Sand in My Eyes (7 page)

“This has to stop,” she declared as she pressed the “stop” button on the copier. But they kept on coming, and she sank down onto the floor, wondering how we fall into routines that we hate and turn our heads from the flaws in our lives, watching year after year spew out before us while doing nothing to improve the quality
.

She then pressed the “cancel” button, banging it with her fist, wondering how she might also press “cancel” with regard to the decisions she made in life. That’s when she squeezed her hand between the wall and the machine and pulled the plug. The room went quiet and she felt dizzy, like she was no longer standing in her own shoes but floating, and out she drifted, through the front doors of the publishing house, leaving her career behind. In the weeks following, she learned of her husband’s disloyalty, then sold her house and urged her husband to take the job opportunity offered him, the relocation that sent them to Florida
.

“I was overwhelmed,” I muttered to myself when I stopped typing. “And a woman overwhelmed for too long becomes miserable.”

I got up from my desk and walked out onto my screened porch. There I stared up at the sky, tapping my foot impatiently for something beautiful to go by, like an eagle or a great white heron, but when nothing good flew by, it got me to wondering whether I had lost my ability to see beauty, for where had all the wildlife gone? And the romantic feelings for my husband, where had they gone, too? There were only ugly things roaming through my mind now, and spiders and palmetto bugs out on my lanai.

I took my slipper off and smacked a fast-moving spider hard. Then I pulled the rubber band out of my rag-doll-like hair and put my fists in the air. “Life,” I cried! “It’s not what I expected—all this housework that never ends, and a marriage that will not mend, and banks that won’t lend. I hate my life and who I’ve become—this miserable woman!”

As soon as the words left my lips I felt sorry for myself. If only I had my mother to call. What woman who isn’t a mother herself doesn’t want to pick up the phone and call her mother, tell her how overwhelming it all is, ask her how on earth can one fold so much laundry, and say, “Help! I’m going crazy. Help! I never knew it could be so hard,” for there is no one better to call when the house is falling down.

I tugged my hair at the roots and covered my face with my hands, not knowing what to do. And because there was no one that I knew of watching, I started to cry like a little girl, catching each tear with my fingertips.
When there came too many tears to keep up with, I cried more like a woman disenchanted with life, and what a serious thing it is to be disenchanted with life, so when my tears ran dry, my soul—it had to be, my bitter, weeping soul—took over, releasing cries of anguish I had never heard coming from my mouth before. With this, the forest and the house on stilts were no longer silent, and the sounds were haunting and frightened me.

And then there was a knock. I stopped and heard
knock, knock, knock
. I bit my lip and listened more.
Knockety, knock, knock, knock
. It was coming from my door.

“Go away,” I whined, tapping my heel, working myself into a dither. “Whoever you are, go away! Leave me alone.”

But the knocking wouldn’t stop.

CHAPTER NINE

I
HEADED FOR MY
front door, sniffing and sobbing, chugging along like a train ready to derail, hoping that whoever was knocking might stop and go away. But as I peered through the peephole, smudged as it was, I saw an older lady on my front porch. Her hair was red, her cheeks powdered white. She was wearing one of those cotton muumuu dresses—one size fits all, without buttons, elastic at the neckline. And she had on her head a flimsy, floppy hat.

I licked my forefinger and wiped the peephole, then looked through it again, catching a close-up of the woman who lived next door—Mrs. Aurelio, I heard her tell my boys the day we moved in. She had been pulling weeds and waved, but I was too busy hauling boxes and keeping track of children to give her more than a nod.

“Go away,” I muttered under my breath. “I will not open the door. I won’t. Get back to your garden where you belong!”

Unless she was bearing lasagna or eggplant, as one might expect from a neighbor with the last name Aurelio, I was not in the mood for this, for neighbors knocking at my door, stopping by without notice. There should be rules against this sort of thing, welcoming a newcomer months after she’s arrived.

But her knocking continued, and if there was anything I knew about the woman from watching her through my window it was that she had all the time in the world, and had to be lonely. Anyone who spends as much
time as she out in her yard tossing seeds into dirt, waiting for them to grow, has got to be lonely.

“Goodie,” I muttered when her knocking stopped. “Now, go! Hobble away, old lady.” But she didn’t. She stood on her side and I, holding my breath like a rabbit hiding from a farmer in a carrot patch, stood on mine. It was then that I saw the look in her eyes, a look that said, “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” and it had me shaking in my slippers.

I reached for my sunglasses on the console and put them on, not wanting her to see my sleep-deprived eyes, swollen from crying. As I grasped the golden handle of the door, I quickly changed the mask I was wearing on my face from “miserable woman whose life is in disarray” to “my life is astounding.” I was good at costume changing and did so daily. No one, except, now, my in-laws, knew of all the troubles in my life. I didn’t want to be a burden, to be one of those women who verbally dump their overwhelmed lives on others, and besides it’s simpler to pretend that all is fine. I wiped my nose on my shoulder, sniffed once more, and opened the door with a smile.

“Hi,” I said.

“I was about to turn and walk away,” she said. “Are you busy?”

“A little,” I said, thinking of all the crying I had to do, all the harping over my husband’s infidelity. “What can I do for you?”

“I don’t want to keep you,” she said.

“No, it’s fine. What brings you over?”

“Here.” She handed me a pot with a tall, slender stem, and smiled at me as if she were a fairy godmother granting me my wish. “It’s yours. I’m giving it to you. I’ve been meaning to come by for weeks now,” she said, “to bring flowers.”

“Is that right?”

“I hear your children out my bedroom window in the mornings.”

“We’re loud, I know,” I said, embarrassed.

