The gardener sees red and learns something about the color of changing leaves.
It isn’t that the deed is unusual in our circle; Phil does it (he thinks I don’t know), Francine, too, and of course, the ever windswept Vikki. I’ve even done a little experimentation. But Rita? Color her hair? This fiery red?
“Don’t give me your look,” she said from the lounge chair on the deck. “I see you don’t approve.”
“Was this spontaneous?”
“I’ve been thinking about it for years. Is it too much?”
Not only was the gray gone but after years of falling plumb line vertical, her hair cascaded in lazy curls. The part was the only thing undeparted.
“It is. Too much.”
“Perfect.”
“I’m astonished. I thought you wouldn’t, out of principle.”
“Being . . . ?”
“I don’t know. Something high-minded and self-congratulatory. Authenticity, maybe. ”
“I had qualms, I admit. Like Truman Capote said, you lose one point of IQ every year you live in California. I wondered what slippery slope I might be getting on. Soon I’d be bingeing, one upgrade after another, peroxided, nipped, tucked. Gaga about enzymes and high colonics, poke collagen into my lips. The more I thought about it the more thrilling it sounded.” She shook her head and her ’do swooshed obediently. “What it really boiled down to was, I’m so tired of being invisible. After 60, hell, after 40, it isn’t just men who don’t see you, it’s across the board. Inner radiance wasn’t cutting it.”
“When did we last think it did? 1973, I think.”
Rita grunted and leaned her head back against the chair, turning squarely into the slanted, warm sunlight. Her red-orange curls clashed sharply with the leathery green leaves of the persimmon tree hanging over the railings of the deck. The news that October was ticking down had barely registered in the leaves. Only the tips had gone yellow.
“If then.”
Beyond the persimmon the Newtown pippin was loaded with apples, many of which bore a bronze blush, signifying “ripe.” Lily was in college. Who would I make pies with? Who did I make pies with last year?
I stared at Rita; I couldn’t avoid the obvious connection: autumn and, well, us. The warmth of summer lingering, stoked, but the signal coolness of the air more expressive day by day. A fitful breeze rummaging through the needles of the redwoods in her garden whispered change. If we were lucky, the first real rain was heading our way.
I felt a corresponding barometric shift vis-à-vis her, hard to account for, but distinct. Had I ever noticed she had freckles? So many? It was amazing how translucent, how healthy her skin looked. Maybe she had done something to her face too, which she wouldn’t admit.
She moistened her lips with her tongue as a gust spooled free a strand of hair, flaring like a flame. My skin itched, tightened over my skull. I felt a primal urge for emollients, to rush inside and do something restorative in front of a mirror, maybe trim nose hair.
“Except for . . . ” she muttered.
“Pete Seeger? Did you say Pete Seeger? What about Pete Seeger?” We had recently seen the documentary about him.
“Inner radiance works for him. What was really amazing was his apparent lack of vanity. I suppose anyone whose instrument is the banjo is by definition vanity-free. Maybe that’s the secret, play the banjo.”
I checked the mental pantry. I knew not one banjo player.
“What?” I said.
Rita opened her eyes for a second. “When are you going to get your ears checked? I said, ‘At home in his skin.’”
“And hair color.”
“People everywhere color their hair. Osama dyes his beard for his videos, for heaven’s sake. He’s authentic. And Saddam before he went on trial. Ronnie Reagan of course never had to. ‘He doesn’t dye his hair, it’s just prematurely orange,’ Gerald Ford said. Gerald Ford of all people. How about Arnie and his orange locks? Girlie boys would tremble in that color.” She opened her eyes a slit. “You’d like to try it yourself, wouldn’t you?”
“I would not.” I squelched the thought about revealing my upper lip experiments. “On men, dyed hair looks pathetic. Phil’s is okay because his hair is so short. Most men shave their heads because it’s better than dye and better than gray.”
“Well it isn’t. Gimme a head with hair. What do we get? Bruce Willises. Die hard. No wonder Demi ran off with that cute young actor, Kutchen Whatshisname. You don’t.”
“My head doesn’t resemble a cue ball. More like an acorn squash. It’s Kutcher. Or Kutchner.”
