The Care and Handling of Roses With Thorns (13 page)

Winslow Blythe’s
Complete Rose Guide

(SoCal Edition)

May

Can you believe summer is almost here? Your roses are in full bloom by now and subject to attack by various forces: bugs and fungi.

Wash the rose undersides daily to get rid of critters. Do this in the morning; doing so at night will lead to mildew or fungus.

Deadhead the spent blooms, unless you want them to produce rose hips.

Now is the time when roses use the most food. Don’t be stingy and they will repay you by reblooming again in the fall.

If you do see signs of powdery mildew, it’s important to spray a fungicide and kill that before it gets out of hand. The foliage will turn pale gray and crinkle up like a piece of old tissue paper. There are other types of mildew, too, like downy mildew, browning the leaves. Either type spreads like a bad flu through a nursery school, and you can pretty much forget those rose specimens.

16

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY,
I
AM AT
S
CIENCE
O
LYMPIAD PRACTICE,
getting my group of students ready for their task: Disease Detectives. In this event, the students look at a real-life report of a food-borne illness, then must decide which disease it is based on the clues.

Mr. Morton is doing Crime Busters, which is like forensic science. Mr. Morton has set out some sneakers he’s laced with fingerprints and hair for the students to analyze. I watch them, wishing I could do the experiments, too. I love watching
CSI
.

We’re both doing the Storming the Castle event.

I give my Disease Detectives students the handouts for the food-borne illness. Jim Hillyard, a basketball-tall senior with long brown hair, grins and rubs his hands together comically. Samantha looks at the handout with distaste. I tell them to make a list of symptoms and what the people had eaten so they can narrow down what the culprits may be.

“I already know which disease it is.” Sam’s voice is flat. She drops her handout onto the table.

“Don’t say it aloud,” I say, not wanting her to ruin it for the other teammates. “Pretend you don’t know. And you certainly don’t know how the health department figured it out.”

“It’s not that hard.” She won’t meet my eyes. Oh, yes. Samantha is unhappy with me.

My temper flares. “No one is twisting your arm to be on the science team, Samantha.”

She reaches for the handout. Not even a sigh or an eye roll escapes. What self-control. I lean down, not very far considering her head comes up to my chest when she’s sitting. “Everything all right, Samantha?”

She gives one quick nod.

I should know she will not talk to me.

I survey the students. They are all involved in their tasks. I watch them ask each other for help, and the trebuchet kids raise their hands for Mr. Morton. I tell myself I am achieving the ultimate goal of a teacher: to become unnecessary to a student’s success. But I have to swallow a lump as I stand in the back, feeling my redundancy.

Mr. Morton tells the trebuchet team to go outside and launch their beanbags, then measure the distance. We both go into the courtyard.

“We could have one more kid on this team,” Mr. Morton says. “For backup. The Olympiad requires two people per team.”

“Someone from another area can cover. We probably won’t get two people dropping out.” I watch Brad launch a beanbag into the air, then yell for the other kid, a junior, to get the tape measure.

Mr. Morton’s forehead wrinkles. Today he is wearing flat-front khakis, brown leather slip-on shoes, and a light gray shirt patterned with something that, on closer inspection, appears to be small airplanes flying about. “It doesn’t hurt to plan for the worst, does it? I called the other people on your alternate list. None of them want to do it.”

I know he’s still talking about Riley joining the team. If all the people on the wait list decline, then I don’t really have any reason to say that my niece can’t do it. Except for my belief she won’t perform, and doesn’t want to.

She did less than stellar on the recent biology test about cell division, never once showing up for help, though I could see she did not understand the concepts. The students who did come for tutoring, who sat quizzing each other with the flash cards they’d drawn, these kids all got at least a B. Riley got a C minus.

“It’s passing, isn’t it?” she had said, acting as though she didn’t care. I truly could not tell if she did care or not, the way she crammed the test so casually into her backpack. If it were up to me, I would post all the students’ grades in public, for everyone to see. Public shaming can work wonders. Though in this day and age, it’s possible no one has any standards anymore.

“It’s barely passing.” It was an embarrassment to me, her aunt and her teacher, for her to get such a low grade. Dr. O’Malley would tut over it, think it was another example of Gal Garner’s poor teaching ability. Never mind all the others who did pass. “You must come to tutoring.”

She had tried for a bargain. “If I don’t do well on the next test, I’ll come.”

