The Care and Handling of Roses With Thorns (10 page)

11

M
Y PARENTS STICK AROUND A FEW EXTRA DAYS LONGER THAN
I like them to stick around, my mother looking for clues of my good health like she’s Miss Marple cracking a case. Once she even held a mirror under my breath while I slept. I awoke with a start and whacked the mirror up into my nose. “Ow! Mom, what the heck are you doing?”

“Sorry, sorry,” she whispered, retreating into the darkness with her long hair flowing around her. If I hadn’t known she was my mother, I would have thought she was a ghost.

My father’s excuse for staying is that he has not finished the trebuchet. He takes his time on the contraption, a simple project he could have completed with Mr. Morton that last afternoon. I know my mother has put him up to it, because I see him out in the garage, taking long breaks to sit and listen to the ball game on the radio. He tinkers with other things in my garage, changes the oil in my car, hangs some pictures. My mother buys Riley a dresser and desk set from the local Target, and my father is also super slow to put these together.

At last, by the weekend, he has finished with all his projects, and I take the opportunity to boot them. Politely, of course.

I get them to leave by promising I’ll have Brad come over and help with the roses and that I’ll get my groceries delivered. As a bonus, I press Riley. “Tell them you’ll do all the cleaning and you’ll make sure I take my meds.”

“I will?” Riley is enjoying having her grandparents here. Gram makes her whatever she wants to eat, or buys it for her. She probably eats two bowls of ice cream a day. Lucky for her, she has Becky’s metabolism.

“Not the meds. I’ll do that. Just the cleaning.” I am whispering to her in the hallway while my mother changes my sheets. She washes them twice a week in ultrahot water so I won’t be bothered by dust mites. I tend to be more lax.

“And what will you give me?”

I stare up at my niece. “I shouldn’t have to give you anything. This is what you should do because you are part of this household.” I haven’t seen too much of her since I was in the hospital five days ago. My parents have ferried her to school and back, and if she wasn’t at school, she was over at Sam’s, presumably studying but probably staring at music posters or something. I overheard her complain about the lack of fun things to do around here, whether or not her grandparents were visiting. My illness is an inconvenience to her.

What my mother said flashes back to me. Maybe Riley would prefer to not be with me, where the threat of sickness is a constant companion. I hesitate, wondering if she’ll take it as a rejection. I’ll say it. “Riley, if you’d rather live with Gram and Gramps, then I bet you can go there.”

She purses her lips. I cannot tell if she’s pleased or dismayed at this idea.

I am relieved she has the option now. If she wants to stay, it will be of her own accord. “Until you decide, let’s help each other.” I hold out my hand. “Deal?”

“Fine.” She shakes. Her hand is stronger than it was when she first got here. She has filled out. Her cheeks aren’t so sunken. Well. At least I’m doing something correctly. “Gram!” Riley yells. “I have something to tell you. I’m going to help Aunt Gal.”

So it is that my parents take off.

• • •

S
UMMER ROSE SHOWS
can be tricky; the seedlings have to be transported in coolers. I prefer the spring shows, though there are fewer of those. On the West Coast, the roses bloom earlier, so the shows begin earlier. I’d never survive in one of the cold weather states, waiting longer for my roses.

On Sunday evening, Brad and I are in the rose greenhouse. He has a tiny blue iPod clipped to his shirt, the white wires feeding into his ears like two leeches sucking out his brain. I can hear some sort of banging noise emitting. I tap him on the shoulder. “Turn that down. You’ll blast out your hearing.”

He complies with a grin, wiping dirt across his tanned face. “Yes, ma’am.”

I go through the seedling rows, deciding which ones I’ll throw out. I keep only those I might take to a show, use as parents, or propagate.

I ask Brad to make pots of soil. I use a blend called Queen of Show specially designed for roses, which is compost, peat moss, coir, and sand. It’s sold at the local nursery, where I have an account. I send Brad there to get twenty-pound bags and put them into the storage shed. This is the kind of heavy lifting I am not allowed to attempt. Nor would I. I’d only fall over.

