The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns

by Margaret Dilloway

  SUMMER ROSE SHOWS can be tricky; the seedlings have to be transported in coolers. I prefer the spring shows, though there are fewer of those. On the West Coast, the roses bloom earlier, so the shows begin earlier. I’d never survive in one of the cold weather states, waiting longer for my roses.

  On Sunday evening, Brad and I are in the rose greenhouse. He has a tiny blue iPod clipped to his shirt, the white wires feeding into his ears like two leeches sucking out his brain. I can hear some sort of banging noise emitting. I tap him on the shoulder. “Turn that down. You’ll blast out your hearing.”

  He complies with a grin, wiping dirt across his tanned face. “Yes, ma’am.”

  I go through the seedling rows, deciding which ones I’ll throw out. I keep only those I might take to a show, use as parents, or propagate.

  I ask Brad to make pots of soil. I use a blend called Queen of Show specially designed for roses, which is compost, peat moss, coir, and sand. It’s sold at the local nursery, where I have an account. I send Brad there to get twenty-pound bags and put them into the storage shed. This is the kind of heavy lifting I am not allowed to attempt. Nor would I. I’d only fall over.

  Brad makes dozens of pots, so they will be ready for me whenever I need them. I walk through the greenhouse, looking at all the seedlings once more. I pull out the ones with ugly foliage and funky blooms, throwing them into my green trash wheeled container to be turned into compost.

  We work without talking. I have known Brad since he was a freshman, and while he is somewhat a chatterbox at school, he is silent around me. I do not inspire chattiness in people. Even when I get my hair cut, the hairdresser who tells everyone about her mother’s appendectomy works quietly on my hair.

  My sister, Becky, on the other hand, is the opposite. Everyone and anyone talks to her. Sales is a good profession for her. In theory.

  Riley interrupts my train of thought by coming into the greenhouse. She tries to move quietly but trips on a soaker hose and falls, hip-checking Brad’s pile of seed pots and sending the expensive soil flying into the four corners of the universe. She gives a little groan, then lifts herself up. I see the fall isn’t bad, no worse than someone sliding into home plate during a P.E. ball game. She is filthy, though.

  “Are you all right?” Brad laughs, covered in dirt himself. He holds his hand out to her.

  “It’s not funny. Who laughs when someone falls?” Riley is indignant.

  “You’re not hurt, Riley. If we didn’t laugh, we might be crying over spilt soil.” I calculate how much money I’ve lost. “Maybe you can see if you can save some of that.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask if I’m okay?” Riley waves off Brad, brushes herself off.

  “You’re okay.” I have never believed you should carry on for simple injuries. Slap a Band-Aid on it, kiss it better, and move on. The more upset a parent gets, the more upset the kid. My mother didn’t learn how to keep calm until I was ten.

  She rights some of the pots she’s knocked over. Brad gets a dustpan and a brush. I then notice a piece of now-crumpled paper in her left hand. “I came in to get your signature. I’m doing the science team.”

  “Next year?” I take the permission slip, staring at it and turning it over in my grimy hands though I myself typed up the form. Riley wants to be on the science team?

  “No. Now.”

  The science team trials are next month, and we have no more room. Besides, Riley lacks the maturity and science skills needed for the team. More kids than we can accommodate want to do it every year. Selection is made by the teachers. I flash back to Riley working on the trebuchet. How easily she gave up. Maybe if she’d put her guts into it and helped out, I would have a different idea.

  No. Riley’s good at art. Not science and math. It’s a fact, just like the fact that I am color-blind though females aren’t supposed to be. I try to think of a gentle way to let her down.

  “Riley, you can’t do it this year.” I hand her the paper. “Just concentrate on the art show.”

  “Mr. Morton said I could, to do the trebuchet. He says there’s a hole in the team and since my grandpa built it . . .”

  “Mr. Morton said so, did he?” I make a mental note to talk to him. I am in charge of the team. Not him. He should have asked. “He’s new. He doesn’t know all the rules. I do. It’s too late.”

