by Deb Caletti
Henry Frisbees a postcard to me, and I catch it like a pro. Pretty good for someone who can’t bounce a basketball and walk at the same time. The postcard is a photo of a beach with the word “Mexico” in playful letters above it, festooned with a cartoony Mexican flag and a pair of maracas with googly eyes. I read the back. Miss you, kid. “Glad I got the mail before my mom.”
“I don’t picture you with a father like that.”
“He doesn’t picture himself with a kid like me.” Henry sifts through the mess on his desk. Somewhere in there is that framed picture, and I imagine myself opening the desk drawer, lifting it out, turning it over. He and Millicent will have their arms around each other under a ridiculously blue sky. Her cheeks will be flushed pink, and his eyes will be dancing. I want to ask Henry about his broken heart, but I don’t want to ask him. I’m not sure I want to know. The past is a good place for the past. And there’s something about Henry. . . . I don’t even want to admit it, but there are pieces of him that feel very far away. So far away that maybe he himself can’t reach them. Those pieces scare me.
“Now, in good postal news . . . ,” Henry says. “The reason I’ve asked you here.”
He hands me an envelope. This is not thrown my way, but given over most gently. In the corner it says UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, DEPARTMENT OF BOTANY AND PLANT PATHOLOGY, HITCHCOCK HALL. “It’s fat,” I say.
“I should’ve given him your address, but I didn’t know it.”
“I thought we were just going to get a letter. A yes or no about Pix.” I squeeze the package. “Squishy,” I say. “Something plastic.”
“Are you the type who always tries to guess what’s in your present?”
“No.” Yes. I open the envelope. It’s a letter, but there’s also a sheet of instructions printed on green paper and several shiny Mylar sleeves that appear to seal shut.
Henry snitches the letter. He scans it quickly. Of course, Henry is the fastest reader alive. “Tess, listen. This is fantastic. “ ‘Dear Tess and Henry—’ ”
“I like it already.”
“ ‘Thank you for your interest in Seeds Inc.’s next Svalbard deposit. I think it’s a wonderful idea. There is no formal application process for inclusion. We choose seeds from our own seed bank. Our aim is diversity. The goal of Svalbard is to secure all the world’s food crop varieties, so we would most certainly be interested in including Tess’s Fragaria singularis both in our bank and in our next shipment to Svalbard. Of course. Instructions for seed preservation and shipment to us are included. . . .’ ”
Henry hands me the letter. He beams. “Did you see that, Tess? ‘Of course. ’ ”
I see that. I see Henry’s and my names next to each other. I see Dr. Harv Johansson’s small, neat signature in blue ink. I see the padded envelope with the return address, postage already included. And all at once, my chest begins to ache. It’s a deep, bottomless ache, an unfixable yearning. There’s no way I can put Pix’s seeds in that envelope and drop them in some mailbox after Pix dies.
“We’re not going to just drop them in some mailbox,” Henry says, reading my mind. His kindness threatens to tip me over. My throat squeezes shut and my eyes get hot with tears. He grabs that postage-paid envelope out of my hands and then he leans down and shoves it into an already overflowing garbage can. The bold move snatches me from the gravelly ledge, the ten-thousand-mile fall. Sweet Henry looks so fierce shoving it in there, I almost laugh.
“You should take the stamp off anyway, so you don’t waste it,” I say.
“Fuck the stamp.”
Henry doesn’t talk like this, so this cracks us both up.
“Do you think if I had a sibling, I wouldn’t be so attached to Pix? There’d be, I don’t know, someone else of her?”
“Maybe,” Henry says. “Do you think if I had a sibling I wouldn’t be so attached to books?”
“Maybe,” I say. “You’d be playing board games and tossing a football and fighting over who got the last doughnut, or whatever siblings do.”
“They fight in the backseat of a car, I think. Which one Mom likes best and all that.”
“And tell on each other too.”
“God, Tess, you’re so cute.”
“Thank you,” I say primly.
“We got the pixiebell seeds into Svalbard. Now we’ve got to get you there.”
“I’ve been looking stuff up, Henry. Reading all about it. Presidents go to Svalbard. Dignitaries. Scientists. Not girls from San Bernardino.”
