The Garden of Small Beginnings, page 21
She laughed. “Yes, if you want it. I have two projects I need to brief out tomorrow. Can you take them on? One is a series-episode book, and one is a new series for us with an established style to copy. I’ll send you home today with samples, if that works?”
She stood up, and so did I.
“In theory, I’m still working at Poplar until the end of the month.”
“Well, then you take one of these jobs, and I’ll give the other to someone else. Once you have more time, I’ll ramp it up.” She suddenly grinned an enormous grin. “I’m stoked! You’re really talented, and I think we’ll have fun.” She led me out of her office. “You should bring the kids over, too. We have a whole play area downstairs.”
Oh, my God, I was in heaven. This couldn’t get any better.
“It’s right next to the espresso machine.”
Sigh.
• • •
Well, obviously I was beside myself with excitement. Work! Fun work! Work I could do at home if I wanted, so I could see my kids. Maybe work doing my own illustration. I still needed to figure out health insurance, but if I had enough cash, I could afford to do COBRA for a while and then see what happened. I felt calm and peaceful and optimistic, which made a nice change from feeling like a paratrooper in mid-drop. I smiled at the children when they came home, I smiled at Leah, I did gentle stretches and a breast exam in the shower (they’re really not weird), which made me feel both yoga-tastic and responsible all at once, and I actually put on nice pajamas for lounging around the house.
Rachel was thrilled about my new job. She actually danced around my kitchen. I wasn’t dancing, because I was emptying the dishwasher.
“You see? I knew it would work out. You’ll become a rich and famous children’s book illustrator, and I’ll get to meet George Clooney.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Does George have a lot of interest in children’s books? He doesn’t even have kids, does he?”
“Details, details,” she replied airily. She was doing better, having finally given in and slept with Richard. I knew it had been great, because she wouldn’t tell me anything about it. Normally I got diagrams.
“Are you seeing Richard later?”
“Nope, he has a work dinner.”
“So, are you eating with us?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“I didn’t think I had to.”
I finished unloading and started reloading, which is, of course, the reason why housework is so depressing. You do it and undo it and redo it all day. You pick up the crap from the kids’-room floor and then the little bastards come along and throw everything down again looking for the tiny princess figure you just secretly threw away. You drink a cup of coffee and put the empty cup down on a bedside table and plan to grab it on your way back to the kitchen, but you don’t. Next time you make coffee, you grab another cup and leave that one in the bathroom because you’re drinking it while you’re getting ready for work, but the dog throws up in the hallway, so you leave it there. Before you know it, the whole house is a coffee-cup graveyard and you feel bad about it, but not bad enough that you remember to take the cup back to the kitchen in the first place. Still, better a cluttered house than an empty head, that’s what my dad used to say, not that he ever cleaned in his life.
After dinner, I went out to evaluate my garage as a possible studio space, while Rachel played with the kids. I opened the doors and just stood there, regarding the accumulated crap. Dan’s bike. Dan’s skis. Dan’s suitcase. A big dollhouse that the kids might actually play with now. A horse on springs my parents had given them long before it was safe for them to play on, and which I had totally and completely forgotten. Several boxes of mystery items. A clothing rack of winter coats you can never wear in Southern California. Ski clothes, which I don’t need, on account of the fact that I can’t ski. Shit, I can barely walk down the street without tripping, the last thing I want to do is go somewhere slippery and strap shiny pieces of high-tech polymer to my feet. I’d rather just break both ankles with a pool cue and save on the airfare.
But as I looked around, I saw potential. The garage had been built at the same time as the house, and had some nice details. It had ceiling beams, for example. And two nice windows. The floors were dry, the walls were dry, and there was already electricity out there. I felt something strange in my tummy . . . What was that? . . . Oh, my goodness, it was excitement.
“What do you think?” Rachel had apparently completed her ninja training and had come up behind me on little pussycat feet. I leapt about eighteen feet in the air.
“Jesus H. Christ, don’t do that! I’ve had kids, my pelvic floor can’t take that kind of shock. I thought you were playing with the children.”
“They fired me. Can I have those skis?”
“Sure. I forgot you skied. I was thinking of making this into an office.”
She made a considering face. “That could work. I like the windows.”
“Me, too. I can put my desk there.”
“It’s pretty big, actually.” She stepped in and started poking about.
