Sand in My Eyes (31 page)

I was fully submerged, deep within the branches and feeling one with the bush, when a voice startled me. “I’m afraid to ask what you’re doing,” he said. It was Liam. He was wearing a black T-shirt, jeans, and reading glasses, which made me nervous, reminding me of a professor I had in college, one who was serious.

“I’m trimming dead blooms,” I answered properly, too properly for having danced cheek to cheek the way we had the night before.

“Good thing you’re not a barber.”

I poked my head out from the branches. “And why is that?”

“Your customers would go home bald.” He made a face and looked at the excess lying on the ground. “By the looks of things, you’ve cut more than you had to.”

I wanted to tell him the reason for doing what I was—that I wasn’t crazy—that he should look at the side of his mother’s car when she got home, at all the scratches, and thank me for sparing more damage.

“Why are all those branches sticking out of your pockets?” he asked.

“I’m taking a few home for myself,” I said, wanting to tell him that the orchid his mother gave me wasn’t opening, and the roses were wilting, and the daisies were now petal-less and waterlogged and the periwinkles all over this island were stressing me.

“I don’t know that I recommend that,” he said, his voice formal and a bit too cold for Florida, and for the way in which he had whispered warmly into my ear the night before.

“Recommend what?” I asked.

“Taking something that doesn’t belong to you, wanting it for yourself when it isn’t yours,” he said. “So when is your husband coming home?”

“Tonight,” I answered, knowing now the reason for his frigid tone, “Late tonight.” The thought of my family returning, and all that had happened during my week alone, suddenly made me question whether I was
thinking like a normal woman thinks.

“Did I mention I leave tomorrow?” Liam said.

“You do?”

“Tomorrow night. That’s why I’ve got to finish these stairs today!”

“Don’t let me keep you.”

“A ten- or fifteen-minute break will do me good.” He sipped from the mug he was holding and made a face. “This coffee is weak. I’ll bet if I held it up to the sun I could see through it. I’m not a fan of weak coffee. It does nothing for me, you know?”

I saw a look of anguish in his eyes I hadn’t seen before. “How was the rest of your night?” I asked.

“When your husband called, I came back, took a shower, made coffee, and drew. I drew all night,” he said, walking away from the branches and from me.

“What did you draw?” I called out to him.

“A woman,” he said, with his back to me as he gathered his tools.

“What kind of woman, what was she doing?”

“She was standing on the platform over at the Red Mangrove Overlook, looking out at the birds.”

“Was it me?” I asked. “Did you draw me?”

But he had started hammering, and I don’t think he heard me ask that. I tried minding my own business, going about my work in the bush, fully enjoying the hydrangea experience, but it was hard—hard not to keep looking out at him, at what he was doing, instead.

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it, that you drew all night?” I asked when he stopped hammering.

“To tell you the truth,” he said in a voice that was glum, like the day, “I’m tired.”

“Why not take a nap?” I asked, stepping into the open.

“I’d like to, but I’ve got to finish.” He walked over to the shed and went inside. I followed.

“I know it’s hard,” I said.

“What?”

“Life—when there’s all these things you have to do, and only a couple
of things you want to do but can’t.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, looking at me like I was cuckoo.

“Taking a nap,” I reminded him. “You said you wanted to take a nap but had to fix your mother’s stairs. I’ve got things like that, things I want to do but can’t.”

He still looked at me like I was kooky. “Like what?” he asked.

“Really want to know?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”

“Fly away with you,” I told him, and just as I felt like laughing, he looked up from the pile of tools he was sorting with a serious look on his face.

“Then why don’t you?” he asked.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“I’m a mother, and like I was saying the first night we talked, what choices do I have left in life?”

“I see what you’re saying, but a person always has choices,” he said.

“As much as I
don’t
love my husband, I
do
love my children with all my heart,” I said. “I don’t know how I can leave their father. They love him. They love us together. Then again, having gotten to know you, and the way you make me feel, I wonder whether my kids might benefit from seeing a happy mommy—oh, I don’t know. I’m getting confused, but can’t help it.”

