by Ruth Ozeki
“I know,” Geek said. “Ironic, isn’t it?” But he didn’t say anything else, and Will continued.
“Just wish we could do something about the old man’s seeds. Normally there’s an offspring who takes over the operation, but, hell, that Yummy—”
Geek leaned forward. “There is something we can do.” He turned on the PowerBook and started to explain the idea. Will listened, nodding every now and again and asking a few questions.
“It’s kind of a long shot,” Geek concluded. “But when you think about it, the Internet is a perfect vehicle for dissemination. All I need from you is some desk space and access to your high-speed line. Once the site is up, and the initial distributions are made, it’ll be easy to maintain. We can do most of it remotely.”
“It’s nuts,” Will said. “But if it’ll set the old man’s mind at ease, it’s worth a try.”
“Excellent,” said Geek, beaming.
Geek moved his base of operations to the Quinns’ office, and by the end of the week the New Garden of Earthly Delights was up and running and open for business. This time there were no nude pictures of Lilith. There were no sex acts or mudwomen against swags of burgundy velvet, no pagan feminist texts or shamanic discursions or anything that the Tri-County Interfaith League of Family Values could find even remotely offensive. But there were still zucchinis. There were cucurbits and lots of squash.
perpetuity of life
It was like a party in Palliative Care, with my dying father as the center-piece, lying in bed like a long white cake. Geek was leaning over him, doing something with a laptop computer, which sat on the tray table where dinner would have been had Lloyd been eating. Momoko stood next to his pillow, and all the rest of the Seeds were crowded around. Frankie and Charmey were sitting on the end of the bed with their baby. Will and Cass were there, too.
We were the last to arrive, which was Ocean’s fault. Ever since Cass had told her that Chicken Little was old enough to start laying, she had been driving me nuts. She’d gotten it into her head to take an egg to her grandpa—maybe she thought it would cure him or something—and she was practically living in the greenhouse. She followed the hen around, picking her up from time to time and flipping her over to inspect her underneath.
“Wanna see her vent?” she asked anyone who ventured in, brandishing the upside-down chicken. “That’s where the egg’s gonna come from.”
Somehow, despite these levels of surveillance and harassment, the little hen hunkered down just before we were about to leave for the hospital that afternoon, and there was no prying Ocean away.
“She’s doing it!”
“Ocean, come on!” Phoenix shouted. “Geek said we don’t have a lot of time. He’s going to tell us something important.”
“Wait! I want to bring Grandpa the egg.”
“If he dies before we get there, it’ll be all your fault.”
Mercifully, a few minutes later the unflappable chicken rose to her feet and hopped off her nest box to resume her pecking and scratching, and we were able to reach the hospital in time to save Ocean from a lifetime of guilt and recrimination from her brother. Now the two of them ran up to their grandfather and kissed him.
“We’re late,” Ocean announced. “Because of this!” She reached into her pocket and, with greatly exaggerated care, drew out a very small egg. “It’s from Chicken Little. I brought it for you, Grandpa. It’s her first one ever!” She took his hand and opened it, then slipped the little brown egg onto his hardened palm, curling his stiff fingers around it.
He brought the thing up close to his face and studied it, blinking his watery eyes like he’d never seen such a marvelous egg before.
“My!” he whispered. Then he looked at his granddaughter like he’d never seen such a marvelous child before either. “Thank you, Ocean.” He held the egg in one hand and reached with the other toward her face. You could see how much effort the gesture cost him, he was so weak. His hand shook. He touched her cheek, patting her as gently as if she were an eggshell.
I felt a quick, sharp pang as I watched my daughter squirm with delight under my father’s approbation. Poo was squirming, too, so I put him down on the floor. He promptly crawled under the bed and started reaching for the various tubes that were conveying fluids in and out of my father. Cass retrieved him, and he seemed perfectly happy to let her bounce him for a while.
“Ocean, take that egg and put it away before Grandpa breaks it.”
She shot me a wounded glance.
