Garden in the Stars
By Lily Herrmann
Gravel flung out from underneath the wheels of his bike. He swerved to avoid the oncoming car and was struck with a memory of pure anguish. He saw the headlights and heard the screams. He remembered the blood and tears and the sound of the ambulance’s sirens. He could see down into the coffin of his beautiful wife Rose and his lovely daughters Annie and Kayla. He felt his heart and soul ripped out of his chest into the cold, cruel world.
But that was 34 years ago. He needed to forget. He had to get over the memories and the haunting dreams. He pulled his bike over to the side of the rode and sat in the dying, yellow grass. He wiped the sweat off his brow and took a long dragging breath of the warm summer air. With eyes closed he said to himself, today is a new day, Marty, just focus on today not the past.
“Oh my gosh, Mister! Are you ok? I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you! Were you hit?”
Marty looked up to the young woman whose car he had just narrowly avoided and grunted, “Mm fine…”
She looked down to him, sitting on the grass in his dirty overalls with an old, black backpack slung over his shoulder. She shuttered with the thought of how dirty and poor he must be. Oh if only you knew, thought Marty, if only you knew. The woman turned her back on him, finding him to be a waste of time and hopped back into her flaming red car. She sped off in the direction of the rising sun with her radio blaring and her windows down, her long blonde hair flying in the wind. What a sad, sad excuse for a young woman, thought Marty, and he hopped back onto his bike, brushing his own scraggly white hair back on his head, and continued his long ride down the highway to work.
With the already blazing sun on his back he pedaled down the highway on his dirty, rusted old bike, remembering. Marty couldn’t help but remember. People said that’s why he still wasn’t healed. Therapists said that after 34 years he should be over his trauma, but they didn’t know. They didn’t understand. They had never heard the screams of their dying baby daughter. Therapists just didn’t know.
Marty had been to a good share of therapists after the accident. All of whom didn’t understand anything. They said he had survivor’s guilt, but Marty knew in his head that that wasn’t true. They said that when your whole family is killed in a violent car crash and you alone live, you feel like it’s only your right to die. Marty didn’t feel guilty that he lived; he knew that’s just how life wanted to play out. Life chose its own direction, and he understood that, but he still couldn’t get over the fact that his daughters lives were cut short before they were even teenagers, and that all his wife dreamed about was going to the garden El Rosaleda, and was brutally killed in an accident that never had to happen.
Nobody knew. Nobody understood. For years Marty had been exiled by society just to be whispered about behind his back. Everybody thought he couldn’t hear the whispers, but he could, he heard it all. Marty heard the taunts of the teens and could see the scowls of the parents when he got too near their children. But the children were the funniest with their little games. They would say how he was a ghost and was coming back to kill them all and would run every time they laid their eyes on him. He couldn’t help but chuckle at them when he turned his back; it was the kind of game his own little Annie would play.
Marty thought of all this on his nine mile bike ride to work and still arrived with time to spare. He locked his bike on the rack outside of the newly painted tool shed and said out loud, “It’s going to be a beautiful day!” The sun had just come up and the sky was already as blue as the ocean, the sun looked as yellow as the yolk of an egg. He took another deep breath of the warm summer air and smiled, he was about to be with his Rose in her garden.
He hiked his worn out backpack higher up on his shoulder and walked through the tall, delicate, white arch covered in flowering vines marking the entrance to El Rosaleda, the most beautiful garden in all of Los Angeles. The butterflies were fluttering from flower to flower and the bees were already out and buzzing around the heads of young children, who screamed and screeched with fear and joy.
As Marty put his pack down by the shed and pulled his gloves on he took a long look around the lovely landscape. Immediately after entering the garden through the large, white arch you were greeted by two lilac bushes framing the entrance. The garden was along a stone pathway, outlined in pink and white rose bushes. Then, the crown jewel: the rose garden. One acre full of roses of every kind and color, streaming with butterflies, bumblebees and curious visitors taking pictures of the rainbow landscape. The large, marble fountain in the absolute center of all the color was of an angel staring into the baby blue California sky. That fountain was Marty’s very own idea, and had a plaque dedicated to his late wife and daughters; the angel was even made to resemble his darling Rose in her most beautiful state. Fathers in the garden were already giving the children coins and pennies to throw in to make their dreams come true, and if one looked down the bottom of the fountain you would see the hopes and dreams of almost every child who ever came to El Rosaleda in the shape of pennies, nickels, quarters and dimes.
