Court of the Myrtles (6 page)

“Botanical botch, eh?” She teases but I'm not buying. I go back to digging.

But Alice hunkers right down next to me. “So how is it that a young woman like yourself has so much time off during the week?” she asks. “Don't you have a job? It's April, you know. Don't you at least have taxes to do?”

“Don't you have grandchildren you should be tending to?” I snap back.

“As a matter of fact, seven. But they're in school on weekdays.”

“Spring break?” I shove the hole-digger in deeper, reminding myself to be nice, remembering that her daughter died. “I work for a museum gift store up at Plymouth Plantation. Okay with you? Friday is my day off.”

“Why Friday? Is that when they polish the historical Rock?” She guffaws at her own joke.

“Very funny, Alice,” I say. “No, it's when I swap for a Sunday so another worker can have a weekend off with her kids. She's a mom.”

“Well, that's mighty generous. So you help somebody
else
have a life.”

I shoot her a look.

“How long you been at that?” she asks.

“A while.” There's a pause and then I feel the need to defend myself. “I like the museum because it lets me live in the past. I like the past,” I say, falling back on my heels. “Though I'm getting tired of people turning up at the plantation complaining how the Plymouth Rock turns out to be way smaller than they thought.”

“You mean some guy gets out of his station wagon, slams the car door and says, ‘I drove all the way from Kentucky for
this
?!'”

“Exactly! ‘It's even smaller than the Liberty Bell.'”

Alice laughs, gets up and heads to my car's trunk for the watering can, but then throws her arms up abruptly to the heavens and spins around to me. “So, you're telling me that when you were a little girl you just woke up one day and said, ‘When I grow up I want to work in a gift store?'”

“Well, not quite. I actually wanted to be a history teacher. American history. Or maybe a museum curator. But when I didn't finish my degree I came up with a way that combined both. I started out as a tour guide for a historical route but then I got tired of that—and all the mud puddles I encountered on the dirt roads. Seriously. You know how many pairs of combat boots a girl goes through being a tour guide on a rainy day? So I
moved
inside
to the museum shop. But at least it's in Plymouth. Where our country all began. Kind of historical enough, wouldn't you say?”

“Why did you drop out of school?”

“Boy, you're just
full
of questions, aren't you?”

“Am I being too nosy?” asks Alice. “I can stop,” she adds unconvincingly. “Well, you can tell me to stop.”

“No, it's fine,” I say, exhaling. “Especially now that I don't have my
mother's
questions…”

I follow Alice to Joy's grave to plant the tray of shade-loving Astilbe, wondering where she'll find space for them. Near the Hostas there's a spot where the “Y” in Joy's name might now be forfeited.

“Well?” asks Alice, squatting over a kneepad. I kneel down beside her, handing over the tools like a nurse handing a surgeon his instruments.

“When I was in college, my grandmother—Rosie's mother—she was elderly and couldn't work anymore at the drycleaners. The steam machines affected her asthma and she had bad coughing fits. Then her knees gave way from standing all day. Problem was there were two words
not
in Grandma's vocabulary: ‘nursing home.' I'm from an ethnic family. We take care of our own. After spending every Saturday and Sunday at her house tending to the cleaning and yard work, my mom realized it was foolish to be paying rent at our apartment so we moved back in with Grandma. My mom had the job at the women's shelter so one day, she just looked at me and said, ‘Honey, it's only for a little while, but you may have to take a step back from your studies. Somebody has to watch Grandma and somebody has to work.'”

“That's just terrible.”

“That's when she needed a nurse to come in and help me to help her,” I say. “She didn't even recognize me anymore. She kept staring deep into my face. ‘Rosie?' she'd ask. ‘No, Grandma,' I'd answer, ‘It's Marla, your granddaughter.' But she didn't get it. She'd just yell at me and say, ‘There's no such person.'”

“And she never recognized you again?”

I shook my head. “It was around two years later, she died. I was in my early twenties and had quit school. Funny thing is that my guidance counselor voted me most likely to succeed. But for now I've kind of filed it under things I gave up on.”