Geek and Will were fiddling with the computer, their heads bent together. “Okay,” Geek announced, “we’re up and running.” He swung the tray table closer to Lloyd and adjusted the angle of the screen while Will cranked up the bed.
Cass stood next to me. “They’ve been working really hard,” she said.
Lilith helped Lloyd with his glasses. Geek glanced at me and seemed nervous, even a little shy. He started to speak.
“Welcome to the New Garden of Earthly Delights,” he said, clicking and opening the home page. Everyone crowded around to see the computer screen. I held back. Apparently it looked good, because the kids started to clap. Lloyd just looked confused. He was peering at the liquid crystal screen through his reading glasses, which Lilith had positioned crookedly on his nose.
“Basically the site is the computerized seed-library database,” Geek said. “The one we’ve been working on with Momoko and Lloyd. It contains every single variety of Fullers’ Seeds, all arranged by genus and species and cross-referenced with the plant names in both Latin and common English.”
He paused, waiting for Lloyd to take in the information. “The idea is to invite growers across the country to become members of the virtual Garden. They’ll register with the Web site, adopt whatever seeds they’re interested in, then grow them out and offer them back to other Garden members through the online catalog.”
Lloyd’s glasses slipped down his nose. He pushed them up again and moved his head closer to the dim screen, trying to see what was on it.
“Other members can contact growers by e-mail and request seeds. It’s awesomely simple, because it will take care of itself—it really takes advantage of the nonhierarchical networking potential of the Web. We sent out a huge mailing to your entire customer list and all our friends and contacts, directing them to the site.”
Lloyd shook his head. It was clear to me that he wasn’t following. He wasn’t about to understand the Internet, never mind appreciate the awesomeness of its networking potential—there was just not enough oxygen getting to his brain—but Geek was prepared. He reached into the battered knapsack at his feet and brought out a sheaf of printed pages. Hard copies.
“Look.” He removed the computer and placed the sheaf carefully on Lloyd’s lap. “They’re from your customers across the country.”
My father picked up a sheet of paper. It trembled in his hand. He brought it close to his face, then held it away and shook his head.
“It’s blurry.”
So Melvin read it to him. It was a Grower’s Pledge. In exchange for receiving seeds for free, the growers promised to propagate them organically, to save seeds from the plants they grew, and to make these new seeds available to other members, also free of charge. Melvin read slowly and carefully. When he finished, he riffled through the stack of pages.
“There’s over forty people right here,” he said. He placed Lloyd’s hand on top of the thick pile. “And more people are sending in pledges every day.”
The small hospital room fell silent. Lloyd looked at the pile of paper in his lap, then looked up at the people assembled there. In a weak voice he whispered, “You’re giving away my seeds?”
In a way I felt sorry for Geek and the rest of them, but it served them right. They didn’t know Lloyd like I did. Didn’t know how stubborn he was, or how controlling. The last thing he’d want was someone else getting fancy ideas about how to run his operation.
Geek looked stricken. He shook his head. “We’re no
t giving them away, Lloyd. People are offering to adopt them. It’s different.” But the confidence had ebbed from his voice, and he did not sound convincing.
Nobody knew what to say. Finally Phoenix spoke up. “Grandpa, it’s so the Terminator won’t get them.”
Lloyd closed his eyes for a long time. Then he sighed. “Momoko?” he said, sounding worn down and defeated.
Everyone turned to look at her.
“She’s asleep,” I said. She was napping in the reclining chair, and I was perched on its arm.
“Wake her up,” Geek said.
So I nudged her. “Mom?” I called into her ear. “Hey, Mom, wake up.” She didn’t move. I looked over at Geek and shrugged. I mean, personally I didn’t care one way or the other, but what was he hoping to accomplish here? If Lloyd couldn’t follow all this, how could she? The part of me that wasn’t feeling sorry for him was feeling pretty smug. See? And you thought you knew them so well. . . .
Then Momoko’s eyes blinked open.
“Grandma,” Phoenix asked, “did you hear Geek’s idea?”
Momoko nodded. “Yes. I like. It’s very nice idea.”
