The Last Forever

by Deb Caletti

  Oh, Pix. “Remarkable how?” I ask.

  “You’ve seen what look like seeds on the outside of a strawberry . . . ?”

  “Yes.”

  “Each apparent ‘seed’ on the outside of the fruit is actually one of the ovaries of the plant, with a seed inside it. A seed within a seed. But singularis—it has hundreds and hundreds of these seeds on the one fruit it bears. And given that it lives for so many years, it’s believed to be particularly resistant to disease. Botanists have attempted to breed singularis with ananassa, the garden strawberry, with no luck so far. Imagine the abundance if a disease-resistant plant that bears millions of seeds is crossed with a plant that bears more than one fruit! But that hasn’t happened yet. Singularis just goes on stubbornly being itself, a plant that lives a long life and bears one extraordinary progeny.”

  Henry walks me out after we hang up with Dr. Johansson.

  “Plant ovaries.” I snicker.

  “Creepy plant ovaries.” Henry snickers back.

  “We’re childish.”

  “We’re ovaryish.”

  This cracks us entirely up.

  I have Jenny’s bike. I show Henry the brown lunch sack in the basket.

  “He packed me a lunch. He even wrote my name on it.”

  “If he included the four food groups, I’m giving him double Dad Points.”

  I hadn’t thought to look inside yet. Okay: A small bag of Tostitos. An orange. A couple of Jenny’s chocolate chip cookies wrapped in foil. I show Henry.

  “An A for effort. The only thing my father packed was a suitcase for Aruba.”

  “You’ve got to come over and meet him.”

  “I want to come over and meet him.”

  I hand Henry the cookies. And then the chips. And then the orange. I want him to have every good thing there is. I’d give him my sweatshirt, and my shoes, and this very bike, and the band in my hair. I’d give him words of love and gratitude.

  “No.” Henry laughs. “These are for you.” He tries to hand back all the food.

  “Just the orange.”

  He hands me the orange. “I have an idea,” Henry says, as he unwraps the foil package and takes a bite of cookie. “Damn, that’s good.”

  “Even better with milk. What idea?”

  “It’s going to sound crazy.”

  “Lay it on me,” I say. And then lay yourself on me, I don’t say.

  “At first I thought, Let’s just plant the pixiebell’s seeds.”

  “But that doesn’t save it.”

  “That’s the same conclusion I came to.” He pauses. “Tess?”

  “What?”

  “There’s no getting around the fact that it’s going to die, right?”

  “I know.” I do.

  “But we can keep it forever anyway.”

  “Press it in some book?”

  Henry groans. “Forever.”

  “Nothing is forever.”

  I know I’m being slow here, but I find Henry so distracting. Those lips, for one. Besides that, I didn’t eat breakfast, and my mind’s dragging. They know what they’re talking about when they say you’ve got to start the day off right. I peel that orange. I hold it to Henry’s nose. “Smell,” I command.

  “Mmm.”

  “One of the best smells in the world.”

  “Tess, you aren’t listening.”

  “Forever,” I say, to prove him wrong.

  “Svalbard,” he says. “We’re going to get the pixiebell’s seeds into the Svalbard vault.”

  “I knew you were going to say that, Henry.” Okay, I’m not that slow. I’m just not that keen on walking willingly toward disappointment. “But that’s impossible. You told me yourself. You said that only three US organizations have gotten seeds into that place.”

  “I love having a mission,” Henry says. He polishes off that cookie.

  “I love having a mission with you,” I say.

  “You want to keep your mother’s plant forever? Well, Tess, Svalbard is the last forever on earth.”

  I get chills when he says it. And suddenly I want that. I want that so bad. The vital part of Pix, in the most protected and permanent place that exists. “The last forever,” I say.

  Henry is excited. He puts his arms around me and lifts me off the ground. That’s when we both hear the whistle. One of those high-pitched ones that people make by putting two fingers in their mouth. I always wanted to know how to do that.

  Henry sets me down, looks around. I see him walking up the street, carrying a bag from Quill, the stationery store. Elijah.

