chapter 13
Gus, nearing Litha
Five days. She’d been gone five days. For a flooded cemetery on the banks of the Mississippi River.
I didn’t know what to do with myself without her. It had been over a year since we’d gone this long without communicating.
I’d started cleaning up everywhere I could. Even the garden. Not too much, because I didn’t know which plant was a weed and what was some kind of witchy herb Decca wanted to keep, but the hostile note in the mailbox from an unfriendly neighbor threatened me into action.
I’d taken Dad to two appointments. One for bloodwork, and another for the oncologist to tell us the bloodwork wasn’t flooding her with optimism. Defeatist words were bandied about. I caught phrases I couldn’t bring myself to believe, like time to start making decisions, and end-of-life plan.
Dad had listened with his usual reserve. The grace of a funeral director. He’d smiled and nodded politely, as if he wasn’t the patient under discussion. As if his family weren’t the ones in the crux of this battle.
I stayed over at my parents’ house two of the nights she was gone. I told myself it was because I wanted to spend as much time with Dad before his cancer made him... well, not him anymore, but really it was because I didn’t know what to else to do. I’d cleaned, organized, prayed, typed up notes for potential sermons.
I’d spent my days wondering when she’d be done with her case. Finding funny videos I wanted to send her when she ended this communication freeze. Buying her favorite cheeses from the market in Franklin.
The nights were unbearable.
My life was in limbo. My ordination was imminent, but until then, I was still a layperson. I volunteered at the church, taught Greek school, baked prosforo, chanted during the liturgies and vigils, but I was supposed to be spending this time in prayer and preparation. And I was, but there were only so many hours I could spend in prayer and reading religious texts without feeling the need to get my body moving. It was the calm before the storm, but I could only take so much calm. And so much being in this house without Decca.
It wasn’t until her car turned into the gravel drive that I realized exactly how much I’d missed her bright, full-teeth smiles, her smelly tea blends, and catching swaths of black fabric out of the corner of my eye as she floated around our little house. The place was filled with her energy, but I missed the corporeal her.
I stopped pulling up a chunk of crabgrass (definitely a weed) from my crouched position behind some anise hyssop (definitely a witchy herb) and watched her car crawl to a stop. She looked nervous, drained. But happy. I wanted to wrap her in my arms.
She spotted me immediately. “Gus! Oh my… I can’t believe you did all this work.”
I stood, grinning like a jack-o’-lantern while she slung her bag over her shoulder, stepping gingerly across the flagstones in her nice, heeled boots. I’d never seen her in her work attire. Narrow, black skirt that hit the tops of her ankle boots, black belted jacket with lots of pockets, black hat. Topped with an old, brown, rugged leather bag that looked like it could have belonged to a great-great-grandfather.
Everything I wanted to tell her washed away after seeing her. The impact of her arrival home after being in the field for five days.
“How did you know what to keep?” She plunked down her bag in the disturbed soil where I’d just been removing clumps of grass and other things I was mostly sure were weeds. Okay, I hoped were weeds.
She still hadn’t moved to hug me, kiss me. I hadn’t either, even though her presence was a balm on my heart. But something more than the dirt caked into my clothes held me from rushing at her with my arms wide.
She pinched off a leaf of the purple flowering Agastache—I Googled a lot of plants this week—and held it under her nose, closing her eyes as she breathed in the scent.
“Google, at first. Then I went down a YouTube rabbit hole. Then I downloaded a plant identification app and took out what was invasive. But after I started ripping everything out, I realized I probably should have checked with you first.”
She shrugged. “Everything that wants to come back will. Same with the weeds. I love when the anise hyssop is in bloom.” She held the leaf under my nose.
“I keep smelling root beer.”
Her laugh tinkled like a wind chime. Jesus, I was obsessed with this woman. I was seconds from melting into a puddle in this garden.
“I don’t get root beer, but it makes sense. Anise is one of the ingredients.” She sighed, happily.
