The Heirloom Garden, page 12
“Funny you just mentioned Monet,” I say, telling Iris about my time abroad. “His gardens were truly magical. You probably already know this, but he had stunning cottage gardens surrounding his home, and a Japanese-inspired water garden beyond that.” I stop and look around Iris’s gardens. “It was like stepping into one of his paintings.”
I turn, and Iris is watching me. “Go on,” she prompts. “I’ve always dreamed of visiting Giverny. I’ve only been able to do it in my mind.”
“It was the first time I not only understood the magic of flowers but also impressionism,” I say. “Walking through his gardens, you can see exactly what he saw—the way that light affects color as morning passes to evening, the beauty of a simple reflection in the water...” I pause, searching for the right words. “I’ve never seen the world around me as literal, as black or white, right or wrong. I feel the beauty and pain in the world, and that’s what Monet saw, too. He didn’t paint what he saw. He painted what he felt.”
I look at Iris, and a wry smile slowly envelops her face. “Are you sure you’re an engineer?” she asks with a little laugh. “Not a poet?”
I tell her of my job, and she nods. “I was a botanist, so I understand completely. There was an exact science to what I did—and what I still do—but there was also an artistry to it, as well.” Iris shuts her eyes. “Paris,” she says. “I’ve always dreamed of visiting Paris.” She opens her eyes. “Was it everything you dreamed?” Her voice sounds like that of a young girl, filled with all the hope of springtime.
“Yes,” I say. “And more.” I smile. “Audrey Hepburn said, ‘Paris is always a good idea.’”
“Smart woman, that Audrey,” Iris says.
I look at her. “You should go.”
Iris averts her eyes and nods robotically. Her eyes veer from me to the fence and then back to her gardens.
“Yes,” Iris responds, her voice sans emotion. She begins to move forward but stops abruptly. “Speaking of smart women, do you have difficulty at work?” She stops. “Being a woman?”
I think of my recent meeting. “I do,” I say. “I always have. College. Career. Working mother.” Iris is nodding. “I can only imagine what you had to endure.”
She turns, and her eyes are like lasers. “I was treated very poorly,” she says, not mincing words, her voice showing zero remorse. “Men don’t like smart women,” she continues. “We’re a threat. To their egos. Their comfort. Their very existence. We’re expected to be small, act small, be window dressing.” She looks away and shakes her head as if to stop herself. “But that’s a conversation for another day.” She turns back. “And with a stronger drink than tea.”
She moves forward with a determined tilt to her aging body, which resembles a parenthesis, as if to say, Follow me, and I do.
Iris’s front and side gardens border the house and fence, hugging a lush green lawn. But as we head into the backyard, I again am reminded of Giverny. There is no backyard, just a monstrous cottage garden with various pathways—mulch, gravel, stepping stones—meandering throughout. On one side is a potting shed and on the other a greenhouse—actually more dollhouse than greenhouse—both of which are the most adorable I’ve ever seen. The greenhouse is comprised of huge glass windows outlined with crisp white frames, but the structure is shingled along the bottom and in the pitches below the glass roof. Iris turns and catches me staring.
“My gardens are not quite peak yet,” she says. “I must apologize.”
I cannot contain my laughter. “Are you kidding me?” I ask. “It’s stunning.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you mind if I ask what’s in your greenhouse? It’s so charming.”
“Ah,” she says with a big smile. “My babies are in the greenhouse.”
I cock my head. Her babies?
She leads me into her greenhouse, which is surrounded by—no, hugged by—forest ferns and hostas. I glance down, and hidden among the dense green are a family of gnomes. The entire family is waving while sporting red caps, curled at the ends, happy smiles and pointy ears. The father is holding a shovel in one hand, the mother has a basket filled with flowers, and the boy is wearing blue overalls and the girl a red jumper. A redbud tree, as aged and bent as Iris but resplendent in its own body, sits at the edge of the greenhouse. In a knothole in the crook of its base sits the gnomes’ home.
“These are my babies,” Iris says, interrupting me from my thoughts and leading me inside.
The entire greenhouse is impeccably clean and quite warm. A potting bench holds a variety of garden tools, and potting soil is stacked deep in one corner. But nearly every inch of the floor and the tables are covered with pots and writing tablets like the ones my mom used in school. I look closer, narrowing my eyes and pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose.
What is that? Oh, my God!
Hosiery hangs from nails off the tables.
“Yes, those are my hose,” Iris says, noticing my expression. “Ever since the war, I still can’t waste a thing.” She stops. I still can’t say a word. “I hybridize my own daylilies,” she continues. “That’s sort of my calling card. I tie nylons around the daylily stalks, tag them, break the stalks after they’ve bloomed and count the seeds. I plant them in here and then count how many grow.” She walks over and touches a pot. “I have to wait three years to see how many bloom. I have to wait to see if the colors are right, if they match the dream I have in my own head.”
“You’re just like Monet,” I finally say. “You bring to life what you feel.”