I looked up at the group. “She was sound asleep. She didn’t hear a word.”
But they waited, because at least she was agreeing, and that might be enough to convince Lloyd.
“Very nice idea,” Momoko repeated. “I think so.”
Lloyd roused himself. “Momoko, they want to give away all our seeds!”
She stood then. Scooting herself to the edge of the chair, she got to her feet and shuffled over to Lloyd’s bed. She held on to the metal safety bars and looked down at his unhappy face.
“It is good way.”
“But they’re ours. We have to keep them safe!”
She shook her head. “No. Keeping is not safe. Keeping is danger. Only safe way is letting go. Giving everything away. Freely. Freely.”
She made a gesture with her hands, like she was shooing small children out the door to play, and then she patted his arm. Lloyd closed his eyes and rested his hand on the stack of pledges. The room was still. Then his lips moved. I thought I saw them form the words Pray take these seeds— but it might have been my imagination. When he opened his eyes again and blinked, it was like a long pain was finally breaking, and a clarity suffused his face that made him seem translucent. He looked up at Momoko, then at Geek, then at Melvin, and then slowly his gaze traveled around the room to take in the rest of us.
“Well!” He sighed, and it sounded like a chuckle. “My, my, my . . . !”
I made my exit then, at that tender moment when the perpetuity of life itself was being affirmed. I could feel my face burning. Maybe it was the way Lloyd gazed at the Seeds, so pleased with them, that made me feel so excluded. Or the fatuous expression on Geek’s moon face as he looked to me for my approval. Maybe it was the way Melvin and Lilith hovered fondly beside my parents, smiling like proud parents themselves, or the adoring looks my children cast upon all their planetary heroes. Or maybe it was just the way that Cass cuddled Poo, my baby—proprietary and always ready to help. I don’t know why. All I knew was that I couldn’t stand it in that pastel room for another cozy second. My brain had started to tighten, squeezing like an empty fist, and I was flushed with an old, creepy, drugged-out need to claw the skin from my bones.
I stood up and edged toward the door, then slipped from the room, walking quickly down the hallway. A Christian folk trio had replaced the harpists that day, and I shoved my way through the middle of the group as they made their rounds, serenading the dying. I caught the refrain, spiritual and uplifting, as the elevator descended. I didn’t really intend to leave the building, but I didn’t stop until I hit the air outside. Then I paused. No one had noticed me leaving, except maybe Cass, and either way I knew she would figure it out and make sure the kids were okay. I could always count on her for that. I headed for the car park, where I spiraled up and down until I found the Pontiac.
So many fucking levels.
I hit the first liquor store on the way out of Pocatello.
Tucked the bottle in my bag, opened a new pack of cigarettes, and headed for the Falls.
falls
In a place like Liberty Falls it wasn’t hard to track a person down. Cass spotted Lloyd’s Pontiac on the way home from the hospital, sitting in the parking lot of the Falls Motel, in full view of the road. With the kids in the back of the Suburban, she wasn’t about to stop. She had told them that Yummy had errands to do, but she could see that Phoenix didn’t believe it. She was glad he hadn’t seen the car in the motel lot. She drove them home, got them fed and settled for the night. When the Seeds returned, she asked Lilith to keep an eye on things, and then she drove back into town.
Downtown Liberty Falls never had much of a nightlife, even back when she was growing up, but these days after sunset it was deserted. The only thing that moved on Main Street was the revolving sign above the store-front of the Falls Mortuary—a place Cass passed almost every day of her life and somehow managed not to see. Tonight, though, the radiant plastic caught her eye with its eternal rotations. She wondered what Yummy would want for Lloyd. He’d been a well-respected farmer, and people would want to show up. She could imagine Yummy’s reaction—I have to plan a what? Cass sighed. She knew the funeral director. She would give him a call in the morning.
Cass parked next to the Pontiac. There was a DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging on the door in front. She could hear the sound of a television coming from the room. She knocked, but there was no answer. She crossed the parking lot to the motel office. A little bell tinkled when she pushed open the door. The office hadn’t changed much since the Olsens had retired and the new owners had taken over. They were Indians, from India. The Olsens had been from Twin Falls. There was a sign on the front desk that read SE HABLA ESPAÑOL.