“You are a thinker,” he said.

“Did I mention I almost majored in philosophy in college?”

“No, you should have. It explains a lot.” He picked up three yard-sale signs and handed them to me. “Here they are,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said, taking them from him. “I chose literature instead. And Timothy—I chose him, too. When I think back, there were so many choices. I wish I had appreciated them more, given them more discernment. I look at things too seriously, don’t I?”

“It’s your life! You can never take it too seriously. Most people don’t take it seriously enough. They go about, never questioning discontentment.
They live with it like it was the color of their eyes, something they can’t change. Me? I can’t do that, Anna, I expect more from life. Call me a revolutionary, but if there’s something I hate about my life, you better believe I’m going to set out to make radical changes.”

“It’s not always that easy,” I said. “It might be for you, Liam, but you don’t have children.”

“I would think children want to see their mother happy.”

“Preferably with their father.”

“But that’s not fair to you,” he said.

“Mothers don’t always care about what’s fair or not for themselves. There’s a part of me that wants to teach my children about forgiveness, only I don’t know that I can, so I instead will teach them about endurance, and how marriage endures through good times and through bad.”

“Yeah, but don’t you want to teach your sons the consequences of cheating on their wives, and your daughter that she deserves better?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Is there better?”

“Anna,” he said, and by now he was standing up and close to me and there was nothing but the yard sales signs separating us. “Never, in my miserable years of marriage did I cheat on my wife. I divorced her, and then started to date, and that was only after we went for counseling and tried all sorts of things to make it work. And let me tell you firsthand that not all men cheat! For him to have cheated on you, a woman like you, Anna, the mother of his children—he’s a real dog and you deserve more in life, and I’m here if you’re considering a change.”

I turned my face so I wouldn’t have to look at him. “Oh, that’s hysterical,” I said. “You—an art history professor leaving for Stonehenge, and me—a stay-at-home mother who can hardly make it to the supermarket.”

“You think you’re better off staying where you are, in an unstable marriage with some dog who cheats?”

“Maybe,” I said, wiping tears from my face.

“It’s your choice, Anna,” he said. “It’s your choice.”

“Not really,” I told him, and by now I was feeling foolish. “You and I, Liam, we’re a whim, we’re a fling, a good memory, a reminder that my heart still beats, but a foolish thing, the two of us, and probably one day
nothing more than a regret I’ll have and, for you, a name you can add to your list, a woman you knew from Sanibel, like all the other women you are yet to love from around the world—all those sacred places!”

“Oh, come on, Anna,” he said. “You don’t believe that. Somewhere in your deep-thinking, contemplative mind you know there’s got to be a way to make it work between us—if not now, someday soon.”

“Nope, there’s no way,” I said like I believed it, and stormed out of the shed, dropping the signs and picking them up, but still storming the best I could. Once I knew he was following at my heels, I went on, “Unless we could reverse time and I met you earlier, but then I couldn’t imagine not having my kids, or having other kids instead of them, so no, it could never work.”

“Why?” he asked me.

“Why what?”

“I don’t know,” he said, pulling his hat off and tossing it to the ground, rubbing his hands through his hair. “Why do bees love honey?”

I gave him a look that said, “you’re not making sense,” and with that he returned to his hammering and I to my snipping, receptive to any unfurling wisdom the flowers might have for me and trying in my mind to see things differently, to see them the way his mother saw things. And to think, before meeting Fedelina, I knew nothing of flowers, other than “roses are red and violets are blue.” Suddenly I knew more, that I should do with my life what I was doing with the shrub—cut out the bad, the dead blooms, starting with my marriage. “I will leave Timothy once and for all,” I mumbled.

But what would I tell my children? That, hard as they might try, all of the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Mommy and Daddy together again? I closed my eyes and held a branch tightly, wishing it had knowledge to share with me. When I opened my eyes, I decided that cutting my husband out of my life wasn’t the answer. How much easier might it be to add rather than cut … add what? Add beauty!

“Bye,” I called out to Liam, my arms full of good blooms.

