Court of the Myrtles (11 page)

As Joy stood back to admire herself in the full length Louis XV mirror, Alice's interests turned to the crystal chandelier that cast its glow on the hunter-green moiré draperies that hung next to an original Chagall painting. “Boy,” said Alice. “You suppose that painting is real? It could never fit in our dining room.”

“What dining room?” snapped Joy. “You used it as a sewing room. We ate at the kitchen counter, remember? And, yes, the painting is real, Mother.”

“Well excuse me, but I didn't have time to entertain, let alone the money,” Alice's tone was a little more defensive than necessary. “This is like out of some rich man's movie!”

“Mother! Quiet down. It's nice that Scotty's parents footed the wedding bill, so c'mon…”

“Well, I appreciate their generosity,” she said a little too loudly, in case they
were
listening. “Me being a widow and all. A good man—and a rich man! What more could a mother ask for her daughter?” Of course there was more. But Alice knew it was too late. She'd never have her daughter back. She'd never really had her at all.

“You know money doesn't matter to me, Mother. We weren't raised that way. My idea of rich was having an inflatable pool in the backyard. The one you never bought me because it would interfere with your garden space.” Joy's bare toes disappeared into the plush ivory carpeting, twirling them left and right. “But forget the inflatable pool, there was really only one thing I ever wanted, Mom, one thing that money couldn't buy.” Her foot froze in one spot on the reversed direction of the raised, wool pile.

“Oh, you were plenty loved.”

“Was I? Really? Because I always felt like the mistake.”

“That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! You were the youngest—the baby who was babied. This isn't the time to get into some crazy head game. Now put on your shoes. You'll be late for your own wedding.”

Obediently, Joy went to put on the white Chanel white leather pumps that she'd been given by Scotty's grandmother. Alice suddenly had terrible regret: for resenting her
pregnancy with Joy, for resenting her dead husband's lack of interest in their last child, for, well, so many things.

The organist had sprained his wrist, so at the last minute, one of Scotty's brother's wives played a harp. The gentle sound echoing from the Gothic cathedral walls enhanced Joy's angelic qualities as she glided down the aisle on her oldest brother, Peter's arm. All eyes were upon her in a big formal froufrou style dress with Scarlett O'Hara hoop skirt. At this very moment Joy was more pleased with herself than she'd ever been in her entire life. Maybe it was because her mother-in-law had let her have the most expensive dress in the store, even when she insisted they could go with the half-priced one on the sale rack. Maybe it was all those smiling faces giving her all the attention she had craved for so long, each of them nodding and acknowledging her with approval. Or maybe it was just because she'd finally lost all that baby fat and actually had a waistline. Whatever it was, it felt sensational! And Joy arrived at the altar, Scotty's size six bride.

And later that evening there was the reception…

Joy's father-in-law gave the champagne toast in crystal, fluted glasses—the very speech her father should have given. Joy noticed that her mother was too busy flipping over the plates to see who designed the dishes. You couldn't get much better than Villeroy & Boch.

But what Joy didn't know was that her mother-in-law across the room, glass raised in a toast, painted smile enhanced by collagen-injected lips, thought that it may have been better for the family business if her son had chosen a more suitable woman, to compensate for the faux pas of becoming a “lowly police officer” instead of taking over
the family business. Scotty's mother wasn't at all sure that poor Joy, daughter-of-a-poor-Irish-brood-wrong-side-of-the-tracks, was the kind of girl to introduce at next year's fundraiser.

When the band broke out with their first dance number, they accidentally played a bad rendition of “Daddy's Little Girl.” Nobody noticed Joy swaying by herself in a corner while everybody else was cavorting and one-upping each other on the dance floor. Usually, girls who can't dance
insist
that the band can't play. But Joy saw it differently: she felt they were
both
at fault—the band and the dancer. Joy just chuckled at the thought, guzzling down her last sip of champagne, because all that mattered now was that she had finally arrived—better late than never. And with that thought, she put out her glass to the tray-carrying waiter, signaling an immediate refill.

