The text wasn’t really from his school, though Alice did work at UMass. And it wasn’t technically a job offer either, but it could possibly turn into one, if Jeremy was really lucky. He wasn’t sure why he was grateful for an excuse to get off the phone with Tim, but he was. And why was Tim coming home?
How R U doing? Alice wrote. Can we talk?
What’s up? he answered.
U feeling better? Becuz 2 summer jobs came thru.
He couldn’t believe she’d hire him after the show he put on at the meeting. Seriously? he wrote.
Would need a letter from your doc.
I’ll ask her today.
When can U meet?
Noon?
OK. Garden office.
His head spinning, Jeremy put his phone in his pocket. There was way too much going on. He really wanted to get back to Springfield and Zoe. But he needed a job, either at the garden or with Professor Clarke’s research. In any case, walking into the permaculture office, the room where the extinct plants last came to him, that would be seriously weird.
Waiting for Jeremy to show for his ten o’clock appointment, Patty tried to concentrate on her other patients. But compared to hallucinations and dead babies in remote parks, chlamydia and birth control options were a bit ho-hum. When she was told that Jeremy was waiting for her in an exam room, her heart rate accelerated and she realized she was anxious. If she were to be completely honest with herself, she’d admit that was partly because of his friend Sam.
But she wasn’t ready to be quite that honest yet.
“How was your week?” she asked Jeremy.
“A lot going on.” He told her about completing the assignments in three of his classes, leaving only two incompletes. Packing up his books and papers and clothes and schlepping it all to his parents’ apartment in a major rainstorm.
“Are you still staying at Sam and Zoe’s?” There, she said his name and felt her cheeks blaze as she spoke.
Jeremy gave her a surprised look. “No, I’ve been home with my parents. Sam and Zoe have enough to deal with right now, with Zoe’s grandma dying.”
“That’s Sam’s mother?”
Jeremy nodded. “And my dad has been … Well, I don’t know exactly what he’s been, except that he’s different.”
“Different how?”
“Acting more like a dad. You know, like he’s concerned about me.” He laughed. “Too much, sometimes. He’s obsessed with these FBI agents who keep bugging me. Says they’ll keep hassling me until I give them what they want.”
“Which is?”
“Names, I guess. Information I don’t have.”
“And that’s good, about your dad?”
“Yeah, I think so. Not about his FBI obsession, but that he’s different.” He shook his head. “But the thing I want to talk about is the hallucinations. Because Alice—she’s the manager at the permaculture garden, the one who …”
“I remember Alice,” Patty said. “She’s the one who drove you here in a wheeled desk chair.”
Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Yeah. She said there might be a summer job for me, if you tell them I’m stable enough to work.”
“Are you?” Patty asked.
“You tell me.” He shrugged. “Because I have no idea. Since I don’t know what these episodes are, or why I get them.”
“Let’s talk about that. Your tests—the CT scan and the blood work—were all normal.”
“So I can’t blame everything on a brain tumor, huh?”
“Nope.”
“I’ve been thinking.” Jeremy spoke slowly, not sure what he wanted to say. “I’m not so sure that the, episodes, or whatever you want to call them, are so awful.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that having plants grow out of my body—or my mind, I guess—it’s as if my imagination rescues them from extinction and brings them back to life. Sometimes there are even flowers and they’re so pretty that I can’t stand it.” He hesitated. “Maybe these make-believe plants are an essential part of me, like drawing and caring about extinct species and being generally kind of a nerd. They could be a gift, not a disease, a gift from the plants because I know their names. Maybe I don’t need to get rid of them, just have to learn how to control when it happens. And not be scared.”
“What would that mean?”
“I don’t know. And maybe I’m all wrong.” This was nuts; didn’t he want to get rid of these … these episodes? “Anyway, would you write me that note?”
“Is that what you want to do this summer?” Patty asked. “Come back to campus and work in the permaculture garden?”
Good question. That’s what he had wanted, a few weeks ago.
“Or maybe on a research project one of my profs is running. I’m not sure,” he said. “But if you write the note, I have the option.”
