The Last Forever

by Deb Caletti

  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 h
ouse, 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.

  This is what I imagine now: Grandfather Leopold, walking home in his overcoat after that party, his breath puffing clouds into the cold night air, his leather-gloved hands in his pockets, one finger tapping the seed case now deep in the satin lining of his pocket. He is whistling. His mustache is white with frost. Snow begins to fall, landing on his wide shoulders and the brim of his hat. That night, he can barely sleep, and in the morning he rises and putters with his coffee and scrambled eggs, prolonging the excitement of what is going to happen next. The seed sits on his bureau like a jewel in a box. The snow, which has blanketed the city, is no obstacle to what he has in mind today. Because his kitchen windowsill is warm. It is near his large stove and the curved, accordion iron of the room’s radiator.

  He washes his cup and plate and fork and lays them out to dry on a kitchen towel. He can’t bear the anticipation any longer. He climbs the stairs and carries the case with the seed back to the kitchen. He has already placed a pot in the sink, filled with scoops of the good soil from the large palm in the living room. He holds the seed between his thumb and forefinger. One and only, he thinks. Rare.

  These seeds—the ones I am now gazing at on the outside of this singular strawberry that Pix has grown, are the progeny of that one tiny speck that Grandfather Leopold gently placed in the soil of that blue terra-cotta pot. There are hundreds of seeds on this fruit. The way life goes on, it seems like a miracle, even if a devastating one.

  We have been waiting for it to ripen, and now that it has, Henry and I have debated when it should be picked. After it is picked, Pix will die. Henry has been saying, Now, and I have been saying, Not now, but I know it’s time. We can’t wait too long. Jenny has suggested that we celebrate the night we pick the berry. It sounds corny, like one of those things people do—a Celebration of Life when someone dies: doves set free, sappy music, bad poems, and school project-ish posters with sad photos of happy times set on easels.

  Still. What is there to do in the face of it?

  I call Henry. “Now,” I say.

  * * *

  Pix is in the center of Jenny’s dining room table, which I’ve told you before is made out of a huge old door. The door of some barn, my father has told me. Pix looks like the guest at the party, the honoree, the Plant of the Hour. Jenny has cut flowers from the garden and placed them around the house, which is perhaps a wrong way to honor a plant, akin to eating bacon at a pig party. My father has put on some music. Jenny still has records and a record player. He plays Jenny’s old hippie stuff—Blood, Sweat & Tears; Three Dog Night; Simon & Garfunkel—shouting out the names of each just before it plays. He is dancing to “Cecilia,” a song about this guy finding his girlfriend in bed with another guy. Dad knows the words and is singing along. I don’t care how old you are; watching your parent dance makes you cringe inside a little. Or, after that pelvis swivel he just did, a lot.

  “Jesus, Dad,” I say.

  “What?”

  I show a great deal of restraint and keep my mouth shut and my eyes averted. Jenny is making chicken and dumplings and I leave to help her in the kitchen. But then the doorbell rings, and Vito, well, you know what Vito does when the doorbell rings, and Dad rushes to get it before me. He’s ridiculously excited when Henry comes over—Dad, not Vito, though Vito is too. Dad loves Henry. Maybe he even loves him more than I do. Now that Dad is not stoned half the time, I realize he’s enthusiastic about practically everything. Not just old TV shows and politics and mammoth craters made in the earth a jillion years ago, but about ancient composers and Roman philosophers. Planetary orbits and hieroglyphics. The northern lights of Longyearbyen, Svalbard, and seed formation. He and Henry are a match made in heaven. I am beginning to understand what my mother saw in him when they first met. The world opens up with someone like that.

  My father actually flings the door wide. There is a great deal of back patting. My father finally releases Henry from his manly grasp, and Henry kisses my cheek. He is holding a present. It is a box with a red bow. My father gestures him inside and shows him where to set it—on the coffee table in front of the big white couch with the enormous painting of trees behind it. On it is something I hadn’t seen yet. Another box. A smaller one, another bow. You wouldn’t think someone was dying here. The party atmosphere feels wrong.

  “Almost like it’s my birthday,” I say. I’ve been dropping birthday references to Henry ever since Elijah told me about the surprise party a few days ago. I pointed out cakes at the Front Street Market when we went in to get a soda. I told him I had the same birthday as President Kennedy and Mother Teresa, which isn’t even true. I asked him if he ever read his horoscope.

  “Horrorscope,” he replied, but didn’t say more. Coming out
and asking might give away the surprise of the party, but I was getting more and more annoyed. Most likely, knowing Henry, he just didn’t want to draw attention to himself. But I know him. I wouldn’t go buy some Happy 18th, Henry Lark message to play on the JumboTron during a Mariners’ game. He should trust me.

  “Pix party!” my father says. He likes the sound of this, apparently, because he’s said it about five times now.

  “Homage,” Henry says, giving me reason number infinity to love him.

  “Henry Lark,” Jenny says, coming out of the kitchen. She kisses him on the cheek, which is the warmest she’s been to him yet. Whatever grudge she held against him seems to be fading. He probably picked some apples from her tree when he was six.

  “You married your mother,” I say to Dad, but no one is following along with my thoughts again, and so the comment floats away amid shoulder shrugs of incomprehension and Oh wells.

  “You guys can set the table,” Jenny says. The music stops suddenly, and Dad leaves to turn the record over. There are songs on both sides of those things, set down in thin, lined ridges, which seems even more incredible than music playing on computers.

  “Too bad there’s no piano,” I say to Henry.

  He thinks. “Tchaikovsky. Symphony no. 6. Pathétique. Requiem; impending death. Plus he lost his mother when he was fourteen. Plus—”

  My father interrupts. He’s listening in. “Rock ’n’ roll’s got us covered.” There is the scratchy sound of needle hitting vinyl. And then, “Let It Be,” by the Beatles.

  Stupid song. I hate that song. I could be at the happiest carnival, riding the happiest elephant ride and eating the happiest, tallest pink cotton candy, and one note of that song could choke me up.

  “Silverware, people,” Jenny commands. But I catch her. She is wiping her eyes with the corner of a paper towel.

  * * *

  Henry sets his napkin by his plate. I push my own away. I’m stuffed. I can barely move.