Marty laughed as he saw the harping mother’s already streaming toward the only shaded part of the garden to get the children out of the murderous sun and get the best picnic spots, the most unique part and the children’s favorite: the part of the garden with the large, animal shaped bushes. The bushes were just passed the acre of the roses along a marble path, and the children loved picnicking under the large elephant or the proud horse. He couldn’t help but envy the families which picnicked in the shade of the beautiful creatures, making them look tiny. It made him ache for his own family, but smiled again when he noticed a mother yelling at her child for running around and playing hide and seek amidst the large creatures. “You could have gotten lost!” she was screaming and Marty laughed because it was probably was likely that such a small child would be lost in the forest of giant animals.
Marty turned back to the shed and grabbed his tools, thinking of what needed to be done today. Trim the lilac bushes and dead head the roses, he thought. As he walked back to the entrance arch to start on the lilac bushes two women who looked like sisters walked by him. He smiled at both thinking that one looked familiar, like she came to the garden regularly, which many people did. Immediately after passing them he heard the familiar one turn to the other and say, “Don’t return his smile Martha! That man’s a kook!”
“What do you mean?” asked Martha.
“I mean that ever since that man’s family got killed in a car crash he’s been unstable! At any moment he could take those shears and slit your throat!”
“Well sis... that seems a little bit harsh for a lonely old man!”
“Martha that man is not little! He’s practically six feet tall!”
“Whatever you say, Karen….” said Martha.
“I’m serious! His wife was a nutter and his children ran around like wild animals! Trust me I’ve been coming here for years! I’ve heard the stories!”
“Oh Karen don’t be rude, he can still hear you!” retorted Martha, as they walked further away down the path to the center of the garden.
Marty kept his back to them and sucked in a long, hot breath of angry air. He could hear them, and they had insulted his darling Rose, the only thing he cared about, the reason he worked at the beautiful garden. They insulted the love of his life! Marty spun around and grabbed the shoulder of the familiar woman, Karen. “You don’t insult my family!” He screamed as he shook her.
Karen’s black ponytail was swinging violently and her pearly white teeth were shaking. “Get off me!” She screamed tears streaming down her tanned face, “You’re a nutty old man and a crazy kook! Let go of me!”
Marty continued to shake her until her face began turning blue. “I’ll call the police!” she choked out with the last amount of breath she could muster, and Marty dropped the woman, who crumpled to the perfectly mowed green grass, now trampled and kicked up after the brief fight so that the dark, chocolatey brown dirt was showing. Shaking with the realization of what he’d just done he bent down to give her his hand in apology. “Don’t touch me!” Karen sobbed in fear. Marty saw her hands shaking and her breath coming rapidly through her pale blue shirt.
“Look what you’ve done!” screamed Martha in outrage, “You’ve practically killed her! I’ll be reporting this to your boss and the police and you’ll never work in the gardening business again! I’ll make sure of it!” Martha was breathing harder than Karen. Marty couldn’t help but notice that she and Karen look almost identical. They must be twins, he thought. “Karen, are you ok?” Martha inquired, as she bent down to check on her.
Realization then struck Marty as he began to imagine the consequences of his actions. “No!” he screamed, with a look of sudden fear in his bright, clear, blue eyes, “You can’t tell my boss! You can’t! I’ll be fired! You can’t take me away from my Rose!” Marty screamed shaking his head.
“Oh you bet I will!” replied Martha, helping up the crumpled, crying Karen, “I’m going there right now and there’s nothing you can do to stop me!”
As Martha stomped away supporting Karen, Marty crumpled onto the warm, dewy grass. Every family in the garden was staring at his violent outburst. Mothers were rushing their children out the arched entrance, hushing them every time they asked questions and begged to stay a little longer. Fathers stomped around the sobbing, old man, lying on the ground, giving him distasteful looks and spitting on him.
“I always told you it was about time that he cracked!” said a man passing by him to his wife.
“Hush! Speak too loud and he could come after us next!” replied the wife as she rushed their children away into the car.
The warm, clear, air continued to ring with whispers of passerby, many speaking as if he wasn’t even there. “He just attacked that woman out of nowhere!”
“Crazy old man, he’s never been right in the head!”
“His wife was the only sane one!”
