The Memory Garden (10 page)

“Ruthie!”

“What?”

“Remember?” Mavis hisses through clenched teeth. “Remember our promise?”

“Well, of course I remember,” Ruthie whispers hoarsely. “What do you take me for? A terrorist?” She leans into the door, almost closing it entirely. “I’m not going to talk about that, but there’s no reason we can’t talk about her. She was our friend, wasn’t she?”

Mavis stares, as though considering the point, which Nan finds shocking.

“Of course,” Nan says, and when Ruthie turns to look at her, she says it again. “Of course Eve was our friend.”

Ruthie nods abruptly before she steps inside. Nan, who only wants some relief from the scent of salt permeating the air, brings the flower she has been holding to her nose. For a moment it works, the salt replaced with the sweet smell, until she comes to her senses and realizes she is clutching a lily of the valley.

“What’s wrong with you?” Mavis asks.

Nan spins an awkward circle in the oversized red boots. The garden is a disaster, shoes splattered in dirt and filled with damaged flowers, but as near as she can tell, no one has planted the dangerous lily.

Where did it come from anyway? She tosses the withered thing away and sinks carefully to the ground. Not for the first time in recent weeks, Nan recalls the old-fashioned hourglass Miss Winter kept in her house, but this time Nan pictures it with all the sand run out.

Life
is
what
you
remember
, Nan thinks as she shoves dirt into the old sneaker.
Who
can
remember
everything? Well, no one, and that’s a blessing. Life is and always has been a composition, much like this garden; it will not be contained and cannot be determined.

She first noticed it years ago, when the shoe plants thrived long past the time for doing so. What about roots? she wondered. What about seasons? What about nutrients and rain and rot and decay? And yet, somewhere in all this mess the sneaker remains, as well as the old lady’s slipper, until this recent vandalism, the container for Grace Winter’s pennyroyal. It is impossible, of course, against the laws of nature. Everything here is. The elm tree, somehow surviving the disease that left main streets all over the Midwest blighted, thrives, as do the weeping apple trees she planted when she first bought the place. Things die, of course, but Nan has long observed that the passage between life and death is different here than anywhere else. This lily of the valley, for instance, its pretty May flower ringing on this August morn. Nan has no control over any of it. Life and death happen in a cycle she can’t anticipate, all out of order and uncertain, and it’s simply futile trying to figure it out.

Nan winces at the drumming of her headache as she plucks a sad sweet pea from the ground, so fragile, she’s afraid there’s no way for it to be saved, though she intends to try. She scoops dirt into a woman’s boot with a ridiculously narrow heel, pouring handfuls of soil littered with stones and broken flowers into the cavity until she is overcome by the intense feeling of being watched. It makes her bones cold, until she realizes it is only Mavis, her wild hair eclipsing the sun.

“What are you staring at?” Nan asks.

“I didn’t come here to exorcize your demons.”

Nan pats the dirt around the tender stem. “Whatever do you mean?”

“You don’t really expect me to believe that Eve’s relative showed up here today, of all days, by coincidence?”

“Well, I certainly didn’t invite her.”

Nan’s headache burrows into her forehead. She’s been getting them more and more lately. She worries it is something insidious, the sort of thing that kills old women, though she doesn’t dare feel sorry for herself, thinking of all the years she’s lived while Eve died at eighteen.

***

Not realizing she’d been holding her breath until she let it go, Nan inhaled as she stepped out of the cloying heat of Eve’s house into the gray light of that December morning, filling her lungs with cold air—the scent of snow freezing out the stench of blood. She stared at the streetlights, thinking how they looked like miniature moons gilding the flakes that floated to the cracked sidewalk, and dusted the old houses with a sugary glow, turning the dismal neighborhood into someplace almost beautiful, before she came to her senses.

Run
, Nan thought.
You
will
regret
standing
here
the
rest
of
your
life
, and she was running down the creaky steps, careful on the ice. “Everything is going to be all right,” she said over and over again, so innocent she still believed good thoughts made things so.

She ran all the way to Miss Winter’s house, its gingerbread trim caked with snow, the windows filled with caramel light.

Nan pressed on Miss Winter’s bell until she opened the door, her pleasant expression quickly replaced by one of horror, as though Nan explained everything, though she had been made mute by things too dreadful to say out loud.

