My girlfriend is late. She said she’d be here by noon. It’s already 2:30. Lately, she’s been erratic, touchy. In May, she went to Cancun with her family and came back different. In the last three months, I’ve become the source of every problem in the world: her stubbed toe, her failed career, the uneaten pasta in the refrigerator. She has started smoking cigarettes. I don’t know what happened in Mexico. I’m starting to hate Mexico.
She spends too much time away from our apartment, nights in Berkeley, coming home hungover and smirking. Last night, she stayed in Russian Hill, babysitting a dog named Basho. She didn’t tell me why.
It’s her garden, but I call it “our garden.” She signed up on a waitlist for a plot at this community garden, and after seven years, someone died, and she got one. The garden plot is about 4 feet by 8 feet but feels smaller. It feels like it’s shrinking.
She was excited about the garden at first. Now, not so much. She used to be excited about a lot of things. Now those things make her angry. I tell myself it’s a phase. I tell myself she’ll snap out of it. I tell myself that I’m not the cause of every disappointment.
I like the garden. I agree to water it and take care of it on the days she “can’t make it.” It takes me about 20 minutes to drive here and hours to properly tend to it. My life is falling apart, and I don’t have time for the garden. But I want to be there for her. I want to be supportive. I want to make it work. That’s what I keep telling myself.
I fill a three-gallon plastic jug on a small table at one corner of our plot. This is my homemade gravity irrigation system. Irrigation tube runs from a nozzle at the bottom, splitting in two directions, and snakes around the garden feeding water to drip nozzles.
“Nice system,” an elderly woman says, surprising me. She’s looking at the irrigation system. I didn’t notice her approach.
“Thanks,” I say. “It took some work.”
She nods, then moves closer to her plot, looking at my girlfriend’s plants with detached interest. I can’t tell if she’s actually interested or just being polite.
“I think my daughter would like that,” she says. “She’s always talking about conserving water.”
“It’s pretty simple,” I say. “Just some tubes, epoxy, and a jug.”
She nods again. We stand there for a moment. The sounds of the playground drift in: kids yelling, the shouts and sneaker screeches from the basketball court. I look at my watch. It’s getting too late. A familiar knot of worry tightens in my stomach.
“Well,” I say, “I should finish up here.”
“Yeah, me too,” she says. “Good talking to you.”
“Yeah,” I say. “You too.”
She turns and walks back to her garden plot. I go back to watering. I try to focus on the plants, on the feel of the hose in my hand, on the way the water sparkles in the sunlight. But my mind keeps drifting back to my girlfriend, to the way things used to be, to the way they are now. I wonder where she is, what she’s doing, and why she isn’t here with me.
I finish up the watering and put the hose away. I look around the garden one last time, taking in the flowers, the vegetables, the trees. I test the spigot again to be sure I’ve turned off the hose. I try to remind myself why I’m doing this, why it matters. But all I can think about is her, and the way things are falling apart.
I water the dahlias some more. It’s better to water slowly so it soaks in. Otherwise, you’re just wetting the surface. You have to get the water down into the roots, especially here where the sun dries the dirt so quickly.
I pull out my phone and look at it. 3 p.m.
I stare at it for a minute, thinking it might ring. Nothing. I put it back in my pocket. I cut some brown leaves off of the grapevine.
As the shadows lengthen, I gather my things and start to leave. I look at the plot one last time, taking in the flowers, the vegetables, the trees. I feel a strange sense of calm, a sense that, despite everything, the garden will go on. The plants will grow, the flowers will bloom, the vegetables will ripen.
I walk to the car, my knees aching with every step. I drive home in silence, thinking about my girlfriend, thinking about the garden, thinking about the way things used to be and the way they are now. I wonder if things will ever get back to normal. I wondered if we will ever laugh again.
When I get home, the apartment is dark. I turn on the lights and sit down on the floor. I pull out my phone and check it. Nothing. I think about calling her, but I don’t. Instead, I sit there, listening to the silence, feeling the weight of everything pressing down on me.
I look around the apartment, at the piles of clothes, the receipts, the computer cables, and the bags on the floor. I think about the garden, about the plants, about the water dripping from the irrigation system. I think about the way things grow, the way they change, the way they survive.
And I wait.