Later that afternoon, with the kink over Thad starting to be replaced by the sudden bubble of joy over my father’s postcard, I realized there was something I needed to do; a score that needed to be settled. The universe had just shown me a mitzvah in the midst of my emotional desert, so now I needed to repay that. I now need to do some good to prove that I still could. And maybe, just maybe, this blackness of life would turn around for me.
I told Thad that I was just going to run up to the bank to get cash for tonight, but instead drove straight to the Farmer’s Market.
Inside, the country folk hawked their wares in a Nashville cum Currier and Ives kind of way. Shame still in my heart from the last time I dared dim these doors with my presence, I kept my eyes down and power walked though. As I passed, men held up NASCAR shirts and ladies waggled purses made from tin cans and yarn at me. I kept my eyes down and did not stop until I saw her: the Garden Rapist.
She sat at her birdhouse booth with her husband, they cracking and eating pecans out of a tin pail. I took a breath and walked straight up to her.
“Hi, you probably remember me…” I began, my voice shaking.
“Well, Michael. Yes, I do.” The Garden Rapist said as her husband stood. She turned and held out her French manicured hand up to him, “Let it be.”
The husband looked like he might kill me in a quiet hippy way.
“First off,” I rushed. “I am so sorry about last time. I just had a very sentimental terra cotta chicken planter full of ivy stolen off my porch…”
“The one you were screaming at me about? The one you said I stole?” she said, one painted on eyebrow arched highly as her tremendous ponytails stood straight out from her head.
“Yes. I was wrong to accuse you of that. It’s just that it was stolen the last time you were over and I told you I didn’t want to do a flower exchange, and I just assumed it was you because you were mad. But I found out it was some drunk college kids from down the street. So, I had no right to scream at you like that. I over-reacted. I just wanted to come and tell you that. I am sorry.”
With eyes wide, the Garden Rapist made a slight grunt and then stood up to join her husband. She looked to him and then back to me.
I prepared myself for a full psycho explosion.
“Oh, that’s just fine,” she said, waving at me like the country folk do. “Water under the bridge and all. I figured it was just a misunderstanding. I mean, didn’t I say that, sugar?” She looked back to her husband and he nodded, sitting back down.
“Oh, good! Good!” I gushed. “I have felt terrible ever since. I’m glad you didn’t take it personally. I mean, I was just being crazy.”
“No, no, hon. I figured it was a mistake.” She reached over and slapped her husband on the hand. “Didn’t I say that? I said, ‘that boy’s gone and got things all messed-up.’ Didn’t I say that?”
The husband nodded and ate another pecan.
“Well, good,” I said. “I just didn’t want there to be any hard feelings or anything….”
“No, no, naw. Not at all.”
“Good, good.” I smiled, relieved she hadn’t climbed over her folding table and stabbed me with her big silver gardening fork, which I’m assuming she always kept around for just such emergency killings.
“But you know what you could do to make up for it?” She had a twinkle of the old crazy in her eye.
“What?” I asked, knowing what was coming.
“We could still do that flower exchange you talked about. It’s about time to plant the spring bloomers.”
“Sure,” I smiled honesty, having already emotionally prepared myself for this inevitable outcome. “It’ll be my pleasure. You can drop by any time you want, even if I’m not there…”
For the next half-hour we continued to talk gardening and about the recent drought, about irises and daffodils, about how to prune roses, rain vs. hose watering, and the supreme and amazing recuperative power of manure.
_ _
This ends the first cycle of the Frankie Goes to Home Depot stories.
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