The Heirloom Garden, page 16
“Tastes just the same, Mary,” Iris says. She finishes a corndog and pulls the second from the bag. “And they got one for you, too. Ketchup. Your favorite. Shirley’s granddaughter remembered. Can you believe it? After all these years.”
Iris holds the corndog out to a beautiful daylily that is open at night, its bloom as bright as the rising moon.
“Just to think that we were there the first day Pronto Pup opened,” Iris says. “How many decades ago was it, my angel? Six?”
Iris holds the corndog in front of the daylily once again as if the flower is going to eat it, and then she polishes it off before leaning forward onto her knees. “Good night, My Mary,” Iris says, giving the daylily a gentle kiss. “Until next year.”
My heart leaps, and I throw a hand over my mouth to contain a gasp of emotion. I watch Iris head inside.
“Hello? Is someone out here?”
I nearly faint when I hear a man’s voice yell. My heart races, the branches tickling my face.
“Hello?”
Through the open door, I can hear the TV blaring, a reporter talking about the number of American soldiers who have died since President Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” in May. I hold my breath. When the door closes, I race back home and pull Lily into my lap, holding her until she says, “Mommy, I can’t breathe.”
“I’m taking a shower,” I finally say.
I stand in the shower and sob, thinking about the innocence of childhood and the reality of adulthood, Iris’s life, Cory’s battles and my day. I shut my eyes, the water pouring over my head. I can clearly hear Iris’s voice after Cory told her there was nothing to be scared of in the world.
“Isn’t there?” I ask, my voice echoing in the shower. “Isn’t there?”
PART SEVEN
HOLLYHOCKS
“As for marigold, poppies, hollyhocks and valorous sunflowers, we shall never have a garden without them, both for their own sake, and for the sake of old-fashioned folks, who used to love them.”
—Henry Ward Beecher
IRIS
JULY 2003
“Thank you for your healing powers and your strength,” I whisper to my tea. I look up. “And thank you for your beauty and memories.”
I am seated on a blanket facing my beloved hollyhocks. The sun is on my face, and I am sipping hollyhock tea and eating lunch.
This is my Fourth of July ritual, and it has been for as long as I can remember, as long as there have been fireworks and barbecues and summer vacations.
This was my mother’s and my grandmother’s ritual, too.
“An old woman’s garden should have white picket fences, shade trees and lots of hollyhocks,” my grandma used to say. “You’ll see one day.”
I never saw my grandmother as old. She was a perennial. Her beauty was in her history. She would bloom forever.
Or so I thought.
“There is just something about hollyhocks,” my grandma would continue. “It’s like they’re standing as tall as they can so they can see the fireworks, too.”
While my grandfather and all the menfolk would spend the day setting up our family’s fireworks on the beach—which was always titled by my grampa, who had more than a little P.T. Barnum in him, “The Greatest Fireworks Spectacular on Earth!”—the women would spend the day in the garden. It wasn’t sexist: we were each truly doing what we loved most.
“The men love a boom, we love a bloom,” my mom would say as we deadheaded the garden. And it was true.
There was just something about three generations being together in the place we loved most in the world: my grandma’s cottage garden. I felt safer than I ever did, tucked along the lakeshore by her flowers, which had been started in her mother’s and grandmother’s gardens. Each flower seemed to tell a story, none more so than the hollyhock.
“Put your ear next to the bell,” my grandma would say. “It’s just like a seashell. It can tell you the story of its life.” I would shut my eyes and shut out the world: the boom of the bottle rockets echoing off the lake, the buzz of the bees, the breeze gently rustling the leaves of the pretty sugar maples.
I am strong and proud, the hollyhocks would whisper into my ear.
“Did you listen?” my grandma would ask.
I would nod.
“The hollyhocks remind us to stand tall in this world,” she said. “Never forget that.”
