The Last Forever

by Deb Caletti

  chapter twelve

  Ricinus communis: castor bean. The most deadly seed that exists, the castor bean takes many drastic measures to protect itself from harm. First, there’s its hard, spiny, spiky outer layer, difficult to crack through even with a pair of pliers. Second, the seeds hidden within have their own hard shells. Finally, intact seeds will do no harm if human or animal swallows them, but poisoning will occur upon biting or chewing. Death will come to your average person after eating only four to eight seeds. Message? Keep out.

  First there is the isolated, nearly inaccessible locale—one thousand one hundred kilometers from the North Pole. And then there is the Svalbard archipelago itself, set in the distant and largely unknown Barents Sea. And then the island in the archipelago, a remote island, a barren piece of rock really. And then the mountain. And then the ice, the years and years of ice. Then, of course, the guards, and the polar bears, and the blizzards to fight your way through. The layers of iron are next. And then the secret keys needed to open the dual blast-proof doors with their motion sensors, the two airlocks, the walls of steel-reinforced concrete one meter thick. Finally, the separate rooms. The containers. The specially wrapped packaging. And inside, the seeds.

  How many layers does it take to keep something—an object, a person, a memory, a secret—held safe forever?

  I don’t know how many layers are enough. Maybe there are never enough layers. But I like to think there are. I like to think that there is a place in this world tucked so deeply into the farthest and most barren spot on earth that anything placed inside will always be there, no matter what.

  Still—two problems. One: I can’t seem to hold on to my mother. She gets farther and farther away every day. This is a horrible admission. I am so sorry. There are those dreams, sure, the ones that seem so real, where she’s alive and we’re together and I am so happy. But when I wake up, she’s gone, and the dream fades, and the truth is that it was only a dream. Another day has gone past, and the days just keep adding up, the ones she’s not been in.

  Two: When it comes to secrets, all those layers only compel them to rise and show themselves. Secrets want to be told. Secrets need to be told. Secrets are our worst and hidden failings, buried down, down, down. But they crave the light, and even more than that, forgiveness.

  “If I see another picture of another plant, I will scream,” I say to Henry.

  “My eyes are crossed from all that reading. Are my eyes crossed?” Henry looks at me and crosses his eyes.

  “They look the same as always,” I say.

  We are sitting on the floor in his room, leaning against his bed. This is the thing about Henry and me. It’s like we’ve been, for a long time. We have a rhythm together. He’s the boy version of me, only I’m not nearly such a genius. Or so talented. Or so attractive. Our selves, though—they know each other.

  His mom is downstairs, having a glass of wine with a friend of hers. I can hear them laughing, two women talking about men. Every now and then, they do that Oh my God, I know! shriek of mutual understanding. My chest aches a little when I hear it. I keep thinking about Mom and Betts, friends since the sixth grade, sitting at our kitchen table eating chips and that horrible bean dip that comes in the can that my mother loves (loved) for some reason.

  Henry’s mother, Jess, has his brown hair and brown eyes, and she is very quiet and kind, more quiet than my mom, and she made us spaghetti and asked me about school in California. It was all so ordinary. Henry put the dishes in the dishwasher. He hugged his mom and thanked her for dinner. The three of us ate ice cream in chipped bowls in the living room, and then Henry sat down at this piano they have in there.

  I thought the piano was decoration. It was old and there were spider plants on top of it, and more books. But then Henry lifted the lid. He placed his hands above the keys. I thought he was joking. I even laughed. I was about to make a crack that he was Beethoven Boy when he started to play. And then nothing was ordinary. The notes were so beautiful and Henry was so beautiful playing that I held my breath. I’d never heard anything more beautiful in my life.

  “La Campanella,” Henry said when he was finished. “The little bell. Let’s say that was for a certain plant.”

  My heart was in my throat. “God, Henry. Is there anything you can’t do?”

  “Car mechanics,” his mother said, but her voice was soft. The way he played, as if he felt every note—it shifted your soul around.

