I turn my attention to trimming the native flowering varietals I’ve planted on the edge of the garden beds. These are the kind of flowers I’ve discovered, happily, that hummingbirds and honeybees love: purple-blue, bell-shaped Honeywort, blue-tinted, thistlelike, False Sea Holly, spicy smelling, bluish-purple Licorice Mint. My favorite, crazy named Miss Willmott’s Ghost —is white tufted, corn on the cob shaped, a big, silvery-green blossom that is taking over the garden. I’m hard pushed to think of anything that has ever once made me smile as much as this dumb flowerbed. I’ve scribbled the names of the plants on wooden popsicle sticks with permanent markers so I don’t forget. I’m told these blooms will be chock-full of nectar as the fog burns off and the warmer weather kicks in. Only thing that would make me happier than a garden full of blooms right now would be to share it with Jazmin. What I would give to lay here, side by side with my BFF, chillin’ in the sunshine, the only sound and movement the whisper of her breathing and the breeze in the tall, wild grass.
A cloud passes overhead casting a shadow on my plants. My childhood was nothing to get worked up about, despite what I’ve said. Boring as hell is all. And I’m in danger of losing the dream sequence if I don’t work hard to line up the pictures in the right order. It’s sort of like looking at jumbled scenes in a movie. And I’m the star. Who needs that sort of bullshit celebrity?
In the dream, Maggie finally got that I was tugging at her sleeve. She was the only one who caught a clue that I was there, although she, like the rest of them, never saw me in the flesh. I knew it, she knew it, but she never let on, much to my frustration, for some reason, she never told the others that I was there in the room with them.
When I woke up around seven, having tossed and turned as I do through the night hours to ease the discomfort, my PJs were soaked through with sweat. It’s gotta mean something that in real life, Maggie made it the hell out of that old ranch and way before me. And if she keep on thinking she wants to be in my life after she’s been gone for so long, well, she’s gonna have to keep on circling back around big time, build my trust and show me that she sees me, really sees me, for who I am and who I’ve become.
Chapter 3
Maggie
They say that time stands still. Well, that’s a myth we trick ourselves into believing. Standing there, like a fool, frozen on the doormat, it was evident my sister was much changed, her pale, milky face small and delicate beneath a scarf wrapped around her head like a turban.
“Hello Bridget,” I said, holding onto the handles of my bags with a viselike grip. Seeing her face-to-face was a shock to my system and, from any lack of movement to greet me, my sudden appearance was clearly as unsettling for her as it was for me.
I had nowhere else to go. There was no plan B, despite the endgame having been unceremoniously scrawled on the wall in permanent red marker months if not years before. If Bridget had turned me away and I would not have blamed her for doing so, I have no clue where I would have turned.
“Maggie. Jesus. What the fuck?” she snapped. “I sure would’ve appreciated some advance warning.” Her looks may have been diminished but she had no problem giving off a steely, high-voltage charge.
I was bone tired. I’d been up and about since the break of dawn, closing up the last details of the apartment. Despite all my prepping for this moment, I was mentally unprepared for an on the spot showdown with my big sis. I braced against the upset of confronting this pale, new, hairless version of her — frail, yet decidedly hostile. Had she shrunk in height? Maybe. I’ve been a couple of inches taller than her since I hit my teens; by then it felt like I towered over her. I was little more than a stranger to my only sibling, the sister I’d been way too wrapped up in my foolish ambitions to give a shit about.
“Don’t be like this, Bridg’.”
“No? How is it you’d like me to be?” she snapped a second time, stepping forward, reaching out and pinching me sharply on the fleshy part above the curve of my hip. “I’d barely recognize you, Maggie, it’s been so long,” she said. “Packin’ on some pounds for the both of us, I see?”
I cringed. Bridget had always been way cruder than me with her use of language. She cut me to the quick in a way that only a sister can. “OK. Thanks for the warm and fuzzy welcome,” I said, reigning in the sarcasm. Bridget is way more than her illness, there’s no way she’s letting it define her. “May I come in?” I asked.
