Court of the Myrtles

by Lois Cahall

  When Mom wasn’t working weekends at the crisis center, she had her own personal crisis to deal with at home: Grandma. Together Mom and I bundled Grandma’s legs in a warm flannel blanket, tucked both sides into her wheelchair, snapped the metal lock into place, and moved her to the front porch. Passersby would wave and Grandma would wave back. She had no idea who they were—she had no idea who anybody was anymore—but she’d place her jiggling cup of orange pekoe tea on her lap and wave back all the same.

  After that, I’d go right out the front door, kiss Grandma on the cheek and she’d say, “Bye, Rosie,” thinking I was my mother.

  The corner hair salon, Sam’s Beauty Bonanza, hung a sign in the window “Looking for a Girl Friday”—even though it was Saturday—to answer phones, take appointments and open mail. Simple enough, I thought, especially since I wanted to spend time reading my scribbled notes from the Impressionist period. With the old ladies done by noon, appointments slowed down so I’d bury my nose in my notes, one hand on the page the other hand dangling half an egg salad sandwich.

  On my first day, 2 p.m. rolled around and someone interrupted Manet and me by shoving a clipboard under my nose.

  “Just sign here, and then here,” said a voice. He pushed the clipboard right on top of my book until I had no choice but to look up and acknowledge him. I saw a man with boyish freckles, eyes bluer than a Caribbean sea and a smile that could light up Times Square.

  “Sign where?” I asked.

  “Here and here,” he said pointing, all smiles. “Special delivery. Name’s Eddy.”

  I grabbed his pen, scribbled my name and returned his clipboard as he handed over the package that contained peroxide and hair brushes.

  “New here?” was the first question Eddy asked me. From then on, it would be “Whatcha reading?” One time he spun around my book about the gardens and architecture of the Alhambra. “Wanna take me?” he asked, not joking, even before he finally got up the courage to ask me the next question. My answer was “Yes, I’ll have dinner with you.”

  But it was the question, “What’s your zip code?” that really caught my attention. No man ever asks a potential girlfriend that question; a phone number’s usually enough. But Eddy explained his question with, “Because if I know your zip code I can get on your route.”

  I laughed. He never got on my route, but he did send a huge bouquet of flowers to my house, a combination of yellow- and peach-colored roses that actually made Grandma’s respond for the first time in weeks.

  Our first dinner date at a Chinese restaurant was perfect. We had everything in common right down to our inability to use chopsticks so we both finished the meal with duck sauce all over ourselves.

  We ended up back at the shoebox-sized apartment he shared with his roommate—a U.P.S. man. Eddy and I made love on that first date, and spent all of Sunday in bed watching old movies, ordering pizza and swapping stories about our childhoods. No surprise that Eddy’s favorite of mine was about the black nun who worked at the shelter with my mother. She was from Africa and had just arrived from doing mission work where she had seen a mailman, just like Eddy, strangled to death by a big snake that was hanging in the tree. According to the nun, the snake devoured the mailman one big gulp at a time, taking two days to eat him alive while the nuns watched, screaming and praying. I wasn’t sure if the story was true, but man, it impressed Eddy.

  By Sunday night I had agreed to go on a second date and even agreed to someday take him to the Alhambra in Spain, so long as he paid the plane tickets.

  When I woke on Monday morning in his bed, I sat up to find him across the room, standing in front of the floor-length mirror adjusting his collar. He caught me staring, and spoke to me through his reflection: “It’s the blue suit, isn’t it?” he said. “Chicks dig this uniform.” I loved how Eddy loved his job, wishing I too, could want something in life so badly.

  Six weeks later, over a postal delivery of curlers and bobby pins, he confessed he was in love with me. “Well, I’m in love back,” I said, not entirely sure whether I meant it, but not wanting to offend him the way I had done to Charlie so many years ago.

