The Garden of Small Beginnings, page 26
She finally turned and looked at me. “Your husband is dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes. Very dead.”
“How did you deal with it?”
“Badly. I went temporarily insane, and I’m still not a model of mental health. But Gene isn’t going to die, because you’re going to sit here and make sure of it.”
Tears filled her eyes, but didn’t fall. “Do you think I’m mad? For thinking I can keep him alive?”
“Nope. I totally get it. But I’m going to be a pain in the ass about the food thing. I’m going to go and get you a sandwich and a drink, and then I’m going to sit here and watch you eat it. While you eat it, I will tell you all about my dead husband, and after you’ve eaten it, you can tell me all about your alive one, OK?”
She smiled, faintly. “Were you always this pushy?”
I smiled back, getting to my feet. “No, only today, and only for you. So if you want to be supportive, you’ll let me do my thing.” I headed off to the cafeteria. Isabel could sit there and keep Gene alive, and I would sit there and keep her alive.
For two days, she sat there, and I stayed until their daughter showed up, and then she and I took it in turns, and then they did the surgery. Amazingly, Gene pulled through, but then there were more days of sitting and waiting until he woke up. It was boring and terrifying and frustrating and gross, as these things always are.
• • •
And what was everyone else doing while Gene hovered between life and death? Well, of course, they were carrying on with their lives, in that insulting way the living do. Mike moved his trailer over to Gene’s driveway and was helping out at his place, running errands and getting the house ready for Gene’s return. They set up a bedroom downstairs. They got a fancy hospital bed, which my children loved and which they nearly broke on the first day, riding it up and down. Gene’s other daughter was coming up once Gene was out of the hospital, for a week or so, and the one with the baby was coming up once her sister had left. All in all, there was a pretty good support system being set up.
I was still going into work, of course, finishing up what I needed to finish up, and helping Sasha. Not that she needed help. She’d gotten a great job in about two days, working for a company that made graphic novels, her dream job. I don’t know why we didn’t both quit earlier. If we’d known these great jobs were out there, maybe we would have. Al was still employed as a fact-checker, and Rose had simply refused to be fired, and had eventually been moved upstairs, where, presumably, she was causing trouble in a variety of satisfying ways.
Roberta King wandered into the office toward the end of the week, grinning. She’d relaxed quite a bit since firing everyone. Maybe it was just the push she needed to get her into jeans.
“Hey, Bloem sent the first part of the encyclopedia content. I hope you haven’t taken on too much freelance work.”
I looked at her. How was it possible that she and I were wearing basically the same outfit—jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt—and yet she looked like a preppy college freshman and I looked like I’d parked my shopping cart in the ladies’ room? Despite this wandering through my busy little mind, I managed to shake my head at her. Multitasking queen, that’s me.
“Nope. I’ve got room on my plate for vegetables, so to speak.”
She perched on my desk. Oh, the casualness. “In addition to individual vegetable varieties, there will apparently be illustrations of various gardening techniques, tools, and that type of thing.” She kicked her feet. “I’ll e-mail you the first section when I get back upstairs. We have a call with their editor tomorrow to go through it and decide what to illustrate and how.”
“Are we starting with artichokes and asparagus?”
“Actually, no. They sent us P first. Parsley, parsnips, peas . . .”
I raised my eyebrows, pushing my chair back so I could lean. “Wow, how long is this all supposed to take?”
“A year or so. Should keep you busy.”
I thought about it. I hadn’t expected vegetables to become such a major feature of my life, but that’s the thing with plants . . . they grow to fill the available space. I realized she was still talking to me.
“. . . and then they send you samples, or photos, I guess.”
“Why don’t they just use photographs?”
“Tradition, they said. I asked the same thing.” She pushed herself off the desk.
“You look very relaxed, Roberta.”
She grinned. “I only got dressed up for you guys. Now I can just be myself.”
I laughed at her. “But we hardly ever saw you.”
She laughed at herself. “Yeah, but I could hear you all down here, breathing. Any minute I might have been called on to settle a dispute and look managerial.”
“You’re joking. We had Rose. She was judge and jury on everything.”
She stopped laughing. “I know. She sits outside my office now, and scares the living crap out of me. She stares at me angrily from the minute I get off the elevator until I get back on at the end of the day.”
“Doughnuts. Baked goods will set you free. Get in before her every morning for a week or two and leave something on her desk. You’ll be old pals before you know it.”
She thanked me and wandered off. I stretched and looked around the mostly empty office. This had all worked out pretty well. A long-term freelance project from Poplar, the kids’ stuff, my own stuff . . . I was a one-woman art factory. Apart from the nightmares, everything was great.
How to Grow Radishes
Plant radishes a month or so before the last frost, and work plenty of fertilizer into the soil first.
• Sow the seeds ½ inch to an inch deep and 1 inch apart.
• Don’t crowd them! They need sun. If they don’t get enough sun they will retaliate by focusing their energy on growing leaves, and you’ll have to go buy radishes and lie about your horticultural prowess.
• Plant every two weeks while the weather is still cool so you can have a continuous harvest.
