Warm Wuinter's Garden

by Neil Hetzner

  “I didn’t expect you to be here this early.”

  “Duty, sacred duty, dearie. Plus if anybody really fits that bill, it is I the good little fairy— always here to serve. Which slyly segues to your charming outfit. Why the khaki, soldier? Does your family have a fetish you’ve held back from me?”

  Peter wished that he had left his house a half hour earlier. Then, he would have been on the road before Raoul had arrived at the restaurant.

  “Yoo hoo, Petey, sweetie, there’s a question on the floor. Actually, two.”

  “On my way down, I may stop in Bristol.”

  Raoul walked behind Peter, shuffled a mound of menus into a deck and began to wipe their surfaces clean with a dampened sponge.

  “That’s cryptic.”

  “The parade. Bristol has a huge parade.”

  “Oh. How enchanting. Are we watching or walking?”

  Peter remained silent.

  “Luscious?”

  “I want to march.”

  Raoul froze in melodramatic amazement.

  “Why?”

  “It’s something I think I need to do.”

  “May I ask? Are you marching for Kuwait’s independence, Vietnam’s lack of, or your own?”

  “If I do it, I’m just marching.”

  “In those death boots? No way. You’re crippled enough as is. You want to march, you march in sneakers. Not some twenty year old boots. I’ll get you a pair from the cage.”

  “No.”

  “Koster. Listen up. No boots. That’s an order. Ooww, I love me when I get this way. When I was a sergeant in this man’s army, I was actually pretty good at this. I’ll get the shoes.”

  “I’ve got my sneakers in the car.”

  “Not those sneakers, darling. Those aren’t shoes. They’re the incunabula, the tabula rasa, of the restaurant. Be murdered today and a forensic scientist could use them to reconstruct the last three months’ specials. Old soldier, new shoes.”

  Peter conceded, “Okay, I’ll take them, but I don’t promise to wear them.”

  “Spoken just like a soldier about his condoms. Hang on, I’ll go get you a pair.”

  Peter was drying his hands when Raoul returned with a shoe box. He held it out toward Peter.

  “Merry marching.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Think of me while you do.”

  Peter looked questioningly at Raoul.

  “Not like in love, lover. As a fellow marcher. Think of me as a fellow marcher. Duty holds me here, but I’ll be there. In spirit. I’m a great fan of Independence Day. All men, even old queens, are created equal. We’re endowed with the right to life, alternative though it may be, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, however kinky. Ah, yes, the Fourth is definitely a fag’s holiday.”

  Peter smiled and nodded.

  “I’ll be back late tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Have fun. Hello to your folks. Tell them I hope the troubles have stopped. Good luck, I hope it all goes well.”

  “Thanks, again.”

  Peter had his hand on the door when Raoul said quietly, “It’d make a lovely sequel.”

  Peter stopped, but he didn’t turn around.

  “What’s that?”

  “Reborn on the Fourth of July.”

  As Peter pushed through the rusty screen door and limped his way across the parking lot in his ill fitting boots, he heard Raoul’s laugh and it reminded him of summer sounds from long ago.

  * * *

  Turning away from the window where she had been watching a squirrel eat the birdseed that had fallen from the feeder, Dilly was surprised by the fractured furniture in her kitchen. The kitchen table had shadow legs. The cupboard door had double handles. In the sink, ghosts of glasses and plates rose up and hovered just to the right of their more solid sources. The cereal box had a wraithic twin ascending from it. The whole room looked like it had been shattered and inexpertly glued back together again.

  “Great. Just great.”

  Dilly drummed her fingers on the counter top before using them to swipe at her tears.

  Now what?

  She had cleared the table, rinsed the dishes, loaded the dishwasher and sponged the counters clean of breakfast crumbs and smears. She had sorted through the tumble of clothes spilling from the laundry chute. She had loaded the washer and started it. She had packed the car even though it was still, at least, an hour before they would leave for Clarke’s Cove.

  Again, Dilly asked herself, Now what? Now what could she expect from life? What now?