  But now we are sitting in his room, and I notice that the framed picture is no longer on his desk. Henry shuts a book he unearthed from under the bed. It’s volume P–R of an old encyclopedia from the early 1900s. I tap his foot with my foot. I am ready for Henry to stop thinking and talking about plants. I’m ready for him to kiss me, although this hasn’t happened yet. The unkissed kiss sits between us. I feel it, held back and becoming more and more desired. The absence of it has its own energy. Absence in general does.

  “I don’t understand why we can’t find it anywhere,” Henry says. “I can’t stand an unsolved puzzle. There is an answer. This is driving me crazy.”

  I keep kicking him and poking him. I want him to stop thinking about the pixiebell now. I want him to see me. I want him to look all the way in and not see anything else. “I’m driving you crazy,” I say.

  He ignores me, persists. “Okay, you said your grandfather stole the seed.”

  “Right. From a professor.” I tap his toes again. I shove my shoulders against his shoulders to knock him over a little.

  But then I picture it. It is Christmas, sometime in the early 1950s. There is a party in a large brick house. There is mistletoe hanging in the doorways and Christmas carols coming from a radio, and the professor’s wife has made a spread of food on the banquet table downstairs. Grandfather Leopold excuses himself—

  “How did they know each other?” Henry asks.

  “They were friends, I think.” They were friends, so Grandpa Leopold had been to this house before. He knows where the professor keeps his collection: in the long, thin drawers of his study. He knows which drawer holds the professor’s biggest prize. He excuses himself after everyone is tipsy, after the professor is distracted with hot rum and tinkling glasses and the cutting of the bûche de Noël—

  “Friends?”

  “My grandfather once gave a speech at the college where the professor taught. Grandfather Leopold was an inventor. Didn’t you think inventors were only in Disney movies? Because he actually discovered some kind of adhesive used in making shoes.”

  “What did he want with that seed?”

  “Well, he was a klepto.”

  “Oh.”

  “And the plant was supposed to have some kind of healing powers or something.”

  “Healing powers?” Henry’s eyes light up. “You should have said so before. This is a good lead.”

  I have stopped poking and tapping Henry. “I forgot all about that part. Until just now.”

  Yes: Grandfather Leopold sneaks up the stairs and looks both ways before crossing the hall to the professor’s study. He tiptoes across the floor. He slides open that drawer. It’s as if the seed is being offered to him. It is right there, in a tiny glass box labeled Pixabellus imponerus. “Wait,” I say. “I know it! I know the Latin name. I’ve heard it before. My mother said it. When she told me the story. Pixabellus imponerus? Emponeris? Something like that. ‘Emperor.’ I remember thinking it sounded like ‘emperor.’ ”

  Henry stares at me. I stare back. I’m excited, but I’m not sure if I’m even right. Something feels like it clicks into place, but the memory is hazy enough that I can’t trust my sudden insight. We’ve been reading Latin words all day. Still, I can hear my mother saying this. I can even see her. She is cleaning out a closet. She tosses me a fedora, and I put it on. I am maybe ten. The hat smells musty. I take it off because I wonder whose head it was on before mine.

  That was Grandpa Leopold’s. More stolen goods, she says. My plant in the kitchen? The last pixiebell? Pixabel
lus imponerus. He stole it! That’s my father we’re talking about! Well, actually, he stole its seed. A rare seed. From an extinct plant. He snitched it during a Christmas party. My own father! No one ever wanted to have him over. He’d slip your stuff into his overcoat. He’d steal your overcoat under his overcoat! That man could never stand to follow the rules.

  “Imponerus?” Henry repeats.

  “Yeah.”

  He’s thinking.

  “This is great news, right, Henry? We know how to find it now.” I make a bold move to celebrate. I sit on him. I straddle his lap and look right at him. I am happier than I’ve been in so long.

  “That’s right,” Henry says. The tips of his ears are red. I’ve embarrassed him, I think, by landing on him like this. But I don’t care.

  “This is it, Henry. We’ve got hope now. It just came out of nowhere.”

  “This plant. It’s really important to you,” he says.

  “Really important.”

  “Because it was your mother’s. And before that, her father’s.”

