The Memory Garden

by Zary Fekete

The twilight shadows hadn’t quite reached the garden yet, and Evelyn was still there, kneeling in the damp soil, her hands moving steadily, using the last rays of warmth before evening. The earth was cold like low lake water, but the promise of spring clung to it. She ran her fingers through the dirt, moving the soil around, feeling rather than seeing where the seeds should go.

She had been spending more time in the garden the past few years. When she first moved back to the town, her instinct had been to be out, meeting neighbors, taking walks, exploring. But as her calendar gradually freed up more month by month, the furrows of the garden gave her places to mark her hours. Every flower, every seed became part of a mental map, and even when she wasn’t in the garden, she thought about it. She envisioned each plant and flower as they were planted, while they grew, and after they bloomed. The longer she tended to them, the clearer it became…each one was attached to a memory.

There were rows upon rows of marigolds, roses, and lilacs, each one tied to a piece of her life, a moment from her past. The garden brought back some thoughts from her childhood, of her mother’s hands planting similar seeds in the backyard of Nebraska. Other thoughts reminded her of flower pots in the big city’s windows, hearty sprouts that flourished with barely a splash of water in the morning before she hurried out to offices and chatty lunches. Some blooms had bright colors recalling trips to other lands with violin music and slow dances in the flickering candlelight. And now, some plants recalled recent memories of different seasons in this small town, her latest and possibly last home, although she couldn’t remember ever planning it that way.

She liked how her time in the garden had developed, how it held echoes of the past. Each bloom was a story, an untold memory buried beneath the petals.

That is, she liked most of it.

Some memories were easier to look at than others. She straightened, her hand at her back, and looked at the purple flower in the middle of the garden.

It was big and luxurious. Much taller than the rest of the flowers. It seemed to move differently. Sometimes when the wind was blowing, the other flowers moved with the breeze, the this one, the purple one at the center, had a mind of its own. It stayed straight, reaching for the sky, with no bother paid to anything else surrounding it.

When did it first bloom? Last year? The year before? She couldn’t remember clearly. And, in fact, she didn’t much want to remember. She caught herself sometimes giving it a wide birth when she tended to the other plants. She never watered it. She let it be and chose to ignore it. It was just a flower, she told herself. But there was something in the way it grew…proudly. It drew her eyes because of its beauty. But there was something else. Something she couldn’t put her finger on.

Naomi had noticed it first. She was Evelyn’s neighbor who came over for visits on quiet afternoons with plates of muffins or pitchers of lemonade. When she did, her eyes scanned the garden with that mixture of curiosity and politeness that Evelyn had grown accustomed to. It wasn’t the first time someone had asked about the purple flower, but Naomi’s question was different.

“Why that one…and why there?” she had asked, squinting at the flower as if trying to understand it.

Evelyn hadn’t answered her right away. She had nodded, offering a half-smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. A slight shiver ran through Evelyn like a breeze through shadows. The way Naomi had looked at the flower made Evelyn feel like she was naked.

“Just a flower,” Evelyn had said.

Evelyn passed her hands across her eyes, remembering Naomi’s curious smile. She tossed one last glance back at the purple flower before dusting off her hands and going back into the house. The shadows now safely encased the garden and the blooms all lay in twilight. Well, not quite all. The last rays still lit the proud purple blooms of the flower at the garden’s center. Evelyn frowned at it from the kitchen window. Then she drew the shade.

*****

The next day Naomi invited Evelyn to go to a flower show in town. She was excited to find some new seeds, and this might be the best time of year to plant them. Evelyn agreed to go, mostly just to get out of the house. That was an activity that she was doing less and less as she was aware that it was becoming much too easy to stay holed up in her house, staring at the walls until the evening shadows drew across them, surprising her more and more by where the day had gone.

