gardening
Ceel and Ben
AGAINST
small town
not a good time to move: Mark starting high school
temporary job
no social requirements
Well. Anyone can see the pros are longer than the cons.
I test the deep bottom desk drawer, and it sticks stubbornly, a result of the wood’s expansion one humid summer. One night,
frantic to reach something stashed in the immovable drawer, Daintry and I had taken a hammer and dementedly pounded on it
until it opened. The wood is still marred with gouged dents, crescents of desperation. I’ve no idea what we wanted so badly,
remember only the fierceness of our wanting. I touch the permanent imperfections, fit my fingertips in each small curve.
Thirty feet of a gum wrapper chain is coiled clumsily in the back. The delicate paper rope slips through my fingers as fluidly
and limply as the overwashed gros-grain Daintry had envied. The zigzagged links are still colorful, still scented with the
sugary aromas of Juicy Fruit and Teaberry and Spearmint. The chain was a collective gift, when Daintry marshaled the entire
sixth grade into chewing, collecting, folding, and connecting hundreds of gum wrappers after I broke three ribs in a horseback-riding
accident. Daintry wasn’t taking riding lessons with me; the O’Connors couldn’t afford them.
All here but for that seventh-grade timeline. I had a chance to be the best on the assignment, unlike the booklet on China,
when Daintry got top honors. She was allowed to cut pictures from
National Geographic,
while the yellow-bordered magazines collecting at my house had to remain whole and unscavenged for some later need that never
arose.
For two decades I kept the timeline stashed behind books on my shelves. Kept it until our yard sale the summer after my father
died. Strangers hovered and browsed among the remnants of a life. There were thirty-four Barbie dolls. No one bought the
National Geographic
issues.
Along with an unsold manual typewriter and a fondue set complete with eight diminutive spears, I threw the timeline away.
But I can still envision its unwavering progress, straight and true with bold slashes at predictable intervals: birth, childhood,
high school, college, marriage, children born, father dead. Friendship isn’t so easily and tidily charted. It curves and meanders
and deviates.
In this story there’s no cataclysmic accident, no gory or revelatory epiphany. In the grand scheme, this isn’t a tragic tale.
No one dies or divorces, loses a child or a husband. Yet it’s a story of unrequited love, betrayal, accidents in which people
were wounded. And it’s about loss. Loss on a smaller scale is no less painful for the person who is losing something. And
like any tragedy, there are lingering questions. Might it have been avoided? Swerved or dodged like highway debris? Were we
destined to divide?
“Did you ever think,”
I’d asked Mother after the sale was over and we folded card tables in the dusk,
“that everyone’s life is like a timeline?”
My father’s abbreviated life was still so recent.
“That events are already laid out and just waiting for you to walk into them, for the moment to arrive that they happen?”
“Certainly not,”
Mother had replied, visibly aghast and swift with assurance.
“That’s nothing but predestination. Episcopalians don’t believe in predestination. Fate ordained. Certainly not.”
I suppose she’s right, again. Our lives intersect with some, collide with others. And sometimes we are saved by the grace
of the accidental.
Among the collection of objects is a recent acquisition: a concrete cherub head. Another gift, in its way, from Daintry O’Connor.
Ceel was right, too. Every woman has a Daintry. It matters not the size of the town, or the house, or the circumstances of
rich or poor. Delve deeply enough and you’ll find her somewhere. Stuck in a drawer, perhaps, though there’s no actual evidence.
Moreover, this woman will be hard-pressed to define exactly what it was about her particular Daintry. She knows things. She
has things. She’s gifted, blessed, endowed. She looms large and vital, invincible and untouchable. She’s the one who pulls
you through and pushes you away. She allows you access, then seals the entry. She feathers the nest, then shoves you from
it. Every woman has one, and you love her all the same. Mine lived across the street.
Items litter the desktop.
Things,
only. As we get older we discard objects that no longer have significance. Out goes the threadbare baby blanket or stuffed
sheep smelling of spit. The lanyard from summer camp draped over the mirror is tossed a season later without a thought. The
unfinished needlepoint belt labored over for a boyfriend. The wedding gift pair of silver candlesticks consigned to tarnish
and attic. So that the things we choose to keep are a tangible lament for something lost.
One by one I put each article in a trash bag. The teeth, the wood, the lists. And the little book of quotes. To go.
We discard people as well. But do we discard them because they no longer have significance in our lives or because they’re
no longer comfortable, remind us of someone we were but no longer want to be? You can’t keep a person. There’s no adhesive
strong enough or flexible enough to hold a psyche, a personality. You can’t crate and tape it, label and store it. Because
people change.
The angel head stays, a keeper. I might need it one day. It’ll make a fine baby present for Ceel.
Ellen pirouettes through the room, the sand-art pendant thumping against her chest. “Are you having a clean-out?” she asks.
Ellen loves clean-outs. There’s always the possibility she’ll come away with treasure. She peers into the bag, sticks her
arm inside, and pulls out the chewing gum chain. “Wow. It’s as long as the room! Is it yours?”
I hesitate. “No.”
“Whose is it?”
“Someone I used to know.”
“Are you throwing it away? Can I have it?”
“If you want.”
“Cool.”
“El, how’d you like to have this desk for your new room in Hickory? We’ll paint it, fix it up.”
“Purple? Can it be purple?”
“Whatever you like.”
“Awesome.”
“Do you know any other adjectives besides cool and awesome?”
“You’re not going to make me get the dictionary, are you?”
“No, but you have to promise me something.” Tit for tat. Even steven. “If I give you the desk, you can’t grow up and away
from me.”
“I don’t want to grow up at all,” she says. The clunky digital watch on her wrist emits faint electronic beeps, and she kisses
it.
“Why’d you do that?”
“It’s three thirty-three,” she says. “You kiss it for luck when the same numbers are all the way across. I set the alarm so
I won’t miss it. You don’t know about stuff like that,” she says with matter-of-fact assurance.
But I do. I knew about picking up our feet over railroad tracks and holding our breath when we passed a cemetery and not stepping
on sidewalk cracks and crossing our fingers and touching the car ceiling when we passed beneath a yellow light. I knew that
three sneezes equaled a wish and putting your ring around the candle on a birthday cake made certain our wishes came true.
“You know Daintry?”
Peter had said to me that August night, the brink of fall, the beginning of the end.
“So you knew Daintry O’Connor growing up?”
Hal too had asked.
Forever,
I could have said to Peter.
I hardly know her,
I could have answered Hal.
Ellen twirls a tiny dial, resetting the alarm. Daintry had a watch with interchangeable colored rims. “How did you get so
wise to be so young?” I ask her.
“What are you talking about?”
I take my daughter’s hand, kiss the soft pulsing inside of her watchbanded wrist. “I don’t know.”
“Hunh,” she teases. “I thought you knew everything.”
Don’t you know anything, Hannah?
“I thought I did, too.”
“Dad,” she calls, bolting away. “Guess what Mom gave me!”
Oh, Daintry,
I think, and close the drawer.
I’ll miss you so.