Things That Grow

by Meredith Goldstein

  “We didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just rocks, basically,” I tell her. “It’s basically fertilizer. It decomposes. My grandma loved it so much here. We wanted to honor her. I’m so sorry.”

  “My husband is back here!” Mrs. Coffin says, and that’s when what we’ve done sinks in for Seth, as if he’s seeing the world around him for the first time today. He drops to his knees and tries to help me, but I push his hands away. For the first time in my life, I am mad at him.

  “Why doesn’t everyone just calm down,” Liam says. “Mom, they’re grieving. Give them a second to get their things and get out of here. They’re not criminals.”

  “Aren’t they? It’s criminal—putting a stranger’s ashes, without permission, near your father!”

  Liam gives Seth an empathetic, apologetic glance.

  “Stop looking at him like that!” Mrs. Coffin says, which makes Liam’s face turn red.

  “Mrs. Coffin,” Seth says, his voice smooth again, his regret suddenly clear, “and you too, Liam, I’m so sorry. This was . . . well, I’m an adult, and this was disrespectful. Please don’t blame Lori. I should be setting some sort of example. Why my mother put this garden on the list is a mystery, but I should have turned around as soon as we realized it was in a private home.

  “The truth is . . . her death doesn’t feel real. These ashes don’t seem real. Never in a million years did I think I’d be in someone’s backyard doing what I’m doing. But this was her wish, and I wanted to do it right.”

  It’s kind of a lie. Grandma never mandated that we go to all four gardens. It was a list of options. Tapestry Garden was never essential.

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t allow it,” Mrs. Coffin says.

  “Of course,” I say.

  She wipes her teary, less angry eyes, and Seth nods. She doesn’t forgive us, but she no longer looks like she wants to bring us to trial. The mulch under the flowers is a little messy now, but the ashes have fully been removed. Our bag holds a mix of soil and cremains.

  “We’ll leave,” Seth says.

  “Do you mind my asking where your husband is?” I say to Mrs. Coffin. I don’t know why I want to know; maybe I want to see how the Coffins did it.

  She points to the exact place where we were putting Grandma Sheryl.

  “I see. Popular spot,” I say, but she doesn’t smile.

  “It gets some lovely light,” she finally responds, although she’s stiff about it.

  We sigh, and Seth has started to walk to the door, so I follow.

  “Do you want to do your reading?” Mrs. Coffin says. She hasn’t moved.

  We turn around and find her looking less scary, less furious.

  “You’re here,” she says directly to me. I think she’d like to make Seth disappear, but she doesn’t seem to hate me. “You might as well read your passage, assuming you were telling the truth about that part of your story.”

  “That’s really kind of you,” Seth says.

  She doesn’t acknowledge him, but tells me, “Come sit,” and we all find a place on the two benches in Tapestry Garden.

  “You won’t mind if we stay to supervise,” she adds.

  I smile. Of course we are not trusted to be alone. And I don’t want to be alone with Seth right now.

  I reach into my backpack and take out the Dorothy Parker anthology.

  “That’s not what I expected,” Mrs. Coffin says.

  “What did you expect?” Liam asks.

  “A prayer? A Jewish reading?” she says.

  I smile.

  “My grandma was an English teacher, and she was a big Dorothy Parker fan,” I say. “There’s actually some nice stuff about death in here.”

  “I’d love to hear,” she says.

  I decide that today is not the day for one of Dorothy Parker’s sassy sarcastic poems. This needs to be something classy. Mrs. Coffin deserves that much.

  I flip to a poem called “Little Words.”

  “‘When you are gone,’” I read, “‘there is no bloom nor leaf, Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds; And I can only stare, and shape my grief. In little words.’”

  The poem goes on.

  It’s sad and thoughtful. There’s a line about having a “weary pen” that I totally understand.

  Grandma Sheryl has died, but the world is blooming everywhere. I am tired, and the family is unraveling. All I have are little words.

  “I should read more Dorothy Parker,” Mrs. Coffin says, dabbing her eyes.