  The mood goes awkward. Once again, I don’t know if things feel weird because I feel weird, or if I feel weird because things feel weird. Let me just say this: If you’re even thinking, Is it just me? It isn’t. Trust me.

  “Hey, stranger,” Elijah says.

  “Hey, ’Lij,” Henry says.

  Elijah grabs Henry’s wrist, bends it behind his back. It’s one of those playful gestures that actually kind of hurt. “I’m surprised you even remember my name.”

  Henry wrenches free. “Come on. Don’t.” He sounds weary, as if they’re continuing a private disagreement that’s been going on for a while now. One I obviously don’t know anything about.

  “And, look, it’s the damsel in distress,” Elijah says.

  I can’t stand that guy, I really can’t. Him and his iceberg sister with their perfect blond hair and their perfect noses and their perfect eyes. Elijah’s wearing white shorts and a bright green shirt and plaid sneakers. People who dress like they’re in a perfume ad shouldn’t be trusted, in my opinion. They’re disingenuous with floral overtones.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I say.

  “Henry loves to save the day. Especially for a female.”

  “Shut up, Elijah,” Henry says.

  “Reminds him of his mother.”

  “Elijah’s parents are both psychiatrists,” Henry tells me. “He forgets he didn’t get the degree himself.”

  “I know Oedipal issues when I see them.”

  “You’re an ass,” Henry says.

  “One of the finest around. Hey, aren’t you supposed to be working?” Elijah asks.

  “Slow day.”

  “It’s always a slow day.” Elijah lifts his bag, gives it a shake for Henry to see. “New ink pens.”

  I don’t even want to say another word to the guy, but standing there with my mouth clamped shut is making me feel small. “Are those for the piece you’re doing in Jenny’s class?”

  “Using a lot of black,” he says. “This one’s dark. A dark tale of love and war.”

  No one speaks. Henry is looking down at his shoes. I don’t know what’s happening here, only that it feels bad. I realize that Elijah is waiting for me to leave. I should stand my ground or something, but Elijah’s presence is shrinking me by the second. This is a contest of some kind, and I’m coming in second place. No, I’m not coming in at all. I’m the marathon runner still slogging along the day after the race.

  “Well, hey, guys. I’m going to head out,” I say. I don’t even kiss Henry good-bye, and he doesn’t kiss me. I kind of slink off on my bike, which is even more awkward than it sounds, especially when you have to pedal uphill with your butt halfway in the air.

  Elijah’s eyes—they’re not perfect after all.

  He’s got the eyes of a pickpocket.

  chapter seventeen

  Cannabis sativa: marijuana. When male plants are eliminated in a crop, it is possible to generate “feminized” marijuana seeds. Essentially, the female plants grow “balls” and reproduce by themselves when no males are around. Growers sometimes ditch the male plants purposefully, as the seeds from the females are more potent and supposedly grow a far superior product. Enough said.

  Once I get up that damn hill, I’m pissed at Henry. Damsel in distress? I’ll show him damsel in distress. I know Henry wasn’t the one who said it, but he could have done more to defend me. Wait. Does that make me even more of a
damsel in distress? What did Elijah mean, anyway? Obviously, Henry was Millicent’s big shoulder to cry on, which is a little like the rabbit helping the viper, if you ask me.

  I make it home, ditch Jenny’s bike on the lawn, and try to ignore Vito’s excessive display of joy at my return a mere three hours after I last saw him. “Jesus, Vito,” I say. Either he has the shortest memory in the world, or his watch is broken. His devotion is more annoying than usual, probably because he’s me in dog form, jumping all over Henry with slavish adoration and bad hair. Vito isn’t the least bit discriminating. I could have just stolen a baby from a carriage and he’d still jump on me with all the love in his tiny heart.

  I might’ve slammed that door a little.

  “Easy,” Jenny calls down from the stairs.

  I’m pissed and hungry, which means that two crooked fingers are beckoning to my inner monster. I head straight to the kitchen. I notice my father in the living room, but I don’t see the important thing. I don’t see that he’s stuffing things into his backpack.

  “Hey, Mogli,” he calls to me.

