Late For The Party--Chapter One

by Gary Cottle

     At forty-one, no one had ever told me they loved me, not in a romantic sense at least. Sure I had heard my mother say it, various other relatives, friends, but no boyfriend had ever looked at me and said, “Gary, I love you.” Most of the time I tried to believe that I was, in fact, lovable. I sometimes told myself I was merely unlucky in finding the right guy, but that wasn’t really true.

     It’s probably fair to say I did everything I could to make sure there was no love in my life. I steered away from making those connections that might lead in that direction, for I was, and am, terribly shy, morbidly shy. In fact the word “shy” just isn’t serious enough to connote my intense feelings of awkwardness, and my propensity to avoid meeting new people. Full on social phobia is the thing that kept me from having what others might term a “real life.” But I had managed to make do despite my affliction. I took care of the house I shared with my father--cooked, cleaned, mowed the grass. I had my books. I rented DVDs regularly from Blockbuster. I had my writing. And I had my internet friends. I was grateful for my quiet little life, and at forty-one, I was more happy, more satisfied than I had ever been. I had spent my youth in a state of suicidal depression. Psychotropic drugs, appointments with psychiatrists, and vacations in hospitals were the mainstays of my twenties, but I had survived by settling into an existence that was tailored down to fit my limitations.

     However, self-doubt, regret and loneliness were always there just below the monastic simplicity. For several years I had lived in relative contentment and peace, but the truce I had made with the demons of my younger self was fragile, and I knew from the beginning that this period of muted comfort would be short-lived.

     May 14, 2007 was the day I was told my father was going to die. The news was very grim, but I was, more or less, prepared for it. It was almost a relief to look at the situation directly and admit the obvious. The doctors had been telling me Dad would eventually return to our home in Fayetteville, West Virginia. They pretended he was going to get better, and for a while, I pretended to believe them. My father had been sick for years. He had his first heart attack in January of 1986, and there had been quite a number of close calls after that, but he had always managed to hang on and bounce back. However, he turned a corner the summer before he died. He became very tired. He stopped eating. He lost interest in nearly everything. He didn’t want to talk on the phone. He didn’t want to see friends or family. He stopped smiling. He lost nearly all traces of his legendary sense of humor.

     For quite a few months, I assumed he was depressed, and I thought the lack of exercise and lack of proper nutrition was making him listless. But sometime after the new year, the truth began to settle in. I realized that part of him was already gone, and I knew he wasn’t going to snap out of it. Right there in front of me, my dad was slowly packing it in. He spent most of his time sitting on the sofa staring blankly at the television, and he stopped looking at me or saying anything when I walked by him. When I spoke to him, his expression would remain blank and I generally got monosyllabic responses. His life was over. We were just waiting for his heart to stop.

     When I got home from the hospital on May 14, I was thankful our small ranch house was quiet and still. Even though I was alone in the house, I retreated to my room. It had been my refuge for seven years, and I needed to feel I was in my safe place so I could let the news sink in. I had seen one of my father’s doctors while at the hospital, and he had confirmed my father’s prognosis was poor. Dad was going to die, maybe in a matter of days, perhaps hours. I turned the air conditioner on in the window above my bed and let the chilly air wash over me and the mechanical buzz drown out all distractions. For a long while I thought of nothing other than the fact my father was never coming home again and that everything was about to change.

     Eventually I decided I was hungry and ate a modest dinner, and while eating, a feeling of urgency came to me. I had to do something. I had to finish a certain project before I could face what was about to happen to Dad. I needed to plant my vegetable garden. It was already getting late, and it would soon be dark, but I pressed ahead. I changed into my work clothes, locked the front door and went out the back.

     Planting a vegetable garden had become a yearly ritual. The idea first struck me soon after we moved into our house on Maple Avenue back in 2000. There was enough space in the backyard, and I had by then already developed an interest in gardening. Dad discouraged me as he usually did. He warned that the soil wasn’t rich enough. He said that the backyard was probably too rocky. He claimed that simply planting a garden would be backbreaking work, and then I would have to go to the trouble of watering and weeding it all summer. He was always like this. Any time I expressed an interest in something new, Dad would do his best to hold me back, always, from the time I was a small child.

     I don’t think he meant to crush my spirit. I think he was truly afraid I would be disappointed or hurt. He was one of those people who was always keenly aware of the pitfalls. He was a bit of a Chicken Little. Life had burned him a few times, and I guess he wanted to spare me, but hearing all those admonishments--admonishments that seemed to be coupled with a lack of belief in my abilities--for decades was disheartening. Even though I tried to resist his negativity, a large portion of his pessimism seeped in, and on top of that, my self-esteem was left in tatters. I became a reticent, reluctant person. My gut instincts resembled that of Macon Leary’s, the accidental tourist, and like Macon, I learned the hard way that you will end up getting hurt anyway even if you’re careful not to take risks. There is a price to be paid for shunning the various calls to adventure that come your way. If you play the game, you may lose, but you sure can’t win by sitting it out.

