Ryan's Widow

A drunk killed Ryan Wenslau one blue-mooned night in October. The driver, whose vehicle jumped the curb at the Kwick Stop, gushed careless tears reeking of scotch. Meanwhile the pint of French vanilla, which the landscape architect had purchased for his wife, seeped creamy droplets over the edge of the pavement. Flash frozen in the moment, his widow did not cry.

Eight months later the widow Wenslau's best friend, Keesha, confronted her. "Ryan's dead, Justy. Weep for your loss and release his ghost."

Justine allowed the elegant Keesha to pummel her with bony-fisted advice before wondering aloud, "Why is my inability to cry such a problem for you?" With her toe she dislodged a chunk of bark from the path they meandered. The pungent smell of cedar exploded from the sodden wood.

Keesha sneezed, then rifled through her pockets. "Damn, no tissue."

Ryan's widow plucked an embroidered handkerchief from the pouch of her sweatshirt and handed it to her companion. Instead of accepting the linen, Keesha batted it away, saying, "Look at you, woman. All you do is work, come home, and collapse. God knows what you eat, if anything. You don't look like you sleep either. I'm really worried about you." Then Keesha snatched the cloth from Justine's nerveless fingers and swiped her cheeks, where tears changed her rich complexion to Belgian chocolate.

Hollowed by a sorrow at odds with the spring winds off the Cascade Mountains, Ryan's bride stuffed her hands into her pouch pocket. "I'm sorry, Keesh. I can't cry. I can't mourn. I can't move beyond his leaving me." And that it was my fault.

A sob escaped the taller woman as she threw herself into Justine's awkward embrace. "Damn, Justy! Don't you know I've cried enough for both of us? I loved the man, too."

"I know." She patted the fleece protecting her friend's lean back.

Justine and Ryan had designed this wetland garden for Keesha. They planted last autumn, before the accident tore Ryan from the fabric of their lives together. Justine's gaze wandered through the composition of plants. With dull eyes her regard flitted over the forms the way Justine now skimmed the veneer of her life.

Buds shrouded the pussy willow. Silvery hairs covered each shoot, more like rabbit than cat feet. Beside arrowhead-shaped leaves of Wapato and next to the willow, cattails fanned from the mud. Weeping willow fronds brushed starry flowers of death camas. For a moment Justine flowed toward their lush embrace until she dammed the current of her thoughts. Such musings bore her too close to the dread precipice. The ghostly smell of French vanilla roiled her belly.

A trench near the extended driveway to Keesha's house yawned open. Ryan died before they could finish the planned bamboo hedge. Last night, as Justine prowled the abyss between sleep and wakefulness, the ditch of her memory stretched into a gaping wound. Like beckoning and dirt-encrusted arms, roots twisted from the sides. Standing water, infinitely deep, reflected her spectral image.

For what else was she, but the ghost Ryan left behind?

The bereaved.

Dispossessed.

The desolate one.

In her dream that wasn't a dream, the furrow looked so like the grave where she buried her husband that she woke with a howl of anguish. This morning, her throat hurt. Still Justine shed no tears.

Keesha withdrew from her arms. Wiping sloe eyes with an edge of her sleeve, she said, "Damn, girlfriend. I can't even walk with you anymore without coming apart."

She brushed static tresses of Justine's hair from her shoulders, where the auburn curls clung like needy children. "Look at you. Green Depression-era glass. That's what your eyes remind me of. You're so brittle, I'm afraid you'll break if I bump you too hard." She drew Justine's hands into her own. "Your fingers feel like ice. I can practically see through them. Come on, Justy. I'm fixing us some hot tea."

In truth, arctic ice filled Justine. Blue crystals clogged her veins. Shards had lodged in her heart on the night she sent Ryan for ice cream and he never returned. Now glaciers moved within her, dragging through once living flesh and leaving behind a furrowed wasteland.

