Spring's Sweet Cantata

Spring's Sweet Cantata



by Alexandra Burt







We are 1214. We live on Chestnut Avenue; the street north of us is Oak Lane, the next over Mulberry Lane. Suburbia, equivalent to bulldozing trees and naming streets after them, where everybody addresses the mail carrier by his first name. We share the same heating and air-conditioning technician and we take our kids to the same pool.

My husband has a passion for miniature helicopters. He orders parts from China, parts that cost more than the helicopter itself. They carry the names of Native American tribes. He spends hours taking Apaches, Chinooks and Blackhawks apart, reassembling them, exchanging rotors, flaps and gears. He spends more time tinkering with them than flying them. I have concluded that flying them depresses him. Preparing them for flight is what excites him. He orders the parts secretly and awaits the asbestos padded envelopes like a romantic letter from a distant lover.

I have a 12-year-old daughter. She talks to her friends, phone clutched between shoulder and cheek, while she brushes her teeth, while she takes a bath, while she does her homework. She does not talk to me. When I enter the room, she presses the phone flat against her thigh and looks at me with her head cocked slightly to the left as if I am a hostile and unwelcome intruder of her territory. She got her period a year ago. She never told me and she never answered when I asked her. Just cocked her head and rolled her eyes. Sometimes I wonder how she would react to the news of my death; would she also cock her head and roll her eyes? I have a suspicion that my husband gives her money to buy sanitary pads and Midol. I have not been in her closet in months; there is no telling what it holds.



You can tell a lot by the gardens people keep. Every day, I water the roses in my front yard. I take my time and inspect every blossom and every stem closely. I know the names of countless flowers, shrubs and trees, know about the bloom patterns and watering preferences, but I am stuck on roses. I decided on the 'hearty' kind, because they bloom every year. I am known for my roses.



My neighbors trust my gardening skills and ask me to water their plants when they are out of town. I have a white painted box on the wall in my pantry. There are five keys on five L-shaped hooks. One is a spare car key, one a front door key to my house and the other three have an almost transparent paper tag attached. Each tag displays a number. The keys belong to the front doors of 1215, 1216, and 1218.

1218 belongs to a Greek childless couple. They both dye their hair two shades too dark. In the winter, when their complexion is reminiscent of mother-of-pearl, they look like ghosts. She outlines her lips with a rust lip liner settling into the greases of her lips. She is a heavy smoker and it shows.

He wears a lot of gold jewelry and the huge bags under his eyes are hereditary. He showed me a family photo and his family displays the same bags, some heavier than his. I believe him to be a closeted homosexual. They have five yucca plants in their kitchen by the window. They visit her brother in Cleveland frequently, leaving me to tend to their garden.



A call came one morning, the day after their departure.



"I fear I have some bad news." A man with a Greek accent hesitated, I could hear him swallow, then switch the phone to the other ear. "They, they...there was an accident last night. A car accident. We are just beside ourselves, as you can imagine."

After some somber words and my solid sympathy from the neighborhood, he asked if I would look after the yard until they made arrangements regarding the will and "since there are no children, it will be a mess to figure out what to do with the house."

I gladly obliged and hung up the phone.



I walked down my driveway, gently glancing at my roses in full bloom. A numbered key in my hand, I turn left towards 1218.



1215 is displaying witch hazel and daffodils. They are planted aimlessly, haphazardly and crooked, if you ask me. A thunderous family, five children, and counting, known for abandoned dolls, cracked toys, and deserted bikes with flat tires scattered about. Roman-Catholic, judging by the lack of family planning.



1216, a common-law couple, displaying an oceanic sweep of purple hyacinths, the sweet aroma intoxicating, but reeking of deceit. I know that 'out of town on business' means 'swinger conventions in Vegas'. Their children long gone, enraptured in their own lives. When their children's passions fade, what advice will they give?



I arrive at 1218. I glimpse over flashy prim roses with a dab of muscari to break the monotony, flanked by magnolia trees. Too much fuss and pretense, like his gold chains and her lipstick.

They must have watered right before they left. The soil is still moist and dark, and the blossoms twinkle in the afternoon sun. Two metal chairs on the front porch, invisible from the street, obstructed by the abundant magnolia trees. I had never seen them sitting there, but now imagine them, perched in the shade, for hours, watching the noisy 1215 brood play across the street. I imagine them speaking of the children they never had, their blood legacy abandoned like an unwanted kitten. They must have been a stunning couple in their youth, fused as one by their childless existence. The lava rocks glossy, the walkway swept and the hanging baskets pricked with fertilizer spears. They had left their garden immaculate.



Walking back towards my house, 1215's front door opens, and the children spill out, dart into the garage to snatch bikes, scooters, and skates. The children's voices are elated, oblivious to adult judgment, trapped in a childhood of carefree bliss. The parents follow, he carries two lawn chairs. They raise their hands in unison and wave.

1216 is silent, left abandoned, the inhabitants obsessively capturing the passion of their youth. Slithery bodies in hotel beds, unknown to one another. Chasing ecstatic pleasures with strangers, not recognizing that passion is a good servant, but a bad master.

As I approach my house, the roses seem droopy and in need of trimming. I give in to the urge to prick off some of the wilted leaves turning yellow at the edges, the stems and its sickle-shaped hooks merciless drawing blood. The prickles of roses are actually an outgrowth of the epidermis, aiding the rose in hanging onto other vegetation. I am thinking about planting some snowdrops, one of the earliest blooming flowers. They do not even wait for the snow to melt before they emerge from the sleep of winter. They push right up through the snow. As people walk by they might stop, point, and say: "Look at that, how delightful. Flowers in winter."