Short story: "Brussels Sprout"

 

Brussels Sprout

 

Bob and Carol are back. They spend their winters in Mesa, Arizona. They always leave the day after Remembrance Day, and they always return the first week of April; but this year, they wished they had stayed an extra couple of weeks in the desert sun.

We had two snow storms since they came back. Both times, they had to shut down the Trans-Canada Highway. It`s only April 28, and the ground’s still cold; but Bob couldn`t wait, and he planted his peas anyway, and Swiss chard, and beets. “It’s too early for anything else,” he said. But three years ago, he couldn’t wait either; and he had to replanted his peas, chard, and beets. So, he was no further ahead. He was just anxious.

We usually drop over (they live across the street from us, one house down) within a day or two of their return; but this year, for some reason, we didn’t. Neither did we have them over for dinner before they left for Arizona last fall, as we usually did. “We better go over and welcome them home,” I said to Cathy, three weeks after they arrived. “But call first.”

Carol made tea. We had introduced her to herbal teas a few years ago, and she did buy a variety package of herbal teas which she offered us whenever we dropped over; but Carol and Bob drank Earl Grey. They were very traditional.

“I just baked these today,” Carol said, as she arranged some store-bought cookies on her serving platter, the same one she used every time we had tea, and she laughed.

We sat at the kitchen table, which also served as their dining room table because their house was too small for a dining room. Their kitchen window looked out at our house, but our triplex was on a corner lot, so they could only see our middle apartment and basement entrance and not the front entrance to the top unit, which we occupied. “I walked over a couple of times to see if you guys were home,” Bob said; “but both vehicles were gone.”

And Carol added, “I see you coming and going out of your basement. I guess you’re pretty busy painting these days.”

“Yes, I’ve been busy,” I said.

“It’s none of my business, but if you don’t mind my asking, where are you painting now?” Carol asked, which made me smile.  

“Why would I mind, Carol? I’m painting the municipal office.”

“Oh, are you still there?” she said, feeling a little foolish.

“Yes. I’ll be there for another week and a half.”

“That’s a nice job. And it’s about time they painted it too. As I was saying to Bob yesterday, I don’t think that place has been painted in years. Didn’t Russ Simmons paint it the last time? I thought I remember him painting it.”

“No. I painted it about fifteen years ago.”

“See, I told you he painted it,” Bob said, with that look of happy surprise that comes across his face whenever he’s right and Carol is wrong.

“Are you sure you painted it last?” Carol said, with an inward look in her eyes. “I could have sworn Russel Simmons painted it, but I might be wrong.”

“You are wrong. He just told you he painted it last,” Bob said, his face now beaming.

“He’s got you this time, Carol,” I said, and laughed.

Cathy, who loves to see Bob win an argument with Carol, who just hates to be wrong, laughed also; and then we talked about their winter in Arizona, as we always did, and their health and winter friends (every year, they tell us of one or two of their winter friends that had passed away), and their gambling at the casinos and how much they won or lost. This winter, Bob won seventeen hundred dollars; Carol lost four hundred.

“That’s another thing she can’t get over,” Bob, who seems to find his courage whenever we popped over, quickly offered. “I can’t help it if I won. I was lucky this winter, and she wasn’t; that’s not my fault.”

“I didn’t say it was your fault,” Carol said.

“But that’s how you make it sound,” Bob said.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Carol said, not wanting to get into it in front of her visitors; but it was the only time that Bob ever got a chance to be his own man, and he wasn’t’ going to let up when he was winning an argument—“More luck than brains, that’s what you said. It doesn’t take brains to play slot machines.”

“Let’s drop it, okay?” Carol said.

“Well, does it?” Bob insisted.

“No, it doesn’t. There, does that make you feel better?”

“Yes, it does,” Bob said, with a big smile.

“Good. Now we can drop it.”

“I’m done,” Bob said.

“You’re going to be well done after we leave,” I said, and broke into laughter.

Cathy laughed too. Even Carol had to laugh, as much as she didn’t want to; but Bob’s face flushed red. He had gone too far, and he knew it. But he didn’t regret it.