  She could edge the sidewalk. Pull dandelions. Clean closets. Pack his things. Wash windows. Scrape paint on the garage. Put her head in the oven and what in an electric stove? Broil away? Clean the basement. Polish silver. Move out. Refinish the tool chest. Call a lawyer. Paint the bathroom. Find a donor. Label photos. Weed the myrtle. Make doughnuts. Sell Mary Kay. Rake the driveway. Wash the porches. Teach. Ruin his life. Tie the clematis. Whitewash the borderstones. Get the marshmallows.

  She was a mother in an empty house.

  Alone. Useless.

  Now what?

  Dilly cradled the phone tight to her ear.

  “Mother, Mother, how are you?”

  “I feel good.”

  “You sound tinny.”

  “I’m outside.”

  “So the phone we got you works?”

  “At this end, yes. It’s very handy. Thank you.”

  “You should have had one years ago.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Is it warm enough for you to be outside? It’s breezy up here.”

  Bett laughed.

  “Honey, I don’t have a cold.”

  “Are you reading?”

  “Oh no. I’m in the garden. Weeding.”

  “Weeding?” Dilly’s voice rose in dismay.

  “There’s a dead heat going between the weeds and the vegetables. I’m trying to help.”

  “Mother, Mother, I’ll do that when I get there.”

  “Dilly, honey, I can’t tell you how wonderful it feels to be out here. After I finish weeding, I’m going to pick beans. What time will you be here?”

  “We’ll start as soon as the kids get back from the game.”

  “Should we expect Bill?”

  “Who knows. I don’t even try to keep track of his schedule anymore. It seems pointless. It’s easier just to assume that he will always miss everything. It’s almost like he’s not part of the family anymore.”

  “Honey, he has a demanding job.”

  “He thinks he has a demanding wife.”

  “Dilly, I always thought a family was like a living thing. It never stayed the same. I’d just get used to how things were and they’d be different. There seem to be lots of times where everyone is going at a different speed. That makes it hard.”

  “It seems to me like the speed we always go is the one he picks. He changes and then my job is to accommodate to that. When is it my turn? When do I get what I want, Mother? Mother??”

  “Honey, I don’t know. I’m not sure any of us ever gets what we want. I’m learning to take what I’ve been given. I’ve got bright light and soft air and beans that are ready for picking. I’m sweaty, but it’s from work and the sun. I’ve had much worse sweats in the last year. I’ve got no see ums dancing around my head looking for a bite. But it’s a little tougher for them now that I’ve got some hair growing back. Looks worse every day. I look ridiculous. Like someone back from the Gulag. A cornfield in December. But…it’s hair.”

  “Mother, you’ll get tired. You should be careful.”

  “Oh, honey, I don’t think so. I feel good now. I don’t want to hoard or parcel out my life in little smidgens. The doctors think that I’m in pretty good shape. They’re pleased. And I’m pleased. But, we know they’ve been wrong before. I’ve got a day of health, and I’m not going to save it. Dilly, it’s cancer. For all that they know, they don’t know very much. And even after all the intimacy I’ve had with it, I don’t know an
ything except that I have to take what it gives me. I’m trying to do that. I’m starting to realize that it’s not so horrid. In a lot of ways it’s not so different from anything else. I never planned on having cancer; it just happened. But, then, when I was young, I never planned on living by the ocean, or being married to a banker, or having four wonderful children. It just happened. Almost none of the specifics of my life have been planned. I’ve been thinking about that a lot.”

  Since Dilly did not want to hear her mother being so philosophical because nothing her mother was saying agreed with what she herself was feeling, she interrupted, “How’s dad?”

  “I think he’s wonderful.”

  “Mother, you know that’s not what I meant.”

