“The Marfan Man” by Guest Writer Eva Newcastle

Time with the Marfan Man was confined, mostly, to lethargic summer stretches, the warmest months first ushered in by the late winter songs of the black-capped chickadees, whistling their flirtations, faint and unseen.

“Fee dee.” The dominant male sang at sunrise. His first note — a C — was sharp, the second a B, but soft. His instinct counted one full measure plus one half in a 4/4 silence. A rest. “Fee dee,” he sang again.

“Yes,” the Marfan Man murmured, roused from slumber, happy to greet another conversation and day.

Each morning, the chickadees would leave their nests, two notes coaxing the Marfan Man from his warm bed, his long feet and toes on a cold, wood floor.

“Fee dee.”

The Marfan Man sipped weak coffee from a heavy mug and listened.

“Fee dee.”

“I hear you, but . . . ” He peered through the kitchen window. There, the yellow honeysuckle’s twisted vine seemed unkempt. That would change.

In those late winter months, bare tree limbs cast short shadows with the late winter sun, still too low on the horizon. Within weeks, the green buds of bold maple leaves would dot the bark, holding back, coiled tightly. An explosion of foliage was always timed with the arrival of the first robins. Their red breasts bulged while they picked at grass, still brown. The Marfan Man breathed deeply, his chest concave.

“Fee dee.”

A flutter. A darting shadow across a gray sky.

“There you are.”

And that was their dance.

The Marfan Man crossed the connecting room. He peered through the glass and out at the thaw. In one perennial bed, the first tender shoots of chives pushed through thinned mulch, picked over by the swallows, trampled by nocturnal critters, and dragged across the flagstone terrace between the snows. Squirrels rummaged for leftovers. Steve, the chipmunk, darted out from beneath the wood pile and sat upright, his jowls packed with the peanuts.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” the Marfan Man joked.

Steve wagged his tail wag and tried not to laugh.

The sweet peas, seeds the Marfan Man had pushed deep into deer manure with his long and agile fingers, would crack through hard shells, shoots snaking their way into the sunlight. Unsure in their youth, tendrils reached and clung for support.

Soon, the purple hyacinth intoxicated all with its generous scent. The peppered aroma of pastel stock faded too fast. By late May, the Marfan Man would sit on a stoop and wait. The lady, feathers shimmering, was always first. She announced her arrival with a formal trill and a chip before landing at the feeder, her reticence displaced when hearing the Marfan Man’s voice.

“You’re back.” He beamed, the ice broken.

“I am!” She fluttered her wings.

“I’ve missed you so much. How was your trip?”

“Mexico is always lovely. Thank you. Next time, why don’t you come?”

“Maybe,” he thought, wondering where the money would come from. “I can’t just pack up and leave.”

He could have migrated to warmer environs where he could thaw his damp bones and spend his tangled days on a pier at the water’s edge. But to leave the rhubarb or the primrose would be a divorce. The garden he’d tended for fifty years was a marriage: through sickness and health, for richer buds or poorer harvests.

“Knowing my luck, the year I travel is the year four leaf clovers blossom in the Japanese moss.”

He’d constructed an overhang to shade hostas and ferns on the quarter acre. He’d moved a black walnut tree with rented equipment. Curious neighbors, venturing out from the suburban bungalows on foot, waved and nodded their “hellos,” unaware of the meaningful conversations occurring beyond a fence that was weathered to gray and splintered by the winds and the rains.

“She’s looking nice today,” Steve remarked about the woman next door.

“She’s pretty but not my type.”

The feathered lady pulled her long, black beak from the syrup and craned her neck, peering over a red, plastic petal. Her black eyes were bright. One drop of nectar glistened in the afternoon sunlight. She listened.

The ruby-throated male rounded a sharp structural corner with a hard right bank and dove at the feeder, chasing his wife away.

“You can share,” the Marfan Man reminded.

“I’m not in the mood.” His wings buzzed.

