Page 63 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
Kathy didn’t want to use the old clichés about how you can’t help who you fall in love with, but in the end that was all she had. That and the knowledge that she’d never been in love with Owen, so when she fell in love with Jemima it was all the fireworks she’d heard about and that was impossible to walk away from.
There had been love in their marriage, of course – Owen was a lovable man. There just wasn’t love in the way he wanted, not for her, and she felt terrible for denying him the opportunity to be with someone who might have really fallen for him too. Except she didn’t know that she hadn’t been in love with him, not until she met Jemima. She thought that the rush of affection she’d felt for him when he started courting her, then the thrill of being proposed to, were what ‘in love’ meant. It never once occurred to her that the thrill was because she felt like she’d achieved something she’d been trained for her whole life. Her job was to get married and have babies. Well … job done. Nowhere was there any consideration of how a woman might feel about it; of what satisfaction – or not – might come with it. Jemima made her believe there was a better way to live – a way that made you feel alive, like every day was singing with possibility. Until it wasn’t.
‘I think he’s over the shock,’ Michelle says. ‘He’s met someone.’
Now her body is turned towards Kathy and she’s watching her mother’s face. For the reaction, of course. All Kathy feels is happiness.
‘That’s wonderful,’ she says.
‘Don’t you want to know who it is?’
Kathy considers this for a second. ‘No. That’s his business.’
From the look on Michelle’s face Kathy wonders if that question was designed to enable Michelle to ask about Jemima. Kathy’s never given much detail.
‘And you?’ Michelle says.
‘Me?’
‘Have you … ?’ Michelle raises her eyebrows and Kathy knows why.
In the weeks after Kathy left Owen, her daughter had pressed her on the subject every time they spoke, asking how she could just leave the marriage when nothing seemed to be wrong. Sick of lying – to herself as much as anyone else – Kathy finally said that nothing was wrong with Owen except for the fact that he wasn’t a woman, because she’d left him for a woman named Jemima. Michelle had made a sound like she was choking and ended the call, and the subject hadn’t been raised since.
‘Are you asking if I have a girlfriend?’
Kathy thinks that what Michelle really wants to know is if Kathy is still attracted to women or has now decided it was a passing fancy.
‘Um …’ Michelle bites her bottom lip.
‘It’s okay if you are,’ Kathy says softly. ‘I know that part was a shock to you.’
When Michelle’s eyes meet hers Kathy can see the little girl who went off to her first day of school both scared and defiant.
‘It really was,’ Michelle says. ‘And you didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘I know.’ Kathy sounds defeated because she feels it. ‘I know.’
She glances towards her meagre back garden. It really should be in better shape now that she has more knowledge about plants.
‘I don’t have a girlfriend.’ She smiles sadly. ‘Or a boyfriend.’
Another glance at the garden and she realises she has something else to say on the matter.
‘But I have friends. I mean, I’ve made friends. We garden together.’
Now Michelle is looking at the garden too and Kathy sees it as she would: with a solitary drooping pandanus palm and a clump of sad strelitzia.
‘Not out there, I hope,’ she says and Kathy bursts out laughing.
‘No. In other people’s gardens. We help out people who need it.’
And they’re also helping me. That’s what she discovered last weekend: the women of the Sunshine Gardening Society have, simply by giving her an activity to do that helps her feel useful, offered her a community that she didn’t know she was seeking.
‘Don’t you need it too?’ Michelle points to the pandanus. ‘That’s on its last legs!’
‘Don’t be cheeky!’
‘Take better care of your garden!’