Once inside, it hit me, over and above the heady aroma of damp wood, aside from the stink of old stuff — the familiar, slightly moldy overtone of an aging Victorian structure — a stronger, more benevolent odor of weed infused the very essence of the place. The scent of cannabis clung to the shabby interior fabric of old rugs and peeling wallpaper, an earthy, pungent, skunk-like aroma had absorbed itself deep beneath the surface of the dingy rooms.
“Whatever,” Bridget said, catching my eye as it darted about. “Just don’t you dare come barging in now, pointlessly stirring up all the old ghosts.”
I scanned the scene. Whatever your preferred word for it, good old-fashioned cannabis, marijuana, pot, weed — an unabashed broadcast of its unmistakable overtones is the giveaway with its warm, slightly powdery sandalwood and fig, forest-like aroma with hints of patchouli and pepper. If its scent has a color, its musky overtone is the deepest, darkest shade of its greenest leaves. There’s no disguising an active cannabis cache to a Northern California native. One way or another I’ve been around weed since my early teens. Even my soon-to-be ex considers himself somehow elevated in his status as both wine and weed connoisseur. I’d never known him not to smoke. Andres stashed his cache of designer cannabis in French glass jars he differentiated with decorative labels designed for jams and jellies. These are the type of jars with fancy wire closures and thick, orange colored rubber seals. He would purchase them each fall, by the half dozen in cases from Williams Sonoma on Union Square. He’d gotten a kick out of convincing the clerks he was an ardent impresario of homemade holiday preserves. “Grandma’s recipes,” he’d tease, ever flirtatious.
The pervasive aroma hit me then as no surprise, Bridget was a legendary pot smoker, never much of a drinker. Hey, I had my fancy wine fetish and she had her weed. Inside, a repetitive medley of leaking rainwater plip-plopped percussion-like into a series of galvanized buckets and plastic bowls positioned in strategic spots. I shuddered visualizing the creeping black mold I imagined inching its way through the drywall. Aside from her tired, puffy face, Bridget appeared ashen, weak, an anemic version of herself.
“You better be good with all this,” she gestured with a small, blue-veined, almost translucent hand at the general state of the place. “I know how you are, neat freak and all.”
Bridget is four years my senior. She’d been diagnosed with breast cancer the previous summer — July to be precise and with all that was going on in my life, I’d not bothered to take the time for even the briefest of visits, to see for myself how she was faring. Bridget busied herself in a spurt of rounding up a mess of open boxes of tea, a half-eaten bar of dark chocolate, a handful of scattered garlic cloves, a chunk of shriveled root ginger. A basket of funky-shaped, unidentifiable mushrooms cluttered the countertop alongside a bowl of red pomegranates, green leaves intact. Amongst these scattered remedies sat a tube of unopened topical cannabis analgesic and an open pack of pain relieving patches.
“A smorgasbord of restoratives, Bridget.” I ventured.
It wasn’t like I didn’t know the worst of it. We’d not seen one another in well over a year in part due to my thoughtless lack of consideration and also Bridget being long since inflicted by the inconvenient phobia that makes her scared to death to drive over a bridge. Still, we had spoken at length by phone the evening of her first oncology consultation. She had received the dreaded call back from the one and only mammogram she’d had in her entire life, soon after she’d turned fifty. One thing’s for sure, she was damn lucky they’d caught it when they did.
“What do you know, Maggie?”
Bridget hissed. “You’d best chill out fast if you’re planning on sticking around for the evening.”
At first, she’d stuck to her stance that chemo and radiation would do her more harm than good. Hell, who’d blame her for being wary of Big Pharma? Cancer treatment is no walk in the park. And Bridget had lived her life until that point as poster girl for natural remedies. I looked her over, subtly, the brittle, delicate figure before me. She explained how she’d taken the high road as long as she’d been able in her gamble on alternative treatments, her initial tactic having revolved around a super intense raw food diet and herbs, a ton of them, plus the elimination of all sugars and processed foods. Whatever weight she’d had to spare had fallen from her frame like tender meat from a rack of slow cooked ribs.
