Court of the Myrtles

by Lois Cahall

  Charlie was the first to find a job. He became a lifeguard at the public pool in Roslindale Square. He also asked me “Do you wanna go steady?” and when I said “Yes” he’d sneak Julia and me into the pool for free. I was forever worried about my tan lines and he was always worried about his burning shoulders, though the worse the burn, the cooler it was. For Charlie, it was true love. For me, it was just a free month at the city pool.

  With September came the end of summer romance. Charlie protested his undying love for me at the Grey Hound bus terminal. He was being sent to a New Hampshire boarding school for his senior year. “You’ll write me, right?” were his last words. I looked him up and down before sarcastically answering, “No.” Then I just glanced down at my half-bitten fingernails, extending them for closer examination, before turning to go. I didn’t turn back, not a once, but Julia did. She just shrugged her shoulders at him after noticing his drooping, puppy dog eyes. Later that night, Julia told me Charlie never stopped looking back at me, all the while waving limply with one hand, his duffle bag in the other. Truth was, I was just embarrassed that a boy would like me that long.

  But it was about ten before ten that night—I remember because I was setting my clock for my first day of school—when word broke about Charlie in the neighborhood. He had decided to hitchhike instead of taking that bus. And when the evening rain moved in, so did the fog. On a long stretch of highway in New Hampshire, an oncoming vehicle didn’t see Charlie near the guardrail. His body was tossed twenty feet into the air, landing face down in a puddle. Killed instantly.

  I was devastated, not just by the news, but also by the way I last spoke to him. I had been afraid he would forget about me and not come back from boarding school. Or worse, return with a new girlfriend. Now I was living with the guilt of knowing I couldn’t take back my behavior. Not at Christmas. Not ever. My mom always told me to be nice to everybody because it may be the last time you see them. My mom was right.

  At his funeral, aisle side of the second pew, I realized the same Catholic Church used for Charlie’s First Holy Communion was one used for his funeral. And that the same church used for his funeral should have been used for his wedding. This was my first funeral and it would forever affect my thoughts of church aisles and walking down them.

  Especially when it came to Eddy.

  Around the time Joy turned fifteen, she miraculously stopped being invisible. Maybe because there was no hiding her size twelve figure or maybe because her face was covered in pimples—the latest explosion on the tip of her nose magnified by her mother’s compact mirror she stared into from behind the locked bathroom door. Rummaging through her mother’s cosmetics, Joy came upon an ivory cover-up stick that she hoped would work its magic.

  But on the outside of the bathroom…

  “C’mon! Hurry up lard ass!” her brother screamed from the other side of the door. “Stop hogging the bathroom! I’m gonna piss my pants!”

  “Why should I?” demanded Joy as she looked through various pencil sticks and came upon a blue one. Joy was sure the cobalt shade would draw attention to her eyes, her one positive feature. Even Georgey always complimented her eyes from where he sat in front of her in third period Earth Science.

  Joy pulled open the door to her brother on the other side, hands in position to quickly bolt the door back shut if needed. Startled by her unexpected emergence, he just stood there. “I said I’m. Not. Ready. Yet!” She slammed the door again, catching the lock before he could shimmy the handle. His pounding increased to kicking. But she didn’t care. She’d spent her childhood being jealous of her brothers who had time with a father she barely ever knew. She could read the transparent expressions on people’s faces, the one that said “That poor chubby thing lost her father.”

  Alice now had time for a hobby, thanks to her policeman’s pension, and her gratitude showed up in the yellow roses that reached for the sun on the new brick walkway. A four-foot path of Astilbe swayed its feathery-pink flumes in the breeze where Joy’s wooden swing once hung on the branch of the old oak tree, now sitting on a dusty garage shelf next to a can of turpentine.

  Alice walked the length of the yard, meticulously plucking dandelions like some Mandrill monkey picking bugs from its baby’s belly. Her passion had become her obsession. Alice had won second place in the Summer Petal Contest that appeared page twenty of House & Garden. It was for her “Mozart,” a hybrid musk rose, simple to grow but a real “looker.” Her petite climbing roses came in third place for their “bouncy touch.” Alice had built a trellis up the side of the wooden fence where the sunshine cast rays on their perfect velvet petals.

