“Too many cooks.” Dad gets out his electric saw. “I don’t want a bunch of kids over here in my way. Except for Riley. You’re going to measure.” He hands her the measuring tape.
“Me? Why me?” She takes the tape as though it were a live grenade. “How long?”
“Look at the plan.” I point to the measurement. Three feet, two-eighths of an inch.
She squints at the measuring tape as she pulls it out. “Is this it?” Randomly, it seems, she points to a measurement.
“Are you going to be on the science team, Riley?” Mr. Morton smiles gently.
She looks at me as though she expects me to answer. I do. “She’s more of an artist.”
“I might try it.” She glares at me. “I can do more than one thing, you know.”
“I know.” I never seem to know what this girl is thinking, except that it is the opposite of me. I don’t remember being such a pain when I was fifteen. I never had the whole angsty hormonal teenaged girl thing. I spread the plans out and double-check the measurement. “Riley, you’re over too far.”
Dad corrects her and she makes the mark.
“Measure twice, cut once,” Dad says.
She remeasures. “I can’t tell if it’s right.” She’s not even looking at the tape or the drawing. “I think it was wrong before.”
“You’re not even trying now.” I reach for the tape, but she pulls it away. “Let me show you how this thing works and what these little hatch marks mean.”
“I know what they mean. Inches.”
“No. The little tiny ones. If you knew what they meant it’d be easier.”
“I don’t want to know. I don’t care.” She throws down the tape. “Ugh. This is a stupid project.”
I glance at my father, who busies himself with another piece of wood. “Just give it a try.”
“I can’t do everything.” Her face contorts like someone sprayed lemon juice into it. I purse my lips. I am used to students being frustrated. I am not used to quite this much emotion involved.
I pick up the tape. “Calm down and try it again. You can do this.”
“You do it. I’m going in to help Grandma make lunch.” She tosses her pencil down, runs off. It bounces and skitters away under a shelf of Christmas decorations.
“Ah.” Dad starts up his saw. “Reminds me of her mother.”
“Unfortunately.” I bend over to look for the pencil.
“Allow me.” Mr. Morton squats and peers under the shelving unit.
I regret that I never swept the spiderwebs away. “Watch out for black widows.”
He gets on his belly and reaches far into the darkness to retrieve the pencil, then wipes the dust on his jeans. “Riley has a low frustration threshold, I’ve noticed.”
“You think?” We go outside, away from the saw noise and from the house, where I suspect Riley is standing with an ear to the window. I tell him about Riley’s background and how she came to be here.
“No contact with her father?”
“Used to have. She spent the first few years of her life with him. Basically, now he’s a sperm donor and an occasional wallet.” I cross my arms. “But my sister chooses to live a certain way. And her kid suffers.”
Mr. Morton looks at me full in the face. “It’s really good of you to let Riley live here.”
I think about when Riley arrived, how my initial thought had been to send her to live with my parents. Then I remember showing Riley the grocery store. I think about what Becky is missing. What she has missed, all this time. I’m not sure I want Riley to leave.
I clear my throat. Compliments tend to embarrass me. I shrug. “She’s my niece.”
His gaze focuses on the rose garden. I think he’ll ask me a question about the roses next, but he doesn’t. An expression of sadness crosses his face, more sadness than Riley’s story should have mustered. I consider asking him what’s wrong, but I don’t know him well. I don’t like it when people pry into my life, tell me I look tired or sick, want to know all the gory details. I wait. If he talks, I’ll listen.
He takes a breath and focuses back to where we are. He grins. “Let’s get back to our medieval weaponry.”
10
ON MONDAY MORNING, MY MOTHER DRIVES ME TO MY IVP test.
“I don’t like this one bit.” Mom grips the steering wheel so hard her hands turn white. “You are allergic to that dye.”
“I don’t have a choice, Mom,” I say mechanically. We have been having this conversation for the past twenty-four hours, and longer than that. I am afraid Mom will unleash her full mother bear wrath on the doctor, and then I will never get my kidney.
“They’re idiots. Idiots.” She is practically spitting. Gone is the artist full of gentility and flowing robes. She has her hair pulled back into a knot and she’s wearing her cherry-red velour tracksuit, the closest she gets to a power suit.
“Stay calm, Mother.”
“Your doctor needs to be told what’s what.”
Great. “Please do not challenge Dr. Blankenship. She already hates me.”
Mom pulls into a parking space and turns to face me. “Gal. If I had been one-tenth as assertive as I am now when you were little, you’d still have a kidney.” She swallows hard.
I pat her arm. Mom will never get over this guilt, this feeling that she should have done more. It’s not her fault. She trusted the doctors to find out what was wrong, not let it destroy my kidneys. We will never consider doctors to be infallible again.
Inside, Dr. Blankenship waits. She extends her hand to my mother. “Mrs. Garner, good to see you again.”
Mom shakes her hand feebly. “I don’t like this. She had this dye done when she was twelve, and the doctor said she would die if they repeated it.”
Dr. Blankenship blinks. “We’re taking every precaution. Don’t you worry.”
Mom snorts. “If you had children, you would know that is a useless thing to tell a mother.”
