Talk about a garden of earthly delights. The colors: a wild profusion of deep reds, purples, yellows. The smells: subtle and soft and aromatic. And the sounds: bees and other insects humming quietly but insistently, the breeze causing slight rustling among the leaves.
A third of the garden is in shade from a magnificent oak tree that spreads its boughs for thirty feet in all directions. The ground underneath is carpeted in blue. Tiny blue flowers, as thick as grass. The other two-thirds of the garden enjoys bright sunlight, and the high fence that surrounds it is completely covered with a brilliant purple flowery vine. Trees bursting with lemons, oranges, figs. I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m in paradise before Adam gave names to any of the flora or fauna, before Eve bit into the apple.
In the middle of it all, kneeling, is a woman, at first glance almost naked, the muscles in her gleaming strong shoulders working as she plunges a trowel into the earth. When my vision clears I notice she’s wearing a kind of flesh-colored sarong that leaves one shoulder as well as most of her legs and thighs bare. Her long gray-blond hair is down and in loose ringlets. Her breasts are spilling forward. A magnificent earth mother. She hasn’t yet seen me. No wonder John Taylor fell in love with her, I think, and am ashamed that my opinion of her had previously been so small, so narrow-minded.
“Oh!” She spots me, and is rising to her feet, holding her sarong up to cover herself more thoroughly.
I hurry to apologize. “MJ, I’m so sorry. I rang the bell and no one answered.”
She nods. The slightly anxious, guarded look I recognize from our first meeting appears and I feel terrible to have conjured it up in the midst of this beauty.
“How can I help you?” she asks. She is still holding the trowel, which is coated with rich brown soil. I can smell it from where I stand.
“I just have a few more questions,” I lie. “Nothing important. Wrapping up loose ends.” I see her visibly relax and again shame slices through me. I don’t deserve to be trusted.
“Come inside. It’ll be cooler there.” I follow her into the kind of house I dream about. Comfy overstuffed chairs. Colored walls hung with vivid posters and old black-and-white photographs. No cut flowers, but lots of leafy plants.
“You went to Berkeley?” I ask, pointing to a classic protest poster from the 1960s, beautifully preserved and framed.
“Actually, San Francisco State,” she says. “It didn’t matter, though. By the time I got to the Bay Area all the fun was over,” she laughs. “I should have been born a generation earlier.” She motions me to sit at the kitchen table, which is of bleached pine, and pours me a glass of water from the tap.
“People still find plenty to protest today,” I say.
“Yes, but there’s a different vibe,” she says, and is silent for a moment. “I grow flowers now. That’s my protest against what’s going on in the world.”
“Your garden is amazing,” I say, and mean it.
She relaxes more. Then she says, “Let me show you something.”
I put down my water and follow her back outside, into the garden, past the oak tree to the sunniest corner. It is closed off by four-foot walls, with just a small gap to walk through. We enter the space. At first I think that the air is full of tiny scraps of paper, confetti perhaps. All different colors of paper, chaotically swirling around me. Then I understand: butterflies. Flitting amidst the bushes and flowers, arcing over our heads. One even alights on MJ’s bare shoulder. A butterfly garden. I’ve heard of these, but never experienced it firsthand.
“This was John’s favorite spot in the garden,” she says, pointing to a bench in the midst of the riot of colors and beating wings. “He always said something I never fully grasped. Not until after his death.” Her face clouds over. “He said he needed this chaos. That everything else in his life was too regulated.”
I’m silent for a moment. “That’s what happens when you take on three wives,” I finally say. “Regulations.”
I ease myself next to her on the bench in the sun. We sit in almost comradely silence. If I’m not careful, I could easily fall asleep here, drugged by the heat and beauty.
“What will happen to the house?” I ask. “Can you afford to keep it?”
She starts. I’ve touched a nerve, apparently.
“It depends,” she says. A black and orange butterfly lands on her arm. She absentmindedly touches its wing and it flies off.
“Houses in Los Gatos aren’t cheap,” I say. “Did John buy it?”
“He put down the deposit. Then we paid the monthly mortgage out of our joint funds,” she says.
I’d done a quick online check before coming here. This old 1940s unimproved rancher is worth a cool $2.6 million on the current market. They’d bought it for $2.2 five years ago. Not a ton of appreciation compared to the boom real-estate years here in the Bay Area a decade ago. But not too shabby a profit for just living in a place, either.
“So how much is your mortgage?” I ask her.
She visibly squirms.
“About 500 k,” she says, not looking at me.