They ran. Nan stumbled, but Miss Winter kept running, wearing no hat, gloves, or coat. When Nan caught up, she led the way to Eve’s house, which they entered without knocking, squinting in the pea-green light. Had the hallway to Eve’s room always been so narrow? Had the door to her bedroom always been so heavy? Had Ruthie and Mavis always looked like ghosts?

Snowflakes melted from Miss Winter’s hair and clothes onto Eve’s breathless body, a benediction of ice.

“What have you girls done?” she asked.

“Nothing,” says Nan, then, realizing that the purple-haired Mavis is looking at her strangely, adds, “is going to make our past go away, you know.”

“I’m not spending the last days of my life in prison,” Mavis says, “to make you feel better.”

“Prison? Who said anything about you going to prison? Oh! For Eve? Is that what you’re talking about? I hardly think that’s on the table.”

“You don’t know, do you, Nan?”

“It’s not like—”

“We committed a crime.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Is this why you invited us? For revenge?”

“Revenge?”

“I know you blame me,” Mavis says.

How could she possibly know that? Nan hasn’t talked to Mavis or corresponded with her in decades. Mavis has no way of knowing what Nan’s been feeling or thinking. “I haven’t, I—”

“Don’t lie.”

Nan squints up at Mavis, who, through some trick of the light, looks like one of those fake statues, a person painted as stone, until she turns her head, and her lavender hair emits a shower of tiny rainbows. Is Mavis’s hair still wet from last night’s downpour? How is that possible?

“What are you up to?” Mavis asks.

“Up to? Up to?” Nan ponders the question, even looking at the sky for a moment as though the answer might be floating overhead. “I’m not up to anything, Mavis. Anything sneaky, that is. I told you about Bay. You remember that, don’t you? I asked you to come so you could help with her.”

“Bay seems quite capable of taking care of herself.”

“I don’t want her to feel abandoned. The way Eve did.”

“Eve? We’re talking about Eve now?”

Nan worries Mavis’s mind has lost its edge. It is not the first time during this visit that she seems confused.

“Nan,” Mavis says. “Eve is dead.”

Nan presses a calendula into a dirty white shoe she doesn’t have time to clean. Can the plants survive lying on the ground with their roots exposed? Why is Mavis standing there as if there is nothing to do, no one to save? Then again, isn’t that what Mavis does in times of trouble—stand around giving orders?

“Don’t you remember, Nan? Don’t you remember Eve dying?”

“Of course I remember.” Nan can barely control the spit in her words. As though she would ever forget! As if it were just another mundane moment in all the forgotten hours of her life. She peers up at Mavis, who, haloed by the sun, looks blurry, like someone stuck between life and death. The thought makes Nan incredibly sad in the midst of her irritation. They waited too long for this reunion. It can never make up for all they lost. All this life lived that Eve never had. Gasping at the realization, Nan sits back on heels. “She did this.”

“Who? Who did what?”

“Eve. I don’t know why I didn’t realize sooner. Of course she would be upset. All of us together again, after all these years.”

“You think Eve vandalized your garden?”

Nan nods slowly. “Who else?” she asks.

“How about the hoodlum who called you a witch last night? How about his friends? How about Bay? She seems like an angry child.”

“Bay? You can’t be serious. Why would—”

“Do you actually believe the most rational explanation for this destruction is Eve?”

Nan wipes her face with the sleeve of her nightgown. It certainly has gotten hot quite suddenly. “Bay would never do something like this. Eve—”

“Is dead.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” Nan shoves a plant, so damaged as to be unrecognizable, into the baby shoe, roughly pressing the dirt around it with shaking fingers. “Clearly, I’m talking about her ghost.”

“Her ghost? You don’t actually believe Eve’s floating around here with gossamer wings, do you?”

“Don’t be silly.” Nan rolls her eyes at Mavis. “You’re confusing ghosts with angels.”

Nan remembers the time Eve dressed as a fairy for Halloween. Funny, Eve was always dressing up as someone with wings: fairies, angels, butterflies. Though it makes sense, doesn’t it, that Eve was drawn toward creatures of flight? Oh, poor Eve!

