The Vegetable Museum

by Michelle Mulder

  “You’ve got a big garden, Uli,” Nikko says as we scoop the sweet coldness into our mouths. “I bet it’s a lot of work.”

  The garden is still not much to look at—a few plants are poking up out of the dirt rows between all the plastic bottles sticking up everywhere—and I wonder what Nikko really thinks of the place. “Uli grows endangered vegetables,” I blurt out, because suddenly it feels important that Nikko doesn’t think my grandfather is as weird as I did at first. “He’s been collecting the seeds for decades. If it weren’t for him, a lot of these plants would die out completely.”

  Uli smiles at me before turning to Nikko. “The garden has to be big for a good harvest of seeds. Vegetables grow in the meantime. Too many for me to eat. I donate most to the soup kitchen.”

  “Really?” I didn’t know that part.

  Nikko asks which soup kitchen, Uli mentions a name, and Nikko nods like he’s heard of it. “I volunteer at the one on Pandora,” he says.

  I didn’t know that either. “What do you do there?”

  “I work in the kitchen.” He waves his spoon through the air like it’s a sword. “The fastest chopper in the west. That’s me.”

  “Good skill to have,” Uli says. “You come over when we’re canning this summer. We could use your help.”

  “At your service.” He nods his head graciously.

  “So do you grow the same plants every year?” Nikko asks.

  “At least two of each variety,” Uli says. “I usually try for more, but space is at a premium.”

  “I’m sure no one would blame you for skipping a season,” I say.

  “I would blame me,” Uli says. “Every region used to have its own vegetables. Peru still has hundreds of varieties of corn and potatoes. But the unusual ones will all become extinct unless people keep planting them. The whole world becomes poorer when that happens.”

  Nikko has a thoughtful look on his face. “So this garden is a museum too. A living vegetable museum.”

  “Exactly.” Uli smiles and looks over at me. I can tell he approves of my new long-haired friend. “Now, who wants more ice cream?”

  “Are you kidding?” Nikko asks. “I couldn’t eat another spoonful.”

  “Last call,” Uli warns, but I shake my head too.

  “I’ll take these inside.” Nikko begins collecting bowls and spoons.

  “Leave ’em,” Uli says. “Go hand out your ice cream.”

  I pull on my gardening gloves. “Will you tell people you rescued it from the trash?”

  “Sure,” Nikko says. “Who’s going to care? And if they do, that’s more for us. Wanna help?”

  I look over at Uli. “I—”

  “Go ahead,” Uli says. “Weeding can wait. And maybe I’ll come too. I’ll bring some maple-walnut over to William.” William is Uli’s friend in our building. They’ve known each other forever.

  Nikko takes his bike home. Uli and I start loading the ice cream from the freezer into a couple of empty boxes he has lying around. “Nice young man.”

  “I bet you say that about everyone who shows up with gallons of ice cream.”

  He smiles. “Glad he was thinking straight. Imagine throwing out food! You’d never catch me doing that. If you’ve ever been truly hungry, you just can’t do it.”

  “You were hungry a lot growing up?” I ask.

  “I used to eat paper when I was little, just to fill my belly. I never told my mother that though. She tried so hard to look after me. Later I lived on the streets for a while after leaving my uncle’s place. I was always glad when people threw out food then. I got a good few meals from dumpsters. You can’t be too persnickety when you’re on the street.” He shifts a few tubs in the freezer. “There! There’s one! Maple-walnut!”

  I go in after it, and when I hand the carton to him, he holds it in the air triumphantly. Nikko comes down the basement steps and lifts one of the boxes. I grab the other, and we parade across the street to our building. We say goodbye to my grandfather at the elevator. I would hug him, but I’m carrying a box loaded with ice cream.

  “Will you come again tomorrow?” he asks.

  I nod. “Sure, I’ll finish up that weeding. And maybe some more ice cream.”

  “Deal,” he says.