The two women walked down the street, talking, looking at the other gardens on their street. They crossed the park at the end of the block and soon were entering the small main street area of the small town. The Saturday morning people were out, window shopping and sitting down to coffees and teas. Evelyn grew wistful, remembering similar moments from her own past in the big city.

The flower show was held in a parking lot behind the main set of shops. It was cordoned off by ropes, and the many tables filled with flowers lined the usual parking spaces in full display. Evelyn walked up and down the rows, stopping occasionally to gently touch a petal or to smell a rose. Naomi was off on the other side, talking with someone about a new plant food.

That was when Evelyn saw it. She froze, and the world around her seemed to stop as well. It sat on the table across from her, the purple flower. Could it be…? She approached it. Yes. It looked exactly like the kind in her garden. But this one was attached to a small bonsai-like tree, growing in a pot. And just like that one, this one stood high too, proudly lifting its petals into the air, utterly indifferent to the variety of other flowers around it.

Evelyn looked around. A man stood behind the table, helping a customer. When he finished, he turned to her.

“You found a nice one,” he said, smiling at the purple flower. “That’s the one I would have picked for you myself.”

“What is it?” Evelyn asked.

“Jacaranda,” he said. “Native to South America. Rare to find one in a small tree form like this. They are usually only found blooming on large trees.”

Evelyn blinked slowly. She put out her hand toward one of the small purple petals. “I have this flower growing in my garden. But…all by itself. There’s no tree. Just the flower.”

The man frowned as he watered the bonsai tree from a watering can. Then he put the can down. “I didn’t think that was possible,” he said. “They don’t grow like that. At least, I’ve never heard of one. Are you interested in this one? Could be a friend for the other?”

Evelyn slowly nodded, as though lost in a trance. She took out her wallet and paid the man. She grasped the pot firmly and lifted the flower. As she did, it seemed like a breath of air passed between her and the flower. She stood still, staring into the purple petals.

“You…need anything else?”

The man’s words caught her by surprise. “No,” she said quickly. “Thank you!” She turned and walked back home, forgetting Naomi.

*****

She stood in the garden, the pot under her arm, balanced on her hip, staring into the garden at the purple flower in the center. Slowly she walked out into the midst of the other blooms, oblivious to the fact that she was trampling on some of them. In her other hand she held a small potting shovel.

She put the potted flower down and began to dig. The shovel tore through the petals and stems of the flowers in front of her making a mess of tattered mulch. She dug on, frantically. When she had a big enough hole, she turned and plunged her hands into the dark earth of the pot. When she felt her fingers touch the bottom, she scooped them below the roots of the bonsai tree and lifted the entire plant free of the earthenware. Once again, she stopped, staring deeply into the heart of the flower before her. Then she turned to placed it into the freshly dug hole. She pushed the loose earth back around the roots and finished by gently tamping down the soil around the small trunk. Then she stood.

The two purple flowers stood, erect next to each other, reaching for the sky. One on the small bonsai trunk, the other on its own green stem. Evelyn felt tears stream from her eyes. She pushed at her face, numbly, feeling the dirt smear across her cheeks. Then she lay down on the ground with her head between the two flowers.

Evelyn didn’t know how much time passed. She just lay there, her back against the cool earth, the soft scent of marigold and lilac filling the air around her. The evening turned quiet around her. Bird song turned toward evening tweets. A few mosquitos nosed through the mulch around her head. She looked up at the sky, a dim strip of fading light on the horizon.

The two purple flowers swayed in the wind, standing taller than the rest, the petals bold against the darkening sky. She watched them for a moment, feeling the way her chest tightened.

The wind had shifted, and for the first time, the purple flowers seemed to lean toward her, as if it were reaching. Evelyn's breath caught in her throat. She could almost hear the whispered words from before, the fleeting memory of her mother’s voice, hearing it again with the teenage ears she used to have, “It will stay inside you, as long as you let it.”

BIO: Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He has a debut novella Words on the Page out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection, To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addiction, out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete Bluesky:zaryfekete.bsky.social