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Authors: Margaret Dilloway

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BOOK: The Care and Handling of Roses With Thorns
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26

T
HE
S
CIENCE
O
LYMPIAD IS HELD IN
P
ASO
R
OBLES, BECAUSE
we’re too small-time to host a shindig like this. On the next Saturday, the last weekend in May, Riley and I awake at five and drive in. I turn off the car stereo. “It’s too early for that noise.”

She yawns big. “Is anyone sick, do you think?”

“You shouldn’t wish people sick.”

“I’m not. I’m just wondering if Mr. Morton called you this morning.”

“No.” I haven’t spoken to Mr. Morton since that day in front of Bub’s.

Riley gives me a sidelong glance. “I know how to use the tape measure now.”

“That is good.”

“So even if I don’t get to do anything else, I did that.” She fidgets with the zipper on her hoodie, zipping it up and down, slowly and quickly, until I’m afraid she’ll catch her skin.

“Did you know that I didn’t know how to read time until I was in seventh grade?”

“What on earth do you mean?” I think of the digital displays on the oven and computers and microwaves.

“A regular clock, with hands. I didn’t know how to read it. We never went over it in school. I guess each teacher thought the last teacher had told us. I don’t know.” She smiles down toward her feet. “I’ve never been too good at this kind of stuff.”

A little cloud lifts and bursts from somewhere above my head. I’m simultaneously happy and sad. “I should have taught you how to read the tape measure, even if you weren’t on the team.”

She shrugs. “I like shooting the trebuchet.”

“It is pretty fun.” I pull into the parking lot at the high school, where the meet will occur.

Mr. Morton stands near his car, carrying a clipboard and looking very official. His hair looks like errant brambles in the wind. “You’re late.” His tone is crisp.

“Then why are you standing outside?” I glance at my watch, a Swatch imprinted with geckos. It’s eight. True, he had said seven-fifty, but eight is close enough considering the event actually begins at eight-thirty. “We’re perfectly on time.”

“Brad and Samantha are sick.” He makes some kind of mark on a piece of paper. “Riley, you’re covering for trebuchet.”

“What?” Riley and I say at the same time.

“Why didn’t you call me?” I ask.

“I did.”

I whip out my phone. “Oh. You did. But I was driving! I couldn’t answer.”

The flu season’s over. Both kids were fine yesterday. I just cannot believe Brad would miss this, or Samantha, with their concern for grades and the extracurricular. Maybe Brad; he’s a senior and doesn’t give a flying fig anymore. But Samantha, the junior? Is she having a mid-high-school rebellion?

“Aunt Gal?” Riley’s at my side. She blinks rapidly. “I’m nervous.”

I put my hands up on her shoulders. “You will be just fine, Riley.”

• • •

T
HE HIGH SCHOOL AUDITORIUM
is really more like a gym, built for basketball games, with hoops at either side and hardwood floors and bleachers. It’s impossibly noisy, everyone’s voices echoing. I pull out my little red-foam earplugs from my fanny pack, take a stadium cushion out of my bag, and perch on the bottom row.

The trebuchets are already set up in a row along one end of the room. Some are made out of metal, but most are wood, like ours. Our whole team wears dark blue T-shirts emblazoned with our mascot and team name, St. Mark’s Lions. The back features a white lion rearing up on its hind legs toward the competitors.

The judge hands out the weights and launchers. They’re beanbags, probably filled with metal BBs. I hope none of them land in the audience. They should have done this outside. The students have to calculate how far those things will fly, based on their previous tests.

Riley, armed with a calculator and a notebook of graphs and tables, searches the stands. Who is she looking for? Oh. Me. I wave. She waves back. I give her a thumbs-up. “You can do it,” I say, though she will never hear me from this distance. She nods like she’s reading my lips.

It’s odd. I see the other parents around me, waving to their children. I’ve cheered kids on in a teacherly role, sure, but this is the first time I have felt so rawly nervous for a student.

Because she’s mine.

I lean forward, my elbows on my knees. “Come on, Riley. Come on.”

