Kinship of Clover

by Ellen Meeropol

  She was a pistol. Had been a pistol. Sam looked at his mother’s deflated face, the flesh sunken into the bones. He smoothed her hair back and tucked it behind her ear. She was a tangled mess of contradictions too. He’d never understand how one woman could contain so many worries, could see danger around every corner, and yet live so fearlessly.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jeremy wanted to stay in town and be helpful, but Sam said there was nothing much to do. Flo had been admitted to a cardiac unit and it would take a few days to determine exactly what happened and how much she might recover. Plus, it would cause more trouble with his parents if he stayed. As it was, Francie yelled at him about spending the whole weekend with Zoe.

  “Nice of you to visit,” Francie said when she dropped him at the bus station. “You like that girl’s family better than your own.”

  It didn’t feel right to take the bus back to Amherst Sunday afternoon, as if nothing had happened, but that’s what he did. He called Zoe every evening, like usual, but she sounded preoccupied. She was probably worried about her grandma, but Jeremy wished they could talk for hours, like they had before.

  Tuesday evening, Zoe said goodbye after ten minutes.

  “I’m so tired,” she said. “I sat with Grandma from right after school until Papa came with pizza for dinner. I talked to her, but she didn’t seem to hear me. Then I did my homework while he talked with her. At her, really, because she didn’t talk back. We just got home and I’ve still got a biology lab to write up.”

  He offered to help with the lab report but she sounded annoyed, said a quick gotta-go and hung up. When the phone rang again right away, he thought that Zoe was calling to apologize, but it wasn’t her name displayed, some number with an area code he didn’t recognize.

  “Jeremy?” a woman’s voice asked. “It’s Mary. Mary Matheson.”

  “Mary,” he said. “Wow. Are you okay? Where are you?”

  “Oregon. I’ve been better. I got your number from Greenhope. Listen, you’re going to hear some bad news about me, and I wanted to explain in person.”

  “What kind of bad?” he asked, although away from Brooklyn and Greenhope and the group, he wasn’t likely to hear anything about Mary.

  “It’ll be in the papers,” she said. “They charged me with several felonies and they’ve threatened terrorism enhancements. It probably would have meant spending the rest of my life in prison. At least, all of my son’s childhood.”

  “Did you do it? What they say you did?”

  Mary’s voice was quiet. “Always assume the phone is tapped and don’t say anything you wouldn’t want the world to hear.”

  Jeremy’s cheeks blazed. He knew that. “Sorry.”

  “Anyway,” she continued. “I’ve pled guilty to lesser charges and will only serve a year.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why did they let you off?”

  She didn’t answer for a long moment. “I gave them some names. I had to, Jeremy. Just two. Carl and Sari.”

  Jeremy felt stunned. “I don’t understand,” he repeated. “How could you do that?”

  “I’m a single mom. Who would raise my boy?”

  Jeremy had no answer for that, but he had a question of his own. “Did you mention me?”

  “No.”

  “Why are you calling me?”

  “Just to tell you, personally, I guess,” she said, her voice now spent. “I wanted to warn you to stay far away from the others.”

  “You were my hero,” he whispered.

  “I know,” Mary said. “And I’m sorry. You have to be your own hero.”

  He mumbled something and disconnected. He wiped his face on his T-shirt and wished he could talk to Zoe. Instead, he tried to work on a long-overdue history paper, but the events leading up to Shays’ Rebellion couldn’t distract him from what Mary said.

  The permaculture committee meeting the next morning wasn’t much of a distraction either, especially after pulling an all-nighter to finish the history paper. Jeremy sat on a rolling desk chair with a wobbly wheel, facing the window overlooking the garden. From his position just outside the meeting circle, he could see the entire office. The low table under the window held seedlings in clay pots, some staked and leaning against the wall. The dozen or so students sat on mismatched chairs, elbows propped on knees, or cross-legged on the floor, all leaning into the discussion. These people were seriously intense.