On those perfect holidays along the lakeshore—clear skies, little wind, temperatures in the low eighties—when the boys were on the beach, my grandma would spread a blanket out in front of her hollyhocks, and we would have lunch. Nothing fancy. My grandma was not a fancy woman. She would make sandwiches with nothing more than warm, fresh tomatoes she plucked from her garden, white bread, mayonnaise and a lot of cracked pepper. We’d have cucumbers and onions, and my grandma’s iced hollyhock-blossom tea.
Firecrackers boom and knock me from this memory. I take a sip of tea—a sip of summer—and smile.
My grandma taught me to make the tea when I was just a girl. Nothing more than picking four of the freshest hollyhock flowers, removing their petals and putting them into a Mason jar with a cup of boiled water. Put on the lid and allow to steep for 15 minutes or so. I like mine iced in the summer with a touch of local honey.
I take a bite of my lunch. It’s still quite simple, although my bread of choice has changed over the years—I prefer a crusty seedy salt I have delivered from a local bakery—and I use an olive oil–based mayonnaise. But the tomatoes are straight from my vegetable garden, as are the cucumbers and onions. I grow strawberries, asparagus, cherries and peppers, too, as well as a lot of herbs.
I may eat a corndog once every few decades, I think with a chuckle, but most of my sustenance comes from what I can grow or what the earth can provide naturally.
I take another sip and stare at my hollyhocks.
I partially credit this tea, illogically I’m sure, for my longevity. I credit the hollyhocks, with complete conviction, for my strength.
Just look at them!
Many of my hollyhocks tower over me. They rise to nearly eight or nine feet tall. They are truly a natural symbol of the power and pride each of us can possess, no matter how rough the terrain.
I engage my aging spine and aching lower back to mimic my friends and sit just a little bit taller.
And their faces! Oh, their faces! Purple, pink, white and yellow. Even ones that resemble old-fashioned peppermint candies.
What is it about a hollyhock, I wonder, that has captured my imagination ever since I was a little girl?
I sip my tea and stare up and into their wide faces.
I smile and nod to myself. I think it’s that—like me, like all women—there’s more than meets the eye.
Hollyhocks are part of the expansive and diverse mallow family, which includes okra, cotton, hibiscus and marshmallow, now known as the delicious end to every Fourth of July bonfire. The plants were supposedly used by Crusaders to make a salve that was placed on the hind legs—hocks—of injured horses. “Holly” comes from holy, also from the Crusaders. Hollyhock was used to treat a variety of ailments, from inflammation of mucous membranes to cuts and bruises, as well as sunburns, cramps and kidney problems.
If our ancestors believed in your healing powers, I think, then I believe you can heal a soul.
I’ve always thought of a hollyhock as a perfect friend. They are lovely but quiet. They always stand by your side. They poke their heads over fences, and they lean into windows to say hello.
A bottle rocket squeals overhead and I yelp, sloshing tea into my lap. I laugh at my overreaction, and then think of my family on the Fourth, so long ago, the men on the beach and us in the garden eating lunch.
I hear Lily scream as another bottle rocket screeches past, her shock turning quickly into a girlish giggle, and suddenly I think of Mary.
I think of summer.
I think of hollyhocks.
JULY 1948
I am not in my body. I am hovering over my garden watching a woman who looks very much like me ripping apart my gardens. She has a sickle and is whacking down flowers—daylilies, bee balm, hollyhocks, daisies, lavender—in wide swaths, like a tornado. I watch her fall to the ground and dig her bare hands into the earth, ripping out heirlooms by their roots. She stands, her hair and eyes wild, and picks up a pretty blue-tinted lake stone from her garden border and throws it at her tiny greenhouse. The shattering of glass echoes along the lakeshore. The woman raises her head and screams, before falling to her knees once again.
“Iris! Iris, stop! Stop it! Someone, help me! Grab her and hold her down!”
I come back into my body. I am being held down by Shirley’s husband and a neighbor boy. Somebody takes the scythe away. I can taste dirt in my mouth. My eyes are nearly swollen shut.
“She’s dying, Shirley! She’s dying! And there’s nothing I can do!”
