The Marigold Lover

It was spring 1987, just a week or so after Miss Mariane had died at 74 years old while watching Jeopardy in her home. The marigolds in her front yard sat idly, confused at why they had stopped hearing the compliments of passersby who loved Mariane and her flowers. They missed the company of the neighborhood kids, who always trotted into Mariane’s yard to see her, hoping that today her generous snack would be warm sugar cookies rather than carrot sticks, but politely thanking her for whatever she had to offer. One particular child was entranced by the flowers; she pet their petals delicately like they were the ears of a small and fragile animal, cooing to them in a manner more special than she offered even to her baby doll, which she always had in tow. But now, the yard was quiet. The child’s soft and loving whispers, the music of the neighbors chattering, Mariane herself humming contently, all gone. The marigolds, like the rest of the neighborhood, grieved in silence.

That day, the children passed Mariane’s house quietly- the familiar sound of their laughter and bickering coming to a halt until they had passed her house by several yards. They disappeared into the woods, as they normally did to play their games, but that day, they came running back, their lungs full of fire instead of air, their throats raw from the sudden screams that had escaped them. They ran, faster than people of their size should be able to run, and one girl- the marigold lover- raced up to the Paxton family’s door, which was next to Mariane’s, and frantically knocked.

Mrs. Paxton, a young mom with rosy cheeks and tired eyes, opened the door in alarm, asking the girl what was the matter, does she need to sit and drink some water, has she been hurt, shall she call her mother. The little girl panted and with wide eyes said, “We just saw Miss Mariane in the woods. Her… her body. We saw her dead. In the woods.”

Mariane Hollis had died on Thursday of a heart attack. She was discovered the next afternoon when a girlfriend she’d had lunch plans with arrived at her door, which Mariane had left unlocked. There was a startle, a cry, and then an ambulance that was far too late. It wasn’t long before everybody knew, the news delivered at mailboxes through hushed voices, downcast eyes, and hand squeezes. She had no children, no husband, but she was well loved by her neighbors, including Mrs. Paxton who knew with certainty that Mariane had never been in the woods, because she had seen her carried right out of her front door.

Mrs. Paxton was stunned speechless, and even once she felt that her lips could form words again, she refrained from showing as much alarm as she felt. “Honey,” she said slowly, leading the trembling child to the kitchen table to sit, “I promise you Miss Mariane is not in the woods… I know you miss her, and it’s been sad and maybe a little scary…”

The little girl shook her head vigorously and said with a small but certain voice, “She’s in the woods.” The girl had pale eyes framed by yellow braids, and a gentle demeanor that delivered such assurance that Mrs. Paxton, after fixing the child a mug of tea, offering her a hug, and walking her back to her house hand in hand, called the police to report what the kids had seen.

“My name is Sarah Paxton, and, um, I was just with a little girl in my neighborhood that had been playing in the woods with some other kids and... she said they all saw something…” she paused before continuing, not knowing exactly what to say, but the officer cut her off.

“Yes, ma’am, we’ve gotten a few reports. We’re sending some officers over to check it out,” he said, his voice accompanied by the frantic commotion of the small town police department, which had never before stumbled upon a situation quite like this.

“Oh,” Sarah replied, feeling a sudden tightness in her chest. She sat down, took a breath, and clarified, “I don’t need to make a statement, then?” The officer said that she didn’t, and after they hung up, Sarah tried to distract herself by preparing dinner for herself and for Mr. Paxton, who would be home from work in about a half hour. She first checked on her baby girl who had been sleeping soundly in her crib for the past two hours, blissfully unaware of the kids’ frightening discovery or the frantic racing of Sarah’s heart. Gently, she kissed her forehead and thanked God for her safety, then swiftly returned to the kitchen and began chopping vegetables and seasoning pork chops, because Mr. Paxton was always hungry as soon as he got home.

As she plucked through her spice cabinet for her husband’s favorite flavors, she thought about Mariane, who she had not yet properly grieved because her husband had scoffed and said, “maybe we’ll get a better neighbor now,” when she had tried to confide in him. She met Mariane when she and Mr. Paxton moved in a few years back as newlyweds. The first thing Mariane had said to her was that she looked sixteen years old, which had offended Sarah, who was twenty-two at the time. Sarah would smile and nod to Mariane when she walked down her driveway and they would exchange pleasantries when they fetched their mail, but Sarah made no plans to befriend the woman. It wasn’t until Mrs. Paxton was expecting her daughter that she began to grow closer to Mariane, who sensed the pregnancy before anybody else. Sarah told her before she told Mr. Paxton.