Brad makes dozens of pots, so they will be ready for me whenever I need them. I walk through the greenhouse, looking at all the seedlings once more. I pull out the ones with ugly foliage and funky blooms, throwing them into my green trash wheeled container to be turned into compost.

We work without talking. I have known Brad since he was a freshman, and while he is somewhat a chatterbox at school, he is silent around me. I do not inspire chattiness in people. Even when I get my hair cut, the hairdresser who tells everyone about her mother’s appendectomy works quietly on my hair.

My sister, Becky, on the other hand, is the opposite. Everyone and anyone talks to her. Sales is a good profession for her. In theory.

Riley interrupts my train of thought by coming into the greenhouse. She tries to move quietly but trips on a soaker hose and falls, hip-checking Brad’s pile of seed pots and sending the expensive soil flying into the four corners of the universe. She gives a little groan, then lifts herself up. I see the fall isn’t bad, no worse than someone sliding into home plate during a P.E. ball game. She is filthy, though.

“Are you all right?” Brad laughs, covered in dirt himself. He holds his hand out to her.

“It’s not funny. Who laughs when someone falls?” Riley is indignant.

“You’re not hurt, Riley. If we didn’t laugh, we might be crying over spilt soil.” I calculate how much money I’ve lost. “Maybe you can see if you can save some of that.”

“Aren’t you going to ask if I’m okay?” Riley waves off Brad, brushes herself off.

“You’re okay.” I have never believed you should carry on for simple injuries. Slap a Band-Aid on it, kiss it better, and move on. The more upset a parent gets, the more upset the kid. My mother didn’t learn how to keep calm until I was ten.

She rights some of the pots she’s knocked over. Brad gets a dustpan and a brush. I then notice a piece of now-crumpled paper in her left hand. “I came in to get your signature. I’m doing the science team.”

“Next year?” I take the permission slip, staring at it and turning it over in my grimy hands though I myself typed up the form. Riley wants to be on the science team?

“No. Now.”

The science team trials are next month, and we have no more room. Besides, Riley lacks the maturity and science skills needed for the team. More kids than we can accommodate want to do it every year. Selection is made by the teachers. I flash back to Riley working on the trebuchet. How easily she gave up. Maybe if she’d put her guts into it and helped out, I would have a different idea.

No. Riley’s good at art. Not science and math. It’s a fact, just like the fact that I am color-blind though females aren’t supposed to be. I try to think of a gentle way to let her down.

“Riley, you can’t do it this year.” I hand her the paper. “Just concentrate on the art show.”

“Mr. Morton said I could, to do the trebuchet. He says there’s a hole in the team and since my grandpa built it . . .”

“Mr. Morton said so, did he?” I make a mental note to talk to him. I am in charge of the team. Not him. He should have asked. “He’s new. He doesn’t know all the rules. I do. It’s too late.”

“But . . .”

“Riley, you should listen to your aunt.” Brad straightens, slapping potting soil off his gloves. I’d forgotten he was there.

She glares at him, then cools her gaze and straightens. “I want my aunt to listen to me.”

“Everyone else on the team worked hard to be on it.” Brad’s lip thins as he sets his jaw. “I’m sure you’ll make it next year.”

Riley glances at me, but I am not going to defend her. I agree with Brad. I can’t help it.

“Well. Okay.” She takes the permission slip and folds it into a tiny grimy square and tucks it into her pocket. “May I order a pizza instead of cooking? I have a lot of homework.”

If it was up to me, I would open a can of something or other from the cupboard and eat it over the kitchen sink. But I feel bad that I had to turn her down. I rub my neck. “You may.”

She closes the greenhouse door carefully behind her. Her head is down. Something in her posture hurts me. I shouldn’t feel bad if I’m right. She can’t do whatever she wants. She has to earn it like the rest of us.

Her mother never set boundaries for her. No, everything for Becky was, Ask and you shall receive. I’ll talk to Riley later.

“Now, Brad.” I turn to him. “This is between me and Riley. There was no need to chime in, okay?”