  “It sounds stupid.”

  “It’s not stupid,” he says.

  “It’s just a stupid plant.” I can see her in her sweatsuit, and she is healthy and making blueberry muffins from a box, stopping to fill a coffee cup with water and pouring it gently into Pix’s pot. You old thing, she says to it. You keep on keeping on. My throat tightens. I might cry.

  Henry doesn’t know what to do with his hands now that I am sitting on him. He uses them to prop himself up, and then he sets them on my arms as if to balance me, and then he gives up the struggle and takes my hands in his. I like this idea best. “Tell me something about her,” he says.

  “Ah.” I look up at the ceiling. So many things. I love it very much that he asks. “Okay,” I decide. “She was a pretty peaceful sort of person. I mean, she liked to read, like us. She didn’t like big noisy places. My dad loves them. He loves anything big and noisy. But Mom, no. Hated Costco. Hated shopping malls. But she went to Splash Kingdom on my third-grade field trip.”

  “Water park?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Five million screaming kids?”

  “Exactly. I wanted her to go so bad. She even rode the bus with us. It was, like, an hour and a half of ‘Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg.’ ”

  “She really loved you.”

  “I don’t like the past tense yet.” Damn it. My voice gets wobbly.

  “Loves. Loves you.”

  “And it wasn’t like she was some great big hero because she died. People make it sound like that. She was just her. She worked part-time in a dentist’s office. She loved Oreos. She got lost whenever she had to drive somewhere new. She was just my mom.”

  “That’s the real loss. Her regular self.”

  He gets this. And for getting that, I give him this. I lean in. His lips are so soft, and he’s not here with me at first because I’ve surprised him. But then, there. There we both are, and the kiss becomes that kind where you forget you’re even in a room in a house in a town. You’re just so present and transported that place has altogether disappeared, and it’s only mouths and mouths and together and together and everything else has vanished, even—especially— sadness.

  When I pull away finally, Henry’s face is blazing.

  “Oh wow,” he says.

  “Finally,” I say.

  He is shifting around, and things are suddenly awkward. I don’t know why, because awkward is usually the last thing I feel with him. I get off his lap. I don’t know how to read him.

  “We should . . . ,” he says.

  “Okay. Yeah, I’d better . . .”

  Maybe it’s me being awkward. Maybe I am just thinking about Millicent with her perfect blond hair and icy blue eyes in comparison to my plain brown ones. Or maybe it’s him being awkward, thinking the same thing.

  Henry walks me to Jenny’s van, which I’ve parked on his street. I lean against the van door, and Henry stands in front of me.

  “La Campanella,” I say. I remember him at that piano. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever forget it.

  “Next time I’ll play you the violin,” he says.

  I open my eyes wide, drop my jaw.

  “Kidding. I don’t play the violin. Hurts my chin. Makes my neck do this.” He lolls his head to one shoulder.

  I laugh.

  “I like it when you smile,” he says. And look. The awkwardness is gone. He kisses the tip of my nose, then gives my mouth a quick sweet kiss too.

  “I like it when you do anything with your face,” I say.

  * * *

  Jenny is already in bed when I get home, but she’s left the porch light on for me and a table lamp. I am shushing Vito because he’s jumping around and barking, completely ignorant of the fact that sleeping people require quiet. He’s so thrilled to see me, I might as well be roast beef on legs.

  “Be quiet, you idiot,” I say, and I give him a dog treat from his jar. “Go to bed, squirrelly squirrel.”

  I sneak up the stairs like I’m guilty of something. Well, I’m guilty of plenty, but not tonight. I haven’t exactly been tearing up the town on a rampage of booze and sex. Still, a sense of wrongdoing hangs around me like bad perfume. I smell it even after I’ve showered. I close my door quietly behind me.

  There’s a note on my pillow. Call your DAD!!!

  Oh, Jenny, aren’t you one to talk? How many years went by that we never heard from you?

