The Last Forever (11 page)

“That is such bullshit, Dad.” I’m not the swearing sort, but my fury is rising up. It is one of Jenny’s huge trees, a brown
smear in a black paint storm, branches whipping and cracking. “That’s just bullshit. I hate psychobabble bullshit like that.”

He’s silent. I can hear him breathing. My heart is pounding. I’m too furious to speak. We’re both silent for a long while.

“I may never forgive you,” I finally say. I feel like this might be true.

And then I remember that the pixiebell is still downstairs, and so is Vito. “I gotta go.”

“Tess.” He is asking something of me. Whatever he wants, I can’t give.

“I’ve really got to go.”

I hang up and run so fast down the stairs, it’s lucky I don’t break my neck. But the pixiebell is right there where I left it, slouched but undisturbed.

Jenny and I wait for a peach pie to cool. She wants me to stay with her as long as I want to stay. I don’t exactly have a lot of other options, but I think that’d be hurtful to say. She cuts that pie, finally, and my phone bleeps. Dad has sent me a photo. It’s a picture of a tall guy outside what looks to be a Mexican restaurant. The guy is leaning against a concrete wall, which is painted to look like a desert. The guy has tall hair. Really tall hair.

Jarvis Believed That Even Hair Could Get to Heaven
, Dad’s text reads.

But I don’t respond. I don’t respond because all I can see is Dad and Mary sharing a basket of tortilla chips as they
drip salsa on plastic-covered menus and wait for their margaritas to arrive. And I don’t respond because I know that if I were on a plane and the yellow masks popped out from the ceiling, I’d put the oxygen on my kid first. I would. I don’t care what they say.

chapter nine

Amaranthus caudatus
: love-lies-bleeding. The seeds of the amaranth, the most important Aztec grain, are ancient. At one time, they were so critical to the culture that each year, a month-long festival celebrated the blue hummingbird god that alighted upon the plant. A huge statue of the god was made from the seeds, and at the end of the festival, everyone was given a piece of the god to eat. In Victorian times, though, the flowers from the love-lies-bleeding plant meant only one thing: hopeless love. Giving them was a declaration that your heart was in over your head.

The pixiebell has not recovered from Vito’s mauling. Two days later, I think it looks worse. It makes it hard to concentrate on what Meg is saying.

“—his
house
. What’s she doing at his house?”

“Whose house?”

“For God’s sake, Tess!
Dillon’s!
Who have we been talking about for the last fifteen minutes!”

“So, he’s moved on. Good for him.”

“Don’t you even
care
?”

“Remember when we used to wear pajama bottoms to school? We liked it at the time, but looking back, you realize how stupid it looked.”

“Okay, okay. Fine. I shouldn’t care about this more than you do.”

“When he kissed me, I’d be planning my outfit for the next day. I’d be writing my thesis statement for a paper. Dillon and I had the kind of relationship that’s more like trying out a relationship.” I think I hear a car coming down the road. “Hey, can we talk later? I’ve got to go.”

Jenny made an emergency call to Margaret MacKenzie from her class, who is also one of the leading members of the Parrish Island Garden Society. If anyone will know what to do about Pix, it’s her.

“Okay, but it’s weird having you gone,” Meg says. “I miss you! And what your dad is doing . . . My mom won’t stop talking about it. You know how she can get. She loves you. She’s worried. You heard me, right? You can stay with us? For as long as you need.”

Vito is barking up a storm. I can hear Margaret’s voice. “Kiss you and hug you,” I tell Meg. “Hug your mom. I love your mom.”

“She never even uses her sewing room.”

“I’m fine. See you soon,” I say.

*  *  *

“I’ve never heard of a pixiebell,” Margaret says. She is sitting close to me. Her perfume is flowery sweet, and her sweater
is purple like a lilac, and her tennis shoes are buttercup yellow, and her eyes are blue as a forget-me-not. She’s a walking flower. She’s a walking flower, and she’s old, and she’s the vice president of the Parrish Island Garden Society. I feel a rise of hope. Pix is going to be all right.

“This may be the only one.” The pixiebell is on the kitchen table in front of us, like a patient in the doctor’s office. “The
last
one,” I say.

“Really?” Jenny says. I’ve never told her that part—how rare this plant is. How one of a kind and important.

