Rules for Visiting

by Jessica Francis Kane

  Leo was quiet.

  “And that’s why I don’t like red flowers.”

  “When did your mother die?”

  “The year after I graduated. I came home that spring, she died in September. She fell down the stairs, but she’d been ill for a while.”

  Leo shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  He helped me put all my gardening supplies back in the trunk. Then we stood next to my car, facing each other.

  “Before I went to college, my mom and I drove together a lot, around town and sometimes out into the country. She’d spend the whole day inside, but she’d come out in the evening for a drive with me. Sometimes I drove, sometimes she did. It was nice being in the car with her. We had an easier time talking when we were both facing straight ahead.”

  “Maybe that’s why she wanted to teach you to drive.”

  For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, Newton’s Third Law of Motion, by which he meant forces come in pairs. With my gift of time from the university, I’d been trying to reach out, as they say, trying to make a family of friends. Just now it occurred to me what the opposite force was, the anchor to my year of visiting.

  Leo raised his hand to cup the side of my neck and cheek, a gesture I love in movies, and I kissed him.

  Meadowbrook

  Protests to save Wayside went on all summer, though without the margarita-loving student presence, they were small. Newspaper editorials in support of construction cited the growing school system and city housing numbers. Editorials in opposition invoked the importance of green spaces and healthy ecosystems. No one knew when or why, but the developer changed his plans. He decided to rename Wayside mall Meadowbrook, make the store signs beige and uniform, and build his condos just in the dell with a thin band of trees left as a barrier.

  So the protests to save the dell began. It was discovered the dell was a sanctuary for a certain kind of finch, and also an ancient burial ground for the Monacan people native to the region. Jane Jacobs was invoked, but she wrote more about cities, so that was confusing. Someone proved it was one of only a few remaining habitats for an endangered tree frog. Someone else discovered that the soil they would use to fill the dell came from another state where the trees had emerald ash borer disease, raising the prospect of transporting the beetles across state lines.

  On a Friday in early August, local day-care centers and summer camps protested. They arrived by foot or city school bus and made a day of it. A picture in the paper showed a little boy mournfully holding a handmade sign that read PLEASE SAVE OUR DELL while all around him children jumped and somersaulted on the sloping meadow.

  Leo didn’t want to lose the dell, but everything else was just what he’d always hoped for: a beautiful name and the possibility of an enormous increase in foot traffic. He said the developer was thinking about putting a fountain in the parking lot, and the condominiums were going to be called The Aspires, which the promotional material explained as a new kind of living for an old kind of soul, aspiration combined with spire.

  “Is it a retirement community?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Leo said. “But they’re using a lot of stone and wrought iron, and there’s a spire.”

  “One spire.”

  “That’s what the plans showed. The architect said it would be a suggestion of antiquity.”

  Shear Elegance was closing, which was for the best, and a high-end shoe boutique was moving in. Someone had signed a lease for the empty storefront; Leo had heard it might be a bookstore. Mrs. Kim’s Inconvenience had reinvented itself, seemingly overnight, as an upscale country market with local produce, artisanal cheese, a coffee station, and a smile on Mrs. Kim’s face. No one knew how she’d done it—though she’d been spotted driving a red convertible VW Beetle—but everyone was glad.

  All the last-ditch efforts failed and the developer broke ground, or rather, started filling in the dell, at the end of August, beating the return of the students by days. The following week, Leo got his new sign. We bought more planters for the promenade and a few for the garage as well, though I’ve told Leo that large hanging baskets over the bays would look nice. He says it’s all up to me. The petunias I planted are thriving.

  The First Night-Blooming Cereus Party

  It would be difficult to overstate how gangly and unlikely the Selenicereus grandiflorus is when not in bloom. It’s a sprawling, branching plant with a thick, knobby stem meant to clamber up trees or rocks in arid landscapes. In a pot it must be supported by a stake and still it grows around and around and entangles itself. The bud, when it produces one, is nine inches long.

  But when it blooms . . . The scent has been described as ambrosia, part orange flower, part vanilla. It is intoxicating, but not overwhelming, not like the scent of lilies, which so many people dislike with good reason. The scent of the S. grandiflorus is finespun. It doesn’t fill your nose, it fills the air around you, which makes a big difference. The bud grows for weeks, but when it begins to open, the bloom and wither occur within twelve hours. The outer petals are spindly and pale yellow. They open first and fold nearly all the way back. The next layer of petals is a little wider, salmon colored to a pink buff, and they open straight out. The inner petals are white, the stamens thin, and the anther yellow. When fully open, the flower can measure up to fifteen inches across.

