The Vegetable Museum

by Michelle Mulder

  I expect Dad to nod solemnly and look concerned—these must be painful memories for Uli—but his sigh sounds exasperated.

  Uli holds up a hand. “Don’t worry, Darryl. I’ll stop.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Your father’s heard this story a million times, Chloë.”

  “But I haven’t,” I say. “And it’s part of my history too, right?”

  Uli looks at Dad like he’s asking if it’s okay to keep talking.

  “Go ahead. Whatever,” says my dad. He takes another bite of his burrito. “Great. Now it’s cold. I’m going to ask them to reheat it.”

  “What’s up with him?” I ask Uli as Dad gets to his feet again.

  “I talked a lot about Europe when he was a kid. I thought he should know where he came from. Maybe I overdid it.”

  I bite my lip. “Is that why things are so tense between you?” I blurt out. “I mean, why you never visited each other? Why you hardly ever came to Montreal?”

  Uli’s hands fall to his lap, and his right eye is wet. He sniffs and shakes his head. “You’ll have to ask your dad about that, Chloë. I can tell you more about Europe though.” He talks quickly. “Mother knew we had cousins in Germany. We never did find them, but she also had a sister in Canada. Mother remembered the address, so she thought we’d head here. She worked three jobs to pay for the tickets.”

  “Where was your dad in all this?” I ask.

  “The Russians shot him. I was a toddler,” Uli says with no emotion whatsoever. “I don’t remember him at all.”

  Dad sits down again, his burrito steaming. Uli glances at him. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep it short.” He describes the little town on the Baltic Sea where he and his mom lived. “She died when I was ten though.”

  “What?” Another crucial detail Dad’s never mentioned. “How did she die?”

  “I don’t know,” Uli says. “She didn’t want to spend money on a doctor. She just got thinner and thinner, and—”

  Dad brushes off his fingers. “Are you two finished eating? I’ll take the plates up to the counter.”

  “Thanks,” Uli says while I watch my father get up yet again. I can’t believe he’d butt in when Uli’s talking about his mother dying. But Uli carries on as if nothing happened. “Some neighbors took me in. They gave me a choice: I could stay with them, or they could help me get to Canada to be with my aunt.”

  Dad comes back and stands by the table until we both get up and put on our coats. He helps Uli with his.

  “I chose Canada, obviously. That’s what my mother had wanted.”

  “What was your aunt like?” I ask.

  Dad rolls his eyes. Uli squeezes my shoulder. “Let’s leave that story for another time, Chloë. I’ve tortured your father enough for one evening.”

  In the car, conversation drifts back to safe topics like earthworms and the national budget. Dad drives us across town to the huge grocery store, and we buy our supplies. By the time we’re back outside, it’s pouring rain. We get drenched on our way across the parking lot.

  “Tell me again why we can’t just buy food a block from home?” I ask. Every week since we got here, we’ve driven halfway across the city to get groceries, even though Smith’s store is just down the street. It can’t possibly be worse than some of the little places we shopped at in Montreal. Sure, it always looks kind of dark inside, but plenty of people go in and out all the time. None of them ever have the horrified look Dad gets on his face when I mention it.

  My shopping question was designed to bug him, to get him to show some feeling about something. I’m still mad about how he treated Uli at the restaurant. I asked my grandfather to tell that story, and Dad acted like Uli was some old guy who talked too much.

  “Wouldn’t catch me dead in that place.” Uli spits on the ground next to him, like I’ve fed him poison.

  I must look stunned, because Dad gives me a sympathetic look. “It’s a long story, Chloë.”

  I can tell there’s no point in asking more questions. We’re all silent as we climb into the car. Back at Uli’s, Dad and I carry his bags of food up his front steps and leave them at the top. I hug my grandfather good night, and we leave before he opens his front door.

  “So what’s the deal between you two?” I ask Dad when we’re back at our place. I’ve never gotten anywhere with this question before—I’ll tell you when you’re older, he always says—but maybe after his performance tonight as The Heartless Son, he’ll be embarrassed enough to cough up some explanations.

