Leota's Garden Page 4

  She’d heard on some talk show that people should exercise their minds. Since she couldn’t exercise her body anymore, she figured she might as well try rolling the marbles around in her head. So she’d taken to working crossword puzzles and studying German from a book Bernard had bought for her shortly after they married. A pity she hadn’t started earlier. It might have helped build a bridge between her and Mama Reinhardt. Anyway, she was still keeping her mind busy. The last thing she wanted was to develop senile dementia or Alzheimer’s. Heaven help her if she wandered out her door one day and took off in Oakland, looking for who knew what. She’d get lost on the streets. End up sleeping in a doorway. Poor Eleanor and George would get a call that their crazy old mother had been found sleeping on a park bench.

  Maybe that’d get their attention.

  A friend of hers from working days had been moved by her children to Chicago. Cosma Lundstrom had written that she had gone out for a nice walk one bright, sunny day and had almost frozen to death in a doorway before her frantic children found her. She’d written Leota all about it.

  The sun was out, but then the wind came up. They’d told me about the wind, of course—this being the “Windy City”—but I never expected it to get that cold. I sat down and couldn’t get up. That stoop was so chilly it might as well have been a brass bench on the South Pole. I think my backside froze to the blasted thing. And then my false teeth stuck together so I couldn’t even ask for help. I suppose everyone who passed thought I was having a gay old time, sitting there and smiling when all the while the fact was my lips were frozen to my gums!

  How she’d laughed over that letter. Cosma always wrote funny things. She’d taken a trip once to Arizona with some senior citizens and written back that it was 117 degrees with a windchill factor of 10.

  They said it was cheaper going in the summertime. Now I know why! I was so hot I bought a bathing suit and didn’t care who saw my ancient wrinkly legs. A lot of good it did me. Why in the blazes would anyone heat a pool in Arizona?

  One year, the Christmas card Leota sent Cosma had come back with a line drawn through the address. Someone had written Deceased in bold letters and ink-stamped a hand pointing back to the return address.

  Deceased.

  A fifty-year friendship was over. Just like that.

  Deceased.

  What a cold, unfeeling word. It just didn’t fit the woman who had been so full of life and laughter and keen observations. Cosma had been a God-sent gift all those years ago when Leota was working and Mama and Papa were still alive. She and Cosma had the same boss, a kindly man who had two sons serving in the Pacific. He made a point of hiring the wives of servicemen. Both young, both with husbands off to war, Leota and her new friend had had much in common. Cosma had always been the one to listen to her woes and offer sound, often-followed advice concerning Mama Reinhardt.

  Leota’s eyes teared up. Oh, Lord, how I miss Cosma. I’ve no one anymore. Emphysema must have gotten her. I always told her smoking wasn’t good for anyone. But she had to start, thought it made her look so elegant. She shook her head. Cosma hadn’t been in Chicago more than a year when her children had to move her into a rest home. “Me and my oxygen bottle have new digs,” she’d joked in a letter. “Remember how we used to walk around Lake Merritt after work and we’d be as fresh as daisies when we finished? Now, it’s all I can do to walk from my chair to the bathroom. The most exercise I can manage is writing letters. As long as my fingers do the walking and talking, I can manage.”

  Oh, the fun they had had when they were young, going to movies together. Several times they’d gone to the downtown USO and swung to Glenn Miller and Harry James with soldiers on liberty, crying on the way home because it seemed as though the war would never end and their own husbands would never come home.

  And yet, while Leota had worried about what might happen if Bernard were killed in battle, Cosma took on life like a bullfighter. And life had gored her badly when soldiers came to her door with the news that her first husband, Jeremy, had been killed in action on Guadalcanal.

  Cosma met her second husband, Alfred Lundstrom, a handsome, blue-eyed Marine from Minnesota, when he was back in the States recuperating from a wound he’d gotten in the South Pacific. He and Cosma married within a month of their first date, shortly before he rejoined his unit. Al returned in one piece. He packed up Cosma and moved her northeast to Minnesota. “This city girl is milking cows!” she had written. They had remained long enough to have their first child, a boy, and then moved back to California.

