The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns

by Margaret Dilloway

  15

  AFTER SCHOOL, I BREAK THE RESTRICTION NEWS TO RILEY, and she takes it with a single nod.

  I hesitate before I ask. Do I really want to know this? “Was Sam’s mother very angry?”

  “Does it matter?” Riley cracks her math book open on the coffee table. “I haven’t talked to her. She hasn’t e-mailed me. I have no idea.”

  I don’t pry further.

  “Can I call my mother?”

  “Of course.” Though you shouldn’t, I add silently. Because your mother’s only going to agree with you because it’s easier.

  That night, I drive myself to the hospital. At the dialysis center, I collapse into a chair. Perhaps I should switch to daytime dialysis. I hate leaving Riley alone, especially now that I know she’ll go off at any moment. Are there kids coming over while I’m gone?

  Dialysis for me now is nothing more than an endless middle ground. The light at the end of the tunnel is always a kidney for a dialysis patient. When that is gone, what is there? It’s like telling a kid Santa’s dead and there’s never going to be another Christmas. My next appointment with Dr. Blankenship is not until mid-May, and I doubt anything will change between then and now.

  A rustle of a newspaper makes me look up. Mark Walters folds the paper into his white-jeaned lap. The man looks not much the worse for wear, despite his dialysis. His skin has a new brownish glow, as if he just climbed out of a hammock strung between two palm trees on a warm beach. Today he wears a gray V-neck T-shirt instead of a white one, and my surprise is so great I can’t help but blurt, “Wow. That’s almost a color.”

  He glances down at his chest and laughs.

  Furious with myself for breaking my vow of silence to this man, I pick up a Newsweek and turn my body away from him. I don’t want to have a conversation. I’ve promised myself often enough I wouldn’t. Everyone thinks he’s so terribly charming. There’s nothing charming about him. He reminds me of the popular girl in high school who pretends she is dumb to get praise and male attention but is smarter than the rest of us. “Fake” is the word I’m looking for.

  Before I know it, he’s sitting in the vacant seat next to me. “Excuse me, young lady. Have I done something to offend you?”

  I shrink away from him, shocked that he’s talking to me still. “It’s ‘pardon me.’ ‘Excuse me’ is for when you want to be dismissed from something, like the table during dinner.” I am buying time. What has he done specifically to offend me, besides exist?

  “What?” He blinks, the gray reflecting into his eyes and making them bluer than usual.

  I put down the magazine. I have had enough. Dara and Riley and the rose show and the kidney. Especially the kidney. “I just think it’s funny how some people are born with a disease and need help to fix it, while others bring it upon themselves and get more help than they perhaps deserve.”

  He twists one side of his mouth. “You’re talking about me?”

  I stare at him, daring to deny it. “I know all about you. Everyone does.” Alcoholic, non–blood-pressure-medicine taker, ruining his perfectly functional organs. With a shudder, Becky comes into my mind’s eye. This could be Becky in ten or twenty years.

  He laces his fingers over his crossed knees. “And that’s why you hate me?”

  “I don’t hate you, exactly.” I take an enormous breath, aware of the nurses behind the glass partition watching this exchange carefully. I hope they will still be gentle with the needles later. “I got bumped off the list.”

  His impressively shaggy brows knit together, casting a hairy shadow over his cheekbones, like a dark caterpillar is marching across his face. “I’m sorry to hear that. I know the wait is difficult.”

  “I’ve done it before. Twice. I know what’s involved.” I will not be talked down to. Not by him, not by Dr. Blankenship. “I happen to think there should be criteria for treatment.”

  “So only the morally deserving get served?” His tone is pondering, not angry. “Perhaps if a motorcyclist refuses to wear a helmet and gets a head injury as a result, we should refuse treatment? Or an obese person who gets diabetes should not be helped?”

  I consider this. “I hadn’t thought about it, but perhaps we should all take responsibility for our actions, and the results of those actions.”

  “Are you not considering the frailty of the human condition?” Walters gives me a sad smile. “I started drinking, Gal, at a low point in my life. My wife had just passed away. I lost my business. I was in a pit I could not quite climb out of alone.”

  I search for something to say. “I’m sorry.”

  He sits back in his chair and I think I detect a note of triumph in his demeanor. His smile looks smug to me.

  This riles me again. “So you think that it’s excusable for someone to hurt themselves because of a tragic event? Others have bad things happen to them without destroying themselves, or others, for that matter.”

  “I’m not saying it’s an excuse. It’s simply something that happened. A reason.”

  I sputter. I’m not a believer in explaining away misdeeds by shirking responsibility. “I bet you think all the murderers on death row should be let out because they had bad childhoods.”

  He raises his hands. “Not at all. I am simply saying,” he puts his hand on my forearm, “that none of us is perfect, Gal.”

  I remove my arm from him. “How do you know my name?”

  “The same way you know mine. We all know you around here, Gal. And contrary to popular belief, we are not all against you.”

  “It’s not just popular belief,” I mutter.

  A nurse calls his name.

  Walters pats my arm, retracted though it is, and gets up. “Chin up, Galilee.”

