Fall Gardening
My dead husband, Henry, watches me from across the table while I sip my tea. In the picture he’s sitting at his new desk, excited to find a job so soon out of college. Back then, newlyweds, we got excited about small things like that: a new place to sit.
“Bye Mom,” Brenden says as he walks through the kitchen, backpack slung on one shoulder.
He’s growing up so fast. The other day I noticed that he has some substantial peach-fuzz growing on his lip. In less than a year from now he’ll graduate high school, and then he’ll leave me too.
“Mr. Fenley gave me the afternoon off at the gas station to write a paper for history. I’ll be back at four.” Brenden walks out the side door that leads into the narrow walk past the trash can between the house and the vine covered chain-link fence.
I hear his first few steps on the path, and then he’s gone. I stir brown sugar into my oatmeal and glance over at Henry, smiling in disbelief at me through the glass.
I put him there after he died a year ago in a crash on his way home. We live in a suburb called Glassberry, an hour west of Denver. He was on I-70 when he swerved to avoid a dog. It was wandering down the road. When he swerved, a ford Bronco in the next lane ran straight into the driver’s door, Henry’s door. I cried for a month after Henry died. I don’t remember anything from that time but tears, not the funeral, not my job, not taking care of Brenden, but then, he was old enough then to take care of himself. He took care of both of us until I got back on my feet. I used to carry that picture around with me, placed it on the pillow next to me, talked to it when Brenden went to school, telling him how hard it was being alone and how I was no good at serious stuff. Henry was able to avoid the dog.
One day Victoria, my supervisor at a nursery in Glassberry, called and said that either I had to come back to work, or she would let me go. I put Henry’s picture in front of his chair at the kitchen table—so he could still be a part of family dinners—and came back to reality.
I look at my watch, it’s six-thirty; I time to go to work.
I get home after just after five. Brenden’s windbreaker hangs from the back of one of the kitchen chairs. That’s right, I think, he told me he’d be home early to write something for school. I walk gingerly into the hall. His door is closed, but I can hear the wheels of his desk chair rattle as he shifts around. Contented, I go back into the kitchen where I now notice the mail in a neat little pile on the table. That boy has everything covered.
On top of the pile is a letter from the bank with “Urgent” stamped on the envelope in red ink, smeared on one end. I feel my cheeks heat up and I wish that I’d gotten to the mail first. I slide my callused finger under the flap and find out what’s so urgent.
Dear Aster Lovechild, you have neglected to make payments on your mortgage for the months of July and August. If both these payments aren’t paid along with September, then we will be forced to foreclose on your house. Please see your contact information below and verify that we have your correct phone number so that we may contact you sooner in the case of another emergency….
I sigh and set the letter back down. The rest of the mail looks like credit card bills, so I ignore it. Instead I look at Henry across the table and ask: “How did you ever manage? I’m not you. I don’t know if I can do this alone.”
Henry made more than enough to meet our needs working as an accountant. I’d worked the same part-time job at the nursery since we got out of college. We didn’t need the money then, but I needed something to do and I liked working with plants. Brenden came along, but he was such an easy child that I was able to keep my job. I’d been losing it slowly since he died a year ago, trying my best to keep Brenden and myself above ground.
Soon I’ll have to find another job, something that will pay enough to meet the mortgage. Brenden will graduate high school in the spring, and, though he talks about different colleges his friends are applying to, he never applies to any of his own. It breaks my heart; it makes my guilt all the worse.
Henry left Brenden $8,000 in a savings account to help him through college. I have been dipping into it to help pay motgage. I try and console myself, thinking that I’ll put it back before he graduates. I haven’t told Brenden about it yet. I want to tell him, to give him some hope of going to college, but what if I can’t put the money back before he graduates? I don’t think I could lie and tell him that Henry left him less than he did.
I put some water on the stove to boil for macaroni and look out the kitchen window. Just below the window, stretching twelve feet into the back yard, my two strips of garden lay bare, resting from the summer crops and slowly falling asleep as the weather gets colder.
After dinner, I leave Brenden sitting at the table still working on his paper for school. I sit down in a deep chair in the living room with Pride and Prejudice. Before long I yawn and notice I’ve read one sentence ten times.
“Hey Mom,” Brenden says what seems like a moment later.
I open my eyes to see Brenden sitting on the couch across from me. My watch tells me I was asleep for a half hour. “Mmm?” I rub my eyes and yawn.
I’m the one who was just sleeping but he looks exhausted. His eyes are red-rimmed and it looks like they’re only open through habit. He leans forward and rests his face in his hands. “You should go to bed,” he says for what seems like the hundredth time. “Really. What’s the point just sitting there and fighting it?”
“No, I’ll wake up here in a second. I want to finish this chapter before bed.”
He picks his head up and smiles, lets the smile slip away, and he says: “I read the mail. I know I shouldn’t have, but it was sitting open on the table. Do we have the money to pay the bank?”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, Brenden. It will all work out. And you shouldn’t be reading my mail.” I give him an exaggerated frown and tilt my head down. “It’s rude, you know,” imitating Grandpa Norm’s voice.
