The Memory Garden (9 page)

Though the birds sing dawn’s arrival, Nan is not quite ready to leave the comfort of her feather bed, a luxury she indulged in when she was going through menopause and the nights were long, her mattress hard. Now, all these years later, her body entered into a new rhythm of restlessness, Nan remembers how she slept when she was young, as though it were something easy, no kind of achievement at all. How long has she been staring at the ceiling, pondering how to proceed with the day? It seems her mind keeps spinning like an autumn leaf about to fall.

Nan shakes her head at the dismal metaphor, thus discovering how sore her neck is; actually, she realizes, her whole body hurts worse than usual. Why? Oh yes, dancing in the rain! Foolish. Risky, even. But Nan can’t say she regrets it. What had she said last night about making memories? Before she can recall, she sneezes. Nicholas uncurls from the foot of the bed. Nan sneezes again, and Nicholas, never a good nurse, jumps to the floor.

Nan turns to her nightstand for the box of tissues there, fumbling through all the clutter, the candles, the stones, the feather (remnant of Nicholas’s sad offering), books, an empty glass, the mug with a film of moldy tea at the bottom, and the digital clock, which signals the late hour. As she sneezes a third time, her hand at last finds the tissues. She blows her nose loudly, finally remembering her advice to Howard. How to know what will make you happy in the end? Ask yourself what memory you are making in the present.

As such things go, Nan suspects an oversimplification. But maybe it’s just what’s needed to enjoy this odd reunion. Clearly, Ruthie is out of the question as any kind of guardian for Bay, and Mavis seems an unlikely candidate. Perhaps the best thing to do with this mess is to make a good memory of it. It seems a rather meager ambition, but Nan is old enough to know how much of life is lost. This does not, of course, solve the problem of what to do about Bay when Sheriff Henry arrives. In spite of the early morning heat, Nan shivers at the thought. Suddenly, and for no reason she can measure, Mrs. Desarti’s face comes to mind. Thalia’s mother has always been kind. Perhaps she would make a good guardian. Nan decides this might be an idea worth investigating further, though really, it is almost unbearable to consider. In the meantime, Nan thinks, “Let me have this weekend.” She had not meant to speak, but having done so, she does it again. She says it like a prayer but means it as a bargain with a ghost. In case one is listening.

She eases herself out of bed, surprised that her clogs aren’t there where she always leaves them, before she remembers they are in the bathroom with the other wet things. She grabs a pair of old boots from her closet. They were left in one of the donation boxes, but they are red, so she kept them for herself. She tries to stand on her left foot to put the boot on her right and almost falls in the process. What is she thinking to attempt such a trick? Sighing, she hobbles back to bed, boots in hand. It’s one of those secrets no one ever tells you: when you get old, all the padding wears away from your feet, and you are left to walk on bones.

Nan glances at her reflection in the mirror and lets out a little yelp. Her hair has gone absolutely wild in the night, a result of her little rain dance. There’s nothing to be done for it except a good brushing, and she doesn’t want to squander her time on personal hygiene right now. She shuffles down the hall, thankful to see the other bedroom doors remain closed, a sign that everyone else is still asleep.

Nan is neither surprised nor alarmed when she finds the sheets and blanket neatly folded on the couch in the parlor, Howard nowhere in sight. The headache he most likely suffers from this morning can be alleviated by time or the herbal remedy Nan has had memorized for decades, but his disdain for walls can only be treated by wandering. Nan sighs on Howard’s behalf. The poet’s journey, while often quite interesting, is never an easy one.

Actually, Nan feels the vague beat of a headache herself. She has had so many lately, she is not sure whether to attribute this one to a disturbing pattern or to last night’s party. Either way, she decides to step outside before she makes the coffee. She cherishes the idea of having a little quiet time to herself on the porch.

Later, Nan will struggle to explain how she didn’t notice immediately everything was wrong. She settles for the fact that she was focused on the sky, which, that morning, is the shade of the rare blue poppy.

Oh
, Nan thinks when she opens the front door,
it’s as though I’m in the center of a flower!