  “I should, too,” I say. “What do you like to read, Mrs. Coffin?”

  “Oh, you know, whatever’s popular these days,” she says. “I’m in a book club that just read—oh, what was it . . . HBO made a show about it.”

  Seth makes a face, and I kick his foot.

  “Well, anyway—” she says.

  We all stand and walk to the door and then back through the house.

  “Where will you take her?” Mrs. Coffin asks when we reach the front of the house.

  “The Mount,” Seth says. “That’s another location on her list, so we’ll try there.”

  Mrs. Coffin hasn’t heard of it.

  “It’s Edith Wharton’s home in Western Mass, Mom,” Liam says, and Seth looks impressed.

  “Do you have Edith’s permission?” Mrs. Coffin asks. I think she’s joking, but it’s hard to tell.

  “Again, we’re so sorry,” I say.

  She nods.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Liam whispers after his mother has turned away. “She’ll recover by tonight’s party. Good luck,” he says, giving us a smile as he closes the door.

  Before we go, Seth takes a piece of paper from his wallet, writes something on it, and leaves it in the mailbox.

  “What was that?” I ask.

  “Just a thank-you, with my number,” he says. “I’m making friends.”

  “You don’t need friends,” I say. “You don’t even live here.”

  “Don’t I?” Seth asks.

  I pause.

  “Your mom talked to me this morning,” he tells me. “She told me you’d like me to stay.”

  “Oh,” I say, my brain too busy to say more.

  My bag feels heavier now than it did when we walked in, mostly because I thought it would be lighter on our way out.

  We find the lot where we parked the car, and that’s when we really talk.

  “I’d consider it,” he says. “I guess I am considering it. It would give us more time to deal with the house. I could get so much writing done, away from city distractions. Also, it means a lot that you want me here. I know it’s more that you want to stay around Chris and your high school, but . . . it means plenty that we’d be able to spend time together.”

  “Right,” I say, but it doesn’t come out with as much confidence as I’d like, so I say it again, trying for conviction. “That’s what I want.”

  It is, but after today, the picture looks different.

  Chapter 10

  The sun has started setting a little bit earlier. The light flashes stripes across the kitchen wall as I eat more of Jess’s mom’s noodles at the kitchen counter.

  I check my phone, and there’s nothing on it. This is the most silent it’s ever been. Chris hasn’t messaged, nor has my mom. It feels weird.

  Up until today, Mom had been messaging and calling all day, like any usual week. She’d sent a link to the high school I’d go to if I moved in with her and Bill. That was before I asked her if I could live with Seth.

  Seth has been upstairs showering and on the phone, probably with Ethan. I wonder if he told him the real story about our afternoon.

  Then he runs downstairs and is energetic and smiley—as if we didn’t just have a horrible experience where we got caught dumping Grandma Sheryl’s ashes on private property. He opens the refrigerator door, takes out the container of scallion pancakes, and eats one in a few bites.

  “Yum,” he says, and I don’t know why, but the word annoys me.

  “What ab
out Mount Auburn Cemetery?” he says.

  “For what?” I ask.

  “We’re down a garden. We’ll go to The Mount, but what about a new fourth place? I was googling gardens near Boston, and Mount Auburn Cemetery kept coming up.”

  That’s when I notice what he is wearing.

  It’s a shirt the Garden Girls bought Grandma for one of her birthdays. It was a joke gift, because she’d never actually wear it. It is a bright orange tee that says I WET MY PLANTS.

  “You’re supposed to be donating that stuff, not taking it,” I say.

  “This T-shirt is mine,” he says, grinning.

  It fits him well, like it was meant to be worn by an aging New York hipster writer.

  “Oliver Wendell Holmes is apparently buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery. It’s a beautiful place.”

  “It’s not a garden, though.”

  “Yes it is,” Seth responds. “I went on like forty school field trips there. The whole thing is a big garden. There’s shit growing everywhere.”