  “Baloo,” I say. They’re our old, old names for each other, from when I was maybe five.

  I do one of those kitchen who-are-you-kiddings—I eat half a cookie, knowing full well I’ll come right back for the other half. That’s when he leans his head into the doorway.

  This time I do see it. Right away. Great. Just great. “What’s that?” I nod toward the backpack over his shoulder.

  “I wanted to tell you—”

  “You’re leaving again.”

  “Only for two days, Tess. I promise.”

  “Oh, right. You promise. Got it.”

  “Tess, I’ve just got to go look in on things. Get the mail. Talk to my boss. There’s still food in our fridge.”

  “It wasn’t my idea to run away from home.”

  “Do you want to come with—”

  “No!”

  I don’t want to go back home or even think about home. It would be hot and stuffy in the house now, all these weeks without an open window. My mother had bought some of that food in the fridge—the ketchup, the mustard no one uses, a jar of pickles that has been in there forever. Her coats are hanging in the closet. Her clothes and her shoes and her scarves and her bathing suits and sunhats, her robe, and those flannel pj’s with the moons on them are all there too. So many objects, too meaningful and not meaningful enough—her address book, her calendar, those stupid protein shakes, that lamp with the beads hanging down—nothing alive, though. Not like Pix. Just things that have lost their magic and that are now only sad.

  Our house, my room, my friends. It was a life that belonged to a different me from a different time, someone I remembered fondly but who was fading fast. When I thought about Meg and Caitlin and Dillon and Nate and Michelle (Michelle—wait. Remember Michelle? I guess not. I’ve known her since sixth grade and haven’t thought about her once in all the time I’ve been gone), or my middle school journal still hidden in my underwear drawer, or my box of earrings, or that pillow I tried to make one day because I was bored, all of it seemed like a best friend from elementary school, the one who moves away, the one you’re sure is so important, but who you stop writing to after the first few weeks. I moved away. I ran from the scene of the crime, and with each passing day, the idea of going back only fills me with more and more guilt.

  “Two days, I promise. I’ve got a ticket. . . .” My father pats the pocket of his jeans. “Okay, goddamn it, where’d you go?”

  We are having a moment where everything comes full circle, I am sure of it. I flash on the image of that lost lighter with the dolphins on it, the one that went missing the day before we left for the Grand Canyon. My father’s black-gray hair is pulled back into one of my bands, and he is patting his shirt where the pockets would be if he had pockets. This feels like the end of something.

  “Thomas!” Here is Jenny now. I had been the one to find the dolphin lighter in the silverware drawer, and now she has found the missing ticket. “Don’t forget this.”

  “Thanks for telling me, guys. What, you were just going to take off and it was going to be one big surprise?”

  “I just bought the ticket, Tess. An hour ago. I got it cheap because it’s a red-eye. I’ve got to pick up my paycheck, babe. There is some old fruit in the fridge. There was that meat loaf you made. That stuff’s gonna be scary. That stuff could be another Nagasaki.”

  Half a cup of oatmeal. One quarter cup of ketchup. One pound of ground beef. One half of an onion, chopped in quarter-inch cubes. I can’t think about that life. In my mind, I see the girl who slipped on those rocks at the Grand Canyon, and maybe, just maybe, I have fallen ten thousand miles and am now, finally, climbing slowly back up.

  “It’s just for two days, honey,” Jenny says.

  I don’t know how she can believe in him again and again and again. I imagine Dad arriving home in San Bernardino. He opens the windows. He turns on the TV. He sits in the rocking chair and watches his favorite old shows. Neighbor ladies arrive with casseroles. They all have long black hair like Mary, and under the dish lids, the casseroles all look like cat food. He’s getting comfy back at home, and wait—the ladies are wearing my mother’s clothes. Neighbor Mary takes a spin in my mother’s red plaid robe, like it’s a ball gown. This film version is revolting.

  “What happened to ‘Mary’?” I ask.

  “I told you. Mary’s an old friend. That’s all. I needed a friend.”

  “Is Mary the Old Friend meeting you at our house?”

  Jenny sighs.

