Tomato Blossom

Meg leaned a moment upon the shovel, arm extended away from her body as a scarecrow with a pitchfork might stand. Her slightly rounded frame cast a dark shadow at her feet, shortened and robust. A small, unconscious smile played around the edges of her mouth and the corners of her pale blue eyes. Skeletal vines of squash reached out of the garden and dead, withered tomato plants tilted at crazy angles looking like a graveyard for summer's harvest. She poked a mushy, worm eaten tomato with her toe, casually noting the various bugs scuttling away. A sudden gust of wind teased strands of her brown hair from the loose knot at the back of her head, swiping at the hair left a gash of brown across her cheek; she did not notice. Looking at the results of her labor, she drew a long, deep breath, holding it until she felt slightly dizzy. This would be ready for planting next spring, she thought as her smile deepened. She let her breath out and knelt in the upturned earth as if that single breath had been what held her up. She crouched there, breathing, stalling the inevitable as the smile faded, leaving behind eyes ringed from sleeplessness and a mouth drawn tight and flat.
Plunging both gloved hands into the loose soil, she inhaled the rich, dark scent of her childhood. As the dirt trickled through her fingers her memory reached back to that time. She saw her father as a young, solemn man, directing a slight, cheerful girl, herself, in removing rocks and other bits of debris from the land they were preparing. Her small hands had grown black and gritty as their work progressed, chatting quietly to one another, while further away Meg's mother sketched quickly behind an oversized pad of paper. As the trio worked a flock of geese honked a greeting to the warming northern climate, causing the girl to race after them, laughing, her arms upraised as if she might embrace the whole landscape should she capture it as the woman painting had surely captured it. Behind her, the man continued to work, watching her from the corner of his eye, smiling and silent.
Meg felt her face relax as she watched the image from her youth. She could smell the heavy perfume of the greasy oil paints and feel warm air on her skin.
"Meg," the voice, although hesitant, startled her back into the present, "you haven't eaten anything," The trio faded from Meg's vision as she stood, regretfully pulling the rough gloves from her hands. She forced her expression to bland as she looked in the direction of her sister-in-law. "You'll get sick." Meg's mouth twitched minutely; surely this was something Diana said to her children, something adults said to people they deemed incapable of taking proper care of themselves.
Meg nodded, rapidly, as one used to hasty movement and sudden decisions might. "I know. I'm capable of monitoring when I need to eat, you know." She kept her voice light, although she could feel her shoulders and neck tensing. Scooping her hair away from her face, Meg rewound the knot, securing it by pulling the end through the middle of it. "Did you make coffee?" She never once looked at the woman, even as she touched her arm in passing. "I'd kill for a cup of coffee. I'm really not hungry, but coffee…"
"Meg, you have dirt of your face."
Diana raised a hand to wipe at it, a sisterly gesture, but Meg ducked it, scrubbing her hands over her face. "Is it gone?"
Diana nodded, her eyes dark and shadowed as she watched the other woman. Her rejected hand scrubbed down the leg of her gray corduroys as if she had, indeed, smudged the dirt from Meg's face. She poked her head out the door once more, regarding the churned earth of the garden a moment before pulling the door closed behind her.
A blast of warm coffee-scented air assaulted Meg as she stepped from the mudroom to the kitchen. Voices from other rooms blended into a low, murmuring counterpoint to the thrumming rhythm of a Celtic music cd spinning in the player beside the off-white stove. Her mother smiled slightly at her, noting her dirty hands before moving to pour a cup of coffee. Meg moved to the sink, dislodging two middle-aged women from their post.
"What are you doing out there, anyway?" Diana's drawling phrase raised Meg's hackles.
"Preparing the garden for spring. Just like we did every year." She instantly regretted the sharp, condescending tone. She looked away from Diana's smooth smile quickly, feeling her stomach churn. She adjusted the long sleeves of her shirt, pulling them tight over her wrists. Grabbing a cookie from one of several plates on the counter, she stuffed it whole into her mouth. Her stomach protested further, but Meg forced herself to chew, swallow and smile. "Who made these, Mom? These are really good." Meg cast a quick glance at Diana, her brother's wife, assessing the damage from her remark. Diana's face was, as ever, serene and smooth. Meg wondered what it would take to crack through her permanently cold exterior. Her chill seemed to creep across the counter, touch Meg's fingers and draw a shiver from her. "Mom?"