  When Leota had heard their plans, she’d been filled with hope that they would end up living in the Bay Area. She’d longed to have her friend back. She’d been desperately unhappy then, working long hours, at odds with her mother-in-law, with whom her children were bonding in her place. Anytime she told them to do something, Mama stepped in and said they didn’t have to do it. And then there was Bernard, still at war within himself.

  But her hopes didn’t materialize. Al saw a lucrative future in the Southland, and, as it turned out, he was right. He arrived in time for the boom years of building and did so well in construction that he eventually opened his own business.

  “This man lives to work,” Cosma had grumbled once on the phone. Al died of a heart attack when he was sixty-five.

  “I’m ashamed to say I’m mad at him,” Cosma had written. “He just retired. We had all these plans of how we were going to enjoy our golden years together, and off he goes without me. Just like a man. Can’t take time to meander. Just a straight shot to where he’s going.”

  Thankfully, Al had been well insured and the sons had been trained in the family business. Cosma had gotten over being mad within a few months, but she mourned for several years. It was her daughter who blasted her out of the house with a cruise to Mexico. After that, Cosma started traveling on her own.

  Leota had loved Cosma’s letters and lived vicariously through her adventures, for no two lives could have been more different.

  Bernard had never been ambitious or particularly industrious. He’d come home whole in body but wounded in heart and mind. He wasn’t the beau she’d fallen in love with and married at twenty. He was like a tired old man, sitting in his easy chair and closing his eyes, not to sleep, but to shut the world out. She had tried all kinds of ways to bring him out of his depression, but he was mired in it. Then he started to drink to deaden the ache in his heart and drown the consuming guilt. He never allowed himself to get too drunk. He would drink just enough to make himself drowsy. Only once did he overdo it to the point of losing control. She managed then, briefly, to get past his barriers and close enough to his tormented thoughts to glimpse the pit he was in. He told her everything, and she had felt the darkness surround her, too. For a time afterward, he tried to keep her down there with him, but she fought free, finding the ways and means to climb out. Oh, God, oh, God! she’d cried out, and the Lord had put His hand down to her and drawn her up.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Bernard. It wasn’t your doing!”

  “You don’t understand!” He was angry, frustrated. “How can you understand? You’re not German!”

  “Nor are you! For God’s sake—and the sake of your children—rise above it!”

  He was determined to remain where circumstances had placed him. He couldn’t climb over them or go around them; he couldn’t break out of the prison of his mind. After a while, he wouldn’t listen to her.

  Mama and Papa had asked him a few pointed questions when he first returned home from the war. “Were you able to find out anything?” Papa had asked, while Mama waited tensely.

  “The city was destroyed,” Bernard had said. “There was nothing left. Nothing.” His voice was so hard and cold, it was clear the door on his wartime experiences had been slammed shut and locked from the inside. Mama and Papa never asked him anything about the war again.

  It was left to her to pick up the pieces and try to put Bernard back together again.

  Mama an
d Papa Reinhardt had waited for that to happen. They’d watched and noticed her every failure. Only Papa occasionally seemed to understand how hard she was trying; Mama understood nothing.

  “A wife should be able to make her husband happy,” Mama had said, and Leota had felt the full weight of blame for Bernard’s unhappiness placed upon her shoulders. She had wanted so badly to lash out in self-defense, but she knew what would happen if she did. Knowing what Bernard had seen had been a trap. Leota possessed the terrible power to silence her tormentor at any time she wanted. All she had to do was tell the truth and watch the sword of it hack Helene Reinhardt down to size. Mama would never dare to look at her with that superior disdain and contempt again. At times the temptation was so great she had to leave the house, because Leota knew she could never speak of it—not without breaking trust with her husband. And that was something she would not do. She had promised never to tell his parents what he had told her that wine-soaked night.

  How many evenings had she escaped into the garden, working by herself until night fell? She would sit in the darkness and weep, anger and frustration mingling with the wrenching love and grief she felt for Bernard. A desperate hope held Leota silent and where she was. She still loved him. If she used what she knew to defend herself, it would be at great cost.