Much like the child, Sarah Paxton spent time with Mariane in her front yard, gossiping about neighborhood happenings, talking about cake recipes, and occasionally dabbling in political talk about the Soviets or Ronald Reagan. Mid-way into her pregnancy, Sarah noticed the pendant on Mariane’s neck and asked her, “Do you go to church around here?”

Mariane had shaken her head and gazed into her yard. “Sunday mornings, I sit here with my bible. I watch the kids come out with their little bow ties and sundresses, and their moms all dolled up with their lipstick and curled hair. And the dads, they’re always just trying to corral all of them into the car,” she chuckled. “But then it’s quiet for a while, and I read my bible and I look at the flowers until everyone comes back. That’s my church.”

Just then, Mrs. Paxton was pulled from her memories because her husband had slammed the front door. Sarah's muscles stiffened and her breath become more and more shallow in sync with his approaching footsteps. She anxiously glanced at the oven timer, which still had eleven minutes left on it.

***

It was on the news the next evening. At first, the neighbors heard bits and pieces of it as they helped their children with their math homework and boiled pasta for spaghetti dinner and put their feet up while reading the paper, but once they realized what was being spoken they were drawn to their televisions, standing stone faced in their cozy dens like statues that had looked at Medusa the wrong way. A body, found in the woods set behind a tight knit neighborhood in a town nobody had heard of. A woman, estimated to be “mid to late twenties”- certainly not Mariane Hollis, as the panicked kids thought, but a girl without a name, a Jane Doe. Foul play suspected. Anyone with information is instructed to call the Bellsworth police department. Vigilance is important, they said. Lock your doors. Don’t be out past dark if you can help it. Don’t let your children out to play.

The Bellsworth police department needed all of their detectives cooperating in this mysterious case, which is why it was so noticeable that one of their best officers was absent. “Where the hell is Gifford?” they muttered, first in annoyance that after his vacation, he had not turned up for work a second day in a row, and then in concern that he had not shown up again for a third, and was unreachable by telephone. Upon entering his house they discovered that he had been shot in the chest twice and had been dead for about as long as Jane Doe had.

The night they found the second body-third, if you count Mariane-the marigold lover’s mother and father sat her down in the den, lowering the volume of her cartoon, offering her a glass of milk.

“Can I add chocolate, please?” asked the girl, knowing that she usually had to have plain milk after dinner, but sensing that she had some leverage in this situation.

“Well,” said her mother, glancing at her father, “I don’t see why not.” Her father nodded and retrieved the chocolate syrup from the cupboard, and positioned it over his daughter’s glass.

“Tell me when,” he said, winking.

The parents waited an awkward few moments to begin their conversation, which was one they never expected to have with their seven year old. The child gleefully stirred her milk for minutes and the sound of the spoon clinking against the glass began to give her mom a headache.

“Sweetie,” her mom began, “I know you’ve noticed some things have been a little different. You saw something really scary the other day and you did such a good job telling someone.”

“I wish it’d been us,” her dad added under his breath, which elicited a sharp glance from her mother. He raised his hands in apology and resignation, as he had already argued with his wife earlier and made his thoughts known. They’ve gotta think we’re bad parents, he had said. Every other kid ran home, but ours ran to Sarah Paxton?

“You did a good job,” her mother repeated. “But the police might need your help a little more. The person you saw… she wasn’t Miss Mariane. She was much younger, and nobody knows her name. But what happened to her… it's not right, and a bad guy did it to her. Does that make sense?”

The girl nodded, even though it didn’t. She had seen animals on the side of highways, unfortunate little piles of flattened fur that had misjudged when it was safe to cross. But this person, this ‘Not Mariane’ girl, had not tried to cross the road at the wrong moment.

“The good guys, though, need help.” Her mom took her daughter’s hand and squeezed it. “Your help. You saw the young lady that was hurt by a bad guy. They said anything you remember might be helpful. Do you think you can do that, talk to the good guys about what you remember?”

The child thought about Miss Mariane and her marigolds just then. She had spent more time in her yard than any of the other kids, and Miss Mariane had always told her stories about her life, offered her iced tea with lemon wedges, and even let her fill a green canister with water and carefully pour it over the flower bed. You’re keeping them alive, Miss Mariane had told her.