  When the sun went down, Alice would come through the back door, run a hand across her sweaty brow and drop into the kitchen chair as though she’d just sunk into a mesh hammock in Bermuda. After a deep exhale, she’d examine the dirt under her fingernails, eventually noticing Joy struggling to get through her homework at the kitchen table.

  “Need some help?” she’d ask.

  “No. I’m on the last one.”

  “Can you be a good kid and pour your mother a Sprite?” she’d invariably say.

  Despite Alice’s emotional absence, she still considered herself an adequate mother. Okay, the house was always a mess but, unlike her dead husband, at least she was there, and the garden was glorious. “It ain’t easy” being a widow to five kids is what ran through her mind when placed her head on the Pontiac steering wheel between red lights. Every day was something new for the kids—soccer practice to Driver’s Ed, marching band to karate lessons—until eventually their activities turned into after-school jobs. Her oldest, Peter gave up the idea of college, instead opting for the job of man of the house. Peter worked down at the Stop & Shop, where he knew if he greeted those customers the moment the sliding doors peeled open, so long as there weren’t any loose oranges rolling across the floor, and if he formed the lemons into a pyramid just right, someday Peter would be awarded the position of assistant manager.

  With all the comings and goings and only one mother to come and go, Alice could surely be forgiven for forgetting to pick up Joy from the dentist after having two of her impacted wisdom teeth removed. Joy sat on the office front step, icepack held to her swollen cheeks, her neck craning to see each car that drove by, as her tongue played mouth hockey with the bloodied stitches.

  A horn finally startled Joy as Alice appeared curbside, slammed on the brakes, and hollered out the window, “C’mon, honey. Hurry along! Gotta pick up your brother’s tux.”

  “A tuxedo?” mumbled Joy, lifting the icepack.

  “Yes, for the prom. Needs hemming before the seamstress closes!”

  Joy didn’t even seem to notice that her mother hadn’t inquired how she was feeling.

  If Joy was upset that she didn’t have a boyfriend, she certainly didn’t let on. Her hefty size made her more of a laughing target in gym class rather than a girl you’d take to second base. The only one who noticed her was faithful Georgey Pfeifer, now a tight-end on the high school football team. She’d linger at his locker just after English Honors with ten minutes to spare before the humiliation of gym.

  Georgey would round the corner genuinely pleased to see Joy, though he usually had a blond cheerleader on one arm and a stack of books in the other. It was clear to Joy that Georgey’s various girlfriends only tolerated her, their eyes casting a quick once-over at her formless peasant blouse, or her hand-me-downs from the neighbor’s daughter, left tactfully in a bag at the back door, near Alice’s boxwood shrubs.

  But as much as she liked Georgey, Joy preferred the safety of her one true love, Andy Gibb. She hoped the other Bee Gees wouldn’t be offended. She knew her brothers would make fun of her—and him—so to spare them both from humiliation she hung Andy’s poster on the back of her closet door. He looked comfortable there, lying sideways propped up on one arm smiling only for her, the big chain medallion shining on his chest. Joy ran her fingers across the bulge in his white jeans, wondering what
a man looked like naked. “I Just Want to be Your Everything” on repeat play, she dabbed her brother’s Jovan Musk on Andy’s neck and lips so that he’d smell like a man when she kissed him. Not that she knew what a real man tasted like, but as far as she was concerned, Andy Gibb was all the man she needed and the least likely to break her heart.

  Joy had contemplated running away from home a million times but this time she was determined to do it. Kneeling down to reach her stash of cash neatly hidden under her bed in an old wooden box that her father had kept his wristwatches in, she counted her savings from walking the neighbor’s dog and delivering newspapers on Sunday. Ten dollars. Twelve if you added the coins. She was loaded! Ten dollars could get her a train ticket all the way to California, couldn’t it?

