Lay of the Land

MARGARET HIGGINS, In Seventy-three years, only finds one thing about her life in order; her front garden. The horticultural anomaly in her otherwise grey and drab estate. It stands as an

edifice to her time in Ireland, which was all her time. She thinks of it as her beautiful

Irish garden. Others have to look at her unmatched gardening skill with deference, and wonder at the masterful person responsible for it. On the corner of a pale-grey T

junction, bending around its oval turn, her garden plateaus out like the midland planes. Hugging the back wall, a teenage pair hang their heads over her door. On the left; an apple blossom, his partner and accomplice, a cherry blossom on the right. Occasionally they grind up against each other before she trims them back every July.

The body of her garden takes shape as an island of well-kept grass that meets flower beds at its encircled shores. Seeing the variegated petunias, cushioned by lavender crowns, emerge from the mulch gives Margaret prideful pleasure; they are like advertisements to a business owner. They grow as they are supposed to. They look as they are supposed to. People think of them how they are supposed to. Every year on the approach to winter, Margaret watches with a copious degree of trepidation as the crusty frost threatens her pride. This garden is the most pressing issue in her life.

When spring comes about, she’s into field medic mode. Beige satchel flapping at her

hip, assessing the damage, tending to the sickly, putting those that won’t make it out of their misery. Circle of life, she thinks while ripping up her lovely lost soldiers, and just because summer spreads a cumbersome arm around the air, doesn’t mean she can’t be on the lookout. Her lack of a wall exposes her garden,

neighbourhood kids run around like they don’t know if their next foot will keep them

upright. They’re liable to do just about anything out of distilled stupidity or clouded

malice.

ONE LAZY AFTERNOON, as the sun ran its light through her blood-red mosaic pathway, she spots one of the boys who lives a few doors up. He flies off his bike and into her garden, crushing crowns of flowers, sending waves of mulch onto her grass.

“You stupid boy” she hisses from the window with the same unforgiving malice she reserves for lazy shop assistants or absent-minded bank clerks. The boy’s winded and thinks the old lady might be coming to check on him but he quickly realises the tune of her shouts, his arms are etched with what looks

like multiple wakes from speedboats, in this instant, he seeds a deep anger for the

woman. “That bitch on the corner”, he’ll swear to his father for the first and last time. His Dad drives more wakes down his back and across his face. No one at school asks about his scars; his teachers avoid his hand, open palm like a daisy in the air; invisible. The boy apologises to Margaret the next day, she’s too concerned about repairs to notice his bruises, or maybe she did and just didn’t care.

MARGARET’S ONLY FRIEND is a woman a called Mary. A soft-spoken religious girl whose husband left her with a house, four daughters, two granddaughters and a secret family in Meath. Margaret didn’t know what the other wife was to Mary, she didn’t ask. Mary doesn’t want to breach that topic. It looked as if there were going to be two funerals. Both wives blamed each other for this sacrilegious taboo. But better, calmer heads prevailed. They

burnt his body with a few of his numerous children present, to confirm he hadn’t

lied about dying too. None shed a tear.

Despite their constant visits, Margaret didn’t much like Mary; she was self-righteous, full of notions and ravenous for gossip. On the short walk to see Mary, Margaret ritually tallies herself against her friend, looking for something to justify herself, something that dwarfs Mary and pulls Margaret on top. Mary's house is more spacious than Margaret's. It speaks of a time gone by. Mary’s marriage, despite its circumstances, had been better than nothing, but her garden was a shambles. Mary knew it, Margaret knew it, and she guessed the whole neighbourhood knew it. Mary had tried to copy Margaret's petunias. She had failed to put the right amount of fertiliser down and neglected to water them once a week, ultimately, the flowers withered.

 Margaret was flooded with smug happiness that winter. The two speak at great

lengths about their gardens, the goings-on in the neighbourhood, and Marys favourite topic; The Church.

“Oh, it’s very odd now”

“That’s right, not in our day”

Mary’s Granddaughter had recently ‘come out’. Margaret didn’t know why she had to, regardless, the two tut in bewilderment at the latest news of her activities and revelations. ‘Coming out’ seems to be a new invention, despite the fact that over her long and arduous life, before the house, settlement and garden, Margaret had ‘come out’ many times, even if Margaret refused to connect the two circumstances. She knew more than anyone the behemoth task of wading up the rapids of public shame, trying to stay steadfast while everything around does its best to knock you down and sand your edges, all to make you flow in their direction. But the tide changed for her. She was lucky, even if she failed to fully recognise it. She didn’t talk much about all that with Mary. She didn’t think much about it either. No, she didn’t think of that at all.

SABOTAGE. That was the only word for it, brazen, evil sabotage. Pure jealousy, of her beautiful garden. Was it Mary? Some other neighbour or vandal from.....wherever they come from. Her Petunias were decapitated in the night,

and just after surviving another winter too.