“By then your grade will be too low,” I had said sharply. “It’s May. How much time do you think you have? Then you won’t be able to drive.”

She had no answer then.

Mr. Morton waits for me to respond to him. The afternoon sun glints like candlelight on his face. I don’t really want to get into all this with him, explaining everything about my niece and her little quirks. “Trust me. You don’t want Riley on the team.”

“Sometimes kids respond better to teachers who aren’t related to them.” His tone is mild, but I take offense.

I squint up at him. “How long have you been teaching, Mr. Morton?”

He takes a breath. “One month.”

“I see.”

“But I have taught . . . kids . . . who are related to me. I mean, she’s still very young.” His voice gets husky.

I want to ask him who and I don’t want to ask him. He doesn’t want to tell me, either, because he strides away to Brad, instructing him on how to correct the trajectory. I watch for a moment. The male students, outdoors, their sleeves rolled up, fixing the catapult, nearly vibrate with health. With their matching uniforms and tans, it looks like a school recruiting ad. I return inside, to my anatomy and my violent vomiting-and-diarrhea scenarios.

17

A
WEEK PASSES WITH
R
ILEY ATTENDING TO THE DETAILS OF
her grounding like a patient prisoner. “I did not use my phone today,” she reports every evening, showing me her Calls list. “You can check yourself.”

“Hmmm, yes.” I make a big show out of checking, though I can barely work my own phone. “Good job, Riley.”

Each day after school, Riley involves herself in all the clubs available to her that will give her an excuse to do something valid with her peers, exactly as Samantha does. She joins Key Club, the community service club; Art Club; Spanish Club; and even the Chess Club. At these clubs, she laughs and jokes like any other kid who’s been going to a private school her whole life. Gone is the Riley who arrived here, punk makeup and all. I try to be happy; she wants to fit in, but something about how thoroughly the old Riley has disappeared unnerves me. She’s trying awfully hard. Maybe too hard. I say nothing, not wanting to seem critical. Arouse the sleeping dragon.

After our post-school activities are done, I take her home, where we make dinner in relative silence.

Every evening that I’m not at dialysis, Riley does her homework. She stares at the dark TV and her turned-off phone, looking so dejected I almost let her use them. “Would you like to play a board game?” I ask her halfway through her week of no electronics.

She gives me a look like I’m an alien from outer space.

“How about cards?” I suggest.

She straightens on the couch, her posture looking the best it has in weeks. She flips back her new hair. The colors are somewhat dull, the shininess probably bleached out by all the processing, but it looks much more normal than it had before. “For money?”

“How about for pennies?” I get out my jar of pennies. My parents and I like to play cards when they visit. Usually it’s long games like bridge, if we can get a fourth. Dara sometimes submits, but the card games are too long and boring for her. I tell her it’s a mental exercise, and we can still chat while we’re playing. “Texas hold ’em. And then blackjack.”

I deal the cards, explaining how the game works. I’m a pretty fair poker player, and I’ve got no problem with gambling as long as you have the money to lose.

Occasionally, my parents take me to Vegas, where we stay at one of the cheap places off the main strip where my mother gets the rooms comped in return for all the money she loses on slots. Dad and I hit the poker rooms, then blackjack tables.

“This is awesome.” Riley taps the table. I deal her another card.

“It’s better with more people.” We play a few more rounds. Then I show her blackjack, how to get to twenty-one and when to hold and when to double down, when to hit. “Now, this is all important to know. What you do here can mess up your whole table. Some people, like me and your Grandpa, would get mad at you.”

“Can we have popcorn?” she asks, sounding like a little kid again.

“Sure. Go ahead and make some.” I’ll bet her mother has not played games with her, not even Candy Land.

Becky was never one for board games. She was always on the go, always wanting to be out, out, out while I was perpetually stuck indoors. During my long periods of confinement, Mom sent Becky to a neighbor’s, who practically adopted her. I remember going days without seeing my sister. “Where’s Becky?” I’d ask my mother. I’d wanted Becky to stay and play board games with me, or watch television, or sit on the bed and play Barbies. The answer varied: Becky was out whale watching, or at the Wild Animal Park, or simply outside playing. As she got older and could choose her social schedule, she would be out every weekend night. Eventually, Becky became more like a person we saw only on random weeknights and holidays than a true family member.

That Becky felt left out did not occur to me until many years later, before Riley was born and after both of us had ventured out into the world. Mom invited me over for her world-famous tacos. Me, and not my sister.