  First stop is our apartment’s little freezer. “Ice-cream rescuers get first pick,” Nikko says, and I choose dark chocolate and French vanilla, hoping Dad will make some of his amazing strawberry sauce for sundaes. He’s not home—which must mean he’s running off his bad mood, thank goodness—so we head up to the fourth floor and work our way down. Nikko does most of the talking because he knows everybody. Everyone greets us as if we were the smartest, most generous people ever.

  The one door we don’t knock on is Estelle’s. Nikko says there’s no point because she’ll either be offended that the ice cream is half melted, or she’ll complain that we didn’t get the kind she likes. I go along with this right up until we’re almost out of ice cream, but the whole time I keep thinking of that day in second grade when Lisa Sampton invited our entire class to her birthday party except for Billy Odiah, who smelled funny, and me, the teacher’s kid. No matter how annoying Estelle can be, I can’t offer ice cream to everyone in the building and leave her out. Within seconds of knocking on her door, though, I wish I’d listened to Nikko.

  “I certainly don’t need the calories,” says Estelle. She takes the carton anyway and squints at the label. “And I hope you used your discretion when it came to William on fourth. He has a heart condition. Every gram of fat puts him at risk. I, for one—”

  Nikko raises a hand and sets off down the hall. “Sorry, Mrs. Fornan. We won’t endanger your life any further. Gotta go now! Bye!”

  I hesitate for a moment, then give an awkward little wave and dash after Nikko. As soon as we’re in the stairwell, he says, “If you ever bring me ice cream and I act like you’re a public menace, please lob the tub at my head.”

  I imagine the gooey mess dribbling down his shoulders. “Do you have a flavor preference?”

  “Blue bubble gum would look rather dashing, wouldn’t it?”

  He follows me down to my apartment. He had planned to head home after we delivered to Estelle—his apartment is across the hall from hers—but I guess striding away from Estelle to fumble with a key in his own lock wouldn’t have been a very grand exit. He waves a spare carton of raspberry-ripple at me. “Want this last tub of poison?”

  “Sure. I’ll stuff it in the freezer.”

  We open the fire door into our hallway just as two paramedics and a firefighter squeeze out of the elevator, rolling a stretcher between them.

  “Uh-oh,” says Nikko.

  I recognize Uli’s white hair first. I scream and run to him. No reaction. One paramedic glances at me but says nothing.

  “Is he—?”

  William is the last one out of the elevator. “He’s alive, Chloë. But he had another stroke. I called the ambulance.”

  “Can I go with him?”

  William tells the paramedics that I’m the granddaughter.

  “Sorry, honey,” one of them says. “You need to be over eighteen to ride in the wagon.”

  “But where are you taking him?” I don’t know any of the hospitals here. And where’s my dad?

  Dad shows up just as the ambulance takes off. I’m freaking out in the hallway, and William is hugging me with his frail arms. Nikko is standing off to the side, looking at his feet.

  SEVEN

  I’ve never seen Dad drive so fast. We screech into the Emergency parking lot. Dad’s swearing as he tries to find his wallet to pay for parking. “Why do they make you pay for parking?” he shouts. “Isn’t it bad enough to have someone in Emergency?”

  The woman at the front desk won’t let us see Uli right away. She says she’ll call us as soon as they’re ready for us. Dad paces back and forth in front of the blue vinyl chairs. I slump into mine, fists clenched in my pockets, staring down at the floor. Every two minutes Dad walks
over to the counter, and finally the woman stands up and says the doctor will see us now, as if we’re in a clinic to see about a runny nose or an upset stomach.

  She leads us through heavy doors with a sign saying No admittance beyond this point. We pass an old, old woman in a stretcher pushed up against one wall of the short hallway. A few feet farther along, a man with a short brown beard, a white coat and a stethoscope around his neck is waiting for us. “You’re Ulrich Becher’s son?”

  Dad nods, and he grips my hand as if I’m a little kid again. Or maybe as if he’s a little kid again.

  “I’m Dr. Yanofski.” The doctor takes Dad by the elbow and leads him to a chair. He brings another for me. “I’m afraid I don’t have good news for you. Your father had another stroke on the way to the hospital. A big one. I’m afraid he didn’t survive. But it was all over quite quickly. He didn’t suffer.”