  “But . . .”

  “Riley, you should listen to your aunt.” Brad straightens, slapping potting soil off his gloves. I’d forgotten he was there.

  She glares at him, then cools her gaze and straightens. “I want my aunt to listen to me.”

  “Everyone else on the team worked hard to be on it.” Brad’s lip thins as he sets his jaw. “I’m sure you’ll make it next year.”

  Riley glances at me, but I am not going to defend her. I agree with Brad. I can’t help it.

  “Well. Okay.” She takes the permission slip and folds it into a tiny grimy square and tucks it into her pocket. “May I order a pizza instead of cooking? I have a lot of homework.”

  If it was up to me, I would open a can of something or other from the cupboard and eat it over the kitchen sink. But I feel bad that I had to turn her down. I rub my neck. “You may.”

  She closes the greenhouse door carefully behind her. Her head is down. Something in her posture hurts me. I shouldn’t feel bad if I’m right. She can’t do whatever she wants. She has to earn it like the rest of us.

  Her mother never set boundaries for her. No, everything for Becky was, Ask and you shall receive. I’ll talk to Riley later.

  “Now, Brad.” I turn to him. “This is between me and Riley. There was no need to chime in, okay?”

  “It got her off your case, didn’t it?” Brad sticks a spade into a small pot. “I mean it. I’ve seen her in study group and she lets everybody else do the work. She just rewrites the notes. She’s not going to pull her weight.”

  I find myself coming to Riley’s defense. “She’s new, she’s behind. You can’t expect her to be at the top.”

  “I don’t want her pulling me down, Ms. Garner.” He sniffs and wipes at his nose with the back of his hand.

  “She isn’t pulling anyone down.”

  “Yet.” His eyebrows knit.

  This is a new side of Brad I haven’t seen, indignantly righteous and not so generous. “Riley’s a smart girl. I’m sure by next year she’ll be caught up.”

  “We’ll see.” He rinses his hands in the sink, wipes them on his jeans. “I gotta get going.”

  “Wait.” I stop him. “Are you dating Samantha?”

  “Don’t be silly. She’s not allowed to date.” He looks me in the eye.

  After Brad leaves, I sit in a plastic lawn chair for a while, staring at my rows of roses. Riley will not diminish Brad, nor any other student. I’m sure of it. Is that what the kids are saying? Of course, Riley got into St. Mark’s only because I am employed there. If she’d walked in off the street with her poor transcript in hand, Dr. O’Malley would have booted her backside to the curb quicker than she could say a Hail Mary. So would I.

  I realize then why Brad has me so disturbed. He reminds me of me. And I can’t say I particularly like the view.

  The pizza truck pulls up, and I leave the greenhouse to its slumber.

  • • •

  LATER THAT EVENING, Becky calls me direct. “Riley hurt herself today,” she says without preamble.

  I blink, surprised. I’ve taken my hands out of soapy dishwater to answer the phone and it makes the receiver slippery. I move it to my other hand, drying the wet hand on a towel. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “She fell. She told me. You should take her to the doctor.” My sister’s voice is concerned, clear.

  I laugh. She’s talking about the fall she had in the greenhouse. “Her pride is hurt more than an
ything. Riley’s perfectly fine, Beck.”

  “It’s Becca. She’s not. I can hear it in her voice.” My sister is working herself up. Pulling out the older-sister card, though as older sister she has only ever been older, never wiser.

  I put the phone on speaker and place it on the counter next to the sink, attacking the greasy pan again. “Hey. If you’re so concerned, why don’t you come home and take care of her yourself?”

  “Some people have a low pain tolerance. You never think anyone’s injuries are as bad as yours.”

  I snort. “That’s because they generally aren’t.”

  “I think you should take her in. Or at least write her an excuse for P.E.”

  “I’ll do nothing of the kind. She’s not eighty years old, Becky. She slipped and fell and broke nothing except a pot of dirt. If you didn’t trust me,” I’m yelling into the receiver now, “then you should not have sent her to me.”