  “Yeah—but I don’t know. It’s still a place of death. Like, for death. I think she wanted to be in a place that’s all about life. She basically told us not to put her in a cemetery.”

  “Fair,” Seth said. “We’ll keep thinking.”

  Then it’s clear he’s going out. His wallet is in his back pocket. He has his keys.

  “You’re leaving?” I ask. “In that shirt?’

  He looks down. “I think it’s appropriate enough for the Big Whale.”

  “Ah,” I say, and smile. I guess this is good. If he’s reacquainting himself with the local sites, he’s really thinking about staying. That’s what I want, I remind myself.

  “What if you get there and you don’t know anyone?” I ask.

  “Then I’ll get an IPA and do people watching,” he says.

  Seth is comfortable anywhere.

  It’ll be good for him to see Ethan tomorrow. Maybe they’ll talk about how a year in two cities might work. And Seth must need him by now. My mom has Bill, and I have Chris, but Seth has gone through the loss of his mom—and taking care of me—on his own. Maybe that’s why he was so messy today. He’s lost his compass. Ethan will remind him of how he’s supposed to be.

  The front door shuts behind him.

  I’m restless, walking around the living room and then the kitchen—wrestling with what Grandma Sheryl would call a bad case of shpilkes, which I believe is the Yiddish word for not being able to sit still. That’s when I hear the faint murmurs of conversation.

  I lift the kitchen shade and see them in the backyard. Jill, Kevin, Deb, Rochelle, Lenny. They’re standing in a circle, sort of like it’s a séance.

  I grab my flower book and head out the back door to join them.

  Jill notices me first.

  “There she is,” she announces.

  “The beautiful Lori,” Kevin says, which is hilarious because I’m in pajamas again and I know I look wrecked.

  I find a space to stand between Rochelle and Lenny, and I see that they are all holding a small piece of a purple flower that’s in bloom. I guess I see that the plant, which is like a wave of color all around the backyard, has been there for a while. How could I have missed it?

  “What plant is this?”

  “Consult your book,” Deb challenges.

  “It’s hard to go page by page,” I say, flipping through it. “You know what would be a good app? Something like the one where you lift your phone up so it can hear a song and then tells you what it is. Someone could do that with plants—like, you could take a picture of a flower and the app would spit back its name.”

  “Good business idea!” Rochelle tells me. Most of the Garden Girls are in shorts and dirty T-shirts for working in the soil, but Rochelle is dressed like a celebrity on an island vacation. She’s in a simple sundress and espadrilles, but she’s just so elegant.

  “What ended up happening today?” Kevin asks.

  I take a deep breath. I could give them the short version—that it didn’t work at Tapestry Garden—but I decide to go long. I tell them about Seth and the ashes and the horror of being caught.

  At one point Lenny covers her mouth with her hand, embarrassed on my behalf, and that makes me ashamed all over again.

  “Seth was weird,” I say. “He couldn’t read the room; there was no way it was okay to leave the ashes there. Not even Mom would have done what he did. It was clear we were trespassing from the start, and he was so . . .”

  “Entitled,” Deb says.

  That’s it. That’s the word I’m looking for.

  After some awkward silence, I say what I’m surprised to admit. “He doesn’t always think of others like most adults do.”

  Rochelle places her hand on my back.

  “It’s a complicated time,” she says. “He’s just lost his mom.”

  “He adores you,” Jill says. “Just like your grandma did.”

  I feel a little better.

  My eyes are back on the book, and the Girls are watching me. Finally I see a page with a flower that matches what’s in their hands.

  “New England aster?” I guess, and they nod. “So it’s local.”

  “Sheryl’d always come out right about now,” Lenny says, her voice thick with feeling. “A brilliant purple.”

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Kevin says, “in light of the talk about trespassing. We’ve made some cuttings so we can plant them at our own homes. It was Lenny’s idea—that we’ll propagate the plant in our own yards.”

  “I love that idea,” I tell them.

  “If you wind up moving,” Jill says, “you can take it with you, too.”

