Winter Garden (10 page)

She pushed herself harder than ever before, desperate to clear her mind. Physical pain was so much easier to handle than heartache. Beside her, the dogs yelped and played with each other, occasionally running off into the deep snow on the sides of the road, but always coming back. By the time she had come to the golf course and doubled back, dawn had gilded the valley. It hadn’t snowed in almost two weeks and the top layer was crusty and glittery in the pale sunlight.

She veered into Belye Nochi and fed the dogs on Mom’s porch. It was one of the many changes in Meredith’s new schedule. She always did at least two things at once. She slipped out of her running shoes and went into the kitchen, where she started the samovar, and then climbed the stairs. She was still red-faced and breathing heavily when she opened Mom’s door.

And found the bed empty.

“Shit.”

Meredith went outside to the winter garden and sat beside her mother, who wore the lacy nightdress that Dad had given her for Christmas last year, with a blue mohair blanket draped around her shoulders. Her lower lip was bleeding from where she’d bitten it. Her feet were covered in stockings that were gray with damp and brown with dirt.

Meredith dared to reach out and cover her mother’s cold, cold hand with her own, but she couldn’t find any words to go along with the intimate act. “Come on, Mom, you need to eat something.”

“I ate yesterday.”

“I know. Come on.” She held her mother’s hand and helped her to rise. After too much time spent on this metal bench, her mother’s body straightened slowly, popping and creaking at the new movement.

As soon as she was fully upright, Mom pulled away from Meredith and walked up the flagstone path toward the house.

Meredith let her go on ahead.

Meredith followed her into the kitchen, where she called Jeff and told him she wouldn’t be home for breakfast after all. “Mom was in the garden again,” she said. “I think I better work here today.”

“Big surprise.”

“Come on, Jeff. Be fair—”

He hung up.

Stung by the sound of the dial tone, she called Jillian instead. They immediately fell into their easy routine, talking about school and Los Angeles and the weather. Meredith listened to her eldest daughter in amazement. As was happening more and more often lately, she heard this confident young woman talking about chemistry and biology and medical schools, and Meredith wondered how it had happened, this growing up and moving on. Only yesterday, Jillie had been a pudgy girl with gaps in her teeth who could spend an entire afternoon staring at an apple bud, waiting for it to blossom. It’s coming, Mommy. The flower will be here any second. Should I go get Grandpa?

And teaching Jillian to drive had taken about ten minutes. I read the manuals, Mom. You don’t have to grit your teeth. Trust me.

“I love you, Jillie,” Meredith said, realizing a second too late that she’d interrupted her daughter. She’d been saying something about enzymes. Or maybe ebola. Meredith laughed; she’d been caught not listening. “And I’m really proud of you.”

“I’m putting you into a coma, aren’t I?”

“Just a deep sleep.”

Jillian laughed. “Okay, Mom. I gotta run anyway. Love you.”

“Love you, too, Beetle.”

When Meredith hung up, she felt better. Whole again. Talking to her girls was always the best prescription for the blues. Except, of course, when those same conversations caused the blues. . . .

For the rest of the day, she worked from her mother’s kitchen table; in addition to paying taxes and reading crop reports and overseeing warehouse costs, she cajoled her mother into eating and paid her bills and washed her clothes.

Finally, at eight o’clock, when the dinner dishes were done and the food was put away, she went into the living room.

Mom sat in Dad’s favorite chair, knitting. A floor lamp glowed beside her; the light gave her face a softness that was illusory. To her left, the candle on the altar of the Holy Corner sputtered and sent smoke spiraling upward.

Mom’s eyes were closed, even while her fingers wielded the knitting needles. Shadowy lashes fanned down her pale cheeks, giving her an eerily sad look.

“It’s time for bed, Mom,” Meredith said, striving to sound neither impatient nor tired. She flicked on the ceiling light and in an instant the intimacy of the room was gone.

“I can manage my own schedule,” Mom said.

And so it began, the endless grind of getting Mom upstairs into bed. They fought about all of it: brushing teeth, changing clothes, taking off socks.

At just past nine, Meredith finally got her mom settled into bed. She pulled the covers up to her chin, just as she’d once done for Jillian and Maddy. “Sleep well,” Meredith said. “Dream of Dad.”

“It hurts to dream,” Mom said quietly.

Meredith didn’t know what to say to that. “So dream of your garden. The crocuses will be blooming soon.”

“Are they edible?”

That was how it happened lately; one moment her mother was there, behind her blue eyes, and then just as suddenly she’d be absent.

Meredith wanted to believe it was grief that was causing these changes in her mother, all of this confusion. With grief, there would be an end to it.

