Milkweed grows all behind my mother-in-law’s house. As I grew up I thought the name sounded lovely—a plant grown from milk, poured in the shape of a pitcher. But she hates the stuff. Always bursting open and seeding her beds of roses and tulips.
When I’m at her house I go for walks, down a small path among pines, along the ditch dug for drainage, and about a mile farther, to where the woods open up into a field. There I can walk or lie in the sun—if the bugs aren’t too bad—run my hands through the grass, take in the golden light. I always clean my body of ticks before I get back to the house, and if Eve knew I went all the way back there she’d have a conniption. As it is, she asks, “Did you come here to go for walks, or to see me?”
I want to say, To go for walks, but really I soothe her softly and we spend the rest of the day in cool darkness, playing cribbage and watching Hallmark movies. She keeps all of the blinds shut, all of the time, all the windows and doors cranked tightly down, so no light gets in. Light makes heat, she says. And yes, it is about five degrees cooler inside.
When I come in, back from my walk, it’s like stepping into airconditioning, although she’d never pay for air-conditioning, not this frugal Yankee. She’d rather live in a house as dark as a coffin. So in the field I feel free, coming home covered in dust and pollen and milkweed spores.
One day in the distance I saw something, a movement.
At first I thought it was an animal—maybe a big cat? Then I looked closer, came closer. I didn’t have any fear, for some reason, although my heart beat faster. I walked along my path, peering down crossed deer trails for any sign of movement.
Maybe it was just a deer, browsing here in the sunlit morning, beating another faint trail through grass. My heart calmed, and then I saw her, a barefoot girl in an eyelet dress, off towards the edge of pine. I’d never seen another girl—no, another person—here before.
“Hello?” I called.
She didn’t answer, disappeared, running away into the fallen needles. I said something to my mother-in-law when I got back.
“I saw a child back in the woods. Does one of the neighbors have a daughter?”
Her grey head shook a no, doubtfully, but she’s becoming forgetful.
“She seemed too young to be out by herself. Maybe someone’s grandchild?”
That didn’t seem right either. I thought through the neighbors. No one’s the right age. Then I poured myself a drink and forgot about it.
The next day, there she was again.
This time she let me closer.
“Hello, little one,” I called.
Her face was grubby and it looked like she’d been crying.
“Can I help you find someone?” I asked, but she didn’t answer.
As I came closer, I stopped. She looked just like me. Clearly, I mean not like me now, with the extra twenty pounds around my ass I’m always trying to lose, acne scarring my face, my dulled hair. Me as I used to look.
It was like looking at a photograph of the past.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said and held out my hand.
That was too much for her, and again she ran, turning tail. Her bare feet flashed white before she disappeared.
“I saw that girl again,” I said when I got back.
“What girl?” my mother-in-law answered.
“That child I told you about yesterday.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. She gets angry when I remind her she’s forgetting.
“Never mind,” I said. “Cribbage?”
Next day I was ready. I walked quietly, stealthy. I wore my sandals. I came to the edge of the grass, drenched in golden light, so bright it almost hurt my eyes. With each silent step I stopped, carefully looking along each faint trace left by deer, in either direction towards forest.
Then I came to the flowers. If she’s really anything like me, I thought—she’ll want flowers. But the only ones I loved were milkweed with their slender stalks, pods opening, and billowing, fecund ova. I picked a bouquet of weeds, choosing only the prettiest, arraying them, and she was the one that surprised me as I focused, coming behind me and brushing my waist with fingertips. I held out the bouquet and she laughed as she took it. together we pulled pods apart, then blew dandelion fluff until it billowed against blue sky. I realized it was getting late.
“Can I take you back to your mom?” I asked.
She distended her lip, pouting.
“Let me help you, please,” I said.
She got up from where we sat, hugging our knees against ourselves, and began to walk, then run, back to the forest.
“Wait,” I said. “Wait.”
She stopped and turned.
“Here.” I held out the last blossom of milkweed, closed still, whole, and she took it, wrapped both fists around its milky stalk. Then she vanished into shadow, lifting each foot as delicate as a pony. When I came into the darkened house, late, confused, I mixed myself a drink.
I examined my own face in the mirror for a long time. The lines in my face, the marks of age. Did the girl in the woods look like me, or just my idea of myself? I looked like her, and I didn’t.
In the hall, beside the mirror, hung a picture of Eve, looking more like the girl than I did. The film blurred by time. She held a flower out to the camera. An uncharacteristic act of ego for her to have hung it there, beside a photo collage of her nephews on the other side, her face younger, her hair a cropped helmet. They were all grown now. Plumbers.
Then I looked at my mother-in-law, there, in her chair. Both of us forgetting who we once were.
I went to the couch. Eve was eating soup from a TV tray, watching the news.
“How was your walk?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said.
“Oh well,” she said. She said it even when nothing was wrong. Then her deep intake of breath, an exhale through the teeth, a pulling down of the lower corners of her mouth.
I saw the vase on her end table. Inside, a single stalk of milkweed, the seedpod closed tight as a fist.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked. “Where?”
She looked at it, eyes hazed by age.
“I don’t remember,” she said. “I don’t remember.”