  Tears burned Leota’s eyes as she stared down at the newspaper, remembering how hard she had struggled and how many years it had been before an angle of repose had been reached between her and Mama Helene. In the end, she had loved the old woman and been glad she had kept silent. Better that it had come from Papa and not her.

  I kept the promise, Bernard. I never said a word, my darling.

  Sadness gripped her. Bernard had died a few years after Al. Not from a heart attack but from complications brought on by alcoholism. Over the years, he’d stayed home while she went to church. “Why should I go? There’s no God,” he’d say. “How could there be a God with the world the way it is?” But she knew better. Without God, she would not have had the strength to stay. It wasn’t until the end that he repented and wept for the wasted years.

  And still she clung to hope. And waited.

  She picked up her pencil, staring at the crossword puzzle. What was a four-letter word for gateway? Arch. What was a five-letter word for excellence—worth? Merit. She penciled in the letters carefully. A Keats creation—poetry; wet spot—swamp; assumed name—alias.

  The wall clock bonged softly from the living room. She’d been sitting at the table working on the puzzle for over an hour. Leaving her pencil on the newspaper, she pushed herself up. Her joints were so stiff and painful these days. Entering the small laundry room that had once been a back porch, she put a few clothes into the washing machine. She had only a little detergent left. Sprinkling a tablespoon of it over the clothes, she turned the dial to “small load.” She stood for a moment, watching the water pour down. It was an old machine, like her, and it could be temperamental at times. Today it was working fine.

  Thirsty for a glass of milk, she went to the refrigerator. There was enough milk left to fill half a cheese glass. She supposed she would have to go shopping again. She couldn’t put it off much longer. She had two eggs left, half a loaf of bread, and canned goods. No meat. No fresh vegetables or fruit. No cookies either, though she supposed she had enough fixings to make some.

  It was only a few blocks to the Dimond District, where she had shopped for more than sixty years. Up until a few weeks ago, she had had no problems walking and carrying back the few items she purchased at the supermarket. But the last time she went, a teenage boy on a skateboard had bumped into her. She had been crossing the parking lot when suddenly he was there.

  In a frantic effort to keep from falling down, she had dropped her grocery bag, scattering things every which way. You’d think she was to blame, the way the boy glared at her. Never in her life had she heard such cursing as came from that boy. Without shame, he spewed out a stream of four-letter words that brought heat surging into Leota’s face. Then he jumped back onto his skateboard and rattled off, leaving her shaken, mortified, and flustered. It only took a minute for her temper to rise. What was the matter with young people today? Maybe that boy’s parents had spared the rod and spoiled the child. And now he was a savage bent on running down little old ladies.

  One of the supermarket baggers bringing carts back in from the parking lot happened to notice her gathering her scattered groceries and paused to help. “Looks like a heavy bag, ma’am. You want a taxi? I call ’em for a lot of old folks living round here all the time. Doesn’t take more than fifteen minutes for one to get here.”

  Leota bristled. Maybe it was the way the girl said “old folks” that got her dander up even more. “I didn’t drop these things! Some little hooligan on one of those roller boards almost knocked me down!” She straightened her dress and squared her shoulders with as much dignity as she could muster. “Customers aren’t even safe in your parking lot anymore.”

  “He’s got no business skating cross the lot. We got signs posted.”

  “Maybe he can’t read.” Considering the public education system, it wouldn’t surprise her in the least.

  “I’ll tell the cab company to put a rush—”

  “No, you won’t. I’m not so old and decrepit that I can’t manage to walk home.”

  “Sorry,” the girl muttered, taken aback. “Didn’t mean no offense.”

  “Any.”

  “Any what?”

  “Any offense.” Mama Reinhardt had spoken better English.

  The girl muttered something and went back to her carts, banging them together and shoving them toward the store.

  That had been a week ago.

