Root Rot

Same Walk, Different Shoes

“Same Walk, Different Shoes” is a community writing project thatBen Wakeman organized as a practical exercise in empathy. The premise is simple. A group of writers anonymously contribute a personal story of an experience that changed their life. Each participating writer is randomly assigned one of these story prompts to turn into a short story. The story you are about to read is one from this collection. You can find all the stories from the participating writers at Catch & Release. Enjoy the walk with us.

Root Rot

The sun had gone down by the time Elena was finished murdering every plant in her garden. The corpses made a pile half her height in the middle of the yard. Big enough that there wasn’t much room for anything else.

She needed to drink.

All they had in the cupboard was a half-dead bottle of Gordon’s, but considering the circumstance, it would do just fine. Plus, there would be a certain poetry in finishing it off.

That’s how Elena Scrimple wound up drunk before Ted walked through the door at 8pm on a Tuesday.

“It was root rot,” she called out from the dining room.

“What’s that?” He didn’t have line of sight from the front door as he took his shoes off.

“My plants. The whole garden.”

Now he was standing at the foot of the staircase between the dining room and the foyer, staring at the empty bottle of Gordon’s, which he prudently chose not to mention.

“You found out what was wrong?”

“Sure did.” It didn’t seem necessary to Elena to open her eyes, or raise her head from where it rested on the crook of her arm.

“Well,” said Ted, “that’s good.”

She shrugged, which looked strange on a body configured that way.

“I think we need to get a divorce.”

He stopped halfway up the stairs. “What?”

“No,” she shook her head, rocking it back and forth on her arm. “No stalling. You heard me.”

He worked his way back down the stairs. “You want,” he said, trying the words on, “a divorce.”

Not that she’d been expecting some other type of reaction, but the tone of his voice made her realize she was going to have to pick her head up off her arm and actually look at her husband to explain it to him.

Fighting through the gin fog, she tried to find the shortest path to the end of this conversation.

“You haven’t fucked me for a year.”

He blinked, opened his mouth, closed it again.

OK, that might have been a little bit too aggressive. She tried a different angle.

“We don’t even have any kids!”

“Hang on a minute,” he said, “we talked about-- or-- and you, you--“

She swung her hand through a wide arc, which made her dizzy. “That came out wrong.”

But how was it supposed to come out again? Shit. She worked her way to her feet, hung her head to take some deep breaths. Suppressed a sudden urge to giggle.

Shit.

“It was the root rot,” she said.

“I’m sorry--you’re...garden?! I don’t see how that--”

“SHHH-SHH-shhhh. Lemme finish. I promise. I mean it’s gonna make sense I promise.”

“I’m sorry, but--“ he was going to say “you’re drunk,” but instead he said, “--maybe we should talk about this in the morning.”

She shook her head. Suppressed another bubble of laughter.

“I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. The wilting, yellow leaves, the weak stems. Was I overwatering? Underwatering? I tried everything. Couldn’t fix it. Something in the soil?”

“You’re saying it was root rot.”

She pointed at him: *Bingo.* He was starting to get it!

“And...so you want a divorce.”

He was not starting to get it. She took another deep breath, sighed it out.

“You can’t fix root rot. Can’t save the plant. It’s the roots! Whatever you do, it’s doomed. So I had to dig ‘em out. All the ones with the rot. Which was...all the ones. I spent so long trying to fix it that it spread everywhere.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.” There was some genuine sympathy underneath the confusion in Ted’s voice.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I-- wasn’t saying--“

“No, not the plants. Obviously not the plants. You never go out there. I’m talking about. Our. Marriage.”

That’s when it clicked. “Oh! You’re saying there’s root rot in our marriage! Wait--“

“Did I ever tell you about what my mother told me about sex?”

“No, but--”

“You know I grew up in a cult, right? Well, not a cult. But yeah, a cult, basically. Real strong fundamentalist thing. Real strong ideas about sex.”

“OK, like...what?”

“She told me -- we were in the car, she was driving me to Becky’s, remember Becky? Anyway, she said do you want to talk about tonight, and I said no I do not, but then she said a young woman has to know what to expect in the sacrament of matrimony, and then proceeded to explain the biological facts, just the facts, and I thought it couldn’t get worse, but I guess I was still a virgin in more ways than one, you know?

“So after she explained how the man part penetrates the woman part to deliver the fertilizing seed, she took great care to make sure I understood that this was an unholy violation of the woman’s body, which is why it would be painful, and that if it ever stopped being painful, it would mean I had lost my purity.”

“Oh my god.”

“Oh ho ho, it gets better! She said that even though the sexual act was a vile sin, it was also the sacred obligation of the woman to submit to the man. In return for the blessing of procreation, you see, God exacts certain costs. Mostly from the woman, of course, since she’s the one who gets to experience the glory of child bearing.

“It went on like this for an hour or so. Parked outside of Becky’s, running late, but then you’ve got to have your priorities.”

Ted was turning his head slowly, some sort of unconscious coping maneuver.

“The thing is, I knew she was full of shit before she started talking. I left the Christian Counsel years before that. But she was my mother. And I didn’t have my own ideas about sex pieced together yet. Neither did you! I mean who would? We were so young.”

Ted sat down at the foot of the stairs.

“Are you seeing someone else?”

Elena picked up the empty bottle of Gordon’s, dropped it with a hollow thud into the trash, and walked over to put a hand on Ted’s shoulder.

“Are you?”

“Of course not!”

She nodded. “See, I think the worst part might be we never even asked before now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Listen, Ted, I don’t know if we figure this all out tonight. Maybe someday we will. I hope so. But I do know we’re never gonna fix it.”

“Because of the root rot,” he said. It was hard to tell if he was coming around or if he was half stunned by incredulity.

She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, and squeezed his shoulder. “I love you. I do. But we’re doomed.”

In the divorce, they split the house and sold it. Elena moved into a little two-bedroom downtown with a wide, south-facing window in the front room. Perfect for her budding geraniums and a couple of pots of aloe vera. Sure, it was a bummer not having a yard, but given the choice between a couple of thriving houseplants and an entire garden full of dead flowers? Well, it really was no contest.