The Last Forever (24 page)

“That’s such bullshit,” Sasha says. “It’s not about pity! It’s about having a mission. And besides, Abby says people aren’t even reading the paragraph.”

“Abby? You’ve got these petitions in Seattle?” My voice is rising. You might even call it a shriek.

“Well, Dr. Johansson has some in his lab and over at the Shaw Mountain Field Station. Oh, and his assistant may have posted them at his synagogue. Abby put them up around
campus. Probably, there are a few around the city. She and Dr. Harv have way more signatures than us already, which
sucks
, since this was my idea! But Abby said the university students see the picture and just sign. They love it. They think it’s hilarious, you with your eyes closed like that, chin on your hand,
How to Keep Almost Any Plant Alive
by Dr. Lester Frank open on your lap. It’s adorable. Look how sweet you look.”

I look like me, only asleep. I don’t get it. I could fight this. I could explain how stupid the picture is, or complain about people feeling sorry for me, or convince Sasha and Henry and Larry of the futility of this huge gesture. But I decide to do something else instead. I decide to take what they are offering me. Jenny said that sometimes the simplest things are the most majestic. And this kindness, this love? Well, it is offered over plainly, but really, it is so large and so splendid and so beautiful that my astonished self can barely take it in.

*  *  *

I cruise around the island a bit before heading home, driving Deception Loop halfway before turning around. This time I am not gazing out toward the twinkly waters of the sound, viewed through the lacy boughs of evergreens. No, I’m on an odd Easter egg hunt, the eggs being my own photograph on an eight-by-twelve sheet, lined paper attached with a staple. Yes, there I am—a petition in the window of the real estate office, next to the houses for sale, and one on the creepy cabin-y bathroom at Point Perpetua Park. There is one on the old water tank, next to a
HAPPY 60TH, HANK! ROCK ’N’ ROLL NEVER DIES, OLD GEEZER!
sign.
There is one on a tree stump in Crowe Valley. It is tacked there with way too many pushpins, my face bent around the curve of bark.

And, oh, I am riding such a high, full wave of love that I
have
to fall. Of course I have to. Of course, because life and love is joy and pain, fullness and emptiness, highs and lows, tide in, tide out. I will have to fall hard from that high wave, smack right down on my sorry face, but we are not at that part of the story yet. No, we are at the part where my heart is soaring in Jenny’s VW bus, and where my own picture keeps surprising me, on a telephone pole and on an abandoned truck in a field and on the front door of the Rufaro School of Marimba.

I am driving too fast. I have Happy Accelerator Foot. All of my delight is pressing right down on that pedal. Happy Accelerator Foot is dangerous, and so is Mad Accelerator Foot. Emotions need to be kept in the head and heart where they belong. Your poor old extremities get a hit of high emotion and they go a little wild, like a hyperactive boy given too much candy at the classroom Halloween party. But I want to hurry home and tell Jenny about this. And then maybe I will plant a garden or paint the whole house or move a mountain.

Tilting mailbox by gravel road. I once made this turn in a car with my mother and father when I was very young. I know that now. My mother would have worn that grim face she got, a pre-pissed face, when she was anticipating her own anger. A preemptive strike against her enemies—tight mouth, expressionless eyes.

She wore that face when we went to a meeting with Mrs. Confrites, my ninth-grade algebra teacher who gave me a D. I told my mother that I was failing because Mrs. Confrites never took the time to explain things well, and that she was always yelling, and I didn’t tell the part about
why
she was always yelling—how Kyra Thomas, who’d never even so much as looked at me before then, in all the years I’d known her, liked to talk and laugh with me in class. I didn’t tell the part about how giving up that attention from Kyra Thomas was just plain asking too much, and that getting yelled at by Mrs. Confrites (
You! Out!
) was completely worth it, and a little bit thrilling, too.

The thing is, my mother
still
wore that face even as the meeting went on, and all I could do in the midst of all that unwarranted loyalty was look down and scrape some dried glue off the desk with my fingernail. My mother was a warm person, a person who wanted to feed you and take care of you, who bought you a brand-new box of Kleenex when you were sick and lemon candies rolled in dusty sugar to help your throat, but she could believe in things, in people, in us, against all evidence. You didn’t want to cross her when it came to her loved ones.