“Bigger than my office at work was.”
“You could rent it out.” She pulled out a lamp I honestly had never seen before. Maybe complete strangers had been creeping in and storing stuff in my garage.
“That’s true. Maybe I’ll see if Sasha wants to share it.” Although, as I said it, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share. It would be nice to have a space of my own.
“You’ll need help cleaning it out.”
“Are you volunteering?”
She shrugged. “Of course. I love to throw stuff away, you know that. Can I have this lamp?”
I nodded. “I’m hoping we can give a lot of it away to charity.”
Her voice floated back from behind a stack of boxes. “That’s good. Otherwise, I’m just going to take half of it to my place, where I have no room for it. Where are you going to put the bouncy horse? If you throw it away while they’re in school, they’ll never know.”
“That’s a great idea, because I have no idea where to put it.”
“You can put it in our room,” a tiny voice piped up. I closed my eyes.
“And the dollhouse can go in the living room,” added another small voice.
We turned around to see the kids and Frank standing there in a row, tallest to smallest.
So much for that plan, then.
• • •
The next day I had an appointment with Dr. Graver again. God, they seemed to be coming around so frequently. I said as much.
“We haven’t changed the frequency at all, Lili. Maybe you just have more things to talk about.”
“Or not talk about.”
“What aren’t you talking about?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
She laughed, which was one of the things I liked about her. She didn’t take me all that seriously. “I would like to know, actually. You’re paying me for my expertise in analyzing and commenting on your life experiences. It would be helpful if you actually shared them.”
I felt chipper but slightly on edge. “Why don’t you guess?”
She looked at me. “I would say you’re feeling exposed and vulnerable because being interested in someone, sexually, has reminded you of Dan. You feel guilty for wanting to move on, and subconsciously angry because your overdeveloped sense of guilt won’t let you do it.”
I hated it when she was accurate. “I don’t think my sense of guilt is overdeveloped. I’m just not ready.”
“I think you are ready. You just aren’t ready to be ready.”
“Again, in English?”
She looked at me with deep patience. “There is something comfortable for you in the life you’ve built, even though you’re deeply sad still, and lonely. It’s a rut, but it’s your rut, do you know what I mean? Additionally, you’re going through enormous change all over right now. You’re leaving the job you had when Dan was alive. Your sister is getting into a relationship. Your sister-in-law is getting a divorce, from a marriage that predates your own. Your eldest child is coming to terms with the loss of her father, and part of that process means talking about him more frequently. She and her sister are also growing, as children will, and as they get older, your relationship with them changes, too, of course. You’re trying to talk to your mom without either of you slamming the phone. You are deeply attracted to someone and trying to pretend he doesn’t exist. It’s a lot to handle.”
“Wow. That is a lot of stuff.” I stretched, making myself big and tall. “I’m impressed with my ability to remain calm in the face of it all, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I am.”
“You realize I could fall apart at any second, like a spineless book in a strong wind?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’m holding on by a thread.”
“I realize that.”
“I’m totally broken on the inside.”
“Completely.”
I curled up on the sofa and cried for the rest of the session. Thank God she knew I was a nutcase, or she would have thought I was totally insane.
How to Grow Peas
Peas are easy to grow, but they have a very limited growing season and only stay fresh for a day or two after harvest. If all else fails, don’t forget they’re easy to find in the frozen section.
• Believe it or not, sprinkling wood ashes on the soil before planting peas is helpful. To the peas, that is.
• Peas are finicky about temperature. They don’t mind snow, but they do mind low temperatures. However, if the temperature gets above 70 degrees Fahrenheit, they don’t like that, either. Honestly, they’re small, but whiny.
• Plant 1 inch deep (deeper if soil is dry) and 2 inches apart.
Chapter 17
The Fourth Class
The next day was Saturday. Gardening class. Edward was friendly but a little distant; maybe he was finally losing interest in me in the face of my apparent lack of interest in him. Which, of course, sucked, because I was interested in him, just not interested in, oh never mind. It was all too complicated.