“We haven’t tried yet.” Henry folds his arms. He pushes his glasses up with one finger, and it looks so nerdy and adorable I can barely stand it.
“It’s in the Arctic! I’ve never even been to Florida.” Even the film version seems too crazy to imagine.
Henry pulls me down onto the bed. Now we’re talking. He’s a gentleman, and I’m ready for him to be less of one. But nothing too juicy happens. He only takes my hands and looks into my eyes. Still, it makes me shiver.
“I need to ask you something,” he says.
“Yes,” I say.
“I’m serious. I want to know if this is something you really want. To bring the seeds of your mother’s plant to Svalbard.”
“Yes, but how much would that even co—”
“No buts. No nothing. Just, is this something you really want?”
I haven’t yet told Henry that my mother’s ashes are in a small copper urn in a cubby of a wall in Denver, next to her parents. I don’t know anything about Denver. I’ve been there only once, when that urn was placed there. It’s warmer than you’d think. Flat for miles, surrounded by shortish mountains off in the distance. I never even knew my mother’s parents, in that adjacent cubby. It’s like we’ve left her all alone there. And that urn has a rose etched onto it. She never even liked roses. She wasn’t a rose-type person at all.
“More than anything,” I say. “More than anything. I’ve been reading, looking at those pictures. . . . It’s so beautiful there. It is the last forever, Henry. The only thing is, I want it so much, I have to pretend I don’t want it at all. That’s how much I want it.”
“Okay.”
“I’m worried to even dream it. I mean, the disappointment . . .”
“Not if we make it happen.”
It is 3,185.1 miles from here to Oslo, four hundred miles from Oslo to the Longyearbyen airport. One kilometer from Longyearbyen Airport to the vault by snowmobile. Average temperature in winter is minus-eighteen degrees.
“Impossible.”
“Stop saying that. Especially when we have so much work to do.”
I toss off my sandals, stand on Henry’s bed in front of the huge map hanging there on the wall. I am hunting around for the tiny word, my finger swirling around in the general vicinity. “It is on an island in the Arctic Ocean, for God’s sake.”
Henry stops my finger right on Svalbard. Then he grabs me around the waist and gives me a shove, and we tumble to the bed, causing a few books to fall off. We are on our backs, staring up at the map. “You gotta remember,” Henry says. “The whole thing belongs to us. The whole wide world is ours.”
* * *
The flower—it’s turning into a fruit now, there’s no doubt about that. The petals have fallen away. I have gathered each one. I have lifted the plastic sheet of the last page of the photo album I brought, and I’ve set them on the sticky page. I’ve placed them in a circle, under a photograph of my mother and me that my father took. It was the summer before we learned she was sick; after that, we stopped taking pictures. Don’t stop taking pictures if your loved one is sick. Just don’t. You’ll be so sorry later.
In the photo, her hair is up in a ponytail, and so is mine. Our cheeks are together, posing, chins out. We are both squinting because it’s bright. I was heading out to go with Meg’s family for the weekend, to her aunt’s cabin on Silver-wood Lake. We were supposed to learn how to water ski, but I never could get up on those skis. I felt like I was a giraffe under water. But t
hat day, Mom was driving me over to Meg’s, and Dad caught us before we got in the car. I was bugged at him for messing around when I was already late. But you can’t tell in the picture. I look happy.
Every day, the tiny green nub of fruit grows wider and thicker. It’s strange to watch something that closely, to notice change like that every day. There’s so much you don’t notice. I think about the lemon tree we had in the backyard in San Bernardino, how it always seemed like one day there weren’t lemons and then the next day there were. That tree smelled so good, though, and my mother made lemon bread with the fruit, squeezing the juice into one of our green bowls, plucking out an escaping seed with the tip of her finger. I might miss that tree, just a little.
There are no more leaves on Pix at all. It’s bald and thin and its color is wrong. Of course, I can’t help but think about the people in that waiting room. I think of that radiation symbol on the door, and of the end of the world, and the only thing that will be left, a vault in the Arctic.