The driveway is smashed full of cars, and so I ditch the van near the back of the line, hop out, and jog a little toward the studio. I forgot it was lesson day. But joy needs company, more company than Vito the dog, who
always
greets you like you’ve both just won the lottery. I need someone who can
discriminate between general joy and this wonderful, specific, fabulous event.

I open the white, rough-hewn door of the studio. My eyes go directly to him. I’m shocked. I guess this is what you get when you stop listening to your phone messages. I didn’t even see the truck out there. But, sure enough, here is my father, sitting on a stool in front of an easel, and it is quite clear that I’ve inherited my abundant artistic talent from him. His vase of wildflowers looks like it’s had a run-in with a terrorist flinging an acrylic bomb.

I am standing over his shoulder; I take on the posture of Teacher, one even Jenny doesn’t wear. “You’ve stolen my technique, Pops. Of course, I stole it from every kindergartener with a paintbrush.”

“Shh. I’m concentrating,” he says. He sounds just like Jenny.

“You got your sleeve in the paint.”

He looks. Sees that I am right. “Shit,” he says. His cuff is dragging around, making a trail not only on his canvas but on his favorite jeans.

“I think you’ve got a gift. A God-given
gift
. You need to paint a ceiling or something.”

“Thomas Believed There Was a Statue in Every Piece of Stone.”

“Welcome home, Dad.”

“Home?” He raises his eyebrows. It’s a question. It’s an
option
.

Perhaps I don’t know an ending when I see one after all.

I sniff his shirt. It smells only of clean cotton and maybe a little of that man soap I gave him.

“I know what you’re doing. And I promised. I keep my promises.”

“Ha. What about the two days? You promised
that
.”

“If you would have listened to my messages and called me back, you would have known what happened. It was unavoidable. I had to take care of some of your mother’s last business, and ours. You don’t just ditch a life.”

“Listen to you,” I say. “ ‘Let’s just do it,’ a wise man said. ‘Let’s just f-ing do it.’ ”

“I suggested going. You suggested staying gone.”

“After you ditched me and left me no choice!”

“Children,” Jenny reprimands. We have been whispering, and it’s true, the whispers have been getting louder and more intense.

“Don’t stop on our account,” Millicent says. “I feel like I’m watching reality TV.” Millicent is in all pink today. She is wearing some retroish pink romper, with pink shiny shoes and two braids tied with pink ribbon. Ha, it’s a fashion misstep. She looks like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

My father snaps his head in her direction. There he is with his black-gray hair pulled into a ponytail and his big nose and his flashing eyes. I missed that big nose. He doesn’t get that protective hard face Mom would have gotten. No, he only looks at Millicent with a flippant smirk. “Honey, I think your braids are too tight.”

“Let’s all mind our own business.” Jenny’s voice shuts down any possibility of more nonsense. It’s the voice she probably should have used on my father years ago.

Margaret has been concentrating on a poppy, the bright orange of its small, closed purse. She doesn’t look away from it when she speaks. Her chin is still tilted up in concentration. “How is the plant, dear? I signed something for you at the pharmacy. I couldn’t read the words, as I didn’t have my glasses. But I saw your picture.”

“We put them up on all the ferries,” Joe Nevins says, and chuckles.

“Now Max wants to go to the Arctic too,” Nathan says. “He’s walking around with a stick from the yard, saying he’s an iceberg explorer.”

“The magnetic force of the poles has healing properties,” Cora Lee whispers. “I signed the petition at the post office.”

“You were holding that book by that plant doctor,” Margaret interrupts. “I recognized that cover even without my glasses. We had Dr. Lester Frank speak to our Garden Society. He was quite the contrarian. He complained that we did not have decaf and that the cookies were too sweet.”

“Arctic?” my father asks.

“I’ll explain later,” I say.

“Are we here to work, people, or have a social circle?”

“Social circle,” Elijah says, and Millicent elbows him.

“You,” Jenny says to me. “Out.”

I am reminded of Mrs. Confrites and ninth-grade algebra
all over again. Here is another message my mother
would
send, in lieu of rainbows and butterflies.
Very funny,
I say to her in my head, just in case.

