“In the kitchen, kneading bread.” Anna stepped back to let Sam enter and followed him down the hall.
“Hey, Sam. Talk to me while I take out my frustrations on seven grains who can’t fight back,” Emily said.
“Tea?” Anna asked.
Sam nodded and sank into a chair at the table. This much kindness was almost more than he could handle. He cleared the moisture from his throat and watched Emily form the kneaded dough into a mound and drape a towel over it. Anna warmed the teapot and spooned loose tea into it. One of the things that fascinated him when they first met was her refusal to use tea bags, instead carrying a small china teapot to the college dining room every morning. It was hard to remember their idyllic beginning, how happy they were until the ultrasound and Zoe’s birth. If only Anna had been able to express doubt or fear about their daughter’s situation; if only he’d been able to wrap his brain around it without terror.
“What’s happening with Flo?” Anna’s voice was soft as sorrow.
“Bad behavior,” Sam said. “Acting out even more than usual. They’re going to start her on some drug to calm her down. You worked in a nursing home, didn’t you, Emily? After.”
“You mean after I got fired from the home care job?” Emily said. “For about six months. I hated it, partly because of those drugs.”
He took a folded brochure from his pocket. “I must have read this a hundred times, but I still don’t understand it. The risks are so bad—cardiac rhythm problems and heart failure, strokes and death. Why would they give her something like that?”
Emily glanced at the paper. “It’s an off-label use. This med isn’t recommended for elderly patients with dementia, but it’s used a lot for that purpose because there’s nothing better. Belligerent behavior with cognitive impairment is really hard to manage and psychotropic drugs work. Sort of.”
Sam watched Anna pour boiling water into the teapot. “What else does it do?”
“All the nasties you mentioned. Sometimes it triggers a cascade of medical problems. It can also act like a sedative. Some people become lethargic.” Emily hesitated. “How bad is her cognitive function?”
“Up and down,” he said. “I mean, I know that’s supposed to be common, but it’s so variable. One day she’s pretty cogent, makes sense and everything. The next day, she looks at me like she’s not quite sure of my name, but she thinks she remembers that I’m an okay guy so she should be nice to me.” He paused. “She can’t stay there unless she takes the medicine. Should I try to move her to a different place?”
“You could try,” Emily said. “But I think most facilities medicate patients to control antisocial behavior. They have to, and sometimes the meds work pretty well. There’s no magic bullet for this.” Her voice softened. “There might be no better option.”
Anna scooted her chair closer to Sam’s and put both arms around him. “I’m so sorry, Sam. I always admired your mother, how tough and fierce she is, even though she didn’t have much use for me.”
“She liked you,” he said. “As much as she liked anyone who wasn’t a blood relative or a comrade. Preferably both.”
Emily poured three cups of tea. Sam inhaled the tea steam and the aroma transported him to the apartment he and Anna rented in those first deliriously happy months. He had to clear his throat again.
He stood up. “I can’t do this.”
“Sit down,” Anna said. “Talk to me about Zoe and this boy.”
Sam sat. “Jeremy? He’s a good kid.”
Anna made a face. “But he’s so much older. And got to admit I’m concerned about his family. Prison and the commune or cult or whatever it was?”
“Come on,” Sam said. “You can’t hold the kid responsible for his family. Besides, is your family any saner? Emily’s dad was in prison, just like Jeremy’s.”
“It’s not only his family,” Anna said. “It sounds like he’s not that stable emotionally. That worries me.”
Sam started to argue with her. He liked Jeremy and wanted Anna to like him too, but he didn’t have the energy for it, not today. He stood up again. “It might take him a while, but Jeremy will figure it out. But right now I can’t focus on anything except my mother. She’s declining pretty fast. Is that normal?”
“Nothing is normal with this disease,” Emily said. “I’m so sorry.”
Anna stood too and hugged him. “Let me know if I can do anything, okay?”
“Me too,” Emily added. “One of the hardest things about this disease is that it doesn’t progress in an orderly manner. Some days there’s profound memory loss. Other days, people remember a lot. Including how much they’ve lost and will lose.”
