The Garden of Small Beginnings, page 16
She nodded, and her eyelids finally started to droop. “Can I just sleep here?”
I closed the computer and settled her down, pulling the sheet over her and stroking her back. I watched her face smooth out in sleep, her eyebrows just like Dan’s, her cheeks like Rachel’s, her mouth totally her own, having no precedent any of us could remember. And for a while after she was asleep, snoring softly, her face totally relaxed, I sat and watched her, trying to atone for being so dense.
Then I carefully got up, pausing to get a glass of wine from the kitchen as I carried the computer to the front room. Then I sat there and went through the photos myself, this time the ones of us together, before Annabel. He had been so handsome, my husband. I had forgotten. Twenty-four when we met, only thirty-nine when he died, and so healthy and full of life. After I’d recovered from the shock of his death, I’d focused on moving forward, trying to show everyone that I had it together, that they could stop worrying now. Nothing to see here, I got it, move along please. My primary feeling, after coming off the psych ward, was embarrassment.
I had always been the practical one, the one who could be relied upon in a crisis. But on the day of the accident, I had completely lost my mind. Stark raving mad. Screaming in the street, running to the car, climbing onto his broken lap, slapping his bloody face, begging him to wake up. The EMTs gently tried to pull me away, but I wouldn’t be budged. It was clear he was dead, some piece of car had pinned him to the seat, a slight but deadly shard of metal instantly killing him. He didn’t suffer, didn’t suffer, so quick they said, so quick. Never knew what hit him, they said. She hit him, I yelled, running after the crying teenager in the other car, she hit him, dragging her to the ground, she hit him, kicking her.
Then they took me away and medicated the shit out of me. I made it through the funeral, more or less, but after that I collapsed and they folded me up and put me away for a couple of months. I don’t remember any of it, which is probably good. The kid driving the other car is going to be seeing my blood-streaked face forever, and for that I give zero fucks.
And now, as I looked at Dan’s lovely face, intact, alive, but trapped in the photograph, I missed him so much I could barely breathe. I had let Annabel down so badly by falling apart. One minute you’re finger painting and eating goldfish, and then you come home from preschool and Daddy’s dead and Mommy can’t see you right now, sweetie . . . and can’t see you for nearly three months, and the baby’s crying, weaned overnight because Mommy’s too medicated to nurse, and there’s Grandma and Aunty Rachel, and they’re crying, too, and what the hell had she done? What did that feel like to her, just three, old enough to know what blame was? We were teaching her to share. To take some little responsibility for her toys, her dog, to know that things she did had consequences. I cried and looked at photos and drank wine in a great sodden lump of self-pity and shame and felt like I’d been planning to cheat on my husband and children simply by being attracted to Edward. In the space of an hour, that attraction had been scorched under the hot lights of remorse and responsibility, and it was going to take more than spring to revive it.
Eventually, I fell asleep, and when I woke up in the morning, I felt like flash-fried shit. It was awesome.
• • •
Once I was at work, I called Rachel and told her about Annabel. I heard her voice break, but, as always, she surprised me by being more concerned about me than she was about anything else.
“Does this mean you won’t keep seeing Edward?” She answered her own question, “You won’t, will you? You’re going to just pull back into your shell.”
I doodled on a piece of paper. Boxes in boxes. “The kids come first, Rachel, they always will. I need to focus on Annabel, on getting a new job, on getting things stabilized, OK? Edward will understand.”
“And what about you? What about letting yourself be happy?”
I frowned. “I am happy. Things are fine. I can always date later on.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
I nodded. “I sent him an e-mail this morning. It’s already done.”
“You sound like Clare.”
“There are worse things to be.”
“True,” she said, and sighed. “OK, I’ll see you at class tomorrow. I’m sorry, Lili.”
I was brisk. “Nothing to be sorry for, Rach. It’s just the way it is.”
And then I hung up and got on with my day. Nothing to see here. Move along.
