Sara Alexi - The Illegal Gardener

“You know you said earlier that my life had shown you that you were running away? What did you mean? I mean, what in my life were you talking about? Exactly?”

In the interlude before Aaman answers, she raises a postponing finger and slips inside to reappear with a bottle of wine and two glasses. She clamps the bottle between knees and pulls, producing a satisfactory pop. She pours; it can breathe while they drink.

“There you go.” She clinks her glass against the one on the table.

“No, thank you.” Aaman looks at her trying to express something without words. Juliet’s realisation comes suddenly and makes her feel foolish.

“Oh, of course. Would you rather I didn’t?”

Aaman grins at her and wags a finger. She grins back and drinks.

“So come on, what did you mean?”

“Tell me more of your life, after you left home.”

Juliet is happy to allow Aaman’s direction.

“I moved out and went to college and promptly started an affair with my tutor, who was old enough to be my father.” Juliet lets out a short, humourless laugh. “Which lasted until he decided my flatmate was more attractive than me, and I dropped out of college, became a loner, pulling pints in the Irish club until I met another lost soul, Mick. But there you go again! He was Irish, my dad was Irish. Mick was older than me, had no job, no home, he was wandering. Michelle tried to warn me, but after what my friend at college had done to me, I no longer believed in friendship. So I married Mick thinking we could, the two of us, escape the world in our bubble. Which we did until the reality of Thomas and Terrance happened. My beautiful boys.”

Juliet gets up and reaches through the front door to the table just inside. She returns to her seat with a picture of her boys. The boys are in school uniform, about eight years old. Smiling and proud, she looks at Aaman to see his reaction. He appears clearly distressed.

“You have left them. Why?” There is an edge to his voice.

“Oh, no! They are not this age now. No, they are grown up. One is doing an MA and will follow that with a Ph.D., and the other’s got his degree and has immediately landed a job at a bank. He’s even been promoted already. They do a lot of in-house training so he’s happy. He has a girlfriend and I think they may get married, but they haven’t said anything yet.”

“They are lucky to have so much education.”

“Yes, it is harder now, there are fees. But Terrance, that’s this one,” she points, “has two small jobs and both me and his dad are helping him through.”

The phone rings.

“Excuse me.” Juliet takes the photograph in with her as she goes.

“Hello?”

“Hi Juliet, how’s it going. Did your house boy show up?”

“Hi Michelle. I am a bit busy at the moment.”

“Oh, OK.”

Juliet clicks the phone off.

“Sorry about that, Aaman.”

“Why did you do that?”

“What?” Juliet looks around her for what it is she is meant to have done.

“Not talk to your friend Michelle who helped you all those years?”

“Well, I, em, I didn’t really want to.” Juliet’s cheeks have warmed and she rubs her arm through her long-sleeved t-shirt.

“Why?” Aaman asks slowly.

“There is no why. I just didn’t want to.” She cannot meet his gaze.

“You asked me earlier what I saw in your life.”

“Yes, and?”

“And I ask you why you do not want to talk to Michelle.”

“Would you like coffee or tea, seeing as you’re not drinking?” Her tone is breezy and impersonal.

“No, Juliet, I do not want tea or coffee, or wine or anything else.”

Juliet stands and then sits again.

“I want to run,” she says.

“Yes, I can see that.”

“OK, I don’t want to talk to Michelle because she asks ‘what am I doing’ all the time. She wants to know what is going on in my life.”

“Isn’t that what friends do?”

“Yes, but that is my point. I didn’t ask her to be my friend.”

“Have you asked her to stop being your friend?”

“What? No, of course not, you don’t ask people to stop being friends!”

“What would it be like if she no longer was your friend?”

“Oh my goodness, the thought of Michelle not being around is unthinkable.” Juliet widens her eyes and raises her brow. “I mean, I don’t phone her and most of the time I don’t want to talk to her, but the thought of her never ringing again, I would feel so, so… oh my God, I would feel so alone.” Her body slumps boneless. “I am such a bitch.” Juliet cannot find a pleasant place to rest her eyes as they look inward. “She has stood by me all these years and persisted with a one-way friendship, which, as I have just found out, I would feel alone without. So why, oh why do I not want to talk to her? Unless I am a class A bitch!”

“Or?”

“Or? Well, she does remind me of all the horrors of my past. But we did have fun staying out all weekend, going into pubs when we were only fourteen. We did get bored on weeknights a bit, but generally she was great. I loved her.”

“Yes?”

“What do you mean, yes? As in yes I loved her? Well it’s true, I did.”

“And now?”

“I am not a kid any more. Things change.”

“Do things like that change? Have you stopped loving your dad?”

“No, never, but Michelle is not my dad.”

“She was with you when you went through a lot of pain.”

“Yes, she wasn’t around much when I went through the pain of college and I could have done with a friend then. You know I really thought I loved John. Dr John Brooks, that was his name. I thought it sounded so educated, above the sordidness of life. I saw him as my salvation. How wrong was I? I saw our relationship as a sign that I was an adult away from all the hurt of my childhood. I thought it was a new chapter in my life. But guess what? It was just more pain.

“Actually the pain was almost worse from losing my best friend of the time to losing him. Jenny.” Juliet pauses to drink some wine.

“We met in freshers week. That’s the first week of term when you are new. We got on so well. We went everywhere together, discovered life away from families together, explored our freedom together. I guess I loved her too really, until…” She found no reason to finish her sentence and stopped to swig down the rest of her glass and poured some more.

“It just seems that everyone I love goes and bloody well hurts me.”

“And what have you found is the best way of getting away from that hurt?”

Juliet’s eyes dart left to right and then she nods her head and smiles sadly.

“I couldn’t get away from the pain of losing my dad. But I left home to get away from Mum. I left college to get away from both John and Jenny. And Mick? Let’s not forget Mick who has been hurting me for the last twenty-five years. I left him and, well I came to Greece. I have matured from a short-distance sprinter into a long-distance runner.”

“And Michelle?”

“Michelle? I have never run from Michelle.” Juliet can almost feel Aaman’s next question and begins to answer, leaving it unasked. “Why? Because she has never really hurt me. She could have. She could have been like Mick or Jenny or my mum, or dishonourable Dr John Brooks, but she isn’t and she hasn’t hurt me because…” Juliet stops. It has hit her. She turns to Aaman, shifts her position and takes his hands. He smiles. “I have pushed her away. I have not allowed her close to avoid the pain just like you and Saabira.”

She lets go of his hands and throws her arms in the air, letting them fall onto her lap.

“I am such a bitch! Poor Michelle, year after year trying to be my friend and all the time I am pushing her away, not allowing her close. Twenty-something years we haven’t seen each other all because I was scared of the possible pain, not even the actual pain. That is so sad, and stupid.” She looks Aaman in the eye.