“No, they’ve brought me joy. This street was too quiet before.” And then she inched closer like she was going to share street gossip with me, of which I knew none. “I had seven. Can you believe it?”

“Seven kids?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head like she didn’t believe it herself.
“Five girls, two boys,” she said. “Of course they’re grown now, but I don’t know how I did it back then.”

“You’re still smiling,” I said. “What’s your secret?”

She waved me off. “I don’t have any secrets, and there are no remedies that make it all easier. I remember walking around in circles, like a chicken with its head cut off, thinking I had lost my mind.”

“That’s me,” I said. “Going to the kitchen, forgetting why I went there in the first place.”

“I do that all the time,” she said. “I’m in my eighties, my children grown, and I hardly know where I’m going or what I’m doing, can you believe it? I don’t know what’s worse—having too much work in one’s garden or not enough.”

“So what is this?” I asked, holding up the potted stem she had given me.

“An orchid, a cattleya orchid. It should flower any day—once it adapts to your home and feels no stress. Orchids dislike stressful environments.”

I let out a laugh, wondering if she had a candle in her bag I might exchange it for—a more practical welcome-to-the-neighborhood gift. “If orchids dislike stress, then it won’t stand a chance at flowering with me.”

“You know anything about them?” she asked.

“Not a thing,” I proudly replied. “Just that they’re weak, delicate, and die easily. You’re talking to a woman who can’t grow a Chia Pet.”

“Then I better not forget to give you this, wherever it is,” she said, rummaging through the large straw bag parked at her feet.

“What?” I asked.

“This,” she said, pulling out a yellow envelope and handing it to me.

“When I give orchids to people, I like to also give tips on how to care for them properly.”

I made a face but it wasn’t strong enough. She put the envelope in my hand despite my not wanting to care for an orchid, or any flower. To me, flowers were something you put in a jar with a bit of water and look at every time you walk by until the day they die, and then you dump the smelly mess in the trash, wash out the jar, and do it all again the following year when someone gives you flowers again.

I looked at the envelope she gave to me, with handwritten bulleted points all over it.

Cattleya orchids need fresh air but don’t like drafts. You might keep a fan on for yours. I suggest low speed. You’ll know it’s thirsty by looking at its leaves. And keep it on a sturdy table. Orchids don’t like to wobble
.

I stopped reading, having no intention of catering to a finicky flower. My children were finicky enough.

“Oh, did I forget,” she dared to add, “that yours—a cattleya—prefers a view of the sunrise.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.

“I know it sounds like a lot, but we could learn a thing or two from orchids.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, having no interest in learning from a flower, especially a spoiled one.

“Well, there are more varieties of orchids than any other flower in the world, and you’ve got to know which variety you’re dealing with in order to care for it properly.”

“And what is there to learn from that?”

“One must be aware of who she is before she can flourish.”

“Interesting,” I said, raising my eyebrow.

“It is, once you contemplate it awhile,” she said. “But inside the envelope is more.”

“More?”

“More tidbits about orchids, as well as a letter.”

“A letter?”

“From my mother.”

“Oh, really?”

“My mother was an amazing woman, who taught me everything she wanted me to know about life by way of the garden. Whenever I give flowers to someone, I include sayings my mother once wrote.”

“Oh,” I said curiously. I knew nothing about gardening, or life, or so I had felt lately.

“Remember,” she went on, “orchids aren’t weak. The world thinks they are, but they’re not. In fact, I kept one on my bureau for weeks after my bunion surgery, to remind me how strong and sturdy I was despite what doctors tried telling me.”

“What did they try telling you?”

She shook her head. “That my body is weak, but don’t get me started.”

I turned and set the pot on the console behind me, then gave the console a shake. “Too wobbly?” I asked, kidding.

“I’d say most definitely yes.”

Too bad, I thought. It’ll have to do for now. I’m sure a wobble or two won’t kill the thing. But when she blew a kiss to it, I felt the burden of taking on the responsibility for a flower she loved. “Tell me,” I said, “where’d you buy it?” I wanted to know so I could run to the store and replace it should it bend over and die. I did that for my sons’ goldfish and they never knew.

“This particular one I started from seedlings that I bought in four-inch pots almost two years ago,” she said in a proud, motherly tone. “I’ve nearly grown it into maturity myself.”

Darn, I thought. “You’re like a mother to it,” I said.

“Caretaker,” she corrected. “And, as much as I’ve grown to love it, it doesn’t belong to me and I must let it go. It should flower any day.”

“Let’s hope,” I said, conjuring how I might go about getting her to leave. “So nice of you to stop by. Did I already ask your name?”

“Fedelina,” she said. “Fedelina Aurelio.”

“Aurelio—I think it’s the name of a place that had great pizza when I was a child. You didn’t own a pizzeria, did you?”

“I married an Italian man, but, no, Oscar never owned a restaurant, never made a pizza in all his life, though that is not to say he didn’t love pizza. But me, I’m Irish. My father was an old-fashioned man who came from Ireland—scared to death his daughter would be taken advantage of. He told my mother the day I was born, ‘Cora, you tell our girl all there is to know about the birds and the bees, the flowers and the trees! I don’t want to worry about any of that.’”

She picked her straw bag up in one hand and took hold of the wooden
railing with the other. It looked to me, by the way she shifted the position of her blocky orthopedic shoes, as if she were ready to make her descent down my steps, but then she turned her head and looked me in the eyes and said, “I’ve come for another reason, Anna.”

“Oh?”

“I grew up in one of those good old neighborhoods where you knew everyone’s name and could stop over to borrow an egg. Not that this isn’t a good street; it is, but times have changed. People are busy …”