"The neighbor," her mother said absently, turning to the front door as another pair of visitors entered quietly. "I'm sorry, dear, I was talking to Viola," her mother's voice recalled all the late-night panic-stricken phone calls Meg had made throughout college and her adult years. Meg watched, as she bustled over to greet the new arrivals and accept yet another dish from outstretched hands. Her hair was gray, skinned back into a pert, youthful ponytail that swayed as she pantomimed the gracious, grieving hostess. Her father would have put a late blooming flower there in the in the elastic holding her hair. Meg wanted to go to her mother, put her arms around her. She didn't know how without intruding, and, instead, she absentmindedly plucked flowers from one of the arrangements from the funeral home. Her attention fixed suddenly upon the flowers, it was a truly ugly arrangement, oranges and pinks stuck into a red, gaudy imitation Chinese vase.
Diana reached toward Meg, her hand grazing the rough fabric of the brown raw silk sweater she wore. Meg's arm froze holding a bright orange carnation. "I didn't mean anything, just your mom has been in here with all these people. I'm just the daughter-in-law." She popped a different kind of cookie in her mouth, dusting her hands unhurriedly on her pants. "We're all glad you came back from…" her voice ended in a question, although one no one had asked yet.
"Bren knew where I was." Meg murmured. She didn't like the defensive, thready sound of her voice. "Bren knew…" she broke off, feeling as if her skin had suddenly stretched taut across her face, as if rigor mortis had set in. Her heart began beating hard in her chest; Meg could feel Diana watching her as if she were some kind of alien creature. How could a woman desert her family, disappear without a word? Meg took a deep breath of air, holding it until she grew dizzy. "Where are the boys?"
"David," she indicated the porch, "is out smoking with the men." Diana smiled lopsidedly, "Bren has the kids. Took them to the park. He's such a good man to do this …"
Meg's hand slivered the air, the sentence, "I know." She heard a thread of reproach in Diana's tone, accepted it as one might a dose of cough syrup - something of negligible worth, to be tolerated if required. She had earned it, anyway. She dropped the flower she'd been holding, bent her attention to the arrangement. Another flower fell to her ceaseless, brutal ministrations, then another.
Diana finally put a hand upon her arm, stopping the shredding of an innocent lily. Meg twitched her arm away under a pretext of scooping up the discarded flowers. "We aren't divorced," she hissed. "Save your sympathy." She had nearly knocked a plate from an unfamiliar woman's hands as she pulled away. Diana's touch lingered on her skin, a brand of sorts, and Meg rubbed at it unconsciously. I don't need sympathy, she thought, I don't need anything.

Meg accepted a steaming mug of coffee from some vaguely remembered aunt. She smiled and chatted politely, her eyes focused upon the mole just below the woman's eye. "This is good coffee, don't you think," the woman noted, in the false funereal tones one uses with people considered dangerous or fragile. Meg nodded, grateful for the unexpected, presence of her father; the coffee was her father's special blend but one her mother detested. She inhaled the steam, conjuring the shadow of her father and evenings spent over the chessboard. She wondered who had brewed the coffee, and why. Perhaps it was meant as a small tribute to her father. Working herself away from her aunt, Meg found herself shadowing her mother, watching her, but rarely speaking to one another. That was comfortable, appropriate.
"I'm so sorry. He was a wonderful man, what a terrible loss" the phrases and consolations slid through the house, winding up stairs and hiding under beds, in closets. The words wound Meg up in them, as if she were a vase to be packed away. Meg moved slowly through the somber groups, nodding and smiling as she offered gentle, well-mannered words in return. Phrase and return, call and response; it became an extension of the funeral service, ritualized and cleansed of strong emotion. Her hands shook as she clasped each old, familiar hand in sorrow and gracious gratitude. She avoided all the people who should have known she was leaving - Diana, David, Bren - all the people who knew her best, had seen her that night in the headlights as she'd dared them to step closer and force her to jump. Meg shuddered away from that memory, turned her attention back to Mrs. Garmon who had been her father's secretary, who was so sorry, who was so surprised at how quickly the cancer had taken him. Meg nodded and smiled, patted hands and arms, accepted hugs and slightly damp pecks on her cheek.