  I freeze. Then my heart starts pounding. Dad’s crying, sobbing as if he’s going to split in two.

  Uli is dead.

  It doesn’t make any sense. I just saw him an hour ago. We were talking, and he was serving ice cream, and…

  “…take you to see him…”

  Somewhere behind us, someone screams, and people are shouting, but I don’t even care.

  “…sorry for your loss…”

  My father stands up, then wipes my cheeks with the back of his fingers. I didn’t know they were wet.

  “…see the body…” he says.

  “I can’t,” I say.

  “It’s important,” he says. “It’s part of saying goodbye.”

  I shake my head.

  A few steps away, the doctor has stopped, waiting next to a closed curtain. My dad takes a deep, shaky breath, squeezes both of my hands and talks to me quietly. “I understand, Chloë. I didn’t want to see my mom’s body either. I told Dad that I wanted to remember her healthy. But he insisted. He said everyone’s scared of death, but it’s part of life. If we face it head-on, we change our relationship with it.”

  I don’t say anything. Please don’t make me do this.

  “I’m not going to force you,” Dad says. “But I want you to know that it wasn’t scary. When my mom was sick, I saw her suffer every single day. But when I saw her body, I knew that the suffering was over. Her body was just…her body. She wasn’t in there anymore. That was important for me.” He looks at me, squeezes my hands again and turns to go.

  I see him reach the curtain. He’s about to go in, leaving me back here, alone.

  No way.

  Curtains. Blankets. Uli’s mouth is open. His skin is yellowish gray.

  And Dad’s right. There’s nothing more final than this.

  My clock radio says 10:12 AM. My first thought is that my history report is due today. I haven’t even started it. I pull my pillow over my head. What seems like seconds later, Dad is knocking on my door. He comes in holding a paper bag from the Mexican place downtown, the one we used to go to with Uli. Yesterday comes crashing back in on me. The sirens. The emergency room. The doctor. Uli’s body. The horribly silent ride home.

  “It’s after noon.” Dad’s eyes are red and puffy. “You should eat something.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Do it anyway.” His voice is gentle but firm, like when I was a kid and I was screaming because my knee was full of gravel and he had to wash it out. I take the bag from him, open it up and will myself not to gag as I eat one of the burritos Uli liked so much.

  “I guess I’m not going to school today,” I say after my first bite. Suddenly I’m ravenous.

  “I’ll send a note. Your teachers will understand.”

  He sits on my bed. I eat in silence for a few minutes. I can’t think about the food because then I’ll think of Uli. I can’t think about my history report because not handing it in makes me think of Uli. I can’t think of anything, so I look at the floor and chew.

  “Are you okay?” Dad asks.

  Uli’s dead. My grandfather that I’d only started to get to know. One fifth of my family is dead. “Am I okay? What kind of question is that?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I just want you to be okay. I want a magic wand to wave so that nothing will ever hurt you again.” His eyes fill with tears.

  I squeeze mine shut. The tears spill out anyway, but at least I can’t see Dad crying. The only thing worse than feeling like I’m going to shatter into a million pieces is knowing that Dad feels the same way.

  The smooth stones on the beach remind me of the ones lining Uli’s garden beds. Maybe he collected them from right where I’m standing, years ago or maybe months ago, when his legs still obeyed him.

  To think that only a few months ago, I barely thought about my grandfather at all. I was thousands of miles away, hanging out with Sofia, going to school, knitting and dreaming of weekends. All that time, he was here, growing a garden of foods that kept other people’s family memories alive. But what about our family memories? Why did I have to wait until I was thirteen to get to know Uli? Why did I have to wait so long to find out there was an apple tree that connects me, Dad and Uli to a tree that grew a long time ago in Poland, a tree that Uli used to swing in as a kid?