  “Agh.” Becky makes a strangled noise. “You’re impossible.”

  “Same to you.”

  We hang up simultaneously.

  I feel my shoulders slump forward. Riley inches into the kitchen, back in her Abercrombie outfit. “I didn’t know she was going to call you,” she says.

  “Are you hurt, Riley?” I examine her again. No limp. No swelling. Only a bruise.

  “I don’t know,” she says.

  “You’re not.”

  She shrugs.

  I sigh. “I know you’re a teenaged girl and all, but can you cut back on the drama a little bit? For me?”

  She sniffs, edges back toward the living room. “She said you’d say that.”

  I guess my sister might know me better than I thought.

  12

  THE DAY OF THE ROSE SHOW, THE LAST SATURDAY OF APRIL, breaks overcast. I hope the gray cloud cover will dissolve into sunshine. I read somewhere that a sign of a weak mind is letting the weather affect your moods, and I’m sorry to say my mind today is as flimsy as an antique negligee. I sit for a minute on the edge of the bed. Picture a sunny day. A perfect day. Perfect roses. Queen of Show. It’s not working. My natural surliness is too present. I give up.

  I fetch a surprise for Riley, hold it behind my back in one hand. A pink cell phone, just for her. My mother, having heard of my cell phone wishes, added us to her family plan and purchased us two phones.

  “Riley!” I rap on her door. “You ready?”

  “I am.” Riley leaps out, shutting the door in a wink. She is dressed in a pair of black skintight jeans and a floaty white peasant blouse that looks like it came out of my mother’s closet, circa 1975. Again with the style change, a chameleon trying to fit in. For a moment I get the impression she’s hiding something, but I can’t figure out what. Why would I think this? I have no basis. Is my parental radar finally coming online? “Everything all right?”

  “Yeah.” She meets my gaze and I know she is not telling me the truth.

  But I don’t want to spoil the surprise. I will break my own mood, I will ignore whatever this girl is hiding for now. “Guess what I have?”

  Her relief is almost palpable at the subject change. I take my hand out from behind my back and show her the phone. A little pink cell phone.

  Instead of being delighted, she shrinks away. Why does this girl always have reactions I don’t expect? “My mom said she was getting me one of those.”

  “Well, she hasn’t yet, so this will do the job.” I make her take it. “It’s not a fancy phone, but it will receive and make calls.”

  “Great. Thanks.” Her voice is flat.

  I suppose Becky promised her an iPhone. We will see if she follows through. I give a little mental shrug. “Let’s get this circus into town.”

  I’ve been giving Riley some space since our little row over the science team. Mr. Morton’s reasoning was that someone dropped out while I was gone, necessitating a replacement. “I will take responsibility for training her,” he said when I confronted him about the unauthorized deal in his classroom after school. He crossed his arms.

  “We have a waiting list. We call the next person,” I said.

  His expression changed from defensive to apologetic. “I didn’t know about that.”

  “You didn’t ask.” People never ask me. They assume. It’s like I’m not even in charge. “Science team is very popular around here.”

  He uncrossed his arms. “My stance would be to accommodate all interested students, not just a few. Let everyone benefit.”

  “The best students get on the team. The other ones have to wait and be alternates, or try out next year. There are team limits.” I don’t relish confronting Mr. Morton like this, upending our heretofore harmonious relationship. Every Tuesday, we’d been meeting after school to coach our teams, he with the trebuchet, me with the physiology students. To me, having ten students in my group was enough, plus more than twenty altogether on the entire team in the little classroom. But he had the unlimited energy and enthusiasm of a green teacher. He could probably handle a half dozen more students and be unfazed.

  “I am sorry,” Mr. Morton said, touching my arm. “I have an idea. We can get more parent volunteers, increase how many students we can accommodate.”

  I gazed wordlessly at him. He doesn’t know how difficult it is to get parent volunteers, particularly at a school where tuition should be enough to cover whatever expenses we have. And particularly when you have well-meaning parents who truly want to help, but are hopeless at the subject. They only get in the way. “I know that it would be very egalitarian to have everyone on the team, but that’s not how it works. We cut, just like the football team.”