I wanted to say something to back Bob up, but I couldn’t; it would only have made it worse for him later, so I deflected— “So, Carol; did you read any good books during the winter?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. I read Angela’s Ashes. A true story. Frank McCourt wrote it. I think that’s his name. My daughter gave it to me to read. My God, I couldn’t believe how poor they were. Have you read it?”

“No, but I want to read it,” Cathy responded.

“You should. It’s incredible. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that held my attention like that. It’s so real and true to life that it makes you shudder.”

“To tell you the truth Carol, I’m tired of Irish writers and their sanctified poverty. I might read it just for the literature, but I doubt it,” I said, with a chuckle.

“How can people live like that?” Carol said, disregarding my comment. “I don’t know how the father of those children could drink away all their food money like that. How could a man do that to his own family?”

I wanted to laugh. Carol, who had inherited her strong-willed temperament from her Irish father, had one brother who drank himself to death and another whose second wife could no longer take his drinking and who drove their oldest son out of the house at sixteen and his wife to take their other two children and leave; but Carol couldn’t see it.

“Someone was telling me your brother got picked up for impaired driving a couple of weeks ago and lost his license,” I said, with a straight face.

“He’s going to fight it,” Bob replied, missing the irony. So did Carol.

“He’s crazy if he thinks he can beat it. They’ve got him dead to rights,” she said.

“They must have given him a breathalyzer, then,” I said.

“Yeah. That’s why he can’t win,” Bob said.

But Carol didn’t want to talk about her family. “I read Shirley MacLaine’s book Out on a Limb last winter too. Have you read it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Wasn’t it out of this world? I couldn’t believe it. I mean, that woman had some pretty fantastic experiences—”

“She starred as herself in the movie,” I said.

“I heard. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m going to get it. I don’t think it’ll be as good as the book, because they never are; but I want to see it anyway. As I was saying, I didn’t think I would ever read a book by Shirley MacLaine; but I didn’t mind it at all. She’s not as kooky as they say she is. I don’t think so, anyway.”

Again, I laughed. “Then you might be ready to read her new book. The Camino. I’ve got it if you want to borrow it.”

“What’s it about?” Carol asked.

“Essentially, reincarnation,” I said, just to be mischievous.

“Well, I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet. Have you read it Cathy?”

“Yes,” Cathy said. “It doesn’t matter if you believe in reincarnation or not, Carol; it’s a good read, because she takes you on the pilgrimage with her. I enjoyed it very much.”

“What pilgrimage?” Carol asked.

“The Camino is about the famous Christian pilgrimage in Spain called the Santiago de Compostela Camino, but along the way MacLaine has visions of some of her past lives. That’s what makes the book so fascinating. If you think you’re ready for a heavy dose of reincarnation, then you should read it,” I said, again with a straight face.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” Carol said, backing off. “I’m trying to keep an open mind about reincarnation, but I still have problems with it.”

Bob was silent. He wasn’t a reader. He was a sitter. “I like to sit,” he told me one day. “I like to just sit. That’s what I like doing the most.”

And he did sit a lot. He sat in his living room chair in the evenings and didn’t do anything. Maybe watch a little TV, but he could sit for hours doing nothing.

“If you’re brought up a Christian, it’s hard to break away from the belief that we only live one lifetime,” I said, to gently bring the conversation to a close. “Reincarnation isn’t for everyone, Carol. It’s a belief that you grow into as you gain life experience. You’ll come around eventually.” I added, unable to help myself.

“I don’t know about that. I have problems with it,” she replied.

I had to laugh. “Ten years ago, you wouldn’t have even thought of reading Shirley MacLaine. Now you have. So, you are making some progress, Carol.”

“I don’t know if you can call that progress. Maybe I’m going backwards,” Carol responded, and broke into laughter at her own joke.

“I don’t think you are, Carol,” Cathy said. “I think when you’re ready to believe in reincarnation, you won’t be able to stop yourself. That’s how it works.”