“It got her off your case, didn’t it?” Brad sticks a spade into a small pot. “I mean it. I’ve seen her in study group and she lets everybody else do the work. She just rewrites the notes. She’s not going to pull her weight.”

I find myself coming to Riley’s defense. “She’s new, she’s behind. You can’t expect her to be at the top.”

“I don’t want her pulling me down, Ms. Garner.” He sniffs and wipes at his nose with the back of his hand.

“She isn’t pulling anyone down.”

“Yet.” His eyebrows knit.

This is a new side of Brad I haven’t seen, indignantly righteous and not so generous. “Riley’s a smart girl. I’m sure by next year she’ll be caught up.”

“We’ll see.” He rinses his hands in the sink, wipes them on his jeans. “I gotta get going.”

“Wait.” I stop him. “Are you dating Samantha?”

“Don’t be silly. She’s not allowed to date.” He looks me in the eye.

After Brad leaves, I sit in a plastic lawn chair for a while, staring at my rows of roses. Riley will not diminish Brad, nor any other student. I’m sure of it. Is that what the kids are saying? Of course, Riley got into St. Mark’s only because I am employed there. If she’d walked in off the street with her poor transcript in hand, Dr. O’Malley would have booted her backside to the curb quicker than she could say a Hail Mary. So would I.

I realize then why Brad has me so disturbed. He reminds me of me. And I can’t say I particularly like the view.

The pizza truck pulls up, and I leave the greenhouse to its slumber.

• • •

L
ATER THAT EVENING,
Becky calls me direct. “Riley hurt herself today,” she says without preamble.

I blink, surprised. I’ve taken my hands out of soapy dishwater to answer the phone and it makes the receiver slippery. I move it to my other hand, drying the wet hand on a towel. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“She fell. She told me. You should take her to the doctor.” My sister’s voice is concerned, clear.

I laugh. She’s talking about the fall she had in the greenhouse. “Her pride is hurt more than anything. Riley’s perfectly fine, Beck.”

“It’s Becca. She’s not. I can hear it in her voice.” My sister is working herself up. Pulling out the older-sister card, though as older sister she has only ever been older, never wiser.

I put the phone on speaker and place it on the counter next to the sink, attacking the greasy pan again. “Hey. If you’re so concerned, why don’t you come home and take care of her yourself?”

“Some people have a low pain tolerance. You never think anyone’s injuries are as bad as yours.”

I snort. “That’s because they generally aren’t.”

“I think you should take her in. Or at least write her an excuse for P.E.”

“I’ll do nothing of the kind. She’s not eighty years old, Becky. She slipped and fell and broke nothing except a pot of dirt. If you didn’t trust me,” I’m yelling into the receiver now, “then you should not have sent her to me.”

“Agh.” Becky makes a strangled noise. “You’re impossible.”

“Same to you.”

We hang up simultaneously.

I feel my shoulders slump forward. Riley inches into the kitchen, back in her Abercrombie outfit. “I didn’t know she was going to call you,” she says.

“Are you hurt, Riley?” I examine her again. No limp. No swelling. Only a bruise.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“You’re not.”

She shrugs.

I sigh. “I know you’re a teenaged girl and all, but can you cut back on the drama a little bit? For me?”

She sniffs, edges back toward the living room. “She said you’d say that.”

I guess my sister might know me better than I thought.

12

T
HE DAY OF THE ROSE SHOW, THE LAST
S
ATURDAY OF
A
PRIL,
breaks overcast. I hope the gray cloud cover will dissolve into sunshine. I read somewhere that a sign of a weak mind is letting the weather affect your moods, and I’m sorry to say my mind today is as flimsy as an antique negligee. I sit for a minute on the edge of the bed. Picture a sunny day. A perfect day. Perfect roses. Queen of Show. It’s not working. My natural surliness is too present. I give up.

I fetch a surprise for Riley, hold it behind my back in one hand. A pink cell phone, just for her. My mother, having heard of my cell phone wishes, added us to her family plan and purchased us two phones.

“Riley!” I rap on her door. “You ready?”