“Well, it’s hot as hell, and I need a shower before dinner, which is braising in the oven.”
“I can smell it from here.”
“It’s jackfruit barbacoa. If you couldn’t smell it from a mile away, I wouldn’t have made it properly.”
“Well, I’m starving, and it smells amazing.”
She trudged up the porch, stopping on the third step. Slowly, she pivoted to me.
“No,” she said, looking horrified. “You didn’t.”
Oh, shit. What didn’t I do?
“You didn’t fix the creaky step. You couldn’t have known.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you have a sentimental attachment to the creak. I can try to unfix it.”
“No, Gus... that creak drove me crazy for five years. It’s so dumb, but it’s the one thing I’d always forget. Then I’d step on the third step and berate myself for not fixing it. I can’t believe you figured it out.”
“It wasn’t that hard. I found the new boards in the shed. They looked old enough to match the rest of the porch, but new enough that they’d last a while longer. I cleaned up the old paint in the corners of the stringer. It wasn’t much.”
“Maybe not, but…” Her body leaned over the railing. The look on her face was unsure. I waited for her.
Come to me. Come on, Decca.I’m here. I wanted to do this for you since I saw you cringe when my foot hit the step on my first visit.I can be this for you. This can be real.
She nodded, gesturing to the door after an awkward silence. “Well, I also need a shower. I’m covered in grave dirt. Unless you want to go first. You look... hot.” She halted, her cheeks flaming. “Uncomfortably hot, I mean. I don’t want to cut in line.”
“Go ahead. I want to put the tools back in the shed,” I said, kicking myself.
I threw the weeds in the burn pile and put the tools in the spots where I found them. Then I took them all back down again and sharpened their dull blades, berating myself with every scrape of the blade against the grinding stone.
In my wild, younger days, I would have said something so smooth, I’d have us both in the shower in two minutes flat. I’d be kneeling between her legs in the old clawfoot tub, and we’d have a lot of fun trying to fuck under that weak stream of cool water. But something about Decca paralyzed me.
She was too good for me. She was too good of a friend, and even though we were technically married, that’s all this was… a favor for a friend. A really huge favor. She did it out of love, but a selfless kind of love. Philia, not eros.
As her friend, I had to respect her enough to leave it at that, no matter how much I desired more with her.
When I finally made it inside, covered in rust, dust and cobwebs, I paused at the bottom of the stairs. She stood in the kitchen, her hair wet from her shower, soaking into her oversized black t-shirt. “You... What did you do in here?”
“I straightened up.”
“Where are...?” she trailed off.
“I kept everything. It’s in the garage. If you don’t like it, you can put it all back.”
Her lips were still parted as she stared at the recliner. Her breaths were deep and audible. Shaking and ragged.
Her fingers twitched. I came around her to see what was happening on her face. Her eyes were wide and sad, tears pooling as she swallowed them back.
“Dec, if I mis-stepped, I’m so sorry. I can replace everything. Except the dust.” I smiled. She didn’t. She just kept staring at the empty space where the cabinet and TV had been. I’d replaced it with a flat screen I’d mounted on the wall. I reached out for her, but dropped my hand, thinking better of it. A touch from me after I’d come in and made all these changes—settled in—would’ve been too much.
“It’s fine. It’s good.” She sniffed and cleared her throat, banishing her sadness. “Needed to be done.” She squeezed her eyes shut and reopened them. I watched her shove her grief somewhere deeper.
Had she ever been allowed to mourn Granny? Or did she feel the need to jump right back into work and all her morbid extracurricular activities?
She turned to me, her eyes softer now, the sadness replaced with something duller. “This is your home. I guess some part of me had hoped you’d do this. Since I hadn’t been able to. I’m glad.” She said it on an exhale; shock turned to relief. But I wasn’t so sure it was real. “I’m glad.”
I knew a part of her hated me for doing it.