  It is difficult for me not to throw the Newsweek at his back.

  Winslow Blythe’s Complete Rose Guide

  (SoCal Edition)

  May

  Can you believe summer is almost here? Your roses are in full bloom by now and subject to attack by various forces: bugs and fungi.

  Wash the rose undersides daily to get rid of critters. Do this in the morning; doing so at night will lead to mildew or fungus.

  Deadhead the spent blooms, unless you want them to produce rose hips.

  Now is the time when roses use the most food. Don’t be stingy and they will repay you by reblooming again in the fall.

  If you do see signs of powdery mildew, it’s important to spray a fungicide and kill that before it gets out of hand. The foliage will turn pale gray and crinkle up like a piece of old tissue paper. There are other types of mildew, too, like downy mildew, browning the leaves. Either type spreads like a bad flu through a nursery school, and you can pretty much forget those rose specimens.

  16

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, I AM AT SCIENCE OLYMPIAD PRACTICE, getting my group of students ready for their task: Disease Detectives. In this event, the students look at a real-life report of a food-borne illness, then must decide which disease it is based on the clues.

  Mr. Morton is doing Crime Busters, which is like forensic science. Mr. Morton has set out some sneakers he’s laced with fingerprints and hair for the students to analyze. I watch them, wishing I could do the experiments, too. I love watching CSI.

  We’re both doing the Storming the Castle event.

  I give my Disease Detectives students the handouts for the food-borne illness. Jim Hillyard, a basketball-tall senior with long brown hair, grins and rubs his hands together comically. Samantha looks at the handout with distaste. I tell them to make a list of symptoms and what the people had eaten so they can narrow down what the culprits may be.

  “I already know which disease it is.” Sam’s voice is flat. She drops her handout onto the table.

  “Don’t say it aloud,” I say, not wanting her to ruin it
for the other teammates. “Pretend you don’t know. And you certainly don’t know how the health department figured it out.”

  “It’s not that hard.” She won’t meet my eyes. Oh, yes. Samantha is unhappy with me.

  My temper flares. “No one is twisting your arm to be on the science team, Samantha.”

  She reaches for the handout. Not even a sigh or an eye roll escapes. What self-control. I lean down, not very far considering her head comes up to my chest when she’s sitting. “Everything all right, Samantha?”

  She gives one quick nod.

  I should know she will not talk to me.

  I survey the students. They are all involved in their tasks. I watch them ask each other for help, and the trebuchet kids raise their hands for Mr. Morton. I tell myself I am achieving the ultimate goal of a teacher: to become unnecessary to a student’s success. But I have to swallow a lump as I stand in the back, feeling my redundancy.

  Mr. Morton tells the trebuchet team to go outside and launch their beanbags, then measure the distance. We both go into the courtyard.

  “We could have one more kid on this team,” Mr. Morton says. “For backup. The Olympiad requires two people per team.”

  “Someone from another area can cover. We probably won’t get two people dropping out.” I watch Brad launch a beanbag into the air, then yell for the other kid, a junior, to get the tape measure.

  Mr. Morton’s forehead wrinkles. Today he is wearing flat-front khakis, brown leather slip-on shoes, and a light gray shirt patterned with something that, on closer inspection, appears to be small airplanes flying about. “It doesn’t hurt to plan for the worst, does it? I called the other people on your alternate list. None of them want to do it.”

  I know he’s still talking about Riley joining the team. If all the people on the wait list decline, then I don’t really have any reason to say that my niece can’t do it. Except for my belief she won’t perform, and doesn’t want to.

  She did less than stellar on the recent biology test about cell division, never once showing up for help, though I could see she did not understand the concepts. The students who did come for tutoring, who sat quizzing each other with the flash cards they’d drawn, these kids all got at least a B. Riley got a C minus.

  “It’s passing, isn’t it?” she had said, acting as though she didn’t care. I truly could not tell if she did care or not, the way she crammed the test so casually into her backpack. If it were up to me, I would post all the students’ grades in public, for everyone to see. Public shaming can work wonders. Though in this day and age, it’s possible no one has any standards anymore.

  “It’s barely passing.” It was an embarrassment to me, her aunt and her teacher, for her to get such a low grade. Dr. O’Malley would tut over it, think it was another example of Gal Garner’s poor teaching ability. Never mind all the others who did pass. “You must come to tutoring.”

  She had tried for a bargain. “If I don’t do well on the next test, I’ll come.”

  “By then your grade will be too low,” I had said sharply. “It’s May. How much time do you think you have? Then you won’t be able to drive.”

  She had no answer then.

  Mr. Morton waits for me to respond to him. The afternoon sun glints like candlelight on his face. I don’t really want to get into all this with him, explaining everything about my niece and her little quirks. “Trust me. You don’t want Riley on the team.”

  “Sometimes kids respond better to teachers who aren’t related to them.” His tone is mild, but I take offense.

  I squint up at him. “How long have you been teaching, Mr. Morton?”

  He takes a breath. “One month.”

  “I see.”

  “But I have taught . . . kids . . . who are related to me. I mean, she’s still very young.” His voice gets husky.