Keesha steered her toward the gouged earth, where the transplant of bamboo for a privacy curtain remained unrealized. A mound of rich soil, backfill for the ditch, eroded along one end--silent reminder of the fallow stages of Justine's great undone. She noted with relief that the walls of the channel didn't resemble her nightmare. Instead galvanized metal from the salvage bin in town girded the sides.

Like grief, unchecked bamboo invaded its surroundings. Bamboo's rhizomes hastened along the earth, sprouting culms every few centimeters. The giant grass inevitably overcame any native planting.

As the widow hopped across the gap, she made the mistake of glancing into the pit. Moisture from the recent downpour puddled along the recessed surface. Her reflection wavered in potholes filled with what resembled liquid mercury, at once fatal and lustrous. A drowned rat lay on its side there. The distended body forced its legs into improbable angles.

The sight of the lifeless rodent stole Justine's concentration, triggering a misstep on the slick mud. Her feet slid as she scrabbled for purchase on the metal sheeting. She plunged into the rat's deathtrap, landing on hands and knees directly over the inert creature. Dead eyes stared into hers. Dry eyes, lacking any spark of life, indicted her for a wasteful death. Something struggled for release in Justine's chest, tore its way into her throat. Sharp as rat's claws, it ripped a keening plea from her. She recognized her cry as the wail of a banshee. No amount of Keesha's oolong tea could calm her.

That night the mourning bride lay on her couch with an afghan over her legs. She huddled between shadow and light until the rat appeared. He shed a red haze of anger like fur; a life lost because of her unfinished business. Sharp teeth flashed in a snarl.

Murderer.

Murderer.

She awoke with her heart pacing the dirge. Blood roiled in the space behind her ears. Justine stumbled to the entrance hall where she shrugged into her heavy coat and rubber boots. Ryan's pajamas, in which she slept, folded against her body like a cocoon of warmth beneath the jacket. From his workbench in the basement, she took her husband's halogen light and attached a hundred-foot extension cord. She loaded their work truck, the one with the R & J Landscaping logo on the drive's door, and backed it from the garage before driving to Keesha's garden.

Rain sheeted down, carried from the south by Chinook winds. Like the night, time registered as a backdrop to her deed. An obscure phantom, Justine slogged through sucking mud. An automaton, she gathered tools from the truck. Thunderous rain masked any sounds from the neighborhood dogs and provided a white noise that worked in consonance with the static in her head.

She lit the lamp, powering it from a connection in the truck cab, then carted load after load of topsoil to the trench. At some point she cast off her sodden coat. As the pit filled, the deluge turned to mist and in the artificial glow, the strip of raw ground resembled a morass. Justine queued pots of bamboo along the tract while black stalks wept. Ryan and she had salvaged these plants a year ago from the renegade offshoots of their neighbors. Barriers made an immense difference with bamboo--and sorrow.

She knelt in the mud. Ryan's drenched pajamas clung to her. Her body heat converted rainwater to steam, which arose in a haze that eclipsed her vision. Methodically she removed each plant from its pot, trimmed it, and placed it in a prepared hole. She chanted to herself: don't crowd the roots; provide the canes with a firm surface. Zigzagging the plants for natural effect, she moved down the line.

As torrents cascaded over her face, she knotted her hair into an untidy mass at her nape. But water collected at her crown, too, producing a watershed for her lower body. Half blind from the wetness in her eyes, she reached for each pot. Her planting refrain altered.

"I'm sorry...I'm sorry...so sorry..."

Finally she groped for a container that wasn't there. In the gray light of morning, no bamboo remained to be sown. Justine turned her head to gaze along the expanse traversed throughout the night. Leafy fronds transformed the sullen gash into a miniature forest. A dog barked from behind a slatted fence along the driveway. The rain stopped. Salty water doused her face. She knelt in her victory garden.

Standing to one side and clutching the bulky lapels of her terry robe, Keesha gazed in wonder at her. "You're crying. You're finally crying."

Justine Wenslau stumbled for the shelter of her friend's arms.