“This is not about my Pampered Chef party, because I already told you I had to do that. I promised a friend. You think I’m not out at Mama and Daddy’s every extra minute I have?”
“I didn’t say that.” In fact, there was a lot I wasn’t saying. Like how I hated the damn Pampered Chef, for one thing. I could have let her have it between the eyes, told her everything about my fears, the appointment looming ahead of me, how sick I’d been. But all I wanted was to get down in the dirt and not think for a little while. “Maybe I can’t blame a kid, but I had too much going on last week, Leslie.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Like you know anything about my life or what it’s like to be a single mother.”
“Pampered Chef doesn’t have a gizmo to help you with that?”
“Just grow up, Beth, and go help Mama. Enjoy your personal day.”
She hung up on me. Everything with Leslie had always been a fight. That was the Hyde in her, Mama’s side. Leslie helped Mama set out bulbs. Leslie set tables and baked casseroles. If you needed a flower arrangement, Leslie was your girl. We could admire her contributions to no end. But the thankless job of pruning back Mama’s garden always fell to me. What Leslie couldn’t understand was that they were hallowed ground. They were the altars of Mama, and I couldn’t get there fast enough today.
The farmhouse looked like a starched, white apron squatting on the green hillside, and I wanted to crawl underneath it and hide. But first, I went around to the shed out back to get Mama’s pruning shears and a pair of her old gloves. I needed to work up the nerve to go inside. I’d never been any good at keeping things from Mama. If I meant to make it through this day, I was going to have to keep my head down. All I wanted was to clear those flower beds. In a few months, they’d spring back to life. Whatever else came and went, you could count on it, if you were willing to do the hard work. Today, I needed to believe that was still true.
I opened and shut the heavy shears. All I knew for sure anymore was that I was ready to lop something off.
The smell of coffee and bacon and cinnamon toast hit me when I walked in the kitchen. Mama wasn’t a hugger in general, but whenever I walked in that house, I inhaled down to my toes, and it was the best kind of comfort.
“Why doesn’t my house ever smell like this,” I asked, “even when I make the same thing?” I went right to the cabinet for a mug and a dish.
“Cause it’s your Mama’s house,” she said, the secret pleasure of it showing around the edges of her smile. She was already putting on a roast for supper. “I’m surprised you could find it through that snarling mess of a yard. Your daddy has lost his mind with those rose bushes.”
She looked like a smaller version of herself to me, and I watched her, a little stunned I hadn’t noticed before how she was aging. Her white hair swept back off her forehead, thick and wayward, like she’d just come through a stiff wind. She was wearing a god-awful red and blue cotton pants set, another one Leslie must have gotten her, wrinkled from a morning napping in the recliner.
The time was, she’d kept herself and everything in this house so neat we had trouble finding things. I looked at the place now and wondered if she’d just given up or if she didn’t care anymore. Leslie said she was doing it to get a rise out of Daddy, but as far as I could tell, he didn’t seem to notice, so long as he could find his paper and the remote.
“Where’s Daddy?” I asked.
“Commissioner’s meeting. You know he can’t sit still.”
I gnawed on my toast. I was anxious to get to work. “If there’s not a job to be done, he’ll make one.”
We all knew Daddy wouldn’t be good at retirement. He was a born mediator, and now that his kids were grown and his in-laws had passed away, he’d gone outside the family for his cheap thrills. But really, we were circling the wagons around Mama. He wanted to be home for her.
That’s when he’d started with the knock out roses. There were a dozen or so the first year, but now they lined the drive and sprang from every formerly bare spot on the property so the place reminded me of Sleeping Beauty’s castle where the thorny bushes were about to take over. He proudly made the rounds like a horticultural General, Sevin Dust in hand, and the roses were abundant.
Mama had nothing good to say about them. “He thinks he’s the Atticus Finch of north Georgia, fighting for justice and city water for the poor county folk. Everybody knows he wants it for his roses.”