A woman appeared from the back apartment and stood behind the desk. She was short, compact, and plump, with dark skin and long black hair, coiled into a bun at the nape of her neck.
“I’m looking for my friend,” Cass explained. “Her father is in the hospital, and I have to find her.”
The woman tilted her head to one side. Cass could hear the TV in the background. Cartoons. The woman must have children.
“Her name is Fuller. Yummy Fuller.” Cass pointed. “That’s her car.”
The woman looked down at her register. A little girl emerged from the back and slipped behind her mother, holding on to her legs.
“Room Four,” the woman said. “Fuller. Yes?”
“I’ll need a key,” Cass said, smiling at the little girl. The girl giggled. The woman said something in a language Cass couldn’t understand. It wasn’t Spanish, and the tone was sharp. The little girl shrank into the background. The woman hesitated, holding on to the key.
“I can call someone from the sheriff’s office to come over—”
The woman slid the key across the counter.
The TV was still on inside Room 4. Cass jiggled the key until she felt the catch give way. The room was dim and close. A thick haze of cigarette smoke hung in the air, lit by the blue flicker from the television. Yummy was lying faceup and motionless across the bed, her tangled hair spread out across the pillow.
Cass felt her heart pound once, a singular thud, and then she ran to the bedside. She didn’t know what she expected to find. Maybe blood on the sheets or an empty bottle of pills. But there was only a whiskey bottle and a glass and a smoldering ashtray. A melting bucket of ice cubes sat in a wet spot on the carpeted floor. The remote control lay on the bedspread, where it had slipped from Yummy’s hand. Cass pushed the mute button, and in the sudden silence she could hear Yummy breathing. She laid a hand across her friend’s forehead. Yummy groaned but didn’t wake. Her skin was damp with sweat. Cass went to the bathroom to wet a washcloth, which she pressed over Yummy’s eyes.
She took off her coat. She helped herself to a cigarette from the pack on the table, then drank the inch of whiskey left in the gl
ass. She felt all shaky inside, a little scared still, though relieved, of course. But there was something else, another feeling. She poured an inch more whiskey and added an ice cube. She thought back to what had just happened, how she’d stood in the doorway and seen Yummy lying there, and how her heart had leaped to her throat in fear, thinking her friend was dead, but how the very next moment, her thoughts had flown to Poo, and then to Phoenix and Ocean, and what would happen to them—and for a split second she’d felt the quick certainty and stunning joy of knowing they’d be hers. It was so clear and simple. So obvious.
But of course it wasn’t. Yummy was fine—she was just drunk—and now Cass realized that what she’d felt was disappointment. There was no point denying it. She bent over and covered her face with her hands, horrified. She was a sick, loathsome person who had once tried to steal a child and was gladdened by the thought of her best friend’s death. The only time she’d ever felt this much revulsion was when the cancer was diagnosed and she wanted to crawl out of her body, but this was almost worse, because you couldn’t just cut away the bad parts.
After a while she sat up and looked over her shoulder, then crawled up the bed and sat cross-legged next to her friend. “Yum?” she said, but there was still no answer. In sleep Yummy looked ridiculously young. Her eyes were swollen from tears, and the rims of her nostrils were red. Seeing her passed out like this, Cass felt a sudden icy sense of what it must have been like for her in San Francisco. Taking drugs until you passed out. Probably shacking up in seedy motels like this with God knows what kind of man, because how else do you get by with no money? It was awful to think about. Cass reached out and stroked her friend’s forehead.
Yummy made a little moaning sound and shifted onto her side. Cass set the alarm on her watch, then turned off the light and stretched out on her back, but when Yummy moaned again, like she was having a bad dream, Cass rolled over.
“Shhh,” she said, putting her arm around Yummy’s waist and holding her, lightly at first, and then snugly, the way she held Will, to anchor her and keep her safe.