“I am.” Riley leaps out, shutting the door in a wink. She is dressed in a pair of black skintight jeans and a floaty white peasant blouse that looks like it came out of my mother’s closet, circa 1975. Again with the style change, a chameleon trying to fit in. For a moment I get the impression she’s hiding something, but I can’t figure out what. Why would I think this? I have no basis. Is my parental radar finally coming online? “Everything all right?”

“Yeah.” She meets my gaze and I know she is not telling me the truth.

But I don’t want to spoil the surprise. I will break my own mood, I will ignore whatever this girl is hiding for now. “Guess what I have?”

Her relief is almost palpable at the subject change. I take my hand out from behind my back and show her the phone. A little pink cell phone.

Instead of being delighted, she shrinks away. Why does this girl always have reactions I don’t expect? “My mom said she was getting me one of those.”

“Well, she hasn’t yet, so this will do the job.” I make her take it. “It’s not a fancy phone, but it will receive and make calls.”

“Great. Thanks.” Her voice is flat.

I suppose Becky promised her an iPhone. We will see if she follows through. I give a little mental shrug. “Let’s get this circus into town.”

I’ve been giving Riley some space since our little row over the science team. Mr. Morton’s reasoning was that someone dropped out while I was gone, necessitating a replacement. “I will take responsibility for training her,” he said when I confronted him about the unauthorized deal in his classroom after school. He crossed his arms.

“We have a waiting list. We call the next person,” I said.

His expression changed from defensive to apologetic. “I didn’t know about that.”

“You didn’t ask.” People never ask me. They assume. It’s like I’m not even in charge. “Science team is very popular around here.”

He uncrossed his arms. “My stance would be to accommodate all interested students, not just a few. Let everyone benefit.”

“The best students get on the team. The other ones have to wait and be alternates, or try out next year. There are team limits.” I don’t relish confronting Mr. Morton like this, upending our heretofore harmonious relationship. Every Tuesday, we’d been meeting after school to coach our teams, he with the trebuchet, me with the physiology students. To me, having ten students in my group was enough, plus more than twenty altogether on the entire team in the little classroom. But he had the unlimited energy and enthusiasm of a green teacher. He could probably handle a half dozen more students and be unfazed.

“I am sorry,” Mr. Morton said, touching my arm. “I have an idea. We can get more parent volunteers, increase how many students we can accommodate.”

I gazed wordlessly at him. He doesn’t know how difficult it is to get parent volunteers, particularly at a school where tuition should be enough to cover whatever expenses we have. And particularly when you have well-meaning parents who truly want to help, but are hopeless at the subject. They only get in the way. “I know that it would be very egalitarian to have everyone on the team, but that’s not how it works. We cut, just like the football team.”

I am thinking about this interaction with Mr. Morton as I face my niece in the hallway. She seems to have gotten over her hurt.

Riley reties the string on her blouse. “We just going to stand around all day, or what?”

“Or what.” I note her hair is growing out brown. “Should we buy you some hair dye to fix that?”

She shrugs, then touches her head. “Does it look bad?”

“A little bit. But no one will be looking at your head. Only at my rose.” I head out to the car, where the rose already sits in a cooler in the backseat. “Come on. You’re going to get freeway driving experience today.”

She claps her hands. “Yay! I turn sixteen in August, you know. I need plenty of practice.”

“I know.” I hand her the keys. “But no B average, no driver’s license. Deal?”

“Deal.” We shake on it.

• • •

R
ILEY IS EVEN MORE CAUTIOUS
on the freeway than I am, never exceeding the speed limit even while cars whiz past her. “You have to keep up with the speed of the other cars,” I say, gripping my armrest.

“They’re going over seventy!” Her knuckles pale on the steering wheel.

I point. “Next exit, pull over. I’ll drive.”

“I can do it. I can do it.” She issues a chant. “I can do it, Aunt Gal.”

“Just don’t get into an accident. You’ll crush the rose.” Rose G42 is packed in its pot, which is packed into a makeshift drink holder inside the cooler so it won’t rattle about. “Never mind crushing you or me.”

