June in the Garden

June and the Midafternoon Appointment

The rain falls hard on the redbrick buildings on Avenuepark Street in Maryhill, soaking into the moss that grows on the roof tiles, seeping through the cracked shingles and the gutters that already sag precariously, and dripping down the walls of the community center where I sit in the waiting room. It’s afternoon on the seventh of May, a Tuesday. According to the forecast I read this morning, it should be 16 degrees Celsius outside right now, which is impressive for Scotland at this time of year, but it does not feel like 16 degrees. Not in here. The dampness in the air doesn’t help either.

It wouldn’t be the first time a newspaper forecast was incorrect. My Gardener’s Almanac is far more accurate. The Royal Horticultural Society predicts a wet summer with heavy downpours, and they are not often wrong. Over 120 millimeters of precipitation for Glasgow. Even more for Exeter.

In the corner, a red plastic bucket catches stray raindrops from a leak in the ceiling, which seems to have got worse in the time I have been sitting here. The wet patch has now spread down the wall and appears to be affecting the electricity around the light switch, making the bulb flicker and splutter. My eyelids twitch and pulse to the rhythm.

The clock on the wall matches my rainbow watch perfectly: 3:32 p.m.

I squirm in the chair, the backs of my thighs numb from the metal seat. My feet tingle with pins and needles, but I am unable to cross my legs or change position as there is a small coffee table jammed against my knees. A stack of magazines with features on “summer bodies” and “flirty-thirty dating lives” sits next to a vase filled with artificial baby’s breath. I know it is baby’s breath because we have it on our kitchen table at home, clipped by my own hands, of course, and arranged in a ceramic jug as milky white as the flower itself. Far better than any artificial version. I refreshed the water before I left for work today, when the morning rays were stream­ing in through the lace curtains, making dust motes dance in the slices of sunlight. The house was quiet at that time. So incredibly quiet.

“June?”

I had clipped the baby’s breath from the flower bed meticulously, approximately one inch aboveground so it would grow back for the autumnal bloom. Not many people know that baby’s breath blooms twice in one year.

“June?”

Yarrows, roses, and salvias are also repeat flowerers. There is a term we use for that, a word I learned from my Royal Horticultural Society encyclopedia, one that rolls off the tongue like a foreign language only spoken in black-­and-­white movies.

Remontancy.

A marvelous word.

“June?”

“Yes?” My voice sounds strange, as if it has been pinched and plucked from my throat, separated from my body. I turn slowly ­toward Aileen, who is standing in the doorway, clutching a large brown folder in one hand and a takeaway coffee cup in the other. I frown, a surge of envy flooding my body. I requested a milky tea at exactly three o’clock, like I always have, but the receptionist told me that this is not a café and she is not a waitress. I did not assume that either of those things was true; I simply asked for a cup of tea while I waited for my caseworker, who is frequently late for our appointments and never offers me a warm beverage at 3:00 p.m. Punctuality and reliability are not Aileen’s best traits. Mother soon learned to clear our entire afternoon on days of home visits, never knowing when and sometimes if Aileen would arrive.

“June,” Aileen says again, this time in a way that makes me feel strange. “Shall we?”

I rise and follow obediently. She doesn’t say anything as I trail behind her, clutching my translucent umbrella, which I won at last year’s local flower show—­an obvious win. Carol’s petunias were overfertilized. Her stems were weak. More is not always better.

Aileen’s heels squeak on the tiled floor and I startle. I want to ask her to pick up her feet a touch more to stop them from dragging, but I don’t. We enter a room down the hall, and she collapses heavily into a large armchair. She takes a swig from her coffee cup, wipes the latte foam from above her top lip, then sets the cup down by her feet. She gestures for me to sit too, so I edge into a chair, leaving one seat between us. Bubble space is very important. I have a bubble and she has a bubble, and they cannot overlap. I only ever let my bubble overlap with Mother’s, and that took years of practice.

Aileen clears her throat. “June, how are you?”

“Fine,” I say, crossing my ankles like I am a schoolgirl sitting in the headmistress’s office.

“I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Fine.”

“I talked with the police again yesterday.” She pauses and waits for my response. I do not say anything, so she continues: “The autopsy report doesn’t mention any drugs in your mother’s system—­”

“Mother doesn’t take drugs. Not anymore.” I glance at the door, which is ajar. Voices carry in narrow hallways, and the last thing Mother would want is the whole neighborhood thinking she was a drug addict.

“There was a lot of alcohol, though.”

I swallow hard, and my throat hurts.

“June, you can trust me.”

Trust is a strange word. Abstract and somewhat incomprehensible. I trust my Royal Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening, the 2012 edition. I trust my Gardener’s Almanac for long-range weather forecasts. I trust Mother. I do not trust short-­range weather forecasts on television, in newspapers, or on mobile phone apps, nor do I trust the “Google” for its horticultural suggestions. Once I used the computer in the staff room at work to research organic at-­home composting and was incorrectly advised to add fresh pine needles to balance out the matter in the mixture. The truth is, pine needles are far too acidic and need to be completely dried out before use. And they should only be incorporated if the matter contains solely nonacidic materials. I never trusted the internet after that.

“Is there anything you want to say? It’s a safe space.”

There are lots of things I want to say, particularly because without Mother, I have not had an opportunity to practice my social skills in real-­time conversation. But I also think that Aileen is referring to something else, something that pecks at the edges of my mind. Without Mother, my head feels like a thousand-­piece puzzle that has been split apart. Broken, the pieces separated, perhaps even turned upside down. Nothing fits together anymore.

Maureen at work likes to do those large puzzles. She often sets one up on the back table in the staff room and encourages everyone to have a turn. I am not allowed anymore because I cannot just do one piece. I have to finish the puzzle, all of it, even if it takes me the rest of my shift. Therefore, I no longer look at the back table. I simply sit at the first table, facing the door, and eat my packed lunch until the timer beeps on my watch, then I clean up and go back downstairs to the shop floor or the stockroom.

“When can I collect Mother?” I ask. “She’ll want to be home for my birthday.”

Aileen sighs and crosses her legs, knocking over her latte cup in the process. She swears under her breath, but I hear her. Mother never swears. Aileen grunts and pants with exertion as she contorts herself into an awkward position to wipe up the murky brown liquid that has seeped out from the sipping hole on the plastic lid. She glances up at me and tries to smile, but it looks wrong on her face. “As you know, the investigation into your mother’s death has been closed, and you are free to proceed with her funeral whenever you want.” She drops the cup into a tall black bin and it clatters to the bottom, the remaining liquid sloshing up the sides.

This appointment appears to be finished, so I nod and stand. I had been practicing nonverbal cues with Mother before everything happened.

“This may seem sudden,” Aileen continues.

I sit back down, wondering how she missed my cue. Perhaps it was incorrect, like the weather forecast.

“But at some point, we need to discuss more . . . long-­term arrangements.”

At first I think she is referring to funeral arrangements, which is natural to discuss after someone’s death. However, Mother has already written notes about how she wants the disposal of her body to be “arranged”: she is to be wearing a navy dress from the autumn 2017 range at Marks & Spencer, which I got with my staff discount, along with her favorite suede heels. If there is a small gathering of neighbors and/or former Royal Mail colleagues, she wants a reading of Robert Burns’s poem “To a Louse” and a buffet lunch that consists of miniature prawn cocktails in jars, triangular cheese sandwiches, and salt-­and-­vinegar crisps. There are no other arrangements to be considered. Mother has been very clear.