  Alice had explained that it was an honor to be invited to attend as a guest. And he hoped they would hire him for a few hours a week during the summer because that would really help with expenses. But he wasn’t so sure about joining the group fall semester, even though he could use the credits. He was having a hard time just following this conversation which ping-ponged energetically from the benefits of a huge lavender puffball perennial called Welsh onion, to questioning the group’s requirement for consensus, to consideration of the ethical slippery-slope of growing annuals.

  Across the circle from Jeremy, a young man with braided hair flowing down his T-shirt was fired up about the annuals issue. “Our mission is to model permaculture to the community, to demonstrate totally sustainable farming,” he said.

  How would that help endangered plants? Jeremy wondered.

  Sitting on the floor in front of the braided guy, a young woman leaned back, her arms entwined around his legs. She nodded in vigorous agreement. “Plants that aren’t self-renewing have no role in our mission.”

  Behind the braided couple, the seedlings on the table began sending sprouts up along the white wall, snaking toward the windows. Jeremy blinked hard, because that was impossible, but slender stems still crawled.

  “Modeling is only part of it,” Alice argued. “We’re also committed to growing veggies for the university dining halls. Healthy, yes, but food that students recognize and will eat.”

  “That’s way down the priority list,” the braided kid insisted. “Permaculture is about transforming civilization, remember? Students—people—will learn to appreciate new foods and to love them because we’ll teach them to. And because otherwise we’ll all starve.”

  Alice stood up. “This is a great discussion and we’ll get back to it later. But I’m going to interrupt it now because we have a guest. Professor Clarke is one of our faculty advisors and she’s here to talk to us about something critically important.”

  “Thanks, Alice.” The professor stood in front of the windows, her coppery hair backlit. “You all know about Sudden Oak Death, right?”

  Professor Clarke had lectured on the disease earlier in the semester, before Brooklyn, and Jeremy struggled to remember the details. He glanced at Alice. Didn’t she, didn’t anyone else, notice the climbing plants, suckers attaching to the wall, and now to the window glass as well, behind the professor?

  “Until recently,” Professor Clarke continued, “the spread has been slow but constant. A few years ago, APHIS set up a national reporting system, and we’ve been running samples as part of that.” She paused and looked around the room. “In the last two months, the spread has accelerated dramatically, worldwide.”

  Jeremy’s fingers started tingling, that familiar pulsation, that warning sting. He glanced down at the green shoots pushing through the skin of his fingertips, inching along the smooth cotton of his shorts.

  “Our planet is so fucked.” The braided kid looked like he was ready to cry. “This could be even worse than the honeybees.”

  The professor smiled. “You’re right. It’s important. Oaks are a keystone species, an ecosystem lynchpin. But we’re working on it, and that’s why I wanted to talk to you today. We’ve been funded for six student internships for the summer and fall. See me if you’re interested in applying.” She turned to Alice. “Thanks for letting me interrupt your meeting.”

  Working for Professor Clarke would be fantastic, but she’d probably choose grad students or seniors. Still, it couldn’t hurt to look into it. Once he figured out what was happening with these vines,
now crawling across his lap and wrapping around his legs. He rolled his chair slightly back, away from the others, and let his hands slide toward the floor. Maybe this was just his sleep-deprived brain playing a trick. Even so, he should probably leave before the plants grew so much that other people noticed.

  Uh-oh. It might be too late for that, because the ones by the window had accelerated their growth—they now covered the glass in a thicket of vines and leaves, a dense forest of growing greens. Small white flowers, trumpet-shaped with a splash of fuchsia inside, blossomed against the glass. Jeremy recognized it then, Nesiota elliptica from St. Helena Island. Supposed to be extinct, but maybe the plants were fighting back, like those elephants in Cameroon Mary talked about, the elephants who attacked villages of poachers. He laughed out loud.