She snorts. “Nice to know where I stand.”

“Hey, I put myself last on the list.”

The San Luis Obispo venue is small, in a rented church auditorium. It does, however, overlook the ocean, the water spreading beneath a steep drop-off. We park the car and stand in the parking lot, staring down at the whitecaps below. Surfers look like ants tossing around from up here. Riley inhales. “The air smells good and salty. Like home.”

I think I should put my arm around her, but physical affection feels too awkward. Instead, I put my hands in my jeans pockets. “Yep. I bet you’re used to the cool San Francisco weather.” Another detail I’d overlooked in Riley’s acclimation to her new environment. I had not given it much thought. “But the human body can adapt.”

“I know.” Riley sounds annoyed again. I have to say I’m not used to teens being so overtly annoyed with me. In my classroom, students usually try to control whatever disdain bubbles up.

I open the trunk and get the cooler out. “You going to help, or just stand there?”

“I didn’t know you wanted help.” But she lifts one end, and suddenly my load is lightened.

I pull out the handle and wheel across the parking lot. “Thanks.”

• • •

T
HIS ROSE SHOW
has only about a hundred entrants in perhaps ten categories. It’s more like a local rose society display than a huge show, but it’s close to home and a good place to test out G42. Here there are only the major show categories: the hybrids, the floribundas, the mini-roses, the new rose.

Other, bigger shows have dozens of subcategories, dividing rose displays into complex artistry. There are categories for single blooms in individual vases; the English Box, a box with six holes cut in rows for each rose; or a wooden artist’s palette, with blooms stuck into holes where the different paint colors would normally go. There are also categories devoted to the best full arrangements, or categories giving a prize to the best blooms floating in crystal saucers of water.

Everyone else already seems to be set up. Rose show entrants like to get there early, to snag the best vases and spots.

I don’t need a vase, nor do I believe where you sit matters. Most roses are shown cut, unless they are seedlings like mine, or a mini. I have my G42 seedling in its growing pot, in all its floriferous beauty. I rub its leaves with an old piece of pantyhose.

Riley watches. “What’s that for?”

“Shine.” I touch the leaves. “The oil from your hands gets on it, too.”

She frowns. “It seems like cheating.”

“It’s no more cheating than Miss America putting on lipstick.” I continue my ministrations, careful not to tear the foliage.

One woman comes over and wrinkles her nose. “That’s not a rose, is it?”

“It’s a Hulthemia.” Riley crosses her arms and draws herself up to her full height. I am proud of her. “A type of rose.”

“I think it’s lovely,” says another female voice. It’s Ms. Lansing, the rose judge from those years ago when I’d met Byron. She is still wearing a lot of makeup, as she was on that day. In deference to the beachy setting, she wears open-toed sandals that show bright pink polish. She leans over and gives me a cheek air kiss. I cringe a little. “How are you, Galilee?”

“I didn’t know you were coming to this little show.” I pump her hand and introduce her to Riley.

“Darling, if my hotel gets paid, I’ll go anywhere.” She barely looks at my niece, her eyes still on the rose. “Fragrance?” She bends forward and takes a sniff. She makes no notes on the pad she carries. Her pencil remains in her pocket.

“Not too much, but it is a repeat bloomer.”

Ms. Lansing glances up. She then does something odd. She pats my shoulder. “Good for you, Gal.”

“Thank you?” I am utterly confused.

“I want you to know I put you in my prayer circle at church.” Her lipstick is bleeding into the fine lines around her mouth.

“Thank you,” I repeat. Byron must have told her about my kidney. I certainly didn’t.

She gives my shoulder another heavy, overly familiar pat, then heads away.

“Was it just me, or was that weird?” I ask Riley.

“Weird.” Riley is in agreement with me.

There is nothing to do now but wait for the results.

We tour the show. Byron, of course, is not here, and I am not friendly with anyone else, so there’s no one to greet. This is how I like it. No obligation.