  Dad pulls a box of crackers from a bag and shoves it into a cupboard. “My father had a terrible childhood. I understand why hearing about it affects you so much. But I grew up hearing it used as an excuse for every screwup. It got old pretty quick.”

  “What screwups?” I ask.

  “Look, Chloë,” Dad says. “Let’s leave the past in the past, where it belongs.”

  I can’t believe he’s brushing me off again. “You’re telling me that? You hardly talked to him for decades. Now you can barely stand to be in the same room with him, and you’re telling me to leave the past in the past?”

  My dad yanks a hunk of cheese from a bag and slams it onto the counter. “Chloë, this is not a conversation I’m prepared to have right now. We came here because I need to lay some things to rest with my father. But it’s hard for me, okay? I don’t want to make it hard for you, too, by telling you the whole story. Your mother’s given you enough to deal with.”

  That kind of makes sense. I tone it down a bit. “Just tell me a few basic things, okay? I mean, he’s safe to be with, right? He’s not an ax murderer or anything?”

  Dad sighs, leans his elbows on the counter and puts his head in his hands. When he looks up, his eyes are red. “No, he’s not an ax murderer, Chloë. And in some ways he was a very good father. But we have some stuff to work through, that’s all.” His eyes meet mine, and they’re not hard like they were at the restaurant. They look sad, like he can’t bear to have this conversation. And the pain in his eyes scares me. So I drop the topic.

  For now anyway.

  FOUR

  “Maybe your grandfather wouldn’t let your dad marry his high-school sweetheart,” Sofia says when she calls the next day. “Your dad was so mad that he didn’t talk to his father for years. Then, this winter, when he realized Uli wasn’t long for this world, he decided it was time to resolve past issues.”

  No matter how messed-up life gets, I can always rely on Sofia to make me laugh. “Trust you to turn family politics into a sappy romance novel.”

  “I’m just saying anything could have sparked their fight. They didn’t deal with it, and they got angrier as time went by. Remember the Blue Sweatshirt Incident?”

  I sigh. “We were six, Sof. And I’m sure my grandfather never accused my dad of stealing a Dora the Explorer top. Besides, it only took a week for us to make up, not twenty-five years.”

  “But it was the longest week of my life,” she says. “By the time my aunt found my sweater in her car, I already had seven pieces of proof that you’d stolen it.”

  “Seriously?”

  Silence. “I never told you? Anyway, I was wrong, okay? I apologized. Several times.”

  “Yeah, but you never told me about the seven pieces of proof,” I tease. “Good grief. It’s a wonder you didn’t call the police.”

  “I’d punch you in the shoulder right now, if you were here.”

  “I love you too,” I say. “If you were here, we’d solve the Mystery of the Enraged Family Members together.”

  “Keep me posted on how it goes.”

  “You know I will.”

  I’m halfway through my English homework when I hear the buzzer and dash into the living room. Dad’s already answered the ancient intercom though. “Yes, she’s here,” he says to the box. “Do you want to come in, or should I send her out?”

  “Who is it?” I ask.

  “Your grandfather.” He nods and disappears into the kitchen, leaving me to
answer the door.

  “Chloë! Just who I wanted to see!” Uli lifts his good arm to put around me, and I hug him, too stunned to speak. He has never come to our apartment before.

  I take his elbow and lead him into the living room. With the secondhand lamps and furniture that Dad scored, it looks a whole lot better than it used to. The walls are now a trendy Montreal-coffee-shop orange. I like it. “Did you guys declare a truce or something?” I ask Uli.

  “I’m not here to see your dad, actually.” He lowers himself onto our couch. “I asked him if I could come over, and he said yes. I have a question for you.”

  I sit down beside him. “Shoot.”

  “Would you help me with my garden, please? Weeding and planting seeds?”

  “For weird vegetables?” The words fly out of my mouth before I can stop them. Fortunately, my grandfather laughs.

  “The heirlooms, yes.”

