“When we bought this cottage, 35 years ago, I never expected to spend time gardening. All that digging and mucking about was Hildy’s job. Always getting her hands dirty, making a mess. See that ole stump down there, near the path. Yeah, that was Hildy’s first experiment, some skinny maple that she’d recovered from those woods. She said it needed room to grow. Heh, well it sure did grow. Grew so big that when we had that storm in’75, the whole shebang came crashing down onto the back porch. She was a pistol.
“Man that girl always had ideas. Look at that boat launch, if you can call it that. She had me build that in the summer of ’83. Some fool idea of hers that we would have a canoe or a raft or if there were grandchildren about, they could go diving off it. Spent the whole summer up to my ass in muddy water, for what? Nothing. Damn Hildy went and decided that the lake was fine to look at but too dangerous to be in. Some fool up Filmore way went and drown himself. They never found the body either. So, all that work went to waste. Damn that girl.
“When I finally said goodbye to the steel plant, or rather they said “don’t let the door hit you in the ass,” we settled up here, in our little getaway, and I’ll be honest with ya, the first two years were sweet. It was like we were newlyweds. Hildy gave up her crafty concoctions and settled on just being a person for a change, instead of a master chef (heh) or a gardener (double heh) and I was finally starting to think that this was the best idea she’d ever had. Even those first two winters, as harsh as they were, didn’t dampen our spirits.
“In ’86 she turned on me. I don’t know if was the ‘change of life’ or the town women she was hanging out with, but she reared on me like an angry bear. She started accusing me of suffocating her, keeping her away from her friends and her children. She was a crazy woman. I got the doc to get some of those hormones for her, thinking she’d be back to her sweet self, but she just got worse. I ain’t ashamed to say it, but I got damned depressed, sitting up here alone with that witch. And that witch ruled me for five years.
“That night I’d been drinking. I’d been drinking a lot. I’m telling you now, since my time is almost up. But she came home after an evening with “the girls” and she started in on me. Calling me worthless and using words that I didn’t even know my Hildy knew. Like I said, I was drunk and depressed and well, I just snapped. I grabbed the nearest thing, the fireplace poker and I brained that witch until she shut her foul mouth. I immediately knew what I’d done, I knew I’d killed her. But in my heart, I swear to this day, I feel like I released my sweet Hildy from the witch she’d become. I buried my wife out back, told family, police and those crazy women friends of hers that she’d drown.
“And what did those old bitties do but bring me a damn apple tree. What the hell did I want another damn tree for, the forest is full of them. But they were all sympathetic (and scheming after the new widower, I’d bet) and they said that they thought the tree would be a nice memorial to Hildy, for how much she loved gardening. Well, I thanked the old bats and you know what I did with that tree, I planted that thing right out back, right over the spot where I buried that witch and I’ll tell you them apples are the sweetest apples in the entire county.
“Hey, Hildy, looks like you finally grew something right!”
***
She laid a hand gently on her father’s arm as he rocked on the porch swing. She looked where he looked, out past the old boat launch into the gentle ripples of the lake. “You want me to get the afghan for him?” her husband asked, climbing the porch steps. She smiled, “yeah, it’s getting chilly.”
“You think he’s happy up here?”
“Definitely, he’s been chattering for about an hour now. I haven’t seen him this animated since long before the stroke. I can’t really understand him, though,” she whispered, looking up at him.
He reached for the screen door. “Oh, I picked a bunch of apples from that tree out back, thought you could make one of your famous pies.”
“That would be perfect.” She smiled and turned back to the lake.