  I toss a stone into the water. And then another. I think about the muscles in my arm that shoot each rock into the air, and about Uli’s good arm that will never throw a rock again. Then I’m running, sprinting flat out as if I could leave yesterday behind. I run up the stairs from the beach and along the path that follows the water. A few blocks later I pass the Stop sign wrapped in red, yellow and green wool that sparked the first real conversation I had with my grandfather. A driver slams on his brakes and yells something out the window, but I keep running until I’m back on our street under the cherry trees. I can hardly breathe anymore. I slow to a walk, through Uli’s front gate and into his garden. It’s the only place I want to be right now. I wish I’d gotten here years sooner.

  I look across the rows of dirt at the greenhouse. I half expect him to stand up behind the potting table to pick up the ice-cream dishes that are still stacked there from yesterday. A museum, Nikko called it. To preserve memories. The last link I have with someone I wish I’d known my whole life.

  I crouch down by the garden bed near the house and yank handfuls of weeds from the dirt. As if sticking to yesterday’s plan could somehow bring my grandfather back.

  “Tell me something happy,” I tell Sofia. It’s Saturday morning. I’m sitting on my bed, knitting her a hat. Sofia’s sitting on her bed, designing a costume for a school play. Other than the laptop cameras and the thousands of miles between us, this is like Saturday mornings used to be. I knit, and she draws or sews.

  “I’m not going to tell you something happy,” she says. “You tell me what happened.”

  I knit mechanically, eyes on the yarn, and manage to tell her about Uli in fits and starts, with long moments of crying and sniffling in between. Sofia says my name. I look up, and she’s not drawing anymore. She’s staring right into the screen. She’s crying too. “I’m sorry, Chloë. I wish I was there.”

  “Me too.” I take a few deep breaths and wipe my tears away. “I can’t decide if I wish we’d never moved here, or if I wish it had happened sooner.” I hope Sofia knows what I mean. I wish I’d had more time with Uli.

  “I’m glad you got to meet him,” she says.

  “Me too.” I pick up my knitting again. She looks at me for a few seconds longer, then reaches for her pencil. We don’t say anything for a while. I need to talk about something else, something lighter. “Remember Slater?”

  “The kid across the street with the rat and the attitude problem?”

  “Yeah, that one,” I say. “I found out why he tries to make everyone’s life miserable.”

  “It’s not because he’s a loser?”

  I shrug. “This kid in my math class says he used to go to the most expensive private school in the city. Then something happened, his parents sold their place, and they moved across town to
a dumpy little house on this street. Now he’s going to public school like everyone else.”

  “That’s so sweet!” she says. “You’ve got matching stories!”

  “What?” I never would have seen it that way, but I guess she has a point. “I don’t try to get back at the world by bullying everyone around me though. And I’m sure he didn’t move here because his dad got fired for freaking out at a student. His dad’s an accountant or something.”

  “Both of you were bitter about having to move though.”

  “But it’s not so bad here.” The words are out of my mouth before I can think about them.

  Sofia stops with her pencil midair and looks into the camera. “Did you just say what I think you said?”

  “I mean, it’s not Montreal. That’s for sure. But it doesn’t pretend to be either. I can go to the beach here every day if I want.”

  “We’ve got beaches here too,” she says. “And they’re sand, not rock.”

  “Yeah, but here I can go all year-round, and sometimes I don’t see a soul.”

  “And that’s a good thing?”

  “Sometimes,” I say. “When I want to get away from it all.”

  Sofia says nothing and goes back to drawing for a few seconds. “Do you think you’re going to stay there?” She’s not looking at me. I flash back to the night before I left. She was crying, convinced I’d never move back.

  “You can’t get rid of me that easily,” I say. “I like it here more than I did before, but it’s still not home. I haven’t had a decent bagel since I left Montreal.”

  “Now that’s more like it.” She grins and holds up her sketch. “So what do you think I should do with this neckline?”

  Uli didn’t leave any instructions, so Dad chooses cremation. The idea creeps me out until he reminds me that burial usually involves pumping the body full of chemicals and sticking it into the ground. Not a good option for an organic gardener.