She inhales the wonderful scent of rain, dirt, and grass, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her upturned face before she lowers her chin, opens her eyes, and notices shoes on the porch. This, in itself, is not unusual, but these shoes look entirely random, as if someone simply threw them, which hasn’t happened for a while.

Well, if that’s the worst of it, it’s not so bad, but what’s this? Nan picks up a black-eyed Susan, its stem torn, the usually cheerful flower hanging. Then she sees the ripped purple phlox, the scattered sedum, the beheaded hollyhock. She recognizes the boot from the garden, the toddler shoe with the pink ribbons, which she had lovingly restored for the baby’s breath, the blue dance slipper, its small heel dangling. What happened here? What is this? What has become of the garden? Shoes everywhere, everywhere torn flowers! Can she save any of them? Are they all lost? She kneels down before remembering how much it hurts to do so, shoving dirt into the nearest shoe and stabbing a stem into it.

She is working like this when Ruthie comes to close the front door, and without a word, sets to help, carefully sinking to the ground in her pink nightgown, her copper hair in tubed curls like the mud dauber wasp nest Nan found early that summer on the side of the house. She stops working long enough to give a nod of appreciation, and Ruthie nods in return; they work in silence until Mavis comes to the door and says, “You two do realize how you look?”

Nan observes that Mavis is in no condition to be casting aspersions on anyone’s appearance, with her violet hair wild around her face like one of those troll dolls so popular in the sixties. Ruthie sits on her black-socked heels, pressing dirt around a small daisy in an old loafer, ignoring Mavis, which Nan decides might be the best course. After all, they are saving lives here. She concentrates on stuffing dirt into a little pink shoe. By the time she looks up again, Mavis has joined them, sitting on the ground beside the sedum, the sun shining through the white nightgown, revealing that she has experienced the course of age, her breasts so depleted they look nonexistent, her stomach, a paunch.

When the car pulls up, Nan thinks she can’t stop what she’s doing, even for a shoe donation, even to sneer at some teenager who’s come to call her names, but when she sees, out of the corner of her eye, the unexpected vehicle, her fingers hover above the dirt long enough for her to wonder why anyone would take the single local taxi all the way out here.
It
must
be
a
mistake
, she decides as she presses dirt around the astilbe, which just might not make it, poor thing.

At the sound of the car door opening, Nan peers through the bright sunlight at the emerging woman and gasps. Of all the impossible things, how can this be happening? She shakes her head as the name falls out of her mouth. “Eve?”

“Don’t be silly.” Kneeling in the midst of several planted shoes, Ruthie wipes her hands on her nightgown, a pink, lacy thing that exposes a surprising amount of bosom. She turns with a pleasant expression toward the stranger.

Eve’s hair was curly; this woman’s hair is straight, but cut short, just as Eve’s was, revealing Eve’s long neck and square jawline. Of course it is not Eve. Nan has seen Eve, and she has always been blurry, like an image under water, while this woman is sharply focused and alive. She watches the taxi as it pulls away, possibly reconsidering.

Trying to offer a reassuring countenance, Nan stands slowly, pushing against the memories that arrive with Eve’s look-alike, the young woman, for some reason unable to maintain her composure, her small mouth opening and closing as if chewing air.

It’s the boots
, Nan thinks, though later she wonders what made her believe the three of them, gardening in their nightgowns, would have looked normal had she only been wearing clogs instead?

“Can I help you?” Nan is surprised to hear the tremble in her voice. Maybe it
is
Eve.
Maybe
the
force
of
all
of
them
together
again
has
caused
her
to
appear
, Nan thinks, though she immediately rejects the notion as ridiculous. The fact that she believes in ghosts doesn’t mean she believes in nonsense.

The young woman raises her chin, which breaks the illusion. Eve was never the chin-raising sort. “Yes, my name is Stella Day? My grandmother suggested…she said Nan?” Her eyes scan past Nan and Mavis to linger on Ruthie, before finally returning to settle, with a disappointed cast, on Nan.

