“Of course you wouldn’t,” Kevin says, smirking at her.
“We can write down some instructions,” Jill tells me, ignoring Kevin.
My mom stands up from the table and makes an announcement. A pointed one, in Jill’s direction.
“You know,” she says, “this is so kind of you to help. But at the moment, I think we need to make a family plan. For arrangements.”
The hint is clear—but it is not taken.
“You’re right,” Kevin says, and he and Jill grab chairs from the kitchen and set them up near the dining room table.
Seth smirks at this, as do Chris and I. Mom not so much.
Then, with everyone around the long table—Grandma’s chosen family in place—it looks like some sort of Game of Thrones military planning session.
Chris pokes at my arm to slide his chair closer to mine, making room for our new friends. I am close enough to inhale him. I close my eyes when the smell of him hits me.
Mom looks at the two of us, eyeing me with a question in her head, and I’m angry. If she saw me more often, she’d know there’s nothing going on here.
Seth shifts his chair so that it’s inch closer to mine than my mom’s. I don’t know why, but it means everything. It feels like we’re a team.
“Okay. So . . . does everyone know?” Mom says, swallowing. “Have we made all the necessary phone calls?”
“No one called us,” Jill says.
We’re sheepish.
“I’m sorry. I should have gone through her phone. That’s on me,” I say. “I know how much she loves you guys.”
“Don’t spend a second feeling bad about that,” Jill says. “Your grandma was texting from the hospital, and when she stopped, we started calling to get her patient condition. Kevin called last, and then—he told us.”
Kevin’s eyes get red at the memory.
“I called the Feldbergs,” Seth says.
“Oh god—the Feldbergs,” Mom says with an eye roll, and at least we can all agree about that.
“Who are the Feldbergs?” Chris whispers.
“My second cousins,” I say.
“They’re my second cousins, twice removed,” Seth says.
“I thought they were Great Aunt Susan’s kids,” Mom says.
“Grandma knows who they are,” I say.
Then it’s weird, because she’s not there to explain it to us. Perhaps we’ll never know who the Feldbergs are.
“We arranged the cremation,” I tell Mom, to move the conversation along.
“When will we be able to pick up the ashes?” she asks.
“Cremains,” Seth and I say at the same time, and then burst out laughing.
Mom gives us a confused look.
“They’re called cremains,” Seth tells her. “No one says ashes anymore, Becca. We can get the cremains tomorrow.”
“Okay then,” she says, annoyed by our inside joke collusion. “Does the funeral home provide an urn for the cremains?”
“Grandma doesn’t want to be in an urn,” I say, already defensive. “She wrote in her will that she wants to be placed near things that grow.”
“Oh,” Mom says. Her voice is small. “She said that? In those words?”
“I can show you,” I say.
“No, I believe you. It’s just . . . well, it’s beautiful.” Mom stares at the table.
“You okay, Mom?” I ask. As much as I don’t always like her, I love her, and her mom just died.
“‘Things that grow,’” Mom says. “You know, there are some beautiful gardens near Bill’s house in Maryland. Where did you take me on our second date, Bill?”
“Brookside Gardens,” Bill says without looking up from his phone.
“We’re not bringing Grandma to Maryland,” I snap.
“Please don’t yell at me,” Mom says.
“Sorry,” I say. “It’s just that she made a list. We know exactly where she wants to be. It’s not just any place with plants. She had favorite gardens.”
“Okay, then,” Mom says, on the defense.
I know she feels left out of the loop. But that’s what you get when you show up late.
“We’re going to take her to each place on her list,” Seth explains before I can respond. “We have four boxes of her to scatter. We might as well bring her to all her favorite places.”
“Four boxes?” Mom asks, surprised. “Why are there four boxes of ashes?”
“Cremains,” Seth and I say again.
Mom glares at us and waits for an explanation. There isn’t a great one.
