Kinship of Clover

by Ellen Meeropol

  The older guy looked at his notebook again. “That would be Timothy Beaujolais?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Timothy gave us a few names of people you were involved with when you stayed with him. So we already know some of your friends.”

  The agent handed Jeremy a page torn from his spiral notebook, the small holes ripped open. Five names were listed in neat handwriting: Greenhope Murphy. Sari Gupta. Carl Goldman. Thomas von Kregg. Mary Matheson.

  Jeremy returned the paper. “Not really friends. More like acquaintances. Greenhope and I were arrested together that day. The others might have been part of the group, but I only went to a few meetings, and we introduced ourselves using first names only.”

  “Quite a coincidence then,” the older agent said softly, “that a few days after your acquaintance Mary Matheson left town there were similar bombings of fossil fuel companies in Oregon and in Brooklyn. That smells like a conspiracy to me.”

  “And why,” asked the younger agent with a slight smirk, “did this acquaintance Mary Matheson, who now happens to be under indictment for terrorism in Oregon, telephone you two days ago?”

  “What?” Jeremy sprang to his feet. “You’re tapping my phone? Is that legal?”

  “Of course not,” the young agent said. “Not yours.”

  “I don’t want to talk with you any more.” Jeremy walked to the apartment door and opened it. “I don’t know anything about any firebombing or what Mary did or didn’t do.” He wanted to cry, but not in front of these smirking men. “I just care about the plants.”

  Zoe sat at the kitchen table, watching the clock, working on the lab report, and eating pizza. She had planned to make a big salad for dinner, but imagining her dad’s disappointment when he returned from the hospital, she ordered pizza instead. Was Jeremy a vegetarian, she wondered? If you loved plants, did you want to eat them?

  Jeremy returned before her father.

  “What did the FBI want?” she asked. “Are you in trouble? Are you okay?”

  “I’m starved.” He stuffed a third of a pizza slice into his mouth.

  “What’s going on?”

  He finished chewing. “It’s so complicated.”

  “I’m not a baby,” she said. “You promised to tell me.”

  “I will,” he said. “I want to. But there are two different things happening. There’s this thing that landed me at Health Services twice in three months. And now the FBI. So I don’t know where to start.”

  His expression was so forlorn, as if his face threatened to crumple. Zoe reached across the table and pulled a strand of cheese from his chin. “When I was little,” she said, “my dad called stringy things ‘lurgies.’ Cheese threads and okra slime and those long slimy fibers inside bananas.”

  Jeremy laughed. “Please, rescue me from the lurgies.” He reached for another slice.

  She waited.

  “Okay. So the FBI guys wanted me to rat on people I knew in Brooklyn, the people I got arrested with. They’re activists against global warming. The cops think that they were involved with a firebombing on Earth Day. I think I heard the explosion when I was being arrested.”

  “Were they involved?”

  Did he hesitate or did she imagine that?

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Were these the same people you heard talking about Molotov cocktails?”

  “I don’t know if I heard them right. Or if they did anything,” he said again, this time whispering. “Maybe they just talked about it.” He paused. “And then there’s Mary.”

  “The one who called herself an eco-terrorist, right? And then was arrested for bombing something?”

  “Yeah. She called me two nights ago and said she named names, of a couple of people from the Brooklyn group. Those same two people who, might have, been talking about, you know. She said she did it because she’s a single mom. Her kid is nine. That’s how old I was, when … it all happened in my family.”

  “What about you? Did she give them your name?”

  “No. She said she didn’t.” He paused. “But she called me and the FBI was monitoring her phone, and now they know she called me.”

  Sam’s footsteps on the outside staircase startled them both and they leaned back in their chairs. Zoe mimed a zipping gesture across her lips.

  “We saved you some pizza,” Zoe told her father. “How’s Grandma?”

  Sam took two bites before answering. “Good news and bad news. The excellent news is that she’s more alert and they’ve been able to take out some of the tubes.”

  “That’s great,” Zoe said. “Can I call her?”

