Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening: How I Learned the Unexpected Joy of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart (11 page)

“Like my river birch?” I said.

“Exactly right,” he answered me, his optimistic face turned toward the clouds, as if he had nothing to fear.

He walked me halfway to the van, but paused to press his fingers on the frozen soil, evaluating something unidentified. As I drove away, I stole a glimpse of him striding toward his garden gate with a light step.

It struck me as deeply strange that he should feel so proud of his lackluster backyard with its bright blue tarps, frail magnolia tree, and a garden shed that looked like it had seen better days. Given Giles’s talent, how could this have happened? Perhaps the answer lay in the collective subconscious of a family displaced.
The fertile front yard reflected the family’s happy public face and the barren area out back expressed the unhappiness they hid from view.

I was surely overanalyzing. I needed Dick to tell me that I was being ridiculous. Perhaps the Owitas just preferred to spend their money and their efforts in front, where passersby could enjoy the view. Somehow, I knew that the truth wasn’t so simple. I recalled the index card Bienta had guarded in her skirt pocket. I saw her trembling fingers reaching for the car keys and her troubled expression. There was anguish in that house, and I didn’t know why.

M
y mother’s recovery from her stroke was slow, but by the first warm days of spring, I started to feel optimistic again. At least I didn’t worry every time I walked away from Mama that I might never see her again. So Dick and I decided to treat ourselves to a three-day getaway to our favorite mountain inn in North Carolina.

The weekend went well, and we both felt refreshed on the drive home. Dick complimented me on my low-cut cotton sweater and admired my newly purchased blue jean skirt. We laughed to think how shocked our kids would be if they suspected we were still in love in the standard, hearts-and-flowers way, despite our creaking joints and gray hair.

Occasionally, I looked over at Dick and admired his
handsome profile and his strong, freckled forearms. We’d now been together significantly more than half our lives, but I hadn’t ever tired of him. That was one positive by-product of my jealous nature, I supposed. I never took him for granted. I brushed my fingers through his combed-back, silvery hair. Whenever he complained of growing bald, I always assured him that I thought it made him look distinguished. After all these years, the secret to our success was really pretty simple. He was still my guy.

When I was twenty, beginning my sophomore year in college, my parents gave their consent for me to marry Dick, who was a year behind me in school. Dick’s parents were thrilled, and I suppose the unspoken understanding was that at least we were doing things in the right order—marriage first, pregnancy later. In a small town like Radford, people pulled out their calendars when a young bride started showing, doing their quick, nosy math to figure out if the bride and groom had really waited until their wedding night.

In high school, Dick had been known as a liberal troublemaker whose family came from somewhere up North. He wore wire-rimmed glasses when they were practically synonymous with being a hippie, and he let his hair grow long and scruffy, so it touched his ears. Worse, he made no secret of his dislike for LBJ, and he clearly hadn’t been born saying “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir” the way the rest of us good Southern children had been. He’d even been one of two white students to join with all the black students in our high school to protest the playing of “Dixie” by the marching band at the start of each pep rally.
They all walked out of the school gymnasium en masse, and that damn song was never played at a pep rally again.

None of the above presented a problem for my parents. In fact, they admired Dick for his beliefs. But it definitely gave Mama a gulp of concern that Dick was—gasp—a Catholic. It was downright comical to imagine it now, but this was at a time when being Catholic was seen as something exotic, even heretical, in my tiny, blinkered town. Folks had vague associations with mystical-sounding incantations and praying to statues. Still, to her credit, Mama got past her hesitation, and it was agreed that Dick and I would be married by a priest in my parents’ Methodist church. It was an icy January day, but the church was packed. It seemed that a lot of local Protestants were willing to loosen their Bible Belts long enough to see what kind of razzle-dazzle might be brought to bear by a Catholic priest.

Dick and I drove a little while in silence. The passing scenery flew by, a tapestry of mingled, woodsy greens. Inside my head, a butterfly of worry landed. I couldn’t help fearing that I would arrive home to news that Mama or Daddy had taken a downturn.

“Remember when the kids were small?” I said to Dick. “I always had this urge to check in with the babysitter, and you would try to talk me out of it.”

“Yep. Exactly right. But I was never successful, so you called and then felt better for about twelve hours. Then the cycle would begin again.”