  I glance over to the kitchen, but Dad’s off in an invisible corner, whistling a song I recognize from his Best of the Nineties playlist. I’m on my own. I really do want to help my grandfather, even if only to hear more stories without having to worry about Dad glaring and sighing through every one. Still, Uli should know what he’s getting into if I help him. “I don’t have much of a green thumb,” I admit. “I grew a bean plant once, but that’s it. Our place in Montreal doesn’t even have a garden, just a tiny patch of dirt by the front steps. Dad grows sunflowers there.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Uli says. “You’ll learn.”

  “But I might, you know, pull out the wrong plants or something.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on you. You provide the muscle. I’ll provide the know-how.”

  Dad’s still whistling. Loud. He’s into another song now. This one I don’t recognize.

  “I’m not all that strong.” I lift one skinny arm.

  Uli grabs his droopy one and holds it up. “Better than what I’ve got.”

  I have no more arguments left. “When do I start?”

  He beams at me, like I’ve just given him a winning lottery ticket. I love that it’s so simple to make him happy, and I wonder again what my father’s held against him for so many years. With any luck, I’ll soon find out. Hopefully, not too many plants will die in the process.

  “What about right now?” he asks. “No time like the present.”

  “This tree’s grandmother”—Uli points to the bare-branched one in his front yard—“grew behind the house where I was born.”

  How is that possible? I picture my great-grandmother, escaping the Russians with a toddler in one arm and a potted tree in the other. “Didn’t you escape with only the clothes on your backs?”

  “Mother had an apple in her coat pocket,” Uli says. “She told me the story all the time when I was growing up. After my dad was killed, she woke me up early one September morning, before sunrise. She told me we were going on a trip. I started to cry because I wanted to play on the swing in the apple tree behind the house, so she picked an apple and made a promise. When we got to where we were going, she said, she’d plant another tree and build another swing. That calmed me down. We set out, and we ate the apple eventually—small and sour, but we were so hungry it didn’t matter. She kept the seeds. Every few days she’d take them out. We’d talk about the beautiful country called Canada where we’d plant our tree.”

  I’m quiet for a moment. “She never made it.”

  He shakes his head. “I brought the seeds with me though. I planted them way in the back of my aunt’s property, where no one would notice a few extra trees.”

  “So what was your aunt like anyway?” I ask. “Now that Dad’s not here, can you finish the story?”

  “She was crazy,” Uli says. “She said she heard voices, saw foxes in the living room, you name it. Her husband was a boozer, and his farm was going down the tube. That’s why he sponsored me to come over. He needed someone to work the farm. I was a city kid by then though. No use to him. He flew off the handle a lot when he was drinking. One time he got so mad he broke my arm. That’s when I left, hitchhiked to Edmonton to seek my fortune.”

  “You should write a book,” I say.

  “Nah. Too much work. I’d rather be planting seeds.” He shuffles down the garden path toward the gate in the hedge. “Come see the garden.”

  “Wait.” I’m still standing under the tree. “You didn’t tell me how this tree got here.”

  He smiles. “You’re a stubborn one, Chloë. That’ll stand you in good stead. But that’s enough ancient history for one day. I have to go in to take my pills soon. After that I won’t have energy to come back out again.”

  I stay right where I am, under the tree, and refuse to move until I hear the rest of the story. No one else tells me this kind of stuff. Dad’s mom died when he was a kid. My mom’s parents both kicked it before I was born. My uncle Leo lives in Shanghai. I have no cousins (which Sofia thinks is hilarious because she has dozens—enough for both of us, she says). I never thought much about the whole extended-family thing until I had to leave behind my life in Montreal to get to know one of my only living relatives. The least Uli can do is finish the stories he starts. “Please, Uli? How long would it take to tell me? Thirty seconds? A minute and a half, max?”

  Uli sighs and mumbles about a chip off the old block, but he gets on with the story. “When I… moved into this house, I took a trip back to my uncle’s farm. I told the new owners my story. They let me take what I needed. That’s how this tree got here. Now enough lollygagging. Let’s go.”

  I feel like he hasn’t told me the whole story, but at least he answered my question. Maybe I can get more out of him when we’re digging in the dirt. He holds open the gate for me.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “Thank you.” Who knows if we’re talking about the garden, the story or something else entirely? I hold my breath as I walk through the gateway into this place that I’ve been hearing about for weeks.