  “Not quite that alert. Not yet. And the nurse said her heart rhythm problem has resolved.” He shook his head. What did that mean, resolved? Gone away forever? Been banished to under the bed for a day or two? Why didn’t they speak English?

  “And the bad news?” Zoe asked.

  “The bad news is that she won’t take her medicines. Or eat. Or drink.”

  Zoe looked at the pizza box on the table. “What about her brain? Can she talk and think and everything?”

  “I don’t know. Mostly she lies there with her eyes closed and I wish I knew what’s she’s thinking.” Was she thinking about Charlie? About his maybe-father? “In any case, there’s not much more the hospital can do. She’ll be discharged in a few days.”

  “Back to Hillside?” Zoe asked.

  “Not exactly,” Sam said. “To the nursing home on the top of the hill.”

  “Hilltop. But that’s temporary, right? Just until she’s better?”

  “I don’t know, Zoe. I don’t know if she’s going to get better.”

  Sunday morning, Jeremy insisted on taking the bus back to school.

  “You sure you’re ready to go?” Zoe asked. She wasn’t ready for him to leave.

  “I’m fine,” Jeremy said. “I’ve got my first session with Patty tomorrow morning and Tuesday is the one final exam I’m ready to take. I want to finish as much make-up work as possible before they kick me out of the dorm.”

  “Come on,” Sam said. “I’ll give you a lift to the bus station.”

  Zoe hugged him. “Come back next weekend,” she whispered. “You promised to tell me the rest of the story.”

  The other reason Jeremy needed to return to school was his brother. They Skyped every Sunday evening at 8:00 and he’d left his laptop at school. It was their one dependable brotherly connection, trumping their conflicting academic interests, opinions, and temperament. Trudging up the hill to his dorm, Jeremy realized that for the first time he couldn’t share everything in his life with his twin. Was there a way to disagree about most things that matter and still be close?

  As he cut through the parking lot and walked around the corner to his dorm, he noticed the woman sitting on the stone steps, hunched over and hugging her knees. Wisps of pink hair escaped the brown felt cloche pulled low over her face. Uh-oh. He considered turning back, but Greenhope saw him. She stood and walked quickly toward him.

  “We’ve got to talk,” she said, taking his arm. “Privately.”

  “Not here.” Jeremy brushed her arm away. “I’m already in enough trouble. The FBI came to my parents’ apartment.” He started walking into the parking lot.

  She hurried to catch up with him. “They questioned me too,” she said. “All of us. They’ve convened a grand jury and subpoenaed Carl and Sari to testify.”

  Jeremy stopped walking and looked at her. “You don’t think Carl and Sari …”

  “Had anything to do with the firebombing?” she finished his sentence. “I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

  He didn’t mention the burrito bar, or Sari’s backpack, or Mary’s phone call.

  “I want to tell you about something, but I’ve got to move quickly. Is there an ATM around here? I need cash and then I’m on my way.”

  “In the lobby of my dorm,” he said, pointing across the parking lot.

  “Listen.” Her voice cracked. �
��There’s really bad shit happening, ecologically, much worse than the FBI hassling us. Moose are dying off in huge numbers, and certain kinds of fish. And I’ve heard there’s something else, some environmental crisis, like the honeybee colony collapse disorder, but bigger. I think it has to do with trees and fungicides but the big corporations have blacked out the news reports.”

  “Sudden Oak Death,” Jeremy said. “But I don’t think there’s any conspiracy.”

  In the lobby, she inserted her card into the ATM, then stuffed the bills into her pocket. She took a deep breath and turned to face Jeremy.

  “A few of us are seriously freaked out about everything that’s happening and we’re going north. To get away from the investigation, and start a community. We’re going to save seeds, grow our food and preserve it. A self-sufficient community that’s totally off the grid.”

  “How?” Jeremy asked. “And where?” He couldn’t decipher his emotions. Was he tempted or disdainful, impressed or scornful?

  “Vermont,” she whispered. “Northeast Kingdom. My parents own land there. Not under their own names, so hopefully no one can find us. My folks were part of the back-to-the-land movement up there in the seventies.”