“I’ll do it,” she said confidently. “I want to help the lady.”

***

They went to the station the next day and the detectives asked questions that helped the child remember. “The other kids said you were the one who first thought the woman in the woods was Miss Hollis. Why did you think it was her?” an officer with a mustache asked.

The girl squirmed but responded, “Her dress and necklace.”

The officer scribbled something on his notepad. “Did Miss Hollis have something similar?”

The child remembered the day Miss Mariane had taken a cardboard box of old clothes from inside the house and showed them to her. One by one, she pulled out the items, each of which had a story. She began to laugh happily when she saw the yellow dress. “Oh, this was my favorite,” she said, holding it up to her shoulders and spinning around like a ballerina in love, as if her achy joints suddenly did not bother her. The dress reminded the girl of the marigolds, which is why she remembered it so well.

“You’re sure the person you saw was wearing the dress that Miss Hollis showed you?” asked the mustache, tapping his pen on the table rhythmically.

The girl said that she was, and that she recognized the necklace because Mariane wore it every day. It was a gold cross on a silver chain, which the child thought was silly. Mariane had agreed that it was, in fact, silly, but explained that the original chain had been broken by someone she used to know, and rather than buy a new one she used a chain from a different necklace.

The detectives became more interested in Mariane, which confused the child since the lady in the woods was somebody else. They asked if she ever talked about her friends, or had any visitors to the house, or if there were any particular places she liked to visit.

“You’re overwhelming her,” her mother interjected when she saw that her daughter was beginning to tear up.

“She spent a lot of time with Mariane,” her father added, “She misses her. Haven’t you gotten enough?”

Although the detectives felt that they did need more, the marigold lover’s parents insisted that it was time she go home, but agreed to bring her back to the precinct the next morning to continue questioning. They brought their daughter home, took her to the Mexican restaurant in town which was her favorite, and let her choose a film for the three of them to watch together. That night, after both of her parents tucked her into bed, the girl laid silently and remembered one of the last times she had seen Miss Mariane.

The child had been sitting on Mariane’s porch, sipping an iced tea and trying to perfect her drawing of a marigold when a young lady with a green scarf and a cascade of chestnut hair walked into Mariane’s yard. “Oh, sweetie,” Miss Mariane said, dropping her knitting needles, “The sight of you.” The two women, one old and one young, seemed to share a silent language, as they embraced each other in perfect unison. Instinctively, Mariane unraveled the scarf from this lady’s neck, and sighed. “Not again.”

The younger woman sniffled. “It’s not as bad as it looks. He came back later with flowers, and he made dinner for us both, even bought a nice bottle of merlot. And he’s taking me on a little trip, somewhere nice, romantic.” Noticing the old lady’s pursed lips she said, “I don’t have anywhere else to go, Mariane. I don’t. You know that.”

Mariane stiffened. “You can’t stay. You know that.”

The woman shook her head. “I think it might really be different this time. I think I just have to change my perspective and it’ll be different. That’s actually what I came here to tell you.”

“It’s not different til they’re dead.” Both Mariane and the younger lady seemed to have forgotten about the child on the porch, who was no longer absorbed in determining the best way to hold a pencil so that she had the best control over the petals, but eavesdropping on a conversation that seemed to be uttered in Greek.

The child had watched silently as Mariane removed the necklace from her own neck and gingerly swept the woman's hair from her shoulders and clasped the chain around her neck instead. “May He protect you,” Mariane murmured, as if she were not talking to either the child or the young lady, and then told the woman to hold tight for a moment as she slipped back into her house. Moments later she returned with the yellow dress and told the lady, “This is what I wore on my first day away. I wore it before and I wore it after. I wore it when I was free, happy. I want you to have it.”

After some fruitless objections, the woman left with her gifts, and the child popped up from her cove on the floor of the porch saying, “I need a new pencil.”

Mariane jumped and then chuckled, “Oh, sweet pea, I forgot you were here. I was just talking to an old friend. She used to like my garden, too, just like you. I’ll go find some pencils for you to work with.”

Mariane walked into her house, searching for pencils and thinking about what she had said to her young friend. It’s not different til they’re dead. She thought about just how true that had been for her. She thought about Sarah from next door, whose eyes were growing hollower, visits growing quieter, footsteps growing more delicate, opinions growing more timid. When Mariane inquired about her changing behavior, Sarah had jokingly replied, can’t sleep with this one around, rolling her tired eyes and gesturing to her gurgling baby, but Mariane knew. She thought about the woman with the green scarf, walking back into her shackles with her marigold colored dress that may never be worn again and a necklace upon her neck that, despite Mariane’s fiercest prayers, would not serve as armor against vile tongues and clenched fists.