For the first time in many Fridays, it's Alice who's beaten me to the cemetery on this perfect May morning. She roams the grounds, plucking up dead twigs making her way to where I lie, perfectly still under the elm tree, just to the right of where Mom's casket is, six feet under.

“Oh, there you are,” says Alice, shading my face as she stands over me. My hands clutch grass blades inside my fists.

“Nobody ever warned me that ‘today's the day you're going to wake up and your mother is going to be dead.'”

“Ah… no,” Alice replies cautiously. “No, they don't.”

“Is that all you can say?” I whimper, pushing myself up into a seated position.

“I will say anything you need to hear and I will listen to whatever you need to say.”

“Oh, aren't you poetic,” I say, not up for it. “It's like I close my eyes and meditate Mom back, but when I open them, she's never there. Why doesn't she just show herself to me? My heart aches so badly that sometimes I feel my chest muscles are going to collapse. Do you know what that feels like?”

Alice squats down to my side before dropping full length next to my body. I sit up now, running my hand over the little humpback whale made of stone shimmied in between this year's flowers.

Violently I snap blades of grass attempting to poke them between my teeth, chewing on their tips. “No, this just has to stop. All of it. I just can't take it anymore.”

I stare numbly into the distance as though in the distance might provide me my mother's return. “She died helping others—the very girls she loved. I used to be so accepting of sharing my mother with all those strays, but I should have been tougher and more protective of her. I should have kept her all for myself. No, I should have
demanded
that I kept her all for myself!”

“Are you ready to tell me about it? The day she died.”

I exhale deeply and then finally begin. “She was working with a young woman named Tessie Wright. Tessie was about eighteen when she had her child taken away by the system because she was prostituting to support her drug habit. My mom put six months of her life into straightening that girl out. Tessie was finally getting her baby back from foster care and was going to live with her aunt and start over—even go back to school. Anyway, in the middle of all this, my mom was walking around the corner of the shelter to the grocer to get some party food—she was going to surprise Tessie and celebrate with the entire staff—but the only trouble was Tessie's pimp wasn't up for any celebration and certainly not one that released one of his girls. He waited around the corner and began arguing with my mother. That's what witnesses told me later.

“The pimp grabbed my mom's arm and pushed her against a brick wall but she slipped on the ice and fell to the ground. He kept screaming at her, and kicked her in the
stomach. But when she struggled to stand up, when she asked him to move aside—stayed tough like she always told me—‘never show fear'—he pulled out a knife. She put her hands up to cover her face but he went for her stomach. It all happened so fast. She just collapsed to the ground. Passersby were screaming and staring, but nobody would help her. They just stopped out of curiosity, I guess, until some taxi guy at a red light screamed out, ‘Call 911!' and then all the people in shock scurried to phones, leaving my mom alone.

“By then it was probably too late. Nobody even knelt down to hold her hand or cover her with a blanket. She was by herself on some filthy, downtown sidewalk. It was a freezing afternoon and my mother died out in the cold, choking on her own blood. Just like that.”

“Oh God, Marla. I'm so sorry.”

“So am I. So was everybody including Tessie who kept telling me it was all her fault. My mom had originally sent Tess to the grocer to get asparagus to go with the honey-baked ham they were going to make for the celebration dinner. Mom didn't realize that Tessie's only fresh vegetable experience had been canned peas. She'd never
eaten
fresh asparagus so she didn't know what they looked like and brought back a bundle of scallions by mistake. My mom didn't tell her scallions weren't asparagus, so instead my mom grabbed her coat from the rack and snatched up her purse from her desk and headed back to the store herself. If Tessie had only brought back the right v
egetable
my mom never would have left her desk and this never would have happened. Or maybe it can't be blamed that Tessie didn't know the difference. So if my mom had only
told
Tessie she bought the wrong thing and sent her back to the grocery store to get the asparagus, she'd
be alive.” My face shows an unwilling surrender. “It really doesn't matter though, does it, Alice? It doesn't matter who's to blame because nothing is going to bring my mom back to me. I couldn't get the cops to understand that. All they cared about was a description of the killer instead of my dead mother. And for what? For nothing. Tessie's back on the streets because the whole thing scared the hell out of her. The baby is back in foster care and my poor mom died for nothing. The least God could have done was let me be there to rub her head and say, ‘I'll love you always, thank you for everything.'”