At Walsh’s, after we’d been given the basic information about cremation—and a price of $1,400, which seems like a lot of money to blow on something—we were asked how we wanted to split the cremains.
“How many boxes?” Mr. Walsh had said.
“You put it in boxes?” Seth had asked.
“If you’re not storing the cremains in an urn—if you plan to scatter your loved one—we pack the contents into a thick plastic bag and place the bag inside a cardboard box. We can prepare the cremains in one box or split them into multiple boxes. Some families choose a few boxes so they can share the cremains or take them to more than one location.”
“Does it cost more to get more than one box?” I asked.
“No. It’s all covered under one price,” Mr. Walsh said.
“Then we’ll take the maximum number of boxes, obviously,” Uncle Seth said with confidence.
“We will?” I asked my uncle.
“It’s the best deal, right?” Seth said. “Why wouldn’t we get all the boxes we can.”
“I don’t want fifty tiny boxes of Grandma Sheryl,” I said. “That’s kind of gross, don’t you think?”
“It’s not going to be fifty,” Seth responded, and then turned to Mr. Walsh. “It’s not, right?”
“It would only be four,” Mr. Walsh said. “Our maximum is four.”
“Then we want four,” Seth said.
It sounded reasonable at the time—four small boxes of cremains to bring to beautiful locations—but Mom clearly thinks we’ve overdone it.
“It seems a little unnecessary to bring her to four different places,” Mom says. “Could we bring all the boxes to one place? The best place on her list? That way it feels like there’s a real monument to her life. One tree—or park. Is one of the gardens more—I don’t know—interesting than the others?”
“She went to the trouble of making the list,” I say, “and all the gardens are close by. And . . . I don’t want Grandma to have to sit with the same scenery for eternity.”
I’m speaking like I believe in something—as if I buy into the idea that the spirit of my dead grandmother will be present to experience the plants around her incinerated body, and for a second, I wonder if I do.
I do believe in some things. I absolutely believe there is alien life elsewhere in the universe—because to assume otherwise is narcissism. I also believe there is power and energy in the world that we can’t see. Like the way I sometimes know that Chris is in a room before I can see him. Like the way I can tell when he’s looking at me. I believe that love gives you a sixth and maybe seventh sense.
But I do not believe in heaven or hell, or that there are rules when it comes to death. I don’t believe that if you get your ears pierced, you’ve screwed up a lifetime of being Jewish.
At least I don’t think I do.
But after extensive googling, there was one Jewish thing that seemed real to me. A rule I wanted to follow.
“I think it’s important that we bring Grandma’s remains to these gardens sooner than later,” I say. “Grandma asked to be cremated, which is not a very Jewish thing to do, but I think we should follow the rules about timing. Jews are really specific about not waiting to bury people. Technically, we should be putting her in the ground right now. Or tomorrow, because I guess today is Shabbat. We should scatter the boxes as quickly as possible.”
“I’ve never understood why we Jews do funerals so quickly,” Seth says
. “Is there an actual reason—or is it just because Jews don’t do a wake, so we don’t have to dress the body up and put on stage makeup?”
“I’d be really good at doing funeral makeup,” I say. “I could make dead bodies look so great.”
Chris coughs through his discomfort, but I also know I’ve probably given him an idea for an illustration.
“I don’t see a need to rush any of this, Lori,” Mom says. “The wonderful thing about cremation is that we can wait to scatter her ashes until it feels right. We have so many things to do over the next few weeks. I know you don’t want to talk about this right now . . . but the reality is that we are going to have to pack up this place and move you. I know that everyone wants to take their time, but it’s August and there’s school. We really can’t wait. Although . . . this house will be a project.”
Mom looks around at the books and tiny sculptures and closets, which we all know are packed with clothes as well as a generation’s worth of belongings.
“We can’t even think about selling it before we get rid of all of this stuff,” she says. “I should start dumping and organizing things while I’m here. We all should.”
“You know I get the books, right?” Seth says. “The books are mine.”
