Pygmalion Marigold

She hoped there would be more time, but a small part of her was already quite sure that Norman would never wake to his favorite sound again. The unpleasant whistle of the male cardinal. It seemed natural to her that Norman’s favorite bird spoke such a funny language. The little beast’s song was notoriously difficult to describe in words, but sounded to her, like an exact replica of Norman’s snore, just higher pitched.

She had tried to plant marigolds to attract more cardinals months before he was admitted to Hitchcock Medical. Unfortunately, 1984 was a record year for spittlebugs due to the ever-decreasing numbers of their predominant predator, the ‘big-eyed bug’. Norman said the plant didn’t stand a chance. The copper, carnation-like buds were soon covered in clear, frothy film. Their decline resembled rabies in duration and in physical symptoms. Once the bugs descended on the plant, it began to froth, and two hours later bruised yellow leaves sunk like peels down to the soil below. Alma kept watering it anyway, pouring a small dash of coffee on the plant each morning. She couldn’t imagine a creature that wouldn’t want to wake up to fresh coffee.

Norman lifted his head to wheeze and gasp. He plopped it back onto the spongy hospital pillow with a final noisy exhale. The old snore that had put her to bed every night was now a gurgling gasp as a result of the various tubes that shot out from his beautiful mouth.

Norman had been a glottochronologist. He recorded words and the way they were used purely out of fascination. He hadn’t known it was a real path of study until he read an article in Time Magazine about Robert Lees, who was at MIT at the time, leading the glottochronology field. He wrote Robert, was offered a position as research assistant and convinced Alma that their lives in the Midwest had come to an end. They packed their belongings into a rusted maroon Volvo and set off for Boston to embark on the next chapter of their lives; a chapter they would call, the machine translation project.

She still remembered the optimism he inspired in everyone he encountered. He’d describe in detail the ways in which his work would allow us to communicate with other species, with any other forms of life we could imagine, and then many more that we could not imagine. He would be holed up in his office for hours, when suddenly she would hear the sound of feet, bounding down the stairs, drawing closer and closer, with a flurry of research papers twirling around him. "I’ve cracked it!" He’d exclaim with a grin from ear to ear. While he had not yet figured out how to communicate with other forms of life or allow nature to communicate with us, or whatever it was that he was really doing with the machine translation project, she got the sense that if he had just had more time…

***

Back in the hospital, Alma kissed Norman’s milky, spotted hand, and just like that, Norman was gone. She loathed the melancholy that comes from living your life as two and suddenly finding yourself as one. That particular lament showered evenly over her as if from the spout of a watering can. But as she walked to her car, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was still there, breathing, existing, and loving her as he always had.

After the cremation, she cradled his ashes between her legs and turned the key in the ignition to direct their rusty red Volvo home. When she crunched up onto the shelled driveway, she paused, to smile as she remembered Norman’s brave feet padding barefoot across the shells to the mailbox each day to fetch The Cape Cod Times. She slowly lifted herself out of the car and carried her cremains into the backyard, dumping them on the shrubs that were left of the little marigold plant.

Well, maybe that will attract the cardinals, she thought to herself. She dreamt her marigolds blossomed, and Norman came up behind her whispering, "You were right my darling, Miracle Grow has just been made from ashes all along. "

The next day, she brought her coffee out to the porch, and just as she was settling into their wicker loveseat, she noticed a development in the garden. She hoisted herself off of the cushion to grab her glasses to get a better look. Oh, it couldn’t be, she breathed. The stem of single marigold had pushed up from the sad little base of the plant. It resembled a thin wisp of a human with a big protruding yellow tuft for its head. She knew the marigold would grow if she kept pouring a splash of her coffee on it every morning! Norman didn’t think it had a chance after the summer of the big-eyed bugs, but she was right, it just needed some morning coffee.

The irony, she thought, that she wouldn't get to tell Norman she had been right. In all of the years they had been married, Norman had managed to out-right her. She thought about the time their daughter, Wren, had begged them to live in the tiny village of Montrosier, France. Alma complained to Norman that she couldn’t possibly understand what a girl would do in France when she had just started walking and was barely out of diapers. He bellowed out great, full laughs that made the sound of the crashing waves down the street seem weak.

"Wren is fourteen, Alma," he said. "She graduated from potty training over a decade ago." Alma was apprehensive. Everything in this great, beautiful world looked like it was meant to do little Wren harm–and it often did–but not France. Upon her return, she was a glowing étudiant. No longer the altricial human, but a beautiful mare, ready to gallop into the world on her newly found footing. "I got lost on a train the first day I was there. It was terrifying. The rest was wonderful." That was all the information they had gotten from her. While Alma was bewildered at Wren’s new air, she conceded. It had been good for her.