“Gave up?”

“Yeah, I know. I love school. I love the feeling of a classroom, putting a pen to paper, the smell of used text books, the breathing—even the coughing of the students…”

“Well?”

“Oh, I just march right on up to the nearest college and sign up, right?”

“Why not? I'm serious,” says Alice, tapping me on the hand with the hand digger. Neither of us speaks for a while, finding comfort in silence and gardening.

“Well?” I ask.

“Well what?” says Alice digging away.

“I know what the next question is going to be.”

“Okay, smarty pants,” says Alice. “Then answer it.”

“No, not anymore. But I had one. A love life…” I say, drifting off. “But we wanted different things.”

“Like?”

“He was a mailman. He delivered mail from exotic places. I wanted to visit them.”

“How long did you date?”

“For a while. Got engaged after Grandma died. We were to get married, but, well, it's a long story…”

“I've always got time for love stories! And he was…?”

“Eddy.” I smile sadly. “Let's just say we decided to take a time out.”

“That sounds smart. Leave it open for a chance at second chances.” Alice is down to the last plant in my tray. “Oh, look, you've got some myrtle tucked in,” she says.

“Myrtle?”

“Yes, in the tray. There,” she points.

“Is
that
what it's called?” I say, examining the clay pot. “I bought it because I liked its little periwinkle flowers. And you have some planted there,” I say, glimpsing Joy's grave. “So I figured it must be good.”

“It's ground cover. Like a Pachysandra. From the Vinca vine family.”

“Why do I have a feeling that means it doesn't like sun?”

“Can tolerate sun
or
shade. Its beauty is its low maintenance,” she says, shrugging her shoulders. “Like my Joy.” Alice runs her hand across its petite flower caps. “Usually used for hedges and—”

“Oh my God!” I say, grabbing at her arm. “So that's why it's called that!”

“What's called what?”

“The Court of the Myrtles.”

“You've lost me, dear.”

“Well, after our wedding fell through…” I pause. “Fell through” probably isn't the right words for what happened. But in the forgiving. In the aftermath, well… “Eddy and I made a promise to each. To reconnect…”

“…for that second chance?”

“Yes,” I nod. “This autumn would have been our one-year anniversary.”

“So call him.”

“This is going to sound silly.”

She shoots me a look. “Go on. I'm used to it. So. The Court of the Myrtles?”

“I always wanted to go back to the Alhambra. It's in Granada.”

“Never heard of it.”

“In Spain. A fortress,” I say. “I did a work study there in my sophomore year of college, and it's the most magnificent place I've ever seen. I couldn't believe places like that existed. But forget all that. The point is, we figured that if we were both ready to reconnect, we'd meet at the Court of the Myrtles, this beautiful courtyard in the Alhambra Palace with a long goldfish pond right down the center. I always thought it was named Myrtle for some Queen, but I just realized it's surrounded by myrtle hedges. And now I know why, for exactly the reasons you just said: low maintenance.”

“Now you've really lost me.”

“Bringing water to the Alhambra couldn't have been easy in its day,” I continue, with a sudden enthusiasm. “I mean, how do you bring water to the top of a fortress, right? Since the grounds of the Alhambra were raised, they couldn't
get
water without constructing channels. You with me? And in this particular courtyard there's a very long
pond surrounded by these myrtle things—like this—but the gardeners there formed them into pretty shaped shrubs.”

“Sounds lovely,” says Alice with a look that says she's finally found my weakness. “Go on…”

“Well, the pond is
so
still that you can see the reflection from one side of the courtyard to the other. I figured if Eddy showed up, I could see his reflection in the water as he approached. Kind of romantic, right? Kinda silly.” My voice trails off, “Anyway, if it's meant to be…”

“Well, is it? You lost me at the myrtles.”

“I don't know. It doesn't matter. If Eddy shows up, he shows up, if he doesn't, he doesn't. I'll have my answer then. Like I said before, he didn't care much for travel. And knowing Eddy, he'll pick the wrong courtyard.”