I have to say our vegetable garden was looking pretty damn leafy. It was time to plant the squash in my Three Sisters garden, which I did, feeling very in tune with nature, and then I shock-and-awed the caterpillars for a while. Mike and Gene were in charge of the salad bed, and it looked amazing. A thick carpet of curly edged leaves, all in miniature right now, but verdant with promise and good health. Angie and Rachel had grown berries, and Eloise and Frances had beans and peas. All of it was growing energetically, and even Impossibly Handsome Bob seemed impressed. I couldn’t tell you why just seeing the garden filled me with peace and happiness, but it did. I would have felt like an idiot, except the entire rest of the class felt the same way. After we’d all weeded and fiddled a bit, we started going around admiring each other’s areas, which sounds dirty but wasn’t.
Rachel’s little lavender bed was the least impressive, in that it had been plants when it went in, but there had been growth, and it looked pretty, and goodness knows it smelled nice.
“Are you feeling any better?” I asked her, keeping my voice low because she was being so private about the whole Richard thing. Also, I wasn’t sure where Impossibly Handsome Bob fit into this whole picture.
“Yes, actually. It was so good just hanging out with you the other night and being with the kids. It calmed me down. Whatever happens with Richard, I still have my family, you know?” Her voice sharpened. “But if you pick another piece of my lavender, I’ll stab you in the ear.”
I paused my hand in midreach. “I thought you were feeling all grateful for family.”
“I am, but keep your claws off my flowers.”
“OK, you nut job.” I wandered over to Angela, who was about to unleash a pod of praying mantises into the garden. Pod might not be the right word, but it’s what comes to mind.
“I am Shiva the destroyer,” she intoned, loudly. “I am the ender of worlds.” She shook the little muslin bag and several long, scary-looking insects fell or clambered out. “I am . . . the Mantis of Vengeance!”
I looked at her, my eyebrows raised. She shrugged. “I learned it all from him.” She indicated Bash, who was actually looking a little like St. Francis, holding a ladybug gently on his fingertip. “It’s amazing how scary even a piece of Lego can be if you give it the right name and sound track.”
“Are we going over to your house after class today?”
She shook her head. “No. I thought about it for a while, but I’ve decided I’d rather move and save all of you for working on an actual garden, if I’m lucky enough to find a place that has one. Fingers crossed, right?”
“Did Bash’s dad come around?”
She crouched down, the better to see her mantises wreaking havoc, presumably. “Maybe. I talked to him the other day. He’s got a new girlfriend, an actual real, grown-up person. He seemed more open to the idea of my moving.” She looked over to where Bash was carefully weeding in his garden plot, next to my kids. He was quietly focused, and the three of them were chattering away. She straightened and stretched. “Being in nature seems to chill him out a bit. I might move a little out of the city, try to find somewhere cheaper, that has a bit of space. But isn’t too far from school, for me.” She sighed, but then she smiled. “It’s nice to see him so mellow, though, makes a change from the human tornado he usually is.”
Eloise came up to us. “The kids look happy.” We all watched them for a minute. “Hey, week after next is the last class, and Frances and I were thinking of cooking the big celebration meal at our place afterward. I think lots of things will be ready, the salad for sure, some of your tomatoes and corn, the berries . . . what do you think?”
“I think it would be lovely,” I said. “Shall we all bring something?”
She shook her head. “No, I think Frances wants to show off. She was a home-economics teacher, you know, back when she started. Public schools don’t really teach home economics anymore, sadly. For God’s sake don’t ask Frances about it. She’ll go off on a tirade about the pointlessness of graduating young people who can’t boil an egg.”
Edward called the class together.
“As you can see, looking around, Mother Nature has been kind to us. Plentiful sun, healthy soil, and the right amount of water have meant that all of your plants have sprouted. We have two more weeks of class, by which time you will all see more substantial growth. The botanical gardens have agreed to let us keep the class area open for the summer, so that your plants can get big enough to transplant to your own gardens, if you wish. I’m also going to teach the class again in the fall, and you’re welcome to sign up once more, to deepen your knowledge and enjoyment of gardening.” He really did talk like a dork, although my Dutch was nothing to boast about. I gazed at him, remembering that one kiss and wondering if he wanted to kiss me again. Would we ever sleep together? Would we ever even have lunch again? And then I wondered why everyone was looking at me.
Annabel came to my rescue. “Edward was asking if we were going to do the course again?”
“Oh.” I blushed. “Maybe. Can I get back to you?”
“We’ll do it.” Clare was confident. Her people were going to make it happen.
“We’ll discuss it.”