“Have you called the Guards?” Mary asks, exchanging any information for a cup of tea. “God help you, Margaret, God help you”

“Oh fuck off with your God, Mary. He’s no better than your two-timing husband”

Mary lays the steaming cup on her table. Turn the other cheek, the good book says,

so she would, like she always did for this spiteful woman. She picked the cup up and left the insult behind.

“What about that young fella? he couldn’t stay upright on his feet, let alone on a bicycle”

Margaret doesn’t feel the need to apologise. The outburst is swept under the rug,

typical.

MARGARET KNOWS WHERE THE BOY WHO CRASHED INTO HER GARDEN MONTHS AGO LIVES. His father, Jerry Murphy, answers the door.

He moved in about a decade ago with his wife. The wife quit a few years later. After

that, Margaret saw her car arrive and alight with ever-dwindling frequency. She finds

out the young boy's name is Jack. What is he, sixteen? He should be leaving home soon and getting a job. Jerry listens to her explain how she suspects his son of purposely

crashing his bike into her Garden, and now she suspects him of striking again.       

The robust man nods insularly as if deep in contemplation. When she finishes, Jerry looks at his son. Jack cowers under his dad's commanding presence, eyes glued to the floor. Ever since the old woman screamed at him Jack hasn’t been able to pass by that perfect, stupid, fake garden without battling revenge fantasies. The woman

knows it was him; despite having no evidence, his Dad wants it to be him in order to

exert his karmic discipline. He figures he’s caught this time. He’ll have to take the victory for the brief time he got away with it and assume solace in the victories to come. He smirks......”I’m really sorry”

Margaret can’t believe his cheek. unforgivable. Jerry picks up on this immediately. A man who learnt to take a hit from his own father, he'd spent his entire life trudging from one confrontation to the next, he knew when a sincere

apology leaked from a defeated opponent's mouth, or when it was spoken to be

spared the cane. This wasn’t even a good attempt at the former. His fist coming down on the table injects a lively static into the kitchen. The vitriol he spews towards

his son resonates in Margaret. Something about this dynamic scares her, authority and subject. This isn’t like her own tirades. She can see the venom in his shouts. She shakes the feeling away. Jack's black hole subsumes the words. Jerry ceremoniously apologises for his outburst. Jack quivers as his oscillating voice pushes out another apology from fear more than regret.

HER GARDEN RECOVERS QUICKLY. It forgets the tragedy that befell it a

few months ago as it incubates a new colour show. Depending on her mood, she either peers or stares at Jack whenever he passes. Margaret is sometimes convinced he’s up to something again, plotting to ruin her garden anew. Her garden looks beautiful, but it’s become her theory that the land underneath grew sour at

some point after her birth and will grow twisted trees or flower heads mildewed with

rot if left unattended.

TESTOSTERONE HITS JACK LIKE AN EIGHTEEN-WHEELER. His once slight

arms bulk out like sacks stuffed with corn. His chest balloons, and balls drop. Hair,

fucking hair, everywhere. He still harbours a great deal of spite for the old woman on

the corner. Jack stops going to school. He notices how the bruises he inflicts now are

more punishing than those he shows. He spends his time smoking and walking around his estate. He throws cigarette butts into the old bitches garden whenever he gets the opportunity. This garden is an affront, outwardly pretty

and pristine, hiding a fucking witch behind it. That was the truth of most things, an

insight Jack has acquired all by himself. Behind everything, there’s dirty, decrepit filth, full to just under the overflow line. Her garden is no different. It’s PR, propaganda. Around this time, Jack's old man shuts up too. No more slices down his arms.

One afternoon his dad returned home from work in his usual stupor, pissed off

about something or another Jack had forgotten to do, but in reality, was probably

never even asked of him in the first place. Forgetting himself, Jack’s father slides the belt out from his trousers and clasps it over itself, buckle front-facing. This is what Jack has been waiting for. He dreams of this moment, of grabbing the buckle and lacing his father's chest with his own lines. The buckle comes down repeatedly on the old man's body; each strike seems to stream anger out of Jack, as if from the

movements themselves, something leaked, something that was vicious and blocked

for so long. He felt relieved afterwards, it was all gone, he could breathe, but it didn’t

take long to build back up again. If there was a question before, there was none now.

The two men understand each other. When his father wakes the next day, bruised

and scraped, head sputtering, Jack detects an apology in the acknowledgement of the old lion's demise, and the rise of the new.

MARY DIED. Another point to Margaret, she supposes. Finally, they’re even.

She might have married and might have HAD a better house, but Margaret still had

the garden and was now sitting in a pew at Mary’s funeral. Her Daughters and

Grandchildren show up along with Mary's entire measly Sunday congregation.

Margaret doesn’t know why she thought the estranged other family might appear, she’s disappointed.

That was the last bit of gossip Mary and her would share.