I explain the different roses to Riley, pointing out the best traits of each show rose under my breath. “Which one do you think will take Queen? Besides mine.” I explain that while there can be prizes in each category, the Queen can be from any of them; it’s the best rose overall.

We walk up and down each aisle, each of us examining the roses at our leisure. I’m attracted to an orange miniature giving off a spicy-sweet fragrance. Each bloom seems to have a hundred petals.

Eventually, Riley stops at a table in aisle four. “This one.” Riley points to a large white rose with pink tips and a pinker center. It is in a tall vase, long-stemmed, set apart from the contestant’s other blooms. Its fragrance has met us halfway up the aisle, no small feat considering how many roses are in the room. It’s a Moonstone rose, a beautiful name and a lovely specimen, even if it’s not a new kind of rose like mine.

“And why?” I am quizzing her, to see if she has paid attention to anything I’ve done or lectured her on, when she appears to be doing everything except paying attention. I expect her to shrug and say she doesn’t know.

She stops and cocks her head, circling around the rose. The grower, a man in his sixties, eyes her anxiously, as if she will pounce on the bloom and rip it apart. Which would be one way to stop the competition.

Riley ticks off the attributes on her fingers. “Glossy green color. Excellent fragrance. No signs of any disease. It looks almost like a silk flower, only better.” She turns to the man. “How’d you do it?”

“Secret compost tea.” He winks. “Let me write the recipe.”

“Thanks. I’ll give it to my aunt here. She grows roses.”

Wait. This man was going to just give me his secret recipe? I couldn’t believe it. I hoped it wasn’t sabotage, that it wouldn’t contain some variant of arsenic to kill off all my plants.

“You’ll need coffee grounds and alfalfa,” he says, scratching out the supplies on an overturned cocktail napkin. “Been perfecting it for thirty years.”

“Wow. That’s almost as old as my aunt.”

“Thirty is a baby,” I said, thinking thirty wasn’t too old.

“Oh yeah, it is. It’s so long.” Riley takes the napkin from the man and nods.

“I can’t believe you’re sharing,” I blurted.

He chuckles, snapping his pen closed and tucking it into his red-plaid shirt pocket. “What are you talking about? Rose growers always help each other. Don’t you belong to a rose society?”

“Only in name.” I survey his other roses.

“You’ve been reinventing the wheel, then.” He reaches out and shakes my hand. “Good luck to you. Winslow Blythe.”

“Good luck to you, too.” I shake his back, then his name registers. “Wait. You’re the Winslow Blythe?
Winning Roses
?”

“That’s the one.” He nods. “Do you have volume six? It has this recipe in it.”

“No. I have volume four. I figured they didn’t change much.” Also, I am too frugal to buy a new guide every year.

He shakes his head. “Nope. Lots of new material.”

Riley shoves the napkin into her jeans pocket. I hold out my hand. “Oh, please, otherwise it will end up in the laundry.”

“Fine. I’ll fix it.” She smooths it out.

12 cups alfalfa pellets

¾ cup Epsom salts

¼ cup chelated iron

1½ cups organic compost

Water (use the hose)

Large container with lid (at least 32 gallons)

I recommend putting the container near the roses before you begin; it will be too heavy to move, and it will stink to high heaven.

Fill a large container with water; a plastic trash can works fine. Add all the ingredients and give it a good stir (I use an old broom handle just for this purpose).

Put a lid on it and let it sit for between four days and two weeks. If the weather is hot, or your container’s in the sun, it will likely be done faster.

Take the lid off. With a bucket, skim some of the “tea” water off the top. Each mature bush gets 1 gallon every other week. Mini roses get a half gallon. Don’t give this to newly planted roses; it’ll burn them.

“Well, what to my wondering eyes should appear?” I put the recipe into my fanny pack, another fashion don’t for Dara, but extremely convenient nonetheless.

“You’ve never heard of compost tea?” Blythe grins at me. He’s supposed to be over eighty, but he looks more like he’s sixty. He has twinkling blue eyes and a mop of silvery hair that is only in faint strands over the top of his head. “Much less stinky than fish emulsion.”