True Romance...

Okay if you haven't read the post I sent out just before this one, you will want to read it first. So start with The Affair and then come back to this.

That piece was one of my fiction exchange pieces with Dana. I wrote it last October after working in the garden the day before. See last year Brent and I bought a packet of wildflower seeds and put them in the corner planter, in a few flower pots, and on the back wall in the garden and just let them go. In the spring they started coming up and there were just a handful of little delicate flowers. Then a new batch started in the summer and there were whole new ones, and then by the fall there was just a riot of plants. It was crazy how many different types of blooms there were and how thick they grew.

I sort of wished that I hadn't done any of the more orderly planting that we have and had just done all of the borders and the open spaces with wildflower seeds. Just let them go and let them grow wild with zero tending at all. I mean if there were weeds in there how would we even know? It would just be thick flowers and growth. Then I thought about fertilizing and would it have been like a long release fertilizer or...and of course I thought about burying a body.

(Yes, Brent sleeps soundly at night. I have no idea how, but he really does.)

This was not my first body in the garden story, as the three of you who have read all of my stuff know, and it won't be my last. I think a garden is a logical place to put a body you need to get rid of. Assuming that you have no public ties to the missing person. I mean, then it would be stupid.

(Seriously, if he has a bout of insomnia it's not because of me.)

I jokingly told Brent I should have posted it as my Valentine's Day story. Because I'm just a big romantic like that.

I mean, exactly like that. I'm not romantic at all. Or not conventionally. When I was telling Brent about the story and that the person she was having the affair with was going to tell everyone he said, "She killed him right? Tell me she killed him." and, I mean, I felt so seen.

I'm only sort of joking there. I really do think it's sweet and lovely that he knew in my story the happy ending would be a body in the garden. And he knows this and still sleeps soundly in the bed with me next to him. That's my kind of romantic.

I think my aversion to conventional romance is that I don't trust it. My two biggest marital influences growing up were my parents and their best friends (we called them Aunt and Uncle). My parents were devoted to each other. I've talked about it before, my dad's first commitment was to my mother, then to us. My mom loved my dad more than anything and we all knew that included us. It was normal for us kids. They did everything together. They just were rarely ever separated. They were each other's best friend, closest confidant, and greatest love. But I don't really remember my dad getting my mom flowers. Or cut flowers I should say.

My mother had an impressive rose garden. She was such a rose person that Jackson & Perkins would send her test roses to grow and see how they fared. She even got to suggest names for the varieties. So he bought her flowers, roses, but they were for her gardens. (I am pretty sure none of which ever had a body in them, pretty sure)

My Aunt and Uncle on the other hand had a very different relationship. My uncle was mean. There is no other way around it. He was mean. My aunt was very sweet and lovely. But he was not. He would say the worst things to her and to their kids. And she would blow it off as no big deal. Every once in awhile I would catch my mother sending my father one of those looks that just said, not on your life, bub. Which he never would had spoken to her like that so no worries. But the thing that also stood out is my uncle used to get my aunt flowers every week. Always a lovely bunch of flowers. I asked my mom once why dad didn't do that for her and she said he didn't need to.

And she might have meant it differently but I took it to mean that my uncle had to do extra nice things for my aunt because he was an asshole most of the time. My dad didn't need to do those things because he was never an asshole.

And as we've had different married couple friends through the years, one of the things I've noticed is that often (not always, but often) the couples that make the biggest deal out of Valentine's Day or public declarations of love and happiness are trying to convince themselves of something. Or trying to make up for being horrible to each other the rest of the year. I joked with Brent that the biggest predictor of divorce in the next year seemed to be how big the Valentine's Day celebration was.

When people ask Brent about what we are doing for Valentine's Day and he tells them nothing that we don't celebrate he usually gets some sort of "oh that's lucky" comment. Which he follows up with "She expects me to be nice to her every day, not just once a year." And it's true. Surprise me with flowers, excellent. Give me flowers every weekend because you're an ass? Oh no. Do it on Valentine's Day because it's expected? Absolutely not.

But know that the happy ending in my short story is a body buried in the garden that nobody finds for 40 years? Well I might just swoon...