Her face grew stiff from the slight, mournful smile she'd practiced in front of her mirror all last night. Her hands felt raw from all the embraces. Meg's eyes searched out her mother, working the small clutch of older, gray women hovering near the piano. Her mother's smile was just right, although the women probably found it too cheerful, too full of life and laughter. Her mother was like that; she had never been able to stay sorrowful for long, always finding the lesson to be learned, or the slight quirk with which to be amused. Meg's mother weathered all storms, was strong and constant as the house itself.
Meg moved on, smiling, nodding, drifting from person to plate to heartfelt embrace. Bren stood against a wall watching her from over the top of a coffee mug. His glasses caught the light in such a way that she couldn't really see his eyes, although the slight frown on his brow told her all she needed to know. Turning away she smoothed her face, finding a frown had grown there in place of the polite grief she had worked to cultivate. "Do you need a rest? We could walk down to the lake," Bren's voice, near her ear and low, like sex talk, raised goose bumps along her skin. She nodded, rested her hand on his arm, avoiding his eyes.
Their shoes crunched in the loose gravel as the rambled the short distance from the house to lake. The sun slanted through the trees, mostly bare now, and lit the late afternoon as in the sepia tones of nostalgia photography. Bren's face was bronzed and impassive as a statue's as they walked, hand in hand. Meg found herself holding her breath again, waiting for the light to change, for his voice to break in and condemn. She forced her breath out in measured beats, opening her mouth to breach the silence growing between them.
"I love you." He spoke quietly, no tone of demand or need filling in the shadowed spaces in the words.Putting a finger to her mouth he smiled. Without waiting for a response, Bren helped her step over the low fence marking the parking area and kissed her once on her brow.
"I know." And she did. "I love you."
"I know." His voice was dark and rich, a deep, aged bourbon and she drank it in as if it were a cheaper, weaker intoxicant. She was drunk on his voice, drowning in a dark, fathomless pond that separated them, and reaching for the last slant of light at sunset that his voice promised. It had always been that way, Meg thought, resting her hand in his as if that were something precious and costly.

The windows cast a warm glow into the twilight as Bren and Meg returned. Her head rested against his shoulder as they walked, entwined. Muted laughter slipped off the porch like a cat slinking off into the night. Entering, Meg found herself delivered into the hands of departing cousins; Bren moved to find their girls. Shadows had grown in the corners as lamps were lit and blinds closed. The mourners slowly dwindled until they were only family and the closest of friends. The cousins departed leaving behind phone numbers and addresses, mute recriminations for years of silence. The sorrow rushed in to fill the silence; a familiar tide returning.
Meg, finding her vigil at an end, sighed and stretched. A day spent watching her father's fingerprints fade from all the surfaces of the house, his scent being driven out by the motion and guests wafting through the rooms she had grown up in, had taken a toll. She stretched again, nursing a need to slowly visit the rooms of the house, to release her father that way, room by room. First she needed her mother's studio. Here, more often than not, they had taken meals and congregated as a family. Meg's father had often joked that both she and David had nearly been born in the studio due to her mother's stubborn refusal to leave until the last possible moment.
David stepped out from a small clutch of middle-aged men, business associates or town elders, smiling tightly to her. She responded with the barest of smiles but it was enough. David touched her arm as he moved past, murmuring a quick introduction. Meg did not pause, but nodded as she went shivering at the chill their carrion smiles gave her. They knew her, knew her opinions and found them wanting. She had been the disappointment, growing up to become a failed poet, failed wife and failed mother.
Slowly she moved through to the studio. Here her mother's paints and canvases held court, obviously the rulers in this particular room. Brightly hued canvases rested haphazardly on every surface, in every state of completion. Her mother rarely completed a painting, but those few she did were more than adequate. Her mother had never sold them; they were her own, private treasures. Meg understood that even as she mourned for her own misborn treasures. She brushed a finger over the slender handle of a brush as her eyes caught upon a small, paint-smeared pine box. She smiled, suddenly moved by her mother's un-looked-for sentimentality. Meg moved her hands over the grimed lid of her own first set of paints, smiling.