  Joy dove up onto her mattress relieved, looking up at Andy on the door and wondering if he’d want to go with her. Problem was he might wrinkle. So she took two slightly melted Snickers’ worth of time to contemplate what to do. Luckily, Andy Gibb was so patient with all her bad habits.

  With the last bite chewed, she licked her chocolaty fingers, scrunched up the wrappers and decided it was time to make her exit. Cash box under her arm, she kissed Andy goodbye. Forever. He was the one person she could depend on to keep an eye on her room in her absence.

  But she instead she found herself wandering the garden center roaming between the rows of perennials, debating about whether it might be smarter to wait until summer vacation to start her new life. And besides, that term paper was due on Monday—the Shakespeare assignment that counted for thirty credits towards her final grade. And Andy might be getting lonely back home….

  Scanning the rows of pink begonias and purple pansies, Joy came upon a fat, prickly cactus sitting all alone in the corner, soaking up the sun. Just the kind of plant Joy could relate to. She was sure it would be perfect for her mother, since it was different from anything else she’d ever seen, so she had the store clerk tie a pink ribbon around it, and handed over her tin of cash, before returning home to where her mother was busy trimming back some hedges.

  When Alice finally looked up, she took one look at the prickly plant and said, “Oh Joy, you shouldn’t have!” And meant it. Twirling the pot critically in her left hand she explained, “Course we can’t really grow cactus in a northeast garden. Needs full hot sun. Like out west in Arizona.” Joy’s face hung low. In a moment of rare understanding, Alice stood up and removed her garden gloves. She drew her daughter’s head into her chest very tightly, and declared, “Oh Joy, I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Problem was, Alice didn’t know what to do with her either.

  Chapter Seven

  R. I. P.

  Anger

  With the threat of April frostbite passed, the town has finally turned on the cemetery’s water spigot. Twisting the knob, I drag the long green hose to Joy’s grave, barely noticing that it only trickles droplets onto the firm row of Astilbes that Alice and I planted just last week.

  “Don’t over-water those,” hollers Alice. “It rained just yesterday.” She approaches from up the hill, bending over to catch her breath, her hands on her kneecaps.

  “Course you got a kink in the hose—right there—all twisted. That’s why the water’s stopped.”

  Staring down to the soil, a small puddle of mud forms around my sneakers. My tears could water these plants faster.

  “Did you hear me, Marla? Oh look—you’ve got some pink flumes forming.” Alice touches my shoulder, but I pull back. “Marla?”

  “We’re all just time bombs!” I snap, practically exploding myself. “And when our time is up, it’s up. Could be cancer, could be hit by a bus, could be murder.”

  ‘Oh I see. So we’re angry today…”

  I shoot her a look. “No, we’re not angry. I am.”

  “So you decided to take it out on my daughter’s grave, eh?”

  “Oh, no, I—”

  Alice grabs the hose from my hand, untwisting the kink before aiming it straight at me, her finger pulling the trigger.

  “Don’t you dare—” I say.

  But it’s too late. Alice sprays hard and I hop around cursing her name as she unloads a hose full of bullets. She finally stops and lowers the nozzle. Panting hard, I look down at my soaking wet clothes. I could, quite literally, kill this woman. But then, despite myself, I start laughing. And so does she.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just—yeah, I’m angry,” I say, wiping my hands along my saturated body. “Or was…”

  “Anger is a good friend for a while. But you can’t beat laughter.” Alice turns off the water from the spigot. “The truth is, if you stay angry for too long, it keeps the real emotions from surfacing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the emotions that allow you to mourn, to move forward and begin rebuilding the me inside.”

  I flap my water-soaked shirt in the breeze. “It ain’t easy.”

  “Nobody said it was.”

  “I got a pay raise today and an extra week’s vacation. It sucks, Alice.”

  “It does?”

  “Yeah,” I say, “First thing I wanted to do was call my mother.” I head for my car trunk to grab a beach towel. “And I wanted to discuss the idea of going back to school. I enrolled at the community college two days ago and I wanted to tell her that, too. See what she thinks about my class choices.”