“Oh my,” Margaret says. “That’s remarkable. How did you come to possess it?”

“My grandfather had a friend who was a professor of botany. He stole the seed from the professor’s rare collection during a Christmas party. The plant was extinct, but my grandfather grew the seed, and now we have the last pixiebell.”

“Wonder if he ever got invited back,” Jenny says.

“Well, I’m speechless,” Margaret says, but she sticks one finger in the soil, then pulls it out. “Soil seems fine enough. What’s happened to the poor dear?”

“ ‘Mary’ overwatered it in Portland before Vito tore it apart.”

“ ‘Mary’?” Margaret says. She even puts the sarcastic quotation marks where they should be.

“Don’t ask. And then there’s all the moving around we’ve been doing. It’s been riding in Dad’s hot truck and ending up all kinds of weird places. . . .”

“Hmm.” Margaret clucks. “A plant needs stability. Let’s
keep it in one location for a while. Somewhere sunny, where it can recover. Water judiciously. Look, these leaves are yellowing.” She puts her crinkled finger to them.

“What does that mean?”

“Lack of nutrients, most likely. I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure?” Jenny asks. She looks worried.

“I grow roses.”

“Maybe someone else in the Garden Society might know?” Jenny suggests.

“Well, our president, Ginny Samuelsson, also grows roses. You know Ginny. She and Frank live out near Little Cranberry Farm?”

“Maybe one of the other members?” I say.

“There’s just Ginny and me, dear. Now that Miss Poe has passed on, there are only the two of us. Wait a minute. Stay right here.” She scoots back her chair and heads out the front door again. Jenny looks at me from over the table.

“My confidence is lagging,” she says.

“Mine too,” I admit. It’s not just lagging; it’s become like those sorry blocks of wood our neighbor Bennie Milstone used to tie to the back of his bike, pretending they were hydroplanes. They’d bump along nicely for a while until they busted. We wait. And wait. “She’s been gone a really long time,” I finally say.

“Maybe I should check on her,” Jenny says. “She might have . . .” This starts us giggling. We’re both having the same wrong thought.

But Margaret comes back alive and well and singing, “Here
I am!” as she returns. Vito barks up a storm again as if he’s never seen her before, which unfortunately speaks to his intelligence level. “I walked out to my car, and when I got there, I forgot why I went.”

“That happens to me all the time,” I lie.

She plunks a box on the table. “Well, this should do the trick.”

Rose and Flower Food. Jenny and I lock eyes. I roll mine. Of course, Pix is neither rose nor flower.

“That’s it?” Jenny says. “Water, light, soil, a box of food?”

“It’s not rocket science,” Margaret says, pretty snippily too.

It’s become abundantly clear. This is up to me. If I don’t do something, and fast, the last pixiebell will be gone for good.

*  *  *

Jenny’s Internet connection is from the caveman days. “I think I’ll go and make lunch and eat it and then take a drive in the country and then come back and then maybe this page will have loaded,” I say.

“Technology.” She shrugs, as if she could take it or leave it.

Well, I could use some cyberpower right now. I need knowledge and information at high speeds. There’s got to be more I can do for Pix than the plant equivalent of unplugging your computer and plugging it back in again. Less water, more light. That plant is going to
die
. “I’m heading out,” I say.

“
I’m
heading out,” Jenny says. “I’m meeting with the gallery owner where I show my work.”

“Oh.” I forgot for a minute that Jenny has her own life.

“I can drop you off or you can take the bike.”

“Bike,” I say.

“In the garage. See you for dinner?”

“Not sure,” I say. Jenny raises her eyebrows, but says nothing more. I shut Pix away in my room, safe from Vito. I say the simplest, CliffsNotes version of a prayer:
Please
.

*  *  *

Jenny’s garage has that dusty-musty smell, and there’s all kinds of weird stuff inside—old wood chairs and a tin drum and a store mannequin that makes me startle before I realize it is not a psycho killer. The bike is in a spiderwebby corner. It shouldn’t even be called a bike, which is something one associates with a mode of transportation used by Lycra-clad athletes, a sleek object that zips and speeds a person to their destination. No, this is a
bicycle
with a half-flat tire and a
basket
. I think I saw this thing in
The Wizard of Oz
. I roll it outside.