“Come here,” says Alice, trying to hug me, but I push her away, getting up abruptly, pacing back and forth, and briskly rubbing my arms together. My face crumbles before lighting up like some mad scientist who's just devised some crazy plot on how to mix poison in the bubbling lab vials.

“I want to be with her,” I say pacing even harder. “You know, I should be over this by now. It's been six months—”

“
Over
this?! Over
this
?! Are you kidding? You think you can just undo twenty something years with a person—
the
most important person—in six months' time? Come on. Even your boyfriend Charlie was a shorter relationship than that and look how long that took to get over. You took that pain all the way to your wedding day years later with Eddy!”

And then I stop pacing to stand still repeating what I said before. “I want to be with her.”

“Just what the heck does that mean?” says Alice, her tone with growing concern.

“It's so peaceful here, you know, Alice, with the birds chirping, wind chimes blowing on that nearby cherry tree. No more outside world. And I bet you forget
everything that's painful.” I turn to Alice and look her straight in the eye. “Yes. That's it. I'm going to be in the ground right here with her. It's the only way.”

Alice stands up tall. “Oh really? Oh no you're not! Over my dead body!” Alice is oddly angry now “She's not in the ground. Not anymore. She's just bones. And what if she's not there at all?” says Alice, tossing her hands around like an angry woman directing traffic. Now Alice is angry in a way I've never seen her.

“She's
got
to be there,” I plead. “You told me so.”

“Yes, I know, but still…” Alice is at a loss for words, which suddenly softens me. “I don't know,” I say. “I know I'm not making any sense. And you're confusing me. But I know I want to go be with her, okay?”

“Suicide isn't a way out of the pain. It will
haunt
you through eternity. It will haunt your loved ones. Trust me.”

I shoot Alice a look that says,
How the hell do you know?

“I just know,” she says, able to read my face. A moment of silence. Two women calming down. Alice is the first to speak. “Why not try the whale watch as your first bargaining chip. Your first option. Then we can discuss how you'll kill yourself,” she says cheerfully.

“Are you making fun of me?” I say, following behind as Alice goes to the town hose, unravels it and begins dragging it to her daughter's grave.

“Look, I'm just saying death is not a way out. I know. I wanted to die too, but if you think about it, when somebody we loved is murdered, we blame the killer. In your case, if you kill yourself, you are both murderer and victim. It's a hell of a confusing situation to leave your loved ones with…”

“What loved ones? I don't have anybody, remember? I'm an only child.”

“Well, you might have somebody, if you don't
kill
yourself. You'll have kids, and grandkids someday. What about that nice mailman, Eddy? What about meeting him in the Alhambra in the fall, like you promised?” Alice bends over some geraniums to pluck back the tips for new growth. “Besides, somebody once said on some Zen calendar that ‘inner harmony is attained neither in the past nor in the future, but where the past and the future meet, which is in the now.'”

“Good for whatever Buddhist said that,” I say, “I'm really not in the mood.”

“If you focus on what's behind you'll never be able to look ahead. You are here now, Marla. Like those maps all over a city that point a red mark to the place you're standing. The red mark tells you how to find the direction that you're headed. It's the
now
that is liberating. And your time here will be very short anyway.”

“I still want to die.”

“Sure you do. So did I,” she gulps, suddenly grappling for words. “But we just can't pull the plug on our own body. It's not our karmic destiny. Trust me, I know.”