The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns

by Margaret Dilloway

  Now Riley comes outside, dressed in her uniform, her hair neatly brushed. “Aunt Gal, you can’t do all this by yourself. You’re all dirty. You have five minutes to get ready.” She looks worried, her arms crossed and her forehead wrinkled. “Let me help.”

  I wonder what the gossip will be at school today, and if any of it will be directed at Riley. “You going to be okay today?”

  She looks down, scuffing the toe of her sneaker into the dirt. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” Then she meets my eyes directly, her eyes flashing green. “Nothing happened at the party, Aunt Gal. Nothing except drinking.”

  I straighten from the hose winder. I can feel specks of dirt all over my face, though I was only watering. My breath comes fast and heavy. “Good. Finish winding it for me, and we’ll get to school just fine.” I walk into the house as she gingerly grabs the handle and begins turning the crank.

  • • •

  IN AP BIOLOGY, I confront Brad as he walks in right before the bell. “Hallway. Now.”

  He follows me out. He says nothing. I’d thought better of him.

  Down the hallway, his father is emptying a trash can. He glances up, looking exactly like Brad will look in thirty years, except I hope Brad won’t look so hangdog-defeated. Bags swirl under the man’s eyes. He nods at me and I nod back.

  Brad holds up his hands and, seeing his father, leans forward in a whisper. “I am sorry, Ms. Garner. I have to help out my father.”

  “What do you mean?” I’m confused. I glance toward his father. “In the morning?”

  Brad flushes. “Dad has a paper route. Dad works a night shift, too, and he’s too tired in the mornings now. He’s saving up money for my college.”

  I glance down the hall at his father again, wondering several things at once. One, why the school doesn’t pay a living wage to its workers. Two, why Brad’s father, who appears to be a fairly intelligent, capable human, can’t get a better-paying job. Three, whether I can start paying Brad so he doesn’t have to leave.

  Brad passes his hands over his face, leaving fingerprints on his cheeks. Down the hall, his father empties a dustpan noisily, shuffling away without a backward glance toward his son. The confident Brad disappears for a second, and I see a new Brad. Unhappy, afraid, alone. This Brad I see comforting his father when his mother didn’t come home, getting the free secondhand uniforms from the school, the one who doesn’t pay into the class field trip fund, who’s earned his peers’ respect through the luck of his good looks and athletic abilities. I see that I don’t know the half of this kid.

  So I don’t say anything to make him feel bad about texting me or quitting. I know I can’t pay him. For a moment I consider asking my mother for help; I know she will foot the bill without question. It’s tempting, but I want to be a stand-on-her-own-two-feet adult too much to ask.

  I am aware of the class inside rustling about. It’s far past bell, and they know we are out here. “Okay, Brad,” I say, after a long silence. “Thanks for letting me know.”

  He nods once, begins to turn, and pauses. “I can’t come after school, either. I have too much studying to do for finals. I don’t want to mess up.”

  I nod once in return. He goes silently into class.

  • • •

  I GET TO SCIENCE OLYMPIAD a little late, because I’m trying to or-ganize my curriculum for the next day. With the competition in two weeks, Mr. Morton is in a tizzy, but I have no worries. My teams are more than well prepared. The kids could do these tasks in their sleep.

  Mr. Morton, on the other hand, thinks his students will forget everything as soon as a little pressure is on them. Maybe his teams aren’t well prepared enough.

  When I arrive at his classroom, the trebuchet kids are outside. Mr. Morton is nowhere to be found, neither inside nor out. My kids are efficient as an ant colony, with their supplies all set up. I look in earnest for my co-coach. His briefcase and metal water bottle are still here, the water bottle forlornly on its side.

  I am bending over helping my anatomy student identify a kidney (“Surely you jest,” I say) when I hear another voice join the kids outside. A familiar female voice belonging to my young niece. I peer through the bank of open windows lining the room.

  Sure enough, it’s Riley, clipboard in hand, watching the action. Brad hands her a tape measure. “I’d rather not do that part,” she demurs. “I’m here to watch.”

