I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.
Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.
Enjoy.
Garden Grow
For Vicki Platts-Brown. Thank you for your friendship and support (and being a *wonderful* neighbor!)
Janet was not a pessimist, not really. She just knew the universe had its own particular sense of humor.
“So you’re not a pessimist,” Maureen said. “You’re paranoid. Okay, honey, I feel so much better now.” She smiled. It was a great smile, a twenty years and I still love you smile, and Janet wanted to see it for another twenty thousand years.
They finished their coffee and croissants in companionable silence over the newspaper. The patio was warm with spring-morning sunlight. All through the garden, flowers and herbs and little shrubby things grew with the exuberance of the well-weeded, the properly mown, the carefully fertilized. Mo liked her garden happy.
“It’s so peaceful here,” Mo said. She gave Janet another one of those smiles, and Janet smiled too. One day the universe would get out the mulcher, laughing all the way: until then, it was good to be happy.
Ten seconds later, they heard the grinding rattle of a diesel engine chewing its way down the street. Janet imagined the universe giving her a friendly wink as it turned its attention to whatever real fun it had lined up today.
The engine grew louder and louder, chut chut chut CHUT, and then stopped. Mo stood and craned her neck over the deck rail around the side of the house, toward the street.
“Aha,” she said. “The new people are moving in.”
Janet looked up and raised a hand. “No PNFH,” she told the universe. “That’s all I ask.”
“Honey, it’ll be fine. It always works out.”
“Sure,” Janet said. And to the universe, Just behave.
Maureen stood and gathered the plates, and dropped a kiss on the top of Janet’s head before she headed for the kitchen. She stopped along the way to pluck a withered leaf from one of the special plants she kept in pots on the patio, the ones that need particular tending. Then she said, “They aren’t even out of the truck yet. Let’s at least meet them before we haul out the pitchforks.”
“Sure,” Janet said. But she felt the universe chuckling. Oh, come on, Janet. Let’s have some fun! Let’s play Psycho Neighbors From Hell!
#
Mo spent the next afternoon in the garden, and joined Janet on the patio with dirt smudges on her gorgeous cheekbones and a full report on the neighbors. “Max and Tiffany,” she said. “Tiffany’s the one with the nails.” She raised an editorial eyebrow; then, in a widdle-girl voice, “Weeding is so hard!” with a wide-eyed, pursed-mouth shimmy and a flap of her hand as if trying to pull a weed without actually touching it.
“What about Max?” Janet poured Mo a glass of the usual pinot gris and leaned back in her chair.
“She never got a word in edgewise,” Mo said. “I get the feeling Tiffany doesn’t like the kind of conversation where other people talk.”
The last of the day’s canteloupe light dappled the Japanese maple, and Mo’s potted plants seemed to stretch luxuriously to meet it. The sounds of dusk gathered around them, the crickets and the crows. And Tiffany shrieking through an open window, “No, put it there! No, there!”
“Sex or furniture,” Mo said, with a slight wince and a larger-than-usual sip of her wine.
“Pitchforks?” Janet said.
“Nah,” Mo said. And then, “Not yet.” Janet said nothing, but she suspected there might be trouble ahead. If Mo decided she didn’t like these people…. Well, she wouldn’t be happy.
“It always works out,” Mo said.
#
By summer, the grass next door was two feet high, the dandelions had planted their flag of empire, and all the lavender Mo had helped the Jensens plant there five years ago was choked by bindweed.
Janet came home from work one day to find Mo on the patio already making inroads on the wine, white-lipped with rage. “I have sent email,” she said. “I have asked politely. I have taken them a goddamn carrot cake. And today I went over and told them they need to take care of the yard before everything dies, and that woman said they’ll get around to it if they can but after all, it’s nature’s way and maybe I need to learn to deal with it.” She drank off her wine in a gulp and stared narrow-eyed at her potted plants nodding in the sun, green and vibrant and lush, spiky leaves, large buds tightly closed.
Then she took a breath. “Well,” she said. “You were right. PNFH.”
Thanks a fucking lot, Janet told the universe. Because I need the extra hassle right now. She sighed. “Pitchforks?” she said.
Mo said, “Go get yourself a glass and we’ll talk about it.”
#
A few days later, Mo was humming in the garden like a bee, hmm hmm, small contented sounds as she deadheaded the rhodies. Late that night she said to Janet, “Let’s have some ice wine on the patio. It’s such a beautiful night.”
And it was. The full moon was impossibly wide and just the right shade of sour yellow. They drank their yellow wine.
Muffled screams began from next door.
“You took them a plant,” Janet said. Mo smiled and drank her wine.
Ho ho ho, the universe said. Wasn’t that fun?
#
The next day, Janet went over and mowed the lawn.