Marty whined in agony and propped himself up against a purple, flowering lilac bush. That Martha is going to ruin everything I’ve worked for, thought Marty, this is the only way I see my darling Rose. This is my Rose’s garden! She can’t make me leave! This garden was my Rose’s dream! She just can’t take it away! Jumping up into the fiery sun, Marty ran to the opposite side of the garden where the pristine bathrooms and the information desks were. I can’t let her get me fired! He screamed in his head. I just can’t!
Marty began sprinting towards the information desk, limping slightly on his left leg, an injury that was a result of the car accident that claimed the lives of his family. He began sweating, not only of the hundred degree heat, but of the fear and nervousness of what was about to hit him. As he reached the brick offices door, and yanked it open, he heard the high pitched shrill of Martha screaming.
“He was going to kill her! I could see it in his eyes! It’s like the look a horse gets before it goes crazy! That man’s an animal; he needs to be locked up!”
“Miss Dwayne, please sit down so we can discuss this like the adults we are,” replied Marty’s boss Ethan Cathaway.
“No Mr. Cathaway I will not sit down until I feel safe in this office! With that old gardener standing there in the doorway gawking like he did nothing wrong I feel like I need to be on constant alert for when he starts hitting us over the heads with shovels!”
“Ms. Dwayne, please! I will not have talk like that about my employees in their presence!” replied an aggravated Mr. Cathaway “at El Rosaleda we believe in respect and peace, so please, sit down so we can discuss what happened like the civilized adults we all are! Marty that goes for you too, you’re letting in the hot air with that door wide open, come have a seat.”
As Marty entered the cool, dimly lit office and closed the door behind him, a young secretary with long, blond hair pulled into a bun, walked into the room from an adjoining office. “Mr. Cathaway I just called the ambulance and they said they’d be here in about five minutes.”
“Thank you, Hannah,” nodded Mr. Cathaway as she exited the room, “Oh Marty,” he said turning toward sun tanned, wrinkled old man in front of him, “What have you done?”
Mr. Cathaway gestured to Marty to sit, and as Marty walked to the chairs in front of the large, oak desk at the back of the room, Martha screamed, “I’ll tell you what he’s done! He’s gone and assaulted my sister like she was just scum off the street! He shook her so hard she couldn’t even defend herself!” Martha sat in the chair next to Marty, also across from Mr. Cathaway’s desk and perched on the edge of the seat, her face red with rage.
Mr. Cathaway, shocked with the Martha’s outburst and trying to protect Marty, who was like his own brother, screamed, “Ms. Dwayne if you are not capable of speaking in a respectful tone in my office I will have to ask you to leave! Now Marty, what happened?”
Marty turned to look at his boss of 34 years and stared into his cold, black eyes. “I attacked her.”
“Oh come on Marty are you seriously telling me what this woman is saying is true? Why in the world would you lose your temper like that?!”
“Because she insulted me and my family,” Marty replied slowly, thinking about every word he said before he said it.
“Marty you seriously injured this woman!” replied Mr. Cathaway, “Right now Karen Dwayne is being hauled into an ambulance and you’re telling me you hurt her like this just because she insulted your family?”
“Yes,” said Marty looking down at his dirty work boots, unable to meet his boss’s eye.
“See!” screamed Martha, jumping off her seat like a rocket, “Now fire this man before I press charges! He’s not stable enough to work in a family friendly environment! Imagine what he could do to a little boy or girl! You saw what he did to my sister!”
“Ms. Dwayne please sit down! Do you not understand how hard this is for Marty already? Don’t you understand how hard it is for me to do what you are forcing me to do?” Mr. Cathaway yelled back in her direction, looking straight into her eye he said, “Marty has been through something no man should have to face, and this is what he does to get over that, he gardens.”
Marty glanced up at his boss, with all his impatience and anger, his boss was a good man. He was short and to the point and he was defending Marty even though he could lose his own job. Mr. Cathaway nodded to Marty who had tears in his eyes. After thinking that nobody understood him, this man did, and now that he realized it he couldn’t thank him enough. This man knew why Marty gardened and what it meant to him. I never would have expected that out of all the people in the world that he’d be the one to get it, thought Marty looking back down to his work boots.
“Now Marty,” Mr. Cathaway said, drawing Marty’s eyes back up to his own face one more time, “The decision I have to make isn’t my choice, and if I had any other options I would take them, but what you did today was unacceptable in the environment we are trying to preserve, as Ms. Dwayne pointed out to us. So I’m going to have to let you go.”
