Warm Wuinter's Garden (45 page)

“I thought I should try to get a couple of
things done before I left.”

Raoul intoned, “Duty, sacred duty.”

Peter pulled a tray from the reach in
refrigerator and counted the steaks on it. “I know it’s going to be
busy today. I just wanted to do what I could to help.”

“Such a good little fairy.”

“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 anything
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.

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.