“I’m not sure which of those is worse,” Sam said.
Chapter Twenty-One
Salvaging his academic status took Jeremy almost a week of persuasive talking and solemn promises to work all summer. Then a week of lab work and papers before he could finally spare a day to volunteer at the university permaculture garden. He waited in the shade of the shed looking across the garden section labeled “Teas, Herbs and Medicinals.” Penny royal and oregano, spearmint and lemon balm, marigolds and clover grew in profusion.
The weather was warm for early May, and sweat-loving gnats swarmed around his face and neck. Plants rarely bit or stung—one of the reasons he liked them more than critters, sometimes more than people. Not more than Zoe, of course, which made him forgot about the itchy bumps on the back of his neck.
A tall woman in a staff tee and rubber boots joined him. “Alice,” she said. “I’m garden leader today.”
“Jeremy. It’s my first time here.”
“Welcome. You got any experience growing vegetables or herbs?”
He nodded. “My family grew most of our food.”
“On a farm?” Alice asked.
“No. In the city. In Springfield.” Jeremy ignored her skeptical look. He’d practically grown up in the greenhouse and spent his summers seeding and weeding, pruning and harvesting. His family might have been screwed up, but they turned their city lot into an organic garden, composting before it was sexy. Of course they did it because their religion required it. He didn’t have much use for most of their beliefs, but they got it right about food.
“So, I know the difference between a plant and a weed. Especially tea.” He pointed at the spearmint. “Our specialty. My family used to run a teahouse.”
“Great. You can start weeding in the tea bed. Any questions?”
“Yeah. Why all the clover? You can’t eat that.”
“Actually, the flowers are edible, but we plant it because it’s a strong nitrogen fixer. Do you know what that is?”
He tried not to feel insulted. “I’m a botany major. And what about comfrey? For the tea?”
Alice grinned. “Nope, because it’s a dynamic accumulator. You know, the deep roots access nutrients and store them in plant tissue. And we harvest the greens for mulch, especially on fruit trees.”
He nodded, though he’d never heard of dynamic accumulators. “One more thing. I think I get the concept of permaculture. It’s a great idea—sustainable gardens, organic methods and all. But will it have any effect on all the plant species that are becoming extinct?”
“Well, it won’t bring them back, unless you agree with that guy who wants to clone them. Which sort of defeats the basic idea of following nature. But farming within biodiversity principles should slow—maybe even stop—the species loss.” She laughed and her ponytail swung back and forth. “That is, if you simultaneously reverse urban sprawl and rein in corporate agribusiness.”
Jeremy grinned. “Right.”
Alice turned to leave. “Have fun. We break in forty minutes for tea.”
“Compost tea?”
She laughed again.
“Like I said. Tea’s my specialty,” Jeremy said.
Jeremy squatted by the spearmint and watched Alice walk along the curved path. Her blond ponytail swung sideways with each step and the curve of her calves
was lovely in the sunshine. He’d never seen Zoe in shorts, or a skirt, maybe because her legs were so scrawny. At least, she called them scrawny.
He’d like to see for himself. He closed his eyes to the image of Zoe’s legs and breathed in the familiar smell of spearmint. When he was a boy, there were often batches hanging over the dining room table to dry. Francie had liked to rub the leaves between her wet fingers and dab it behind their ears. Goddess perfume, she called it. Tim would push her hand away and wrinkle his nose, but Jeremy loved it. Later, after they lost the house and the yard and their only tea came from the food coop, he longed for the aroma of fresh spearmint.
Stop being sentimental, he told himself, and reached for the weeds.
Forty minutes later, a bell rang and he stood up, relishing the familiar ache behind his shoulder blades. He followed two other volunteers through Toro blueberry bushes, along quince and persimmons, toward the dining commons. The doorway was draped with a banner that read Diversity = Resilience.