  Bett continued, “If you had forced me at twenty to design my mate, if you had made me wrestle with what he would look like and what he would do, I’m sure the prototype I would have come up with wouldn’t have had much resemblance to your father. Except for that horrible time a few months ago, I have been very much in love with your father for more than forty years, and yet I probably wouldn’t have pulled him out of a line up of potential mates. When I married him I didn’t know that, through happenstance, we would live in Massachusetts or here by the water. I’ve been very happy in both places. I loved the mountains of western Massachusetts and I love the ocean; yet I think I could have been just as happy if we’d stayed in Indiana or had moved to Wyoming. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

  “Yes, Mother, you’re saying that you could have married anyone, had any kind or number of kids and lived anyhow and anywhere and it wouldn’t have made a difference. Twelve kids in a tenement with Vic the Vacuumist and you still would have been happy. Are you feverish?”

  Bett laughed so hard Dilly jerked the phone from her ear.

  “Yes, honey, I expect I am. In a way I’ve always been a little bit feverish. Just like you. I suppose we get it from Opa. He was feverish about nature. He could be very cool with people, but not when he was outside. I always had that same kind of enthusiasm about all kinds of things. Until I got sick. Almost worse than what cancer does to your body is what it does to your thinking. The thought of what it was doing to me got inside my head and kept growing and growing. I could feel myself getting small and mean. I didn’t want that. I really didn’t want to end my life that way, but, then, I let there be lots of days where I reveled in my misery. ‘Look what’s happened to me. It’s not fair.’ I got to where I thought I deserved to be mean and small and there was something very satisfying about being that way, just filling up on bile.”

  “You weren’t that bad.”

  “Dilly, you’re sweet. But you only saw a little and that was on the outside. The inside was much bitterer. I could feel myself gnawing at my insides. Trying to hollow me out. To toss all my good feelings and memories out like they were nothing more than old bills and receipts. As I got emptier, I could feel myself collapse and shrink. I could feel myself getting smaller, denser, meaner. There were too many days where I just reveled in that. ‘There, now do you see? I’ve got the whole disease.’”

  “Mother, Mother, don’t. Everybody goes through that. They’re stages.”

  Dilly wondered what stages awaited her. What stages were left? Hadn’t she had all the stages before she had even made her decision to get pregnant? What could be left? She was trying hard to listen to what her mother was saying, but she seemed to have so much noise inside of her that she couldn’t hear. Maybe later.

  “Kids will be home soon. I better make sure everything’s ready. See you in a couple of hours.”

  “I can’t wait, Dilly. We’re going to have a wonderful time. “I love you, honey.”

  “Me, too, Mom.”

  Dilly’s final word stayed in her mouth like a hard candy.

  Chapter 28

  Bett dragged her gathering basket along the row of green beans. As she braced her weight on one reddish, slack skinned arm, she used her free hand to reach up under the spade shaped leaves to find their hidden fruit. When she grew tired, she stopped picking to sort through her harvest. From among the hundreds of long straight pods, Bett selected a small curled bean. She brought it to her nose and sniffed its sea breeze clean smell. Its plump flesh pushed back against her teeth before it snapped in half. She used her tongue to pry the tiny pulses from their protection. As she slowly chewed and savored its goodness she ordered her thoughts.

  Steamed green beans with butter, lime juice and grill roasted red peppers. Maybe a few blanched almonds for more color. With Peter marching in the parade and Dilly coming late, they wouldn’t have dinner until late. They’d use the raspberries she and Ellen had picked for ice cream. She frowned as she thought of her jealousy at the web of scratches on Ellen’s arms. What wonderful wounds. She had none. A scratch could make the lymphedema come. Ellen had picked while she had held the basket. She needed to remember to ask Neil about the salt for the ice cream maker. She hadn’t known whether to tell the others about Peter. She hadn’t known whether he would want them along the parade route. She wasn’t sure just how he would shed his shame. It was leaving. She knew that. She had known it from the night that he had shown up, red eyed but tearless, to talk about legless men. Legless, but not crippled. She was sure the shame would go, but it would go like a snake’s skin rubbed against rocks. He must make his way for awhile with its dull shreds dragging behind him.

  As our past acts hang on with all of us, she thought.

  Life twisted on its way. Random forces careened into significant events. Breaks and bruises and blood occurred. There didn’t seem to be much one could do to avoid the bad. Nita’s risk of cancer had been an accident. Peter’s time in Vietnam had been determined by the pure chance of his birth date. She had lost a breast and leg because… Just because.