“She said you were friends with my great-aunt Eve? She thought you would be able to tell me about her. Eve, I mean. I’m writing a book. Trying to, at least. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a few things published. I’m not a complete beginner, though most of it has been frankly derivative. Doesn’t every female writer go through an Anaïs Nin period? Anyway, it’s kind of a family history/memoir thing, I think.”

She shuts her lips into a chiseled, false smile, and Nan is struck by the incongruity of this breathlessly chattering person, so different from the girl she resembles.

“I wouldn’t just drop in like this. Normally. But I was in the area. With my boyfriend. My ex-boyfriend. I mean he’s my ex-boyfriend now. Anyway, I thought, you know, why not? Why not just take a risk for once in my life? Why not just stop by and see if we could have a conversation? I wouldn’t normally do something like this, but I recently lost my job, and so, anyway, here I am.”

“How interesting,” Mavis says, rising to stand with such effort that for a second she appears near to toppling. “How very interesting to be named after a cookie.”

“Dora,” Ruthie hisses. “Stella Dora are the cookies. Her name is Stella—”

“Day. Stella Day. If this isn’t a good time—”

“What?” Mavis barks. “You going to wave down a taxi?”

“I have a phone, of course.”

Of course. Everyone does these days, though cell phones don’t work out here, much to Bay’s dismay, but that’s not really the point, is it? Goodness, it is very difficult to organize her thoughts with Eve’s doppelgänger standing on the front walk.
Now? After all these
years
someone
has
finally
come
with
questions?
So confused is Nan, it takes several breaths before she is able to determine that the sensation of something uncoiling deep in her pelvis is the feeling of dread. After all, she smells the salt of this Stella’s lies. Does she really expect Nan to believe that her arrival, this weekend of all the weekends, is mere coincidence?

So deep in thought is she, Nan doesn’t even realize she is staring until the young woman shifts uncomfortably and once more does that thing with her eyes, casting about for better options.

“Is there a shoe store around here? Was there a tornado?”

“Just a little wind and rain,” Nan says, waving at the overturned shoes and flowers, sniffing against her own deception. “You brought luggage?”

“I was with my boyfriend? We were going somewhere? That’s why I have my bag. I don’t plan to stay. Or anything.”

“What’s the matter?” Mavis says. “Afraid we’re contagious?”

“I don’t want to impose.”

But
of
course
you
do
, Nan thinks. “You say your grandmother told you to talk to me?”

“That’s right.”

“She would be Eve’s…”

“Eve’s brother, Daniel? He was my grandfather. Eve was my great-aunt. I never met her. She died before I was born. Well, you know that. All my life people told me how much I look like her. People said some strange things to me over the years. Anyway, Daniel Leary was my grandfather.”

“Daniel?” Nan shakes her head, trying to fathom the little boy with big ears, always hanging about and bothering them, an old man now.

“Danny?” Ruthie says, her voice trembling. “How is Danny?”

“He died before I was born. I never knew him. We Learys tend to die young.”

“That’s good,” Ruthie says, which is plainly strange, but she has been strange since her arrival and likely doesn’t mean to sound menacing.

“This isn’t a good time,” Nan says. “As you can see, I have visitors and—”

But Ruthie, in her black socks and dirty nightgown, completely oblivious to the effect of her appearance, walks across the grass with open arms. “Don’t be silly, Nan. It’s the perfect time! Stella? It’s Stella, isn’t it? I’m Ruthie. Now, isn’t it just, what is the word? Seren…serin…ser-something-or-other that you should arrive when we’ve gotten together for the first time in years?” Ruthie wraps her arm around Stella’s narrow shoulders. “Is this your luggage? I once had nice luggage, but you know how that goes. My son took it with him to Mexico, and that was that. I never saw my suitcase again.”

“Ruthie!”

Her arm still around the girl, Ruthie stops at the door and turns, her smile unbroken by Mavis’s sharp voice.

“Serendipity.”

“Yes!” Ruthie shouts, which startles everyone. “Oops, sorry. I haven’t done that in years. My husband hates it when I talk loud.” She turns to open the door. Stella quickly steps out of Ruthie’s grasp into the dark maw of the foyer.