The Vegetable Museum

by Michelle Mulder

  FIVE

  “Ta-da!”

  Nikko and I are standing in our building’s parking lot. A few minutes ago he banged on my door (wearing plaid shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, but who am I to judge?) and told me to follow him outside. At first I thought he needed help with another load of groceries. But now I’m staring at a red-and-white bicycle with high handlebars, a wicker basket and a bell on the front. Sofia would absolutely love this bike. I’m not kidding. It’s completely hipster cool and would fit in perfectly in Montreal. I can already picture myself pedaling along the Lachine Canal, my hair flowing out behind me, with a baguette, some cheese and a picnic blanket in my basket.

  “Hop on!” Nikko says. “Try it out. I brought a wrench to adjust the seat height.”

  “I…uh…”

  His face falls. “You don’t like it? Is it the seat? Mom’s got a cushier one in our storage locker.” He fumbles in his pocket for keys.

  “No! It’s not the seat.” I feel my face get hot. I’m embarrassed to tell him why, but I don’t want him to think I’m ungrateful either. “It’s the whole bike… and the fact that I don’t know how to ride one.” Why didn’t I learn when I was six, like every other kid?

  “Oh, is that all?” Nikko slips the keys back into his pocket. “I can teach you.”

  I revise my picture to me pedaling up and down the sidewalk of our apartment building with all the nosy neighbors gawking out their windows. The sight of me wobbling and splatting onto the pavement might even bring a smile to Estelle’s face. I open my mouth to tell Nikko that I’m not the sporty type, but then I stop and take a breath. “I…want to ride this bike, but I’d rather skip over the learning part. You know, the bit where I fall off and look like a complete idiot? I could do without that.”

  “But the fall only lasts a few seconds,” he says, and I wonder what it must be like to not care at all what anyone else thinks. “You get back on, keep practicing and get around on your own steam for the rest of your life. So what if you tumble the first few times?”

  I glance up at the windows. Estelle’s nosy cat is watching us. I picture it snickering.

  “We don’t have to practice here,” Nikko adds. “We can go to the elementary school. That’s where I learned to ride. In the parking lot.”

  When he was, like, four, probably. He waggles his eyebrows at me and looks so ridiculous that I can’t help laughing. “Okay. School parking lot it is.”

  “Great! Meet me back here at four thirty.” He’s gone before I can ask him what to do with the bike. In the end, I wheel it into our apartment and text a photo to Sofia. She texts back.

  Wheeeeeeee! Can he find one for me when I come visit?

  I keep telling her that I’m not going to be here long enough for her to visit. Ninety days until I get home, and once I’m there, I’m not leaving.

  Flash forward to me sitting on the bicycle behind Sir James Douglas Elementary. The seat is as low as it can go, and Nikko has taken off the pedals. After about ten minutes of arguing, he’s also dressed me up in a set of gardening kneepads (borrowed from my grandfather) and sport socks tied around my elbows. He won me over by promising that no one I know will see me now, but people will definitely notice if I go home covered in scrapes and bruises. The crowning glory of my stellar outfit is the large pink helmet, on loan from his mother. I take a deep breath and picture myself pedaling the Lachine Canal, kneepadless, sockless and pink-helmet-free.

  “Now sit back, push off with your feet and glide. You’re not going to fall, so don’t worry about looking like an idiot.”

  “Idiot? Why would I look like an idiot?” I wave my socked elbows at him.

  “Oh, I wish I had a camera! Tomorrow I’ll bring one, and you can send the photos to your friends in Montreal. You have Instagram, don’t you?” He lifts an imaginary camera to his face. “Smile pretty now!”

  “No!” I yell like a crazed bicycle warrior and push off. It doesn’t take me long to get the hang of balancing. Soon I’m chasing him around the parking lot, laughing harder than I have in ages.

  When I veer past him and glide to a stop, I’m out of breath but grinning. Nikko puts the pedals back on and holds the back of my bike as I wobble to a start. Now comes the hard part. “If you let go, I’ll never forgive you!” I shout as he runs behind me. I teeter around the empty parking lot a few times and eventually come to a stop. “I didn’t fall!”