The neighbor boy’s expression is stricken. He looks at me, his face red, his body strong and healthy.
“Get off me! Get off me! I just want to die!”
I push them off me and struggle to my feet. I lock eyes with the young boy. He should not be seeing these things at such a tender age.
I feel a weight behind me, and Shirley is pulling me back to the ground again, holding me as I thrash, as I weep, as I come back into the reality that my daughter is dying.
“I know, I know, I know,” Shirley whispers. She is sobbing, too. “No one deserves this, especially you. But don’t harm your flowers, Iris. They’re the—”
Shirley stops.
“They’re the only thing I have left in this world,” I finish for her.
Shirley grabs me even tighter.
I stare into the sky. It is joyfully, ridiculously blue, and its beauty mocks me.
How can there be a heaven up there?
Out of nowhere, a bottle rocket shoots across the cerulean backdrop, and I suddenly remember: it is the Fourth of July.
I had forgotten what day it was. I only know that this is the day my life—along with my daughter’s—will likely end.
Just a few days ago Mary was playing at the county’s Fourth of July fair. She was riding the carousel and the Ferris wheel, jumping off the diving board into the county pool, eating funnel cakes and lighting Black Cat black snakes on sidewalks. The next day she told me she didn’t feel well, and I thought it was all of the junk food she had consumed. Mary felt good enough to go out and play on the beach, but a few days later she began to feel dizzy, and I watched her walk around the house as if she were drunk. That’s when I knew. I rushed her to the hospital.
“Polio,” the doctor said. It was the word every parent feared these days, especially in the summer. But it only got worse. “Paralytic polio,” the doctor continued. “Rare. Extremely rare. Very little hope.”
“What about an iron lung?”
He walked me out of Mary’s room. “Iris,” he started. I only heard fragments.
An iron lung costs as much as a house.
It won’t do any good for Mary.
The hospital administration suggests Mary return home, for the safety of the other patients.
The doctor draped hot packs of wet wool onto Mary’s limbs to keep them from going into spasms. I sat by her bed praying for a miracle, praying for Mary to recover, to stand, to sprint to the beach and shoot bottle rockets into the sky.
“Go play,” I say to the neighbor boy still standing over me. “Have fun. Shoot your fireworks. Be a child.” He stares at me. “Go. Go!”
The shadows of those gathered to witness this spectacle extend over our bodies, but slowly, they retreat, and—shard by shard—the summer sun returns. Shirley is still holding me tightly, unrelenting in her grip.
“It’s not fair,” I sob. “What have I done to deserve God’s wrath? My husband, my daughter... I have nothing left to live for.”
Shirley doesn’t say a word. She just holds me and holds me, until my sobbing subsides and my breathing calms. My cheek is pressed against the earth, and in front of my eyes lie three stately stalks of hollyhocks: crimson, yellow and white.
I shut my eyes and focus on Shirley’s breathing. As I do, I can again hear the waves crashing into the shore, the buzz of the bees in my gardens and the echo of fireworks along the shore. In those sounds I can also hear my grandmother’s voice. She is the one holding me now, whispering in my ear, “Just look around, Iris. The daisies remind you to be happy. The hydrangeas remind you to be colorful. The lilacs remind us to breathe deeply. The pansies reflect our own images back at us. The hollyhocks remind us to stand tall in this world. And the roses—oh, the roses!—they remind us that beauty is always present even amongst the thorns.”
I jerk upright, forcing myself out of Shirley’s arms.
“Iris,” she says, her voice on high alert. She sits up and grabs me again. “Don’t.”
I reach out and grab a stalk of crimson hollyhock. “I used to make hollyhock dolls with Mary,” I say. I study the flower and smile. “She loved them.”