“That doesn’t sound right either. So. What do you really think?”
“Bruce Willis is underrated.”
“Ha.”
“It does make you look younger. It’s going to take some getting used to.”
“You’re not the only one. It took me a half hour to reassure Toby I was still his grandma.” She refilled her glass from the pitcher of lemonade, picking out a leaf floating in it. “It’s not about authenticity. Styrofoam is authentic. The question is acceptance. Accepting age, death, whatever. That’s bad enough. What’s really a load to accept is how much confusion and attachment I feel, how I’m still dumb as dirt. At my age.” She cackled . . .
Now blue October, smoky in the sun
Must end the long, sweet summer of the heart.
Robert Nathan, from “Blue October”
Confusions: there is no better antidote than a vague stroll through the garden. Well, not so vague. I have clippers in hand. Always carry clippers.
The ‘Out of the Blue’ rose is undergoing a finale of blooming. Stooping, I take a whiff of one of the six or seven blossoms still arrayed on the leggy stems. What color are the roses? Violet? Purple-pink? So many permutations, you need to be a painter to convey them. I look and sniff not with a lot of anticipation but out of kind of duty. I’d feel like a cad if I didn’t pay homage. I might even be punished.
Similarly, after clipping the disorderly foliage from the bamboo, I witness the perfection of each sleek culm, dusted sky blue. I touch them, and the blue in fact feels dusty. Only when I notice one has withered foliage do feelings shift into a deeper, darker stratum. What if this plant is sick? What if it died?
Worry, I suppose, is one way of paying attention. How liberating it must feel facing a freezing winter, to welcome the desert the garden becomes; a retreat from a spectrum of sensualities, and worries. Hereabouts, instead of ascetic whites and grays, we get camellias flaunting pinks and reds, flagrant magnolias, flouncing acacias and plums. Spring sprints in, taking the baton directly from fall, with barely a hint of winter.
A blanket of weariness, a dis-comforter, settles over me. Instead of liberation, I want hibernation. I go inside and call Louis, friend of my youth. “I’m coming for a visit,” I say. Maybe a change of scene would help.
At the Albuquerque airport I see his hair is 100 percent gray. It looks great.
Over the next two days we peruse the folio of shared history, adding a page or two: the runaway cat, the art exhibit that moves us, the goofy dancing in the building across the street. The laugh we have dancing isn’t quite cosmic, but awfully good.
On a flawless day we drive up the mountains into aspen forests, great swaths of them, and hike through golden confetti falling from cerulean skies. At the trailhead a sign informs us that the leaves don’t turn color; instead, chlorophyll becomes obstructed by a piece of “cork” and green disappears, revealing colors already present. (Not knowing that—at my age?) But why are certain leaves pure gold and others reddish? And why are some stands already nearly bare, while others nearby are somewhat green? Do the latter moisturize?
The short visit over, Louis takes me to the airport for my return flight. We say goodbye, not knowing when we’ll meet again. That is always the case, but it seems more the case.
Home again, I walk through the garden pressed by the idea that I must quit coasting. I have to do something radical, to make beauty visible again. I barely see the garden, and neither do my friends. It needs a makeover.
Meanwhile Rita’s new packaging is already becoming unremarkable, edging into the limbo of things taken for granted, though not yet completely there. Something lingers in the air, something sexualized, juiced up. Not between us, make that clear, but generally speaking. The feeling is pleasurable, a spritzing of newness which pleasure needs to stay green. A lifetime requirement, it seems. Forever looming is slippage, bound to become a chasm, no matter what. The downward slope. The loneliness of it. Oh woe.
While this gloompot hoards his porridge, another part of me, without prompting, without caring if anyone else in the convention is paying attention, walks around, inhaling deeply, saying “thank you” again and again. Just that. Because it rained an inch last night and now in the garden everything feels different, renewed in a mysterious way. I see the heightened radiance of the leaves, smell the suddenly manifold smells, and wonder, how could I ever have been hankering for frost?
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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.org, Amazon.com and Black Oak Books in Berkeley. R.E. Faro can be reached at farospace@sbcglobal.net. Visit www.infarosgarden.com.