I’ve fallen asleep right there on the floor in front of Pix. I have trouble sleeping at night in my own bed. Jenny is gently shaking my shoulder.
“Dinner,” she says, and when I wake up, there is Pix and Jenny and the open photo album and the flood of remembering about where I am and why. I was lying when I said it didn’t hurt anymore that my father is gone. She is gone, and he is gone, and we have lost so much.
chapter nineteen
Taraxacum officinale: dandelion. The one round, white poof of a dandelion that comes after the yellow flower is actually hundreds of tiny seeds gathered together, all with little white parachutes, all waiting to be released. When the time is right, the seeds fly off into the air in various directions like a dandelion army. They drop from their parachutes onto land, ready to infiltrate.
“What is this?”
The sheet is taped to the checkout counter of the Parrish Island Library. I can hardly believe what I’m seeing. It’s a picture of me. And it’s an awful picture—
“We took it while you were sleeping,” Sasha says.
An awful picture of me sleeping, slumped over in the Leave Me Alone chair. My eyes are shut. My chin is resting in my palm. I’m too shocked to take in the words underneath the image, something about Pix and me and Svalbard. There are blank lines for signatures. Sasha’s name is on there already, and then Henry has signed underneath, and then Larry, and then Kenny Travis.
“Kenny Travis?” I ask.
“He stole the pen, but at least he signed,” Sasha says. I remember. Kenny Travis, the eight-year-old thief of dogs, bikes, and yard sale signs.
“What are you guys doing?” I feel slightly panicked. I should perhaps rip this page right off, leaving only the tape and a small, clinging bit of paper.
“Getting you to Svalbard.”
“By signature?” Okay, they’re not exactly getting very far, but still.
“Never underestimate a determined librarian,” Henry says.
“Petitions! Power to the People!” Larry says, and raises a fist in the air.
Sasha slides a different page across the counter to me. It is a printed list. I don’t understand at first, and then I do.
Back-country ski boots. Insulated overboots. Expedition-weight base layers. Down suit. Breathable wind pants. Fleece pants and jacket. Synthetic mittens. Wind-resistant mittens. Balaclava. This goes on for two pages.
“Baklava?” I say. “A little Greek pastry for the trip?”
“Balaclava,” Sasha corrects.
“Bank robber hat,” Larry explains. He mimes pulling on a ski mask. “Where only the eyes peek out. When you come back from Svalbard, you can hold up a convenience store.”
“There’s a ‘two’ next to everything,” I say.
Henry shrugs.
“You’re coming along?”
“Protect you from polar bears,” he says. He grins at me, that shy, knee-weakening grin. Oh, if only.
“Guys,” I try again. “Thank you, really. But I’ve done my homework. The vault administrators have been flooded with requests from people who want to visit. They only open it maybe twice a year to deposit new seeds. They don’t exactly give tours. Invitation only.”
“Switch your RSVP to Ready Mode,” Larry says. He swivels his hips a little, which is something he shouldn’t do. He’s obviously had too much coffee.
This is nuts. There’s not that much to do here on Parrish, obviously. I get it. That’s the conclusion I come to, anyway. I guess they can’t do much harm, though, can they? I mean, there’s not a soul in sight at the library right now, and it’s generally not exactly busy.
I protest on vanity grounds. “This is a terrible, terrible picture.”
“You look like an angel,” Larry says.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Sasha says.
“I Photoshopped out the drool,” Henry says. I look at him, alarmed, but he’s chuckling.
“Very funny. You’re a riot.”
“Tess, my darling,” Sasha says. “Can you do something for us? We’ve been up all night. Can you run down to Java Java Java and get us some lattes?”
“You’ve been up all night?” Oh no.
“Just go,” Henry says.
Well, of course I go. And the minute I do, I understand why they’re sending me into town. I don’t know whether to groan or run away or laugh. There I am, my stupid sleeping face, the plea for Pix and me, on the telephone pole outside Randall and Stein Booksellers. And there I am, on the door of Sweet Violet’s Chocolates. And when I go way, way down, blocks away, to Java Java Java to get the coffee, there I am, on the counter by the cash register.
“Hey, aren’t you the . . .” The barista, who’s got a beard like Larry’s and a hemp bracelet, squints at me, taps the petition.