“What?” Carol asked.

“Life,” Cathy replied.

“Life? Don’t tell me about how life works. I know damn well how life works, and I’m not sure I like it!” Carol said, making another little funny.                               

We all laughed, but Carol had missed Cathy’s point entirely, and I wanted to go back there again but chose not to. We drank another cup of tea, at Carol’s insistence, and then I got up to leave, and Cathy got up too. “It’s good to have you back home,” I said, and we made our way to the back porch where we had come in. They never used the front door.

Carol and Bob followed us, as they always did, and which we always allowed for when we made our exit. “Oh, by the way,” I said, as I was lacing my runners, “Cathy and I saw a movie on TV last winter that you might enjoy. It brings together very nicely the two books you read last winter. It’s called Yesterday’s Children, starring Jane Seymour; and it’s about a drunken Irish father who abuses his wife and family. The mother dies giving birth to a child and is reborn immediately in the United States. Jane Seymour plays the reincarnated mother who starts having flashback memories of her past life, which forces her to go to Ireland to see if she can find her children from her past lifetime. It’s based on a true story, Carol; so, you can’t argue with the premise. I’m sure it’ll give you something to think about.”

“What’s it called again?”

“Yesterday’s Children.”

“Is it out on video?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to check it out.”

“I might just do that,” Carol said, with a funny look in her eyes.

“Okay, we have to go now,” I said, opening the door to leave; but Carol wouldn’t let us leave. She kept us standing there for another fifteen minutes, beginning every new and unrelated topic with, “As I was saying…”

 

On our drive to the city the following morning (to pick up groceries, check out the nurseries for flowers for our front yard, and pick up paint supplies for my next job) the subject of Bob and Carol came up. “As I was saying,” I said, with a chuckle, “we didn’t see much of them last summer. I think we’ve outgrown their friendship—again!”

Cathy laughed. This was a problem with us. We outgrew our friendship with people who didn’t share our view on life. Despite all the mobility they seemed to have—whether it was going on a real holiday to Cancun, wintering in sunny Arizona, or hauling a trailer to different campsites every summer—they all seemed to be standing still.

“It’s not their fault. They just don’t know any better,” Cathy said, referring to our good neighbors Bob and Carol.

“Isn’t it curious though, that after all these years together they’re still so unresolved?”

“Bob’s not bad,” Cathy said, in his defense. “I think it’s Carol that has the problem. She wants to be in control all the time. My ex was just like that. He had to have his own way no matter what. But you can’t grow if you don’t let anyone else grow.”

I smiled. The memory of Cathy’s insecurity when we first met loomed large in my mind. “Yes,” I said, laughing to myself at the intoxicating freedom that she found in our relationship, which took her years to adjust to. “It’s karma, basically. If you don’t give freedom, you stop growing. That’ the mathematics of karma.”

“I think that’s why we outgrow our friendships,” Cathy said. “Our friends don’t give us the freedom of our beliefs, do they?”

“I wouldn’t have put it like that, but I think you’re right. We give our friends the freedom to believe what they want to believe; but in one way or another, they deny us the freedom of our beliefs. But do you know why?” I asked.

“No. Why is that? I don’t understand why people can’t just live and let live. We do.”

“Yes, we do; but that’s only because we understand how karma works. We know better than to interfere in another person’s life. Take Carol, for example; why do you think she has a problem with reincarnation?”

“Her attitude,” Cathy quickly responded. “She keeps herself locked up in the same state of consciousness by her attitude. My ex was like that. He couldn’t change.”

Again, I smiled. “I agree. Carol has to be in control. That’s her personality. And as long as she holds onto the attitude that she has to have her own way, she’ll never grow enough to see how the law of karma works in her life. That’s why she has a problem with reincarnation, because it takes karmic awareness to discern the law of reincarnation.”

“Does Bob believe in reincarnation?’ Cathy asked.

“I don’t think so. They’re both locked into their Christian perspective. It takes courage to grow, sweetheart; more courage than most people have. That’s why it seems to us that our friends are standing still. You can even tell this by the foods they eat.”