  Harm came. It roared through a life like a tornado. A mindless force. It threw lives over, snapped long held assumptions, bent and twisted dreams and hopes, and uprooted faith. Then, it, the actual force itself, was gone. Swept past to another place, another’s life. And one was left standing amidst the wreckage. With a choice. Stay shocked. Frozen like a statue. Holding tight to memories. Or, forever parsing shoulds and mights and maybes. Or, one could move. Bend. Bend over. Pick through the debris. Gather. Sort and save. Salvage.

  Harm could be planned for and protected against, but not prevented. That was the first and, ever and always, the hardest lesson for any person, but especially a parent, to learn. Constant care and sleepless protection could not prevent harm from digging its sharp dry fingers into a child of any age.

  Harm couldn’t be prevented. That parent’s nightmare. That most hellish truth couldn’t be denied. It was the simplest rule. Life’s first law. Harm was inevitable.

  Bett finished picking out the row of beans. The beans and grilled salmon drizzled with basil oil and potato salad with new potatoes, peas and peapods in yogurt. The Fourth meant salmon. She would snap beans with Nita and listen hard to the small voice, fighting fear so fiercely behind the placid face.

  Bett stretched to put the basket as far from her as possible. She reached behind, found the rubber armpit guard of her crutch, and, using another new skill she was mastering, maneuvered it so that she could use it to push the gathering basket closer to the edge of the garden. She winced when a sharp pain shot through her buttocks and up her spine as she let too much of her weight shift onto her stump. She took a deep breath and held it until the pain’s claws slid back into their sheaths.

  Make a spread of smoked blue fish, blue cheese, chopped fennel fronds, walnuts and cream cheese. Dilly wouldn’t help. Two, three, four of the ingredients were bad. Serve it with celery and endive leaves rather than rye bread or crackers. That might tip the scale. What a funny girl. She wasn’t mean, just bossy. And lost. A lost boss needing a job. What a funny love they had. So deep it hurt. But they could never talk without irritation. Sometimes, they could hardly be in the same room together. But, still, mother and daughter. Loving mother
and loving daughter. If only Dilly could learn that the only real protection from hurt was joy. Harm’s antidote, joy, unlike harm itself, wasn’t random. Joy could be learned because it was the certain effect of specific causes. Give to give, not to get, that brought joy. If only Dilly, who so wanted joy, who sought it from all around her, who thought it could be extracted, could learn that. Mercy brought joy. Clemency for self and others. Peter was learning. Slough off memory and forgive because mercy cut, and might be the only thing that could, the grapples from the past. Courage, fear filled acts of courage, birthed joy. Nita poised. Standing still and trembling. If she could but jump. Gratitude brought joy. Remembering the gifts of grace. Sight and sense and common sense and…

  Bett rolled onto her stomach. Already she had found that from there she could push herself to an awkward kneeling position, and then, after balancing most of her weight onto her left haunch, she could plant her crutches so that she could use them to draw herself up. In her violent heaving to bring herself onto her knee, a hand broke the stem of a newly weeded fennel plant. Its clean perfume filled the air. She sighed then laughed at her clumsiness. Her callused fingers slid down the fennel’s base. She twisted the slender stem from its roots. She braced herself and began to twine a crown. Two earwigs skittered from their nest. She brushed them from the shoot. She finished twisting the fronds into a circle. She drew the crown to her mouth and trimmed a hanging sprig with her teeth and savored its sweet spiciness.

  Bett tried to put the crown on her head with two hands as if it was a coronation, but she found she couldn’t keep her balance. She threw out her scarred right arm and used it to wedge herself upright.

  As Bett placed the plait of green on her stubbly head she whispered,

  “And he who battled and subdued,

  A wreath of fennel wore.”

  Bett pulled herself up on her crutches and haltingly made her way down the row with the wreath askew on her head.

  What now? What next?

  Find Neil and hold him. Have him hold her. Repair wounds.