The Mother Garden

by Robin Romm

  “Yael?” Mateo called.

  I took a bead between my thumb and forefinger. I could make out, though the room was dark, a slight red sheen. I slipped it into my mouth and swallowed.

  “Please open the door,” Mateo said, his voice grave, authoritative.

  I unlocked it. The hair Mateo tugged stuck from his head like a frosting dollop and he had a piece of lint on his eyebrow. “Come here,” he said. He’d just shaved, and he smelled very strongly of lemons. My mother is dead, I said to myself. But the words sounded ridiculous. Mateo is being nice to me because my mother is dead. I pushed him aside and climbed into bed.

  “I’m exhausted,” I said. But really, I just wanted to close my eyes. I wanted to see if I could feel it, that shiny red bead, slipping silently through me.

  When the alarm went off, I woke feeling strangely elated.

  “Teo,” I whispered. I could tell he was awake. I shoved my foot between his ankles and felt his scratchy leg hairs. “Wake up.” I ran a hand down his chest, hooked a finger in the elastic of his boxers, scooted close. He opened one eye.

  “What time is it?” He lifted his head to look at the clock and groaned. “I have that meeting at eight-thirty,” he said. “Those sadists.”

  Mateo and I left each other alone in the mornings. We both hated the violence of waking, hated each and every bird that chirped. But this morning the sun was coming right out of the center of my stomach. Mateo made a move to get out of bed, but I crooked my arm around his neck. I felt radiant, zinging with life.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, rolling on top of him. “I’m good.” I began to tug off his T-shirt.

  After he left, vaguely puzzled and disheveled, I carried the bowl of beads to the coffee table. I gathered the necessary materials: dental floss, scissors, a sewing needle. The beads gathered on the string, and when it was long enough, I tied it off. It hit just over my heart.

  I’d forgotten about it by the time Mateo got home. He came into the house, set his bag down, and headed to the kitchen when he stopped short.

  “You made a necklace?” I fingered the beads. Red, dirty stucco, blue.

  “What?” I said.

  Mateo shook his head and raised his arms a little, then dropped them to his sides. “Yael,” he said, squinting a little. “That’s just wrong.”

  “I think they’re beautiful.”

  “Those beads,” Mateo started, and then shook his head. His voice was a higher pitch than usual. “Those beads were sitting in your mother’s stomach!” He waited for me to get it, to take the necklace off and hurl it to the carpet. I put my hand over the beads.

  “Do you not see that that’s disturbing?”

  “You said you thought it was a joke,” I said.

  Mateo continued to shake his head. “I don’t know how to deal with this.” He stormed past me to the patio, where he sat stiffly, staring at a tree.

  “Maybe it’s too hard,” he said. “Maybe I just can’t take it.” I sat on the deck chair beside him. “I don’t know what you want from me. Are you punishing me for something?” In the dimming light of the summer sky the beads looked almost supernatural, like a wad of colored foil burned in the center of each one. “It’s just so much pressure,” he said. I looked out into the trees behind the house. It was nearly dusk and they cast long shadows over the lawn. I closed my eyes and a peaceful sensation drifted in, right where the necklace fell over my chest. It spread through my body like a vapor.

  “Please take the beads off,” Mateo said. I’d climbed in bed next to him in my nightgown. The beads hung beneath the thin fabric, making a ridge.

  “No,” I said. “They give me comfort.” I hadn’t expected to say this, but after I did, I realized it was true.

  Mateo rolled onto his back and breathed deeply. “Don’t I give you comfort?” he asked.

  “Of course you give me comfort,” I said. But it wasn’t true. He rolled away from me.

  I couldn’t sleep. If they had found these beads in my mother’s stomach, then wasn’t it possible they’d find other things as well? Keys? Scrolls? Tiny mirrors? I crawled out of bed and went into the living room to call my father. He picked up on the first ring, sounding frightened.

  “Sorry. I can’t sleep,” I said. He sighed.

  “I can’t sleep either,” he said. “I’ve been feeling very odd.”

  “Odd how?” I asked.