Dr. Blankenship is at a loss for words, for once. She breaks away from my mother’s glare. I grin a little.
• • •
MY MOTHER AND I sit in the waiting room until they are ready for me. This I’ve never understood about doctors’ offices: they tell you to come in early even if they don’t plan to do anything for hours.
Mom thumbs through the People and Us magazines fanned across the coffee table. “I have to say, I haven’t heard of half of these people.”
“I have, unfortunately.” I look for a Scientific American or even a National Geographic, but cannot find one. “It’s difficult to get my students to work hard when you can get famous by releasing a sex tape.”
“Gal!” My mother actually blushes.
“Hey, it’s not me. It’s them.” I gesture toward the magazines.
“I’m sure Riley doesn’t think like that.” Mom picks up an ancient Good Housekeeping and cracks it open.
Considering that Riley’s mother hasn’t even taught her how to grocery shop, I can’t imagine Becky offering much guidance in the area of pop culture and morality. “It depends on what her mother’s taught her, doesn’t it?”
“It’s up to you to teach her now.” Mom is pretending to read the magazine, keeping one eye trained on me.
“I try.” I think I’m not doing such a bad job. Riley is doing well in school, despite my initial misgivings. She is popular with the teachers. Kids treat her well, as far as I can tell. She hasn’t complained.
“It has to be difficult, going from zero kids to a teenager.” Mom pats my knee. “You know I’ll take her if you can’t handle it.”
I bristle. “I can handle it.”
My mother nods. I understand she is offering me an out, the option of admitting I cannot handle the responsibility of a child, even an almost fully gro
wn child. But I am fine and Riley is fine. I think. Doubt swirls up now, a cyclone my very own mother has created in the way only fleshly female relatives can. I actually sigh with relief when the nurse calls my name and it’s time for my dreaded procedure.
I am set up on a bed. The nurse prepares the IV drip with Prednisone and Benadryl. Mom sits next to me. “Make sure they don’t kill me,” I say. I force myself to relax. This is for my kidney. I need this for my kidney. I picture healthy kidneys dancing in my head. My kidney functioning strongly, regenerated into a healthy organ instead of the essentially dead one inside of me.
I’ll try anything to get my kidney to work. I traveled to Santa Barbara several years ago to meet a hypnotist who treated me once a week in a glass-walled office overlooking the Pacific. Hypnosis worked well for pain, but nothing happened to make my kidney heal. I went to an acupuncturist over the course of a year and lay with needles sticking out of my back for half-hour increments in a bid to make the kidney restart. I’ve written to researchers who have grown new kidneys in mice, volunteering to be a human guinea pig; they all said it was too early to try out the procedure on me, that this technology is at least a good decade away. And my mother and I have prayed for help from every saint in the saint lexicon. My patron saint against kidney disease is St. Margaret of Antioch. There are prayer chains of elderly ladies across the U.S. asking for a kidney miracle for me, at the urging of my mother and her cronies, who e-mail chain letters about my illness.
“Saint Margaret, pray for me,” I say, probably only in my head, because I’m pretty sure my lips have stopped moving.
I used to wonder if God hated me. Then, around age twenty-four, I had an epiphany. God doesn’t hate me more than He hates anyone else. Good people die, horrible people live trouble-free lives. He’s a pretty hands-off type of deity. It’s the cost of free will. We’re not pawns in a game, like in Clash of the Titans.
So if this IVP test is what I have to do, so be it. Whatever happens will happen.
“I’m here,” I hear my mother say.
The IV goes in. I barely register it.
The Benadryl hits my system and I pass out.
• • •
I AM STANDING in my rose garden, only it’s a perfect rose garden. No bugs, not even any dirt, just perfect blooms. My house is gone. This doesn’t bother me, because the sky is so perfectly clear.
I see my two Hulthemia parents, the ones I started last year. I bend and sniff the mother I used. They are growing out of what should be the ground but is a sterile hospital floor.
Riley stands nearby, holding a black hose connected to nothing. “I’m watering the roses, Auntie.” She isn’t paying attention to what she’s doing, she’s flooding the flowers. They will die.
“Stop it, Riley.”
She ignores me. “I know what I’m doing.”
I try to move, to get to her and stop her. But I am rooted to my position. When I look down, I realize I have no feet. It is quite clear I am becoming a rose myself.
Byron appears before me, his chest nearly colliding with my eyeballs. “Ms. Garner?” He’s holding the rose I’m taking to the contest. His eyes look so very very blue, like exotic oceans I have never seen. “Congratulations. You have won the gold medal.”
“Yay! I won!” I turn my head and expect to see Riley, my mother, my father standing there. But there’s only an empty greenhouse.
I turn back and Byron is gone.
My roses have disappeared.
The rose in my hand grows hotter and hotter until it melts away into ribbons of molten lava colors and I drop it with a soundless cry.
• • •
I OPEN MY EYES. I hear my heart pounding in my ears. My mother is shouting from a distance. Dr. Blankenship is at my feet, new lines creasing her face. She is not as young as I thought. A nurse has an oxygen mask pressed to my face.