She scratches her head with her pencil, then crouches down and writes furiously. She adjusts the trebuchet, places the beanbag, and holds the string. When she pulls the string, the catapult will release and fire the beanbag.

“Fire one!” the judge calls.

The first team fires. The beanbag flies nearly to the other basketball pole.

“Fire two!”

That’s us. Her teammate Jim releases the trebuchet. It flies a little further. Riley raises her hands in victory.

Once all the teams have launched, they each send a member with the tape measure. A judge will double-check that they measured accurately. If the student didn’t, points will be deducted.

I pray Riley remembers her metric system.

“Riley, Riley, Riley.” I am chanting loud without realizing it. The other parents look over at me. I am the only one chanting. Oh Lord. I’ve turned into one of those annoying parents I hate, the ones who stand up and clap at graduation after we’ve asked everyone to hold their applause until the end, the ones who yell at the soccer coaches from the sidelines. How easy that transformation was.

She measures, looks at the tape. She straightens and gives me a thumbs-up and the biggest smile I’ve seen on her.

I can’t help it. I stand up and cheer.

She is not embarrassed. She gives a little jump and claps. Second place. It doesn’t matter. I hoot as loudly as I can. Everyone stares, surprised at the noise coming out of the short lady.

Mr. Morton, looking on from the other side, shakes his head with a smile.

• • •

B
ACK AT
S
T.
M
ARK’S
that afternoon, the parents who didn’t drive come pick up their kids. I leave Riley chatting with Jim, and go over to Mr. Morton.

He sits alone under a Chinese flame tree. It’s a young one, the trunk still studded with thorns, yellow flowers barely starting to show. As it matures, the thorns will smooth out into green bark.

Mr. Morton’s hair, so wild in the parking lot, has been combed down to an unrecognizable Ken-doll helmet. Even his beard is unnaturally still. His face is drawn and tight, as though he’s been sitting there grinding his teeth and clenching his fists.

I sit down beside him. “That went well, considering. I’ve never needed an alternate in all the years I’ve been doing this.” We acquitted ourselves well in Disease Detectives and the other events.

Mr. Morton squints out at the quad, his face bare of sunglasses. “We should probably name alternates from now on.”

“Probably.” I think of Dara, and I want to ask him how the movie date went. I fear it will be taken wrong, as jealousy or prying. “Sometimes we make mistakes. We’re human, aren’t we?”

He gives me a sideways, puzzled glance.

I take a breath, decide I might as well ask. “Why did you leave your company? And your wife and child?”

Mr. Morton shifts away as if I’ve developed symptoms of the Ebola virus. “Please, don’t be so indirect.”

I tap my foot. “No. Really. Does Dara know? Does she know about all this?”

“Maybe you should tell her, since you seem to know so much.” He sets his mouth back into a firm line. “Hell, you probably know more about it than I do.”

“I’m watching out for her. Someone has to.” I think of Dara, our new coolness, and tears prick my eyes. I haven’t even told her about my new kidney transplant status yet.

“I haven’t talked to Dara since the movie last week, if you must know.” He shakes his head. He stands. “I make it a point not to discuss my love life, past or present, with anyone except the parties involved.”

I spread my hands apart. “Hey, I’m just trying to figure out whether you’re a jerk or not.”

He laughs. Sticks his hands into his front pockets, stares at his brown loafers. “I am not.”

I picture his little girl, alone with her mother in another city. Riley and Becky and her father all over again. “Do you ever see her?” I ask. “Are they still in San Luis Obispo? That’s not far.”

He gulps. “I don’t see her as much as I’d like.”

I want to ask him why. Did he abandon them? Use drugs? Before I can think of a more socially appropriate way to pose the question, he asks me one.

“What about you?”

“Me?” I crumple my lunch bag.

“You. Are you a jerk, or not?”

I blink at him. No one’s ever accused me of being a jerk. At least, not openly.

He nods toward the Chinese flame. “You’re as prickly as this tree. You take pleasure in it. But underneath,” he shakes his head, “I don’t know yet.”

I don’t think of myself as prickly. “Correct” is a better term. Protective. “Maybe you never will.” I remember the day he came over to make a trebuchet, how well we’d gotten along then. I sort of wish it could go back to that. But ever since he crossed me with Riley, I have only been looking for the worst in him. Perhaps I’m missing something. I know he’s missing something with me.

