“Let’s plant them here. I think it’s a good idea.”
Without looking at me again, he immediately began to mark out the boundaries where we would dig up the grass and soil, and we got to work. Will stuck his shovel deep into the ground and I followed, using my boot as leverage along the top edge of the metal, forcing it down into the dirt, and heaving the earth onto a growing mound. Despite the cool breeze, it wasn’t long before sweat rolled down my back and he and I both were stripping off layers, making a pile of discarded clothing in the grass. It was hard work, probably the most labor I’d done in a long time, but it felt good and I began to enjoy myself. The sun gradually made its way toward the horizon and I was so caught up in the rhythm that when Will spoke again I was startled. It felt as though we could go on like this forever, digging side by side, in silence.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he said, hurrying over to where I stood in what was now a hole about a foot and a half deep. My jeans were covered in dirt from my knees to my ankles. He grabbed the shovel’s handle, stopping me. “We’re planting peony roots, not digging for water.”
I was almost sorry to stop. “I hadn’t noticed that we were done.”
The scrape of the sliding glass door to the kitchen caught my attention and I saw that my father stood at the top of the back steps.
“Hey, Dad,” I called out.
“You kids want some coffee?” he asked.
A hot drink after all this work was the last thing I wanted, but I appreciated that he was making an effort to do something nice.
“Hi, Mr. Madison,” Will said.
My father made his way toward us. “Hi, Will. Nice to see you out here with Rose. And taking care of everything in general. It means a lot. I should say it more often.” He paused, surveying the nearby gardens. “I’m sorry I don’t.”
“I’m happy to do it. Mrs. Madison’s gardens are special.”
Dad rubbed a hand across his eyes. “Yes. I know.”
My father’s sincerity, whenever he showed even the littlest bit of emotion, made me tear up. I blinked my eyes and turned away, straight toward the setting sun.
“So how ’bout it? Coffee?” Dad said, his voice cheering up again.
I hoped my father wouldn’t notice that my eyes were wet. “Thanks for the offer. I’m thirsty, but not for something hot.”
“Oh. Right,” he said. “How about I put some ice in it?”
This made me laugh—he was trying really hard. “Sure, why not,” I answered.
“Will?”
“I’d love some water.”
“One water and one iced coffee coming up,” he said.
“Two waters,” I said.
“Two waters and one iced coffee,” my father confirmed, and returned to the kitchen.
Meanwhile, Will disappeared around the side of the house—maybe he could tell I needed a minute alone or maybe it was just coincidence—but it wasn’t long before Dad brought out a tray with three tall glasses balanced on top and placed it on the nearby table.
“Here you go,” he said to me.
“Thanks, Dad. That was really nice of you.”
He smiled a little and I wanted to cry all over again, reminded that occasionally my father was still capable of doing Dad-like things, like trying to take care of me, even if it was only a glass of water and some coffee. “Okay, kid. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Back to work,” he said, and walked away, his shoulders a little hunched, though not as much as usual, and still I felt like weeping. Before a sob could escape I saw Will headed this way again, a giant bag of compost hoisted over his shoulders, his body bent at an awkward angle. I lifted the cold glass of coffee to my lips and gulped some down, the bitter taste causing me to make a face and helping wipe away the sadness. Dad had made the coffee potent and even the ice didn’t dilute its strength. Will let the bag slide to the ground next to the newly dug bed. It made a heavy thud.
“Do we really have to use this stuff?”
“If you want your flowers to grow, then yes,” Will said, and drained his glass. He tore an opening in the bag and took the pair of thick work gloves hanging from the back pocket of his jeans and put them on. He began to pile compost into the shallow area, covering the bottom. It looked dark and rich and earthy next to the light brown dirt we’d piled up from digging the bed. After a while, he looked up at me. “It washes off, you know.”
This comment snapped me to action. I didn’t want him to think I was afraid to get my hands dirty so I walked straight up to the bag and stuck my arms elbow deep in the stuff, not even bothering with gloves, and brought up a giant handful. I dumped it in the bed, trying to mimic the way Will was shaping the piles of compost so each would cradle one root.
He stared at me.
“What?” I demanded. “Am I doing something wrong?”
A small smile, so small it was almost imperceptible, tugged at Will’s lips. “I said it washes off, not that you had to bathe in it. I have another pair of gloves you can borrow.”
“Gloves are for the weak of heart,” I said haughtily.
He flicked some compost at me and I yelped. Then I flicked some back, but he didn’t budge. “Whatever you say, Rose.”
It was the first time Will ever said my name. Before I could search his face for why, he was already busy at work again.
By the time we finished, the sun was almost set, the sky a brilliant palette of red and pink and blue. I was covered in dirt and compost and grass, certain I smelled awful. I couldn’t wait to take a shower, but I also felt satisfied. If we’d done this right, there would be gorgeous flowers coming up from this ground in a few months. Best of all, I’d done something my mother wanted and I was proud of myself because today I had honored her wishes.
“Everything okay?” Will asked.
I studied the sky awhile longer before I turned to him. “Yeah. It is.”