  I am thinking about this interaction with Mr. Morton as I face my niece in the hallway. She seems to have gotten over her hurt.

  Riley reties the string on her blouse. “We just going to stand around all day, or what?”

  “Or what.” I note her hair is growing out brown. “Should we buy you some hair dye to fix that?”

  She shrugs, then touches her head. “Does it look bad?”

  “A little bit. But no one will be looking at your head. Only at my rose.” I head out to the car, where the rose already sits in a cooler in the backseat. “Come on. You’re going to get freeway driving experience today.”

  She claps her hands. “Yay! I turn sixteen in August, you know. I need plenty of practice.”

  “I know.” I hand her the keys. “But no B average, no driver’s license. Deal?”

  “Deal.” We shake on it.

  • • •

  RILEY IS EVEN MORE CAUTIOUS on the freeway than I am, never exceeding the speed limit even while cars whiz past her. “You have to keep up with the speed of the other cars,” I say, gripping my armrest.

  “They’re going over seventy!” Her knuckles pale on the steering wheel.

  I point. “Next exit, pull over. I’ll drive.”

  “I can do it. I can do it.” She issues a chant. “I can do it, Aunt Gal.”

  “Just don’t get into an accident. You’ll crush the rose.” Rose G42 is packed in its pot, which is packed into a makeshift drink holder inside the cooler so it won’t rattle about. “Never mind crushing you or me.”

  She snorts. “Nice to know where I stand.”

  “Hey, I put myself last on the list.”

  The San Luis Obispo venue is small, in a rented church auditorium. It does, however, overlook the ocean, the water spreading beneath a steep drop-off. We park the car and stand in the parking lot, staring down at the whitecaps below. Surfers look like ants tossing around from up here. Riley inhales. “The air smells good and salty. Like home.”

  I think I should put my arm around her, but physical affection feels too awkward. Instead, I put my hands in my jeans pockets. “Yep. I bet you’re used to the cool San Francisco weather
.” Another detail I’d overlooked in Riley’s acclimation to her new environment. I had not given it much thought. “But the human body can adapt.”

  “I know.” Riley sounds annoyed again. I have to say I’m not used to teens being so overtly annoyed with me. In my classroom, students usually try to control whatever disdain bubbles up.

  I open the trunk and get the cooler out. “You going to help, or just stand there?”

  “I didn’t know you wanted help.” But she lifts one end, and suddenly my load is lightened.

  I pull out the handle and wheel across the parking lot. “Thanks.”

  • • •

  THIS ROSE SHOW has only about a hundred entrants in perhaps ten categories. It’s more like a local rose society display than a huge show, but it’s close to home and a good place to test out G42. Here there are only the major show categories: the hybrids, the floribundas, the mini-roses, the new rose.

  Other, bigger shows have dozens of subcategories, dividing rose displays into complex artistry. There are categories for single blooms in individual vases; the English Box, a box with six holes cut in rows for each rose; or a wooden artist’s palette, with blooms stuck into holes where the different paint colors would normally go. There are also categories devoted to the best full arrangements, or categories giving a prize to the best blooms floating in crystal saucers of water.

  Everyone else already seems to be set up. Rose show entrants like to get there early, to snag the best vases and spots.

  I don’t need a vase, nor do I believe where you sit matters. Most roses are shown cut, unless they are seedlings like mine, or a mini. I have my G42 seedling in its growing pot, in all its floriferous beauty. I rub its leaves with an old piece of pantyhose.

  Riley watches. “What’s that for?”

  “Shine.” I touch the leaves. “The oil from your hands gets on it, too.”

  She frowns. “It seems like cheating.”

  “It’s no more cheating than Miss America putting on lipstick.” I continue my ministrations, careful not to tear the foliage.

  One woman comes over and wrinkles her nose. “That’s not a rose, is it?”