Love in Bloom (9 page)

One corner of the shop even offered unique home interior decorations and kitchenware. Amber eyed the yellow polka dot dish setting displayed on a glass patio table with a lustful eye. She would love to have a set of dishes like that. And the patio table. It would have all gone so nicely on their front porch. That house had great potential for entertaining. For a moment, she closed her eyes and envisioned herself as the Rachael Ray of Heart Lake, whipping up meals in minutes for happy guests. No point going there, not yet anyway. She first had to find a way to turn her house into a happy place before she could think about making company happy.
First things first. Tackle the garden.

“Mommy, look,” cried Seth, kneeling in front of a big, stone cat. “Can we have this in our garden?”

She looked at the price sticker. “Not today, Sethie. If we can't use it to grow something to eat, we're not getting it.” She spotted a line of little, red wagons and got one for him. “But here. You can pull the wagon for our seeds and things. Okay?”

That satisfied him. Now, if only there was a grown-up version of that red wagon for her. She got another wagon so she could carry their heavier purchases, then, averting her gaze from the plates, she led her son off in search of fertilizer.

It didn't take long to find the rest of the things she needed to become a gardener. It didn't take long to rack up a bill, either. Amber watched the mounting total as the clerk rang up her purchases and tried not to panic: garden gloves, seeds, chicken manure, and two spades—one for her and one for Seth. Yikes! It sure cost a lot of money to save money on food. At least she already had a shovel in her car trunk. It was a rusty old thing that she'd found in the shed behind the house, but it would do fine for working fertilizer into the ground.

As she handed over her charge card, she reminded herself what
a good thing this garden was going to be. Fresh air, organic food, something fun to do with Seth—it was all good. And it was better than hanging around the house watching Ty mope in front of the TV. He'd had two interviews in the last couple of days, but neither one had netted a job offer.

She let Seth carry his spade and he bounced ahead of her as they made their way back to the car, singsonging, “We're gonna garden, we're gonna garden.”

This will be fun, she told herself, trying to work up to her son's level of enthusiasm. But it wasn't fun, really. The fertilizer bags were heavy and a real pain to haul to their garden plot. And the stuff was stinky. She got some of it in her tennis shoe while dumping it out. Ick! And, good grief, who'd have thought it was such hard work shoveling dirt? The earlier rains had made the ground sodden, and it felt like she was shoveling cement. It wasn't work for Seth. He was having a great time using his new spade to fling soil and manure everywhere.

Just when she thought it couldn't get any better—ha, ha—a fat raindrop hit her nose. Where had the blue sky gone? She looked up. Gray clouds had eaten every scrap of it. And she was only half done. “We'd better hurry,” she told Seth.

Taking her at her word, he began to toss spadefuls of dirt in the air. The rain was really coming down now and the dirt was turning to slop. Suddenly, something splattered the side of her head, getting in her hair and on her face.
Oh, please don't let this be what I think it is
. But she knew, even before she put a hand to her cheek, she knew.

“Iiiick,” she cried and dropped her shovel. “Ick!” She began dancing around, shaking her head, swatting at her manure-mud-coated curls.

Seth thought she was doing this for his entertainment and began to laugh, going into a Tasmanian dev il frenzy, flinging glop every which way.

“Enough, Sethie,” she cried, grabbing his hand and stopping him. “This is gross. It's time to go home.”

“No,” protested Seth, his voice suddenly tearful.

“Yes. It's raining and Mommy is all icky. We'll come back.”

In about a million years.
People did this for a hobby? People actually thought it was fun to get dirty and stinky like this? At the car, she loaded up the shovel and spades and threw the floral-print gardening gloves into the trunk after them. The pouring rain pelted her and she could feel drips from her hair trickling a river of polluted dirt down her neck.
Ick, ick, ick!

This was insane and she was going to stop the insanity now. She would see if she could get some more hours at the bakery, or she'd make cookies and sell them at the farmer's market and use the extra money for groceries. But the garden thing was not happening. It was not her. If people had been meant to grow their own vegetables, there'd be no such thing as a produce department.

“I don't want to leave,” Seth whined as she climbed behind the wheel.

“Mommy needs a bath,” Amber said.
Mommy needs Prozac
.

The car smelled like poop, thanks to her garden hair treatment, making the enclosed space torture. Even though she knew she'd get blasted with cold air and rain, she let down her window. If she didn't get fresh air in this car, she was going to throw up.

The air didn't help. Knowing what was in her hair was making her want to throw up, anyway. A shower, a nice warm, clean shower would be Nirvana. It was all she could do not to speed as they drove along Lake Drive.

“Can we go tomorrow?” asked Seth.

His cheeks were rosy. He looked so cute in his yellow rubber boots. She felt like a rat for not wanting to ever see that stupid garden again. “We'll see,” she said. “Here, let's listen to your Veggie Tales songs.” She put in the CD to distract him. Now, if only she could find
something to distract her.
Shower, shower, shower.
Darn, it was hard to drown out singing tomatoes and cucumbers.

They got back and Seth ran ahead of her into the house. Ty was already making lunch for them. It was something he'd started doing on the days she worked, and the part-time lunch service had evolved into an everyday offering. It was one of the few things he did that showed her somewhere, deep inside, he hadn't lost hope, that he wasn't completely ready to give up on life. On them.

He sent Seth to his room to peel off his muddy clothes. Then he took one look at Amber and his eyes got saucer sized. “Whoa. New look?”

Ha, ha.
“I've got poop in my hair,” she informed him, and kept on moving to the bathroom, pulling off her jacket as she went.

Ty followed her in. “What happened?”