  Eddy told me he had a present for me but that I’d have to come with him. Sam gave me the nod and I left the reception desk with Eddy who took me by the hand to the back of his red, white and blue postal van. In the back was a box, too big for a diamond ring, and too small to be anything overly exciting. It sat all by its lonesome. “It’s from a famous nightgown store in Beverly Hills,” he said. “Been sitting here unopened and unclaimed for years. Thought you might want it… could be sexy.”

  “Oh what the heck,” I said, and opening it, found the prettiest yellow satin negligee. I lifted it from its tissue paper and held up against my chest. “Hey, it’s even my size! A six!” A tiny jewelry box dropped out from inside the nightgown and onto the truck’s metal floor.

  “You believed me?” said Eddy. “I was kidding.”

  “Huh?”

  “Could get fired for tampering with official government property. I bought it for you.”

  “The nightgown?” I asked.

  “Of course, the nightgown. And the jewelry box.”

  I loved his sense of humor and how he took pride in his job as a U.S. Postal Worker. It seemed like a respectable career. Maybe that’s all I required in those days—that and the sweet microscopic quarter-carat tiffany-set ring: a simple, secure life.

  “I want to give Marla everything she’s ever wanted,” said Eddy to my mom. “I have a good job, good retirement benefits, and a solid future. She’ll never have to work a day in her life.”

  “That’s very chivalrous, Eddy,” said my mother arranging the vase of mums and daisies. I could tell by her tone she was touched by his sincerity. The flowers he bought her didn’t hurt either. “But once my mother passes on, I think Marla will want to resume a full-time education. She’ll have her own career. Be a museum curator. Travel the world…”

  “Once the babies come, she won’t want that anymore. And besides, I’ve been saving since I graduated from high school. I’d say in two years we’ll be able to buy a house, start a family, and hell, we can even get a dog once we fence in the yard.”

  “Marla’s more of a cat person.”

  True, but I did like the idea of my own house.

  At that moment the three living-room cuckoo clocks released their little brown birds. Exactly 6 p.m. Time doesn’t wait for you to decide what you’ll do next.

  Maybe all these clocks chiming at exactly this moment was actually my grandpa come back from the dead to give me a message that it was time all right—time to get the hell out!

  Alice never dated another man following her husband’s death. She insisted that any husband who died in the line of duty “deserved to be upheld in a woman’s memory with the utmost honor and dignity.” That’s what Alice told Joy when she found her mother clutching teary-eyed to a photo of her dead husband.

  Alice’s heart remained full of love for her police hero though her house was now empty. After twenty years of routine and morning chaos, suddenly there were no more brown-bag lunches to make, no more required summer reading list, no more piles of dirty dishes and no more shoes at the front door mat. Her black Easy Spirits sat there solo, joined occasionally by a pair of heels when Joy came home from work, which somehow made it seem all the lonelier.

  Alice spent much of her time roaming through the one place that would never let her down—her garden. She wandered her meticulously pruned vegetables, fenced-in by a chicken coop, where she examined a plump, beefsteak tomato suspended perfectly from its vine. Alice might have been alone but the smell of the nearby honeysuckle touching the tips of the fence was companionship enough.

  Joy had finished school and trained for her Real Estate license. She found contentment in other people’s happiness and wanted their houses to be perfect just the way she’d always imagined hers would be someday—her home with Georgey Pfeifer, as her husband a long-abandoned dream. They’d lost
touch after high school graduation when he went off to college in California. She tried to find him once, but there were 127 Pfeifers in the San Diego phonebook.

  One time, she even had a couple named “Pfeifer” tour an old Victorian with her and she inquired if they might be distant cousins. They weren’t. They didn’t purchase the house either.

  But weekends were another story. Even though her mother was just in the next room, she felt alone. Oreos were now only a distant memory of comfort. Joy had begun spending time at the gym but she wanted to do something more meaningful. She wanted to volunteer. Which is how she found herself working as a paramedic’s assistant on Sundays after a few night courses at the local community college. And how she found herself falling in love with Scotty, the police officer who she met at a traffic accident, and the man who taught her to spin her sorrow into happiness by saving lives.