  “Don’t throw the beads out,” he said. “I think we should keep them in the family.” I could hear him tinkering with something on the other end; it sounded like he was playing with silverware. “Yael, actually, do you think I could come over and take a look at them?”

  “Now?” I asked.

  “If that’s okay. I know it’s late.”

  Twenty minutes later, my father knocked softly on the front door. Red tinged the whites of his eyes and in the corners, a yellow gel gathered. He grabbed my shoulders stiffly and pulled. I tried to lean into the embrace, but it put me off balance.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. He sat, placed the bowl in front of him on the floor, and shoved his hairy hand into the remaining beads. The muscles in his jaw pulled back, but the rest of his face got very still. He rocked, grasping his upper arms, kneading the flesh as if looking for a good place to grip. Then he began to cry out. I’d never heard him cry and the noises were tentative and jagged.

  Mateo padded out of the bedroom in his socks and boxers. He looked at me, alarmed. I looked at my father. I’d heard stories about this. Women threw themselves on the graves of their dead husbands, eyes rolled back, throats dilated. But I hadn’t expected it from him. When my mother stopped breathing, he put his hand on her head, then pulled the sheet over her face. He called the attending nurse. He made sure the right papers were signed.

  When my father quieted, I felt the small hairs on my neck and arms reorient. He hung his head, balled his hands into fists, and wept. I kneeled next to him. Mateo followed and kneeled next to me. I put my hand on my father’s back. Mateo put his hand on my back. My father took some deep breaths.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  I shook my head and patted his back.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Mateo said. I brought out extra sheets and blankets and put my father to bed on the sofa.

  Back in the bedroom, Mateo wanted to know how I was. There was a feigned sympathy in his eyes, but behind that, exhaustion.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I fumbled for the necklace beneath my robe. Warm from my skin, the beads felt animal and alive, as if inside of each of them beat a fragile little heart.

  When I woke up, my father was drinking coffee on the sofa. Mateo had left for work.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” my father said. There was a grayish tint to his skin and his sideburns were completely white. He used to look tall and brusque, always rushing away in dark polished shoes. Now he wilted in beige sneakers and jeans.

  “Don’t be,” I said. I went and sat next to him. Momentarily, his eyes locked on my neck.

  “I made plans to go sailing today.” He changed his focus, staring deeply at the coffee in his cup. “I’m trying to get out of the house.”

  “That’s good,” I said. But my mind wasn’t linking up to the present. I could feel only the beads.

  “I’m going with a nurse from the hospital, but I just want you to know that it’s not really a date.” I looked at him, still staring at the coffee.

  “It’s not a date,” I repeated.

  “Of course not,” he said. “How could it be a date?”

  “How could it be a date?”

  “How could it be?” he asked.

  A date? It had occurred to me that this would happen someday, but not two weeks after her death. She’d been sick for years, dying for months, but her death was new. It was like a magic trick, of sorts: now you see Mom in the bed, now you see a bed!

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “What?”
/>   “I can’t believe you’d even think of dating right now.”

  “I just told you it isn’t a date,” he said.

  “She just died!”

  “Yael, this is hard for me,” he said. “I know it’s hard for you, too. But I need to do something. I need to get out. I can’t spend my days locked in the house, feeling that I never knew how to be happy and now I never will.”

  Happy? Of course he wasn’t happy. They’d been married thirty years and now she was dead. Why would he be happy? And that he’d never been happy? Happy was a word to be squished through the nose at birthday parties.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know,” he said. “Your mother and I were our own people, not just your parents.”

  “Please leave.” I stood and walked toward the door. My father, cowed, set the coffee cup down on the table, picked up his coat, and walked toward me.

  “I’m only trying to be honest,” he said.

  Last night, as he wailed, I’d wished for him to stop. But now I wanted to switch the flip, watch him howl and bawl every day for the rest of his life. We’d take each bead and recount a memory of my mother: the way she tapped a dish after she washed it; the way she organized and labeled our camping gear, cut dreadlocks off the dog—and as we talked, we’d drown in borderless, limitless grief. When we got to the last bead, we’d start again.