  “Really? Your parents were hippies?” Maybe he and Greenhope had more in common than he thought.

  “How do you think I got a name like Greenhope?”

  Jeremy laughed, but Greenhope stopped him with an intense look and a hand on his cheek. “Come with me?” she asked softly.

  For a split-second he was tempted. Her hand offered more than friendship. At least, he thought it did. And wouldn’t it be sweet to escape the culture of greed and doom, to really live their beliefs? But what about Zoe, and all those plant species in peril. And there was Tim—and a Skype date in thirty minutes—and, even, his parents.

  “I can’t,” he said. “Not right now anyway. There’s too much going on here. But I’d like to keep in touch. You know, in case I change my mind in a few months or something?”

  She shook her head. “No cell phones, no computers. We don’t want the feds or anyone else to be able to track us down.”

  Jeremy stepped back. “Good luck,” he said.

  Watching her walk away, he wondered if he made the right choice. There was something very attractive about her plan. And what was it that Flo said, about making sure you could live with your actions, even if you didn’t win? When you were stuck and confused in the middle of things, how could you possibly know how you’d feel when the smoke cleared?

  He checked his watch. Time to Skype. If only he had the kind of brother he could ask about these things. If only he could ask Tim’s opinion and expect a reasonable conversation about it.

  Tim sat at his desk and opened his laptop. He looked forward to these conversations with Jeremy and dreaded them, both at the same time. These days, Jeremy was a minefield and Tim had to step carefully, avoiding potentially explosive topics that could detonate in their almost identical faces.

  He opened the Skype program and clicked on Jeremy’s photo icon, listening to the musical dialing. Then quickly he re-angled the screen so that the wall empty of posters was no longer in view. Not that he had ever invited Jeremy into his bedroom, but who knows, maybe he snooped during his Brooklyn weeks. Tim wasn’t sure he could explain why he took down the X-Men posters. Or why he sometimes felt bereft with their torn remains folded in the bottom drawer of his bureau, under his high school yearbook and other relics of childhood.

  Even the threat of explosion didn’t lessen Tim’s pleasure when Jeremy’s face appeared on the screen. “Hey, bro,” he said.

  Jeremy smiled too, although it didn’t reach beyond his mouth. “Hey.”

  “What’s up? Trouble in paradise?”

  Jeremy looked sincerely puzzled at that. “Huh?”

  Tim laughed. “Mom says you’re spending a lot of time with wheelchair girl. A ‘hot romance,’ she said.”

  “You called Mom? Alert the media!”

  Tim made a face, but he would allow Jeremy to change the subject. His brother had never been very good with women. He was probably embarrassed about dating a cripple. “Nah. Mom called me. And you know she’s got to be majorly worried to contact the twin who doesn’t give a damn. She said you’re still having those dead plant visions?”

  Jeremy shrugged. His reluctance to talk was visible on every part of his face.

  “… She said the FBI followed you up there?”

  “Yeah. Thanks for giving them my address. These were the local feds and they came to Mom and Dad’s apartment. You can imagine how well that went down. They said you gave them names of the people in the Earth Day group. Thanks a lot, bro.”

  “They would have gotten them anyway,” Tim said. He did have a small pang of regret about supplying the names. But his business school scholarship could be revoked so easily. Just a phone call to the dean, really. And global warming was a running joke in his classes, a pathetic left-wing conspiracy to attack the business community. “That’s what you get, anyway, for getting involved with those eco-nuts.”

  Jeremy shook his head. “You’ve still got your head stuck deep in the sand, don’t you? Well, this is important, an epidemic keystone species die-off. Big enough that the government is suppressing the news. Greenhope and bunch of the others are going off to …” Jeremy stopped abruptly and he blushed deeply.

  “What?”

  “It’s just … My phone is tapped. So this computer probably is too.”

  “The feds probably already know everything, bro. They’ve got all this neat technology to keep tabs on troublemakers,” Tim said. “Like your friends.”