  “No one’s meeting me at our house. Maybe Rob, to bring my check.” Rob’s a guy my father works with. Rob’s hands are always dark brown from the black walnut stain they use on the furniture.

  “Thomas, you don’t want to miss the ferry,” Jenny says.

  “Two days.” He kisses my cheek. I give him the coldest, unfriendliest cheek I can. It’ll turn friendly again when he’s proven himself. I sniff his shirt when he gives my cold, unfriendly shoulders a hug. I don’t smell any weed, that accidental plant rolled up in those Zig-Zag papers. No, he actually smells like Old Spice, the Television Dad soap I give him every year for Christmas, hoping it might transform him.

  From the front window, I watch him walk out to his truck. He must feel my eyes, because he turns and waves. He blows me a kiss. He holds up two fingers and shakes them at me. His lips purse dramatically. Two.

  But I know an ending when I feel one.

  Jenny puts her arms around me from behind. She holds me close to her. We both watch him.

  “He’ll be back,” she says.

  “Why do you have so much faith in him?” I ask.

  “That’s my own son.”

  “Still.”

  “It’s the way a parent loves a child. That love is the most steadfast thing I know of.”

  “Even if that child does wrong? Even if he does really wrong?”

  It’s my worst thought—how I’ve disappointed her. Even if she’s dead, she’s disappointed. Out there, wherever she is, the feeling I’ve left her with, the very last feeling, is how much I’ve let her down.

  “You love your child so much, your heart could break with it. Nothing can change that. No-thing.”

  My throat gets tight with tears. I want to believe her. My father beeps his horn twice. Two long beeps, sending a message: two days.

  “You’re probably going to have to go home too at some point, my girl.”

  I shake my head.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “Roots,” is all Jenny says.

  * * *

  I hear that old, loud engine before I see the arc of lights through the curtains in my room in Jenny’s house. Vito loses it at the sound of a strange car in the driveway. Yeah, he’s twelve pounds of pure terror. Anyone who’s on his way to murder Jenny and me in our beds will turn and flee at the sight of Vito’s tiny, barred teeth. He’s as scary as a gerbil in a bad mood.
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  Jenny taps at my door. “I believe you have company,” she says. She has a book under one arm, and she’s wearing a nightgown and reading glasses, and it’s as close to a granny look as she’ll ever get. We just need a big bad wolf, and we’ll be in business.

  Well, of course I knew I had company. As soon as I heard that gravel crunching under car tires, I peeked out the curtains and started throwing on clothes. I’m sure Millicent never goes to bed this early.

  “Tess?” Jenny says.

  “What?” I don’t have time for a big discussion right now. I’ve got exactly one minute to get amazing.

  “I worry. I mean, look at you racing around here—”

  “We had this discussion once already,” I say, shoving past Jenny.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just . . . You’ve got your heart on the line. I see it.”

  “It’s called living in the moment,” I yell down the hall. “It’s called throwing caution to the wind. It’s called trusting that sometimes things work out okay!” I am in the bathroom, but I can still hear her.

  “It’s called love,” she says.

  I practically break the sound barrier, flying around at the speed of light as I attempt to brush my teeth and throw on some makeup before Henry rings the doorbell. My aim is to do all those things and then be casually watching some informative documentary on TV, but that’s stretching it, as I can never figure out how to work that remote. Every time I use it, the TV gets subtitles.

  “Well, Henry Lark,” Jenny says, answering the door. She’s got Vito tucked under one arm. He’s gone from fierce protector to ardent lover, trying to squirm his way to Henry so he can shower him with affection and sniff his pant legs.

  “Sorry to come over so late,” Henry says.

  “It’s fine,” Jenny says. Poor Jenny. I’ve ruined life as she knows it.

  I’m out of breath due to all of my panicked efforts to be casually together. “Oh hi, Henry,” I say. I’m pointing the damn remote at the TV, which is now displaying a Tuna Helper ad you can read along with.

  “I’ll leave you alone,” Jenny says. But her voice has edges. I’m not sure who she’s actually miffed at, so for the sake of simplicity, I assume it’s me. This is my general life policy.