  Leota jotted detergent on her list. At the rate it was growing, she would need two trips in order to tote everything back up the hill. She’d seen a little old man pulling a red wagon behind him and thought at the time that he was out of his mind. Now she thought he was probably being very practical. She could put two full shopping bags of groceries in a wagon and pull it home much more easily than she could carry them in her arms. And if she had to stop and rest, she wouldn’t have to put the loaded bags on the ground and then stoop over and try to heft them back up again and risk wrenching her back.

  A red wagon.

  Good idea, but where was she going to get one?

  She washed out the milk carton, filled it with water, and put it back in the refrigerator. Water would have to do until she gathered the courage to walk to the store again. She stood gazing at her supplies. A jar of bread-and-butter pickle chips, a half pound of butter, an almost-empty jar of mayonnaise, four plastic-wrapped cheese slices, and one small mason jar of apricots. It was the last one of the hundreds she had put up over the years. For two years it had sat like an orphan on the pantry shelf before she gave in yesterday and tucked it in her refrigerator. How many apricots and cherries and plums had rotted on the ground over the last few years? What a crying, shameful waste it was!

  Fruit trees needed tending. They didn’t live the long lives of oaks or redwoods. They needed pruning and care. Ignored, they declined into scraggly, woody trees that produced less and less fruit. Insects infested them and they became diseased. Winds came up and branches broke off. After a few years, a tree that had once produced enough fruit for an entire neighborhood wouldn’t produce enough for the birds and one little old lady.

  Leota slammed the refrigerator door and walked into the living room. Weary, she sank down into Bernard’s old easy chair. It fit her perfectly. After Bernard died, she’d spent the better part of three weeks covering it with a thick, pretty, aqua fabric. The work had been good therapy. Now, after thirty years of widowhood, she had worn down the nap, leaving the chair arms, headrest, and seat cushions almost bare—as well as permanently indented. But it fit her the way it had fit Bernard after all those nights of sitting and staring.

  She was becoming like him. Sitting. Staring. Waiting.

  Thinking about the past.
br />   Her thoughts were often on the good times she had had over the years. Sometimes just getting old was the hardest cross to bear. She used to walk around Lake Merritt just for the pure pleasure of hearing the birds sing, seeing the children sailing their boats, feeling the sunshine on her shoulders. And all those years she had worked, she had stood on city corners waiting for a bus to bring her within five blocks of home. She had worked hours in the garden, sometimes until the sun went down, and still had enough energy left over to go to a dance hall with a friend and do a fast Lindy. She had been a strong woman, full of energy.

  Now . . . now all she did was walk from her kitchen to the living room to the bathroom to the living room to the bedroom. She had worn a path into her carpet. Only her mind wandered now, traveling wherever it would. From past to present. Across the city. Across a nation. Around the world. Sometimes into the heavens. Or down to hell.

  Oh, Lord, I used to dream of going to Europe. I wanted to see London, Rome, Paris, Vienna. I still do, but I’m old, so old just thinking about walking five blocks to the grocery store and back again wears me out.

  Maybe if I had company it wouldn’t be so bad.

  Someone.

  Anyone.

  She thought about calling George and discarded the idea. It was just past noon. He would be working. No two-hour lunches for her son. He had given her his office number, but she knew by the expression on his face as he did so that the last thing he wanted was his mother calling. “In case of emergency,” he’d said. But even then . . .

  No. She could wait until later. Seven maybe, if she was still in the mood. She’d called at five thirty once, thinking he would be home. She had heard cars and trucks in the background. When she asked where he was, he said he was in his car, a convertible at the time. It scared her half to death thinking of him holding a telephone in one hand and driving down the freeway with the other. She’d told him to put both hands on the steering wheel and hung up. She’d waited for him to call her back when he got home. When he didn’t, she called his house thinking he’d been killed on the freeway. His wife, Jeanne, had answered. Yes, he’d made it home safely. No, he hadn’t mentioned she had called. He was in his den working on a project. She’d put the phone down and gone to get him. A few minutes later, she’d come back on the line. Sounding embarrassed, she said George couldn’t talk to her right then. He was in the middle of something. Was there something she needed? Leota said no. How are you, Mother? Fine. Everything is fine. As fine as it ever was.