  He sputters the exasperation I feel. “What good is being an alternate going to do if you don’t know how to step in? What if somebody’s sick?”

  I call out a rejoinder. “Yeah, what if someone’s sick?” I step forward. So Mr. Morton has decided what I think does not matter, and so has my niece. But really, what else is new around here? I feel resigned more than anything.

  Riley’s eyes widen. “Hi, Aunt Gal.”

  “Miss Garner,” I remind her. Riley fumbles with the tape measure, unable to get the metal to uncoil. Brad holds down one end by the trebuchet, and she walks the tape measure out to where the beanbag sits in the middle of a brown, dead patch of grass.

  “Five meters and . . .” Riley’s voice trembles. “Two centimeters?”

  “Can’t you read one of those things yet?” I ask in what I think is my mild voice. I stride over and read it. “Five meters, twenty centimeters.”

  “You don’t have to yell at me.” Riley turns away, chewing her lower lip.

  “This is nowhere near yelling.” I glance around. Still no Mr. Morton. “Has anyone seen Mr. Morton?”

  They all shake their heads, except one. One of the trebuchet team, a female junior, points. “He went back there.”

  Odd. There’s nothing behind the science building except scrubby hillside. I walk around the building.

  Indeed, there he is, talking on his cell. Cell phones, I decide, should get some kind of award as the most accursed invention of the modern age. You can never be unplugged. I’m about to say something, but his back is turned, and what I hear next stops me cold.

  “I have given you everything,” he says, his voice loud and full of more emotion than I’ve ever heard out of a male, except at a Shakespearean play. “I want to see her. I’m her father.”

  At this, I drop back behind the corner, unwilling to listen to any more. Mr. Morton is a father? Who is the mother? Dara doesn’t know about this. That’s the kind of gossip that spreads fast. Who is he talking to?

  What do we know about this man? I ask myself.

  I go into the classroom. Mr. Morton comes in shortly after. His hair seems to be electrified, which makes me smile momentarily, but he shows no sign of being upset.

  “Sorry about that.” He sits at his desk, straightening papers that need no straightening, and only then do I notice the flush in his cheeks. I decide not to confront him about Riley just then.

  But I don’t have to, because my niece herself materializes next to him. “You said you were going to tell her,” she says accusingly. “She went all crazy on me.”

  Teens sure have a different reality than I do. “Riley. Define crazy.”

  Mr. Morton raises his hands. “Hey, hey. Peace. I’m doing the trebuchet, I can have her as an alternate if I want.”

  His direct snub of not only my teaching authority but my guardian authority stings. “I thought we were both doing the trebuchet,” I say. My father built the contraption, after all.

  He shakes his head. “My name’s on the form as the adviser. You know you only need one coach per event.”

  “And Mom signed off on my form,” Riley chimes in.

  “That’s why I let her on the team.”

  “You kept her a secret!” I cannot believe it.

  “It just happened.” Mr. Morton is going to make this All About the Principle. I can tell he’s hunkering down, ready for a long-term battle.

  “Ho
w?” I’m certain Riley has forged the signature. “Show me the permission slip.”

  Mr. Morton makes a show of leafing through his files.

  Riley stands resolute, her fists at her sides. This team is important to her, even though she’s just an alternate and she can’t read the darn tape measure. I suspect its only importance comes from the fact that I said she couldn’t do it. Her cheeks burn carnation pink, making the freckles stand out on her nose. “She said I could sign it for her.”

  “Forgery. That is perfect.” I sit down at an empty table opposite Mr. Morton. He twists his mouth into something resembling concern.

  Riley crouches next to me. “If you call her, she’ll say she signed it.”

  This is the last conversation I want to be having. People always seem to think I seek conflict. I don’t. It seeks me. I put my forehead in my palm. It feels hot, or my palm is cold. I can’t determine which.

  I have had enough. All I want to do is go home and watch Wheel of Fortune.