But each day it went on, each time Mom seemed disconnected to the world and confused by it, Meredith lost a little bit of faith in Dr. Burns’s assessment. She worried that it had to be Alzheimer’s instead of grief. How else to explain her mother’s sudden obsession with leather shoes and pounds of butter (which Meredith now found hidden all through the house), and the fairy-tale lion that she sometimes found her mother talking about?

Meredith touched her not-mother again, soothing her as she would a frightened child. “It’s okay, Mom. We have plenty of food downstairs.”

“I’ll sleep for a minute, then I’ll go to the roof.”

“No going to the roof,” Meredith said tiredly.

Mom sighed and closed her eyes. Within moments, she was asleep.

Meredith went around the room picking up the blankets and other items Mom had dropped.

Downstairs, she put a load of clothes in the washer so they’d be ready to go when she got here tomorrow. Then she finished the two care packages for Jillian and Maddy.

It was ten o’clock by the time she was done.

At home, she found Jeff in his office, working on his book.

“Hey,” she said, coming into the room.

He didn’t turn around. “Hey.”

“How’s the book going?”

“Great.”

“I still haven’t read it.”

“I know.” He turned to her then.

The look he gave her was familiar, full of disappointment, and suddenly she saw the two of them and this moment from a distance, and the new perspective changed everything. “Are we in trouble, Jeff?”

She could see that he was a little relieved by her question, that he’d been waiting for her to ask it. “Yeah.”

“Oh.” She could see that she’d disappointed him again, that he wanted to talk about these troubles she’d suddenly excavated and tripped over, but she didn’t know what to say. Frankly, this was the last thing she needed now. Her mom was crossing the road into crazy and her husband thought they were in trouble.

Knowing it was a mistake and unable to correct it, she left his office—and his sad, disappointed look—and went up to the bedroom they’d shared for so many years. She stripped down to her underwear and put on an old T-shirt, and climbed into bed. A pair of sleeping pills should have helped, but they didn’t, and later, when he crawled into bed, she knew he knew she was still awake.

She rolled over and pressed up against his back, whispered, “Good night.”

It wasn’t enough, wasn’t anything, and they both knew it. The conversation they needed to have was out there, like a storm cloud, gathering mass in the distance.

In mid-February, green was the color of defiance. White crocuses and snowdrops blossomed overnight, their thin, velvety green stalks pushing up through the glittering white blanket of snow.

Every day, Meredith vowed to talk to Jeff about their troubled marriage, but each time she made such a promise to herself something would happen that moved her in a different direction. And the truth was that she didn’t want to talk about it. Not really. She had enough on her plate with her mother’s increasing confusion and weird behavior. A newlywed might not be able to understand how troubles in a marriage could be ignored, but any woman who’d been married for twenty years knew that almost anything could be overlooked if you didn’t mention it.

One day at a time; that was how you made it through. Like an alcoholic who doesn’t reach for the first drink, a couple could simply not say the sentence that would begin a conversation.

But it was always there, hanging in the air like secondhand smoke, an unexpected carcinogen. And today, finally, Meredith had decided to begin it.

She left the office early, at five o’clock, and ignored the errands that needed to be done on the way home. The dry cleaning could be picked up later and they could go a day without groceries. She drove straight to her mother’s house and parked out front.

As expected, she found Mom in the winter garden, dressed in two nightgowns and wrapped in a blanket.

Meredith buttoned her coat as she went out there. Nearing her mother, she heard the soft, melodic cant of her voice saying something about a hungry lion.

The fairy tale again. Her mother was out here alone, telling stories to the man she loved.

“Hey, Mom,” Meredith said, daring to place a hand on her mother’s shoulder. She’d learned lately that she could touch her mother at times like this; sometimes Meredith’s touch could even help ease the confusion. “It’s cold out here. And it will be dark soon.”

“Don’t make Anya go alone. She’s afraid.”

Meredith let out a sigh. She was about to say something else when she noticed the new addition to the garden. There was a bright new copper column standing next to the old verdigris-aged one. “When did you order that, Mom?”

“I wish I had some candy to give him. He loves candy.”

Meredith helped her mother to her feet. She led her back into the bright, warm kitchen, where she made her a cup of hot tea and reheated a bowl of soup for her.

Her mother huddled over the table, shivering almost uncontrollably. It wasn’t until Meredith gave her a slice of bread, slathered with butter and honey, that she finally looked up.

“Your father loves bread and honey.”

Meredith felt a surprising sadness at that. Her father had been allergic to honey, and the fact that Mom had forgotten something so concrete was somehow worse than the previous confusions. “I wish I could really talk to you about him,” she said, more to herself than to her mother. Meredith needed her father lately, more than ever. He was the one she could have talked to about the trouble in her marriage. He would have taken her hand and walked out in the orchard with her and told her what she needed to hear. “He’d tell me what to do.”

