Moving Mary

Moving Mary

The gardener rescues a whispering statue and ponders her place in his garden.

“If you don’t take her I’m putting her on the sidewalk,” Vikki said.

For a few years in the ’80s, Mary shared Vikki’s garden with Quan Yin, Diana the Huntress, Nefertiti and a clay totem looking vaguely like Bella Abzug. This phase of Vikki’s life, in which she was communing with her inner goddesses, went into eclipse when she joined a gym, and the statuary disappeared from the garden. Mary took up residence in the furnace room. Now Vikki was trying to pawn her off on me. I didn’t much want her; she was profoundly nondescript. Her only hint of charm was the gesture of open-handed generosity.

“Isn’t that sacrilegious?”

“I don’t care. Paul said the clutter in here is a fire hazard.”

A stationary bicycle was jammed against the water heater, blocking the path of Mary’s liberation. “Mary’s not incendiary.”

“She has to go. I don’t know why I keep all this crap.”

I wouldn’t touch that. “Can we slide this over?” I asked, pushing the bike so I could squeeze by and grab the statue and duck-walk it to the middle of the room. “She’s one heavy mother Mary. How were you planning on getting her to the sidewalk?”

“You can’t lift her?”

I leaned her sideways. I could, but at what cost to spinal tranquility?

“Wait. I have a dolly.” Vikki slipped into the garage, reappearing with a sturdy two-wheeler. Call the pope. That Vikki had something useful and could find it was a miracle. Maybe this was one of those miraculous statues, capable of big stuff, not the weeping eyeballs or face-in-the-taco kind of thing. Having rescued it from a humiliating fate, I should get some payback. But then, being put out on the sidewalk may not have made much difference to Mary. Wasn’t humiliation, humility anyway, her claim to eternal glory? Her unwed pregnancy, coupled with that absurd talk about her virginity. Who was going to fall for that?

I jiggered her into the cradle of the dolly and tilted her toward the horizontal, ready to roll. Let it be, Mary whispered.

Getting her to the front sidewalk was a breeze through the breezeway, only three steps to negotiate, but I still had to lift her onto the pickup. I knew Paul wouldn’t help and neither would Vikki. First I arranged a bed of bagged leaves, the servant of the handmaid of the Lord. Then I managed without fateful twinges to lift and lay her onto it.

“She’ll be happy in your garden,” Vikki said, hands in a prayerful clasp, shiny bracelets sliding to her elbows.

At home I didn’t want to press my luck by lifting her out of the pickup, much less up the 38 steps. I didn’t think to bring Vikki’s dolly, but with all the steps, it probably wouldn’t have helped much. I left her on her bed of leaves.

For a week Mary lay there uncomplaining, not your ordinary Virgo. Her open-palmed pose, instead of grace and favor, came as the days passed to project worn-out acceptance.

Whatever.

One morning I finally hoisted her out and plopped her heavenly heft onto the asphalt, breaking off a corner of the base. It was an inauspicious welcome. After some experimentation I discovered that if I grabbed her under her hands, and did a plié at each step, lifting as knees unbent, Mary’s assumption could occur. It might take a half-hour, but what did it matter?

Eighteen steps up I had a rhythm: step right, step left, plant feet, bend knees, heave-ho, scored to the “Song of the Volga Boatmen.” Mary and I were heading upstream.

“Isn’t she a little frigid, even for you?”

Below at the curb Bertie idled in his spanking new red convertible. The perfect rejoinder floated inches away in the biosphere but I couldn’t reel it in. Speechless, my palms turned out, I may have mimicked Mary but it was the inner Kali I was channeling. I wanted to hurl something, an elephant.

“She looks harmless,” I said. “But she has a temper.”

“Yeah, I worry. Should I come back later for rosary?”

“It would do you good.”

“Well, I’ll think about it,” he said. “Hey. You need to trim that tree again. It’s coming over my fence.”

“Which tree?”

“Which tree. Which tree. You know which tree.”

“Is there anything else?”

“I’ll let you know,” he said and drove off.

And he would. But if I avoided my front steps I would never have to speak to him, given that all the conversation we’ve had over the past two years has been with him in his car, engine running. We no longer had fake-friendly chats over the hedge. Sad, I thought, that neighbors could be so antagonistic. Don’t you think so, Mary?

She smiled faintly. Let’s keep going.

Mystical rose/
Tower of David/
Tower of ivory

From the litany of Mary

I quickly learned a few things about her once we arrived at the back garden. Despite her reputation, she wasn’t sentimental at all, and she was bossy, like a privileged teenager. First she didn’t like it under the variegated chamaecyparis. Its white blotches brought out her flaking complexion. Nor under the brugmansia in the back corner. Too dreary. I swore I would not move her a third time. My back wouldn’t take it.