He doesn’t laugh. “I can give you what I earn at the gas station.”
“No, sweetie.” I shake my head. “That’s your money. You should spend it on things that you want. You be a kid while you still can. Let me handle the grown up stuff.”
“Alright. You really should go to bed.”
“Okay, mister, you win.”
I ask Dianne, the nursery’s owner, if I can work extra hours. She and I both know that there’s not much more for me to do, but she agrees. We didn’t talk about how long I could work overtime, but I know not to ask again.
At the end of the week, on my way home I drive by Little Napoli, an Italian restaurant that was Henry’s favorite. I pull into the parking lot and try and think of the manager’s name. Armand? Arlo? It was something like that. Henry would have known. He was always very friendly with the staff.
I step into the dark restaurant. It’s quiet and three waiters stand around the welcome desk, the evening rush not yet started.
“Excuse me, can I speak with Arlo?”
Two of them in black dress and small aprons look dumbly at me. The other, at ease with in his pressed white shirt, studies my face a moment and says: “Do you mean Mr. Alonzo?”
Damn. “Yes, he’s still the manager, right?”
“Ah, no ma’am. He’s part-owner now. I don’t think he’s in yet tonight. May I help you with something?” The other two wander back into the restaurant.
“I was wondering—well my husband, perhaps you remember him. Henry was his name. Anyway we used to eat here a lot. I was wondering if you needed any help?”
“Help ma’am?”
“Yeah, if you had any open positions?”
“Oh, I’m sorry I don’t know. I don’t think we’re hiring, but that’s the manager’s business. Shall I get him for you?”
“No,” I say, “that’s alright.” I laugh and smile and rush out the door.
With the extra time at the nursery, and a little help from Henry’s savings, I manage to swing the mortgage and keep the house.
September ends: October brings the first chilly winds of autumn with it. I wiggle my hands into my pockets to warm them against my thighs. I get home after work and find Brenden in the living room chewing on a sandwich.
“No work today, sweetie?”
“No. Mr. Fenley cut my hours.”
“Oh, I didn’t know. Brenden,” I sit down across from him, “I got a call from one of your teachers. She said you’re failing economics.”
He studies his sandwich, selects a bite, and says, “So,” and takes another bite.
“So why didn’t you tell me that you were failing? I could have helped you study.” I cross my arms and lean back.
“Since when are you good at economics?”
“Hey, don’t talk to me that way.”
He’s not looking at me, tearing through his sandwich in a moody silence.
“Stop acting like such a brat. Just because I’m not your father doesn’t mean that you can disrespect me. I’m still your mother, Brenden Lovechild. It’s time you started acting like my son.”
“Why bother? I’ll be out of the house soon enough.”
“That won’t change the fact that I’m your mother, and with an attitude like that you won’t get very far in life.”
He mumbles: “not like I’ll get very far anyways.”
“What was that?”
“I said it’s not like I’m going to college so why bother and worry about doing well in life.”
I try and think of something in defense, but all that comes to mind is the money I’ve been taking from him. A tense silence passes, and I retreat from the room.
Over the next few days I scold myself in the mirror for not being more responsible. Finally, I go back to Little Napoli, and Alonzo gives me a job waiting tables. It’s tedious and much more demanding than the nursery, which I still work at for the morning shift, but I make enough in tips to keep me there. It’s not enough, however, to go on living in the 18,000 square-foot house that has been our home for the last six years, so I buy a “for sale” sign on my way home to stick in the front yard.
Brenden and I are walking in a park near our new apartment. Someone bought the house in February for much less than I was asking but only a little below market value. The trees are all bare, holding our breath, waiting for spring.
“I noticed you didn’t put Dad’s picture on the table,” Brenden says.
We’re both staring straight ahead as we walk down the path.
“Yeah. It’s time we get used to our family as just the two of us.” I think how empty the table has seemed now that there are only two of us, like a flower with some petals missing.
“ . . . Mom? What’s going to happen when I graduate?”
“Are you asking about college?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, your father left some money in a savings account to help with that.”
After a pause he asks: “How much.”
“$8,000, but I’ve taken some of that out. I did that to pay the mortgage, but I’ve put some of it back. If you work the summers, then between what you can save up and what I’m earning now, you should be able to go to school.”
We stop at a bench and sit down to watch the ducks sliding into a pond, their buoyant bodies insulated against the cold.
“Brenden, I know I’m not your father. He would have done a better job putting you through college and being your parent. I love you, though, and I’m trying to do what’s right by you. I probably can’t answer many of your questions and I’m not a good example of a responsible adult. You’re probably better at being an adult than I am already. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I still want to be your mother, even when you leave for college.”
“I know I’ve been really against you this year. Sorry about that.”
I hug him to me, feeling him breathe in and out.
He pulls away slowly after a few seconds and shift around on the bench. “How are things at the nursery?”
“We’re just coming out of our slow season. People are all getting ready to plant their spring gardens.”
“Oh . . . that sounds good.”
“It will be.”
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