Iris smiles. “That might be the nicest compliment I’ve received in years.” Her eyes fill with the light penetrating the greenhouse. “It’s getting warm in here,” she says, pulling off a sweatshirt to reveal a body—now in a T-shirt—that is lithe and obviously still strong underneath her wrinkled skin, her forearms as thick and strong as tree roots. “You wanted to see my peonies.”
I follow Iris outside and over to the far side of her garden, which is slightly elevated on a berm and filled with light. “This gets the most sunshine and less water,” she says. “My peonies love it.”
Her peonies are works of art, all as beautiful as paintings in a gallery. Some sport huge, puffy blooms as thick and billowy as cotton candy, each flower filled with endless rows of petals. Some are all white, some white tinged with pink or flicks of red, while some are light pink and others fuchsia. Others are more delicate: crinkled white with yellow centers, and some resemble beautiful bowls, cups of pink petals surrounding creamy centers.
I can smell them before I even reach them. The entire yard—the entire world, it suddenly seems—is perfumed with their sweet scent. I can’t help myself: I race toward the flowers and grab a bloom, pulling it toward my nose. I inhale.
I again think of Paris, of walking into the famed French perfumery Guerlain. The beautiful shop was filled with intoxicating scents in ornate glass bottles. I couldn’t afford to buy a thing as a poor, young college student, but I spent an hour in the shop smelling every perfume, with my favorites being the ones that evoked the scent of fresh flowers. I sniff again, and this time I am transported to my grandmother’s backyard.
“These peonies started in my grandma’s gardens, where you now live,” she says. “They came from her mom’s house. They’re heirlooms. They’ve been a part of my family history longer than I have.”
I turn and looks at Iris, whose face is abloom, just like her gardens.
“I’m sorry about your yard,” Iris says suddenly. “There were too many memories next door. I brought every plant over here.”
I stand and nod. “I wish I had taken starts of my grandma’s peonies,” I say. “Oh, the memories these bring back. My grandma had peonies with blooms as big as baseballs, and they would just flop over on the ground during the summer heat like her old dog used to do. She had a laundry line over her peonies, just so they would scent her sheets when she hung them out to dry.” I stop and shut my eyes. “When I would stay with her in the summer, my sheets smelled like peonies. Like heaven.”
“Why didn’t you take any starts?” Iris asks.
“My mom,” I say, my voice dropping. “She’s not much of a gardener. She’s not one for making memories.” I turn to Iris. “She has cut down every tree in her yard.”
“My heavens,” Iris gasps. “Why?”
“Fear,” I say. “Fear rules her world. A tree might fall and damage the house. A branch might hurt the roof. Peonies attract ants. Flowers attract bees. Everything is scary.”
“What about your father?”
“She rules him, too,” I say. “And now he just stays quiet.”
For a long beat the two of us match the last word floating in the air. And then Iris looks at me and asks, “Would you like a bouquet of peonies?” She stops. “No, better yet, would you like a start of my peonies?”
Iris heads to her greenhouse and returns with a shovel and a pot. She stands over her peonies and regards them, before doing the same with me. “I think I know which you prefer,” she says, before thrusting her shovel under a huge bush of peonies filled with white blooms tinged with pink. My nose twitches with excitement. Iris puts a clump of peonies—roots and all—into the bucket and adds some dirt around them.
“Plant these immediately and be sure to water them in, you hear me?” she says, her voice stern. “If they wilt, water them some more. They’re hearty, so they should root.” She leans down and, without warning, breaks off a few more. “For your dining room table,” she adds. “In memory of your grandma.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“We started as adversaries,” Iris says. “You let down your walls.”
“So did you,” I say. My eyes dart toward her fence.
“Just a little,” she says, her voice thick with sarcasm.
“Thank you,” I say.
Iris walks me to the front gate and opens it. As I’m about to leave, she says, “Abby, we all go crazy, but we can still create beauty out of all the horror.” She stops. “Don’t give up on your husband. He’s alive. So is your daughter. Those are all the blessings you need in this world. That’s all that matters in this world. You have your family.”
I watch her as she talks, moved but unsure as to what to say. She is wringing her gloved hands, almost as if she’s forcing herself to keep from saying anything further.
Like, Don’t grow to be old and alone like me. Don’t wall yourself off from the world.
My heart quickens, and I open my mouth to ask about her daughter, about what happened.
“Goodbye, Abby,” Iris says. “And good luck.”
“Goodbye,” I say with a nod.
I walk onto the sidewalk, and she shuts the gate behind me. I can hear it lock. I stop on the other side for a moment, and I can see the outline of Iris’s body through the slats, pressed against the fence, as if she wants to leave with me. The fragrance of the peonies fills the air, and I lift them to my nose. When I turn back, Iris is gone.
I look at my house. I stop, unable to go inside quite yet, hoping that it’s not too late, that Cory is not already gone, or that I have not already left, either. I recall what Iris just said to me.
Such a fine line between goodbye and good luck, I think.
I take a deep breath and finally open the front door, praying for the latter.
PART SIX
DAYLILIES
“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.”
