The Garden of Lilies

Each flower was cultivated to perfection –their stems tall, the budding heads displaying bright purples dotted among the white petals, yellows and lush greens bursting over the edges of the garden. Dirt had lodged under Clara’s fingernails, in the creases of her hands, smeared across her forehead, intwined with the sweat that clung to her face, but she stood back, her lips curling into a satisfied smile. Among tufts of vividly green grass, several large patches of lilies battled against the gentle wind, standing together like a united crowd.

‘That’s quite the garden you’ve got there!’ Micheal Scott, Clara’s cheery, middle-aged neighbour had a border collie tugging on the end of a red leash, its black nose following a trail along the ground. Clara secretly hoped the dog would pull him away.

‘Thanks,’ she replied quickly.

Micheal didn’t leave. ‘Yeah, they’re really pretty. Lilies, are they? I’d love to have a nature strip like yours –that was the wife’s job, before we split.’ He glanced back at his own house, the strip of grass in front in dire need of a trim, or even a water. It spiked up in uneven tufts, yellow and mottled, sprouting into the cracks in the concrete.

‘It’s fine.’ Clara didn’t really know what was fine, but she wasn’t interested in keeping the conversation alive.

‘Oh, I guess so. Well, I’ll let you get back to it. Charlie clearly wants to go. Your garden’s pretty,’ he ended, allowing the dog to tug him away. Clara secretly thanked Charlie in her mind for pulling him away before he could make another comment about her garden. No, it wasn’t pretty. It was beautiful. It was exquisite. And it was all that was left of her daughter.

Clara knelt back down, her knees instantly smearing with dirt. One of her flowers was wilting beneath the canopy of petals. Her Lilium regale. What had gone wrong? What had she done wrong? Had she not watered it enough? Had it not got enough sunlight? Would it die because of her? Clara gently plumped the head of the flower, nudging the other flowers aside until the petals reached the sunlight. No, this flower would not die, Clara decided. She would take care of it and she would watch it and make sure it was okay. She’d never let it out of her sight. Not that it could go anywhere. But she wasn’t making that mistake again.

Clara’s house was quaint –two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen and a living room, and a backyard barely big enough for the inflatable pool she used to strain her lungs blowing up in the summer. It sat behind a peeling white-picket fence, a concrete slab in the front garden with two deck chairs Clara used to read in during the evenings while Lilly drew with chalk on the ground. She’d draw dogs and cats and people and houses but most of all, she drew lilies.

It’s me, Mum! I’m the flower! She’d squeal, her wavy golden hair glinting in the setting sun. Clara would chuckle, telling her that she was just as beautiful, or maybe that she’d buy her a lily to look after when it was her birthday, if she was responsible enough. Her birthday came and went and many stunning lilies wilted in dirty vases of water haphazardly placed beside the window as the excitement wore off. But there were never enough. Clara would have bought a hundred lilies for her if she knew she’d only have six birthdays together.

‘Excuse me, Mrs Evans? Do you have a minute?’ For a second, Clara thought Micheal had returned. But it was too formal, too stern.

‘Please, call me Clara.’ She’d never gone by Mrs Evans since her husband died of cancer right before Lilly’s birth. It was always easier to go by her first name.

‘Of course, Clara.’ Clara didn’t invite the man in, or ask his name. She sat in her front yard, her eyes hazily following him as he approached her, his expression wistful but serious, like he was about to inform her of another death. ‘I’m Rob, I’m with the council. I’ve just come to inform you there’s been a new development to add more curb-side ramps for easier accessibility to the road and the footpath. As the nature strips outside houses don’t come with the property, we don’t need permission from the homeowner to alter them. But you’ve got a garden, so I thought I’d let you know we’ll be removing it.’

Clara’s heart sank into a pit in her stomach. ‘What?’

‘You can remove your plants if you’d like, or they will get destroyed when construction begins. Either way, they’ll get removed. I just thought I’d let you know beforehand.’ Rob said.