Becky had shown up that night, dropping off a load of laundry. She froze when she saw us. We froze, too, hunched over our dripping crunchy taco shells as if we’d been caught with gold bullion in a bank.

To my amazement, Mom got a guilty look on her face and began explaining it away as coincidence. “Your sister just dropped in. Would you like a taco?” This clearly wasn’t true, and I was confused for a moment until it hit me. They hadn’t wanted to see Becky.

Becky knew it, too. The air whooshed out of Becky’s step as though someone had whacked her kneecaps with a baseball bat. She sank into Dad’s recliner and retied her shoes, which did not need retying.

“No time, thank you.” Her voice was too chipper, cracking, her hair hung over her face to hide her expression. How could I see such tiny things in my sister when I never even knew what to buy her for Christmas? And why couldn’t my parents see it?

Mom relaxed, going back to her taco. Dad acted as if he had barely heard the exchange at all, his eyes still trained on the football game in the other room.

Only I, confronted with the evidence that I was my mother’s favorite, reached out to her. How can a mother have favorites among her children? At the time, I still harbored hopes that one day I would find some man who could look beyond everything I appeared to be, see who I was. “They’re really good tacos, Becky.”

Instantly she reared back, a cobra attacking. She stood. “What part of ‘no’ don’t you get?”

“Fine.” My throat caught on a piece of shell. I swallowed. “Don’t eat the tacos. I don’t care.” I would not offer again, not offer anything. Couldn’t she see that none of this was my fault? Why did Becky have to punish me?

“There’s no need to be rude.” I thought Mom was speaking to me, but no, she was speaking up for me, to Becky, her tone even more cutting than my sister’s.

I sat thinking of all this now as my sister’s daughter, playing a good-girl role, made popcorn. I had been unlucky in some ways, lucky in others. I wanted, more than anything, for Riley to be lucky in everything.

• • •

O
N
F
RIDAY EVENING,
Riley comes in, her chores discharged, wiping her brow dramatically as if I’d just asked her to complete the seven labors of Hercules instead of clean our common bathroom. “My restriction is up. May I go out?”

So it was. Curiously, this week had felt less like a restriction week than a small vacation with my niece. For a moment the word “no” presents itself on my tongue. I flicked it away before I could say it aloud. “Where, with whom, and for how long?” I tick these off, feeling as if something has again slipped away from me before I can hold it. “With Samantha?”

“Are you kidding? Not with her, probably ever again. With some kids from art class. You don’t know them.”

“I know everyone.” The school is not that big.

“It’s just to Rory’s Diner.” She names a popular hangout for the high school kids, a fifties-style joint with an old Corvette turned into a dining table. She slides what look like sleeves cut off an old T-shirt, with thumb holes in them, over her forearms. I realize that’s exactly what they are. “I’ll be back by ten.”

My stomach clenches. I understand, suddenly, Samantha’s mother’s concerns. How much easier it would be for me if I kept Riley at hand, under my roof, in my sight, at all times. But I can’t do this during my dialysis and I cannot do it now. “All right.”

She disappears into the bathroom, and as though on cue, a car pulls up and honks. Riley opens the door. Her black eyeliner is back in place, her hair is slicked down. She wears black jeans and oxblood Doc Marten boots, and a T-shirt with a lacy vest over it, along with those weird gloves. She looks like what I think a typical art student would look like, except with fewer piercings. “See you.”

Her armor is back. I sit upright on the couch. “Wait. Who else will be there?”

She leaps out the door, a gazelle escaping from a lion.

I ponder how she made these plans without using her cell phone or computer. And how she would know I’d say yes.

The phone rings. It’s Dara. I have spoken to her only in passing since I heard her gossiping with Dr. O’Malley.

“Dara.” I try her name out gingerly, not sure how I feel about it.

“Hi, Gal. I haven’t seen you around school this week.”

“My class is still in the same place.”

“So’s mine, oddly enough,” she says drily. “Listen, I’m sorry about the whole Riley and Samantha thing. I know you’re doing your best.”

“I always do.” I consider whether or not to apologize. I decide to do a half apology. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

She hesitates. “How’d you like to go get some food?”

“Love to,” I respond. I nearly wither with relief that my friend is free.

We avoid the burger place with the kids, though Dara could own that joint, with her wide cream circle skirt and her ballerina flats. Her hair is up and out of her face, and she wears no makeup except for lip gloss. “You look classy,” I say to her.

She tosses her hair back. “I
am
classy, Gal.”