“I’m not trying to take your books,” Mom says. “I want you to have her things. I have to be back for coaching sessions by Tuesday, but Seth, if you can stay for the next few days, we can come up again at the end of the week. Bill, when we get home, we’ll have to clean out that guest room closet for Lori. Bill, are you listening? Bill!”
I’m sure my face is blank as I listen to this. I can’t process it.
“Bill, what’s the name of the school she’ll go to?”
“Atholton High School,” he says, looking up from his phone. “I’ll google the public school start date right now.”
“Thank you.”
They are going to pull me out of my high school and away from my friends. They are going to make me go to—
“Wait, what is it called?” I ask.
“Atholton High School,” Bill says.
“Asshole-Town?” Seth says.
“Atholton. With a t-h,” Bill says.
“Great,” I say. “Wonderful.”
“Lori, I’m really excited to have you with us in the house,” Bill says, which is nice, but it doesn’t make this any better. I imagine Grandma Sheryl telling me that things look different after you take just one full breath, so I do.
“Can we get back to the cremains for a sec?” I say, not wanting to face the reality of how my life will be uprooted over the next week. “You know, there’s a very specific reason Jewish people do funerals quickly,” I say, and Mom gives me a questioning look. I’ve had no Jewish education, and suddenly I sound like WikiJew.
“Jews bury people quickly, Mom, because between death and burial, the soul is unsettled. Expelled from its home,” I say, and my voice sounds a little bit like the rabbi I watched in an online tutorial I found on some website. “The body must be returned to the earth in order for the soul to be at peace.”
Everybody, even Chris, goes quiet and stares at me.
“Did you just get possessed?” Seth asks.
“No, really!” I continue. “I’ve done a lot of Jewish research in the last day, and I buy into a lot of it. I don’t want to wait on this. Jewish people believe that the soul can’t get into heaven until the body is buried. It’s just stranded out there, floating.”
“I thought Jews didn’t even believe in heaven and hell,” Seth says.
“Well, the website talked about heaven.”
“What was this website?” Seth says, smiling.
“BuryyourJewishgrandmadotcom,” I joke. “I don’t remember. It was a legit website, though, I swear. It had Hebrew on it.”
“Catholic people cremate,” Bill says, placing his phone face-down on the table. “We cremated my grandparents, but we still buried them. They’re in a family plot in Virginia. The priest told me it was okay, as long as the body was buried.” Then he lights up. “Here’s a fun fact—my grandparents are in the same cemetery as Patsy Cline!”
I don’t know who that is, but Bill seems thrilled about it. We give him weak smiles, but no one responds.
“What are the gardens on Mom’s list?” Mom asks, sounding exhausted, like we’re putting her out.
I shoot up from my chair and run to Grandma’s bedroom to grab the will. Then I bring it to Seth, and the Garden Girls jump out of their chairs to stand behind him. This is what they were waiting for.
Jill clutches her heart and lets out a gasp. “Oh, my sweet, dear Sheryl,” she says.
“What?” I say.
“This list is lovely,” Jill says. “We went to these places together. Kev, look—she’s got The Mount here.”
Kevin takes Jill’s hand. “Of course she does. And look—her favorite Tapestry Garden, although Lord knows how you’re going to get her there.”
Before I can ask about these places, Mom speaks up.
“If you don’t mind, Jill—Garden Girls, all of you, I have a bit of a migraine, and I think I need to talk to my family in private for a bit.”
I give her my angriest look. These people were Grandma’s closest friends, and to kick them out—I can’t believe she’s being so rude.
“No, of course,” Jill says. “We understand. Come on, girls.”
“I guess that means I should go too,” Chris says, and then I’m really furious.
“Chris, you don’t have to—”
“No, Lor, it’s cool. I’ll just run upstairs and grab my stuff.”
And with that, the Garden Girls follow Jill to the door and I see them out.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Jill.
“Don’t be,” she says. “We don’t want to overstay, and we’ll come back to check on the plants, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course,” I tell her. “Please do.”