“Who, Bob and Carol?”

“Yes. Haven’t you noticed?”

“A long time ago,” Cathy said. “Carol won’t try anything new. ‘That’s the way I’ve always cooked, and I’m not about to change now,’” Cathy said, mimicking Carol.

I laughed. “It's a safe little world they live in, sweetheart; and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. But then, why should we? It’s their life.”

“And their karma. But it does get boring after a while, doesn’t it?”

“More than they’ll ever know…”

 

We picked up my paint supplies at my dealer first, then we stopped in at the Great Canadian Super Store for groceries, and then we went to Applebee’s for lunch. “Where to now,” I asked, as we got into the car after lunch.

“Walmart. I want to see if they have any plants out yet,” Cathy said.

They had flowers in their plastic covered green-house, but it was still too early to buy any. We wouldn’t be safe from frost until May 21, and even then, it was doubtful; so, we had a couple of weeks to wait yet.

We looked around, and then we went inside and looked for a composting pail for our back yard; but they didn’t have any.  Cathy bought all of her seeds and a couple of bags of onions for her garden, and then I walked over to Chapters and she drove to Intercity Mall. On the way home, we talked about the changes she was going to make in her garden.

She had gone online the night before to check out gardening in northwestern Ontario, and she learned that she shouldn’t plant vegetables in the same place every year, so she was redesigning her garden as we talked on our long drive back to St. Jude.

Cathy loved her little garden. When she was married, her husband wouldn’t let her have a garden. Not in the rural community of Nesbit where they lived the first seven years of their marriage, nor in Rock Point where they lived for the rest of their seventeen and half years together. “There’s no way you’re having a garden in our yard,” her ex told her. “I picked enough goddamn rocks in my old man’s garden to last me a lifetime!”

“You won’t have anything to do with it. I’ll take care of everything,” Cathy said.

“I said I don’t want a fucking garden, and that’s that—”

Then she met me. She did the books for small businesses, and I brought her my books to do. A cardboard box full of papers. We had an affair, and she filed for a divorce; and the first summer that we moved into the triplex I built, I had a contractor haul in six loads of top soil and made her a little garden, which she took pride in planting every summer.

“I think I’m going to plant my onions in the back this year. I don’t want that ugly orange fencing for the peas in my garden this summer. I’m going to buy some white trestles from Walmart for the peas to climb on, and I’ll plant the corn in the warm end of the garden.”

“Corn? You bought corn seeds?” I asked, surprised.

“Yes, corn. Why not? We’ve never had corn before.”

“And with good reason. Our season is too short for corn. No-one in St. Jude grows corn. Not even Jigs McGraw, and he’s the best gardener in town.”

“Oh yes they do. I’ve seen corn plants in some gardens.”

“Where?”

“On my way home from the hospital. I saw some corn plants in the Lutheran church property,” Cathy said, sounding a little like our neighbor Carol.

“You may have seen some plants, but did they produce any corn?”  I said.

“They must have, or they wouldn’t have planted them, would they?”

I smiled. I knew our season was too short for corn—unless it had already been started indoors and had a head start of five or six weeks; but I wasn’t going to deny her. “Okay, corn it is. What about the beans? Where do you want to plant them?”

“Somewhere in the middle. I haven’t decided yet. I’m going to plant my Swiss chard beside the onions, in the far end, then my radishes, then my beets, and then maybe my beans, two rows of yellow and two rows of green, then my lettuce, two kinds, and then my Brussels Sprout next to the corn.”

“Is it worth the bother to plant Brussels Sprout?” I foolishly asked. “We’re lucky to get one or two good feeds from what we may get.”

“You’re not going to deny me my little treat, are you?”

“Of course not. I just think that all of that soil for one or two handfuls of Brussels Sprout isn’t really worth the bother, that’s all.”