“Where are you going with all that?”

“Home,” I said. “I’m taking a few for myself.”

“Don’t forget your signs. You need help putting them out?”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“I’ll leave them at your steps.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Bye.”

As I carried the blooms up my stairs and into my house, I knew that, like the hydrangea branches, Liam and I didn’t stand a chance at rooting, and I felt remorse for loving that which wasn’t mine, and for taking flowers that didn’t belong to me. Still, I dropped them into jars of water, wanting to believe, hoping one might root.

The rest of my day I spent organizing the junk under my house into piles, and sticking prices to the items for the next day’s yard sale. I worked well into the night, and shortly after dusk there was a knock at my door. It was Fedelina.

“There’s something I need to ask you,” she said, a grave look to her face.

“There is?”

“Yes, and be honest.”

I felt like crossing my fingers behind my back. I could never tell how I had fallen in love with her son.

“Promise me you’ll be honest?” she asked again, and I gave a nod of my head.

“Good, because I need to know,” she said, turning to the side, showing me her profile. “Is my mouth drooping?”

“Is your mouth drooping?” I repeated back to her.

“Yeah, right here,” she said, pointing to the left side of her face.

I stepped up close. “I don’t think so. Why?”

“Oh, I looked in the mirror, and it looked to me like it was.”

“I don’t think so,” I said, giving it a good look. “I don’t see it drooping.”

“Then it’s the way I’m applying my lipstick,” she said, and when I gave her a peculiar look, she added, “I’ve had a couple of minor strokes in the past. That’s why I’m asking.”

“Oh,” I said. “What does your son think?”

“I didn’t ask him. I wanted to ask you first.”

“Put no trust in me,” I told her. “Please get yourself checked.”

“I don’t feel like moving up north or touring assisted-living homes. I know my family wants that. It’s why my son is here, checking up on me as he is. He’s leaving tomorrow, you know,” she said.

“Is he really?”

“Yes—and that’s a good thing. I don’t want my children sticking around, worrying about me. They’ve got their lives, and I’ve got mine.” She was rummaging now through her straw bag, and I was glad she wasn’t looking into my eyes, detecting that which mothers detect, the eyes of a girl in love with their boy. “You wouldn’t happen to have any lotion, would you?” she asked. “My hands are dry and they’re driving me crazy. This itching! It doesn’t stop.”

“Over there on the windowsill, help yourself,” I said, pointing.

The look in her eyes went from warm to suspicious. “My oak leaf hydrangea?” she asked.

“I felt bad for it—all the dead blooms! I wanted to help.”

“That wasn’t necessary,” she said quickly, setting it down next to the other ten jars. “Hydrangea—they can thrive on very little attention, Anna.”

I could feel the guilt eating away at my cells for taking what didn’t belong to me, and for letting my heart yearn for another man when it should be yearning for my own husband. I could learn a thing or two from the hydrangea, I thought sadly to myself. If they can thrive on very little attention, then I should, too. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to get so lonely, to the point of doing what I did—cutting from branches that don’t belong to me.

“Anna,” she said sharply, and I obediently looked her in the eyes. “I hope you’re not being falsely optimistic, romantic in your thinking that one of these ten jars of water is going to grow roots. Is that what you’re hoping for, dear?”

I nodded, unsure whether we were talking flowers, or if she was alluding to me and Liam, and whether or not I believed our love might take root.

“I don’t mean to burst your bubble,” she continued. “I’ve had friends in the past, a long time ago, who cut branches from shrubs and tried what you’re trying. It worked for some, but they had to leave their arrangements
in water a long time before they could grow roots of their own. But, more often than not, it does fail, and the branches would have been better off where they were, where they belonged before the cut.”

I gave a loud sigh and shook my head, wanting to tell her that I already knew that Liam and I didn’t stand a chance. “What was I thinking? It could never work,” was all I could say, for I still didn’t know whether I was sensitized and perceiving flowers differently due to our prior conversations, or whether she was on to me and trying to caution me with regard to my love for her son.