“Listen. I’m sorry I brought that up,” I say in a low voice. “It’s between you and Dara, and you and your ex. Not me.”

“You’re only looking out for her.” He smiles quickly. “Don’t worry. I’m not a jerk. I don’t think.” He runs his hand through his hair. “I’m a private guy, Miss Garner. I don’t like to talk about my personal life.”

“Bet that drives your mother crazy.” I notice he’s calling me Miss Garner again. Establishing distance.

As he well might. He may not be here past the school year. I expect he’ll want to move back into the city.

Riley jogs up, her eyes bright. “Ready, Aunt Gal? All the kids have been picked up.”

Mr. Morton gets up with a nod. “I’m on my way out, too.”

I swallow. “I’ll see you.”

“Yup.” He waves.

We part to our opposite sides of the lot, each disappearing into our cars.

• • •

T
HAT NIGHT,
I hear Riley talking to her mother. Describing the tournament, her triumph. Glossing over, understandably, the Disease Detectives.

“Your daughter was the hero of the day,” I say, loudly, from across the room.

“Shush, Auntie.” Riley laughs. It’s good to hear her laugh.

Then the conversation gets around to other topics. I’m trying not to listen, but at the same time, how can I not listen in such a small house?

“School’s over the third week of June, Mom.” Riley listens. “She wants to talk to you, Aunt Gal.”

I notice Riley’s more likely to say “Aunt” while she’s talking to Becky. “Becky. How’s Asia?”

She ignores this. The connection is scratchy and it sounds like we’re talking in 1911 instead of 2011. “Gal, I know I said I’d be home this summer.”

I brace myself. “So when are you coming home?”

Riley pricks up next to me on the couch. I get up and go into the bedroom. I don’t want her to hear this, whatever this is. I sense it’s not going to be good.

“They want me to stay on this job through the summer. Go to China and Japan from here.” Becky’s voice is hoarse. I don’t sound that bad unless I have a flu.

“Are you using?” I hiss into the phone.

“How dare you ask me that,” she says angrily.

“I think you are. You sound like hell.”

“I am not. I have a cold. I talk a lot.” She clears her throat and her voice sounds better momentarily. “If you don’t want her, send her to Mom’s right now.”

“It’s not a question of
wanting
her, Becky. It’s a question of you doing what you’re supposed to do.”

“I’m
supposed
to be earning a living. That’s all I’m supposed to be doing.”

“You’re not conscripted into that company. It’s not military service. Find a job close to home.” I am whispering now, sure Riley’s got her ear to my door listening.

Becky pauses. “This is what the company wants me to do. I have no position stateside. I’m doing all I can.” She is emotionless in her delivery. I consider arguing with my sister. Then I remember Riley’s got more meat on her than she probably has in years, that her hair is no longer that depressing ultrablack color, that she has actually voluntarily participated in a Science Olympiad.

Becky continues. “You want me to quit this job and come home to nothing? In this economy?” She sniffles. “I can’t have Riley here in Asia. I’m traveling too much. She’d be alone.”

I stop her. “All right, all right. Calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down.”

I laugh at the sheer cliché of our conversation. One of us is always telling the other to calm down.

“I’m hanging up now,” Becky says.

“I’m not laughing at you.”

“Good-bye.” She hangs up.

“Bye,” I say into the buzzing receiver. “Good-bye, Becky.”

Once again, it’s up to me to break the bad news to her daughter. I square my shoulders and fling open the bedroom door.

 

Winslow Blythe’s
Complete Rose Guide

(SoCal Edition)

June

It’s almost time for the second grow cycle and the June rose shows! To get ready, your roses are going to need lots of food. Ever see a teenaged boy at an all-you-can-eat buffet? That’s what roses are like. They will eat as much food as you give them, and then some.

 

• Give them a nice weekly fertilizer as their main course.

• Pep them up with organics, like the fish emulsion and maybe the special organic tea you made.

• Clean ’em up daily for mites and such. Spray if you must.