Edward smiled at me, and I felt my tummy tighten. I felt adolescent, completely vulnerable and scrutinized, and suddenly it occurred to me that I was going through super-early menopause. Maybe all this hot and cold was just hormonal. I could have all this plus hot flashes, memory loss, and vaginal dryness. Fan-fucking-tastic.
At the end of class, we all stood about for a bit, trying to persuade Angela to let us come over to do some planting on her balcony. She had to be firm.
“No, it’s not ready for you yet, and I don’t have any plants to put out there anyway.” She looked around at us all. “What about Mike’s place? We haven’t been there yet.”
She was right. We all swiveled to look at him. He laughed and put up his hands. “Dudes, put down your weapons. I don’t have a place, actually.”
Gene didn’t look surprised, so I guess this wasn’t news to him, but the rest of us were taken aback. Rachel spoke up. “What do you mean?”
He turned up his palms. “I mean I’m a rolling stone, bro. I live in a trailer attached to my car, and I move around a lot. One of the reasons I wanted to do this class was to do something I can’t do otherwise, which is have a garden.”
There was a pause. Luckily for all of us, Annabel has some sense of courtesy.
“Then why don’t you all come back to our house for pizza again? Bash wants to see the fairy house, and you can help us clear out the garage to be Mom’s office. She got a new job.”
“How come you didn’t mention that earlier?” Angela was slightly outraged. “I mean, that’s big news, right? Are you pleased?”
I nodded, looking around. A retired banker, a pair of teachers, a surf bum, a working single mom, an importer of rare artifacts, and three small kids. A mixed lot, that’s for sure, but we were all happy to be together, and somehow we had become friends. My gaze settled on Edward, who smiled gently at me. I smiled back.
“Yeah, I’m really pleased. Please come hang out, if you want to. You don’t need to help me clear out the garage, though.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Frances. “And while we’re there, Mike can tell us how he came to live in a trailer.”
He groaned. “It isn’t that interesting.”
Frances clicked her tongue. “We’ll be the judge of that, young man.”
• • •
As it happened, Mike did the easiest thing and drove his trailer over to my house. Angela was somewhat sarcastic.
“OK, bro, I have to say that your idea of living rough is different from mine. That trailer is bigger than my parents’ apartment, and there are two families living there.”
She stood up, and so did I.
“In theory, I’m still working at Poplar until the end of the month.”
“Well, then you take one of these jobs, and I’ll give the other to someone else. Once you have more time, I’ll ramp it up.” She suddenly grinned an enormous grin. “I’m stoked! You’re really talented, and I think we’ll have fun.” She led me out of her office. “You should bring the kids over, too. We have a whole play area downstairs.”
Oh, my God, I was in heaven. This couldn’t get any better.
“It’s right next to the espresso machine.”
Sigh.
• • •
Well, obviously I was beside myself with excitement. Work! Fun work! Work I could do at home if I wanted, so I could see my kids. Maybe work doing my own illustration. I still needed to figure out health insurance, but if I had enough cash, I could afford to do COBRA for a while and then see what happened. I felt calm and peaceful and optimistic, which made a nice change from feeling like a paratrooper in mid-drop. I smiled at the children when they came home, I smiled at Leah, I did gentle stretches and a breast exam in the shower (they’re really not weird), which made me feel both yoga-tastic and responsible all at once, and I actually put on nice pajamas for lounging around the house.
Rachel was thrilled about my new job. She actually danced around my kitchen. I wasn’t dancing, because I was emptying the dishwasher.
“You see? I knew it would work out. You’ll become a rich and famous children’s book illustrator, and I’ll get to meet George Clooney.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Does George have a lot of interest in children’s books? He doesn’t even have kids, does he?”
“Details, details,” she replied airily. She was doing better, having finally given in and slept with Richard. I knew it had been great, because she wouldn’t tell me anything about it. Normally I got diagrams.
“Are you seeing Richard later?”
“Nope, he has a work dinner.”
“So, are you eating with us?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“I didn’t think I had to.”