How to Grow Lettuce
Before you even think about planting lettuce seeds, make sure your soil is prepared. It needs to be loose and well drained, and you should treat it to a little organic matter a week or so before planting.
• Lettuce seeds are very, very small, so make sure your bed is well tilled, as clumps will frustrate the lettuce’s best efforts. If you’re nearsighted, make sure you have your glasses on. I mean, really, these seeds are small.
• Once they start popping up, thin them out to the proper spacing:
Leaf lettuce: Plant 4 inches apart
Cos and loose-headed types: Plant 8 inches apart
Firm-headed types: Plant 16 inches apart
• You can sow additional seeds every two weeks for continuous harvest. Assuming you can remember where you put the seed packet, in which case you’re a more organized person than I am.
• You can tell when your lettuce needs water just by looking at it. If it’s droopy and exhausted give it a little drink, it’ll perk right up. Unless it’s truly depressed, in which case just hang out close by until it feels better.
• Harvest leaf lettuces by simply removing the outer leaves first so the inner leaves can keep growing.
Chapter 13
The Third Class
Surprisingly enough, and despite my dark mood, the next gardening class was a roaring success. We were all happy to see our little plots, and delighted to see tiny shoots popping up all over the place. I’ve taken my kids to Disneyland, and the screams of delight at the botanical garden when they saw that actual plants were growing beat the happiest place on earth, hands down. To be fair, it wasn’t as outrageous as when Clare saw Ariel across Main Street in Disneyland and screamed so hard they alerted security, but that was an extreme case. (Side note: If you want to see something impressive, watch Disneyland turn into a Jerry Bruckheimer movie when they think a kid is being snatched. Guys with guns drop out of the trees, dwarves pull Kalashnikovs, and Cinderella assumes a Jedi fighting stance. OK, I’m exaggerating, but they do take it very seriously.)
My tomato plants were growing, my corn had put out new leaves, and Rachel’s lavender was growing nicely. Gene and Mike were preening themselves over their lettuces, and Eloise and Frances were nonchalant about the fact that each and every seed they’d planted had come up.
Edward had gathered us into a circle. I looked at my feet, realized I’d had those particular boots since Dan was alive, and started looking at the trees instead. Edward had sent me an e-mail in response to mine, and it said simply, “I will wait for you. I am a patient man, and you are very special.” What an asshole. I listened to his voice and tried not to feel sorry for myself.
“Today is a very exciting day, because we are going to enlist the help of Mother Nature’s wonder workers.”
Clare turned to me and hissed in the worst and loudest stage whisper in the world, “Worms, Mom, he’s talking about worms!”
Edward laughed. “Clare is right. I am talking about worms. Earthworms are one of the most important allies of the gardener. Not only do they aerate the soil simply by moving about, but as they digest organic matter, such as old plant material, or kitchen scraps, they produce worm tea, which is one of the most potent fertilizers available to us.”
Gene, the retired banker, clearly had a mental disconnect. “Worm tea? How do they manage that with no hands?”
We all got the same image, of worms trying to manipulate a teapot, not to mention the hot kettle. It was a disturbing moment for all of us, I think.
Thank goodness Clare was going to public school. “It’s worm pee. I don’t know why they call it tea. It’s just pee.”
Edward grinned and nodded. “Worms exude liquid waste, essentially their pee, and it’s very rich in nutrients. It’s so strong, you have to water it down a lot. Otherwise, it would burn the roots of your plants.”
“And how do we get this pee?” Angie was as practical as ever, keeping one eye on Bash as he did speed laps around the garden. It was like taking a small greyhound, in a Transformers T-shirt, out for a run. “I assume we don’t catheterize them.”
“Too fiddly,” chimed in Rachel.
“They wouldn’t like it,” added Eloise. “They’re very private creatures.”
Edward remained calm. “We don’t. They give it to us. All we do is build them homes and give them food.”
