received from men or their daughters, who were now all grown and busy with their own men. It was companionship, and closeness, and the forward propulsion of life. Between them was a vitality that kept pumping. There was no other name for it, really, but love. One summer they took a vacation together and as Anne said, “What color do you like?” holding up a mug, Leda had a stressing sense and she walked up to Anne and hugged her and Anne hugged her back. Neither of them needed to explain to the other why.
But as it was, only so much time could be taken up by friendship, so Leda found herself idling in her own life. Searching for something to do. She joined a pottery class. She read a lot. One afternoon she asked John if he wanted to go to the Rodin exhibit at the MFA. He said he was too tired.
“But it’s the last day,” she said.
John said he’d take a nap and think about it, but as she watched him walk up the stairs, cookies in one hand, the other hand on the railing, she knew he wouldn’t go. She asked Anne and checked to see if Annabelle was around.
“On the boat all day with Robert,” Annabelle texted. Followed by: “.”
Leda got dressed in her best blouse and put on her darker lipstick. She threw on her new coat and went to the museum alone.
She parked in the parking garage and locked her car and stood in line to buy her single ticket.
“Would
you consider a membership to the museum?” the man asked her, and she thought, Yes, I would. But she didn’t buy it because she knew she wouldn’t use it.
She made her way over to the exhibit and walked around, standing up close to this statue and that. There were couples and young families all around her. A group of schoolchildren noisily moved from one room to the next. Momentarily the room was empty, and she walked around the marble floors, listening to her echoed footsteps as she walked up to The Kiss. And as she stood beside the statue, her own reflection shimmered and warped in the glass case that protected art from humanity, she had an epiphany so brief and so painful and so exhilaratingly true: The fundamental condition of womanhood is loneliness. As quickly as she realized it, she allowed it to pass over her. It was too late to do anything about it now.
She went home, and she and John watched an old movie together. She told him about the museum, and he listened and nodded and took part in the distant way that he could, never reaching, never touching, never hearing the marble or feeling The Kiss.
This was the final innate truth of womanhood. It persisted from age twelve to her death.
CHAPTER 55
Gardening
It was a small ambition, really, but Leda wanted to garden. There was something romantic about it, beautiful and everlasting. She envisioned herself walking among rows and rows of roses, holding watering cans, preening bushes. If ever she built up an idea in her mind, this was it.
At the start of spring she went to a bookstore to buy a book for beginning gardeners. She came to find out that an entire section of the bookstore was devoted to nothing but gardening, plants, and flowers. There were encyclopedias and how-to guides, stunning picture books, and stacks of books with references in the title she couldn’t begin to understand. Holy hell, she thought. A little girl sat with her back pressed up against the bookshelf just to the right of all the gardening books. She was reading some kind of psychology book that was much too mature for her. Leda couldn’t help but admire the child’s ambition. Good for her. She’ll be someone when she grows up, she thought.
After a while she gave up and walked over to the cashier, a fairly good-looking man in his thirties who sat on a stool reading Thomas Pynchon. She thought of Annabelle and wondered if she and this man would get along.
“Mom, really? Reading Thomas Pynchon as he’s working in a bookstore? Making some big show so that everyone can see that he’s, like, so smart and so literate,” she could hear her say.
“Well, at least he reads,” she would respond.
Annabelle and Robert had decided to “take a break,” as he put it. After seven years of dating, he needed “some space before making serious choices.” Leda hated him for it. The minute Annabelle called her and asked what she thought, her voice shaking as she said, “He says this will be good for us,” she told her to dump him.
“Don’t you think that’s a little harsh, Mom?”
“You will never forgive him for this. Tell him to shit or get off the pot. Tell him he’ll never find anyone prettier, smarter, or better. Tell him to go fuck himself.” She heard herself rattle off these sentences with the kind of venom that all children delicately try to avoid inciting in their parents, but she couldn’t help it. Her daughter deserved better.
“Listen, honey, don’t waste another seven years of your life.”
“So the last seven years were a waste?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks a lot, Mom.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but it’s true. You want to get married and have a family, right? That’s what you want? For your life, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t waste another minute on this nonsense. Not another minute.”
Annabelle decided to give the break a chance. It had been six months. Every time Leda talked to her on the phone, it sounded like she’d just been crying. She wished she could do something, make her daughter date someone nice who was taller, so that she could see how great life could be.
“How are things with Robert?” she’d ask on occasion, and Annabelle either would say things were “good” or she’d start crying and tell her about some horrible text message.
“I asked him how his Saturday was going, and he said, ‘Great! Out with friends!’ Just like that. What does he expect me to say to that? ‘Oh, have an awesome time! I’m at home crying.’ I hate him.”