  “Go be honest somewhere else,” I said.

  I was supposed to meet Mateo for lunch downtown, but I had no interest in walking to the train. I didn’t want to see him, his clean-shaven jaw, well-meaning eyes. I only wanted to see him if his mother was dead. I’d start a club. Maybe even a commune. I’d surround myself with people who would promise never to say the word “happy.” Who wouldn’t use it or any of its synonyms. We’d be like an experimental French novel. We’d even ban the letters of happy.

  The phone rang and the machine picked up. No one left a message.

  “What,” I said when it started up again. My sharpness dissolved into crying.

  “Yael?” Mateo sounded concerned. “I don’t suppose you’re coming for lunch? I was going to suggest that Japanese place, but another time. I’ll just come home. Are you okay?”

  Okay? Was okay like happy?

  The bathroom tiles felt cool and gluey under my bare feet. All the crying had made me feel a little high. As the water crashed from the faucet of the tub, I dumped in the beads. They gathered near the drain, a colorful smattering of glass, brighter once submerged.

  I took off my nightgown and sat until the water grew cold around me, gazing at the light blue ceiling, the small crack that led from the window above the tub to the corner of the room.

  The front door opened and slammed.

  “Yael?” Mateo called, walking toward our bedroom. I shivered, but I didn’t want to move. I rolled the beads under my feet and stared at the shower curtain. A small vine of orange mold started at the bottom. Rust spotted the metal at the top of the curtain rod.

  “Hey,” he said, coming into the bathroom. He sat on the toilet and peered at me. My eyes felt dry, the skin around them thin and tattered.

  “How are you?”

  “Never better,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. There it was again, that stupid, stupid word. He reached over and tucked a wet strand of hair behind my ear. His hand lingered there. I put my hand on his for a moment, then pushed it away.

  “I brought you some food from that soul food place on the corner,” he said.

  I didn’t want to look at him. The rust growths looked like starfish.

  He sighed. “Yael, you gotta help me out here. I’m doing the best I can.”

  This was Mateo’s burden? Was I supposed to comfort him?

  “Screw off,” I said.

  “Oh, that’s really nice. I bring you lunch while you’re acting like a total psychopath, rolling around in your mother’s stomach remnants, and you tell me to screw off. You screw off.” He continued to sit on the toilet. Why didn’t he just leave? My insides were made of lint and tiny red embers, a combustible combination of stillness and fury. He ought to get out now and find himself a nice girl with two functional parents and maybe a little dog to play with in the park.

  “I’m not getting out,” I said.

  Mateo looked down at his shoes. Brown leather loafers, appropriate for a budding journalist. News shoes. The toes were worn, the rubber soles curving a bit at the heels. He stood, took the bag of food, and walked out of the bathroom.

  I thought I’d hear him leave. I waited for the door to slam, but it didn’t. He went into the kitchen. I sank down into the tub and submerged myself. But as my head went under, I had to bend my knees and they stuck out of the water. I sat back up, my head soaked, my knees cold, and started to shake.

  Mateo came in holding my old bathrobe and the beach towel. “Get out,” he said. His voice was gentle. I looked at him.

  “I’m not ready to get out,” I said.

  “Get out anyway.”

  An order. How exciting. No one had told me what to do in months, since the doctor gave my mother her final prognosis. Everyone just nodded when I spoke. If they did ask things, they asked gently. I was an ominous force, a person to be pleaded with. I grasped the porcelain lip of the tub and raised myself out. My hipbones jutted like fins near my sunken stomach. I stepped onto the bath mat and Mateo wrapped the towel around me, held out the robe.

  He’d set the food on a silver baking pan on the dresser. A yellow flower from the yard leaned in a large water glass. After I got in bed, he situated the tray between us as if it were a small child. He took a rib and started eating, careful not to look at me. The beads were alarmingly bright.

  The phone rang.

  “You get it,” I said to Mateo. He reached across me for the receiver. I could hear my father’s voice booming.