That night she crawled into bed. As soon as the words, "you were right," left her mouth, she heard the spread of Norman’s lips and could see the crinkling of his crow’s feet as he smiled even in the pitch black. She sat up in bed the next morning and spotted a white piece of scrap paper lightly taped to her forehead in the mirror adjacent to their bed. She squinted to read it. "Sohtap, sohtam?" Her morning eyes reversed the mirrored letters. The note read, "Pathos, mathos," a Latin proverb Norman had studied early on in their relationship. Learning through suffering. She peeled the note off her oily morning skin.

***

Suddenly, Alma was twirling in Norman’s arms for the first time all over again. Back when they were kids. "Your feet are like teenagers, he urged gently as she looked up at him through thick brown lashes, they do what they’re supposed to when you aren’t looking, and they screw up when you’re watching them. "

A smile replaced her nervous glance, and when she tipped her head back to laugh, leaving no feet in sight, the real dancing began. Those who knew Norman described him as good, kind, mellow, even, yet when he stepped onto that dance floor, he lit up. The golden trail left by his steps radiated a confidence and adeptness unlike any Alma had ever seen. She felt jealous eyes watch from all directions as the king of that dusty barn made her his queen.

After four songs, and an insufferable amount of glaring from envious young women, Norman led Alma to the bar to get a drink. As he handed her a cup of moonshine punch, she broke her shy silence and retorted, "What do you know about teenagers anyhow? For all I know, you still are one. "

She was onto him. Norman had turned twenty only a few months before. His whole life, his height made him appear older, but at some point, the perception reversed, and he appeared younger than his age to most people. He had skipped first grade on account of his height. He hit five feet before he could read. “It creates a hierarchical environment,” the principle had told his mother, while baring down over her barely five-foot-two frame, which was further withered from her everyday chores of home-owning, farming, and single motherhood.

Norman skipped first grade, went right to second, and never looked back. From then on, he spent a lot of time looking down. He grew approximately two and a half inches for six years straight, entering high school at a record-breaking six foot five.

***

For Alma, life without Norman continued in a similarly mundane routine that felt exponentially more pointless. Alma rose to cloud-streaked light dappling her white duvet at 6:30 am. She would embark on a walk to Old Silver Beach before returning home to brew the loneliest pot of coffee. With her newspaper in one hand and her china teacup in the other, she would inch precariously outside and settle into her iron-rod garden chair with a sigh of relief. After two long, drawn-out sips of her creamy, sugary concoction, she would hold her teacup out, and tip it over, watching the milky liquid spread into the soil until it disappeared–soaked up by the marigold’s thirsty base. This ritual was repeated every morning for ten weeks, at which point Wren came to visit.

"Mother, you can’t continue on in this house. It’s not safe. You’re so thin! Do I need to start bringing meals? I’m worried about you," she pouted. Alma shrugged. Wren fussed her way to the window, trying to plan a course of action. "And this! What on earth have you done to the side garden? What type of flower is that? It's taking over the garden!"

The marigolds had grown exactly two and a half inches for the past ten days. The stems looked as though they would split in the middle, leading the flowering bulb into a forward bend. One stalk was creeping up towards her bedroom window, ready to poke her in her sleep. The lawn was littered with delicate, yellow petals. Wren walked outside and began to rake the petals into piles, before disposing of them in the back compost. She pulled out her phone, hesitating over the buttons as she called a gardening company. She knew Alma would not approve – would want to do it herself, but the plant had grown too fast, and soon it would just be a mess her mother couldn’t clean up.

"Hi, yes," Wren urged politely, "would you be able to stop by tomorrow afternoon? Yes, it’s the marigold through the gate and in the back…it’s overgrown and it’s attracting too many birds. Yes. Thanks again." She exhaled, closed her eyes, and hung up.

The next day, Alma rose at 6:30am. She started for Old Silver, a little slower than the day before. Each day was slower now; she could feel it. With coffee grounds clinging to her fingertips, she grasped her cup and made her way outside. She noticed that a new layer of brass petals coated the ground, but it wasn’t until closer examination, that she recognized distinct figures. She lowered herself to the ground and lay flat on her back. Slowly, she began to open her arms and legs, tracing the earth to make a marigold snow-angel where the words had been spread, just moments ago.

"Pathos, mathos, my darling." Alma whispered as she drifted away peacefully. Upon her last exhale, the wind swept through the garden and the leaves came alive, jumping and dancing with an effortlessness that could only be matched by Norman’s light and nimble dancing feet.