Then she thought about the child, and what she had just told her about the woman in the yard. She used to like my garden… just like you. She halted in the doorway, clinging to a handful of pencils, and took a look at the pair of yellow plaits, the careful little hands, the baby doll resting in the chair while the child herself was splayed out on the floor, examining a flower that she had gingerly plucked from the garden. She had promised that after she was finished using it as her model, she was going to give it to her mother and keep it in a glass full of water in their kitchen. Sensing her presence, the marigold lover turned to Mariane and grinned, overflowing with pure elation at the amount of pencils Mariane had found, and in that moment Mariane knew exactly what she had to do. That night, she read her bible and prayed for the last time, resigning to asking forgiveness rather than permission.

***

After the child had relayed what she should recall of these moments to the detectives the next day, they began to put it together. The coroner had concluded that the lady in the woods showed signs of ongoing abuse- bruises in various stages of healing, unhealed rib fractures, even hints pointing toward malnourishment. Her cause of death was asphysixation and the manner of death was murder. Her face was unrecognizable because of the swelling and discoloration, but dental records proved she was the girl that had been dating Michael Gifford, the dead police officer, for several years. Her parents had both died tragically when she was in high school, and her closest living relative was an uncle across the country who was in a facility for schizophrenia.

The officers did not want to believe it, so they didn’t. Gifford would never, they said, it must’ve been someone else, even as the evidence piled up against him and the case reluctantly closed. The news channels were not so loyal. Headlines screamed, “COP KILLS GIRLFRIEND, WAS ABUSIVE, SOURCES SAY.” The neighbors watched, the men dropping their jaws in disbelief while the women shook their heads, shocked, but not surprised. The question remained, however: who killed Michael Gifford?

The coroner had confirmed that it was not a suicide and that the killer was standing about three feet from him. The bullets went straight through his body and out the other side, but it appeared his assailant had collected them. There was no evidence in Gifford’s murder, only circumstantial speculation, which floated about in whispers. It could have been somebody he’d arrested, people said. Or someone from before he’d moved to this small town, someone from the city. Some said it was obviously connected to his abused and slain girlfriend-maybe a past lover or old teacher or someone that had cared for her more than he had.

Even though Mariane Hollis fit this particular description and was in possession of a firearm, which simply sat in a safe collecting dust, she was not on the list of suspects. Her alibi was a heart attack and she was a sweet and caring old woman who was assuredly not capable of shooting a man point blank.

***

Spring turned to summer, and the town began to carry on. The marigold lover had taken it upon herself to keep up with Mariane’s yard, which nobody objected to because this neighborhood, these kids, and this child in particular had been the closest thing Mariane had to next of kin. The house had been emptied and her belongings had been auctioned off to strangers, because the neighbors did not feel quite right taking them. The marigolds remained, though, and the child kept them alive. It was collectively agreed that should a family move into the home, they would simply have no choice but to accept the gardener’s authority over the front yard. She planted more marigolds, and a variety of other flowers- carnations, daisies, azaleas, daffodils, magnolias, and even a patch of sunflowers, which Miss Mariane had kept in her garden as a child. They look at the sun when they need light, Mariane had told the girl, but when the sun isn’t there they look at each other instead. Isn’t that nice?

Despite the child’s ongoing presence, the yard was not the same without Mariane. It was haunted, not by her ghost as the child longed for, but by her utter goneness. Some days, the child went hours in Mariane’s yard without speaking to anybody. Mrs. Paxton usually acknowledged the child, and sometimes she even sat with her and let the girl see a real baby, which she treated with as much care as she did the marigolds and her doll. However, the girl had not heard Mrs. Paxton laugh or ramble or think aloud since before Miss Mariane had died. One day, the girl called over to Mrs. Paxton to show her a daffodil that had sprouted white while the rest were yellow. Mrs. Paxton hung her head as she trudged over, and when she lifted her chin ever so slightly, the little girl saw that the skin around her eye was swollen and had a purplish tint to it. Her hair was knotted and she was wearing a faded plaid flannel even though it was mid July. The girl suddenly felt shy, as if she didn’t know this ghost of a woman standing before her.