“You know what to do,” her mother said, tearing off a chunk of bread and putting it in her pocket. “Tell them you love them. That’s what matters. And give them the butterfly.”

It was perhaps the loneliest moment of Meredith’s life. “That’s right, Mom. Thanks.”

She busied herself around the kitchen while her mother finished eating. Afterward, she helped Mom up the stairs to her bedroom and brushed her teeth for her, just as she used to do for her daughters when they were small, and like them, her mother did as she was bid. When Meredith began to undress her, the usual battle began.

“Come on, Mom, you need to get ready for bed. These nightgowns are dirty. Let me get you something clean.”

“No.”

For once, it was too much for Meredith—she was too tired to fight—so she gave in and let her mother go to bed in a dirty nightgown.

Outside the bedroom door, she waited until her mother fell asleep, began to softly snore, and then she went downstairs and locked up the house for the night.

It wasn’t until she was in the car, driving home, that she really thought about what her mother had said to her.

You know what to do.

Tell them you love them.

The words might have been tossed in a bowl of crazy salad, but it was still good advice.

When had she last said those precious words to Jeff? They used to be commonplace between them; not lately, though.

If reparations had to be started, and a conversation undertaken, those three words had to be the beginning.

At home, she called out for Jeff and got no answer.

He wasn’t home yet. She had time to get ready.

Smiling at that, she went upstairs to shower, not realizing until she reached for her razor how long it had been since she’d shaved. How had she let herself go so much?

She dried and curled her hair and put on makeup and then slipped into a pair of silk pajamas that she hadn’t worn in years. Barefooted, smelling of gardenia body lotion, she opened a bottle of champagne. She poured herself a glass and went into the living room, where she started a fire in the fireplace and sat down to wait for her husband.

Leaning back into the sofa’s soft down cushions, she put her feet up on the coffee table and closed her eyes, trying to think of what else she would say to him, the words he needed to hear.

She was wakened by the dogs barking. They were running down the hallway, falling over each other in their haste to get to the door.

When Jeff walked into the house, he was engulfed by the dogs, their tails thumping on the hardwood floor as they struggled to greet him without jumping up.

“Hey,” Meredith said when he came into the room.

Without looking up from Leia, whose ears he was scratching, he said, “Hey, Mere.”

“Would you like a drink?” she said. “We can, you know . . . talk.”

“I’ve got a killer headache. I think I’ll just take a shower and crash.”

She knew she could remind him that they needed to talk and he’d change course. He’d sit down with her and they’d begin this thing that so frightened her.

She probably should force it, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what he had to say anyway. And what difference would a day make? He was clearly exhausted, and she knew that feeling in spades. She could show him how much she loved him later. “Sure,” she said. “Actually, I’m tired, too.”

They went up to bed together, and she snuggled close to him. For the first time in months she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

At five forty-five, she was awakened by the phone. Her first thought was Someone’s hurt, and she sat up sharply, her heart racing.

She grabbed the phone and said, “Hello?”

“Meredith? It’s Ed. I’m sorry to bother you so early.”

She flicked on the bedside lamp. Mouthing Work to Jeff, she leaned back against the headboard. “What is it, Ed?”

“It’s your mother. She’s in the back of the orchard. Field A. She’s . . . uh . . . dragging that old toboggan of yours.”

“Shit. Stop her. I’ll be right there.” Meredith threw back the covers and got out of bed. Running around the room, she looked for something to put on.

“What the hell?” Jeff said, sitting up.

“My eighty-some-year-old mother is out sledding. But I’m wrong. She doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. She’s just grieving.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’ve told Jim.” She found a pair of sweats on the floor of her closet and started dressing. “He’s seen her three times in the last month and every time she’s as rational as a judge. He says it’s just grief. She saves her crazy for me.”

“She needs professional help.”

She grabbed her purse off the bench at the end of the bed and ran out without saying good-bye.

By spring, Meredith and Jeff had settled into silence. They both knew they were in trouble—the knowledge was in every look, every non-touch, every fake smile, but neither of them brought it up. They worked long hours and kissed each other good night and went their separate ways at dawn. Mom’s bouts of confusion had become less frequent lately; so much that Meredith had begun to hope that Dr. Burns was right and that she was finally getting better.

Meredith closed the ledger on her desk and put her mechanical pencil in the drawer. Then she hit the intercom. “I’m going to the house for lunch, Daisy. I should be back in an hour.”

“Sure thing, Meredith.”

She grabbed her hooded parka and headed down to her car.

It was a lovely late March day that lifted her spirits. Last week a warm front had swept through the valley, pushing Old Man Winter aside. Sunlight had left its indelible mark on the landscape: ice-blue water ran in gullies on either side of the roadways; sparkling droplets fell from the wakening apple trees, creating lacy patterns in the last few patches of slushy snow.

