In the late afternoon, wearing a loose cotton dress over her wet bathing suit, her long hair hanging damp and cool down her back, Darcy walked from Jetties Beach over to the narrow cobblestoned lane she called Jelly Bean Road. She climbed the hill and ambled over to Main Street, circling past the crowded downtown area with its shops and crowds and never enough parking spots.
Her pulse quickened as she came to her street. So far she’d stayed away from her garden in the late afternoons, not wanting to be seen by Boyz, not wanting even to think about him. On the other hand, she didn’t want to be a coward, fenced in by her own anxieties. She knew that if, for example, Boyz and his family were playing croquet in their yard, that did not mean she had to hide inside. Her garden was her connection with her grandmother, and more—it was her place. She had to weed and plant and trim. She wanted to have friends over for summer parties, when she strung the trees and bushes with miniature lights so the garden sparkled like a magic land. She had to be able to sit alone on her patio and read until darkness fell, and then let the book drop to her lap and her head fall back on the chaise so she could watch the sky slowly and tenderly transform the sun’s gold into evening’s silver as stars appeared. This was a special time for her, almost a sacred time, and she wouldn’t allow herself to give it up.
At home, Darcy tossed her book bag on a chair and headed for the kitchen. This evening, she was determined to enjoy her backyard. She chose a Pinot Noir from her small wine rack and was uncorking it when she glanced out her kitchen window and saw, in the next yard, something out of place, peculiar, unsettling.
Had someone dumped a bundle of clothes in her neighbor’s yard? But, no, there was movement—and all at once she realized that Mimi, that dear old grandmother, was lying on the ground, unable to rise.
Darcy set the wine down and raced out her front door, squeezed through the narrow passageway between houses, not caring if she broke a few petals off the blue hydrangea, and burst into the backyard.
“Mimi?” Darcy dropped to her knees beside the older woman, who lay facedown in the grass, her blue frock twisted all around her body.
Awkwardly, Mimi turned her head. “Oh, Darcy, dear. I’m so glad to see you. I was sitting in the lawn chair, and got too warm, and stood up to go inside, and bam, down I went like a villain on TV.”
“Did you break anything? Do you hurt anywhere?”
“I might have twisted my right ankle. It hurts like the devil when I try to stand. I use a cane because of my wonky left ankle, so I do seem rather…grounded.”
“Where’s Clive?”
“Off buying groceries, doing errands. I promised him I wouldn’t come outside on my own, but a day like this is irresistible….”
“Let’s see if we can turn you over and get you into a sitting position.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
They discussed the logistics of the maneuver—should Darcy push on Mimi’s left side or her right? If Mimi could lift up a bit, Darcy could give her a gentle heave with one hand on her hip and one on her thigh. They counted to three and Darcy pushed. In vain. Mimi weighed a good one hundred eighty pounds, and many of those pounds were good healthy padding, perfect for protecting her when she fell but difficult to shift. Also, Darcy discovered that Mimi’s upper arm strength was more or less nonexistent. All this meant that when Darcy shoved on Mimi’s hip and leg, she managed to rotate the lower half of Mimi’s body backward, but the upper half of her body stayed put and the lower half was finally, inexorably, pulled by gravity back down to the ground.
Mimi was trembling. She muttered something incomprehensible. For a chilling moment Darcy feared the older woman had had a stroke and lost her ability to speak. Darcy knelt close to Mimi’s head and gently touched her neck. She didn’t know what she was doing. All she could think of was what she saw on television cop shows: If someone was incapacitated, moving her head could cause injury to her neck.
“Did I hurt you?” Darcy asked.
Mimi spoke again, more slowly. “I have grass in my nose.” She was laughing. Her whole body shook as she laughed.
Her laughter was contagious. “Shall I move your head sideways? Does your neck feel okay?”
“Please move my head sideways.”
Carefully, unable to stop laughing, Darcy lifted Mimi’s head and turned it sideways. A sprinkling of dirt and a few stray filaments of grass coated the older woman’s nose and cheeks.
“Shall we try again?” Darcy asked.
“Yes. This time pretend I’m a rug, one of those heavy Persian rugs. Just unroll me.”