“Spearmint, lemon verbena, or H2O,” Alice said, pointing at three large mason jars in a metal bucket of ice. He poured spearmint tea into a mug with the university seal mostly rubbed off and sat on a folding chair by the open window. The breeze carried a sweet scent, honeysuckle maybe, or fruit blossoms. He let his eyes close. One of these weeks he’d catch up with assignments. And sleep.
“How’d it go, Jeremy?” Alice sat down next to him, and gestured to a dark-skinned woman in cut-off overalls. “This is Peg.”
Peg nodded and Jeremy said hello.
“I liked it,” Jeremy said. “It’s a great antidote to too much studying.”
“How’d you get involved with the garden?” Peg asked Alice.
“I’m an SFF major. Sustainable Food and Farming,” Alice said. “This is what I want to do with my life. What about you?”
Peg shrugged. “I’m a lit major, but I grew up in Springfield. I was eating dinner when the tornado hit. Our house was okay, but our neighbor’s house, just across the street, was totaled. Nothing left but a cellar hole. I became, like, obsessed with catastrophic weather and the fall of civilization and that we’ll all have to grow our food and make our clothes and burn candles. Thought I better start learning how.”
“Wow,” Alice said. “I saw the tornado clips on the news.”
“I’m from Springfield too,” Jeremy said. “About a mile from the tornado path.”
“Is that why you’re interested in permaculture?” Peg asked.
Jeremy shook his head. “I’ve always been into plants, since I was a little kid. Drawing them, mostly. I’m a botany major as an excuse to hang out with plants.” He leaned forward. “I’m interested in species extinction, trying to stop it. I’m taking Ecosystems and Climate Change this semester.”
Alice interrupted. “Isn’t Professor Clarke amazing? That course changed my life. And she’s part of a group studying this new tree crisis. A huge die-off, like the bees, you know?”
Jeremy shook his head. “I haven’t heard about that.”
“I don’t know details,” Alice said. “But it has to do with a pathogen killing oak trees in California and Oregon, spreading across the country and into Europe. Professor Clarke is part of a research group for the feds.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about changing my major,” Jeremy said. “To environmental studies, to do work that makes a difference.” He looked from Alice to Peg. “Species loss is like a holocaust, like plant genocide.”
“Wait a minute,” Alice said. “You’re the one with the radio program, right? The guy who …” Alice’s voice trailed off and she looked away.
Peg stared at him. “Who what?”
“Nothing.” Jeremy stood up. “I just got—I don’t know—excited. Carried away. I’m fine.”
A man in a staff tee stuck his head in the doorway. “Back to the trenches,” he announced.
Jeremy finished his tea, which wasn’t as good as Francie’s, and returned the mug to the table.
“I’m pretty much done with the tea section,” he told Alice.
“Want to transplant some lettuce seedlings?” she said. “I’ll show you where they are.”
Tucking soil around the delicate sprouts, Jeremy thought about that night at the radio station. Did Alice actually hear the program—not very likely—or just hear about it? And what did people say about him? That he was nuts, or what? Terrific. He could be followed through life by two bizarre stories, one his dad’s and one his own.
Ten minutes later, Jeremy’s phone buzzed. He sat back on the pebble pathway and wiped his hands on his jeans before answering.
“Hey, Zoe. What’s up?”
“It’s my grandma.”
He could hear the panic in Zoe’s voice. How cool, he thought. Not that she was worried but that he knew her voice well enough to recognize the emotion.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing yet, but they’re starting that new drug tomorrow, so she’s having a party tonight, just family and her women friends. She says she wants us to remember her before she becomes a zombie. And she especially asked you to come.”
“Okay. I’ll have to borrow a car,” Jeremy said. “But I’ll be there.”
When Zoe and Jeremy got to Flo’s room that evening, the party was already in progress. Mimi had set up a folding card table in the middle of the room, covered it with a tablecloth in Van Gogh colors, and set out wine, tortilla chips, and salsas labeled “Hot,” “Hotter,” “Hottest.” Sam perched on the windowsill close to Flo, who held court in her reading chair by the window. She raised her wineglass to the newcomers.