She pulled a prescription pad from her pocket and scribbled a few lines. She ripped the page off, and handed it to him.
“I think you are stable enough to work,” Alice said. “But at some point you are going to have to deal with these extinct plants growing from your body. There’s a reason for these delusions.”
“Maybe they’re just illusions instead of delusions,” Jeremy said. “And not so bad?”
“Joking about it is fine,” Patty said. “But it would help you to learn some strategies, for when it happens again. And, at some point I think you should really go deeper. Talk with someone who has more psych training than me.”
“I don’t know,” Jeremy said. “Maybe.”
The rest of the session flew by. When Jeremy stopped for a sandwich en route to meet Alice, he was still thinking about the possibility that plants sprouting from his fingertips didn’t mean he was sick or demented. Brushing crumbs from his jacket, he knocked on the permaculture office door and walked inside. Alice was on the phone at the corner desk. She put a finger to her lips and then pointed to the chairs.
They were still set up in a haphazard circle. Jeremy tried not to remember those mismatched seats filled with people, more students on the floor leaning against backpacks and jackets. He sat on a metal folding chair, perched on the edge of the seat, facing the garden. The low table was empty, all the seedlings now planted outside. There were no vines, no small white flowers with an inner splash of fuchsia blossoming against the glass. He sighed and checked his watch. The next bus for Springfield left in forty minutes.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Alice said, dragging a chair to face him.
He handed her Patty’s note. “No problem. Here’s the letter you asked for. She thinks I’m okay to work. But I’m not sure if …”
Alice held up her hand. “I can’t promise anything, you know. I’ll bring this to the Permaculture Garden Board but I’ve gotta tell you that two Board members were here. That day.” She shrugged. “They’re probably pretty nervous about you.”
“That’s okay,” he said, leaning forward. “Tell me about the jobs for Professor Clarke.”
“I don’t know all the details,” Alice said. “And there’s something odd about the project, some kind of power struggle in Washington about it. This is big—the ramorum organism has the potential to kill off more than oaks—redwoods and rhododendron and other related species—as well as impact wildlife and worsen soil erosion. But it seems like a huge nursery corporation tried to hide the disease and spread infected plants all over the place and they’ve hired lobbyists to convince Congress to freeze the funds. Until they succeed, there are three jobs working here this summer, working with leaf and bark samples from all over the eastern US”
“Wow,” Jeremy said. “Guess we need an Assange or Snowden for the plant world.”
Alice stood up. “Eventually, the truth will come out,” she said. “You can’t keep that kind of thing secret forever. And then we’ll have to figure out how to respond. In the meantime, I’ll take your letter to the Board meeting next week and you should let Professor Clarke know you’re interested. I’m rooting for you, whiche
ver job you decide to apply for.”
Jeremy stood up too. “I appreciate it,” he said. “But I don’t know what I want. I’m thinking maybe it would be better to wait until fall, for me to work here.”
“Oh?” Alice held the door for him.
“I might get a job in Springfield this summer. My girlfriend is there.” He still blushed every time he spoke that word. “And my dad is home now, after being away for ten years.”
“Away?”
“He was in prison.”
He ignored Alice’s stunned expression and waved goodbye. He had never said those words aloud, except to people who already knew, and it felt surprisingly liberating. Well, two-thirds terrifying and one-third liberating.
Flo’s room was already crowded when Jeremy arrived. Sam sat on the bedside chair, his fingers looked dark against the pink chenille bedspread. He held Flo’s hand, pale with the blue vessels snaking like vines under her skin.
Three women sat side by side on the empty bed by the window. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, Jeremy thought, his brain trying to defuse the tension of the moment. He nodded to Sam and waved to the three women—Zoe’s mother Anna, and her aunt or cousin, whatever Emily was. The older woman was Mimi, Flo’s best friend. He remembered her from the night before they gave Flo the new medicine, when Zoe brought him to her grandmother’s goodbye-to-herself party. Flo had been right about that, after all.