  At the word “Dad,” though, I see him running around like crazy, hanging a billion Christmas lights and setting up the enormous blow-up snowman, until the big moment when he flips the switch and Mom and I cheer from the lawn. I miss him, but it’s a complicated missing. The word “Dad” also doubles the sense of wrong that sits just under my skin. We are both guilty. Our mutual wrongdoing is loud between us, and sometimes it just feels better to not hear it. He probably feels the same way about me. Cat-Hair Mary shuts out that particular noise. Well, maybe Henry does too, but never mind.

  I don’t call. Anyway, it’s late. Instead I go over to where the last pixiebell sits on the windowsill. I think of my mother holding one hand to her chest while she tried to breathe, saying, Sharp. She gathered her things—her purse, her phone charger—but she was taking her time about it. Dad was getting impatient. I think he was scared. She said she wanted to shower first, but he said, Anna, for God’s sake! and they argued. She was coughing hard and spitting bad stuff into a Kleenex. Jesus, Anna! What are you thinking! I felt the same way he did. She stopped to wipe the kitchen counter! She watered the damn plant! Mom. Stop it. Everything’s fine. Come on! We both snapped at her. I regret that so much.

  “Pixabellus imponerus, don’t worry,” I say to Pix. “Help is on the way.”

  If this were a movie, Pix would be sitting in a circle of moonlight, and one of its leaves would slowly drop then, turning and falling like one of the rose petals in Beauty and the Beast. You’d know that time was running out.

  But it isn’t a movie, and so the plant just sits there in the dark. I get into bed. I am thinking about Henry. I am being my own selfish self, per usual, closing my eyes and hearing music, remembering mouths, feeling hopeful. You’d have thought I’d have learned something by now. Obviously I haven’t, because in all my prancing in the meadow of love, I don’t even notice that the pixiebell has changed form. Cells are dividing, its stem is shriveling, and something is beginning to grow at its very top, where the last few leaves remain, as I drift off to dreams of hands on piano keys.

  chapter thirteen

  Bhut jolokia: ghost pepper. Specifically, the purple ghost pepper. Seeds of the purple ghost pepper are said to be extremely rare and can be purchased only through black markets and shady online sellers. This purple pepper is reported to be the most elusive and hottest pepper on earth. Only one problem: It’s a fake. While the traditional Bhut jolokia indeed grows one of the hottest peppers, the seeds of the “purple ghost” that are sold are likely from a dif
ferent plant altogether. No such seeds truly even exist.

  He calls me while I am still asleep.

  “I need to see you.”

  “Henry,” I say. I look over at the glowing green numbers on the little clock by the bed. “It’s four thirty in the morning.”

  “We have to talk.”

  “Now?”

  “Tomorrow is fine, I guess. I work at two. Do you want to come by the library?”

  “You’re worrying me,” I say. “Why are you up at four thirty in the morning? You sound so awake.”

  “I have something important to tell you.”

  “Tell me now.” Wait a minute. I don’t know if I want to know what he has to say after all. “No. Don’t tell me. Is it terrible, Henry?”

  “Not terrible. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “It’s all right,” I say. It’s Millicent, I’m sure. That turned-down picture. That scene in the parking lot.

  “You seemed so happy tonight. I feel bad.”

  “I changed my mind again. Tell me.” Dread sneaks up wearing his dark cape, pulls me in. How could Henry love me when I’m such a regular girl? I have no amazing talent. I have no elusive, icy charisma. I have no quirky, embroidered shoes. Mom and I usually just went to Payless ShoeSource, for the Buy One–Get One sale.

  “There’s no such thing as a pixiebell,” Henry says.

  I’ve been clutching my pillow, ready for the blow, and I loosen my grip out of sheer surprise. “What?”

  “I’ve been up all night. I’m almost sure of it. The name. Imponerus? It means ‘impostor.’ ”

  “Wait. You know Latin?”

  Silence. I can almost hear him shrug. “I think your professor was having a little fun with old Grandpa Leopold.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Uh-uh. I knew it the minute you said it, but I’ve been up since, making sure.”

  “If it’s not a pixiebell, what is it?” I scrunch my eyes, try to see Pix in the dark.