  “Of course not,” he says. “That’ll be tomorrow, when I let go. Or the next day.” He pulls a watch out of his pocket. (A watch! Who uses watches these days?) “I’d better get home for supper.”

  “Don’t you have a cell phone?”

  “Nope. My parents are afraid it’ll fry my brain. Radiation and all that.”

  He rides a bike in traffic every day, and his parents are worried about cell-phone radiation? I show him my phone, so ancient that it would never be mistaken for smart. “Technology addiction is my dad’s pet peeve. He’s cool about most stuff, but when it comes to technology, even a phone could turn me into a techno-monster.”

  Nikko sighs. “Parents.”

  “What are yours like?”

  He reaches up and tightens his ponytail. “They both teach yoga. Mom’s writing a cookbook. Dad’s a musician. He plays the double bass.”

  I knew that, actually. I’ve seen his dad load the gigantic instrument onto his bike trailer. Who knew anyone could pull an instrument of that size with a bicycle? Nikko’s obviously not the only eccentric in his family. “But what are they like? Strict or chill?”

  “Chill, I guess, as long as I follow the rules.” He looks at his watch again. “And one of those rules is that I have to be home for supper by six o’clock. Shall we head?”

  I take off my mismatched gear, load it into the basket and push my bike toward the sidewalk. “Thanks for the lesson.”

  “Same time tomorrow?” he asks.

  “You sure? It must be boring for you.”

  He shakes his head. “Anyway, I’ll have you riding on the road by the end of the week.”

  “Drivers of Victoria, watch out.”

  He smiles, and I blurt out the question that’s been bugging me all afternoon. “So, why are you doing this? I mean, getting me a bike and teaching me to ride?”

  “Why not? We live in the same building. All my other friends live too far away to ride with.”

  So basically, I’m better than nothing. Oh well. Beggars can’t be choosers, as my grandfather would say.

  I fish my phone out of my pocket and pose by my bike. “Do you want to be in my selfie? I’m sending it to a friend in Montreal.”

  “Hi, honey!” It’s nearly nine, almost midnight in Montreal, but Mom is so hyper she sounds like she’s downed three enormous lattés. Probably from the 24/7 coffee shop on the corner. I miss that place. Sofia and I used to buy pains au chocolat and eat them by the pond in Parc La Fontaine. She says they’ve changed their supplier and the pastries aren’t as good anymore, but I’d still give anything to be sloshing along slushy sidewalks and eating warm pastries with her right now.

  “How was your day?” Mom asks. I rest my head on my desk. I’m only halfway through my math homework, I still have a history paper to start, and I don’t have the energy to pretend life is wonderful. Dad holed himself up in his room half an hour ago. Tonight he took Uli and me out for cabbage rolls and borscht. Uli started talking about how supermarket food is laced with poisons and has lost all its vitamins by the time it hits our plates. Dad asked if we could just enjoy our meal for once without analyzing it, and Uli shut down. I tried to get conversation going again, but no luck. When I asked Dad later why we moved here if he won’t try to get along with his father, he got mad, stalked down the hall, slammed his bedroom door and started lifting weights. Every now and then, I hear a grunt.

  “Fine, Mom. Everything’s fine.”

  “Great!” she chirps. “I wanted to let you know I met the deadline.”

  “Great,” I say with zero enthusiasm. I haven
’t heard from her since she bailed on our weekend in Tofino. Part of me hoped her silence was because she felt awful for being such a crappy parent, but it sounds like she was too busy even for that.

  “Chloë, I know you were disappointed. We were both looking forward to time together. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

  “It didn’t work out because you didn’t make it work out.” I’ve been practicing these words since she ditched me.

  Mom takes a sharp breath in. “Chloë, I didn’t call to argue with you. I wanted to say thank you for giving me the extra time for my deadline.”

  Unbelievable. “I didn’t give you that time. You took it. It’s not the same.”

  “Look, Chloë.” The glittering sequins have all fallen away from her voice. “I know the changes of the past few months have been hard on you. But we’re doing the best we can, okay?”