I finished unloading and started reloading, which is, of course, the reason why housework is so depressing. You do it and undo it and redo it all day. You pick up the crap from the kids’-room floor and then the little bastards come along and throw everything down again looking for the tiny princess figure you just secretly threw away. You drink a cup of coffee and put the empty cup down on a bedside table and plan to grab it on your way back to the kitchen, but you don’t. Next time you make coffee, you grab another cup and leave that one in the bathroom because you’re drinking it while you’re getting ready for work, but the dog throws up in the hallway, so you leave it there. Before you know it, the whole house is a coffee-cup graveyard and you feel bad about it, but not bad enough that you remember to take the cup back to the kitchen in the first place. Still, better a cluttered house than an empty head, that’s what my dad used to say, not that he ever cleaned in his life.
After dinner, I went out to evaluate my garage as a possible studio space, while Rachel played with the kids. I opened the doors and just stood there, regarding the accumulated crap. Dan’s bike. Dan’s skis. Dan’s suitcase. A big dollhouse that the kids might actually play with now. A horse on springs my parents had given them long before it was safe for them to play on, and which I had totally and completely forgotten. Several boxes of mystery items. A clothing rack of winter coats you can never wear in Southern California. Ski clothes, which I don’t need, on account of the fact that I can’t ski. Shit, I can barely walk down the street without tripping, the last thing I want to do is go somewhere slippery and strap shiny pieces of high-tech polymer to my feet. I’d rather just break both ankles with a pool cue and save on the airfare.
But as I looked around, I saw potential. The garage had been built at the same time as the house, and had some nice details. It had ceiling beams, for example. And two nice windows. The floors were dry, the walls were dry, and there was already electricity out there. I felt something strange in my tummy . . . What was that? . . . Oh, my goodness, it was excitement.
“What do you think?” Rachel had apparently completed her ninja training and had come up behind me on little pussycat feet. I leapt about eighteen feet in the air.
“Jesus H. Christ, don’t do that! I’ve had kids, my pelvic floor can’t take that kind of shock. I thought you were playing with the children.”
“They fired me. Can I have those skis?”
“Sure. I forgot you skied. I was thinking of making this into an office.”
She made a considering face. “That could work. I like the windows.”
“Me, too. I can put my desk there.”
“It’s pretty big, actually.” She stepped in and started poking about.
“Bigger than my office at work was.”
“You could rent it out.” She pulled out a lamp I honestly had never seen before. Maybe complete strangers had been creeping in and storing stuff in my garage.
“That’s true. Maybe I’ll see if Sasha wants to share it.” Although, as I said it, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share. It would be nice to have a space of my own.
“You’ll need help cleaning it out.”
“Are you volunteering?”
She shrugged. “Of course. I love to throw stuff away, you know that. Can I have this lamp?”
I nodded. “I’m hoping we can give a lot of it away to charity.”
Her voice floated back from behind a stack of boxes. “That’s good. Otherwise, I’m just going to take half of it to my place, where I have no room for it. Where are you going to put the bouncy horse? If you throw it away while they’re in school, they’ll never know.”
“That’s a great idea, because I have no idea where to put it.”
“You can put it in our room,” a tiny voice piped up. I closed my eyes.
“And the dollhouse can go in the living room,” added another small voice.
We turned around to see the kids and Frank standing there in a row, tallest to smallest.
So much for that plan, then.
• • •
The next day I had an appointment with Dr. Graver again. God, they seemed to be coming around so frequently. I said as much.
“We haven’t changed the frequency at all, Lili. Maybe you just have more things to talk about.”
“Or not talk about.”
“What aren’t you talking about?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
She laughed, which was one of the things I liked about her. She didn’t take me all that seriously. “I would like to know, actually. You’re paying me for my expertise in analyzing and commenting on your life experiences. It would be helpful if you actually shared them.”
I felt chipper but slightly on edge. “Why don’t you guess?”
She looked at me. “I would say you’re feeling exposed and vulnerable because being interested in someone, sexually, has reminded you of Dan. You feel guilty for wanting to move on, and subconsciously angry because your overdeveloped sense of guilt won’t let you do it.”
I hated it when she was accurate. “I don’t think my sense of guilt is overdeveloped. I’m just not ready.”
“I think you are ready. You just aren’t ready to be ready.”
“Again, in English?”