“There's more than one?”

“Yeah, the Court of Lions is right next door.”

“Could be more fun than the myrtles…” she suggests. And then, seeing my expression, she says, “You're still in love with Eddy, aren't you?”

“I miss him dreadfully but now's not the right time. Everything's changed. I miss my mom more. I'm not in the mood for marriage, let alone happiness.”

“That's crazy. It's not Eddy's fault that your mom died.”

“Oh, it's not just about my mother…”

“Listen, Marla, you have to give the guy a second chance. Your mother's dead but your life has to play itself out,” says Alice. “And it won't stand still waiting for you to decide what to do next.”

“Yes, I know. But how do I live my life without my mother's death always crippling my emotions? I feel like it's wrong to enjoy the very things that she's not here to see.”

“So it
is
about your mother, then. Shame. She'd have wanted you to try all kinds of things even if it meant doing them vicariously
for
her. How do I know? I'm a mother.”

“You're a mother, all right!” I say, rising. “Okay, lady. That'll be enough planting for one day.”

Alice play-jabs her small digger into my kneecaps.

“So, Alice, I'm supposed to go ahead and just get married…” I say, glancing over to my mom's headstone. “But Mom won't be there for the wedding day to zip up my white taffeta gown, or remind me to put sunblock on my own daughter's shoulders at the beach, or…” I sigh. “There's a long list of she-won't-be-there-to-see's.”

Alice gets to her feet and leans over to wipe the dirt from her pant legs. “You're right, Marla. She won't be there. Nobody will ever fill that void in your life the way a mother can. That unconditional love is something you'll never have again.”

“Well, you sure know how to make a person feel better,” I say, whisking the dirt from my jeans, too.

I follow Alice to a nearby trashcan and watch her toss the empty plastic flower tray and little green cup holders. “Oh Marla,” she sighs. “Doesn't matter how they die. Mourning comes and goes in cycles, and when we lose somebody—a mother, a child, or even a very alive Eddy—we go from denial to anger, then to confusion and finally, one day, acceptance. But every time something new or good happens in life, whether a new trip or the children you think you'll have, the cycle of pain starts all over again,
magnified by the fact that your mother won't be there to comfort you, take the pain away. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.”

For the first time I'm speechless. Alice grabs my arm and looks me straight on, and I watch her mouth as she speaks. “Acceptance, Marla,” she says. “Time teaches us humility. And we succumb to the inevitable. In this case a dead mother for you and a dead Joy for me.”

“Yeah,” I gulp. I head quietly back toward my mom's grave, gathering the tools left strewn on the grass.

“But don't shut out the world, Marla,” hollers Alice after me. “Do the things she wanted to do and then some. Otherwise you're not making her death worth it. Don't give in to her death. Never.”

“Why not?” my voice escalates. “I may as well give in to my death, too. That's how I feel. Nothing matters now.”

“That's bull. I'd rather see you live your life thinking that your mother will be there waiting for you on the other side, than live your life
not
thinking your mom will be there, and then she is. That would be two lives lost.” I'm listening now. She continues, “Think how a loss like this will toughen you. How loss will make you a survivor, make you strong to face everything life has to offer, good and bad. They say what toughens you also softens you. Softens you to be a good mother someday, too.” She's in front of me now, pointing that damned hole-digger at my chest. “Your mom would have wanted
that
! Then you can become a mother as good as your mom was to you.”

“I don't know, Alice…”

“Well, maybe I've said too much. I'm sorry. Should learn to mind my business. Hah. Never happen.”

I head toward my car, tossing the garden items in the trunk as she leans against the passenger's door.

“Besides, the guilt doesn't just disappear,” I say, “I keep thinking of all the things we can't do together—not me, or her, but
we,
” I say. “We can never eat fried clams again. Or stick our toes in the sand. Or go to Nantucket again. It was her favorite place.”

“But that's where the whale might be waiting. Have you thought of that?”