Winter Garden

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.



Meredith went to her, bent down. She tested the already-swelling ankle. “Help me get her into the living room, Jeff. We’ll put her on the ottoman bed.”



Jeff bent down to her mother. “Hey, Anya,” he said in a voice so gentle it made Meredith remember what a wonderful father he was, how easily he’d dried his daughters’ tears and made them laugh. He was such a good man; after all Mom had put him through over the years, all the silence she’d heaped on him, still he managed to care about her. “I’m going to carry you into the living room, okay?”



“Who are you?” Mom said, searching his gray eyes.



“I’m your prince, remember?”



Mom calmed down instantly. “What have you brought for me?”



Jeff smiled down at her. “Two roses,” he said, scooping her into his arms. He carried her into the living room and put her down on the ottoman bed.



“Here, Mom,” Meredith said. “I’ve got an ice pack. I’m going to put it on your ankle, okay? Keep your feet on this pillow.”



“Thank you, Olga.”



Meredith nodded and let Jeff lead her into the kitchen.



“She fell off the chair?” he asked, glancing into the ruined dining room.



“That would be my guess.”