He nodded and began to pack up. When we were both laden with empty bags and tools we headed back to the driveway. “Now what?” I asked, after we returned the shovels and the wheelbarrow to the back of his truck.
“You wait till April, maybe May,” he said, walking toward the driver’s side.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Seriously.”
“April is when the weather gets warm again,” he explained, but that wasn’t what I was asking about.
“So you’re leaving, just like that,” I clarified.
“Yup. See you later.” Without even glancing my way, he opened the door to the cab and got inside. He started up the truck, put his arm across the passenger seat, and began to back out. Something tugged at me inside as I watched him go. Maybe it was confusion, maybe it was disappointment, but I was out of practice with my emotions so I couldn’t be sure.
12
BETWEEN THE LINES
After the Saturday I spent with Will, my morning routine began to deviate. Like always, I brewed the coffee, got Dad up, and made sure he was fed and on the road to work on time, but before I left for school I went outside to check on my roots. According to the gardening books, they loved that compost Will made me buy and at least a good two inches of it should cover the bed to keep the soil rich until winter hit. Plus the bed needed watering or the roots would die. I certainly couldn’t have that happen. First thing on Monday I retrieved the watering can from the back steps, filled it, and headed toward the new bed, the heavy container bumping against my legs, causing some of the water to slosh out. “Got enough of that stinky soil you like so much?” I said as I let a light rain fall across the roots. The sound of footsteps came up behind me and when I turned around Will was standing there.
He pointed at the watering can. “Don’t overdo it,” he advised, and reached out to palm the topsoil, picking up a handful and rolling it around in his fingers.
“I know what I’m doing,” I said, embarrassed to meet him here, now, while I was talking to the dirt.
Will looked as if he wanted to laugh. “I can tell.” He opened his fist, let
ting the soil fall through his fingers, and got up.
I glared at him. “I thought you wouldn’t be back here till April.”
He shrugged. “See you,” he said, and walked off.
But then Will and I began to run into each other every morning. “Here to check on the roots,” he announced the second time it happened.
“Me, too. They seem well,” I said.
Again he left without further comment. By day four, though, we almost graduated to genuine conversation.
“You really care about these,” he stated. Crisp fallen leaves rustled around us in the air, the trees almost barren from the growing cold and wind. Will’s hair was getting long and it kept blowing into his eyes.
“I do,” I said.
“Why?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Before your mother died,” he began, and my eyes widened—Dad, Jim, and I almost never said those words out loud, as if by not saying them they wouldn’t be true. “You didn’t care for the gardens.”
“I did, though.” I was a bit indignant.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
“I meant, you literally never took care of them. Your mother did all the work.”
“Oh. Well. That’s right. But I guess that’s changing.”
“I guess so,” he said, and that was the end of another exchange.
A full week passed and then another, and my conversations with Will piled up. I began to notice that he was expressive, that somewhere deep under the surface lived emotion—it was subtle, but definitely there. You just had to pay attention to see it.
During one of our morning talks, Will was explaining how reddish shoots and buds would push up out of the ground this spring and I started to think about how my mother used to bring her love of gardening into her teaching. I interrupted him. “My mother’s kids used to love watching that happen.”
Will looked at me with skepticism. “They grew peonies?”
“No, of course not,” I said, and laughed because her students could barely wait for snack time each day never mind the six months of fall and winter. “It was a far more modest endeavor. Pea shoots in cups. They kept them by the window and checked on them constantly. My mother loved how excited the kids got at the first sign of green.”
“Pea plants are perfect. They grow fast and they’re difficult to kill.”
“They’d have to be easy or you’d have traumatized children by the armful.”
Will looked at me hard. “Peony plants are a lot more difficult.”
“Are you preparing me for disappointment?”
“No. Just stating the truth.” Then, like always, Will began his march around the house toward the front yard. But this time, he stopped.
I waited to hear what else he would say, warming my hands around my coffee mug.
“These will turn out fine,” he told me. “You’ll see. Come spring, they’ll be beautiful.”
“I hope so.”
“Believe it,” he said, and continued on his way.
After school Krupa drove me home and during the ride I decided to show her the peony bed. It was only dirt, but it felt like an accomplishment, and after the last month, I wanted to share something that had gone right in my life. “Do you have a minute?” I asked when she turned into my neighborhood. “There’s something I want you to see in the backyard.”
“Of course,” she said. She pulled into the driveway. The car rattled and sighed and clanked before quieting.
“Follow me.”
We cut across the lawn and wound our way through the gardens until we arrived at my mother’s roses, where the new flower bed pooled out next to the patio. “So this is it. It’s not much, I know,” I said.
Krupa stared. “What did you plant here?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper, and I wanted to hug her. When we were growing up my mother was always planting and pruning and digging, inviting us to pick bouquets when there were so many flowers she didn’t know what else to do with them. Krupa knew that whatever I’d done here must be special because anything to do with the gardens at our house was about my mother.
“Peonies,” I said, pointing at each individual mound of compost where Will and I had the roots. “In the spring this will be full of flowers. Hopefully,” I added.
“Peonies are beautiful,” Krupa said.
“They are,” I said.
“It’s going to be gorgeous. Your mother would have loved to see this.”