A feeder had never been necessary until the honeysuckle had taken ill, the year the Marfan Man underwent open heart surgery to correct his failing aorta. The constant overcast that summer so many moons before parroted his mood that year. The cooler temperatures depleted the nectar, so the Marfan Man brewed his own.

“Thank you.” The hummingbirds found the nourishing source.

“You’re welcome.”

And that was their introduction. Over those languid summer days, the hummingbirds shared their traveling tales of the relatives they’d visited and the adventures of garden dives discovered on the flight path north.

Asleep in his bed, the hummingbirds sprinkled clover seeds as though they were fairy dust, seeds picked up from a roadside garden, somewhere in the deep south. The Marfan Man would find his green charms, a promise held since youth, soon enough.

The pansies were always stretched too thin by the summer equinox. By July, the lightning bugs put on a phosphorescent display, their neon tails a silent choir in moonlight. Fireworks burst and thundered across the sky.

For the Marfan Man, the fireworks brought the sound and the fury of a vitality he’d never known to life. The hummingbirds cowered in their nest, hidden by long leaves.

“You can come out. Don’t be afraid.”

“You do you,” the ruby male snarked, one protective wing covering the family he loved.

When the smoke and sting of sulfur cleared, one-thousand darner dragonflies feasted on mosquitoes, veined wings translucent below a stretch of late summer aquamarine, riding the waves of gossamer turbulence.

Every day, the one male and ladies fed at the red plastic flowers and the lavender. So did the ants who wrestled their way through the yellow plastic cages, up and into the glass. Drunk on sugar, they drowned.

“Serves ’em right,” the wasps complained, scavengers on the cement where nectar had spilled,

“Don’t be cruel,” the Marfan Man scolded, gentle abut their retracted stingers.

“Change the food, would ya?” The sage grasshopper grumbled, sunning himself on a toasty brick after stuffing himself with sweet basil — preferred over the spice.

“Are you going to finish that?” A caterpillar inched his way in for the feast.

“No,” the grasshopper insisted. “Go ahead.” He lifted a hind leg and threw shade at the wasps, hogging the feeder while the caterpillar chewed.

A fight between the lady and the digger bee ensued.

“Knock it off, you two.”

The lady, unwilling to risk injury, darted away. Undaunted she tried again. Without fail, the Marfan Man changed the nectar for her every day. And the hummingbirds and the dragonflies were free to flutter, to hover, and to dart until night temperatures dipped. The digger bees and wasps dispersed, the lady fed in the first September mists. She chirped and craned her neck. Peering over the plastic petal, her pleading eyes met his.

“You’re coming with us this year, I hope.”

“Maybe next year.” His heart sank, pained by her request.

The days were shorter and less humid. The sunlight had shifted, zinnias giving way to coleus, kale, and mums. Disappointed, she fluttered, landing on a wire one last time, watching the squirrels who delighted in the autumnal fruit. Dozens nibbled at thick, green husks. One squirrel carried a walnut between his teeth on a high-wire act. He paused.

“What?” The squirrel looked down at his friend.

“Nothing.” The Marfan Man laughed. “Go on.”

The squirrels barked. The chickadees were quiet. Without fanfare, the hummingbirds were gone without their usual parting words.

Saddened, the Marfan Man stowed next summer’s seeds away, impatiens for the spring he would never see. Four-leaf clovers bloomed when the small house and garden sold.

“Fee dee.” The dominant male sang at sunrise.

A young girl awoke.

“Fee dee.”

She sat before her baby grand piano and played.

A red cardinal held center stage on a barren forsythia branch, warbling an octave above the nocturne she practiced.

“Oh.” She saw him through the bay window and pulled her dainty hands from the baby grand keyboard. “Hello, little friend,” she whispered, delighted.

The cardinal turned and smiled. “How do you do?”

She could have sworn that’s what she heard. The young girl’s eyes were wide open, her mouth agape with disbelief. The cardinal raised his wing to his beak as a signal. She raised a finger to her lips, a magical garden hiding secrets, unearthed by the pure of heart who hear the music.