  “She might not be here, but you have to assume she is listening.” Alice winds up the hose. “By the way, I’m proud of you for enrolling, if it counts for anything. You can talk to me about your courses.” She winks as if she knows that talking to Alice is something of a mixed blessing for me.

  “Thanks,” I say, glancing at the Peter Rabbit box stashed in a corner of the trunk under the spray can of Armoral and a cleaning rag. I toss the emergency beach blanket on top of it and slam the lid of the trunk down. “You know, the only good thing that’s come from my mother’s death? When I’m trying to prove a point to and I say, ‘I swear on my mother’s grave!’ They take me seriously.”

  I’m at my mother’s stone now and I look up to the sky. “Do you think everybody sees the light—the near-death tunnel that people talk about? Do you think Charlie saw the tunnel, the light?”

  “Charlie?”

  “My boyfriend.”

  “I thought his name was Eddy.”

  “Charlie was my first love. I was just thinking how unfair it was that he died. He was in a car accident—actually an out-of-car accident. He was hitchhiking. Only seventeen.”

  Alice plants her hands on her hips staring to the sky, struggling for words. “Would it help if you knew Charlie didn’t feel any pain?”

  “C’mon, Alice, you know better than that. That’s about as bad as ‘he’s in a better place,’” I say. “How the fuck do you know if he felt pain?”

  “I don’t, it’s true. But they say the spirit leaves the body very fast. Often it’s a body’s own spirit that will see the crushed car or the scene of a crime and wonder what unfortunate person was killed, only to find out that it was actually them that was hit by the car.”

  “Really?” Now she’s got my attention. Did that happen for my mom, too?

  “Look, I know I’m only an silly old woman, but I believe that when death occurs unexpectedly and the spirit is tossed out of the body, somebody from the afterlife will be there to greet them and help them through the emotional encounter, even before they feel any pain. It’s that old saying, ‘It happened so quickly, he didn’t know what hit him.’”

  “Thanks, Alice. That’s nice. Especially if my mom didn’t feel any pain either.”

  There’s a moment of silence after my words slip out. I’m almost wishing Alice would ask me how my mom died. But she doesn’t. I run my hand over the carved name of her stone. “How do you know so much about this stuff?”

  “I’ve been around a lot of death.”

  “Yeah, well, me too. But it doesn’t make me an expert,” I drop down on the lawn and stretch my arms behind
my head. “I’ve got so paranoid I’m going to lose more people that when someone dear to me phones, I save their voicemail just in case it’s the last one. Used to do that with Eddy on the answering machine.”

  “I can understand why you’d do that,” says Alice, bending to pick up random twigs around the other graves.

  “Sometimes I feel guilty discussing my mom with you. I mean, you lost a child. It doesn’t get worse than that.”

  “Yes and no,” says Alice squatting down at my side, “Joy’s death was an illness. It gave our family time to readjust to the idea that she wasn’t going to be around forever. I had time to make choices for the funeral well in advance. From what you tell me, your mother’s death was an accident, so you had to make choices in the midst of shock and disbelief. My mourning took place long before my Joy died. It began when we got the news.” Alice is by my side now, lying down looking at the sky, too. “I got to say goodbye. You’re still way behind me in the mourning process. You’re still trying to say goodbye.”

  I close my eyes and let the smell of the spring air guide my emotions. Suddenly I feel calm, amazed at how this woman has restored my balance. How she understands me. Almost like a mother—my mother. I open my eyes. “You must have been a very loving mother,” I say.

  Alice just looks down and says nothing.

  Chapter Eight

  At the stroke of ten, three tiny plastic birds glided across their wooden slides to deliver their message: “cuckoo!” Who the hell has three cuckoo clocks? A house that used to be owned by a clock repairer, that’s who. Every night, my grandfather would finish up in his repair shop, call Grandma and say, “It’s five minutes before five so I’ll be leaving at six sixteen. Have supper on…” He thought he was funny. And she thought it was funny that he thought it was funny.

  Grandma knew something was wrong when one day he was six minutes late. He was already dead of a heart attack. He never made all the other suppers that she eventually ate alone.