And with that, he pointed to the stack of boxes over on one side of the garden. “So let’s build.”
While I dream of a cottage in the country, or an apartment overlooking Central Park, apparently worms dream of black plastic bins on stilts. They were pretty heavy, so Impossibly Handsome Bob was enlisted. He threw them about like egg boxes.
Gene and Mike were already unpacking their worm farms and continuing to develop their strange father-son/banker-surfer relationship. You would never have put them together, and if it weren’t for this class, they probably never would have met, but somehow they meshed perfectly. Also, Gene had brought us both news of his new grandchild and cupcakes.
“The frosting is pink, in honor of little Emily, who really is the most perfect baby in the world.”
He showed us pictures of the usual Winston Churchill look-alike, and we all oohed appropriately. He even gave us gory details of the labor and knew the right weight and length, for which I had to give him props. Even my late husband, who was actually there in the room both times, could never remember what the girls weighed, or anything like that. He complained it was like asking a soldier to remember what caliber weapon he got shot with, as the trauma of childbirth had wiped his brain clean, but I reminded him I was the one who’d gotten shot. Whatever, he was not a numbers guy. But Gene got it all on the nose, and handed out cupcakes with abandon.
He also asked us for a favor.
“I want to put together a scented garden for my wife, to . . . uh . . . for my wife.” He was blushing. “While she’s away . . . as a surprise. I got all the plants and stuff. Edward helped me. I was wondering if any of you would like to come to my house and help me put it in. I’ll get pizza, and there’s a play set for the kids.”
“I’m in,” said Mike, somewhat unnecessarily.
“Me, too, and Bash,” Angie added. I nodded, and in the end, we were all on board. What an amazing gardening class/activity team we’d turned out to be. Then we got back to the job at hand—worm housing.
Putting the worm bins together turned out to be fun. They slotted together very easily, basically two deep trays on legs, one that nestled inside the other. Meanwhile, the kids helped Lisa to soak blocks of some kind of fiber stuff to make bedding for the worms, and we all looked curiously at the little linen sacks that presumably held our tiny helpers.
Once they were all set up, with their moist bedding in place, we opened the little bags and tipped in a wriggling mass of tiny red worms. I was a little disappointed, as I had been expecting the standard earthworm, long and fat with those weird little bands of whatever it is.
“Red wigglers,” Lisa informed us, “are the most popular worm for this job.”
“Did you know,” chimed in Annabel, eager to share her worm expertise, “that you can’t really cut them in two and make two worms?”
“Nope,” agreed Clare, “that is an old woman’s big fat lie.”
I started to correct her but lost motivation halfway.
Lisa obviously had more patience for my kids than I do. “You are right, although a worm can survive being sliced in two, under the correct circumstances. Basically, a worm has a brain and two hearts, a major one and a minor one. If you cut it in half and one half has the major heart and the brain, then that half will survive. If you cut it in half and one half has the brain and the minor heart and the other has the major heart, then both will die.”
To which there was nothing to be said, but it was good to know if I needed to do an emergency worm bisection a very small X-ray machine would be a must-have.
Once the bins were set up side by side under a canopy that Bob had built, we all retired to our little areas to weed and examine and tidy and, basically, chat.
Edward came over to talk to me about my Three Sisters garden. It was a pity, but clearly my body hadn’t received the memo from my brain about not being interested in Edward anymore, because as soon as he drew near, I could smell the scent of his skin and found myself watching his mouth, his hands. I chastised myself and told myself to pull it together. It didn’t work, but it made me feel worse about myself, so, you know, score.
“So, last week you planted the first sister, the one that takes the longest to grow and provides shade for the other two—the corn.”
I nodded. I was very proud of my little corn sprouts, although I couldn’t yet imagine that they were going to turn into those giant swaying stalks I saw on the Green Giant cans.
“We’re going to plant the beans now, and as they grow they’ll use the cornstalks as supports. It’s very elegant.”