  She could remember exactly the moment love took over every vein in her body, the first time she’d felt a warm security, the first time she felt any sexual sensation. When Scotty began moving his arms to maneuver the traffic out of the ambulance’s way, he saw Joy staring at him and unleashed a giant smile.

  And that’s how it all began. Love at first sight… just like in the movies.

  One Saturday soon after, as Alice was sitting on the back deck, sipping iced tea, slicing up that beefsteak tomato, a shadow cast itself over her and her life.

  “Joy? You’re home early.”

  “Mom, hi, we need to talk,” said Joy, her eyes darting to the kitchen door where Scotty stood shifting from his left foot to his right. She signaled for him to come out. He had gone from calm, quiet police officer to a bumbling bag of nerves. Practically crashing through the screen, he tripped over a rake Alice had resting on the banister and knocked over her glass of iced tea.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Alice,” said Scotty, instantly falling to his knees gathering up the ice cubes sliding through the slats of the deck floor.

  “It’s only ice,” said Alice. “Lawn could use some watering. Come now, leave it.” But he was determined to put all the ice cubes back in the glass, slippery in his fingers and covered with white sand particles. Alice wondered how this man could actually be a police officer. It was only a matter of time before he forgot to put the safety on his gun and shot himself in the thigh. But she tried to contain a laugh at the thought of it. “You were saying, Joy…” said Alice.

  “Oh mom, Scotty and I, well, we’ve been dating for a while now and…”

  “What she’s trying to say, Alice, is that I’ve asked your daughter to marry me,” said Scotty, smiling up proudly and reaching up to hand Alice the glass now full of ice cubes, sand and several blades of grass. He remained on his knees, which was kind of an odd sight. “And, since Joy’s father’s not here, I figured I didn’t have to ask your permission first.” Alice motioned for him to rise. He stood up. “So I…”

  “Oh my, that’s wonderful news,” said Alice staring down at the empty glass. And then feeling as she should do something, Alice leapt from her chair to pull them in for a hug. “Congratulations!”

  There was a strange crack in her voice. She was reminded of the day she told her own parents that she too was to marry a cop. “Your father would have been proud, honey. A police officer, just like him,” she explained, tapping Scotty on the back. Of course, when Alice had announced to her parents that she was going to wed some thirty years ago they were thrilled simply to have her out of the house. “One less mouth to feed,” she remembered hearing her father say later that night. But with Joy, it wouldn’t be that way. “Do you want to live here?” asked Alice. “Just until you get on your feet? Save a little?”

  Joy and Scotty shared a look.

  “Plenty of room,” insisted Alice.

  “Well, we don’t think…”

  “Oh, c’mon, just think about it before you say ‘no,’” said Alice. “We can knock down a wall and make your brother’s bedroom larger. Like a master suite. What do you think?”

  Again the two swapped glances.

  “Mom, that’s really sweet, but we can’t.”

  “I’ve been promoted from traffic controller,” announced Scotty.

  “Youngest one ever,” said Joy.

  “Bonuses and everything, I even get my own squad car!” added Scotty.

  “In Philadelphia,” added Joy.

  “That’s wonderful!” And then her mind processed the last word. “Philadelphia? But that’s so far…” said Alice, hesitant of what might come next. Her eyes searched Joy’s for answers, but Joy’s eyes were cast down to the lawn where she watched one lone ice cube slipping away.

  “We have to move to Philadelphia, Mom,” announced Joy. “It’s the chance of a lifetime for Scotty and I can get a transfer to another real estate office.”

  “It’s where my family’s from,” said Scotty, “so they’re absolutely ecstatic. We’ll be living closer to them.” Joy twisted her hand this way and that, the sun catching her three-carat diamond’s flawless cut in its rays. It was the very ring Scotty’s mother had handed down from her grandmother.

  “Well, of course they must be excited to have their son back. It’s your hometown…” said Alice, pulling her lawn chair under her legs, and sitting before she fainted.

  “Mom, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “It’s only about an eight-hour drive, give or take,” said Joy. “And we can talk every day. I’ll get one of those long-distance phone plans.”

  “And I get three paid vacation weeks a year,” said Scotty, “So you know we’ll be here to visit you.”