I laughed. “Has to think he’s in charge. Same as Leslie.”
“Well, you don’t have to listen to her,” Mama said, even though we both knew Leslie was not so easily dismissed. “Why are you taking off work, just to come out here?”
I shrugged. “It’s a teacher work day.”
She was sneaky, cool as a cucumber, but I knew Mama was looking for signs I was lying. “It’s Wednesday. Aren’t those things usually at the first or the last of the week?”
“Yeah, well, I told Leslie I took a personal day, and that didn’t fly, either. Call it what you want. I’m here to behead your gardens.”
Mama looked at me sideways, but she was too glad to have me at the house to make a stink. “Fine, if that’s what you say. But you ought to find something better to do with your time off than come babysit me. I can manage. Or your daddy can help me. It’s still hot as Hades out there, anyway.”
I sipped my coffee and considered the work ahead. “I need to dig today,” I said. “That’s all.”
The morning heat was already pressing down when I pulled a chair around back for Mama and got down to business. She was still trying to talk me into waiting for a cooler weekend.
“It’ll be cold soon enough,” I said. “You’d better enjoy the heat while it lasts.”
Mama’s old garden gloves fit snug and stiff on my fingers. If you didn’t look close, you might think the hands inside of them were hers. Mama sat barefooted in her chair in the shade with her Guideposts. Occasionally, she’d read me a line or two to get my response. Sometimes, I’d look at her and think she might be praying. The morning crept toward noon, and the heat bugs droned in the Johnson grass, but I had one bed nearly cleaned up and mulched for first frost.
“I guess Leslie thinks I’m one foot in the nursing home, lately,” Mama said, watching me work on the second bed. “I told her she’d better keep a bedroom ready for the day me and Daddy decide to come move in with her.”
We laughed because Mama was just messing with Leslie, but I worried. “You’re going to give her an ulcer.”
“She’s good with the hard stuff,” she said. “You remember that little guinea pig? She sat out here all day long, holding that thing ’til it died.”
Mama was right, of course. And I did remember.
“She may drive us crazy, but Leslie’s the one you want in a fight,” Mama said.
“It’s a good thing, because that’s about the only way I get her.”
I grunted, cutting through thick stalks and pulling out the dead leaves of the daylilies. While I taught school and kept a house with Cooper, I was jealous of the way Leslie had been making up for lost time with Mama, meeting needs, cooking dinners, carting her to town and back while they shared mothering tips.
“I don’t know what you do to this stuff,” I grumbled. “It’s like a jungle out here. You’d think the deer would eat some of it up.”
“Don’t blame me. Talk to your daddy.”
“Why? Is he peeing on the foxgloves?”
“Hell if I know. I wouldn’t put it past him. That man is obsessed.” Mama scowled at the bushes and shook her head. “He’s put in a new bush every time I turn around. I told him, he’s a politician. People are going to think he’s burying bodies up here. But he’s dug so many holes it’s a wonder the entire hill doesn’t just give way. We’re living on a mountain of chicken shit.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Granny would have lost her mind. She always said the smell of roses made her think of the funeral home.”
Then, there it was. “It takes a lot of manure to have a garden worth growing,” I muttered, Granny’s favorite thing to say whenever we’d complained. I was thirty-two years old, a fifth grade teacher, and still I didn’t know if she’d meant life was the manure, or if we were. Later, when Mama said it, I didn’t know if she’d meant to encourage us or tell us to suck it up. Honestly, it worried me. If I couldn’t figure out something as simple as a garden analogy, what else might I be missing?
I considered this Mama-mystery for the thousandth time while I attacked the last stalks in that bed, scalping them to the ground. The second bed was almost cleared. One more, and summer would be put to rest.
“Some days,” Mama said, “when I sit out here, I swear I can just hear her talking to me.”
“Mama, Granny’s been dead three years. I doubt she’s worried about Daddy’s roses.”