  Faces in the circle turned to look at him, and Jeremy turned the laugh into a cough. Maybe the vegetable kingdom had something to say about Sudden Oak Death or permaculture gardens or transforming civilization. Maybe they had a different perspective, a different set of priorities. Maybe they wanted students to deal with plants in peril, with species at risk. For a moment he hoped that the plants would expand, would send their persuasive shoots into the other students at the meeting. Would weave them all together into one glorious living organism and they could talk about saving the planet and wouldn’t that be an interesting conversation. He wished Zoe’s grandma were there too—she’d love it, and she’d understand too. He knew she would.

  But no. The plants weren’t touching any of the other students. Just him, and he had better get out of here.

  He tried to stand up, but he couldn’t. The green stems—so tender when sprouting from his fingers—had thickened. Now they tethered him to the chair. The vines wound tight around the seat, twisted around the metal chair legs and his bare legs. They wove in and out of the spokes on the small wheels on his chair. They began encircling his chest, making it hard to breathe. This was new. Scary. The plants had never frightened him before. He began to pull at the vines, trying to loosen them. “Begonia eiromischa,” he begged. “Nesiota elliptica. Camellia sinensis.” But the plants continued to grow, to tighten.

  “The plants,” Jeremy called out. “They won’t let me go. Help me.”

  Jeremy had only patchy memories of the trip to the Urgent Care Clinic. He remembered Alice taking charge, saying something about a history of emotional problems that made the other permaculture students step back. He remembered saying he couldn’t get up, so she pushed his chair the two blocks to Health Services. She leaned forward with the effort so that her ponytail swung wildly at the edge of his vision, in time to the clacking of the wobbly wheels on the uneven sidewalk.

  A group of white coats were waiting for him at Urgent Care. Patty was there too. Right before he passed out, he looked down at his fingers, his wrists and arms. His skin was clear. The plants were gone. They left no trace.

  Once the nurses had Jeremy settled, hooked up to a monitor, and had started an IV, Patty sat at his bedside and considered the situation. Was Jeremy—such a sweet kid, if a little odd—losing his grip on reality?

  She made a mental list of the possible etiology of his episodes. Hallucinations could signal a brain tumor. An infection, bacterial or viral. Drugs or toxins. Mental illness; he was the right age for onset of schizophrenia. None of these were good. She’d start with blood and urine testing and an MRI of the brain, but her gut told her this was emotional, not organic disease. He had seemed a bit evasive when they met before, but when he wasn’t imagining the return—revenge?—of extinct plants, he seemed so normal and healthy. Likeable, too. Who was this kid?

  She opened the bedside laptop, typed Jeremy Beaujolais into the search engine, and pressed Enter.

  Nothing came up for his name except an honorary mention in the Central High School science fair three years earlier. No social media sites or blog postings. But someone named Francine Beaujolais had a number of hits, mostly news stories about a dozen years earlier. A quick check of university demographic data confirmed that Francine Beaujolais was Jeremy’s mother. Patty read the articles chronologically—about the family’s commune, the deaths of Jeremy’s half-siblings, the trials and prison sentences.

  Okay, so this was a kid with mega-secrets.

  Patty wondered what charcoal-sketched monsters lived in the cobweb corners of this boy’s imagination. Whatever happened when he was young, he would have to decipher his childhood history enough to build himself an adult home and figure out how to live there. She studied the newspaper photograph of Francine hugging her husband Sebastian at his sentencing hearing and then looked at Jeremy. His eyes were open.

  “Welcome back,” she said.

  Seeing the nurse practitioner sitting at his bedside in the curtained cubicle, Jeremy’s first thought was where was her mustard-colored sweater? His second thought was a cavernous, face-blazing embarrassment. He covered his face with both hands.

  “I can’t believe it happened again,” he mumbled.

  “How many times is this?” Patty asked.

  He had to think. Once when he was a little kid, in the greenhouse. Then at the radio station, when they sent him to Patty the first time. Twice in Brooklyn, in the garden and at the demonstration. And today.