• Continue your hybridizing experiments, if you’re into that sort of thing.

 

27

T
HE CALL COMES EARLY IN THE MORNING, WAKING ME BEFORE
dawn on the following Tuesday. It’s the first day of June, the day after Memorial Day, the end of the school year winding up, when students worry over finals and term papers and I worry over my next big rose show.

“We have a kidney. Do not eat anything today.” It’s Joanna, the transplant coordinator.

I’m number two on the list. Walters is one. The doctors run a bunch of tests to see if the kidney is a match. The blood type is only one way of matching. They try to match as many criteria as possible.

My stomach flutters. “When will you know?”

“This morning.”

I knock on Riley’s door. She rolls over, her face bearing the wrinkles of her pillowcase. I give her a thumbs-up. “Today might be the day.”

I expect her to roll back over and go to sleep, but she sits up. “You better call Grandma. She won’t forgive you if she’s not the third to know.”

• • •

A
T SCHOOL,
I keep my cell phone on, though this is frowned upon. There are always exceptions. This is definitely an exception.

All morning, I’m a frazzled bundle of nerves. I jump at every noise and sound. Me or Walters? Walters or me?

During Riley’s biology class, Dara shows up. “Riley told me.” She takes my hands. “I didn’t even know you were back on the list. How’d you manage that?”

I drop her hands and smile wryly. “Long story.”

She lowers her voice. “I know you’re mad at me for siding with Dr. O’Malley, Gal, but really all I want is what’s best for you.”

I’m reminded of my own words to Riley. “Maybe I know what’s best for me, Dara.”

She blinks, smoothes her skirt nervously. “Are you excited?”

Not at all. “What do you think?”

She laughs. “I think you’re nervous as hell.”

“No cursing in my classroom, please.”

“I’ll help with Riley until your mom gets here.”

I give her a quick smile. “Thanks.”

My phone finally buzzes. We all freeze. I pick up.

“It didn’t go to you. I’m sorry.” Joanna sounds sympathetic.

My pulse slows. “To Walters?”

She hesitates. “I’m not supposed to say. But I will say he’s not available today.”

I hang up with a small grin. I picture Walters at the hospital, getting congratulated, prepped for surgery.

Riley stands next to me. “It’s a go?”

“No.”

“Then why the heck are you smiling?” Riley is tensed up, perhaps ready to fight or cry on my behalf. Behind her stands Dara, appearing to be exactly as fearful as my niece. Two sentinels.

I shrug. “I just am.” I reach down into my consciousness and feel around for jealousy or rage. Nothing. “I guess it went to the next-best person, right?” I shake off my nervousness, literally shaking each leg until the kids stare, and pick up my whiteboard marker. “Let’s get back to business, shall we?”

• • •

AP
B
IOLOGY IS DOING
all review until the AP test the next week. I hand out the copies of review sheets as they walk in, thick packets twenty pages long. “I hope your study groups are meeting,” I say.

Samantha and Brad come in, a few paces apart from each other. I step in front of her to stop the two at once. “You got over your flu quickly.”

“Stomach virus. Twenty-four hours.” She grips her stomach, slouching so her long hair covers her face.

“Did you know there’s no such thing as a twenty-four-hour stomach virus?” I hand her the review sheet. “Must have been food poisoning. Should we do Disease Detectives to find out what caused it? What did you guys eat?” I look from her to Brad.

Brad pushes past Samantha, who goes to her seat. “We’re fine now.” He moves his hair out of his face, his tanned cheeks flushed. He is angry. I can feel it. Angry at being called out. I think the appropriate feeling would be shame.

“I’m glad.” I watch as Brad studiously avoids glancing at Samantha as he sits next to her. She turns her body away from his. Ah, young love. Forbidden love. Messing up Science Olympiads. I hope it was worth it. For Brad it didn’t matter, but for Samantha, a junior, a win could have made a big difference on her college applications, especially because she might have gone to the state championships. “Let’s begin.” I turn on the overhead projector.