After the funeral, the Grandchildren invite her back to Marys house. The living room smells of peat and wet grass. The house's contours don’t mirror those of Margaret's youth, but the smell brings her back. She remembered how her curled golden hair fought with the constant wind, the smiles from figures in the distance walking lonely fields. She had so much promise and hope back then. The family tell stories of Mary, no doubt special to them, but only special because someone they knew is the protagonist or at least a supporting character.

The one who had come out sings a lovely baritone solo. In the reflective moments between her breaths, Margaret feels a piece stolen from her. Something taken, not Mary, but the feeling that she might have had all this. If something hadn’t failed her. This land. She cries for the first time in years, not for Mary like all those around her think, she cries uncontrollably about the things she didn’t dare talk about. The details she accepted she'd be judged upon, they boil up in the arms of the one who had ‘come out’. The English Prince who wandered into her small Donegal town, the missed periods, her father's stoic rationalism, the laundry that shouted her down, like Jerry to Jack, the birth, the priest, the nuns, the loss; drawn out like spindles of yarn, pregnant with the sins of a nation, now overgrown, the runoff of the life she never lived. Together, she and the one who came out fought the tears.

“There, there, she’s in a better place now”

Margaret had wanted to stay in contact with the family but didn’t want to intrude.

They went back to their lives, and she to hers. They might talk about her from time to time “Sure, do you remember the one who cried back at Granny Mary's house, poor pet ” She would be an afterthought to Mary, that stung her. The acrid pain mixed with her newfound silence prompts questions, like ones she hears in the melodramatics of daytime T.V. More and more things long ago crystallise, melt, and then bubble.

She changes her theory on the land underneath her garden the more she allows herself to recall: This land was always evil no matter how she tried

to order it. No matter who tries to prune and shape it, it will always be evil.

HER GARDEN PRESENTS ITS BEST FACE FORWARD, as she always wanted it to do. But her pride begins to wane; the only thing in her life that’s in order. How could that be? For the first time, she looks at the bushels of flowers, they’re hemming her in. The trees pressed up against one another are blocking her exit. Her pride and joy are a mask. The only thing in her entire life that is in order. Whose order? Certainly not hers, certainly not her ‘taken’ baby.                                

She could have sat on the lawn in her garden with a husband and family, who came out, or in, as whatever. She doesn’t notice as she tears the geraniums up; as she spreads the oak-coloured mulch and purple, yellow, and red flower heads all over her perfectly manicured lawn. Neither does she notice Jack, watching from across the street, his hulking mass relaxed behind a plume of cigarette smoke.

“Margaret?” This is the first time someone has said her name in months. She

looks up,

“Oh fuck off, Jack”, she screams. Margaret lets the excess energy she feels

dissipate. She nearly keels over with exhaustion. The hulking boy crosses the threshold to her lawn. His eyes are busy as he takes drags, long drags. When he’s finished, he flicks the cigarette onto the lawn, meticulously placing his shoe over it and shimmying the ashes into her grass. Is this a slight to her or her garden?

"I said fuck off", Margaret wheezes. Still nothing from the boy.

“You know when I did that, yeah?” Jack nods towards the ripped flower bed,

“When I did that, my dad beat me because of you” Jack's anger rests between his eyes.

 Margaret has seen this look before. Priests and Nuns have a similar look only theirs were never quite this raw; instead, backed by something she supposed they thought was a higher power, but Margaret knew to be just plain old delusion.

Margaret wants to rip him up like he undoubtedly wants to do to her but what use would that be? One person, one priest, one dead wronged wife, one coming out girl, one asshole dad, one sad old hermit on the corner, they were all victims of something, something that extended its hand far beyond either of their visions. But she knew it was there, a tradition of concealment, false smiles that govern everyone, this had leaked into Margaret at some stage. She hated all around her for not getting that. How could they? They didn’t know what Margaret and Jack endured. She took that hatred out on them, on whoever assumed she was fine, that her life had been in order like theirs. They didn’t need to shape their gardens. Now Jack would do the same, lash out as she did at the garden she tried so desperately to make ordered and pretty.

Jack takes a step closer, his presence broad, like a tank billowing towards her intent on harm.

“This garden is a fucking bitch”, she says. Jack lets out a gust of air and a smile.

 “I’m sorry that your dad is an asshole. I’ve known a fair few myself. I knew your da was one of them, but even at my age, I ..” she finds herself speaking without knowing where the sentence might lead her. She cuts herself off when she realises …” prefer not to see it” Jack is taken aback. He understands the old woman now, perhaps more than she does.

Margaret sees something in him, something Jack sees in turn within her. The garden is torn asunder; beneath it are wounded animals limping forward, heads stretching outright, refusing to acknowledge injury. To do so would be to accept the reality of things far greater.

“ I’m sorry for messing up yer garden,” the wake-ridden boy shines ephemerally.

Her ghostly tendrils of once-golden hair hold their own structure. “It’s not your

fault Jack,” she whispers “It's not your fault”.

END