“We were shoveling in the chicken manure. Seth got carried away. I hate gardening!” She pulled off her sweatshirt. “And I spent a ton of money just to get the stupid, damned, stinky poop for the garden and stupid, damned stinky garden gloves and the stupid, damned stinky seeds. And I'm not saving any money,” she finished on a wail.

“Hey, at least you're doing something.”

She felt Ty's hand on her shoulder. Next thing she knew he was pulling her to him to comfort her—something he hadn't done since those early days when they first saw trouble looming outside their little restaurant.

It made her cry all the harder, for what they'd had and lost, for where they were now.

“It's okay,” he said. “Forget the garden. You're doing enough anyway.”

“Mommy?” Seth stood in the doorway, stripped down to his Spider-Man underwear, his round little face tight with worry.

She and Ty pulled apart like they'd been caught doing something
wrong. “It's okay, sweetie,” she said to Seth. “Go let Daddy feed you lunch while Mommy takes a shower. Okay?”

“Come on, bud,” Ty said, steering Seth out of the room.

She piled her dirty clothes on the bathroom floor and charged into the shower. After three doses of shampoo, she almost felt normal again. But normal these days wasn't necessarily that good. She toweled off, put on clean clothes, and joined the boys in the kitchen.

Ty had made panini with some day-old bread she'd brought home from the bakery. This particular sandwich was one of Ty's creations, and it was her all-time favorite sandwich—a panini with mozzarella, red onions, tomatoes, a dash of Dijon mustard, and some fresh basil. Well, almost fresh. She'd found it in the veggie bin on the back porch of Helpline, the local food bank, along with the tomatoes.

She sank her teeth in and felt instantly consoled. “This is great,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said.

Another bite restored her equilibrium. “I can't quit.” She'd already invested in seeds and gardening tools and put down her deposit on the garden plot.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Sure you can. There's nothing wrong with quitting. Isn't that what you told me?”

The bit of sandwich she'd just swallowed stuck in her throat.

He got up, took his plate into the living room, and turned on the TV.

She followed him.

“Mommy?”

“Finish your food, sweetie,” she said to Seth, keeping him anchored at the table.

She sat down on the couch opposite her husband, who was staring determinedly at the TV screen. “Are you comparing a garden to that restaurant?” she demanded, her voice low.
That restaurant.
Bad choice of words. She could see his jaw tighten.

“Don't start,” he said.

“Mommy?” The lowered voices weren't fooling Seth.

This was pointless, anyway. She left the couch with a smile pasted on her face. “After lunch, we'll take a rest and then when we wake up we'll color. How does that sound?”

Seth smiled, obviously relieved, and nodded.

“Okay then,” she said and smiled back at her son with false heartiness. Boy, had she gotten good at that.

Neither she nor her husband mentioned the garden again. Or quitting. Or much of anything. About two in the afternoon, Ty announced, “I'm going out.”

She had the good sense not to ask if he was going to pick up applications. Wherever he went, she hoped he didn't use much gas. They had five dollars left till payday.

And she had a fortune in seeds sitting in her trunk. She thought of the old fairy tale about Jack and his beanstalk. Dumb kid, buying magic beans. But look what grew from those beans!

Her hair was coming out of her scrunchy. She pulled the thing out and made a fresh ponytail. She couldn't let her life keep getting away from her like this, she just couldn't.

She grabbed a pencil from the jar of pens and pencils she kept by the phone on the kitchen counter, then marched to the coffee table and picked up the yellow legal pad lying there. She plopped on the couch cross-legged and drew a big square. Over it she wrote: Amber's Garden. Then she began to plan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

B
Y ONE ON
Saturday afternoon, all of the Heart Lake High students had been in to pick up their flowers for the dance. Hope expected the afternoon to be relatively quiet, so she gave her sister a thank-you note and a check and set her free to enjoy a much-deserved break.

“Are you sure?” Bobbi asked. “I don't mind staying.”

“You have to work to night. I'd feel guilty if you did. Scram.”

“Okay. You talked me into it. Maybe I'll see if Jason Wells likes coffee.”

Coffee with Jason, that sounded good to Hope.
You have more important things to do
, she told herself.
Like . . . watering your plants
.

Bobbi was barely out the door when a young couple entered the shop. Even before she saw the ring on the woman's finger, Hope knew they were engaged. Everything about them said it, from the way they held hands like they were glued together to the intimate
smile they exchanged. They were here to order flowers for their wedding.

“We've heard you're the best,” said the groom-to-be.

Here was a good future husband, already wanting nothing but the best for his wife. “I do love doing flowers for weddings,” Hope told them, and seated them at her little wrought-iron table. She fetched her laptop, then pulled up a chair and joined them. “What are your colors?”

“Red and orange,” said the bride.

Well, there was a new one. She could only imagine what the bridesmaids' dresses would look like. But red and orange together made for striking floral arrangements. “We could do your bouquet in red and orange roses,” she suggested.

“Oh, I like that,” said the bride. “Roses are my favorite flower.”

It didn't take long to settle on flowers for the boutonnieres, the tossing bouquet, the chapel, and the reception. “I love the idea of using carnival glass as part of the arrangement for the food table,” said the woman. “I've never seen that done before. In fact, I never heard of carnival glass,” she added, running a finger along the edge of the orange pedestal candy dish Hope had produced.

“It will be unique,” said Hope. Everyone was special and the flowers for their event should be special, too.

Her customers left, beaming, and she smiled as she put their deposit check in her cash register. “Life is good,” she reminded herself for the umpteenth time that day. Then she happened to look out the window to see Jason Wells walking down the opposite street, talking into his cell phone. He was smiling. He went from smiling to laughing. Was he talking to Bobbi?