Melusine

Karen Roy

Two Weeks of Wisteria

God, she hated winter. She didn't think she could take the cold in her bones much longer.

A mother-in-law suite is what Jason called this place when she moved in.  A fancy name for shoving her in the basement!  The house was built into a hill, so the lower floor only had windows on the one side, being underground on the other three.  It was damp: just a thin layer of sheet-rock between her and the stone wall.  The floor had cheap carpeting, put down without padding underneath.  Or if there was padding, Jason must have picked the cheap stuff.  She'd told Emily not to marry him.

As if in apology for the darkness of the place, the one wall that opened to the outside had plenty of windows.  Windows over the sink, and sliding glass doors to the patio.  They faced west, so she didn't even get the sunrise.  The view was nothing special: just a long slope of hill falling away from the house, with the neighbors' scrubby mess of a backyard in the middle.  The neighbors had kids; she saw them occasionally playing in the snow.  She shivered just watching them.

So cold.

* * *

No dishwasher.  She had to wash by hand and put things on the drying rack.  As she did, she looked sourly outside.  Her windowsill was heaped with snow, now settling into soft, melting mounds.  She could hear the sound of water running downhill, a constant, irritating trickle, unlike the rhythmic roar of the ocean outside her own home. She imagined it eroding away all the dirt around her, leaving the buried walls exposed like an unearthed coffin.  Maybe then Jason could knock some holes in them and give her windows.

She scrubbed a cup with more force than strictly necessary, then winced.  Arthritis.  She shouldn't have to wash her own dishes when she had arthritis.  Emily had helped her out once or twice when she'd first moved in, but nowadays she only came down to collect laundry or drop off food.  Typical Emily; all good intentions and no follow-through.  She pursed her lips and set the cup down.

A flash of color outside caught her eye.  Down the hill a ways, in the neighbors' yard, there were little specks of green.

* * *

The white flesh of winter was melting away, exposing the bones of the earth.  Rocky land hereabouts, with ugly boulders: the beginning of the Appalachian foothills.  It was enough to make her yearn for the easy sweep of dune and ocean, the cool colors of home.  The only color here was the peep of crocuses poking their heads through the thinning ice down the hill.  At least, she thought they were crocuses; what other plant came out so early?  But they had no flowers yet, and her eyes weren't what they used to be, so she couldn't tell for sure.

When Emily brought her laundry in, bustling with energy and false cheer, she considered telling her about the crocuses.  But the thought of seeming pathetic, a feeble old woman watching flowers grow, stopped the words in her throat.  Instead, she turned her back to the windows and complained about the light.

"You know I like to read at night.  How am I supposed to do that with the sun glaring in my eyes?"

"You could read in your bedroom?"  Emily looked hopeful.

"I just can't get used to this bedroom.  I liked my old one, in the house your father made.  Solid construction, beautiful design.  Now that was a nice home."

Emily's smile was frozen.  "Here's your laundry, Mom.  I'll just be upstairs.  You know how to reach me."

Yes, she knew how to reach her daughter.  All she had to do is put on her boots, walk outside, around to the front of the house, knock on the door.  She said as much as Emily left.

"Mom, you could just pick up the phone!  That's why Jason put in a separate line for you."

"I refuse to pick up the phone to call someone in the same house."

"Okay, Mom."

"It's completely unreasonable!"

"Okay, Mom."

* * *

They were crocuses, coming up now in a vivid collection of colors. The woman next door must have planted them, she thought.  They described a wiggly line around the edge of her property.  That's not how she would have planted them, of course.  She would have made a straight line, to be neat.  Like the picket fence that had fronted her house on the cape: painted once a year and as clean and regular as a row of headstones. But maybe housewives were different, less careful of appearances, here in West Virginia.  She scoffed, turned aside. She was surrounded by hicks.

* * *

Taller sprouts came next, pushing exuberantly up once the last of the snow was gone.  Tulips grew in clusters, each plant's leaves in a tight circle, opening out.  Again, there was no order to them: there seemed to be a river of dense green meandering the yard.  Very untidy.  Daffodils were scattered haphazardly around the trees.  She recognized their long straight leaves even before their heads came, and watched carefully for buds to form, wondering what color the flowers would be.  She preferred the white petals with yellow center, but hadn't much hope.

One day, she watched the woman next door come out to tend the yard (she could hardly call it a garden, seeing as children played in it, and it had no apparent boundaries).  The woman wore a bright yellow sun hat on her head and knee pads over worn jeans.  She worked for two hours, picking up sticks and breaking them, throwing them into the woods.  She had a big rake, which she used to get the winter's detritus cleared, and a small hand-rake to clear the ground around new sprouts.  As she worked, her children ran around her, getting dirty and scraping themselves on brambles from the woods.  Yellow Hat actually encouraged this behavior, laughing with them and getting muddy herself.  The most puzzling thing she did, though, was take her shears to the edge of the yard and prune what looked like a dead bush, cutting away quite a lot and fingering the long branches as if looking for something.

That night Jason came knocking on the sliding glass door.  "Janice? Can I come in?"

She opened the door and stepped aside.

"Emily told me the sun was bothering you in the evenings."