  “Obviously, both of you are going to do as you like. I might as well not be here.” I pick up my tote bag, a pink one imprinted with multicolored DNA molecules that my mother bought me last Christmas. The DNA molecules roil before my eyes. I focus on a corner of the room, waiting for the dizzy spell to pass.

  “Don’t be like that.” Mr. Morton exchanges a look with Riley that says, We must manage her before she has a true fit. This I really cannot stand. Before I say something I will probably regret forever, I hustle out of there, dizzy or not.

  19

  IT’S NOT UNTIL I ARRIVE BACK AT HOME THAT I REMEMBER I left Riley there at school, when I am the one who drives her home. Well, she’s a big girl. She can figure out a way home. She has before.

  Everyone else wants to make things too easy for the kids. No one has to work for anything, figure stuff out. Mr. Morton’s niceness will be the downfall of him as a teacher. He’ll probably let all his students take the final three times until they get the grade they want.

  I push aside my feelings that I’m committing neglect, and get on the computer to check my e-mail.

  One from Byron. Finally.

  So sorry about your rose show. Terribly busy with the season now. Good luck to you.

  And that was all, no signature, no chattiness. He’s had enough of this quasi-friendship, no time to give me a how-do-you-do. Or he is in fact busy, as he says.

  First Dara, then Brad, then Riley and Mr. Morton, now Byron. Not to mention the kidney doctor and powers-that-be. Is there no one not conspiring against me? I let out a breath, a long one whooshing the dust off my keyboard. Then I sneeze.

  I have to laugh at my own pitifulness. There’s nothing else to do. By this time next year, I promise myself, I will have:

  1. A new kidney

  2. A successful Hulthemia, with scent

  3. A new couch

  I write the list down on a piece of scrap paper emblazoned with a realtor’s picture. I pause. It seems like Riley ought to belong on this list someplace. But what do I want for her? Do I want her to leave or stay? I write:

  4. Riley?

  I put the list away.

  My phone pings with a text. Mr. Morton, not Riley, because Riley knows better than to use the text feature. I am going to have to change to the unlimited text plan, unhappy as I am about that prospect.

  Will give Riley a ride since you left, it reads. Jesus God.

  That reminds me of overhearing him on the phone. Dara and I know next to nothing about Mr. Morton, except that he used to work at some chemical company. He and Dara have been out several times, but all they’ve done is see a movie, get coffee afterward, and talk about the movies. Hardly getting-to-know-you scenarios. That’s more like conversational avoidance.

  I think about the morning I’d asked Dara if she liked Mr. Morton, when she dropped in to have her coffee with me. I’ve always hated coffee; tastes like bitter dishwater, but I’ve watched her drink gallons over the years.

  “He’s a nice guy,” she said. Her mug was shaped like the face of a winking woman; it said BAILEY’S on one side.

  “Does Dr. O’Malley know you’re advertising liquor on campus?” I said.

  She blinked. “Come on. I got it in an antique store.”

  “That makes it perfectly acceptable?” I settled back into my chair. I’d brought in some of my newly blooming roses off my nonbreeding bushes, the burnt red Hot Cocoa, and had them arranged in an old pasta jar in a big cloud. “I know he’s a nice guy. But what does he like to do?”

  She took a sip of the coffee so light it had to be mostly cream. Dara never ate breakfast; said her coffee had more than enough calories and calcium to count for food. “Build things. Watch movies.”

  “Heck, I know that much.” If it were me going out on dates, I would have the man’s mother’s maiden name, Social Security number, religion, and childhood dreams by the second one. I made a noise of disbelief, which sounded more like an unattractive snort. “Dara. Come on. Quit bringing me second-rate information.”

  “I’m sorry!” Dara laughed, smoothed out her capris printed with large roses. “I prefer to let things take a natural course, not force them.”

