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Theodore “Teddy” Williams sat in the car for a long time, listening to the cooling engine tick long after it had been shut off. One of the women inside the two-and-a-half story brick monstrosity flicked the curtain to peer out, and then quickly ducked out of sight. He took off his wire-rimmed glasses, and rubbed his weary eyes. Unruly eyebrows bristled beneath his fingers.
Molly always trimmed his eyebrows. She could no longer be trusted with scissors, let alone something sharp near his eyes. Giving away Molly’s garden stuff seemed wrong. It signaled giving up, meant he’d finally accepted she wouldn’t get better.
He hunched his shoulders, gripping the steering wheel with gloved hands until creaky arthritic joints popped. After a long, shuddery breath, Teddy opened the car door and pried himself out of the driver’s seat, popping the trunk. He limped to the front steps, slowly climbed them and fixed a cordial smile on his face. It wouldn’t fool anybody, but he needed to make the effort.
The door swung open, and he faced half a dozen women ranging in age from thirty to seventy. Cassie held the door wide and motioned him inside, and his smile slipped. Teddy cleared his throat. “Thanks, but I can’t stay. Molly’s expecting me.”
No, she wasn’t. Molly likely wouldn’t know if he visited or not, but he couldn’t stay away. He visited every afternoon. On good days when the nursing home scheduled an outing, they used to meet at the local mall for coffee and a walk. Today they’d called to tell him to meet at the mall, and he couldn’t wait to get there. Good days didn’t happen so much anymore.
“We talked and Molly wanted me to bring her stuff over for the club to use. It’s in the trunk of the car. Help yourself.”
She should be here. Molly loved her Master Gardener club meetings, and delighted in sharing tips and bringing in expert speakers. After these special meetings, his wife came home filled with as much excitement as a teeny-bopper sighting Frankie Valli or whoever the young kids liked these days, and gushed about pruning timeliness, mulch components, grafting and the latest in weed pre-emergent technology.
“Thanks for coming, Teddy. We all miss Molly so much.” Cassie folded her arms. “She was a driving force in the club. How generous to share her materials.” The other women murmured agreement, but their sympathetic expressions stiffened his spine. “Maybe with Molly’s secret ingredients, the rest of the club will carry on her legacy of winning blooms.” Cassie’s warm tone contrasted with her flinty expression. Despite her groomed yard and manicured flowerbeds courtesy of a hired army of lawn care specialists, Molly beat the pants off Cassie time after time.
“Molly never shared her garden secrets with me. Probably had something to do with her singing to the plants.” A couple of the ladies smiled at his comments. “Me, I can’t carry a tune in a tin bucket, but Molly and Patricia challenged the birds with their singing.” He glanced around the room. “Where’s Patricia?”
Cassie shrugged.
An older birdlike woman—he thought her name was Ethel, he couldn’t keep all of Molly’s friends straight—came forward and gave him a hug. “Patricia hasn’t been here for the past several meetings, either. She and Molly were very close. Well, we all were. We miss her.”
He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Thanks. You meant a lot to Molly, too. She loved these meetings.”
Molly wanted to share the supplies and pass on the savings to her friends, because not everyone in the club lived in mansions like this one. Cassie married up after her divorce, but acted like she’d been born lady of the manor. Others in the club pinched pennies and shared resources to create showcase gardens for boasting rights more than any income. The quiet rivalry between the iris club and the rosarians culminated at the spring garden tour each year. With only a dozen slots available, the gardeners angled for every advantage, and in the fall and winter months prepped the soil for winning blooms.
“We just started the meeting. Would you care to stay? I’ve got coffee brewing, and one of the ladies brought cookies.” Cassie’s crossed arms tightened, and she made no move away from the door. The other women, with the exception of Ethel, wouldn’t meet his eyes.
He was a reminder of their mortality. They’d already pruned Molly out of the little clique before the disease infiltrated the rest of the group. Teddy spun on his heels, pushing Cassie aside. “Sorry,” he mumbled. But he wasn’t. “Come get what you want. Maybe some of Molly’s magic will rub off on you.”
She’d always been magical to him, a creature out of a fairy tale that somehow agreed to marry him, a mere mortal more adept at talking to computers than people.
He rushed back out the door, and had to consciously slow himself to keep from pitching headfirst down the brick front steps. The gaggle of biddies inside jostled each other, four finding coats to then clamber out the door after him. He stood at the trunk waiting for the women—they did remind him of geese, muttering and honking under their breath to each other—to line up and each grab a sack before trundling it into their own cars to stow.
Molly talked him into buying the truckload of fertilizer three years ago from the local man making the rounds. Mostly, she’d wanted to help out the hard-luck fellow. With the economy tanking, folks turned to all kinds of homegrown moneymaking schemes. But with the Molly magic, the contents of a dozen or so burlap bags labeled with neon yellow tape made a huge difference in the blossom production.
Their house had been on the tour four times in the past seven years Molly had been a member. Her roses rivaled any they’d seen in Tyler, Texas, arguably the rose capital of America. She kept her garden small due to the limitations of their postage stamp backyard, and used vertical space to advantage. Cherokee Rose took over the north side of the yard, spanning more than twelve feet in height and width, while Fortune’s Double Yellow and Seven Sisters rambled up each side of an arched trellis that framed the back patio. Miniature roses lined the paving stone pathways painting carnival colors everywhere. But when she became ill a year ago, the garden took a back seat.