  I want to ask him who and I don’t want to ask him. He doesn’t want to tell me, either, because he strides away to Brad, instructing him on how to correct the trajectory. I watch for a moment. The male students, outdoors, their sleeves rolled up, fixing the catapult, nearly vibrate with health. With their matching uniforms and tans, it looks like a school recruiting ad. I return inside, to my anatomy and my violent vomiting-and-diarrhea scenarios.

  17

  A WEEK PASSES WITH RILEY ATTENDING TO THE DETAILS OF her grounding like a patient prisoner. “I did not use my phone today,” she reports every evening, showing me her Calls list. “You can check yourself.”

  “Hmmm, yes.” I make a big show out of checking, though I can barely work my own phone. “Good job, Riley.”

  Each day after school, Riley involves herself in all the clubs available to her that will give her an excuse to do something valid with her peers, exactly as Samantha does. She joins Key Club, the community service club; Art Club; Spanish Club; and even the Chess Club. At these clubs, she laughs and jokes like any other kid who’s been going to a private school her whole life. Gone is the Riley who arrived here, punk makeup and all. I try to be happy; she wants to fit in, but something about how thoroughly the old Riley has disappeared unnerves me. She’s trying awfully hard. Maybe too hard. I say nothing, not wanting to seem critical. Arouse the sleeping dragon.

  After our post-school activities are done, I take her home, where we make dinner in relative silence.

  Every evening that I’m not at dialysis, Riley does her homework. She stares at the dark TV and her turned-off phone, looking so dejected I almost let her use them. “Would you like to play a board game?” I ask her halfway through her week of no electronics.

  She gives me a look like I’m an alien from outer space.

  “How about cards?” I suggest.

  She straightens on the couch, her posture looking the best it has in weeks. She flips back her new hair. The colors are somewhat dull, the shininess probably bleached out by all the processing, but it looks much more normal than it had before. “For money?”

  “How about for pennies?” I get out my jar of pennies. My parents and I like to play cards when they visit. Usually it’s long games like bridge, if we can get a fourth. Dara sometimes submits, but the card games are too long and boring for her. I tell her it’s a mental exercise, and we can still chat while we’re playing. “Texas hold ’em. And then blackjack.”

  I deal the cards, explaining how the game works. I’m a pretty fair poker player, and I’ve got no problem with gambling as long as you have the money to lose.

  Occasionally, my parents take me to Vegas, where we stay at one of the cheap places off the main strip where my mother gets the rooms comped in return for all the money she loses on slots. Dad and I hit the poker rooms, then blackjack tables.

  “This is awesome.” Riley taps the table. I deal her another card.

  “It’s better with more people.” We play a few more rounds. Then I show her blackjack, how to get to twenty-one and when to hold and when to double down, when to hit. “Now, this is all important to know. What you do here can mess up your whole table. Some people, like me and your Grandpa, would get mad at you.”

  “Can we have popcorn?” she asks, sounding like a little kid again.

  “Sure. Go ahead and make some.” I’ll bet her mother has not played games with her, not even Candy Land.

  Becky was never one for board games. She was always on the go, always wanting to be out, out, out while I was perpetually stuck indoors. During my long periods of confinement, Mom sent Becky to a neighbor’s, who practically adopted her. I remember going days without seeing my sister. “Where’s Becky?” I’d ask my mother. I’d wanted Becky to stay and play board games with me, or watch television, or sit on the bed and play Barbies. The answer varied: Becky was out whale watching, or at the Wild Animal Park, or simply outside playing. As she got older and could choose her social schedule, she would be out every weekend ni
ght. Eventually, Becky became more like a person we saw only on random weeknights and holidays than a true family member.

  That Becky felt left out did not occur to me until many years later, before Riley was born and after both of us had ventured out into the world. Mom invited me over for her world-famous tacos. Me, and not my sister.

  Becky had shown up that night, dropping off a load of laundry. She froze when she saw us. We froze, too, hunched over our dripping crunchy taco shells as if we’d been caught with gold bullion in a bank.

  To my amazement, Mom got a guilty look on her face and began explaining it away as coincidence. “Your sister just dropped in. Would you like a taco?” This clearly wasn’t true, and I was confused for a moment until it hit me. They hadn’t wanted to see Becky.

  Becky knew it, too. The air whooshed out of Becky’s step as though someone had whacked her kneecaps with a baseball bat. She sank into Dad’s recliner and retied her shoes, which did not need retying.

  “No time, thank you.” Her voice was too chipper, cracking, her hair hung over her face to hide her expression. How could I see such tiny things in my sister when I never even knew what to buy her for Christmas? And why couldn’t my parents see it?

  Mom relaxed, going back to her taco. Dad acted as if he had barely heard the exchange at all, his eyes still trained on the football game in the other room.

  Only I, confronted with the evidence that I was my mother’s favorite, reached out to her. How can a mother have favorites among her children? At the time, I still harbored hopes that one day I would find some man who could look beyond everything I appeared to be, see who I was. “They’re really good tacos, Becky.”

  Instantly she reared back, a cobra attacking. She stood. “What part of ‘no’ don’t you get?”