While Mavis stands in her dirt-streaked nightgown, staring into space, Nan plants two more shoes, appreciating the silence until she is overcome by her duties as hostess. She can’t allow her guests to become catatonic, no matter how much she regrets their presence.

“Mavis?”

She turns her neck so slowly Nan almost expects to hear it creak. “You’ve seen her?”

“Who?”

“Eve?”

“Yes, of course. Well, sometimes. Occasionally. Mostly it’s a scent or an unpleasant taste, but yes, I have seen her.”

Mavis looks as though Nan were a ghost herself, a shocking presence among the flowers.

“What does she want? What does she say about death? Does she say anything about me?”

Isn’t it just like Mavis to make herself the topic of concern? “She doesn’t talk. Sometimes she sings. You know, ‘Happy Birthday,’ things like that. She never tells me what she wants. You remember how she was.” Nan pats dirt around a cosmos, trying to recall when the taste of ash arrived. She hopes it leaves soon. She doesn’t want the weekend ruined by the bitter flavor. “I don’t understand why you’re surprised.”

Mavis waves her hand, the way she does, as though what anyone says is just an annoyance. “Why would she appear to you? What’s so special about you?”

Nan picks up a long, winding red stem that might be a wild strawberry. It should be planted in a tall boot, something where it can cascade and show off its tendril of pink flowers, but there is no time for that. What’s so special about Nan? It’s just the sort of thing Mavis would say, insult disguised as query.

“It’s the house. It’s some kind of portal, I guess. Like in that movie. You should have seen it. What a mess—the broken windows, the rotting porch wood—it stood abandoned for twenty years, which is why I could afford it. From my inheritance, you know. Who would have guessed that little bit of money could buy all this?” Nan waves her dirt-streaked hand like a conjuring magician. “Of course the yard was overgrown and wild. But once I saw the place, I knew it was home. The locals tried to talk me out of it. They said it was a bad-luck place. A doctor built it for his wife, and she died on moving day, right on the front staircase, rubbing her hand over the calla lilies carved in the banister. They said it was haunted like that’s a bad thing. Truth be told, I considered it a positive point, but it turned out to be difficult. She shows up whenever she wants to. She doesn’t wear gowns or rattle chains or such nonsense, of course. She won’t talk to me. I’ve always thought she’s just waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For me. For when I die. For revenge. Oh, don’t look like that, Mavis. I remember how sweet Eve was, but we were all changed by her death, weren’t we? It makes sense she would be too. It’s all right. I figure it’s what I deserve.” Nan picks up another lily of the valley, its leaves torn. Where are these coming from? She tosses it aside, reaching for the foxglove instead. It, too, is a dangerous flower, but only if a person is foolish about it. No one should ever imbibe the water any flower has been sitting in (or accept a drink of any kind from a stranger), for instance. Nan shakes her head, slightly disgusted with herself for blaming the boy for her own criminal behavior.

“Why would you deserve to be haunted?” Mavis asks, easing herself down to kneel on the damp ground. She grabs an old saddle shoe and a fern frond, which likely won’t take root, but Nan is not really sure of anything in her garden, and besides, she doesn’t want to risk discouraging Mavis with details. “I’m surprised you believe in ‘deserve.’ I got over that a long time ago.”

Of course Mavis has never been hampered by expectations or accounting. She always has been capable of setting her own rules, an annoying trait Nan now wishes she possessed and passed on to her daughter. If Bay didn’t worry so much about being normal, Nan wouldn’t be so worried about her now. Is Mavis capable of understanding any of this?

Nan explains how Bay was left all those years ago in the caul-draped box. “I told her almost everything right from the start,” Nan says, “but I said it was lace. I wanted her to have a nice picture in her head about her arrival. And I think I was right to do so. After all, she only recently learned about the caul, and even at her age, reacted poorly. I didn’t even get to the part about her special talent for ghosts. I didn’t get to tell her that she’ll be able to see them and talk to them as though they are still alive, before she ran out of the room. I thought…well, I don’t know what I was thinking. I thought she would see the three of us together and realize it’s not a terrible thing to be a witch. I thought that would make things easier for her after I was gone. I had the silly idea, I realize now how silly it was, that you and Ruthie could take care of her. You know, if something ever happened to me.”