  “At that rate, you’re going to get married at about the same time the sun burns itself out.” I sharpened my jar of number two pencils, something I did every morning for the students who forgot theirs at home. For a while I told everyone that if they forgot a pencil, they were just going to be out of luck, but then half the students did no work for a solid week because they’d left their pencils at home. Dr. O’Malley was not so happy about this.

  Dara took a rose out of the jar. “Can I take one?”

  “Looks like you already did.” I kept sharpening as she stuck it behind her right ear.

  “Not behind the left?” I indicated her other side. Left ear would mean her heart was taken.

  “Nope.” She held her now-empty cup. “I’m still seeing Chad, too. It’s all still light.”

  Any lighter and Mr. Morton would think she wasn’t interested at all. I stuck another pencil into the sharpener, raising my voice against the satisfying mechanical hum. “Whatever makes you happy, my dear.”

  At home now, I open Google on my computer. If Dara is not going to find anything out about George Morton, I will. It’s so easy to find out stuff about people these days. Once, a man advertised a set of large pots on Craigslist. He’d e-mailed me back, told me it would be first come, first served, and then didn’t answer his phone. All I knew was his first name, his neighborhood, and his phone number, and I found his house and got in his driveway seconds before another woman. Yes, I got those pots.

  I type “George Morton, San Luis Obispo” into the search engine.

  Instantly (this still surprises me, after all these years of having the Internet; I still half expect to have to use a card catalog when doing research) a number of hits come up. Most of these are not his.

  I look over the image search. On page four, one photo sticks out. George Morton with another woman and a baby girl.

  “Acrimonious divorce pits Alchemy Tech founder Morton against his wife,” the caption reads. “Lara Stratton-Morton, a former lab technician at Alchemy Tech, has filed for sole custody of their two-year-old daughter.”

  My fingers feel frozen. I rub them together. A baby girl? An ex-wife? Why did they split up? An image of Riley’s father flashes into my head, a man now so distant I honestly have to look up his name or ask my mother if I want to know it.

  Now that I know his company’s name, it’s easier to find another article. Most are his research papers; he deals with synthetic polymer chemistry, it seems. This encompasses non-natural rubbers, plastics, and fabrics like neoprene and nylon and, of course, polyester. Because many polymers use petroleum as a starting point, and we’re running out of oil, compani
es are trying to develop new ways to produce these materials. I find myself impressed at his body of work. Why would he leave something like this to teach at our nothing school?

  Then I come across this nugget. Nugget, nothing. More like a piece of coal that I must swallow.

  Shares of Alchemy Tech plummeted today at the news that CEO and founder George Morton is stepping down. Amid rumors of a takeover, Morton sold his majority shares last week and has no plans to remain in operations. “I have every confidence that our teams will continue to produce the best work and fulfill all our contracts,” he said in a statement. The company primarily deals with developing new synthetics for the polymer industry.

  Dara should know about this. I’d want to know. I reach for the phone.

  The door slams. Riley pauses dramatically near the entrance, holding aloft the chrome Craftsman tape measure my father left here. “I learned how to read it. Want me to show you?”

  I have the phone in my hand. What should I say, good job for learning how to do something everyone else learned in sixth grade? Is she going to learn how to skip rope next? The mean thoughts make me flush. I’m still angry at her for joining the science team behind my back, though the fault really lies with Mr. Morton. I decide I won’t bring up the science team at all. “Not right now, Riley. I have to make a phone call.”

  Disappointment crosses her face. I was supposed to want to see her read a tape measure? I suppose a real teacher would. I put the phone down. “Measure the couch. Show me.” The couch would be easy; I know it’s exactly eight feet, two and a half inches.

  “Maybe later.” She tosses her tape measure unceremoniously on the couch, where it bounces off and crashes into the TV remote on the coffee table, knocking it off. “Oops.”

  “There better not be a ding in my table.” I get up and inspect its white paint. It’s what Dara calls a Shabby Chic table, one with curlicued sides. I found it by the side of the road. Dara painted it pink, then white, scratching away part of the top to reveal the color underneath. It reminds me of some of my pink and white roses.