• • •

S
ATURDAY, THE DAY
of the Pasadena rose show begins, as usual, before daybreak. I am up and moving G42 into my car before the paper boy (really, a paper deliveryman in an old Toyota) cruises by. Riley gets up shortly after, excited about the prospect of a road trip and spending the night in another city.

“Can we go to Disneyland?” she asks.

“Do you think I’m made of money?” I load a bag with snacks for her. Pudding cups, apples, granola bars. “Haven’t you ever been?”

She shakes her head.

I pause, a bottle of water in my hand. “We’ll have to remedy that. Even I’ve been to Disney a few times.”

“Cool.” She smiles and brings her backpack out to the car.

Pasadena is smoggier than I remember. It hangs over the background mountains, the convention center in the foreground, its brittle white the color of a bleached bone.

There are far more people here than at the San Luis Obispo show, with dozens more categories, including all the fancy displays with specially built rose boxes. I explain this to Riley as we walk in. “This show will be a fun one just for that,” I tell her. “For wandering the aisles.”

“Scoping out the competition.” Riley smiles. “This will be a lot more fun than Science Olympiad, that’s for sure.”

We check in. I see Ms. Lansing at a far table and we wave to each other, but she doesn’t approach me, thank goodness. I find my table, number 20, which I take as a good omen, and set down my cooler.

I plan to leave it there until judging time. For one thing, I don’t want anyone else ogling my rose. For another, I want to keep it a surprise. I’ve entered it into the New Breed category.

I sit on the folding chair and wiggle my toes. “I’ve got an intuition this is going to go really well today.” I grin.

Riley sits on the table, tipping it a bit. She jumps off.

“Careful, Riley.”

“I’ve had intuitions about stuff before.” Riley sits on the chair next to mine. “Sometimes I know which song is going to play on the radio before I turn it on.”

“Maybe it runs in the family.” I smile at an elderly man going by on a walker. I hope I’ll live to be so old.

“Sometimes I feel like my dad’s going to come back for me. That never happens.” Riley shrugs. “Guess we can’t all be right all the time.”

She slumps down in her chair until her head is on the flimsy back. I put my hand on her shoulder and give it a little shake for emphasis. “He doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

She smiles.

I clear my throat, reach for my purse. I dig around and pull out some cash. “This is for you.”

“For what?” She stares at the two twenties as though it’s a fortune.

“Whatever you like today. Food, souvenirs. Heck, you might even want to buy your own rose.” I press it into her hands.

She opens up the small black purse with a gold chain strap and takes out a tiny cloth coin purse with a kitten sewn on it.

“Don’t lose it.”

“I’ll be careful.” Riley grins. “I’m going to walk around, okay?”

“Remember. Table 20.” I wave as she flounces away. “Just ask someone if you get lost, all right?”

“I’m not two, you know,” she calls back, still flouncing.

I shake my head.

“Teenagers. I don’t envy you,” the lady at the next table says. She’s about my age, I assume, and her table is crowded with roses. She has four minis, two hybrid tea bouquets, and three arrangements of old-fashioned roses. I can barely see her behind it all. She stands and tugs on her carefully tailored blazer.

“Have any kids?” I ask conversationally.

She grins. “I wouldn’t have the time for all this if I did.”

I simply nod.

“Teenagers are all right, I’ve found.” I wheel my cooler under the table, trusting that in this rose show no one will disturb it, then go off to find a snack bar.

• • •

T
HE ROOM BUZZES
with activity. All around me I see people shouting greetings, hugging, slapping backs. I don’t do much networking at shows, but I almost envy these folks their enthusiasm.

Why don’t I talk to more people? I might learn something, as I did with Winslow Blythe, who gave out the fertilizer recipe. Sure, I say hello to strangers, compliment them on their roses, but when have I ever really tried to make a connection?

Only with Byron. And he’s the one who approached me.

I reach the snack bar and see nothing that I want, or can, eat. I make a circuit of the room, going up and down each aisle. The area seems to be the size of a small stadium, everyone’s voices rising up into the ducting and crystal chandeliers above and floating away.

At last, as I circle back up my aisle, I see a crowd of ladies around a table and suspect Byron must be behind them.