“In the meantime,” Jill says, “Rochelle, do you have the book?”
“Oh yes,” the glamorous Rochelle says, and reaches into her navy woven bag to retrieve a shiny paperback edition of An Illustrated World of Plants and Flowers.
“It’s your grandmother’s,” Rochelle explains. “I was borrowing it.”
“It looks familiar,” I say, taking it.
“Yes,” Deb says. “It was her favorite field guide. If you have questions about what you have in the house, what you see at gardens, you’ll learn a lot from this.”
“Thanks,” I say, and I feel as if I’m holding something more important than the Torah.
“Keep us posted, my sweet,” Jill says, squeezing my shoulder.
Kevin approaches me. “Do you have your phone?”
I take it from my pocket and hand it to him. He thumbs work fast as he enters information.
“This is us,” he says when he’s done. “Text us with any questions, and let us know . . . let us know where she is, okay?”
He’s crying now, and I say, “okay,” as he wooshes past me out the door.
“Girls!” I hear him yell, his voice harsh. “Take me home. It’s too much.”
They crowd around him, arms around shoulders as they disappear down the driveway.
* * *
Determined, I return to the dining room.
“Here’s the thing, Mom,” I say before she can start. “I know we have to deal with a lot of stuff. But I want to bring Grandma to her favorite places. All of them. Now.”
“Lori, I’m not saying—” she starts, but I cut her off.
“You’re the spiritual one, Mom. You of all people should get it. I need to put her to rest.”
Seth sits up straighter, his brown eyes bright, and I can tell he’s with me.
“She’s right,” he says. “Mom wanted this. She listed four gardens, and we have four boxes. We have at least a week before Lori starts school—somewhere. If you have career coaching sessions with your clients, go home. I can take Lori to the gardens. We can bring M
om around and deposit her with things that grow, just like she asked. I can even get going on packing up the house.”
Mom holds her geode chain again.
“This won’t take us long,” Seth continues. “Go clear out her new room. Sign her up for Asshole Academy.”
“Atholton,” Bill whispers.
“Meanwhile,” Seth says, “Lori and I will get this done. She doesn’t want Mom to linger in Jewish purgatory, and neither do I.”
He reaches for my hand across the table, which is dramatic, but I like it.
“I never get time with my niece. Mom would want this—she’d want us to do this together. Lori and I will scatter the boxes. Go home, Becca. We’ve got this.”
“Don’t you have to get back to New York, Seth?” Mom asks. “When do you start teaching? What about Ethan?”
These are fair questions. Seth teaches writing at a bunch of colleges around the city, which is his main job, other than working on his third novel for a long time.
Uncle Seth waves off Mom’s question.
“The classes are online,” he tells her. “It’s a syllabus I’ve taught a bunch of times. And Ethan can fend for himself. Honestly, we don’t need to be so . . . on top of each other all the time.”
It’s a dig at my mother’s relationships. I appreciate it.
“Really, Becca, if Lori doesn’t want to pick up and run to some random town in Maryland days after her grandmother died, she shouldn’t have to. You’re not the one who gets to decide how we get closure. I want to distribute the four boxes now, too.”
“These gardens are all local? You could visit them this week?” Mom asks.
Seth places the list of gardens in front of Mom so she can see it. She gets quiet, and her eyes are glassy. I know it’s weird for her to see her mother’s handwriting. It was so hard for us too.
Mom reads the local sites aloud.
“Arnold Arboretum. Tapestry Garden. The Mount. Brayton House (Rhode Island).
“Oh, sweetie, I’d love for you to see the arboretum,” Mom continues.
“I’ve seen it a bunch of times,” I say before I realize that she’s talking to Bill, not me.
“What a beautiful place for the craisins,” Mom adds.
The room gets quiet, and then Seth and I explode with laughter. Bill is trying to keep it in, but he can’t.
Things That Grow Page 5
