The Housing Bubble

Mrs. Palmer’s Roses

Back in another lifetime, I lived in a small, spare, glass and wood cottage on a private beach on Southern California’s Gold coast. The trophy wife of a mildly psychotic physician, my horticultural yearnings were sublimated into the sparse dirt flower beds that separated our million dollar postage stamp from that of our enormously well-heeled neighbors. Centered on the tiny patch of perfectly manicured grass that comprised our front yard was a stone planter, beautifully executed, and just large enough for the five tea rose bushes I had so lovingly chosen, nurtured, and threatened into perfection. Every leaf was manicured, every thorn symmetrical. The plants were fertilized with compost born of countless extravagant repasts, and home-brewed earthworms that amortized out at about $13 apiece. The blooms, which in the Laguna climate lasted throughout the year, were spectacular in their profusion and velvet purity. Here was my sanctuary.

After a time, I began to notice that every Sunday morning when I came out the gate to fetch the weekend papers, there would be a gaping hole in the fabric of my floral tapestry…usually a bud, full of promise, perfect, pristine. Gone with only a severed stump to mark its passing.

Over the weeks, I became apoplectic with outrage, brought to the brink of mayhem by the sense of violation. Even the leavings of my neighbor’s rheumy-eyed Shitzu lay benign, environmentally neutral by comparison (And how I detested that accursed creature and its unregulated bowel activity.) Those were my flowers, damnit! Who could be doing such a selfish, senseless thing?

Pushed to the limit of my civic endurance, I crouched one Saturday evening behind the stone wall abutting the rose planter, and with a hamper of cold herbed chicken and a chilled bottle of Miramar Torres, I waited.

Sure enough, just after sunset, old Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, the reclusive inhabitants of what was perhaps the most desirable property in the entire bay—a parcel so large and well-situated it set local real estate developers to salivating at the prospect of the Palmer’s imminent demise—came doddering down the sidewalk and stopped in front of my roses,

Slowly, painfully, they loosed each other’s arm and bent over the blooms, inhaling as deeply as their frail old lungs would admit, their eyes closed, lost in some far distant reminisce.

Then Mr. Palmer took an ancient penknife out of his equally ancient cardigan, and with a measured little swipe, severed bud from bush. With a creaky bow, he shyly presented it to his plump and bent little wife.

Something about their gaze left me embarrassed and ashamed…as though I could never fathom, let alone hope to find such depth of feeling for another soul; and chagrined, I watched them shuffle slowly down the sidewalk, past the immaculate display gardens of the far-too-rich, and around the corner path that lead down to the sea,

Time passed, I had a baby, old Mr. Palmer died and Mrs. Palmer successfully resisted her fabulously wealthy children’s attempts to move her out of the decaying old beachfront and into a suitably exclusive Assisted Residential Facility. And every Saturday evening while her neighbors sat down to catered lobster fests on the beach or prepared for gala events at glittering venues, Mrs. Palmer would make her torturous way down the sidewalk to my rose planter. And every Sunday morning I would find one of my plants partially but carefully denuded.

One evening I decided to intercept her. I vowed to confront her about respect for other people’s property and for beauty—and the effort it took to maintain it. As she made her way toward me, I stepped out from behind the courtyard gate and sat down on the stone planter in front of my house- my new baby on my lap.

Mrs. Palmer came up to me.

‘‘How lovely your roses this evening” she said in her thick German accent. “And the little one, such a blessing!’’ My infant son flashed her a beatific grin. I said nothing.

She knew I knew.

‘’Others?” she asked indicating my child with a bristled eyebrow. My ten-year-old stepson had just lost his mother to a homicidal step-father with a serrated kitchen knife and a good strong arm. From previous unfortunate encounters I knew any interaction between the boy and myself was doomed to abject failure, and now he was coming to live with us—his ever-absent father married to his medical practice, my long-awaited baby’s needs soon to be usurped by the demands of this brilliant, disturbed, horrifically traumatized addition to my household. Tears stung my eyelids and the essential unfairness of the cosmos overwhelmed me.

‘‘My stepson is coming to live with us next week’’ I sniffed as she nodded sympathetically. ‘‘His mother just died. I’ve just had this little baby, my only child, and now….’’

‘‘Honey,” she said seizing my wrist in her arthritic grasp. I saw in her far-away ageless gaze the eyes of my baby as he suckled my breast, and the tears spilled over.

‘‘…Honey, you never know where love is gonna come from.’’

I looked down at her wizened arm, saw the tattooed numbers. She kissed my baby on top of his golden head and reached over to the roses. With an ancient penknife she cut a perfect blossom and handed it to me with a little bow. Then she waddled off down the sidewalk and out of sight.

Happy Valentine’s Day
Allena Hansen