Clara’s gaze drifted to the splash of colour on her nature strip, now apparently not hers. ‘No –no, you can’t do that. That’s mine.’

‘Unfortunately, it doesn’t come as your land. There’s nothing you can do about this. I’m very sorry. Your garden must have taken a long time to make.’

Rob didn’t understand. It had taken half a decade of heartache to build her garden, a memorial in her own front yard. A reminder of what she had lost, and what could have been.

‘No, please. Can’t you do anything?’ Clara stammered, tears forcing their way into her eyes. ‘You can’t… Not my garden…’

‘I’m sorry. The construction will be taking place in a few months, so you’ve got time. Again, sorry for your loss.’ Rob said it like a person had died, rather than a garden. But by tearing down her garden, Clara would be killing a person. The memory of a person. The smile, the laugh, the sticky lemon-lime cordial dripping down from an icypole on a hot summer’s day.

Rob slowly slipped out of Clara’s front gate, strolling down the street as if he hadn’t just shredded the last of her world. She couldn’t destroy her garden. She couldn’t. It was all that was left of Lilly. She’d already lost her once.

Clara lay wake that night, her mind plagued by thoughts. Her room was a dusty, midnight-black, the curtains open a crack, allowing the full, silver moonlight to spill through the window. Outside, a single streetlight flickered above the garden, sapped of its vibrant colour in the darkness. If Clara were to squint, the garden would look like nothing more than an overgrown patch of weeds, the vivid heads of the flowers spiking up against the wind. She imagined the garden being uprooted by a machine with a long, mechanical arm –or worse, having concrete tipped over it, leaving the lilies to silently suffocate beneath. Clara felt a cold sweat break out across her forehead. The lilies would surely die if she picked them –maybe she could save them in pots? –but it would be ten times worse watching them destroyed by someone who wasn’t her.

Clara stood up, slipped her boots on, and pulled a jacket over her pyjamas. It was dark outside; the world was sleeping. But Clara knew what she needed to do. She wouldn’t pot the lilies. She had a better idea.

Carefully, methodically, Clara uprooted every single one of her perfect lilies, so the fragile roots still hung like cobwebs from the stem, clinging on to clumps of soil that she brushed off. She carefully stored them in a vase, but she didn’t keep them there for long. The vase was just for transport, which she loaded into the passenger seat of her car, carefully clicking in its seatbelt and steadying it with her hand.

As she drove into the night, Clara caught a glance at her garden in the mirror. It was bare except for a few rogue tufts of grass among the clumps of soil that had been haphazardly tossed to the side. It was empty.

Clara drove to where tall trees loomed over the road, creating a midnight canopy. Where thick, metal gates kept people out. And in.

Clara slowly transferred the flowers from her garden into a small hole she dug in the loose dirt. The roots knotted together and she didn’t know if they’d get enough sunlight, or rain, and she wouldn’t be there to fertilize them. But they’d be free to stand on their own.

As she covered the hole, Clara realised she still had one lily left. She could have plunged it deep into the ground, like with all the rest. But she didn’t.

There was a small vase lodged in the ground with a single, wilted flower, battling against the gentle breeze. Clara picked it up, running it through her fingers. Who had put it there? It hadn’t been her.

And then Clara replaced it with her own lily. A full, turgid flower, the stem strong and the petals soft and delicate. Perfect.

Clara cried beside her daughter’s grave, wishing she could see the lilies that were planted there. Wishing she could take everything back. But she couldn’t.

The garden was gone and the lilies would die, Clara knew. But the memory wouldn’t. The garden was hers to keep alive, to tend to and to water, and now she had to let it go. To move on from something she’d been holding onto for far too long. To let her Lilly go.

Clara had her own garden of lilies now, inside her mind, rather than outside her window. The garden of shared laughter and hot chocolates in front of the T.V and yelling matches over school readers.

Yes, Clara’s garden of lilies would live on.