“Hey, classy is a compliment to some people.”

After a discussion about what I can eat, we choose a soup and salad place, which has enough variety for the both of us.

I pile a plate with soft French bread and pasta with white sauce, and another with Romaine, zucchini shavings, cucumber, and celery. I have to avoid high-phosphorus veggies, and I’m allowed just three half-cup servings of each permissible vegetable. However, I can eat as many bread products as I like, provided they are not whole-grain, because those contain too much phosphorus.

Dara eyes my plate as she adds a high-bran muffin, no butter, to her plate of greens. “I wish I could have that pasta.”

“Maybe so, but you probably don’t want the rest of the package.” I avoid the tomatoes and the soups, all of which seem to have some kind of potato in them, which are also banned.

We sit at a wood table so heavily lacquered I can see up my nostrils when I glance down. I move my plates of food in front of me. I consider whether to tell her I heard her talking to Dr. O’Malley in the hallway about my stubbornness. The only reason I think I’m right, I want to point out, is because most of the time I am. I shouldn’t have to change my mind simply because someone else has a different (and wrong) opinion about a situation.

Dara should know by now that I don’t avoid doing things because they are easier. It would have been easier for me not to involve Samantha’s mother, for me to cover up for her daughter. But then if something else happened later—say, Samantha went out again without her parents’ knowledge and got into serious trouble—surely I, as the adult involved and a teacher to boot, would bear responsibility. Samantha’s parents would say I should have told them at an early stage.

I don’t want to get back into any unpleasantness with Dara. The sting of her words with Dr. O’Malley has worn off. I’ve heard worse about me. Sticking to a position, in my opinion, is a character virtue, not a flaw.

“Excited about the rose show in Pasadena?” I ask.

She nods, but grimaces. “I am.”

I grin. “You know, Byron will be there.”

“Byron the great and powerful?” She takes a small bite of bran muffin. “I can hardly wait. What am I supposed to do with a guy in another state?”

I shrug. “Same thing you’d do with a guy here, probably. Not get serious about him.”

She ignores this jab. “Gal. I’m still not sure I can go. It’s pretty tight for me right now. I’m saving for a house.” She shifts uncomfortably in her chair, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Oh.” I can’t fault her for that. Still, I don’t want to think about the possibility she won’t go. “But you’ll probably come, right?”

“I’ll have to see after our next paycheck. I have a lot of credit cards to pay off.” She changes the subject. “How’s the science team coming?”

Dara just has to come with me. I wait until I swallow before responding. “Just fine.”

“George says you need another alternate for the trebuchet.” She focuses on her plate.

I put down my fork. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to put the pressure on, too. Riley is not coming on the team.”

She holds up her hand. “One, chill out. Two, you are not the Grand Poobah. You don’t have final say in everything.”

“I do in this.” Science Olympiad is my territory. “Why don’t you start an art team?”

“There can be no art team. Art is too subjective.”

“I thought you always said you know good and bad art when you see it.”

“But that’s only me.” She heaves a frustrated sigh. “Gal, has it occurred to you that if you do let Riley on the science team, she might be inspired to work harder in your class?”

I waggle my finger. “That’s not the way it works. First she works hard, then gets rewarded. Not being lazy, and then getting special treatment.”

“Who is it going to hurt?” Dara asks.

I stare at her. She should let this go. The only answer for why she won’t is Mr. Morton. Mr. Morton is pillow-talking her, complaining about me. The thought of Mr. Morton and Dara pillow-talking is too much to bear, and I get up abruptly, shaking the unsteady little table. “I’m going to get more pasta.”

I take my time at the pasta station, watching the cook heat up the sauce and the rigatoni in the big wok pan, waiting for a fresh batch although more than half a bowl is still in the serving area. Whatever happened to people proving themselves first, then getting rewarded?

I see Dara on her cell phone, talking away. Mr. Morton. How much do they see each other? Are they calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend yet? Dara hasn’t seemed to mention any of her other hangers-on these days. I get my fresh pasta plate and return to the table as she hangs up.

“It’s like credit,” Dara begins.

“What’s like credit?” I burn my tongue on the pasta and take a gulp of water, which uses up all my water for the day.

“People get into trouble with credit. Maybe they lost a job and couldn’t pay a bill. Then the credit companies jack up the rate and make it harder to pay off. They can’t get credit because the rates are too high. But these are the people who need a break, so they can pay off their bills.” Dara looks pleased with herself.