She turned onto Mom’s driveway, parked, and walked up to the gate. Off to her right, a man in coveralls was checking the red smudge pots. She waved to him and covered her mouth and nose as she walked through the thick black smoke.

Inside the house, she called out, “Mom. I’m here,” as she took off her coat.

In the kitchen, she stopped short.

Her mother was standing on the counter, holding a piece of newspaper and a roll of duct tape.

“Mom! What the hell are you doing? Get down from there.” Meredith rushed over and reached out, helping her mother climb down. “Here. Take my hand.”

Mom’s face was chalky; her hair was a mess. She was dressed in at least four layers of mismatched clothes but her feet were bare. Behind her, on the stove, something was boiling over, popping and hissing. “I need to go to the bank,” Mom said. “We need to take our money out while we can. We haven’t much to trade.”

“Mom . . . your hands are bleeding. What have you done?”

Mom glanced toward the dining room.

Meredith walked slowly forward, past the cold samovar and the empty fruit basket on the counter and into the dining room. The large oil painting of the Neva River at sunset had been taken down and propped against the table. Wallpaper had been torn away in huge strips. In places, dark blotches stained the blank walls. Dried blood? Had her mother worked so feverishly that she’d scraped the skin off her fingertips? Ragged strips of wallpaper had been placed in a bowl on the center of the table, like some weird wilted floral arrangement.

Behind her, the pot on the stove continued to boil over, water sizzling and popping. Meredith rushed to the stove and turned it off, seeing now that the pot was full of boiling water and strips of wallpaper.

“What in the hell . . . ?”

“We will be hungry,” Mom said.

Meredith went to her mother, gently took hold of her bloody hands. “Come on, Mom. Let’s get you washed up. Okay?”

Mom seemed hardly to hear. She kept mumbling about the money in the bank and how badly she wanted it, but she let Meredith lead her upstairs to the bathroom, where they kept the first-aid kit. Meredith sat Mom on the closed toilet seat and then knelt in front of her to wash and bandage her hands. She could see several precise cuts—slices—to the fingertips. These wounds hadn’t been caused by feverish scraping. They were cuts. Slices. “What happened, Mom?”

Her mother kept looking around. “There’s smoke. I heard a gunshot.”

“It’s the smudge pots. You know that. And you probably heard Melvin’s truck backfire. He’s here to make sure the pots are all working.”

“Pots?” Mom frowned at that.

When Meredith had her mother cleaned and bandaged, she put her into bed and pulled up the covers. That was when she noticed the bloodied X-Acto knife on the bedside table. Mom had cut herself on purpose.

Oh, God.

Meredith waited until her mother closed her eyes. Then she went downstairs and just stood there, looking at the damage around her—the boiling wallpaper, the ruined walls, the freaky table arrangement—and fear settled in. She went out to the porch just as Melvin drove away. It took every scrap of willpower she had not to scream out loud.

Instead, she pulled the cell phone out of her pocket and called Jeff at work.

“Hey, Mere. What is it? I’m just about ready to—”

“I need you, Jeff,” she said quietly, feeling as if she were coming apart. She’d tried so hard to do everything right, to fulfill her promise to her father, and somehow she had failed. She didn’t know how to handle this alone.

“What is it?”

“Mom has gone way around the bend this time. Can you come over?”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Thanks.”

She made a call to Dr. Burns next and told him she needed him to come over immediately. She didn’t hesitate to use the word emergency. This definitely qualified as one in her book.

As soon as the doctor said he’d be right over, Meredith disconnected that call and dialed Nina’s number. She had no idea what time it was in Botswana or Zimbabwe—wherever her sister was now—and she didn’t care. She only knew that when Nina answered, Meredith was going to say, I can’t do this alone anymore.

But Nina didn’t answer. Instead, her perky recorded voice said, “Hey, thanks for calling. God knows where I am right now, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.”

Beep.

Meredith hung up the phone without leaving a message.

What was the point?

She stood there, the phone in her hand, staring through the slowly dissipating smoke. It stung her eyes, but it hardly mattered. She was crying anyway. She didn’t even remember when it had started, her crying, and for once, she didn’t care.

True to his word, Jeff showed up in less than ten minutes. He got out of the car and came toward her. At the top of the porch steps, he opened his arms and she walked into them, letting his embrace hold her together.

“What did she do?” he finally said.

Before she could answer, there was a loud crash in the kitchen.

Meredith spun on her heels and ran back inside.

She found her mother sprawled on the dining room floor, clutching a strip of wallpaper in one hand and her ankle in the other. A chair lay on its side beside her. She must have fallen off of it.