She looked at me with deep patience. “There is something comfortable for you in the life you’ve built, even though you’re deeply sad still, and lonely. It’s a rut, but it’s your rut, do you know what I mean? Additionally, you’re going through enormous change all over right now. You’re leaving the job you had when Dan was alive. Your sister is getting into a relationship. Your sister-in-law is getting a divorce, from a marriage that predates your own. Your eldest child is coming to terms with the loss of her father, and part of that process means talking about him more frequently. She and her sister are also growing, as children will, and as they get older, your relationship with them changes, too, of course. You’re trying to talk to your mom without either of you slamming the phone. You are deeply attracted to someone and trying to pretend he doesn’t exist. It’s a lot to handle.”
“Wow. That is a lot of stuff.” I stretched, making myself big and tall. “I’m impressed with my ability to remain calm in the face of it all, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I am.”
“You realize I could fall apart at any second, like a spineless book in a strong wind?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’m holding on by a thread.”
“I realize that.”
“I’m totally broken on the inside.”
“Completely.”
I curled up on the sofa and cried for the rest of the session. Thank God she knew I was a nutcase, or she would have thought I was totally insane.
How to Grow Peas
Peas are easy to grow, but they have a very limited growing season and only stay fresh for a day or two after harvest. If all else fails, don’t forget they’re easy to find in the frozen section.
• Believe it or not, sprinkling wood ashes on the soil before planting peas is helpful. To the peas, that is.
• Peas are finicky about temperature. They don’t mind snow, but they do mind low temperatures. However, if the temperature gets above 70 degrees Fahrenheit, they don’t like that, either. Honestly, they’re small, but whiny.
• Plant 1 inch deep (deeper if soil is dry) and 2 inches apart.
Chapter 17
The Fourth Class
The next day was Saturday. Gardening class. Edward was friendly but a little distant; maybe he was finally losing interest in me in the face of my apparent lack of interest in him. Which, of course, sucked, because I was interested in him, just not interested in, oh never mind. It was all too complicated.
I have to say our vegetable garden was looking pretty damn leafy. It was time to plant the squash in my Three Sisters garden, which I did, feeling very in tune with nature, and then I shock-and-awed the caterpillars for a while. Mike and Gene were in charge of the salad bed, and it looked amazing. A thick carpet of curly edged leaves, all in miniature right now, but verdant with promise and good health. Angie and Rachel had grown berries, and Eloise and Frances had beans and peas. All of it was growing energetically, and even Impossibly Handsome Bob seemed impressed. I couldn’t tell you why just seeing the garden filled me with peace and happiness, but it did. I would have felt like an idiot, except the entire rest of the class felt the same way. After we’d all weeded and fiddled a bit, we started going around admiring each other’s areas, which sounds dirty but wasn’t.
Rachel’s little lavender bed was the least impressive, in that it had been plants when it went in, but there had been growth, and it looked pretty, and goodness knows it smelled nice.
“Are you feeling any better?” I asked her, keeping my voice low because she was being so private about the whole Richard thing. Also, I wasn’t sure where Impossibly Handsome Bob fit into this whole picture.
“Yes, actually. It was so good just hanging out with you the other night and being with the kids. It calmed me down. Whatever happens with Richard, I still have my family, you know?” Her voice sharpened. “But if you pick another piece of my lavender, I’ll stab you in the ear.”
I paused my hand in midreach. “I thought you were feeling all grateful for family.”
“I am, but keep your claws off my flowers.”
“OK, you nut job.” I wandered over to Angela, who was about to unleash a pod of praying mantises into the garden. Pod might not be the right word, but it’s what comes to mind.
“I am Shiva the destroyer,” she intoned, loudly. “I am the ender of worlds.” She shook the little muslin bag and several long, scary-looking insects fell or clambered out. “I am . . . the Mantis of Vengeance!”
I looked at her, my eyebrows raised. She shrugged. “I learned it all from him.” She indicated Bash, who was actually looking a little like St. Francis, holding a ladybug gently on his fingertip. “It’s amazing how scary even a piece of Lego can be if you give it the right name and sound track.”
“Are we going over to your house after class today?”
She shook her head. “No. I thought about it for a while, but I’ve decided I’d rather move and save all of you for working on an actual garden, if I’m lucky enough to find a place that has one. Fingers crossed, right?”
“Did Bash’s dad come around?”