Vito is sitting on the front step, waiting for his life to get more exciting. “Forget it, Toto,” I say to him.

*  *  *

The bike has only one speed, and so by the time I get to the library, my calves are burning like I’ve just climbed to base camp carrying the yak. I set the bike down on the steps. I suppose I should chain it up, but this town seems to be the type of place where you could walk around dressed in hundred-dollar bills and people would only nod and smile. The bike isn’t exactly screaming
Steal Me
, anyway. It’s missing a kickstand.
The last time Jenny rode it was obviously before the invention of helmets.

“Henry will be here in ten,” Sasha says. I didn’t see her over there, huddled by the Dumpster. She tosses down her cigarette stump, twists the toe of her boot back and forth to put it out.

“I’m not here to see Henry,” I say.

She snorts. She has a pinch of her T-shirt and is fanning it back and forth. “This”—she taps the cigarette butt with her toe—“is between us, right?”

“Right.” I’m on Henry’s side about the cigarettes, but it’s none of my business. She’s not going to be able to hide her crime, anyway. No matter where a person smokes, they stink like they’ve been sitting in a tavern, listening to Kenny Rogers music and waiting for their turn at the dartboard.

Inside, the guy I saw with the cart last time is behind the desk. “Larry,” Sasha calls to him. “Jenny’s granddaughter.”

“Hey, Jenny’s granddaughter,” he says. His T-shirt says
SAVE THE MALES
, and he’s got scruffy chin hair that may one day, with hard work and dedication, grow up to be a real beard.

“Tess,” I clarify. “I’m looking for stuff on plants.”

“Cool,” Larry says. He steps from behind the counter, motions me to follow.

“Plant care?” I say. “I’ve got a sick plant.”

“Righto.” He’s a man of few words. I can tell we’re getting close, though, because we pass books on volcanoes and the universe and forests, and now the spines have all turned shades of green.

“I don’t know anything about it, and I really need to know.”

Larry is flicking out volumes expertly with the tip of his finger. They are stacking up in my arms.
The Big Book of Plant Care. The Houseplant Survival Manual. The A to Z of Plants.

He stops. “Wait. What kind of plant?”

“I don’t know exactly. A rare kind.”

He thinks. He tosses
How to Keep Almost Any Plant Alive
onto the pile. “Ba-da boom,” he says.

“Thank you.”

“You oughta ask Henry.” He gestures to the desk, where I am thrilled to see that Henry has arrived, just as Sasha promised. My heart starts thrashing around. He’s just as beautiful as I remembered. Those cheekbones! Sweet, vulnerable cheekbones! He is poking Sasha in the chest with one finger. He knows a bad tavern when he smells one. “The excellent Mr. Lark has a mind like an encyclopedia.”

“Okay. Thanks again.”

I settle myself at the table where I saw Henry for the first time. I keep peeking over at the desk. Henry, in his thin-framed, elegant, odd way—he’s got an unusual charisma. I open the first book, but I’m not concentrating very well. I forgot to bring paper and pen to take notes, and the print in the book is small, and the words in the table of contents might as well be written in a foreign language for all they sink in to my poor, overcome brain. I turn the page anyway. I’m such a faker. The words on the page say something like
Henry, Henry, Henry
.

He doesn’t see me, or if he does, he doesn’t come over. He’s sipping from a coffee cup, his hair falling over his forehead when he leans in. He’s laughing at something Sasha says. It’s one of those full laughs, not a heh-heh laugh, but a soul laugh, a spirit laugh. It makes me laugh too, as I sit there reading “Make the most of compost” again and again. The line sings.

He’ll be coming over. I’m sure of it. How can he not notice me? But there are library manners at work, the unspoken agreements that happen here—having your nose in a book conveys a request for privacy, and in this place, it’s a request that will always be respected. I will have to catch his eye, give the visual cue that lets him know it’s okay to interrupt.

I’m plotting and scheming as passively as a heroine in a Victorian novel when the library is overtaken. It’s like a SWAT team invasion of mothers and toddlers and babies and strollers and commotion. I think about getting under the desk like we used to do for the earthquake drills in California. Okay, maybe there are only six or so mothers, but all that struggle with doors and equipment and squirming bodies and bags slung over shoulders and bits of conversation and one kid falling and crying and suddenly it’s like you might as well surrender with your arms up.