I form a skirt from the flower, a body from a bud and a head from a seedpod, and then reach over to grab a yellow hollyhock to make a hat. I pinch the parts together with my fingers since I don’t have a toothpick and make the doll dance on my lap. For one short moment I am happy again. But slowly, the doll disintegrates as I play with it, the hat and head falling off, followed by the body and ruffles of the skirt. I watch it die in front of my eyes, just like my daughter. I lift my head and roar in grief. Shirley embraces me until my sobbing slows and then she picks up a white hollyhock and holds it before me. “Let’s fill Mary’s room with flowers,” Shirley says. “Since she can’t come outside to play on a beautiful summer day, let’s bring the outdoors inside.”
Shirley stands and looks around. She heads to my shattered greenhouse and returns with a few buckets. She begins to fill them with all the flowers I’ve hacked down or ripped out of my gardens.
“Stop,” I say.
“No, you stop!” Shirley suddenly shouts. “I cannot imagine what you are going through, but you need to be with your daughter right now, no matter how hard it is.” She holds up a daylily, as violet as Mary’s eyes. “You created this for her,” she says, her voice lower but still filled with strength. “These flowers will be her legacy. And every single time you give someone a start from your garden or your own daylilies, you can tell them about your daughter. And when a stranger asks that stranger about the flower, she will recount the story you told her. That will go on forever, and Mary’s memory will never die as long as flowers are blooming on this earth.”
Shirley is crying, her nose running. I feel my knees weaken, but my friend catches me before I fall.
“For Mary,” Shirley whispers.
“For Mary,” I repeat.
We gather as many blooms and vases as we can carry and fill Mary’s bedroom with flowers. Her room resembles a floral shop by the time we are finished. I take a seat by Mary’s bed and hold her hand. As she begins to wake, her nose twitches before her eyes open. “Smells like summer,” Mary says. Her eyes flutter and then open, barely. She sees me and smiles.
“We brought summer to you,” I say. “Happy Fourth of July.”
Her little body is having trouble breathing. The muscles in her chest needed for breathing and swallowing are becoming paralyzed.
“Thank you, Mommy,” she says. Mary tries to look around, but her head won’t cooperate. I look at Shirley. She walks over and pulls a hollyhock from a vase and hands it to me. “Remember?” I ask Mary, beginning to make a doll.
A tiny smile etches her face and when I finish, she is asleep again. I bend my head to pray, but instead I ask in anger, “Why, God? Why Mary? Why me?”
The windows are cracked, and the warmth and sounds of summer fill her pink bedroom. My eyes are shut, my head is numb, my heart aches so badly I feel as if my body has been cleaved in two. In the distance I can hear a group of happy, healthy children squealing “Wheeee!” as they jump into Lake Michigan. But in my ear, I can plainly hear God ask, “Why? Whhhyyyyy, Iris? Why not you?”
My heart quickens, and my head jerks upright. I look around the room to see if someone is talking to me, tricking me. But Mary is still asleep, and Shirley has passed out in a little rocking chair in the corner, one of Mary’s cloth dolls in her lap.
I stand, wanting to scream, to break all the vases in the room, but instead my body feels as if it’s being moved by another force, compelled to complete a task. I leave and when I return, I wake Shirley.
“What?” she asks with a start. Her eyes widen when she sees what I have gathered: scissors, tape, string, colored construction and crepe paper that Mary used to draw on and play with. “What’s going on?”
“Mary can’t see the flowers,” I explain. “So we have to hang them from the ceiling so she can when she wakes up. Like fireworks up in the night sky, so she can see them.”
“Oh, Iris,” Shirley says. She tries to stand but the little rocker stays attached to her ample behind. She pulls it free, and—for the first time in ages—I smile. “Why?” she asks. “Why are you doing this?”
“Why not?” I ask.
As Mary sleeps, we make paper flowers of all varieties and colors, and tie and tape them from the ceiling and to the walls. We work all afternoon and evening, unsure when—or if—Mary will wake.
“Mommy?” I am sitting in the chair by Mary’s bed. Fireworks are going off all over the lakeshore. The night sky is illuminated through her bedroom window as if it’s morning.
“Oh, sweetheart!” I say. “You’re awake.”
Her eyes open into a slit. “I see it now...the flowers,” she says. “Summer flowers.”