Marty nodded with tears streaming down his face. “I know…” he said and he stood up to leave El Rosaleda one last time.
“Haha! Thank you Mr. Cathaway! You’ve done the right thing! Now nobody will ever feel unsafe in this garden again!” said Martha Dwayne, who was smiling in wicked triumph.
“Oh no Ms. Dwayne,” stopping Martha’s laughter in its tracks, “Marty is still permitted to visit El Rosaleda, we cannot close our doors to anybody,” said Mr. Cathaway with a slight smirk on his round, porky face.
Marty already at the door, about to open it, turned to Mr. Cathaway and said, “God bless you, sir!” and left the office, knowing that he could still see his Rose’s garden every day.
One Year Later
“Alice! Where are you?” screamed a mother at the end of a long, fun filled day at El Rosaleda.
“I’m right here Mama!” said a small girl, who was galloping around a gorgeous, horse shaped bush.
“Meet me at the archway in ten minutes so we can leave, ok?” directed the woman, as she was cleaning up the remains of their delicious picnic.
“Yes Mama!” cried Alice, whose curly brown hair was shining in the setting sun, “I’m gonna walk around for a bit!”
“Ok, just be safe,” replied the unsure Mother, with a curious look in her dark brown eyes. With that, Alice began to walk down the marble path to the center of the rose garden where the angel fountain was shining. As she approached the edge of the fountain and looked in, she ached to have a penny of her own to throw in. She watched as a caring Father handed his son, about her age, a shiny new nickel, and how he closed his eyes, made a wish, and threw the nickel into the fountain, blindly.
“Daddy! Do you think it’s gonna come true?” screamed the little boy full of excitement.
“Maybe Andy, maybe…” smiled the dad as he grabbed the little boy’s hand and walked him out of the garden. I wish my daddy was still here, thought Alice, he would give me bunches of pennies and nickels. As Alice was remembering about how her dad used to say that if you believed hard enough wishes would come true, she felt a tap on her shoulder. As she turned around to see who wanted her, her patterned pink dress twirled around. She stared up at an old man, who was tanned and wrinkled and said, “My mommy said not to talk to strangers.”
“I just want you to have this nickel,” said the man, “You looked like you could use one.”
Alice’s bright green eyes lit up with joy, and she smiled a big smile full of pearly white teeth, “Thank you mister! My name’s Alice, I’m six!”
The old man bent down to her to meet her eye level, “Hi Alice,” he said, his own clear eyes full of amusement, “I’m Marty, I’m 69.”
“Jeez, Mister! You’re old! You must’ve seen everything by now!” shouted Alice with wonderment, thinking of all the amazing things Marty could have seen.
Marty laughed, this girl reminded him of how his little Annie used to be, so willing to talk to anybody who would listen and full of creative ideas. As he thought more about his Annie he felt the same sadness coming over him again, and he walked to a wooden bench next to the fountain and sat down.
He gets the same look mom gets when she thinks about dad, thought Alice. “Mister Marty? Are you ok?”
Marty looked up into little Alice’s shiny green eyes and said, “I’ve just seen a lot more of life than I would have liked.” For the last year Marty had been living in his house, alone and sad. All he did was bike down to El Rosaleda every morning and sit on the bench by his Rose’s fountain, thinking. He would remember how she would talk about going to see this great garden that she read about in the Sunday newspaper. She would say how beautiful it must be and how she always wanted a garden like that. He remembered deciding that on her 34th birthday he would take her there. He could see in his mind how he told her and the kids to get in the car and the look of joy and wonder that spread across his lovely Rose’s face when she heard where they were going.
But then he would remember the tractor trailer swerving the wrong way, and he’d hear the screams of Rose telling him to brake and he remembered looking in the rearview mirror and seeing his little Annie screaming and his innocent Kayla crying. He heard the crunch of the car completely smash in and heard the bloodcurdling screams of his family. He saw the headlights and heard the screams. He remembered the blood and tears and the sound of the ambulance’s sirens. He could see down into the coffin of his beautiful Rose and his lovely Annie and innocent Kayla. He felt his heart and soul ripped out into the cold, cruel world.
“You get the same look my mom gets,” Alice said looking at Marty, pouting her lips.
Marty’s head snapped up like he had just been broken out of a trance and the faraway look faded out of his eyes. “What do you mean?” He asked, confused.