“He’s an asshole,” Leda would say, but that was it. Anything more and she knew it would just cause a fight. She had to hope for the best and believe in the possibility of her daughter snapping out of it, waking up, being as direct in her relationship as she was in her career. But there was little else she could do. She couldn’t save her. She couldn’t bring her Thomas Pynchon like she wanted.
“Can I help you?” the young man said, putting aside his book.
“Yes, I’m trying to find a good book for gardening. Something that’s helpful for a beginner.”
“Oh, okay, well, let’s take a look.”
He got up and walked ahead of her at a sure, steady pace. She had to work to keep up with him. Behind him, she could see the slenderness of his frame. He looked almost frail. For a brief second she thought what it might be like to push him into the books.
He got to the gardening section and immediately crouched down to get a better look. He ran his finger along the spines and mumbled off titles. If Leda had been younger she may have assumed that he knew what he was doing, but as soon as she saw him crouch down at such a reckless speed, she knew he knew nothing about gardening books.
“I thought we had a book…,” he started, and then trailed off without looking up. For a while longer he just silently sat crouched. Is there a way for me to rescue him from this ridiculous display? she wondered, but she could not think of one, and so they just stayed there by the gardening books, waiting for something to change between the two of them to free them both from the circumstance.
“You know, I’d say your best bet may be to ask a florist,” he finally said.
“That’s probably a good idea,” she said, although she was fairly certain he didn’t mean a florist, exactly, but rather a horticulturist.
Thomas Pynchon jumped up as quickly as he’d crouched down and nodded one steady nod at Leda before walking swiftly away. He returned to his stool and resumed reading the same as before, if not just a bit red-faced. She said “thank you” as she left, although she didn’t mean it.
There was a nursery down the block, so she figured she’d like to stop in and see what they had. The bookstore had been so depressing. She wanted to look at flowers and feel happy and excited at the potential of her soon-to-be-garden.
Even though it was only a short walk away, she decided to drive. Her knee had been bothering her lately, and it never seemed worth it to push herself.
“Won’t your knee hurt when you garden?” John had asked her.
“No, it only hurts when I’m walking.”
“Oh, I figured all that kneeling in the dirt would bother it.”
“No,” she said, but after he said it she did start to worry.
“You should get your knee replaced,” Annabelle had told her.
Leda shook her head. “No way.”
“Why not, Mom? You’re being crazy.”
“When you get to be my age, you’ll understand that surgery isn’t the answer for everything.”
Annabelle shrugged. “All I know is I would not be going around in pain.”
“That’s definitely something a young person would think.”
The nursery was smaller and older. As far as Leda could remember, it had been there since she was a child. It was called Betty’s Garden. People in the neighborhood referred to it as “Betty’s.”
“Just go to Betty’s,” they’d say whenever anyone inquired about needing azaleas or a nice hanging plant.
She parked b
y the rows of Radio Flyer wagons. As she got out of her car, she hesitated as to whether she should take one or not. She hadn’t intended to buy anything, but there seemed no reason that she should miss out on the opportunity to pull one of the darling red wagons behind her. The one she took was the least rusty of the bunch. It wobbled a bit on a wonky wheel, but she figured that it was a good match for her and her knee.
As she entered the nursery an older woman wearing an apron and stacking gardenias called out to her. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“Thanks. Will do,” Leda responded.
She walked among the many beds of flowers. It was so beautiful and peaceful, the bright earthy smell of soil, the sound gentle sway of petals in the breeze. I could live here, she thought. She didn’t know the first thing about which flowers to pick, although she remembered somewhere someone had said that roses were difficult to grow. She also remembered that her mom had grown pansies in the front garden of their home. Seeing their happy little faces, she suddenly was consumed by memories of her mother gardening and planting, her standing beside her mom holding flowers and helping to dig a neat little row of holes.
“What is this?” she’d asked.
“It’s called a trowel,” her mom said.
She’d forgotten all about the pansies, even though, really, they’d been a marker of springtime for so many blissful years. What else don’t I know of? she wondered, and thought of the sound of scraping soil off of the walkway, and the disturbing beauty of root systems. We really don’t know what goes on underneath. And here it is and it looks so strange dangling in my hand, holding together this flower.
She took a few containers of pansies and placed them in neat little rows in her wagon, as if she were already planting them, and walked up to the lady, who was now stacking snapdragons.
“Hi, are pansies hard to grow? I’m planning on starting a garden and I’d like to start with something manageable.”
“Oh, no, pansies are a great flower to start with. And so pretty! Can I ring you up?”
“Oh, great, thank you. Yes, please.”