Teddy smiled when one by one, four of the women filed past the car to return to the house. Cassie and Ethel stayed at the door. “There’s still a few bags left. Some gardening tools, too.” He wanted all of it gone. It reeked of normal, happy times that would be no more. The reminder hurt too much.
“I don’t want to mess my clothes.” Cassie hugged herself, not budging from the doorway. “Leave a bag there on the drive. I’ll have one of the kids tote it to the garage when they get home.”
He adjusted his glasses. It would serve her right for him to accidentally-on-purpose break open the bag and dump it all over her sidewalk. But when Ethel hurried down to join him at the car, he stifled the impulse and offered a weak smile.
“Don’t mind Cassie. She’s all tied up in knots trying to be someone she’s not.” Ethel spoke softly, for his ears only, and patted him on the shoulder. “Molly always knew exactly who she was, and what she needed. That was—and is—you. She adored you—still does, I’m sure.”
He grabbed up Cassie’s bag of fertilizer and carefully set it on the ground so he wouldn’t have to look at Ethel. “There’s two more bags.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “I could carry them to your car.”
“Just leave the rest here for Cassie, if you don’t mind. I’ll pass on the fertilizer, but would love to have one of Molly’s gardening tools. Not to use. But as a memory, you know?” She patted him again. “As an honor to her. What happened to Molly could happen to any of us. That’s got them scared. But she’d be pleased what you’re doing here. Never doubt that, okay? Let your heart lead you and it’ll never fail.”
He smiled, blinking hard, and covered her hand with his gloved one and squeezed. “Is that what you do? Let your heart lead?”
She nodded. “Been with my cowboy for going on forty-five years, through the fat and thin times. The heart never lies, not if you listen close enough.” Ethel leaned closer. “Even when it seems mighty silent, you can hear the echo.”
“Thank you.” He indicated the open trunk, filled with a variety of gardening implements. “Help yourself.” He muscled the last two bags out of the car and dropped them beside the others.
At first, he and Molly laughed about the memory lapses. After all, neither of them were spring chickens, and he had nearly a decade on her. When she left her eyeglasses in the microwave they chuckled about “see-food” for a week. Then she called the pastor by the wrong name, and the embarrassment stopped the laughter dead. Shortly thereafter, he found notes she’d made to herself to keep track of the must-do items of daily living. The list included “take a shower” and “turn off stove.” That scared him.
He’d begged her to see a doctor. Molly refused. She’d always been pig headed—it took him nearly three years to convince her to marry him. But after she drove across town to a dentist appointment and had a meltdown when she couldn’t find her way home, he scheduled the appointment despite her protestations.
They’d held hands in the waiting room, anchoring each other against the desperate tide that threatened to sweep them away. The diagnosis drowned their hopes, and they’d been treading water ever since, knowing the time would come when they could no longer stay afloat in the flood.
Ethel picked out an old pruning shear, the yellow handle grip stained with sweat and scarred from use. “I remember seeing Molly use this.” She hugged it to the breast of her coat. “I’ll treasure this, and take good care of it. Betcha it’s full of Molly magic, more than that old dusty fertilizer.”
He saw Cassie in the doorway, waving a hand at the stacked bags. “You got that right.” He slammed the trunk of the car. “Everything had to be yellow, or have sparkles. I’m proud you’ll have it. Molly will be glad.” If she could remember, that is.
It developed so quickly. Even the doctors whispered puzzled conversations in the face of Molly’s swift decline. Teddy kept her at home as long as he could, but his age prevented him from providing the care she needed and deserved. Finally he’d found her a nursing facility, and continued to see her every day.
Some days she was bright as a penny, the Molly he’d always known. Those days they packed every moment with fun and laughter, memories of good times. The medications supposed to slow down the disease progression gave them hope for the future, a future they measured in days and hours, no longer months or years.
After cracking computer code for decades and figuring out circuitry and neural networking puzzles, Molly’s brain disease thumbed its nose at him. Alzheimer’s played fast and loose with logic, a moving target that stymied the doctors and wrung emotions dry.
He climbed back into the driver’s seat, and watched until the ladies disappeared back into the house. Ethel pushed aside the blinds and waved the yellow-handled pruner, and he waved back. Teddy started the car, but before he could push it into gear, his cell phone rang.
The number wasn’t familiar. Teddy still consulted with a few companies, and figured it might be an unlisted number from a client. “This is Theodore Williams, how may I help you?”
“Mr. Williams? This is Alison? Over at SunnyDale Nursing Home?” She spoke in constant questions, a young person’s habit that drove him nuts.
“Yes, Alison, I’ll be at the mall in another twenty minutes. Is the group already in the food court? I’ve got my car today since it’s good weather, and can park around back.” He shoved the car into gear and pulled out of the drive.
“Well, there’s a change of plans. That’s why I called.” She hesitated, and then hurried on. “How soon could you get here? I mean, to the facility?”
“What’s wrong?” His heart quickened.
“Nothing is wrong. It’ll be fine, I’m sure? I mean, don’t worry at all, not at all. But, could you come here instead? Soon as you can?”
He disconnected the call without a word and gunned the engine.