"Nothing to be done about that, I suppose," she answered.  "Unless you mean to change the rotation of the Earth."

He shifted from one foot to another.  "We could get curtains.  For the sliding door, I mean.  Maybe blinds?"

Curtains?  Now there was an idea.  "What color?" she asked stiffly.

"Uh... I don't know.  Maybe you and Emily could go shopping for some."

"Not while it's wet outside.  I could slip, and I've already broken my hip once, thank-you-very-much!"

"Okay."

"When the weather is nicer.  Assuming it does get nicer in this state."

"Okay."  He dithered a moment at the door–Good Lord, what a dolt–before nodding and taking leave.

* * *

Yellow Hat was back.  Now she had window boxes that she was planting something in.  Her children helped her, pouring dirt into the boxes (spilling much of it), making holes and tamping down on the tiny seeds.  When they watered it at the end and placed the boxes on the porch rails, Janice wondered what kind of flowers would come up there.  The rest of the garden–yard, really–was greening nicely.  There seemed to be a collection of herbs in one corner, and down on the far end, where a retaining wall kept the land from sliding away, tall shoots gave the promise of some kind of lilies or iris.

The closest part of the yard to Janice was dominated by a tangled bush of some sort, the one the woman had pruned.  Now it seemed to be coming to life.  Its branches were long and dipping, green at the tips, though still brown in the center.  Yellow Hat was out every day, checking it for something.  Every morning, Janice found herself checking it, too.  She'd look down the hill to see if it had done anything.

"Mom?"

Janice startled, turning to see her daughter in the doorway.  "Oh, Emily!  I didn't see you!"

"I was wondering if you wanted to come shopping with me.  We need groceries, and I thought we could look for curtains, too."

"That sounds good."

But it wasn't good at all.  The drive into town was a horror–Jason's sad excuse for a vehicle running so loud that they couldn't talk. Emily opened the window to get some fresh air, and the wind whipped Janice's hair into disorder.  Then at the grocery store, Janice's lips pursed to see her daughter pull out a crinkled envelope and count cash to see what she had.

Afterward, they went to a thrift store for curtains.  "A thrift store?" Janice said, aghast.  "Emily!"

"Mom, I don't want to hear it!"

"Why can't we go to a real store?  I don't need something with cigarette burns and cat hair."

"This is a real store, and this is what we can afford."

"This is what your allowance covers, you mean."  As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn't.  But Emily didn't say anything, just opened her window all the way and drove home in a roar of wind.

* * *

The next morning, Janice woke to an intoxicating scent, like perfume, only without the faint whiff of alcohol.  She stretched under her blankets and sniffed the air, wondering what it was.  Nothing in her rooms accounted for it, and it wasn't until she opened her sliding glass door and stepped outside that she placed it.  Wisteria.  The strange bush at the bottom of the hill had bloomed.  Bunches of purple flowers dangled, grapelike, from a few of the lower branches.  Just a few blooms, but there were more to come, not yet opened.

Janice couldn't quite bring herself to close the door, then, so she left it open (for the breeze, not the smell, she told herself) and sat on her couch to read.  But the words slid away from her, and soon the book was forgotten on her lap while she drifted.  It was a bit like reading on the beach, she realized with a start.  She'd always bring a book to the beach with her, when she lived there, but the ocean didn't allow for concentration.  Her best intentions would ebb away, and leave her relaxed, rocked by the sound of the waves.  No use trying to read by all that vastness... nor, apparently, trying to concentrate in spring.

Outside, the woman next door came out to check her plants, and Janice smiled to think of her discovering the wisteria.  Janice had known it first, and for a moment, she felt like she was sharing it with the other woman.  She wondered if the scent reached around the house to Emily.

* * *

Purple, Janice thought, placing a wet dish into the drainer, was a lovely color.  Yellow Hat's wisteria had filled out, and the bush was a fragrant cloud at the bottom of the hill.  Maybe she could get purple curtains for her windows.  But then, they ought to be sheer, really, so she could still get some light.

Passing the door later that day, she amended her plan: sheer, and open most of the time.  Wouldn't want to block the view.

The weather grew finer with each passing day, and Janice took to sitting outside, or even walking around a bit.  She carried a folding chair out and sat in it, watching the ecstatic twitterpation of bunnies and birds.  Her cement patio got good sun, she decided.  Not quite a beach, but still nice to sit at.  Watching Yellow Hat work in her garden was always relaxing.  The other woman had noticed her watching and taken to waving cheerily when she first came out.  A friendly sort, Janice decided.  Probably that Southern gentility she'd heard about.

* * *

Jason was working late again.  She could hear Emily upstairs, settling down to a quiet dinner.  Without reflection, Janice picked up the phone.

"Emily, my dear... You really ought to come visit me.  Well that's okay, bring your food.  We can sit out on my patio... the wisteria is blooming down the hill, and it's only here for a short time."

As she spoke, she looked at the long shadows outside.  No curtains, she decided.  What she needed was a planter.  Maybe grow some flowers by her door.

Karen Roy loves small details and tales more suggested than told. Her love of language has led her to a degree in linguistics, which allows her to work with words, as well as playing with them in stories.