  “Yeah, well, it still sucks.”

  “I love you, Chloë,” she says. “You know that, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And this will all work out. Your father and I are both exactly where we need to be right now. You have to believe that.”

  “But what about me?”

  “You’re in the right place too. You’re getting to know your grandfather, and you’re with your father, who loves you just as much as I do.”

  I don’t say anything. What is there to say?

  “Chloë?”

  I still don’t answer.

  “If you’re not in the mood for a conversation, we can talk another time. I’m fine with that.”

  I mumble goodnight, hang up and stare at my math homework. It might as well be in Swahili. I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing everything could be different when I open them again.

  SIX

  The greenhouse is getting crowded. Uli and I have grown enough tomatoes to keep the whole neighborhood in spaghetti sauce this winter. He planted the seeds in his kitchen a few weeks ago, and the other day he showed me how to transplant them into bigger pots. “Mark Weiss’s grandmother smuggled the seeds from Germany,” Uli said. “She sewed them into her hat band. The fellows at the border never noticed. Good thing too. These are the best tomatoes I’ve ever eaten.” In a few months, he says, this greenhouse will be like a jungle with big red fruits hanging everywhere. (Yup, tomatoes are fruits because they have seeds. Who knew?)

  Out in the garden, tiny pea shoots are poking up. I put a bamboo stick next to each one to give the little sprouts somewhere to climb. In the next row over, I planted hard, wrinkled little fava beans, but first I had to pop each one into my mouth and get it all wet. Apparently, something in our spit—enzymes, Uli says—helps break down the bean’s outer coating so it’s easier for the sprout to break through. That’s what his friend’s Turkish grandmother told him anyway, so he always does that when he plants favas. If spit has anything to do with the towering plant and superlong bean pods in his photo of last year’s garden, I’d say it’s worth the extra step.

  The next row is purple orach, or mountain spinach. (I didn’t have to stick those seeds in my mouth, thank goodness. They’re so small and papery, they would all stick in my teeth.) Scottish blue kale is the next row after that. We put the tiny cabbage plants in the last row before the hedge. Uli started growing those indoors a few weeks ago too, and for the past few days, he’s had to ferry them back and forth between his living room and the front step to harden them off. (That’s gardener-speak for “get them used to the cold.”) Twelve plants. Three different varieties.

  “Who eats this much cabbage?” I ask as I plant. On the stool next to me, Uli lights up as if I’d mentioned chocolate.

  “Wait till you try sauerkraut,” he says. “I grew up eating it the German way, with caraway seeds and wine in it. But I like the Turkish way even better—with lemon and ginger. Or we could make rotkraut—red cabbage cooked with apples. Or roasted cabbage. So many ways to eat it. Just you wait.”

  I don’t have the heart to tell him that in eighty-five days, I’m out of here. But now that I’ve spent so much time working in the garden, I kind of wish I could see it in its full mad-vegetable glory. I guess Uli can send me pictures. Or maybe Nikko. I’ll ask him to help Uli once I’m gone. The harvest is going to be huge.

  I push the hoe deep into the dirt and wiggle it back and forth, enough to loosen the earth but not enough to upset the soil’s invisible creatures. There’s a whole underground world down there that I had never thought about before. The bacteria that live close to the surface can’t live deeper down, and the ones deeper down can’t survive close to the surface. Each creature has a job to do. If someone mixes them all up by digging, a whole lot of them die, and the rest have to regroup before they can get back to work.

  Uli nods at the row of cabbages. “Looks good. Next task. Turning the compost.”

  “Aye, aye, captain.” I salute him with one dirty-gloved hand. He smiles, and I wander over to the big wood-and-chicken-wire boxes behind the greenhouse. A wave of warm air rushes up to me when I lift the lid. It smells like soil after a rain. I dig the hoe in deep, haul out dirt from the bottom and bury the eggshells and other kitchen scraps that were resting on top.

  “Asparagus should be ready to eat this year,” Uli says.

  “Blech,” I say.

  “You’ll change your mind. I planted it three years ago. This’ll be the first crop.”