Chapter 21
I decided to go visit Dan’s parents, and took the kids with me. They lived in Pasadena, only about half an hour away, and we usually went over once a month or so. Paul and April were übergrandparents, best in class, possibly best in show. Dan’s mother, April, made cookies, wore aprons, was pleasantly round-faced and apple-cheeked, and watched My Little Pony so she could discuss it intelligently with the kids. Dan’s dad, Paul, built toy rockets and blew things up in their huge backyard. Seriously, it was a dream house, and they were fairy-tale people. You’d never know that they’d both recently retired from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where they’d programmed satellites.
Maggie was out when we got there, presumably with Berto. April confirmed this.
“Yes, she’s allowing that shitbird to talk to her.” She said this as she pulled a tray of brownies from the oven, sprinkling M&M’s over the top to get all melty and ridiculous. “That fuckhead.”
I was surprised. “Maggie?”
April shook her head. “No, of course not. Dirto.”
“Dirto?”
She shrugged. “I’m sure you’ve found the same thing: When someone hurts your child, you become very immature and angry about it. I changed his name to Dirto, and Dirto he will stay until he cleans up his act.” She put the brownies on the cooling rack and turned off the oven. I had spent probably months, over the years, in this kitchen, and very little changed. Wooden love spoons hung above the counter, April’s collection of blue and white china stood on a rack above an original Welsh dresser, a cat slept on top of the microwave. Presumably the cat had changed over the past dozen years, but as they always had ginger cats, it was difficult to be sure.
I pushed my coffee cup away, hoping to make room for a brownie. “He seems repentant . . .”
She shook her head and sat down across from me, folding her hands on the table. “No, he seems regretful, which is a totally different thing. He regrets doing it because it didn’t work out. It doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t do it again. Repentance, real repentance, would mean he knew what he did was wrong and learned from it.” She stood again to cut me a brownie, having finally realized that my frequent glances in that direction meant I needed sugar. “You realize these are too fresh to cut, and that you run the risk of burning your mouth and making an enormous mess?”
“Yes.”
She slid a plate across. I could hear Paul, out in the garden, encouraging Clare to strike a match. I should have been worried, but I wasn’t. Sometimes it’s better for them to learn how to do dangerous stuff properly, so they don’t panic and hurt themselves when they inevitably try it on their own. Besides, he was a rocket scientist.
There was a pause while I took a bite and then immediately had to breathe hard to cool it down. April just raised her eyebrows at me.
“So Maggie tells me you’re dating someone?”
I choked on a crumb, and a distressing moment ensued with April having to get me a glass of water and bang me between the shoulder blades.
Eventually I was able to shake my head. “No, I’m not. I met someone, but I’m not ready to date yet.”
She frowned at me. “We’ve talked about this before. You know Paul and I want you to be happy. I really believe Dan would want you to move on with your life, and not have to raise the children alone.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Well, he’s not here to ask, and I miss him so much still.” I paused. “Don’t you? I can’t imagine how much harder it is to lose a child than a husband.”
She was silent a moment. “For the first year, I thought I might die every day. I didn’t want to be alive, but I had to keep going, for Maggie, for Paul.” She looked sharply at me. “I imagine you felt much the same. I know when we visited you in the hospital, you were as deeply sad as anyone I’ve ever seen, not including myself.” She shook her head, subtly, and got up to refill her mug of tea. “I feel bad for not visiting you more, but I worried if our twin planets of sorrow got too close, they might cause a black hole we’d never get out of.”
From the garden, there was a giant whooshing noise followed by a simply enormous bang and the sound of cheering. We waited for the ceiling to fall in, but it didn’t.
“Let’s do it again!” Clare’s voice was several octaves higher than normal, and I could hear Annabel chiming in.
Paul answered them thoughtfully. “I’m not sure we have enough of the rocket engines. Let me go look.”
He came through the kitchen door, and April silently pointed to the larder.
“Third shelf down, cardboard box.” He bustled in and out, fistfuls of rocket engines in his hands. I liked the fact that they stocked Estes rocket supplies along with the cat food. What could possibly go wrong?
April was silent for a moment, thinking. “Do you still get mail for him?”
I nodded. “Mail and e-mail, all the time. He’s qualified for an incredible amount of credit since he died, which is hard to believe. It’s possible Visa is accepted in the afterlife, I guess, but you’d think they’d send the bills there.” I carefully blew on another bite of brownie. “Lots of fishing catalogues, because he bought a rod one time, lots of consumer electronics . . .” I looked at her. “Do you?”
“Sure. We always got mail for him, ever since he went to college. Once a month we’d forward on anything that looked important, and then once you and he were living together, he got mail there instead, and we’d only get the occasional thing. But they still come.”
“It sucks, seeing his name. And I can’t face calling these people and telling them he’s dead. Especially as they often tell me he was the only authorized user and therefore the only one who can cancel the account.” I took another bite, this time without burning myself. “I think I’m still paying for his cell phone.” I also kept his Facebook page alive, and other social media crap. I expect “the cloud” is full of ghosts.
She nodded silently. Then she said, “But it gets a little better, as the years go by. At first, every memory was painful, even agonizing, but eventually I was able to think about him with joy again, remembering all the wonderful things about him. He was a wonderful son, a wonderful father.”