Bridget was up-front in how she’d smoked a bunch of weed for the pain. “Don’t worry, only the good stuff,” she confessed, cannabis she’d grown herself, out back. I listened as she told me how she had diligently tested the soil for ph levels, adding an assortment of minerals to nourish plant roots. “I harvested the resinous flower heads at the peak of their power, the same day my plants showed signs of growing cloudy,” she said, adding: “I managed to get it together to dry and trim the good stuff, the super stinky, sticky, gluey intoxicants.”
After three months of resisting standard treatment, her oncologist found that her tumor marker had increased. Bridget felt she’d been given no choice but to reconsider her options. We’d not progressed in any sisterly support system after I’d left home and I was, by then, suddenly and ashamedly acutely aware of my part in it. I looked down at my left hand. It was shaking, slightly. I was still wearing my thin platinum wedding band and diamond solitaire engagement ring, which flashed as I listened to my sister’s updates. I forced myself to think of something other than a bottle opener, the comforting sound of a cork easing its way out of a snug, slim, glass bottleneck and the glug of a generous pour.
Bridget had been in no position to seek a second opinion. The concept of taking a drive down to Stanford for a visit with the super docs, or anywhere else for that matter was as foreign to her as the price tag. If I’d been smarter, more reserved with my finances, I would’ve comfortably been able to grant her the dignity of a second opinion. Jeez, this is my one and only sibling we’re talking about. She’d been a homebody her whole life, never pushing beyond the borders of her beloved Sonoma County and in that way, I’d always thought of Bridget as the cool, calm, grounded one of the two of us, the one who had never given up on this old place, on our family. I’d figured, in my selfishness, that she’d be fine. She had to be. Bridget is a fighter. She’s proved it this far. Boy has she. The alternative is too hard to fathom.
By the time she’d visited her oncologist for a second appointment, the tumor had continued growing and significantly. Evil thing had wormed its way into her lymph nodes. My self-sufficient sis was being forced to swallow her tough, old, pioneer pride.
“Plant-based medicine is totally where it’s at as far as simultaneous treatment,” Bridget rattled on, even now, as I scanned the numerous lotions and potions and medicines she was intent on shuffling away from my prying eyes. Ultimately, she’s been forced to agree to conventional treatment, however hideous it proves to be.
They’d operated on her at the end of the year. Chemo followed soon after and, daunting still: “radiation is next in the cards,” she explained, looking like she’d seen the worst that life could dish up and was tough enough yet to deal with whatever came next.
I’d been absent for all of it to that point, the entire nightmarish trajectory of my sister’s cancer trauma, while I, in turn, had fallen unceremoniously from the gilded perch of my own making.
“You never asked for help,” a weak attempt to justify my stupendously late arrival.
“And you never offered,” Bridget shot back, suppressed fury building in her eyes. I could feel it, see it. “Where were you when I was at my worst, Maggie? The days and nights after my surgery — damn it, that’s when a decent sister might have made an appearance. Why now?”
A sudden wave of shame washed over me, not guilt — far worse. Christ, she could have died, she may still. To think I’d lain awake, night after night, weeks, months, willing sleep to visit, indulgently revisiting scenes of my own poor decision-making, abandonment and selfish despair. All the while, my sister was fighting for her life. Who was I to complain?
Bridget, seemingly undaunted by what seemed to me the brutal butchering of both her breasts and the physical evidence of her post-chemo fragility, struggled in the low light of dwindling afternoon to maneuver our dear, departed mother’s dinosaur of a food processor from its dark lair in a lower cabinet. “One of us has to work in the morning,” she announced, more briskly, baiting me to spill the reason of my showing up on a workday. Her thin lips clenched as she shot me a narrowed, sideways glance that swept over to my bags, her line of fire swiveling back in my direction: “I’ve kept it together without your help, Maggie, thank you very much.”
Only no, I beg to differ, clearly, she had not. I’d be walking on eggshells awhile, I’d expected as much.
“It’s a little late for a sisterly show of support,” Bridget cautioned, as she stood aside and reluctantly submitted to my stepping in and hauling the heavy, antiquated kitchen gadget up and onto the counter.