My first thought is to ask if Riley turned the water off. No, that wasn’t real. I wait for the dream to dissipate. Something bad has happened. But I’m still alive.
My eyes feel puffy and my throat aches. I’ve had another allergic reaction. They have stuck me with epinephrine to resuscitate me.
Mom yells indecipherably outside my room at whoever is keeping her from coming in and breaking the doctor’s neck.
Dr. Blankenship puts her thumb and forefinger on her temples. “Fuck,” she says, almost inaudibly.
“Doctors aren’t supposed to curse in front of patients.” My voice is hoarse.
She sags with relief. “You’re stable, Gal.”
I think about saying I told you so, and decide against it. Definitely, I will later. “So, do I get my kidney now?”
Her face is pained. “One thing at a time.” She strides over and puts her hand on top of mine. Hers is really cold again.
“Sheesh, Doc, what are you, a vampire?” I flinch but find I am not quite strong enough to move. “I have the rash on my face, don’t I?”
She nods. “You’re going to be fine. We used just a tiny bit of dye and stopped right away.”
“Did you do the X-ray?”
“No.”
I sigh. “That was completely useless, then.”
My mother finally busts in and runs to my side. “Gal! You’re all right.”
“Of course.” My throat opens up all the way. “Just tired. And cold. Can I get another blanket, please?”
“I’ll do it.” Dr. Blankenship leaves, glad to be doing something.
“She’s feeling guilty.” I relax into my pillows. I’m already feeling better.
“Serves her right. What did we tell her?”
“I know, Mom.” I’m still groggy, thinking about my dream. The medications will take a while to wear off. I’ll probably have to stay overnight. The thought angers me. I was supposed to water tonight, check on the seedlings again to see if any great new blooms appeared. Tomorrow I have to wash the bugs off the blooms. I was supposed to do it today, actually, but I didn’t have a chance before my appointment. I hate useless overnight hospital stays. They never let you sleep properly, always waking you up to make sure you’re still alive.
“Mom, call Brad and tell him to go do the roses, will you?”
“Is it just watering? Dad and Riley can do that.”
“No. Brad knows what to do. Tell Brad.” I drift off into sleep, thinking how funny it is that I’m in this life or death situation and I’m worried over some plants. “Do it, Mom,” I mumble. “Don’t forget.”
11
MY PARENTS STICK AROUND A FEW EXTRA DAYS LONGER THAN I like them to stick around, my mother looking for clues of my good health like she’s Miss Marple cracking a case. Once she even held a mirror under my breath while I slept. I awoke with a start and whacked the mirror up into my nose. “Ow! Mom, what the heck are you doing?”
“Sorry, sorry,” she whispered, retreating into the darkness with her long hair flowing around her. If I hadn’t known she was my mother, I would have thought she was a ghost.
My father’s excuse for staying is that he has not finished the trebuchet. He takes his time on the contraption, a simple project he could have completed with Mr. Morton that last afternoon. I know my mother has put him up to it, because I see him out in the garage, taking long breaks to sit and listen to the ball game on the radio. He tinkers with other things in my garage, changes the oil in my car, hangs some pictures. My mother buys Riley a dresser and desk set from the local Target, and my father is also super slow to put these together.
At last, by the weekend, he has finished with all his projects, and I take the opportunity to boot them. Politely, of course.
I get them to leave by promising I’ll have Brad come over and help with the roses and that I’ll get my groceries delivered. As a bonus, I press Riley. “Tell them you’ll do all the cleaning and you
’ll make sure I take my meds.”
“I will?” Riley is enjoying having her grandparents here. Gram makes her whatever she wants to eat, or buys it for her. She probably eats two bowls of ice cream a day. Lucky for her, she has Becky’s metabolism.
“Not the meds. I’ll do that. Just the cleaning.” I am whispering to her in the hallway while my mother changes my sheets. She washes them twice a week in ultrahot water so I won’t be bothered by dust mites. I tend to be more lax.
“And what will you give me?”
I stare up at my niece. “I shouldn’t have to give you anything. This is what you should do because you are part of this household.” I haven’t seen too much of her since I was in the hospital five days ago. My parents have ferried her to school and back, and if she wasn’t at school, she was over at Sam’s, presumably studying but probably staring at music posters or something. I overheard her complain about the lack of fun things to do around here, whether or not her grandparents were visiting. My illness is an inconvenience to her.
What my mother said flashes back to me. Maybe Riley would prefer to not be with me, where the threat of sickness is a constant companion. I hesitate, wondering if she’ll take it as a rejection. I’ll say it. “Riley, if you’d rather live with Gram and Gramps, then I bet you can go there.”
She purses her lips. I cannot tell if she’s pleased or dismayed at this idea.
I am relieved she has the option now. If she wants to stay, it will be of her own accord. “Until you decide, let’s help each other.” I hold out my hand. “Deal?”
“Fine.” She shakes. Her hand is stronger than it was when she first got here. She has filled out. Her cheeks aren’t so sunken. Well. At least I’m doing something correctly. “Gram!” Riley yells. “I have something to tell you. I’m going to help Aunt Gal.”
So it is that my parents take off.
• • •
The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns Page 10