And there was Zoe. Her wheelchair was backed into the narrow space between Flo’s bed and the wall. Leaning forward, Zoe rested one shoulder on the bedspread next to her grandmother, her head sharing the pillow. Both women’s eyes were closed.
Jeremy stood next to her. If Zoe was sleeping, he didn’t want to wake her up. But if she wasn’t sleeping, she might be pissed off if he ignored her. How did guys negotiate this stuff? He touched her shoulder.
She opened her eyes. She didn’t look surprised to see him and she didn’t seem pissed off, either. She pushed herself up into a sitting position in her wheelchair and smiled at Jeremy, a slow, warm sunbeam as if their argument the day before never happened, as if she didn’t go storming off down the Forest Park sidewalk looking like she never wanted to see him again.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he answered. “How is she?”
Zoe shook her head.
The nurse stepped into the room. “Everything okay in here?”
“She’s sleeping,” Sam said.
“It’s a coma,” Zoe corrected him.
The nurse touched her stethoscope to Flo’s chest and listened. “Her heart rate is very slow and her breathing is irregular. I don’t think it’ll be too much longer.”
Sam couldn’t stand this. He couldn’t sit around waiting for his mother to die. He gestured to the three women on the bed. “Let’s take a short break. Give the younger generation a few minutes.” He leaned over and kissed Flo, resting his lips on her sparse hair for a moment.
He looked at Zoe. This is your last chance, he thought. Say goodbye. “We’ll be back in fifteen minutes, Poose. Okay?”
“Poose?” Jeremy asked, when they were alone with Flo.
“Baby nickname. I’ll explain some other day.” She took Jeremy’s hand. “Grandma looks so alone.”
“So get close to her,” Jeremy said. “Hug her.”
Zoe transferred out of her wheelchair and onto the bed. Flo was positioned on her right side and Zoe snuggled close behind her, spooning her grandmother’s diminished frame. She breathed with Flo, matching breath for breath. When Flo stopped, Zoe held her breath and counted—one-one thousand, two-one thousand—until Flo gulped another ragged mouthful.
Boots abandoned Flo’s feet and curled up against her chest, filling the hollow space next to her bruised ribs. His purr was a roar in the silent room.
Jeremy stroked the cat’s back, watching the sparks of static electricity dance between skin and fur. He eased onto the bed at Zoe’s feet.
Later, he couldn’t be sure if he made things begin or just recognized the signs earlier. It started with the familiar tingling in his fingertips and the tremble germinating deep in his flesh. Tender sprouts grew around his muscle fibers and blood vessels, getting ready to burst out. They poked through the skin with a hot pinch of pain and his hands were spring-growing twigs, swelling and pulsing. The shoots opened—they unfurled and stretched into branches and leaves and the beginnings of buds, weaving in and out through his fingers and twining tight around his wrists and then sprinting across the space to Zoe and Flo. He had a brief flash of worry—could his plants harm other people?—but he immediately knew that wasn’t the case. As the leaves grew thicker and the buds swelled, Jeremy directed the vines, with just the slightest mental nudge, to knit a green embrace around the three of them.
He glanced at Zoe. She was hugging Flo, speaking softly into her ear. She couldn’t see the vines, could she? What would she think of him now?
And then the buds swelled and burst into flower and he stopped worrying about what anyone else thought. The blooms were large and spiky and deep red—red, of course, because Flo loved the color red. He knew this plant. It was Blutaparon rigidum, from the Galápagos Islands, only extinct a few years. The heavy blossoms covered the three of them and it was perfect and lush and comforting. More Latin names came spilling from his mouth into the warm air above the bed. “Neisosperma brownii,” he whispered. “Campomanesia lundiana.” There were more flowers too—different flowers from his favorite extinct species all growing together in one extended family of green—the rusty red lace of Vanvoorstia bennettiana and the ruby-gulleted white trumpets of Nesiota elliptica. His brain was the loom and their bodies the warp and the plants the weft, their supple stems weaving in and out around three waists and thirty fingers and six soft shoulders.