A painting still on the easel, still wet, caught her eye. Her father, thin and wasted looked toward a bright window, sunshine spilling across his useless, blanketed legs. A small smile lingered in the corners of his eyes and the small twist to his lips as he waited. It was a man Meg had never seen, her father as a dying man. Through the window Meg could see a small image painted there, perhaps a child, perhaps her. She stared at it, devouring a glimpse of her father that had been denied to her.
"Meggy," a small voice from behind caused her to jump, upsetting the old paint box onto the floor. She turned to find her mother there, shoulders sagging, graciously mourning matron replaced by a grieving, heart-stricken widow. Meg tugged at her shirt sleeves, unconsciously smoothing them over her hands.
"This is lovely, mom." Panic edged her voice, making it shrill and false.
Tears broke from her eyes, "I thought if I painted this and never finished, just kept painting he wouldn't be able to die. He didn't like to leave things undone." She stopped. "Superstitions. I didn't know how fast …"
"It isn't your fault." Meg rested a hand on her mother's arm, uncomfortable and desperate to escape.
Her mother closed her eyes, visibly gathering herself. Meg watched, awkward, silent, and unsure what was expected or required. "He wanted to see you, wanted to say goodbye."
"I didn't know, I…" Meg fumbled for words as she knelt to clean the spilled paints from the floor. Her hands were clumsy with the paint tubes and her eyes were drawn, over and over to the scars barely visible beneath her cuffs. They were pink and ugly, raised craggy hillocks of flesh.
She had opened her eyes, and studied Meg with a painter's eye. "We didn't know where you'd gone." Her voice had gone cold, "Bren…" Meg felt her mother's gaze on her wrists, watched her eyes widen, then narrow, skip to her face. Meg looked away, afraid of the shadows and questions playing across her mother's face.
"I know." Meg slowly slid past her, "I'm tired, mom. I think I'll go to bed."
She fled up the stairs to her childhood bedroom. Behind her a quiet, "Goodnight Meggy," tiredly climbed the stairs, unanswered.

Her room was silent, finally, except Bren's breathing and the snufflings of Matty and Ginny. She sat up carefully, sliding from under Bren's arm and out of the bed. Her bare feet met the floor, garnering a gasp. She dressed silently, crept down to the car and, with hardly a thought, backed down the sloping drive. It didn't matter where she was going - would there be darkness or shore lights, all that mattered was the motion, the solitude. The midnight blue sky, teasing her further, to drive just one more mile.
She stopped at the other side of the lake, where the house was invisible. Putting the car into park, but leaving the engine running, she slipped out from behind the wheel. The country station she'd tuned the radio to churned out song after unfamiliar song, freeing her from memory. Slowly she undressed, piling her clothes carefully in the driver's seat. She ran a hand down her body, marveling at the unfamiliar slopes and textures, drawing out a shiver that began at the top of her head and moved down; an earthquake that left nothing standing in its wake.
Walking to the edge of the lake she watched the lights dance across the surface and smiled, a bright, brilliant smile. Propelling herself forward she let the water take her, and lift her, holding her upon its surface with no questions, no demands and no expectations. Shapes moved across the sky as she watched: constellations she had no words for, airplanes bound for far-off destinations. She watched them all, her body melding with the water, only her white panties flashing bright and visible as a gentle wave lifted her hips and dropped them again. Her hair fanned out, collecting weeds and fallen leaves, and Meg had the perception of it growing longer, anchoring her to the sand at the lake's bed.
Meg's eyes drifted half-closed, she felt the angry thud of her heart slow as she drew breath after breath. Her head dipped below the surface of the water, she slowly began sinking, being drawn down, she thought, by her hair growing into the sand. Bobbing up again she sucked in air slowly, savoring the tang in it. Savoring the pointed stab of breath as she waited longer each time to bob up and break through the surface.
She floated there until morning began creeping through the sky. She watched the sky pink at the furthest edge then ducked under again, deliberately. Meg drew her arms down hard, propelling her body forward, toward shore. She made her way, dripping and smelling of fish, back to her car, then her mother's home, then her family. Baptized, shriven and clad in a winding cloth of lake water and weeds, her hair still anchoring her to the sand and her body still buoyant with release.