My eyes started to fill. I’d managed not to cry for a long, long time, but I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. They slid down my cheeks and I wiped them away with my sleeve. “Thanks,” I whispered.
Krupa reached over and took my hand. “This is good, Rose,” she said. “It really is.”
13
ONE OF THOSE DAYS
“Roooseyy.”
“Jim, will you wait a minute? It’s not like I forgot you were there.” My brother was on speaker, which he hated, while I sprinkled salt and pepper across the top of a chicken. “Your face is glaring at me from the phone anyway.”
The wind whistled loudly outside. Every day for the last week it rained, so my trips to the flower bed had ended. We changed the clocks and it was getting darker earlier, making the atmosphere feel gloomy, the sky already black outside the windows.
“Roooseeeyyy!” Jim’s voice bellowed again through the kitchen.
“I’m still here. I told you I’m kind of tied up.”
“What picture of me is on there anyway?”
I laughed and glanced at the screen again, making sure to keep my messy hands away.
“Rose. What. Picture.”
“Remember how in eighth grade—”
“Not the one with the braces—”
“—And the headgear and the long hair. Yup. Just before bedtime and you are wearing pajamas. I love this picture.”
“Get that off your phone. Every time I call you whoever is around sees it.”
I opened the oven door and slid the roasting pan onto the rack. “Stop being melodramatic.” The timer was set for fifty minutes and I started it counting down. I washed my hands before picking up the phone, cradling it between my ear and shoulder while Jim continued to rant. “Jim,” finally I cut in. “That photo cracks me up.”
He sighed. “Yeah, but at my expense.”
“Nobody sees your monster metal smile but me. And maybe Krupa.”
Jim was silent for a moment. “What happened with you and Chris? Were you ever going to tell me?”
No one in my family knew about the breakup yet. I’d been keeping it a secret, or trying to. I didn’t feel like dealing with their questions, though I should’ve known Jim would find out on his own since we knew a lot of the same people. “Who told you?”
“So it’s true. Interesting.”
“You didn’t even know for sure?”
“I ran into Susan Hepler on campus and she mentioned she’d gone home for a weekend and run into Chris Williams. She noticed he was wearing his jacket.”
God, that stupid jacket again.
“Are you going to tell me what happened or what?” Jim pressed.
“No,” I said. “There’s nothing to tell. We broke up, couples break up, and it’s not a big deal. It just is what it is.”
“Do you want me to talk to him?”
“No! Please don’t. You don’t need to do that.”
Jim sighed into the phone. “Rosey, I’m worried. I don’t like you to be alone.”
“I’ve got Krupa.”
“Krupa’s not enough.”
“Jim.” My voice became hoarse. “It’s my fault. I lost Chris because I can’t handle being in a relationship. I’ve been so wrapped up in being sad about Mom and with Dad’s dramas that I shut Chris out, along with everyone and everything else in my life. I used to have the cheerleaders and the football games and I used to go out dancing and partying and have a normal social life, but now I’m this person who i
s so afraid to hear music because it makes me cry that I can’t even go into stores at the mall.” This last bit of my rambling confession reminded me about the iPod in my Survival Kit.
The Survival Kit was another thing my family didn’t know about yet. A part of me wanted to tell Jim, but what if Mom hadn’t left him one? The mere thought made me feel horribly guilty.
I could hear my brother breathing on the other end of the phone. “Listen, I’m sorry, Jim. Forget everything I just said. I need to go.”
“Rosey—”
“I’ve got to check on dinner. Make sure it doesn’t burn,” I lied, watching as the timer ticked down past forty minutes and counting.
“Rosey—”
“I’ll change your picture, I promise. I love you. Really, I do. Bye.” I ended the call and rested my phone on the counter. The house was quiet except for the muffled sound of the rain beating against the window.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the iPod.
Once upon a time I loved music. All kinds—old, new, alternative, cheesy, danceable, moody. From the moment I hit sixth grade I began to give my life a sound track. I made a playlist for every occasion, every emotion, every kind of day, for hanging out with Krupa, for doing my homework, for hooking up with Chris, and for gorgeous summer afternoons. There was no reason too small.
But not anymore.
A few bars of anything, even dance music, and the tears started to fall. This wasn’t the first time I’d cut music from my life either. In eighth grade, the year Mom was diagnosed with cancer and first went through chemo, I hated music then, too. If someone turned on a stereo or docked an iPod I’d race over and unplug it or press the power button to shut it down.
Without music, though, a huge piece of me felt missing.
Mom knew it, too, and that’s why she added the iPod to the Survival Kit. Maybe I was ready for my life to be one long, beautiful playlist once again.
Rushing through the house to my room, I threw open the closet and slid the bag from its ribbon. I unfolded the top, my hand fumbling inside until my fingers closed around the thin, smooth metal rectangle. Music would be task number two because I was done with silence. The bedside lamp cast a warm circle of light onto the iPod’s silvery blue surface and I slid my finger gently around the click wheel. I was about to put in the earbuds when there was a knock at my door. I shoved the iPod under the covers and placed the Survival Kit on the floor on the far side of the bed. I grabbed a book off the table and opened it across my lap. “Come in,” I said.
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