Cut the whining. And swearingPut me there where the fuchsia drapes over the retaining wall, in that little grotto. I have a thing for grottoes.

A grotto? Since when? But that’s where I put her, and she was right, it was the best place. I dug a hole about a foot deep and buried her up to her shins, tilting her forward and a little sideways, as if she was emerging from the underground like a Nike missile.

Edgy, Mary said.

Such sarcasm.

Just stand me up straight.

So I did, embedding her only as deep as her feet, burying the chipped base. I stuck in plugs of campanula around her; Campanula poscharskyana, a weedy, suitably humble species, blue-flowered, Mary’s favorite color.

Now leave me alone.

Obeying, I took a backward glance, the Queen of Heaven in a forsaken part of the garden. She was making herself more of a presence than I bargained for, but what had I bargained for? She had made no false promises as far as decorative appeal; she just seemed to want to be out in the light. False premises, that’s what we were dealing with. I wasn’t a devotee. She shouldn’t be preening like a celebrity.

Whatever.

Spiritual vessel/
Vessel of honor/
Singular vessel of devotion

“Surprise,” my friend Phil said as I opened my front door. “Sorry I didn’t call. I was nearby. I just saw your neighbor. Boy is he steamed.”

What had I done? Nothing. A woman in a U-Haul backed into his car at Home Depot.

“The side door is dented and the mirror is hanging like a dead bird.”

“Is the perp still alive?”

“A witness saw her drive off. He got the license but forgot it.”

“Poor Bertie. That car is his reason for living.” I was being flippant, but I did sympathize a little. “I’ve had two fender benders this winter. They’re a pain.”

“Whose fault?”

“One definitely mine. I took for granted a stop was four-way and boom. The other time, swear, it was the fault of the mailbox.”

“Bertie knew who to blame: ‘foreigners running this country into the toilet.’ How he made that leap, I don’t know. People have shorter fuses these days. I do.”

“There’s certainly a lot more irate honking.”

“They’re probably honking at you.”

“I pay attention when it matters.”

“It always matters. You should have learned that by now.” He sighed, and leaned over to take off his mud-caked shoes. “I can’t stay long. You don’t have anything to eat, do you?”

“I could heat up some soup. Before you come in I want to show you something.”

We stepped off the front landing, and strolled around the side of the house, navigating the treacherous boulders that doubled as steps. Gaps in the border hedge were big enough to glimpse Bertie’s car coming up his driveway. The damage showed worse than Phil had described. A wicked scrape also ran the length of the passenger side. Big-money damage. I turned and considered the coy little smile of the garden’s new resident.

You can’t be thinking I had anything to do with this.

“All you need is a rusty bathtub behind her,” Phil said coming up behind me. He muttered something else I wasn’t meant to catch.

“Be nice,” I said, nearly parroting what I had said about her temper.

The phone was ringing when we got back to the front door. The machine clicked in and I paused to listen while Phil took off his shoes.

“I had a terrible week,” Vikki said in her most aggrieved voice. “A shit-storm, truly. On Tuesday, a pipe broke and flooded the basement and Paul fell and broke his wrist. I spent 10 hours in the emergency room. On Wednesday, yesterday, I chipped a tooth. And today I find out my brother is suing me. He claims I stole money from Pop’s accounts. If he wants to write the checks, I said, be my frickin’ guest. Maybe it’s happening because I got rid of that statue. Maybe you should bring it back. Would you mind?”

I lifted my eyebrows meaningfully in Phil’s direction.

“Do it,” he said, “while you have the chance.”

I had the chance. It’s Sunday now. Vikki was here Friday and there was no mention of the Virgin.

Bertie’s car has been missing from his carport, so I presume it’s in rehab, getting a celebrity makeover. The tree he griped about remains unpruned. Someday I may prune it. It’s not the only plant that needs a cutback; they all do, and they can wait. I am going to be overwhelmed by greenery in a matter of weeks, I know, but spring is here, unaccountable as ever, and the garden feels too newly fledged to do anything but coo over, its ungainliness cousin to its charms. Rooted and empty-handed I stand, raindrops ticking off the top of my head, half-smiling, like I’ve just been kissed.

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Dispatches from Faro’s garden have appeared seasonally in The Monthly for more than a decade and were recently published as a collection by Ithuriel’s Spear Press.The book, entitled In Faro’s Garden, A Tour and Some Detours, is available at www.spdbooks.orgAmazon.com and Black Oak Books in Berkeley. R.E. Faro can be reached at farospace@sbcglobal.net. Visit www.infarosgarden.com.

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