She shrugged and looked down the hillside to where my grandparent’s house sat empty. “I guess she still whispers in my ear.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t listen to her.”
Mama laughed out loud at this. “Honey,” she said with a pleading kind of humor. “You are misunderstanding.”
“Well then, make me understand.” There were so many things I needed her to explain that I didn’t know where to begin. “Life’s just full of crap, and we’re supposed to be glad about it?” I sat back on my heels, trying to clear my head. I must have been getting dehydrated. “Or is it that people are full of crap, and there’s no use trying to change them? Just accept it. That’s what Granny always did. She wanted us to act like everything was fine, all the time. Especially when it wasn’t.”
“I didn’t mean to light your fire, Beth,” Mama said.
“I just think sometimes you should be able to complain. You should be honest when something is hard. If you were, maybe Granny wouldn’t be haunting you now.”
“Maybe you know everything, Beth.” Mama’s tone said I had things left to learn, like maybe daughters invite their Mamas to haunt them, whisper in their dreams, come to them in the scent of their pot roasts and the sharp tongues of their children. One day my daughter would teach me.
All of a sudden, the heat on the back of my neck made me sick. I stood too quickly. The blood rushed to my head. It was too hot to be out there. But all I could think was if I had to pass down the gifts of my grandmother today, what would come back with the turn of the earth, and what would be consumed and forgotten? Did any of it matter, how we sweetened our tea or bounced our babies or planted our summer squash?
“What’s got into you?” Mama asked. “Are you and Cooper fighting? Is this about moving off from here?”
“Me and Cooper don’t fight. You know that. People have to talk to fight. And you’re not supposed to know anything about moving yet. I told him I hadn’t said anything about it. Besides, it might not happen.”
Cooper wasn’t afraid of a place where his accent would instantly lower his IQ, and shortening was a specialty item. This move was something we’d kept to ourselves, mostly because it was going to send my family into a tail spin. But Cooper and I dreamed of rugged mountains, picturesque towns with wineries and cold streams, and the Pacific Ocean.
Today, however, I was grateful he was gone so I wouldn’t have to look him in the eye. In a blink, he’d know while he’d been out rustling up a living, something inside me had gone wrong with our dream. He’d hide his disappointment and fear and want to make everything better. If Cooper was right here, right now, he couldn’t do a thing to help me.
Before I knew it, so much honesty brought up my breakfast, all over the nearest bunch of Daddy’s rose bushes.
“Well, that’s pretty,” Mama said, smiling at the mess dripping from the bright pink blossoms as she came to where I stood and lifted the hot weight of my ponytail off my neck. “I told you it wasn’t a good day to be out here. Now, let’s cool you down.” Calm down my hot head is what she meant.
Inside, Mama put mint tea in front of me like she’d done when I was a little girl and my temper would get the better of me. I wanted to bury my face against her chest and let her take the burden of my fear, but instead I drank my tea and tried not to cry. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.
The aroma of the pot roast was thick and rich, and my stomach clenched and twitched again. She shuffled to the laundry room to bring a mountain of clean towels to the table. She was never still, only slower. I watched her begin to fold and stack them before I grabbed one. I knew the bones of her wrists, the curve of her neck, the familiar movement of her routines. I could remember sitting at this table as she taught me to fold laundry. Back then I’d been proud of my stack of washcloths. Now, watching our work pile up fast and predictable, I wanted Mama eternally here with her stack of towels. How ridiculous I was, a grown girl going through my life expecting to be doing this for always, learning her ways.
She seemed convinced I was feeling better when she said, “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have made plans to be home for the rest of the day,” like she’d read my thoughts. “I’m leading a session in about an hour over at New Hope.”
New Hope was the counseling center where she volunteered; Mama’s new mission in life was working with these women who’d lost their kids to the court while they battled addictions and abuse and desperation.
“You have to do that today?”