My labored breath formed a small cloud in the chill of the kitchen as I unloaded the bulky Gigantosaurus of a machine onto the scratched and yellowed surface of the Formica countertop. The kitchen was cold and damp, in need of a clean sweep of what I figured was a good six months of old mail, bags of recycling — cartons, bottles, pill packets and containers — layers of unwashed sweaters and jackets that hung lifelessly from the backs of chairs.
I’m a tad on the obsessive-compulsive side, I’ll freely admit, especially when it comes to kitchens. Walking into a cluttered environment makes my eyes twitch. My fingers were itching to work. I love to beautify things. If it were up to me, I’d have happily set to there and then, armed with a box of trash bags. I’d have gladly rolled my sleeves up to make a clean sweep of the place, to clear at least enough space so as to be able to see what we were dealing with. It wasn’t that it was outright dirty. I could see that Bridget, Bobby, Mia, even, at least one diligent soul appeared to have been making some effort to keep the countertops, floors and sink wiped clean.
She dealt me a scowl, the first hint it was Bridget herself who was struggling to keep it all together. “Don’t fucking go there, Maggie,” she warned. We’re a stubborn bunch, the McCleerys, always have been. I’d long since thought of Bridget as “The Boss”, though I’d jokingly taunted her during our teens that she was never the boss of me, though she had been and we’d both known it. She’d liked it that way, taking charge, or so I’d thought, until I’d left her to it by taking off without so much as a look back.
Bridget set about fiddling obsessively with the close-to-defunct food processor, putting an end to any further uncomfortable dialogue for the moment. I could see its cutting blades were blunt. An unappealing feed tube that funnels food in for shredding, slicing, pureeing and grinding was clouded, yellowed with use and age. I’ve been around plenty of state of the art kitchen tools and equipment hanging out with the big earners, the new money of the City. It’s fair to say I’m a snob when it comes to cookware and utensils, Andres and me, we both are, were — I won’t deny it. The bastard commandeered most of what we’d painstakingly picked out together at our favorite Sur La Table in the Ferry Building over the years. Bridget spotted my thinly veiled look of disdain before I managed to check myself. She stormed out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her so hard the whole house shook as she stomped upstairs equally forcefully and as noisily as her weightless frame would allow.
I’d been a lousy sister. Hell, I was having a hard enough time getting used to the idea of the old/new me. How was I to deal with this frail and sensitive new Bridget? She possessed a natural beauty, my alluring older siste
r. It makes me cringe to think of how I’d shown up here so clueless — a wine-drenched, used up, high tech chatter slut — newly single and broke, to boot, and oh, yes, rapidly aging out of the upper limits of an extended breeding age. Shoot, let’s not forget that.
“Maggie, must it always be about you?” Bridget stormed back downstairs and into the room, minutes later, red faced and agitated. Her patchy, fair colored eyebrows were raised in a pair of sharp triangular attack signals and she held her upward pointed nose into the air. She was primed for the fight that was brewing. I jumped, as I’d always done at the sudden sound and motion of Mom’s old automated cuckoo clock, despite it having been the same outdated timekeeper that taunted me each and every hour on the hour since childhood. A hand-carved wooden bird darted out on cue from its dusty lair, breaking the tension with its ridiculous chorale. Brood parasite, the female cuckoo, according to the old man’s book of country lore, I recalled. After she finds another unsuspecting bird’s nest, the she-bird waits ‘til the other one’s out and about before she works up the nerve to push one of her rival’s eggs out in order to lay one of her own. Life’s a bitch however you look at it.
I glanced around for a second relic of the past, the equally sinister ceramic rooster that held court in the center of the kitchen table. Its beady, black, hand-painted eyes confirmed its continued extended residence as they stared back at me in accusatory silence. Why Bridget kept all this worthless junk sitting around was a mystery to me. Was the woman sentimental, lazy, or merely indifferent to change? I haven’t figured it out, though I managed to check my sudden impulse to swipe the foul-faced fucker from his perch, launch him on his first and final flight into a heap of shards. That’s where he belonged, in my opinion, along with the infuriating cuckoo clock — swept to the bottom of the trash can of our past.
Big Green Country Page 3