  I don’t know when the bud on the Goulds’ plant first appeared. My father had been carrying the plant back and forth between the window in his kitchen and a sunny spot in the backyard. It probably could have endured the summer overnight temperatures, but he was taking extra care. It was early September when he showed the bud to me and it was about to open.

  Reader, I planned a party. Quickly and with a lot of help—it was more of a potluck, really—I invited people to gather in my house. The flower began opening at six o’clock and by the time people started arriving at eight, the fragrance was already strong. Leo brought chips and guacamole from the restaurant. Blake’s wife brought a cake she’d decorated with flowers, some made with frosting, some real, all of them edible. Sue and Maria brought glow sticks and wintergreen mints for the kids when it got dark. Apparently if you chew on a wintergreen mint in the dark, an observer will see what looks like lightning in your mouth. “It can get a little messy,” Sue said, shrugging. “They have to chew with their mouths open.”

  Janine brought several bottles of wine. Recently I’d learned she was building a tree house in her backyard. I was worried at first because a lot of designs involve putting the house at the heart of the tree, requiring a number of big branches to come off. Her design, however, in order to spare the tree, was a house on stilts, the back attached to the trunk, which acted as a ladder up to a small door. Between this and the wine, she was rising in my esteem.

  And Philip Gould brought a pot of blue asters, Beth’s favorite late-summer flower. “She never liked to cut flowers,” he said.

  “I have always felt the same way,” I told him.

  Two days after I sat in the parking lot of the Garden Keeper and decided not to visit Beth, she suffered a series of additional strokes. She spent a week in hospice care, then Philip moved her home, where she died a few days later in her own bed, surrounded by family and friends. A memorial service is being planned for the spring and Philip has asked my father to speak. When I close my eyes I can see the front of that rehab building. Not going in is a mistake I hope never to repeat.

  I put the asters on the floor right next to the night-blooming cereus so we could admire them together.

  “That’s nice,” Philip said, looking at the pot. “Thank you.” My father brought him a piece of cake and the two of them talked quietly in a corner of the living room for some time.

  I knew of course that my father and Philip were friends. But to see Janine and Sue greet each other warmly? And Leo meet Blake, shake his hand with reverence, and start asking about droug
ht-resistant perennials? A little later, I saw Leo talking to Janine, and my father was laughing with Sue and Maria, and Blake came up to me and said, “Did you know giraffes hum at night? Janine told me.” He looked delighted.

  I felt warm and stepped into the front hall for air. There were children playing in the front yard. I didn’t know if they went with people at the party or not, but I opened the door and told them to come have some cake. All of them came running inside.

  Back in the kitchen I found Sue and Leo laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “You,” Sue said, and wrapped her arms around me. “We think you should get local kids involved in landscaping the new Meadowbrook parking lot with nothing but petunias. What do you think?”

  “Very funny.”

  When I’m doing well like this, when things are running smoothly and in balance, I wish my mother could see me. I wish she were sitting quietly somewhere at this party, just watching. I don’t want her to be impressed; I just want her to see how it’s possible to order a life, how it’s possible “to gather all accidents into our purpose.” I’d like to show her the pink tape measure, the stone bird, the little white pot, the pressed camellia. Also the hobbled fawn, Leo’s postcards, and Rose’s paint chips—all the gifts, or contraband, of my visiting year. I wish my mother had had her own, so she could have known what it means when a friend remembers how you take your coffee, or that you don’t like scary movies, or what you called your grandparents. I’m still not the center of a group, but if I died tomorrow, Vanessa would plan a memorial service within a week, Lindy would make it beautiful, and Rose would know what to say or read. I’m less sure about Neera, but that’s okay. I have more than I need.

  I dreamed recently that I had only a few minutes to write something about each of my friends but couldn’t find pen or paper. So I started writing with my finger in the sand and everyone gathered around to read. We were staying together in a house by the sea. The dream made me happy because—I’ll admit it—I’ve always loved those books where friends gather for a weekend and lives are changed.

  Around nine-thirty the bud was almost fully open and, as it was dark outside, Sue opened the glow sticks and handed out the mints. Some of the children ran outside with abandon, but a few stayed, settling cross-legged on the floor, Henry and Bella among them. They were in awe of the flower, and I smiled watching them. I sat down next to Henry and he turned.

  “Thank you for inviting me,” he whispered.

  “Thanks for coming,” I whispered back.

  Some of my other neighbors on Todd Lane came, but not many. Maybe next year more will come.