“Oh sure, take away my little treat, why don’t you? Just because I like Brussels Sprout you have to deny—”

I knew it before I opened my mouth, the unresolved conflict between us concerning the Brussels Sprout had reared its ugly head; but I wasn’t foolish enough to let it all the way out, so I simply said, “Sweetheart, I wouldn’t deny you your little treat. It’ your garden, and if you want to plant the whole garden with Brussels Sprout, it’s entirely up to you.”

“I don’t want to plant the whole garden with Brussels Sprout, just one or two rows; that’s all. You won’t mind, will you?”

“Why should I mind? It’s your garden, isn’t it?”

“It’s our garden,” she emphasized.

I didn’t reply. It was our garden, but we both knew it was hers; and if I tried to take any part of it away from her, especially her Brussels Sprout, which had taken on unspoken significance, I knew it would do serious damage to our relationship, and I called upon every ounce of strength I had to keep from denying her her Brussels Sprout after she had given away our whole crop of one zip-lock freezer bagful to her uncle out of spite last summer, and she hadn’t forgotten. It was still there lurking, deep and unresolved.

I knew I could never transform her married-life personality, which could drive her to states of love-destroying silence that had more power to infuriate me than anything she could ever say to me; that was why I gave her all the freedom she wanted and needed to grow into the person she was denied to be by her controlling ex-husband, and if I denied her her Brussels Sprout, it would only have driven her into destructive silence; so, I consented.

But that didn’t resolve her guilt for giving away her whole crop of Brussels Sprout to her uncle Stumpy last summer just to spite me. Had she given them to her father, as she had planned to do, I wouldn’t have minded; but she gave them to a man I had little respect for, and that rubbed my face in it and made me very angry.

We did get into arguments. Two or three time a year, whenever there was a family function to attend, a family dinner, wedding, or whatever, her family and my family stood between us like an impregnable wall of fraught emotions. Why that should be, boggled my mind; but it did, and every time it happened, we were driven, despite ourselves, into separate corners. And this last time Cathy stormed out of the house, saying, “I’m driving down to visit my dad. You can do whatever you want—”

“Go visit him. And you can stay there for all I care!” I said, to my regret.

Cathy did stay with her parents in Nesbit when she left her husband. She had nowhere else to go; but after one month of living with her parents, her mother said to her, “I don’t want you living here anymore. You’re fucking up my life—”

Her mother, who got lung cancer from years of heavy smoking, was dead now, and she got along very well with her father, who never had a mind of his own when his wife was alive (every payday, Cathy’s father, who worked at the paper mill with her mother’s brother Stumpy, turned over his paycheck to his wife, and she gave him five dollars for spending money that had to last until his next payday); but it wasn’t the right thing to say to her, and I regretted saying it; but when push came to shove, I just didn’t give a damn.

She didn’t respond; but she knew I meant it, and she didn’t want to jeopardize our whole relationship over a stupid argument. But she had her pride too, so she took the Brussels Sprout that she had just collected from the garden and instead of giving them to her father as she had intended, she gave them to her uncle Stumpy who lived just down the road from her father and had dropped over for his daily shot or three of rye.

She knew I didn’t care for her uncle. I tried not to show it for her family’s sake, but Stumpy’s whole wisecracking user personality bothered me. I had done work for him (for Cathy’s aunt, really, who was more like a mother to her growing up than her mother), painting his house and texturing the living room ceiling, a fifteen hundred dollar job for the price of the material alone, which I never saw, and the following year another small painting job on their back porch for which he owed me another twenty-five dollars for the paint but which I never saw either, and as forgiving as I could be, it bothered me to be used that way.

So, when her father told me she had given her Brussels Sprout to her uncle, my blood began to boil. “I thought she was going to give them to you,” I said to her father.

“Stumpy said he likes Brussels Sprout, so Cathy gave them to him. He’s always bumming something,” her father said.

I lost it. “Son of a bitch! It’s not enough that I paint his whole fucking house for nothing, he has to eat our Brussels Sprout too!”

Cathy’s father laughed. He knew how I felt about his brother-in-law, and he agreed with me; but he had gotten used to him over the years, and ever since Stumpy’s stroke, which left him partially paralyzed, forcing him to use a walker, he felt sorry for him.