I have to be content to share my fine day with Vito after all. I let him out of the house and into the yard, where he runs in circles, speediest dog in the West. He crosses the finish line near my feet, and I pick him up. I feel his little heart beating like mad and he’s panting.

“The winner!” I say to him. And then I lift him high in the air against the blue, blue sky. We both celebrate, and we are both grateful for all the triumphs the day has brought.

*  *  *

He startles me. I am lying on an old lounge chair I found in Jenny’s garage, and I’m in my bathing suit. I’ve dragged that chair way, way over into a corner of the grassy field in front of the house, where no painting class member could ever see me. I’ve gathered the essential elements for a perfect summer afternoon: chair, book, towel, cold drink (that I’ve sloshed across the lawn, losing an ice cube on the way), and companion (panting dog who recovers the ice cube and crunches vigorously before circling down in a spot of shade). Once settled, I promptly fall asleep. It seems I can sleep anywhere but my own bed.

I am dreaming, and so when he says my name, I jump. Terrific. I must look just great, with the bumpy towel marks on my face and the lines from the rubber strands of the chair on my calves where the towel didn’t reach. My face is flushed and my hair is damp with sweat. It got hot out there, in that
patch of grassy meadow. Even Vito has gone back to the house, I see.

“Elijah,” I say.

“Sorry if I woke you.”

“That’s all right.” I sit up. This sounds simpler than it actually is. I am scooting my bathing suit around and clutching my towel and peering down at various spots on my body, making sure everything is covered up. Elijah makes me feel exposed.

“I’m having a surprise party for Henry next week. For his birthday. Maybe you’d like to come?” He tosses his hair. I don’t imagine this. He actually does it. He flings it back so that I can admire its glossy sheen.

But an arrow of, I don’t know, regret, disappointment, jealousy, is shooting toward my heart. It hits its mark, takes the sad, beating beast down. I didn’t know Henry was having a birthday. We’ve never even
talked
about birthdays. He hasn’t mentioned a thing about it.

“Our house? Next Saturday night. Let’s say eight.”

“Sure. Great. Where?” The question is a lie. I know exactly where their house is. Henry pointed it out one day, when we were headed to Point Perpetua with a pizza from Sneaky Jake’s. Actually, that’s a lie, too. I knew where the house was even before that. I looked it up, in the narrow Parrish Island Directory in the library. And then I drove past that huge Victorian with the perfect paint and the wide lawn and I imagined Henry and Millicent running across it holding hands, Millicent’s perfect hair flowing behind her. Henry tackling
her under the perfect lilac, kissing her passionately. Millicent lifting herself up from the lawn afterward with the nastiest, most disgusting case of poison ivy ever. You should have seen her. Ugh.

He gives me the kind of directions that involve landmarks of various kinds. Just past Asher House B and B, turn by that big tree, et cetera, et cetera. My mother loved those kinds of directions. She’d always ask people on the phone, “What’s it near?” Give her a 76 Station or an Albertson’s and she’d be set.

“Exactly how far past Asher House is this tree?” I ask.

He looks—pardon the pun—stumped. “Um. Half mile? Mile?”

It is exactly .33 miles, but I’m not at that part of the story yet. I’m at the part where I’m clutching my towel to my chest and saying, “I’m sure I can find it.”

“Great,” he says, but it doesn’t seem great to him, not really. The
Great
doesn’t convey enthusiasm. No. The
Great
is high pitched and self-satisfied. It says only one thing: that Elijah has finally put an end to one very nasty piece of business.

chapter twenty

Verbascum blattaria
: moth mullein. In the longest-known ongoing scientific experiment, Dr. William James Beal, a professor of botany, buried twenty bottles of twenty-one different seeds (including
Verbascum blattaria
) in a sandy knoll in 1879. The purpose of the experiment was to determine how long the seeds could be buried in the soil and still germinate when planted. The crazy old coot dug up one bottle every five years. He died twenty-five years after he started the experiment, so he was able to dig up only five time capsules. Another scientist kept the experiment going. For the next fifteen years,
he
dug up a capsule every five years. The last time capsule was unearthed in April of 2000, by yet
another
scientist. The seeds inside had been buried for 120 years, and some of them, most notably
V. blattaria
, could still germinate, proving that life (and a life’s work) goes on, even after death.