  He held up his hand, fingers splayed. “Five, I think.”

  Oh, six. There was the birthday party and dancing with Zoe. But that was different, pleasurable, and not scary at all. And none of Patty’s business.

  “Tell me about the first time.”

  “I don’t remember much,” he said. “I was nine.”

  That wasn’t true. He remembered everything: his dad in jail. The flickering candles in the greenhouse. The funeral chants. Sitting on the floor in a circle, sharing a pillow with Tim. The candle flames danced and soon the plants were dancing too and when they grew around his fingers and up his arms and around his skinny body, he felt less alone, less sad.

  “Jeremy?” Patty asked. “Are you remembering something?”

  “Yeah. I guess. But listen, I’m pretty tired.”

  Patty stood up. “Why don’t you rest for a bit then. But here’s what I think. These episodes are apparently happening more frequently, and they are disturbing to everyone. You, most of all. I’ll order some tests to rule out potential physical causes. But I strongly suspect this is a reaction to some stress in your life, some emotional trauma.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “I think,” she continued, “that you’re going to have to face whatever it is sometime and it might as well be now. I think you need to talk with someone at the counseling center and try to figure it out.”

  “Someone? You mean a shrink?”

  “A therapist.”

  He rubbed his eyes, hard. He was an adult and he hadn’t broken any laws, so they couldn’t make him talk to anyone, could they? It was hard to imagine how talking could help. He wasn’t even sure he wanted the hallucinations—or whatever they were—to go away. There was something comforting about them, like a crazy uncle you adored and were embarrassed by, all at the same time. Still, he liked talking to Patty. And he was scared.

  “I’ll talk to you, but no shrink.”

  “I’m a nurse practitioner, Jeremy. I’m not trained to do in-depth psychological work.”

  “That’s okay, because I’m not crazy.”

  She didn’t speak for a few minutes, and Jeremy thought she was going to refuse, insist he talk to some stiff jerk who wouldn’t get anything.

  Then she smiled. “Fair enough. I can consult with a therapist. You and I will do this together. But we can’t make a habit of meeting like this, when there’s a crisis. We’ll talk every week. And we need to get another adult involved, to support you.” She paused. “Are your parents still in Europe?”

  Jeremy felt foolish. “I lied about that,” he admitted. “They never were. I’m sorry, but I didn’t think they could deal with this. They still can’t.”

  “Okay. Is there someone else?”

&
nbsp; He hesitated, then said slowly. “My … girlfriend’s dad is cool. He might come.”

  “Will you call him? Tell him we’re going to do some tests and ask him to come pick you up tomorrow afternoon. Take you home and keep an eye on you for a day or two?”

  “I guess.”

  “One other thing. Are you willing to share your feelings with me, even when it’s hard?”

  “I’ll try.” He removed the newspaper clipping from his wallet and handed it to her. “I guess you can start by reading this.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  While Jeremy wrestled with his demons that Wednesday morning, Sam followed the food services cart down the hospital corridor. Metal wheels clanged across the tile floor, pausing at each doorway while the kitchen worker collected dirty trays. Stylized flowers draped the walls in plastic scallops of purple and yellow. Soiled sheets and towels escaped from linen bags. The overhead page summoned Dr. Strong STAT to ICU. Heartbeats marched in muffled syncopated beeps across the rows of monitors behind the nurses’ station. Flo’s room was silent except for the hum from the special oxygen mask designed to prevent her lungs from collapsing during the long hesitations between breaths.

  Her tray was untouched. A scum glistened on the surface of the cream of wheat. Sam sniffed the coffee; it had no smell. On his mother’s admission five days earlier, he told the staff that Flo only drank tea, steeped four minutes sharp. She hated coffee, always had. She never learned to brew it either, even though Dad—no, Brad—chugged it by the gallon. He made his own, in a percolator on the stove. It smelled wonderful but tasted like burnt tires.