“I’m not the one throwing up my Eggos,” she said, lifting her eyebrows so she looked just like Granny when she’d drawn hers on too high. “If you could finish this up for me, that’d be a big help, Beth. That heat’s not going to let up. You can come back early tomorrow,” she said, solving all problems.
Just come home where you belong, she was saying. But I didn’t belong here anymore. I belonged home with my husband, or at least I should be there when he got back. And it bothered me how this house had changed without my noticing. As bad as I hated it, I had to admit I wasn’t a child anymore, and hiding out in my Mama’s house couldn’t be the answer to everything. All I could do was fold a few whites, finish the flower beds, and face my Jonah day alone.
“I can’t come back tomorrow, just because it’s hot today. I have an appointment in the morning,” I said a little too sharply. “And Cooper’s coming home Saturday. This is the only day I have to get those beds done.”
I knew I sounded hateful. But she was leaving when I needed her, even if she didn’t know it. She was going to strangers while I was left here with the way she’d made me.
“Well, you do what you’re gonna do. But you can put some more water in the roast. Learn something so you can feed Cooper’s offspring right.”
Oh, shit fire. She thought I was pregnant. “Whose fault is it I only know three recipes?” I said. “Cooper won’t starve so long as he can survive on biscuits, banana pudding and turkey dressing.”
I wished she’d stay and open her cookbooks and spend days in the kitchen with me, telling me everything she’d never told me before. I wanted to look at baby pictures and hear the stories of how Leslie and I were born. I wanted to know why she’d married so young and what she’d dreamed about as a girl. I needed her to show me again how to lay out a pattern and how to find four-leaf clovers on the first try. But I was trying to throw her off the grandbaby scent, so I was being ugly. It was so hard to hide from Mama. I’d thought coming here would make me brave, clear my head, help me make sense of what I was about to do. Instead, everywhere I looked I saw more I stood to lose. And there was Mama, watching me, like I was an egg timer that should have gone off. I felt the disappointment for both of us.
Regardless what she thought, she didn’t ask. Mama was smart enough to know that wasn’t how you got the real answers. And then she noticed the clock. “My stars! I’ve got to g
et cleaned up or I’m going to be later than usual. Takes me ten minutes just to find where I’ve left my boob.”
My heart shrank to a hard little pit in my chest. I swallowed the terrible memories of two years ago when the world had almost ended. “You should just keep it in the car,” I said. I made a joke, Lord help me. “Hang it from the rearview.”
I rinsed my glass at the sink and didn’t look at her. We’d talked about Leslie, roses and ghosts, but we’d never talked about the cancer. It was the poison Mama swallowed with a quiet smile while the rest of us watched in horror. She gave us her legacy; she gave those girls her pain.
She left me there a few minutes later. There were two flower beds left to clear. They’d take me the rest of the afternoon. But I didn’t think that would be long enough.
During the heat of the day, I decided to eat a sandwich and wait for the sun to drop lower. The house was empty, and I ended up on the living room floor, surrounded by a hundred little slips of paper and wrappings and box tops, all the handwritten and collected recipes that Mama had saved over the years so she could make cookbooks for us girls. Some of them had been handed down for generations, food that had graced the tables of our family through Civil War and World War, Great Depression and Baby Booms. Talking to Leslie had made me remember them.
I was supposed to have divided them and made three books, one for me, Leslie, and her little girl, Kayla, who wanted to give them out on Mother’s Day. But I’d forgotten. Now every recipe seemed precious. I read each one and stacked them on my lap until they covered me with Mama’s secrets, and I fell asleep under their sweet weight.
When I woke up, the sun was already dropping into late afternoon, and the recipes were only a small stack of scribbled notes that would have to go back in a box.
By the time Daddy came home, the roast was done, and I was back outside, the second garden finished. I had the hose out, rinsing my breakfast off the roses, and I’d had time to really study those bushes.
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