  Whatever I’ve been expecting, this isn’t it. It looks like a recycling depot spat up over rows and rows of leaf-covered dirt, with empty plastic bottles sticking up at regular intervals. At the back, near the greenhouse, a few tall plants with crinkly, purplish leaves stand tall.

  Uli puts a hand on my shoulder. “Not much to look at now, but come summer, you’ll be harvesting more vegetables than you can fit in your fridge.” My face must tell him exactly what I think about that idea, because he bursts out laughing. “Quite the enticement for a young person, I know. I tried to bribe your father with brussels sprouts when he was a kid too. That didn’t work either.”

  “It explains a lot though.”

  “Still doesn’t like ’em?”

  “Hates ’em.”

  “And you?”

  “Not a fan.” But we both know I’m not in this for the veggies. I’m doing this for my grandfather. And maybe for my great-grandmother, who I’m already imagining as some sort of tree spirit flitting around this yard, watching us and celebrating our work. My great-grandmother who desperately wanted to raise her little boy in a peaceful place and never even got to see him grow up.

  I have a whole new respect for that apple tree. I wonder if I’ll feel something—some sort of DNA memory—when I bite into one of its tiny, sour apples. I look out over the leaves and empty pop bottles, picturing a whole garden of heirloom vegetables that all mean something to someone somewhere, even if they look weird to me.

  “That’s chickweed,” Uli says, pointing to a big patch of tiny plants poking out of the earth.

  “Who gave you that one?” I ask.

  Uli smiles. “It came on its own. It’s a weed, but an edible one. Go collect some. We’ll put it in a salad.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope. Here.” He points to the little plants and holds out his hand until I bend down and pick some for him. He pops the tiny leaves into his mouth. “Go on. Try it.”

  I do, rubbing off the dirt with my fingers first. “Hmmm. It’s actuall
y not bad. For a cross between grass and spinach, I mean.” I’m not likely to ever eat it again, but I can tell that my response has made Uli happy. “How much do you want?”

  “Oh, a few good handfuls. I’ll find something to put it in.” He waves me toward the greenhouse.

  I follow. “What’s with all the plastic bottles?”

  “It’s my irrigation system,” he says. I think he’s joking until he explains that each bottle is covered in pinholes. In summer, he fills the bottles every few days with water from the rain barrel. They leak out as much water as the plants need to stay healthy. “Best system money can buy, except I built it for free.”

  He pulls open the door of the greenhouse and leads me inside. Benches loaded with planting supplies line the walls, and there’s a big table in the middle. On top is a faded brown shoebox, its corners worn. He places one hand on the lid and looks at me. “This is it. In here are the seeds for everything we’ll grow this year. All the stories too.”

  He opens the box and pulls out one of what looks like dozens of white envelopes. Inside is a paper packet of seeds, a folded piece of paper and a photo of a plant. It looks like a grapevine, with tiny watermelons hanging down where bunches of grapes would be. “This one is cucamelon,” he says. “From Mexico. The waitress at my favorite diner gave me the seeds ages ago. I make pickles every year. I probably still have a jar, if you want to try them.”

  He pulls out envelope after envelope, showing me pictures of purple leeks, black radishes and a bumpy light-brown bulb called celeriac. The folded pieces of paper tell the story of each seed. I read a few. Each one is like a mini travelogue, tracking where the vegetables came from, who gave Uli the seeds and when. Some even have little world maps at the bottom of the page, tracing the veggie’s journey.

  “Better get a move on,” he says, closing the box. “Let me grab some tools and something for that chickweed.”

  As he rummages in a corner, I look through the glass of the greenhouse out into the garden. I imagine the empty rows crowded, as Uli promised, with plant life and vegetables whose ancestors traveled here from all over the world. Uli says that some of them don’t even exist in their original countries anymore. The ones we’ll grow are the last of their kind. This is nothing like Sofia’s great-aunt’s plastic-bag collection after all. These are endangered species. And food. And history. And what my grandfather lives for, all wrapped up in one.