For a short moment, oak branches appeared with red oozing lesions on the bark. There were brittle leaves and crinkled brown around the edges. No! He would not let that happen, oak trees would not join this pageant of extinction. He banished the image and they were gone. Sibilant Latin names sang above them, music to accompany the shroud of scarlet and white and rusty blooms and shiny green leaves. “Argyroxiphium virescens,” he chanted. “Thismia americana.”
When he finished speaking names, Zoe opened her eyes. “That was beautiful. Thank you,” she said. Then he thought her heard her say, “I love you” before burrowing her face into her grandmother’s hair.
He rested his cheek against Zoe’s sweater. He wasn’t clear about what Zoe saw or if he heard her right, but he couldn’t remember ever feeling this peaceful, this unafraid.
“The plants,” Zoe whispered. “Are they here?”
He whispered too. “Yes.”
“Maybe they’re your mutant superpower,” Zoe said. Her breath sent ripples into the red petals of a Blutaparon blossom entwined in the gray nest of Flo’s hair.
His thoughts returned to leaves and branches and he wove a basket of plants living and plants gone, big enough for the three of them. Padded with clouds, swinging from stars, rocking with some half heard melody, a kinship of white trumpets and clover. There was comfort in the motion and the music and the Latin names. The calm might disappear any minute in a slammed door or angry voice. It might be psychotic or marauding brain cells gone amuck, but for now, for this moment, the world was aligned and it all made sense and was better than good.
Chapter Thirty
Zoe was the one who insisted they sit shiva.
“You know what Flo would say about that, don’t you?” Sam had commented.
Zoe laughed. “Do I ever! But this won’t be a religious thing. No prayers or ripped clothing or covered mirrors. Nothing solemn at all. Just remembering her and telling stories.”
Balancing a plate of cookies on her lap, Zoe wheeled to the threshold of the living room and hesitated. Mimi and the other old ladies huddled on the sofa with one of grandma’s old photo albums. Her dad sat with Anna and Emily and Pippa and Gabe in front of the bay window. Where sho
uld she put the cookies?
Gabe didn’t wait for her decision. He scooped up the plate and stuffed a cookie in his mouth. “I’m starved.”
His mother finessed the tray from his control and set it on the coffee table. “Behave yourself,” Pippa said.
“Flo would have said he was behaving totally appropriately,” Mimi said, looking up from the photo album. “What’s that quote she loved, about well-behaved women rarely making history?”
“Well, Gabe’s a kid, not a woman. Besides, Flo romanticized bad behavior, among other things,” Fanny muttered, reaching for a cookie.
Claire laughed. “Our Flo was full of contradictions. She loved the idea of Party discipline but she refused to toe the line.”
“Any line,” Marlene said with a laugh.
“Speaking of lines,” Mimi said, pointing to a photo. “Remember this picket? Boycott grapes or something, I think. Flo gave an amazing speech at that rally about needing dancing in her revolution.”
“Thought she was Emma Goldman,” Fanny muttered.
Mimi elbowed her. “Stop being such an old prune. You miss her just as much as the rest of us.”
“I do,” Fanny admitted. “She was spectacular. And so damn annoying.”
The four women laughed. “One of a kind.”
Mimi closed the photo album. “Flo had a dozen of these,” she asked Sam. “Where are the rest?”
“The fire,” Sam said. “The only reason this one is here is that I’ve been scanning her photos into a digital file, one album at a time.” He called into the hallway. “Jeremy, are you done?” He turned back to the women. “He’s finishing up the slide show.”
Jeremy set the laptop on the bookcase. Anna moved furniture so everyone could see—the four older women squished together on the sofa, Anna, Emily, and Pippa on chairs in front of the window, and Gabe on the floor, leaning against his mother’s knees.
Jeremy pulled a footstool next to Zoe’s wheelchair. He wiped a tear from her cheek and tried to think of what to say, how to comfort her. Then his phone buzzed in his pocket. He read the text from Alice and clicked on the link she sent.
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