  Like his brother, Tim thought. But Jeremy was silent, so Tim continued. There had to be some way to drum some sense into his thick skull. “Greenhope came over last night, asked me how to find you at UMass. I knew she was strange, but not that strange.”

  “Don’t knock it, Tim, just because you don’t see the whole picture.”

  “What I see, bro, is you trying to replicate the demented family we grew up in. Creating another fucking pie-in-the-sky commune opting out and growing food. That’s what I see and it makes me sick.”

  And it did. It made Tim nauseous, because his brother was too far gone to listen to reason. He shook his head, hard, and reached for the keyboard.

  “Let me try to explain it to you,” Jeremy said.

  “I can’t.” Tim pressed the hang-up icon. The screen went blank.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The cat curled up warm against Flo’s feet. She wiggled her toes against his solid presence, against his jackhammer purring that vibrated through the weave of the blanket and into her thick yellow socks with no-slip patches on the soles. His respirations rose and fell and she felt every breath push through her worn-out skin and into her blood, carrying feline comfort to her comfort-hungry cells. Charlie was way too smart to die in a fire, whatever they said. Charlie would have nosed open a window and jumped to safety, or crawled through a ventilation shaft like on that television program Brad used to like, where they were always escaping certain doom to complete a mission.

  She opened her eyes. She was in a bed, propped up on pillows so she could look around, but it was not her room. A bedside table with a blue plastic tub. A water pitcher and cup with a straw. She looked away. These were not her things. This room was wrong. Quiet and dim, with two beds, the other empty. Just her and the cat.

  The cat was wrong too; he was black with white boots. Charlie was gray and much smaller. Charlie always slept tight against her chest, so she could feel the tremble of his purring directly into her heart.

  Charlie was dead in the fire. She remembered the smoke. She remembered the “Cook with Honey” music, how the ghosts danced her around the living room and then smoke was in the honey and in her eyes and in her mouth.

  She closed her eyes and floated. Her body felt airy and light, tethered to the bed only by the vibrations of the cat, each rumble in sync with her own heartbeat.

/>   Sam drove the winding driveway to the top of the hill. The nursing home overlooked the river, with an unobstructed view of the city to the south and conservation land to the west. When Flo was admitted Monday afternoon, her nurse told him that in a week or two the spring-swollen river would be so raucous that his mother would want to keep her window closed. He hoped Flo would be back to her cranky self by then; if she complained about the loud rush of river, he’d gladly open and close her window a thousand times.

  The brick walls of the building were gloomy in the afternoon shadow. He parked the car, killed the engine and sat there, not getting out, not wanting to deal with it all. An orderly waved as he walked by on the paved pathway, pushing a gnome-like resident in a wheelchair. He felt ashamed about procrastinating and climbed out of the car, gathering Flo’s clean laundry and a plastic tub of chicken soup Zoe made. “Of course she’ll eat chicken soup,” Zoe had insisted.

  He hesitated for a few moments at the fork in the sidewalk. Waiting to sign the admission papers two days before, he’d studied the large aerial map in the nursing home hallway, so he knew that the smaller path led into the wooded river view area, to a gazebo in a clearing. Another time, he thought.

  After the cacophony of the hospital, the quiet of the nursing home was startling. Soft music from the activities room replaced the beeping monitors. Food carts wouldn’t click on these carpeted hallways. If only his mother would eat, drink. How long could she last without food and water? Maybe he could ask Emily about that, for her professional opinion. Or maybe that Patty, at UMass. She had been so easy to talk to. And Jeremy seemed to trust her.

  He hesitated in the doorway to his mother’s room. The light was dim. Flo was motionless in the first bed, the one farther from the window, her eyes closed. A large black cat slept in a puddle of sunlight near her feet.

  Mimi sat at the bedside. She put her index finger to her lips and pointed at Flo’s hands. “Watch,” she whispered.

  The bed covers were pulled up to Flo’s chin, but her hands had escaped from the confinement of the fabric. Her fingers moved rhythmically along the tender loops of pink chenille. Her knuckles were swollen, the skin shiny and red, but her fingers tapped and jumped and danced over the blanket.