She crouched down, the better to see her mantises wreaking havoc, presumably. “Maybe. I talked to him the other day. He’s got a new girlfriend, an actual real, grown-up person. He seemed more open to the idea of my moving.” She looked over to where Bash was carefully weeding in his garden plot, next to my kids. He was quietly focused, and the three of them were chattering away. She straightened and stretched. “Being in nature seems to chill him out a bit. I might move a little out of the city, try to find somewhere cheaper, that has a bit of space. But isn’t too far from school, for me.” She sighed, but then she smiled. “It’s nice to see him so mellow, though, makes a change from the human tornado he usually is.”
Eloise came up to us. “The kids look happy.” We all watched them for a minute. “Hey, week after next is the last class, and Frances and I were thinking of cooking the big celebration meal at our place afterward. I think lots of things will be ready, the salad for sure, some of your tomatoes and corn, the berries . . . what do you think?”
“I think it would be lovely,” I said. “Shall we all bring something?”
She shook her head. “No, I think Frances wants to show off. She was a home-economics teacher, you know, back when she started. Public schools don’t really teach home economics anymore, sadly. For God’s sake don’t ask Frances about it. She’ll go off on a tirade about the pointlessness of graduating young people who can’t boil an egg.”
Edward called the class together.
“As you can see, looking around, Mother Nature has been kind to us. Plentiful sun, healthy soil, and the right amount of water have meant that all of your plants have sprouted. We have two more weeks of class, by which time you will all see more substantial growth. The botanical gardens have agreed to let us keep the class area open for the summer, so that your plants can get big enough to transplant to your own gardens, if you wish. I’m also going to teach the class again in the fall, and you’re welcome to sign up once more, to deepen your knowledge and enjoyment of gardening.” He really did talk like a dork, although my Dutch was nothing to boast about. I gazed at him, remembering that one kiss and wondering if he wanted to kiss me again. Would we ever sleep together? Would we ever even have lunch again? And then I wondered why everyone was looking at me.
Annabel came to my rescue. “Edward was asking if we were going to do the course again?”
“Oh.” I blushed. “Maybe. Can I get back to you?”
“We’ll do it.” Clare was confident. Her people were going to make it happen.
“We’ll discuss it.”
Edward smiled at me, and I felt my tummy tighten. I felt adolescent, completely vulnerable and scrutinized, and suddenly it occurred to me that I was going through super-early menopause. Maybe all this hot and cold was just hormonal. I could have all this plus hot flashes, memory loss, and vaginal dryness. Fan-fucking-tastic.
At the end of class, we all stood about for a bit, trying to persuade Angela to let us come over to do some planting on her balcony. She had to be firm.
“No, it’s not ready for you yet, and I don’t have any plants to put out there anyway.” She looked around at us all. “What about Mike’s place? We haven’t been there yet.”
She was right. We all swiveled to look at him. He laughed and put up his hands. “Dudes, put down your weapons. I don’t have a place, actually.”
Gene didn’t look surprised, so I guess this wasn’t news to him, but the rest of us were taken aback. Rachel spoke up. “What do you mean?”
He turned up his palms. “I mean I’m a rolling stone, bro. I live in a trailer attached to my car, and I move around a lot. One of the reasons I wanted to do this class was to do something I can’t do otherwise, which is have a garden.”
There was a pause. Luckily for all of us, Annabel has some sense of courtesy.
“Then why don’t you all come back to our house for pizza again? Bash wants to see the fairy house, and you can help us clear out the garage to be Mom’s office. She got a new job.”
“How come you didn’t mention that earlier?” Angela was slightly outraged. “I mean, that’s big news, right? Are you pleased?”
I nodded, looking around. A retired banker, a pair of teachers, a surf bum, a working single mom, an importer of rare artifacts, and three small kids. A mixed lot, that’s for sure, but we were all happy to be together, and somehow we had become friends. My gaze settled on Edward, who smiled gently at me. I smiled back.
“Yeah, I’m really pleased. Please come hang out, if you want to. You don’t need to help me clear out the garage, though.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Frances. “And while we’re there, Mike can tell us how he came to live in a trailer.”
He groaned. “It isn’t that interesting.”
Frances clicked her tongue. “We’ll be the judge of that, young man.”
• • •
As it happened, Mike did the easiest thing and drove his trailer over to my house. Angela was somewhat sarcastic.
“OK, bro, I have to say that your idea of living rough is different from mine. That trailer is bigger than my parents’ apartment, and there are two families living there.”