  But Alice wasn’t listening to them. All the convincing in the world wouldn’t change what was going on in her head. She knew that her daughter Joy, the child she had paid the least attention to, was grown and gone right before her eyes. And when they say “it’s never too late” Alice realized it might be. Just like her husband, she’d lost the chance to do the things to make it all worth it. She’d failed again. Alice looked at the last remains of the ice cube dissolving down the hillside and knew exactly what that cube was feeling.

  “Mom, are you sure you’re okay with this?” asked Joy.

  Alice nodded, and drifted off into her rose garden, leaving the two of them to watch after her. Pinching a dead bud from a rose stem she turned back, “Aren’t roses the most romantic flower on the planet?”

  Chapter Nine

  R.I.P.

  Withdrawal & Loneliness

  Two days before Mother’s Day, I’m sitting on the grass by the side of my mom’s grave hugging my kneecaps and rocking myself. “Can Mother’s Day actually be worse than Christmas?” I ask her. “A holiday to honor a mother who no longer exists?”

  I look at my watch—ever a clock-repairer’s grandchild. 10:55—I’m five minutes early but so is Alice. Today I want to be alone. So do I really care? But before I can answer that…

  “Hey there,” says Alice.

  “Hey.”

  “Ever read the epitaphs on some of these ole timer’s graves?” Alice strolls from stone to stone, her eyes taking in the inscriptions. “No, really, I’m serious. Have you read them?” she asks. “I like that one—right over there.” Alice makes her way to a random, grey-granite stone. She begins reading it: “‘If there’s another world, she lives in bliss. If there is none, she made the most of this.’ Words to live by, if you ask me,” she says with significance.

  I didn’t ask you, I think to myself. Just let me withdraw into my own self-pity.

  “Oh look,” says Alice, with typically inappropriate lightness. “They’re preparing a plot.”

  I glance over to view a green tarp draped over freshly dug soil. So what. Big deal.

  “Funeral’s tomorrow, no doubt,” says Alice. “I bet it’s for old man Davis. You knew him?”

  I shake my head, wiping the tears around my lashes. I don’t care about ole man Davis or any of these people. I just want my mom back.

  “Lost his wife a few y
ears ago; used to be here all the time fixing up her grave. Explains why I haven’t seen him in a while. Oh no, wait, it’s not for him. I’m mixing him up with the bearded man who comes to visit his sister.” Now Alice is standing over where I sit on the damp ground. Still I say nothing.

  “Rough one, eh?” she asks, rubbing at the top of my head. I recoil a bit though I hate to admit it feels nice to be mother-loved.

  “The stages of grief never happen in the order they say. I mean the disbelief and the shock are always the starter but then it can go in any direction. Some folks feel yearning and despair first while others feel anger. Eventually we all get to acceptance.”

  “I’ll never accept it.”

  “It takes time, Marla.”

  “Even this…now,” I say, moving my hands around my head. “Talking to the dead is like a monologue between me and me. Ridiculous. Pointless. I’m sick of pruning and planting for no good reason, wasting all this emotion, words, time, gardening, on someone who’s never coming back.”

  Alice looks at the new seedlings popping up around my mom’s stone before glancing to Joy’s grave with its overabundant and firmly established garden. She frowns. “You’re right, these graves are starting to look a little ridiculous,” she says.

  “I just want her back.” I say. “No more flowers.”

  “So you’re doing rocks now?” Alice glances down at a series of stones that I’ve carefully laid out in a semi-circle.

  “They’re special—striped ones. See?” A smile suddenly forms on my face. “My rock collection. Mom got me started when I was about six years old at the beach. I thought it was a stupid idea when she introduced it to me. By age seven it was a hobby, by fifteen it was an addiction.”

  “And now it’s an obsession,” Alice teases. “This one’s pretty,” she says, squatting down and touching a grey one with a jagged white line going down its center. “Looks like somebody almost painted it on. I bet your eyes go buggy trying to find a striped rock in the middle of all the solid ones on the shore.”