  “Wait.” I turn to face him. “You’ve spent three years on a vegetable that tastes like socks and makes your pee smell funny?”

  He grins. “Not socks! Asparagus tastes like Heaven. No comparison to—”

  “I know, I know. Organic heirlooms always taste better than conventional store-bought food, right?” I smile so he’ll know I’m not about to bite his head off like Dad would. Sometimes I wonder if the organic debate is what finally ripped my family apart. I mean, Dad did a lot of the cooking when he was a teenager. Imagine coming home from school, cooking dinner and then eating to the soundtrack of The Dangers of Conventionally Grown Food. I picture plates flying, organic gravy dripping down the wall and my dad secretly stocking Uli’s freezer with TV dinners just out of spite.

  Uli props his elbows on his knees and takes a deep breath. “Your father must have had a rough day yesterday. He sure was touchy last night.”

  “Yeah, no kidding.” He’s been grumpy for a week straight but won’t tell me why. Grown-up stuff, is all he says. That could mean anything from money to Mom to Estelle with a whole new list of stuff to fix in the building. Today when I got home, Dad was stomping around, slamming cupboards, because the power had been out since the morning. All day people had been knocking on his door to let him know. His bad mood filled the apartment, so I went to see if Nikko was up for a wobble around the school parking lot. But he was out, so I came over to Uli’s, leaving Dad to deal with his own mood. “He’s not exactly an open book, my dad.”

  “You got that right,” my grandfather says.

  I close the lid of the compost and go back to where Uli’s sitting. I pull out a tiny chickweed plant from between the spinach and hand it to him. “What’s next?”

  “The bed over there needs weeding.” He pops the chickweed into his mouth, points to a jungle of weeds at the far end and picks up his stool. We make our way over there, and he says, “Now tell me what’s new with your Montreal friend.”

  He likes my Sofia stories. Last time I was here, I told him about her upcycling sewing class and the funky purple trim she added to an old polyester dress. When she went to put it on, she discovered she’d sewn the sleeves shut.

  “Nothing new today,” I tell him, “except that our favorite DVD store closed. Me and Sofia were loyal customers, maybe the only customers. No one rents movies anymore. But the guy who owned the store loved movies, and he gave the best recommendations.” I try to picture our neighborhood without Película, but I can’t.

  “It’s hard to see a place change,” Uli says, like he’s reading my mind. He bends down to pluck a few blades of grass from the soi
l but then sits back on his stool, as if the effort is too much for him.

  It must be hard to see himself change too, I think. We’re silent for a few minutes. It’s a comfortable silence though.

  “What’s that?”

  I stop weeding for a moment, and I hear it too, a bicycle bell ringing over and over again. “I’ll go look.”

  It’s Nikko. The saddlebags on his bike and the box on the back rack are brimming with ice-cream cartons. “Jackpot!” he says. “Your grandfather around?”

  “Is all that ice cream for him?” Does Uli even like ice cream? Sure, we ate it together in Montreal once, but I’ve never seen him eat it here. It’s packaged food, after all.

  “It’s for everyone!” He tells me how the grocery store’s freezer conked out in the power outage, so they were selling it for a dollar a tub. “I bought enough for Uli and for everyone in the building. It’s half melted, but ice cream is ice cream, right?”

  Uli appears behind me. “Deep freezer is in the basement. Toss it all in there. Firm it up a bit before you hand it out. I’ll keep a few tubs for myself. Thanks.”

  “Really?” I ask. “All this talk about organic and local, and now you’re going to fill your freezer with this stuff?”

  “Bah,” Uli says. “Ice cream’s not about nutrition. It’ll have more flavor in my mouth than in a trash bin, which is where it would have ended up if Nikko hadn’t bought it.”

  “My thinking precisely,” says Nikko.

  “Gotta pick your battles,” Uli continues. “I choose chocolate. Basement door is this way.”

  A few minutes later, the freezer is full. We make our way back to the greenhouse and stretch a plastic tablecloth over the potting table. Uli brings out bowls and spoons from his kitchen. Each bowl gets filled to the brim.