“That’s nice, honey,” Mrs. Paxton said absently when the child gestured toward the flower, and then she was gone, leaving behind only an air of anxiety.

Hours later, still feeling mildly unsettled, the marigold lover was about to head home for dinner when Mr. Paxton pulled into his driveway and walked toward the girl. Her little fists tightened around the gloves she was carrying, and she was acutely aware of the streaks of dirt across her jeans and her face. Mr. Paxton smiled warmly, but the girl shivered as he knelt to the ground to inspect the flowers.

“They’re looking quite good,” he said approvingly. “I’m impressed. You’re quite the little botanist. Any chance you would be willing to share a couple with me? I’ll give you a dollar.”

The child scrunched her nose and glanced at her flowers. She forgot about dinner at home because she suddenly was no longer hungry. “I don’t know…” she said reluctantly, clutching the gloves even tighter. She turned toward the porch, as if she could meet Mariane’s eyes, but only found her empty chair, which sat eerily still.

“They’re for Sarah,” he continued, as if the child had agreed with him. “We’ve gotten into some arguments lately. I’m sure your parents do that sometimes. It’s normal, with husbands and wives. But she’s upset, and I think I better give her something pretty.”

The girl remained silent, thinking about how Mrs. Paxton hadn’t seemed to care about her garden when she had seen her earlier.

“What do you say? It would make her quite happy, I think.” He began to examine the flowers more carefully, and flashed the child another smile.

“I guess that’s fine,” the girl said finally, and without missing a beat Mr. Paxton began ripping the flowers from the soil so violently that she flinched, and she could do nothing other than hope that he didn’t ruin adjacent flowers in the process of constructing his bouquet.

“I hope she likes them,” the girl added, as she began walking back toward her own house, not caring about the promised dollar. In this moment, she missed Miss Mariane more than she had in quite some time, the grief striking her heart in a manner that shocked her and almost prompted her to wilt like a dying flower onto the curb before heading into her house. She wished Miss Mariane had been there to sternly tell Mr. Paxton that this was her garden, not his. I wrecked her garden, the girl thought, I bet she’s so mad at me, up in Heaven. I have to fix it tomorrow.

Picking up her pace rather than sitting down, she tried to shake this uneasy feeling. After all, Mr. Paxton had always been nice to her, and maybe the flowers really would make his wife happy. She looked like she needed to cheer up. Mariane always liked Mrs. Paxton, the girl decided, burying her anxiety like she did the seeds of her flowers, it’s what she would have wanted. She walked into her house, the steam from the kitchen and the smell of tomato sauce and meatballs comforting her like a hug. As she went to help her mother set silverware on the table, the dead marigold, the model for her drawing, still sitting in the glass of water on the kitchen counter, caught her eye.

***

The night she had died, Mariane returned home knowing that it was going to happen. She’d had a heart attack once before, years ago, and her condition was under control so long as she took her medicine, ate well, and avoided stressful situations. She knew what the pain up her left arm meant, and knew that it could take minutes or hours. She returned the gun to its safe, but not before running it back and forth beneath the couch, which she had not cleaned in months. She sank into her recliner and turned the television on to Jeopardy, which she watched every evening, and although her home phone was just steps away, she did not attempt to call for help. Decades ago, she had watched her husband sit in a similar position, clutching his chest with one hand while the other quivered outstretched toward Mariane, his mouth lazily agape as he tried to utter a plea for help. Quickly, Mariane had reached for the phone but instead of picking it up and dialing, she rested her hand there, watching wide eyed as he trembled and gasped until he was no longer trembling or gasping.

In her final moments, though, she had not seen her husband. She saw the marigold lover and the woman with her yellow dress and cross necklace. She saw them hand in hand, the young woman living in her house alone, working in town as a teacher or a waitress- maybe even going to night school. She saw Mrs. Paxton drinking iced tea with the two other girls, bouncing her baby on a knee while she sat on the porch, watching the gardener and smiling because the woman in the yellow dress had poured her heart out to her with a grace and wisdom that Mariane herself was never able to articulate, inspiring Mrs. Paxton to free herself and her daughter. She saw the child continuing to care for the marigolds and keeping them alive, growing up with the seasons until she one day carried a bouquet of marigolds down an aisle to a man that truly loved her, while Mrs. Paxton and the woman in the yellow dress watched and beamed. At all of this, she smiled between involuntary gasps and yelps, shut her eyes, and waited.