Memorial Day

Memorial Day

         The ivy is drooping, long strands growing up over the mirror and beyond that across the top of the kitchen door. But drooping, spindly-looking, needing water. He goes into the kitchen where he has a gallon jar of water waiting and begins to water all the plants. What a husband, not animal husband, a houseplant husband. In the ivy planter is a rock that says ‘turn me over’, a gift from the English woman. For some reason he remembers it’s Memorial Day.

         Thirteen years ago today his ex-wife said to him: “I don’t think we’re right for each other any more.” Suddenly he was looking at everything upside down, or like from under ten feet of water. It shouldn’t have been so shocking, all the signs were there, they hadn’t been right for each other for several years. He’d had to move out, his life in a shambles. He still didn’t know if he was over it.

         The ivy didn’t drain properly, it probably needed new soil, he poured in a little water and waited for it to be absorbed, then added more. Turn me over. He’d been a hero there in the apartment when the English woman and he were lovers. She was a shouter, a multiple shouter. The walls weren’t thin but they wouldn’t have blocked shouting like that, people in the street could probably hear it.

         It was funny, the English woman was really kind of soft spoken, but when they made love it was like there was no volume control. If she were an opera singer, the audience would have no problem hearing her in the back of the house.

         His next door neighbor stopped him one time with this look on her face, a little gleam in her eye, “I heard that you had company last night. You must be some kind of sexual champion.” Some kind of hero.

         Thirteen years. Down at the bar one night some stranger was going on about divorce and how you just got on with your life, as if marriage was like a smallpox vaccination and if it didn’t take then the scab fell off and you were through with it. “It still leaves a scar,” he said to the man, “even if you can’t see it.” “Sounds like you don’t have closure,” the stranger said smugly. He wanted to say “I’ll show you closure” and blacken the superior son-of-a-bitch’s eye for him, “see if that closes.”

         But it was the truth and he knew it. The bastard was right, there still wasn’t closure, even thirteen years later. The bartender was the only one who saw any humor in it.

         Maybe that’s why he’d broken it off with the English woman, maybe that’s why he couldn’t seem to stay in a relationship with anyone for more than a few months, no closure. He didn’t believe it, he knew he had experienced some kind of closure, he’d felt it, like a shadow on the sun, when his wife first closed the door on him, and it was still closed thirteen years later. That’s what closure felt like.

         More water into the ivy. Keeping plants proved to him that he could nurture, that he could care for something and not kill it with neglect. The ex-wife had plants all over the house, he’d taken one when he left, but she hadn’t cared because it was his anyway, a relic from his first marriage.

         It had taken him four years to finally kill it, it was a sin of omission, he’d forget to water it for months at a time. One day he looked up at it and it was dead. He didn’t feel remorse; he didn’t feel anything. Surely the stranger in the bar would have seen that as closure, though he didn’t see it himself at the time. The irony of it, the symbolism inherent in this last remaining vestige of both of his marriages, dried up and dead on the shelf. Turn me over.

         He had plants all over the house now, he watered them when they got dry, they seemed to thrive, seemed to add something to his life; a shapeless form of satisfaction that stayed nebulous and never congealed into something like accomplishment.

         Plants were perfect companions, you didn’t have to clean up after them, no shots or visits to the hospital, you could go away and leave them for weeks and they’d still be there when you got back, a little droopy, but none the worse for the separation.

         Since his divorce, he just didn’t seem to have the energy to expend when it came to lovers. It seemed like they always wanted something more than he was willing to give; another orgasm, another heart-to-heart talk about the future, another walk by the river.

         With the right person he knew he’d be glad to take walks, to talk and make love for hours, to nurture. He just hadn’t found that person, who knows, maybe he needed to find closure first.

         After the marriage plant had been dead a year, he threw it away, pot and all. He’d let a couple of more years slip by, and then, on the spur of the moment, bought a cactus. He killed it too, but out of kindness rather than neglect.

         The cactus was like a signal of some kind of change, because he started accumulating other plants and pretty soon he had almost a dozen. That’s what killed the cactus, he watered it too much. The other plants needed water every other week, the cactus only needed it once a month, but he watered them all every time. He felt a certain regret when he had to throw the dead cactus away.

         He decided to break up with the English woman when her roommate called him down to the hospital and he had to sit there almost all night, watching her heartbeat race across the cardiac monitor. Its erratic rhythm seemed to perfectly describe the dysfunctional nature of the woman that he’d taken for his lover. She’d been married six times and he knew for a fact he wouldn’t be number seven.

         As he sat there at her side and heard her tell the Emergency Room doctor about the drugs that she had to take all the time for pain, he realized why she always looked stoned. And now she was in the hospital, her heart running all over the place, like a Jack Russell terrier, while the drugs they gave her seemed to have no effect. Instead of wanting to nurture the poor woman, he just wanted to go home alone and go to bed.

         There wasn’t any easy way to break up with a woman, he had learned, no way to do it without also causing pain. Honesty was the best policy, but he also knew it to be the most difficult.

         If he were able to lie, it would be easier for him, because sometimes nothing stings worse than the truth, but he knew lying was not even an option. Rejection hurts, he’d learned that fact first hand, and there’s certainly no joy to be had in the rejecting, either, but it hurts even more the longer you put it off.

         He waited a couple of weeks and then told her he wanted to break it off, definitely not his proudest moment. She had cried and called him a bastard; told him he should never have said he loved her.

         She was right, he was a bastard. But he learned his lesson, and next time he wouldn’t tell a woman “I love you” until he was sure of it himself. At least she didn’t accuse him of being a lousy lover, even if he wasn’t, after all, a hero. Turn me over.

         He picked a few brown leaves from the ivy and pulled all the dead incense stems out of the pot. Sometimes, to turn things around, you have to start small. It was Memorial Day, it was a grave day, a day to look back and remember. ‘The King is dead, long live the King.’

         He searched through his feelings, wondering if he really did have closure. Maybe he finally was ready for a relationship, maybe he could commit to someone and not scuttle the love-boat before it got out of harbor.

         Maybe it was like knocking a dead plant out of its pot, but saving the dirt. Maybe that's closure, when you can take the old dirt, mix some fresh soil in and then plant a sturdy new start in the same old pot.

         It would take a few hours for the droopy ivy leaves to regain their shape. He picked up the rock and turned it over, the new message read: ‘Ahh! That feels better.’ He looked at himself in the mirror and somebody smiled back at him.