“Well,” said Alice, “When my daddy died my mommy wouldn’t talk for a really long time. She would just sit and stare off into space like you’re doing. What do you think about when you do that Mr. Marty? ‘Cause when my mommy does that all she thinks about my daddy and nothing else.”
Marty stared deeply into little Alice’s bright green eyes, and she stared back into his own blue ones. He took a deep breath, bent, and scooped the girl up and sat her down next to him on the bench. “What happened to your daddy?” he asked in a quiet, cautious voice.
Alice looked up at the old man, who was crumpled inward with sadness and began her story. “When I was four my daddy came home from work one day and he went right to bed without telling me a bedtime story or giving mommy a kiss. When I woke up the next morning I heard him and my mommy talking real quiet and he told her that the doctor said he had cancer.”
Marty stared down at the little girl, whose sparkly pink shoes glittered in the light of the setting sun. “Do you mean cancer?” he asked, apprehensively.
“Yea that’s what I meant to say,” she replied, rolling her eyes, “Then after that he quit his job and spent a lot of time at home with me and mommy. He would cuddle me and watch all my favorite movies and always told me he loved me so much and that no matter what I was going to be a great person when I grew up and nobody could ever tell me different.”
Marty smiled down to her and said sweetly, “Your daddy must have been a very smart man.”
“He was Mr. Marty but ya gotsta stop interrupting me if you want me to finish!” she giggled, “So after that my daddy started to lose all of his hair and he couldn’t walk around the house anymore and stuff. So my mommy said that he was gonna go to the hospital for a little while to get better and that I could go visit him as soon as he was ok again. A few months after that I started crying all the time and Mommy asked me what was wrong and I told her how Daddy hadn’t read me a bedtime story in forever and I would never know what happened to Princess Penelope if he never read me the end of the book. So Mommy said that I could go visit Daddy in a few days.”
Marty looked at the little girl, afraid of the ending of her story, knowing all too well what was going to happen.
“And so a couple days later,” she continued, “I went to the hospital with Mommy and Daddy was lying in this big bed with all these crazy looking machines beeping around him and he told me that Mommy had told him I was sad that he didn’t finish the Princess Penelope book. But he was talking really funny and quiet so I had to listen real hard. Then Daddy closed his eyes and began to tell the ending of Princess Penelope, and I said, ‘Daddy, where’s the book?’ and he said, ‘Alice, you can always make your own ending to your story no matter what people have written’.”
Marty smiled, he liked the idea of that. He thought of what that meant to him and came up with, no matter what anybody says or tells you to do you can always change it no matter what. That line will stick with me forever, he decided.
“And then he told me his own ending to the story,” Alice now said with her eyes closed, “He said that in the end Princess Penelope lost her husband Prince Peter, but no matter where Prince Peter was and no matter what happened to him, Princess Penelope could look up into the stars and see him, and that if she listened hard enough she would hear him say, ‘Goodnight, I love you’. And so every night Princess Penelope did and every night she got to see her husband Prince Peter. So after the story Daddy told me to climb up on his bed and give him a kiss goodnight, and I said I love you Daddy and he said I love you too. Then the next morning Daddy was dead and that’s when Mommy started to do what you do and act all quiet and not talk to anybody. But instead of doing that I look up into the stars and I see my daddy and I say I love you, Daddy and he says I love you too, Alice.”
Marty looked down to the little girl and said, “That’s a wonderful story, Alice.”
She smiled up to him slyly and said, “Mr. Marty I’ve heard lots of stories about you, I know just who you are!” she giggled at her own cleverness, “Everybody says you miss your wife and kids a lot.”
“I do,” he said with simple sincerity.
“Well I bet if you looked up into the stars you would see your wife just like I see my daddy.”
Marty looked up into the sky, now a dark blue and spotted with the bright, white beauty of the stars. He knew from now on that every night he would be able to look up into the stars and smile at his Rose. He raised his voice to the stars and whispered, “I love you, Rose.”
Alice tugged on his sleeve and smiled, “So you do think she’s up there Mr. Marty?”
He looked back down to the little girl and smiled sweetly, “Yes, I do, I bet you she has her very own garden up there too, just like this one,” he said with tears in his eyes, smiling.
“Yea,” she whispered in sudden thought, “A garden in the stars.” And after little Alice walked away, Marty looked to the stars and never missed his darling Rose again.
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