“Welcome,” Flo said. “Now, the party can really begin.” She took a drink and blew them a winey kiss.
Jeremy hung back, but Zoe took his hand and pulled him into the middle of the room. “This is Jeremy,” she announced. “And these,” she said, waving her arm across the four women sitting side by side on the bed, “are my grandma’s best buddies.”
“I’m Mimi, and I’m so glad to meet you.” Mimi sprung forward and gave him a mini-hug, the kind meant to welcome.
Jeremy looked surprised and Sam smiled to himself. He still felt overwhelmed in the presence of these women, even after knowing them his whole life. If Jeremy didn’t feel that way now, he soon would. That is, if he stuck around.
Marlene waved. “I’m Marlene and we’re the Girls’ Club.”
“We’re the Sisterhood,” Fanny interrupted. “And I’m Fanny.”
Mimi laughed. “Give it a rest, guys. These kids don’t care about our group’s name.”
Claire stood and shook Jeremy’s hand. “I’m Claire and I don’t care about our name, either. But I’m happy to meet you.”
Flo leaned forward and took the spoon from the “Hottest” salsa, licked it, and tapped it on her wineglass.
“Enough small talk,” she said. “Tonight’s party is in honor of my brain, my doomed and decaying brain, and my big mouth. Tomorrow they start drugs to shut me up.”
“You have such a delicate way with words, Ma,” Sam said. “Not to mention a healthy dose of paranoia. You know, the medicine might help.”
Flo dipped her head at him, in regal acknowledgement of the possibility. “Maybe. But tonight might be my last chance to say what I think.”
Mimi laughed. “You’ve been saying what you think every single day for the forty-five years I’ve known you. Probably long before that too.”
“Still, this might be my intellectual swan song. And I particularly want to address these young people. They’re the ones to carry on my work.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Please, Ma. No political speeches.”
Flo pointed the spoon at Sam and he saw her eyes fog over for a quick moment, as if she was looking past him, and then she continued. “Just because you’re an apolitical slug, doesn’t that mean your daughter and her young man are also.”
She turned to Jeremy. “You asked me a question a few days ago. You asked how to fight a threat that’s overw
helming, when defeat and disaster seem inevitable.”
Jeremy nodded. Zoe took his hand.
“Which threat?” Mimi asked. “There are so many.”
“Terracide,” Jeremy said. “Global warming is killing off plant species, destroying the biodiversity of Earth.” He glanced at Flo but she was gazing into her wine, deep in thought.
“‘I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues,’” quoted Zoe. “The Lorax was my favorite book as a kid. What’s your wise advice for us, Grandma? How do we save the world?”
Flo stared into her wineglass, swirling the rich burgundy liquid into a vortex that climbed higher and higher up the sides of the glass, pulling her in like the tide. The words swirled too, all those Seuss-words she used to recite over and over with Zoe. “‘The trees have no tongues,’” she whispered and the eddy pulled her in deeper and she spun the glass faster and the tide pulled harder and the wine climbed closer to the rim and then it was over the rim and onto her hand and into her lap and the glass fell to the floor and shattered.
After cleaning up the broken glass and spilled wine, Flo’s friends packed up the chips and salsa and sunny tablecloth and folding card table.
“Leave the wine,” Flo told them. “Bet I can’t drink after tomorrow. It’s probably not allowed with that medicine.”
“The bottle is all yours.” Mimi kissed Flo goodnight.
Zoe started to disagree, then stopped herself. Why shouldn’t her grandma get blotto tonight if she wanted to?
While Jeremy and Sam walked the women down to their car, carrying the table and bags, Zoe helped Flo get into her flannel nightgown and under the covers. She transferred from her chair onto the edge of the bed and leaned close, pushing Flo’s flyaway hair away from her face.
“You okay, Grandma?”
Flo shrugged, then pointed to Jeremy standing in the doorway.
“Sam said he needed a cup of coffee,” Jeremy said. “He’ll be up soon.”
Flo patted the bed, the space between her and Zoe. “Sit, Jeremy. I want to tell you something, something important.”
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