     Even though I grew up to be way too cautious and reluctant, by the time the ambition to plant a vegetable garden came over me, I had determined that I could ignore Dad’s dour attitude if I wanted--sometimes anyway, if I gave it everything I could--so I went ahead and tried my hand at raising a vegetable garden the summer we moved into our little ranch house on Maple Avenue. I was not in the best of health even though I was still a fairly young man then, but I wasn’t planning on plowing up forty acres. The lower part of the backyard was often soggy and wet, and several large shade trees down there blocked the sun. There was a small, one-car garage on one side of the lot, and the gas line went straight up the middle of the backyard. That left me with a 15x15 foot plot to work with. My vegetable garden would be about as big as a modest sized living room or a good sized bedroom. It was a manageable project, and I made a go of it. I grew several varieties of heirloom tomatoes--including Mr. Stripes--bell peppers, banana peppers, crookneck squash, a couple of rows of Silver Queen corn and Blue Lake green beans. I even grew a few cantaloupes and watermelons.

     The vegetable garden was a success from the start. My efforts, just as my efforts to raise flowers, gave me a tremendous sense of accomplishment, and this was something that had been lacking in my life. The vegetables and the beautiful flowers provided a sense of optimism. I came to know, in a deep and real sense, certain things did pay off if you planned ahead and worked steadily and faithfully toward your goal. It was a marvelous renunciation of an abiding odious belief that I didn’t have it in me to achieve anything worthwhile.

     I regularly spent hours working in the yard during the summer months. The work made my body stronger and I felt more fit than I had in my whole life. And because I was working with plants and using my muscles, I felt alive and part of nature. I learned to rejoice in feeling exhausted. I did what I had to do. Then I slumped lazily onto my garden bench which sat on a small porch along the side of the garage. I could survey the back yard while sitting on the bench, smell the freshly cut grass, look at the old maple trees, watch birds. And my vegetable garden was right there in front of me. The summer air was always warm and humid. It covered me like a blanket. I could hear lawn mowers in the distance buzzing, dogs barking, and the wisps of conversations coming from neighbors’ kitchens. Everything seemed right with the world when I sat there on that bench and recovered from my toils.

     By the first of July, I would have green tomatoes large enough to fry, a delicious treat, and then the tomatoes would ripen and other things would be ready to harvest and eat. Having fresh vegetables daily for several weeks in summer was like a celebration, and it just so happened that Dad enjoyed the vegetables more than I did. He was a West Virginia country boy, and back in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s, back when he was young, almost everybody who lived in the country grew vegetables. Grocery stores were much smaller back then, and most people were poor and they didn’t have the money to buy a lot of stuff from the store anyway, so of course they grew many of their own vegetables. Dad had grown accustomed to farm fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, green onions… So he missed them, and when I started bringing in goodies from our backyard, it was like I had restored a cherished part of his past he thought was gone for good. He would often go out into the garden and check on the progress of various individual vegetables, and he would beam with appreciation when it was time to pick them and eat them. Much to my surprise, I had managed to do something, at long last, that made my father proud of me.

     Everything was all set the evening of May 14, 2007. I had already scrapped away the sod and loosened the soil with a maddock that had been part of my father’s tool collection since I was a child. This was the backbreaking work my father told me about. But each year I managed to get it done. I had already mixed in 10-10-10 fertilizer and several bags of humus. And a couple of days prior, I had a neighbor take me to Southern States and a couple of local nurseries so I could buy seeds and seedlings. Now I had to dig the holes using my small spade and drop my babies into place. This meant I had to crawl along on my knees for a few hours, a task not quite as labor intensive as the sod removal with the maddock, but it wasn’t easy, and I was already tired. But I went on with it. I worked without taking any breaks. The sun soon went down and the only light I had came from the sconce by the backdoor, but I kept at it. When I was finished, I was exhausted, my knees ached, and I was covered in dirt. But my garden was planted. I was glad I had managed to get that chore done, but I was also sad. I was consciously aware of the fact that this would be the last time I would plant a vegetable garden at our house on Maple Avenue. In a sense, I came of age in that house even though I hadn’t moved into it until I was in my thirties. While living there, I found out that I was capable, I could do things, at least certain things, and I felt useful for the first time in my life. But my time there was about to end, and I was all too aware of this.

     It was about eleven o’clock when I limped back into the house. I was thirsty, I needed to pee, and of course I needed to shower. But I immediately noticed that the answering machine was flashing in the darkened living room. I hit play and heard someone who identify herself as my father’s nurse ask me to call her back as soon as possible. So I picked up the receiver, punched in the number and asked to speak to the woman who had called me. When she came on the line, she informed me that my father was having difficulty breathing and that I needed to return to the hospital at once.