“He still should pay you what he owes you,” Cathy’s father would say to me, whenever Stumpy’s name came up. “By Jesus, that’s not right. You did all that work for nothing; the least he can do is pay you for the material. That’s not right.”

And it wasn’t right that Cathy should give her whole crop of Brussels Sprout to her uncle, and she knew it; but she couldn’t bring herself to resolve her guilt for spiting me the way she did, so it got shoved deep into the shadow side of her personality, and for the first time since she had given away her whole precious crop to her uncle, the repressed guilt reared its ugly head to either be resolved or do more damage; the choice was ours to make—

“You don’t want me to plant Brussels Sprout this year, do you?” she said.

She wanted to get it out into the open, but it was a double-edged sword that could cut both ways; so, she wasn’t really conscious of baiting me. She was, and she wasn’t; that was the double-edged nature of the ego/shadow personality.

It bothered her that I never said anything when she gave away her whole crop of Brussels Sprout to her uncle. Most men would have scored big on that point, but I knew better. Keeping score in a relationship is a deadly game that keeps couples from growing, because they feed off each other’s energies instead of their own initiative, like our neighbors Bob and Carol who were always bickering over nothing. Keeping score was karmically stupid, and I wasn’t going to fall into that trap; so, I chose not to let Cathy’s unresolved little demon guilt out at all. I would let it shrivel up and die from the absence of attention.

“I like Brussels Sprout, sweetheart; so, I’d appreciate it if you planted at least one row,” I said to her; and because I honestly meant it, I wasn’t playing with her.

“But you said it wasn’t worth the bother. That’s what you said,” she insisted, trying to pry open the door to her demon guilt so she could argue away her whole crop that she had given away to a man I had lost respect for, uncle or not.

“Cathy, a lot of things aren’t worth the bother; but we do them anyway. Go ahead and plant them if you want to; I don’t mind.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure. I’m not your ex, sweetheart.”

“I was just checking,” she said, and laughed.

 

Bob had borrowed my rototiller. His tiller was at his daughter’s place on the other side of the city, where he dropped it off every fall, and it wasn’t worth the bother to drive all that way to pick it up and till his garden and bring it back again; so, he used mine. And to show his appreciation, he serviced it for me, as he did every time he borrowed it.

And this spring, he changed the fan belt; but when I started tilling the garden, the belt went loose and was slipping, and I walked across the street and told Bob.

I could have solved the problem myself, but Bob, who had retired from the machine shop at the Ontario Hydro plant in Pine Falls, liked to be needed when it came to little mechanical things; so, he grabbed his tray of tools and walked over with me, and within a few minutes he had the problem solved. “I feel foolish, Bob,” I said, indulging him.

“I should have tightened it, but it worked fine for me.  I guess that’s why I didn’t notice it,” he justified himself. Bob did that a lot.

“Well it works now,” I said. “Cathy wants to plant her onions, chard, and peas tonight; but not in the same place. She went on the computer one night and learned that she should rotate her crops, so she’s planting everything in a different place this year.”

Bob, who grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan and whose garden impressed us every summer with its abundance, gave me that little look of his whenever he was doubtful about something. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea for the peas,” he said. “I always plant my peas in the same place. They give something back to the soil that makes them grow better. But that’s just what I think. I might be wrong,” he said, giving himself some wiggle room.

“I’ll tell Cathy. But I think she’s got her heart set on planting her peas over there, by the retainer wall so she can have her trestles.”

“Well, it’s her garden; so, I suppose she can plant them where she wants,” Bob said, with a wisdom that made me chuckle at the coincidence (of our mutual understanding of the relationship-destroying game of compromise).

“Right,” I said. with a smile “But I’m going to chop down some of those branches to let more sunlight into the garden. She’s not going to like it, but hey—”

Bob laughed, but then thoughtfully added, “Maybe you should think about it.”

“Maybe I will,” I said, smiling again at Bob’s wisdom.

 

——