I grin. Byron, holding court, dapper in a navy blue blazer with a white shirt underneath. The ladies swoon and touch his shoulders and arms. I cringe. They’re hungrier than prepubescent girls at a teen idol concert.

I smile serenely. I go up and take his arm with a big flourish, giving him a kiss on each cheek. “Byron! Dah-ling! I haven’t seen you in ages.”

“Since when did you turn into Zsa Zsa Gabor?” he murmurs, kissing me back. His cheeks are as smooth as a baby’s.

“Let me see your roses.” I grin backward to the women, who range in age from about twenty-one to sixty-five. “You have a diverse demographic.”

“I do.” He smiles at them, gives a dismissive wave.

“Show’s over, ladies. Nothing to see here.” I wave at them, too.

The ladies disperse, still not believing an upstart like me could hold Byron’s attention. They’ll be looking for my roses for sure, assuming I’m a genius breeder. Which I am.

He points out one of his roses. “A mini-Hulthemia seedling I’ve named Larissa, after my sister’s daughter.” It has light pink petals but no blotch. “The blotch will come out as it gets older,” he says, reading my mind. “No fragrance, unfortunately, but excellent color and reblooming qualities.”

I stop and look at him. “Are you ever going to go pro, Byron? Just mass produce your own rose plants and sell them directly to the public?”

He puts his hands behind his back and grins like a schoolboy. “Later this year.”

I give him a congratulatory punch on the arm, as I would a brother. “I knew you’d be the next David Austin! The David Austin of Hulthemias.”

I expect the next words out of his mouth will be him asking me to come work for him. I wonder how much houses cost in his neck of the woods in Texas. This could be the perfect opportunity, I realize. Getting out of my teaching job that I might get shoved out of anyway, working for Byron. If I could go there after my transplant, after Becky reclaims Riley, it would be perfect. I’m sure he’d let me.

Byron gestures to the next rose on the table. “I also have an apricot mini, named and registered this year.”

I lean over and sniff. It smells delicious. “It actually smells sort of like apricots, Byron.”

“That one will be a hit, I’m sure.” I admire its very glossy, dark green leaves.

“Do you know what I’ve named it?” He hems and haws. “Gal.”

“Yes?” I wait for him to tell me the name.

“It’s Gal. The rose is called Gal.” He smiles, waiting for my reaction.

I pause. “After me? Galilee?”

“Just Gal, because that’s what I call you. I hope that’s all right.” He peers into my face.

I freeze. “Gal” is what I’d planned to call my G42. Gal, after me. My name. And now it’s going to be a mini-rose that I had absolutely zero to do with.

He points to the tag.
BYRON MADAFFER, “GAL,” APRICOT MINI.
There it is, already done and officially registered. Not a thing I can do about it. I might as well be pleased. Some moments pass before I finally say, “It’s an honor.”

It is. Really. I bet any one of those ladies, no matter what their station in life or how many rose titles they had won, would love to switch positions with me. I smile and extend my hand. “Thank you, Byron.”

“It’s my pleasure.” He shakes my hand.

I take a breath. “So. How many new employees are you going to hire?”

He goes behind his table and busies himself with straightening. “Probably none.”

“None?”

“None.”

His assistant, a tall young man wearing a white shirt with a tie, hands him a polishing cloth. Byron gets to work on his roses, though they already appear perfect.

I linger by his table. Byron is hard to read. One minute he’s into you, the next he’s done and on to the next thing. “If you’re ever in the market, give me a call. You know I’d love to work with you.”

He nods shortly. “I can’t make any guarantees.”

I get the hint. I step away. “Of course not.” Humiliation, I decide, tastes like dish soap. His assistant flashes me a sympathetic smile. I gesture behind me. “I better get to looking for my niece. It’s almost time for judging.”

Byron finally stops his polishing. “Did you bring G42?”

“Of course.” I expect him to say he’ll stop by and look at it. He’s seen it only in pictures.

Instead, he extends his hand, his brows crinkling up in the middle. “Good luck, Gal. I’ll see you later.”

“Okay.” I turn and walk away, wiping off the residue of his hand, which had suddenly turned sweaty.

BOOK: The Care and Handling of Roses With Thorns
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