  “Mateo? Why are you home so early? Is everything okay?”

  I tugged on the necklace and the knot gave. The string slid across my jugular, then into the robe. “Shit.”

  Mateo put his hand over the receiver. “Do you want to talk to him?” I shook my head, reaching down into the robe to gather the strays. Most of them still hung on the thread. Mateo held the phone to my ear anyway.

  “Yael,” my father said. I didn’t say anything. “What are you doing?” I was trying to figure out if any more beads were under my thigh.

  “Resting,” I said, standing up, grabbing the phone.

  “You can’t bring her back,” he said.

  “No, you can’t bring her back,” I said. Between my thumb and forefinger I squeezed a white bead.

  “I’m not sure what you mean by that.” My father faltered. I clamped down on the bead as hard as I could, pressing my skin into the tiny eyelash etchings that graced the bead’s surface. And then, as if in desperation, as if the bead had nowhere else to go, it popped from my fingers and flung itself down the heating vent. I threw the phone on the bed and pulled up the vent, but the bead was gone.

  Mateo picked up the phone and politely asked my father if we could call him back. He got the vacuum out of the hall closet.

  “I seriously doubt we’ll be able to suction it up,” he said, plugging in the cord. The vacuum revved excitedly. Mateo lowered the hose down deep. Then we heard a pop and crunch and Mateo flipped the power switch off. I unlatched the door and took out the bag. Fishing through dust and fibers I located it, broken into small white pieces, like doll teeth.

  “We can glue it,” Mateo said, taking the pieces from me. Downstairs in the laundry room we found some craft glue. He smoothed it on the ceramic surface with a small paintbrush and I used my fingers as a clamp. Mateo left me there. Gradually the milky glue began to turn clear.

  When the bead seemed dry enough, I made my way back upstairs to restring the necklace. Mateo put on headphones, opting to ignore me. I set the broken bead in the center, flanked with red ones. I imagined my mother’s skin, the way it was once—very pale, with blue veins in the temples and light freckle
s on her nose and eyelids. She sat on a lawn chair next to me. I was eleven. She held a cherry stem in her strong teeth and eyed me as I showed her how to tie one in a knot. She attempted to follow my lead, her mouth circling like she was chewing cud. Finally she stuck out her tongue to admit failure and the mangled stem fell against her clavicle.

  I looked at the glue, jagged in the cracks. “Come back,” I said to it. The bead said nothing. Mateo bobbed his head to the music and paged through a magazine, and for this I was grateful. If he moved closer, put his arm around me, I would have had to admit that I understood she was dead—that no amount of piecing her together would change that. It would have been like she was there on the carpet, her arms close to her side, her mouth cracked open as if trying to let in that last breath of air.

  A ROMANCE

  Mrs. Capp didn’t tell me we were having company this morning, but when the bell rings, she flies to the door as if she’s been waiting all her life. The man’s a bit of a hippie with long, wavy blond hair and an unkempt beard.

  “Liza, this is Satan.” She says his name with such assurance I can’t be sure I’ve heard her correctly. She articulated the “Sate” part far better than the “tan” part—and given his looks, he might be named “Seat-Man” or “Slaton.”

  “S-A-T-A-N?” I ask. He nods. I nod back. Am I missing something? Mrs. Capp did tell me, a few days ago, that she met a man while browsing through the record store downtown. “Nice-looking,” she said. “And very knowledgeable about percussive jazz.” She mentioned she might have him over sometime. But she didn’t warn me that he was coming this morning.

  “Nice to meet you,” I say. I’m still in my pajamas, reading the newspaper. In large, gothic font across the top of the front section are the words nine dead in bus collision. Satan jams a thumb through the hammer loop of his painter’s pants. He looks at the paper and I think I see his blue eyes twinkle, then he looks guiltily away.

  A few months ago, Mrs. Capp placed an ad in the local paper looking for “a quiet and respectful female roommate with a low tolerance for untidiness and a high regard for manners.” We didn’t hit it off so well the day I met with her about the room, but since she didn’t get many responses, I ended up moving in.