—John Ruskin
IRIS
JUNE 2003
“Lily? Lily!”
What is all the commotion?
I am standing in my garden considering which of my babies, my daylilies, to cross on a beautiful still morning.
So much for still, I think.
“Lily?”
I stand and tilt my head like an old dog trying to home in on the exact spot of the sound. I angrily toss my gloves onto the ground and hold very still.
“Lily?”
I head toward the screened porch very quietly for a better view of what’s going on. I open the door and place my face near the screen. A figure stumbles into the backyard next door.
The derelict father.
I sigh and shake my head. His voice sounds slightly slurred yet again, tinged with sleep and who knows what else.
I’m done! I think. I will not allow that girl to be in danger any longer. I grab my phone from my kangaroo pouch and begin to dial 911.
That’s when I hear him call again.
“Where are you? Lily? Lily!”
There is now panic in his voice, the panic only a parent can understand when a child goes missing, even if only for a split second, the panic that screams, No, not my child. God, let my child be okay.
His voice is also filled with guilt, the guilt only a parent can understand when they’ve not been there for their child, even if only for a split second.
“Lily? Lily! Lily!”
I edge back toward the door.
“I’m on the beach, Daddy!”
My heart melts when I hear the little girl’s voice drifting on the breeze.
“Come play with me in the sand!”
Silence. I place my face against the screen.
“I can’t come get you, baby,” he finally yells. “Come back, okay?”
“Why, Daddy? It’s fun.”
I watch the father take a step, open the gate and then stop. He buries his face into his hands and then bumps his head against the gate. I can see through the opening of their backyard and straight down to Lake Michigan. Lily is alone, the waves crashing into the shore. She wades into the water and fills a bucket. A wave knocks her down and carries her back into the lake. She struggles but manages to return to shore, her bucket full.
“Lily!” he screams, his voice ragged, trying to stay calm but filled with fright. “Please come back now. I can’t come down there.”
What is happening? I wonder. Go get your daughter. Now. I hover my finger over the green call button.
“Come make a sandcastle with me,” Lily calls.
Cory lifts his head toward the sky and screams, his mouth open, a gaping maw, although no sound is released. He tries to step outside the gate and then toward the dune, but as soon as his feet touch the sand, he stops as though an electric fence surrounds the property.
“Sand,” he says quietly. “No. No. No. No sand.”
I look at the shadow box on the wall. I see Jonathan’s medal of honor, and my heart races.
He is just like me, I finally realize. Both traumatized by war, walls, life, boundaries real and imaginary. A grown man afraid of sand. A grown woman afraid of others.
“Come back, baby,” he calls. “Please.”
My heart breaks, and my hand trembles. I place my phone in my pouch again. I know what I must do. I take a step, open the screen door and walk to my fence. I lean against it for support, my body moving slat by slat until I am to my back gate. I open it, my entire body quaking. “Please, Jonathan and Mary, give me strength.”
I am outside the gate. My knees buckle. I peer beyond the dune grass. I can see the little girl playing in the waves. A red flag flaps in the breeze. Rip currents. I peer left and right. There is no one else on the beach. I take another step. The world is spinning now, the sky the earth, the grass the heavens, the sun atop me.
I find myself crawling, hand over hand, my face barely above the ground, grass scratching my cheeks, tears filling my eyes. I make it to the top of the dune and begin to crawl down it.
“Lily! Now!”
I hear a girlish scream—Squeeeeee!—and then the whoosh, whoosh of footsteps in the sand running past me. I fall into the tall grass, my heart pounding in my ears.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again!” he says.
“I’m sorry, Daddy. But I was bored, and you were asleep.” She stops. “Again.”
Footsteps grow quieter. The back door slams.
I lie on the ground, staring at the sky until my heart calms.
I finally stand, itchy from the grass.
“Thank you.”
I yelp. I look up, and Cory is standing at his fence.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Are you?”
He shakes his head and begins to weep.
“You need help,” I say.
“I know.”
“You realize you are risking your daughter’s life and your relationship with your wife if you don’t get help, don’t you?”
Cory is heaving, just like Lake Michigan, huge waves crashing forth.
“Do you want me to call for you?” I ask. “Someone?”
He looks at me, this big man all little boy, and nods. “Can you?” he asks. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
I nod.
Cory rushes inside and returns with a ream of papers. “The military gave me some names. I don’t know who to call, or how to start.”
I shuffle through the papers. Only one of the names is that of a woman. I call her immediately.
After Cory heads back inside, I return to my yard, picking up the crosses I’d set down moments ago. I hold them as if they were people, not flowers, or ghosts.
We are all just like these daylilies, crosses of life’s traumas and tribulations, the world’s good and bad.
I think of the family next door. But we are all still beautiful, aren’t we? Worthy of care and attention, just like these daylilies?
I begin to cry softly.
Yes, I begin to realize, the father I do not like—and the family that has trampled on my privacy—are exactly like me.
ABBY
JUNE 2003
“Hi, I’m Dr. Trafman. You must be Mr. and Mrs. Peterson.” She extends her hand.