Dick fiddled with the radio dial and finally found a station
he approved of. It was an oldies station, and “Baby Love”
was playing. I sang along, providing backup, and he graciously refrained from asking me to stop. Settling back, he readjusted his sunglasses, and I thought of the days when we were our younger and more slender selves, with thicker hair and whiter teeth and much more energy. Growing older was no picnic, but our nearly thirty-five years of marriage was something to be proud of. I felt a surge of satisfaction knowing that our parents’ wisdom in giving us their blessing had been confirmed. Our parents weren’t crazy, and our detractors had it wrong. Dick and I had stood the test of time.

•   •   •

As we turned onto Mount Vernon Road, the neighborhood looked different. It seemed the grass had grown a little thicker, even in these past few days. Surprisingly, pink flowers set on leafless stalks had bloomed beside the driveway. I gave a little gasp as we pulled in. How lovely the flowers were, what an unexpected pleasure.

Dick and I each grabbed handfuls of bags to bring into the house, and I managed to be first to our mailbox, where I saw a slim white envelope waiting for me. The return address was the imaging center where I went for my regular mammograms. I’d gone in a few weeks prior to our trip and had hoped to get the results before we left. But no such luck.

I hadn’t said a word about it to Dick, but despite the pleasure I took in our time away, the arrival of this envelope had occupied
a hidden corner of my mind throughout our trip. Whether we were shopping or relaxing, sleeping late or being pampered in the spa, I felt its presence in its absence. Now it was here.

I would recognize the imaging center’s bright blue logo anywhere, and I knew that Dick would as well. I wondered if he remembered that it was that time of year again. In my head, I did the math: thirteen days between the mammogram and when we left on vacation. Surely they would have phoned me by now if there were a problem. Once, after the lumpectomy, I did have to go back for extra pictures, but everything turned out okay, I reminded myself.

I didn’t want Dick to know the news contained in the envelope before I did. Why worry Dick, I thought to myself, when only minutes later, I could scan the contents and then announce, with dignity, that we were off the hook again?

But just as my fingers grasped the envelope with the bright blue return address, Dick’s hand went over mine and we struggled for control over that slim piece of paper.

He, too, recognized the blue return address. Lewis-Gale Medical Center, Department of Radiology. Later, he confessed that he had read my calendar and knew exactly when I had my mammogram. He’d held his vigil on vacation, too. So, even in our closest times, it was something that came between us despite the fact that neither of us acknowledged it to the other. The beautiful green eyes that had looked at me with love only a short time earlier now held an empty look, as if he were bracing himself.

I somehow managed to snatch the envelope out of his hand. Without the envelope to hold on to, Dick looked even more forlorn, lacking even an illusion of control over the situation. He turned the key to our front-door lock. I twisted the knob. As I held the envelope away from him, I thought of all our bags of purchases from our weekend shopping trip. My favorite was a pair of black velvet shoes that reminded me of Audrey Hepburn. Maybe I’d surprise everyone and die in style.

In the foyer now, I turned toward Dick abruptly.

“Here,” I said. “Take it. You’re the head of this household. Read it to me.”

Reluctantly, he accepted it. As I stepped back, my purse knocked something off the narrow table in the hall. It was a picture of Dick’s parents in their younger days. Full of remorse, I picked it up. The glass was broken, but the photo was intact and could be reframed. I looked up and saw Dick and me reflected in the gilded oval mirror that had come from my grandmother’s house. I noticed the veins that stood out on Dick’s neck like cords, the jutting motion of his handsome jaw, the blood that rushed to transform his face into a mask of rage that covered up an even deeper feeling: fear. Fear of losing.

“Here, Carol. You read it. I’m sorry,” Dick said. “The news will be good. Let’s get to that part, okay?”

“You know how I hate that happy talk—right?” Poor Dick. He couldn’t win for losing. My fingers ripped the paper in a single motion, and I scanned the contents.
Dear Carol Wall: Your recent mammogram . . .
it began, and then, within the space of
several seconds, I felt like the heroine in one of those old movies, standing on the window ledge of a twenty-story building as the crowd below gathers to watch the spectacle.

I pulled out a dining room chair and sat down.

“It isn’t good,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s the other breast this time. The ‘healthy’ one. They want me to come back for another mammogram.”

“Oh, God.”

“I told you,” I said, clutching my stomach. As my composure crumbled, Dick’s eyes grew hard. I stifled several silent sobs. Pressure built against my diaphragm.

“Now, listen,” he began to lecture, pacing to and fro as if delivering his closing arguments to a moot court jury. “You can’t get all worked up about each wrinkle in the process. You’ve had cancer . . .”