“You must be”—I read the first and only signature—“Nick Talbott.”
“Call me Nicky,” he says, and pushes the cardboard tray of cups to me. “I’ll call you Cool.”
I laugh. The bells jingle against the door when I leave. I keep walking. Now I see my face at the Front Street Market, on the wall by the shopping carts. I see it at Eugene’s Gas and Garage. My closed eyes are on the window of Bud’s Tavern.
I carry the coffees back, balancing their cardboard holder carefully. I open the library door with one hand and a foot. Henry has started story time, and in that half hour, many more signatures have appeared on the sheet. I see Nathan’s and Max’s, the big loopy print of a boy just learning cursive. I see names I don’t even know, probably those mothers with overflowing strollers and diaper bags. Several toddlers have apparently done the deed. The name BEN is written in extra-large print. A name I can’t make out has a backward R.
“Lattes,” I say to Sasha, who’s looking mighty pleased with herself. “Do you have reason to think the Norwegian government will care about a petition from Parrish Island, USA?”
“Do you have reason to think they won’t?”
I stop to read the words there, really read them. It’s a plea. It’s practically on its knees with folded hands raised—Help poor, pathetic Tess Sedgewick get the seeds of her dead mother’s plant into Svalbard. It doesn’t exactly use those words, but it’s pretty clear, and I’m just not okay being some petition version of those starving-children/abused-dog commercials with the sad music that make you end up hating starving children and abused dogs.
“It’s a pity plea,” I say. “I shouldn’t get special treatment because my mother died. People’s mothers die. Their fathers die. Every day. I don’t deserve something special because of that. I don’t want to win some dead parent lottery.”
“That’s such bullshit,” Sasha says. “It’s not about pity! It’s about having a mission. And besides, Abby says people aren’t even reading the paragraph.”
“Abby? You’ve got these petitions in Seattle?” My voice is rising. You might even call it a shriek.
“Well, Dr. Johansson has some in his lab and over at the Shaw Mountain Field Station. Oh, and his assist
ant may have posted them at his synagogue. Abby put them up around campus. Probably, there are a few around the city. She and Dr. Harv have way more signatures than us already, which sucks, since this was my idea! But Abby said the university students see the picture and just sign. They love it. They think it’s hilarious, you with your eyes closed like that, chin on your hand, How to Keep Almost Any Plant Alive by Dr. Lester Frank open on your lap. It’s adorable. Look how sweet you look.”
I look like me, only asleep. I don’t get it. I could fight this. I could explain how stupid the picture is, or complain about people feeling sorry for me, or convince Sasha and Henry and Larry of the futility of this huge gesture. But I decide to do something else instead. I decide to take what they are offering me. Jenny said that sometimes the simplest things are the most majestic. And this kindness, this love? Well, it is offered over plainly, but really, it is so large and so splendid and so beautiful that my astonished self can barely take it in.
* * *
I cruise around the island a bit before heading home, driving Deception Loop halfway before turning around. This time I am not gazing out toward the twinkly waters of the sound, viewed through the lacy boughs of evergreens. No, I’m on an odd Easter egg hunt, the eggs being my own photograph on an eight-by-twelve sheet, lined paper attached with a staple. Yes, there I am—a petition in the window of the real estate office, next to the houses for sale, and one on the creepy cabin-y bathroom at Point Perpetua Park. There is one on the old water tank, next to a HAPPY 60TH, HANK! ROCK ’N’ ROLL NEVER DIES, OLD GEEZER! sign. There is one on a tree stump in Crowe Valley. It is tacked there with way too many pushpins, my face bent around the curve of bark.
And, oh, I am riding such a high, full wave of love that I have to fall. Of course I have to. Of course, because life and love is joy and pain, fullness and emptiness, highs and lows, tide in, tide out. I will have to fall hard from that high wave, smack right down on my sorry face, but we are not at that part of the story yet. No, we are at the part where my heart is soaring in Jenny’s VW bus, and where my own picture keeps surprising me, on a telephone pole and on an abandoned truck in a field and on the front door of the Rufaro School of Marimba.