  That’s a nice thought, but I’m not ready to compromise yet.

  “I still might stay,” I say. “Seth . . . I think he and I could do well here together, you know?”

  They nod, just as hopeful.

  I will try to stay hopeful too.

  * * *

  Not long after they’ve gone and I’m back indoors, I wander into the spare room, once my mom’s room, and open the closet. That’s where there’s evidence that my mom did have a life here. There’s a poster for the old boy band New Kids on the Block still taped to the wall inside. Next to it is a poster of some kind of goth band I don’t know. My mom never could decide who she wanted to be.

  Maybe there’s some truth to what she told me about what it was like for her growing up, but I know my grandma didn’t mean to leave her out. I don’t mean to do that either. It’s not my fault that Seth and I have interests that my mom doesn’t share.

  The Garden Girls have made me feel a little better about him and what happened today. He hasn’t had much space to grieve.

  I wish Grandma could see Seth and me like this. Him in this house, taking me everywhere. Him wearing her ridiculous shirt. The two of us googling houseplants so we can keep them alive. I want to tell her everything that happened at Tapestry Garden. I know we didn’t succeed in our mission, but she’d want to hear all about it—about who lives there. I want to ask where she’d send us instead.

  Chapter 11

  I can’t sleep. My inner clock is all messed up, and it doesn’t help that Seth keeps the house at negative degrees. It makes me get up to pee a lot.

  I went to bed early, after a little bit of Poldark—which somehow I’m starting to like—but now it’s just after eleven and I am all-caps awake. Also, I’m alone. Seth hasn’t returned.

  I will not text Chris. I want to prove to myself that I can make it one full day without communicating with him. Just in case.

  I can’t text Jessica and Jason. They are not late-night-texts-about-nothing kind of people. They get up early to run before it’s too hot.

  I didn’t think Seth would find anything interesting at the Big Whale, but he’s still out, so he must have found some sort of high school person. This is good. I do want him to want to stay, and maybe he will if he has a good time.

  And today was just a blip.

  I put my hand
over my eyes, remembering the look on Mrs. Coffin’s face as we defiled the soil where she’d already put her husband. It must have been horrifying for her.

  I decide to use this insomnia time to look at Grandma’s things. Mainly, I want to make a record of her bookshelves; I know they belong to Seth now, and I guess he’ll take them to New York eventually. Grandma has the titles arranged in such a specific way, and I never want to forget what it looks like, so I figure the best thing to do is to take pictures of every shelf.

  Maybe one day I’ll read all the titles one by one. A book club curriculum designed by Grandma. I could do it with Seth.

  The titles and names are familiar because I’ve been staring at them for so many years, even before I moved in. She always separated the books by gender and in alphabetical order, which is kind of weird but makes sense. She was always so concerned about ratio. On the women’s side, there’s a lot of Toni Morrison. Tillie Olson. Nadine Gordimer. Ntozake Shange. Gertrude Stein. There’s something called The Pagan Rabbi that, when I was young, I always misread as The Pagan Rabbit. I notice that there’s an Alice Walker book called In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens.

  I wish she’d lived long enough for me to be published, so that I could be put on these shelves. I’d have had a place in the S’s, just after Alice Sebold. Just before Mary Shelley.

  I belong next to Mary Shelley, I think. What a dream spot.

  I walk to the men’s shelves—there are only two—pull Seth’s first novel down, and smile at how much it’s been loved. The pages spread open like meat falling off a bone. Grandma has dog-eared the pages and circled paragraphs with a pencil. It makes me jealous of him.

  That makes me want to be nosy.

  I go back upstairs.

  Seth has left his writer’s journal on top of his laptop in the spare room. I can see that he’s drawn a little flower on the front of it, which makes me smile.

  I flip it open, just to the first page, not to spy, but to see how he takes notes. That’s all.

  On the first page he’s written the names of the gardens on our list and some of the plants we’ve seen. We’ll both be amateur botanists by the end of this journey.