  In Beowulf Grendel, standing outside alone, was harrowed by the din of the banquet, a terrible word meaning “to lacerate or wound the feelings of.” Amber Dwight never would have allowed that to happen. I’m sure she would have kept the doors of Heorot wide open.

  The Tree That Owns Itself

  The last tree sheet. This one I gave to my father.

  The white oak (Quercus alba) is one of the preeminent hardwoods of eastern and central North America. In the forest it can reach a magnificent height, and in the open its canopy can become massive as its lower branches extend far out laterally, parallel to the ground. The wood has great strength and durability, so the oak has been used in shipbuilding for centuries. Good crops of acorns occur at intervals of a few years, called “mast” years, from the Scandinavian mat, meaning “food.”

  At the top of a steep hill in Athens, Georgia, where Dearing and Finley streets intersect, there is a tall white oak with a stone tablet in front of it that reads:

  For and in consideration of the great love I bear this tree and the great desire I have for its protection for all time, I convey entire possession of itself and all land within eight feet of the tree on all sides. William H. Jackson

  Jackson was a professor at the University of Georgia and these words are from his deed to the tree, circa 1840. The tree, which locals today call “The Tree That Owns Itself,” fell in a storm nearly a hundred years later, the year my father was born, and a seedling cultivated from one of its acorns was planted in its place.

  * * *

  —

  MY FATHER SAID HE’D WANTED the tree on university grounds because he thought I’d sell the house after he died. But I’m not going to do that. The house on Todd Lane may be the geographical center of our tragedy, but it hasn’t done anything wrong.

  My father and I are going to visit Georgia next month. It’s a mast year, I checked. We’ll find an acorn from the white oak in Athens and bring it home, where I’ll cultivate the sapling at the university until it’s ready to be planted in our backyard.

  Grendel wasn’t a very expensive suitcase and his miles are showing. He has one mauled corner and a wheel that creaks when it rotates. He looks like he’s been in a fight or two, but I mended him with some duct tape and he’s ready for another trip. My father says he has a friend we can stay with, which is news to me. I’m delighted.

  Leo thinks I should drive, which might be nice. My father and I haven’t taken a trip together in a long time and we’d be in new positions in the car. If nostalgia is the recovery of something lost but with a difference, I’m likely to be swamped by it. My father, too. But we’re thinking of swinging through Savannah on the way home, where we’d both like to see the Spanish moss. My brother might come, not with us to Georgia, but home for a visit after our trip. A strange expression, home for a visit. It’s not definite yet, but I’m working on the guest room for him just in case.

  His name is Ben.

  And our mother’s name was Miranda, invented by Shakespeare, derived from the Latin mirandus, and meaning “worthy of admiration, wonderful.”

  Rules for Visiting

  Do not arrive telling stories about the difficulties of your trip.

  Bring a gift.

  Make your bed and open the curtains. A guest room is not a cave just because it’s temporary.

  Help in the kitchen, if you’re wanted.

  Unless you are very good with children, wait until you hear at least one adult moving around before getting up in the morning.

  Don’t feed the pets.

  Don’t sit in your host’s place.

  If you break something, admit it.

  Say good night before bed.

  Always send a thank-you note.

  There are others, but these are the essentials. They should cover every house and living situation, large or small, rich or poor, cozy or elegant, married or single, children or no children, and every kind of visit, family or friend, local or abroad, long or short. I have very few friends and not one of them is replaceable. May you settle and find good friends.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The writer Amanda Davis, who died in 2003, was beloved by many. I was not lucky enough to know her, but her story affected me deeply, and her attitude toward friendship, as I understand it from the dozens of beautiful tributes written for McSweeney’s after her death, was the earliest inspiration for May’s journey.

  Michael Downing, Janice Nimura, Clare Aronow, and John and Jackie O’Farrell are friends, hosts, and early readers of the highest order. Thank you.

  The day Edward Carey agreed to draw trees for this book was one of my happiest. Thank you. They are perfect.

  Thank you to Sharone Ornstein for all the conversations; Fiona McCrae and PJ Mark for believing in the idea; and Ginny Smith and Laura Barber for deep, insightful editing.

  Mitchell, best friend for twenty-eight years and counting—thank you for everything. Olivia, who read an early draft, and Simon, who helped with names—I love you and hope you find many fortnight friends.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jessica Francis Kane is the author of This Close, The Report, and Bending Heaven. This Close was longliste
d for The Story Prize and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize, and The Report was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection and a finalist for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction. Her stories and essays have appeared in a number of publications, including Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney's, The Missouri Review, The Yale Review, A Public Space, and Granta.

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