He showed me how to make a little hole in the earth and drop in a bean seed. Pretty easy, really, and somehow it felt natural. What didn’t feel natural was having him so close to me without reaching out and touching him. He didn’t like it, either; when we both stood up, he looked at me and smiled a small, sad smile. Then he walked off toward Gene, and if I wanted to run after him that was my tough luck.
I turned my attention to my tomato plants, looking for weeds. I hurt, and someone was going to pay.
“Feeling the need to pull weeds?” I jumped and turned around. Eloise was smiling down at me, the sun behind her throwing her face into shadow. “It’s very satisfying sometimes to pull things up by their roots and throw them over your shoulder. Clears the mind.”
I grinned. “Until you turn around, presumably.”
“Did you look for caterpillars?” She started peering at my tomatoes. “Oh, there’s one.” She pulled a little green caterpillar, very small, from a leaf and tossed it over the fence. “Off you go, you little creeper.” She kept hunting. “They eat through the leaves and hurt the plant. Once the tomatoes come in, they go through them, too.”
I frowned. “Well, that’s not acceptable.” I found one, too, and pried it off the leaf. “Let go, you swine.” The caterpillar held on with its grippy little feet, and for a moment I felt sorry for it. Then I saw the hole it had been chewing in one of my precious leaves and hardened my heart. “Scat, you little swine.” I think I heard a tiny “aiyeee” as it flew away over the fence, but maybe I just have very sensitive hearing.
Eloise sat down on the other side of the tomato bed and made herself comfortable. She was a rounded woman, built along comfortable lines, and she moved confidently. There was none of that hesitancy I saw in women who used to be thin and had gained weight and now moved about the planet in a darting fashion, trying to stay hidden. There was an ineffable air of fuck you about Eloise that I liked.
“You’re clearly the teacher’s pet.” She peered at me between some leaves, somewhat like a giant caterpillar herself.
“I’m sorry?” I felt myself blushing a bit, and busied myself with some intense leaf study.
“Well, first he brings plants to your house in a semi, and then he lets you mind the tomatoes. They used to call them love apples, you know.”
I made a face at her. “You’re nuts. In the nicest way, but nuts.”
She shrugged. “I’m just saying he likes you. We can all see it.”
I just smiled a tight little smile, and suddenly she frowned. She opened her mouth to ask a question, but Frances appeared, her shadow falling across both of us.
“I thought I heard your leaden footfall, my dear.” Eloise finished decapitating some poor defenseless bug, and got to her feet. “I was just encouraging Lilian to pursue the gardening teacher.” I looked up, shading my eyes against the sun. Frances was smiling at me.
“I expect she can handle herself, El. You should stop meddling.”
“Oh, fuck off, Frances. You’re just as incorrigible a romantic as I am. Which one of us has a tattoo of the other one’s name, eh? That would be you.”
I grinned. “Where’s the tattoo?”
“I’ll never tell,” Frances replied airily, turning away. Eloise silently pointed to her partner’s butt, and followed her. I smiled to myself, and then relaunched my battle against the insect army. I could hear tiny little horses stamping in the potting soil and wanted to set up battlements in the compost area. They wouldn’t know what hit them. A little bit like me.
Once the class was over, we got ready to head over to Gene’s house, which was in Beverly Hills. Gene had already gone on ahead to get things ready. Rachel looked at the address and raised her eyebrows. “Huh, I guess banking’s more lucrative than I thought.”
Eloise and Francis snorted, both lifelong trade union members. “You’re joking,” Eloise said. “You thought banking was charity work? It’s about making money, for crying out loud.”
“True,” Rachel conceded. “But I guess I had retired bank-branch manager in my head.”
Mike had wandered over. “Nah, Gene used to run the West Coast for a big investment bank. You know, trading stocks on the Asian markets and things like that.” He laughed. “We bonded over bonds, actually, because I maintain a pretty diverse portfolio, especially in the current climate, and he thought I’d made some smart choices.”