“He was,” I agreed. “He can’t be replaced.”
She looked at me calmly. “You’re not trying to replace him, Lili. It’s acceptable to go in a new direction and let him stay as he was. It’s not a betrayal, it’s not a rejection. I can take pleasure in Clare and Annabel, and in Maggie, and in Paul, and it doesn’t take away from my sadness about losing Dan, or the joy I can now feel when I remember him.” She reached across the table and took my hand. “It’s not even related, you must understand that.” She stood up. “He didn’t leave us on purpose, honey, but he did leave, and that’s all there is to it.” She headed toward the back door. “Now, I’m going to make sure Paul is setting his trajectories correctly. Sometimes his math gets a little sloppy.”
I sat there alone and watched the cat, who was industriously washing his tail. He curled it tidily around his paws and assumed the loaf-of-bread pose for which cats are so rightly famous. For a moment, I envied him his comfortable spot, his simple life. But then I put the last piece of gooey brownie in my mouth and stood up to go outside and watch the fireworks.
Companion Planting
Dill and basil planted among tomatoes protect the tomatoes from hornworms, and sage scattered about the cabbage patch reduces injury from cabbage moths.
• Marigolds are as good as gold when grown with just about any garden plant, repelling beetles, nematodes, and even animal pests. They also look dandy tucked behind your ear.
• Some companions act as trap plants, luring insects away from your precious vegetables. Nasturtiums, for example, are so favored by aphids that the devastating insects will flock to them instead of other plants. Psych!
• A glass of wine placed between a gardener’s fingers improves most planting situations. Replace often, especially in warmer weather, or on Fridays.
Chapter 22
The Last Class
The following Saturday was the last class, and the Grand Harvest.
I was hoping for sheaves of wheat, giant draft horses pulling plows, and all that good pastoral stuff, but that wasn’t how it went down. Instead, we all picked and pulled and dug, and ended up with a mountain of stuff. It was pretty impressive, actually.
I had about twenty ears of corn, two large baskets of pattypan squash, and three baskets of green beans. Blue Lake green beans, to be precise, each one as long as my palm and then some. Biting into a freshly picked bean is a lot juicier than I had suspected, and more delicious. However, the big surprise, for me at least, was how awesome fresh lettuce is. Picked, washed, and eaten, it’s a whole different leaf, as it were. Honestly, you could eat handfuls just on its own—or I could, at least. Eventually Mike threatened me with a trowel. Because Gene was still in the hospital, Mike was harvesting their salad bed alone, and I nipped back in and stole more when he wasn’t looking. Just like Peter Rabbit, but without the little blue jacket.
Gene was doing better, possibly due to Isabel’s control of the forces of nature, and would be allowed to return home in a month or so. Angie and Mike had been to see him the evening before, and reported to the class.
Angie was holding Mike’s hand. “Gene’s going to need a lot of nursing support and rehab, so Mike is going to park the trailer there for a few months, and Bash and I are going to move into their guest house.” She grinned at her son. “I think Isabel and Bash put this plan together, to be honest, because I can’t tell which one of them is happier about it.”
“Isabel says I can go on the swing whenever I want.” Bash seemed amazed at his own good fortune, and Clare narrowed her eyes and muttered, “Lucky,” under her breath.
“We can go visit them, honey,” I reminded her.
“We’d better.” Honestly, she’d turned into a Mafia don all of a sudden. I couldn’t keep up.
Rachel had brought Richard to help with the harvest, and the two of them were laughing with Frances and Eloise. Richard had a piece of lavender tucked behind his ear, which made him look like a cute village idiot. Rachel was relaxed and happy, wearing no makeup and smiling a lot. You think you know someone better than yourself, but then it turns out there’s a whole other side you never guessed about. Rachel had always seemed tough, competent, unreachable, and now was sweet, soft, and vulnerable. I liked Richard so far, but if he hurt her in any way, I was going to slam his dick in a drawer. Just saying.
I went to finish gathering the tomatoes, which had produced in such an overachieving way that I kept finding more and more of them hiding under leaves. The two rows of plants had also grown impressively, creating a hidden green corridor between them. I sat on the ground and closed my eyes for a moment, relaxing and taking in the scents and sounds. I heard rustling and opened them again to see Edward, who was just sitting down to join me. It was a tighter squeeze for him, but he managed it. We sat there, cross-legged like a pair of kids, knee to knee in the tomato patch.
“I like your hiding spot,” he said. “It’s very green.”
I nodded. “It smells nice, too.”
“You missed one,” he said, leaning forward to point it out. He was so close, and impulsively I ducked my head as well, kissing him and putting my hand on his cheek. I felt him hesitate, so I slid my hand into his hair and pulled him in tighter, making it clear I wanted this, wanted him. There was less recklessness than in the kitchen; more control, and after a few seconds, even more heat. As the kiss got deeper, Edward slid his hand down my arm, twining his fingers with mine, and I felt an increasingly familiar desire. This wasn’t a kiss. This was foreplay. We were going to be lovers, and I couldn’t wait.