I picked at my fingernails, doing my very best to come across as a grown-up who had received some mildly disappointing news. I blinked rapidly to hold back tears. “Really, Dick? What part of my breast cancer felt like merely a wrinkle to you? Having a part of my body removed? Lying on a table as everyone else scampered out before my dose of radiation was turned on?”

Dick put his hands on my shoulders. He tried to project a calm voice. “What I meant was, Carol, first we have to get a handle on what we’re dealing with. We can’t react to every little thing that happens. You’ll just go back and let them take some further pictures. They’re being careful. Don’t we want them to be?”

“We?”
I screamed, losing composure. “It’s somewhere you can’t go. What do you do when I have surgery? You get a cup of coffee, read the paper in the waiting room. When they did the biopsy, you even gave them your cell number and had them call you at the office. You racked up some billable hours while I was being knifed. Can’t you get this through your head? The love between us, our kids and our home, have been the center of our lives since we were barely old enough to vote.
This
threatens it. The worst part is, we can’t control the outcome. Your being so healthy is going to come between us. I just know it will. I already feel left out, unworthy and resentful. Wait and see.”

Dick looked stunned. He ran his fingers through his hair. He looked at the lovely Oriental rug that anchored the dining room table and chairs. We bought it in Richmond some years back, on a getaway trip when the kids were small. The rug’s colors had mellowed over time, reminding me of the life Dick and I had lived together for over thirty years. I thought of our three children, and the games they’d played on this rug, the milk and cookie crumbs they’d spilled on it. We’d all left our mark.

“We’ve always had a lot to lose,” I said, feeling remorseful for my outburst.

“I know,” he said.

“I can’t be calm about something like this, Dick. I’m not like you that way.”

Dick got a faraway look on his face as I began thinking how I hated that place, the radiology department
.
It was like being in
the grave . . . no windows . . . cold. It had even occurred to me at a particularly morbid moment that they might as well have situated the morgue nearby, conveniently close after they’d finished scaring you to death. Everyone was so nice there, so supportive. But the thought that they knew something about me that I didn’t know yet made me crazy.

My thoughts of illness and death inevitably brought me back to my childhood. All roads led me there. I remembered the time Daddy, Judy, and I were diagnosed with the polio virus. I was probably five years old at the time. Daddy was in the hospital for a short time. Meanwhile, the rest of us were quarantined in the house. The crisis soon passed, but it took its toll on Mama. One day after Daddy returned to work, she had what must have been a panic attack. She lay on the sofa and told me to call Daddy at work. This had never, ever happened, and instinctively I knew that it was my job to remain calm, and to try to keep Mama calm until Daddy arrived. So while Mama lay on the sofa, holding one hand over her heart, I sat on the floor beside her and pretended to read the comics. And that’s when things got really strange. When Daddy got home, he and Mama decided that the way to draw the least amount of attention from the neighbors was to avoid calling an ambulance. So instead, they called Daddy’s friend who owned a funeral home and asked him to send a hearse for Mama. And while Judy and I stood on the front porch, two junior honor guards, they rolled Mama by us on a gurney and down the steps to slide her into the hearse. To this day I wonder
what on earth to make of that incident. Was Mama more afraid of illness than death? For my own part, I knew that I was deathly afraid of both.

“I need to get some air,” Dick said. “As soon as you get your appointment, please let me know.” Before I could respond, he snatched up his keys again. “There are a couple of things I need to check at the office.”

I watched him screech away in his car, and instead of feeling abandoned, I was relieved to see him go. Dick and I needed to be away from each other for a few hours. Right now we only reminded each other of how much we had to lose, and how terrified we were. Then, as if it had been planned, I spotted Giles driving his Neon down our street.

Dick’s car was gone, and Giles probably thought we weren’t yet home from our trip. Peering out, I watched as he went straight to work along the flower bed he had built in front, between the boxwoods, where great heaps of orange and purple impatiens had erupted into pleasing mounds of color. There were also two small rosebushes, one for Lok and one for Mama.

From the kitchen window moments later, I watched as he inspected the wildflower garden we had just created by the birdbath. The stones were smooth, well worn by water flowing over time, and they encircled flowers that seemed content to be loosely organized, their blossoms tipping here and there, and even intertwining. There were lady’s slippers, black-eyed Susans, painted trilliums, and so on. He did everything the way he had promised.