Also, there was nothing supernatural about any of it. Still, I was happy I read them.
“The writing was good,” I tell Mom, “but they weren’t my thing.”
“Right,” Mom says.
We hear the sounds of television coming from the second floor.
“Bill’s watching his news,” she says. “Every night with Rachel Maddow. I’ll have to get used to it.”
“Rachel Maddow’s cool, though, right?” I ask.
“I don’t enjoy current events before bed. We’ll have to find a compromise.”
“Back to Seth’s books,” I remind her.
“Right. I was going to say that my brother has never written about me,” she continues. “Everyone else—our mom, our dad, our cousin Dick, who died when we were teenagers—I can see how these people inspired Seth’s characters. It’s all rather transparent. But I’m not in there at all. And did you notice that not one of his main characters has a sibling? Not one.”
“I don’t remember that,” I say.
“Yes, well,” she says, “take a closer look. They’re all only children. Which is fine. But I guess I thought that just once I’d open one of his drafts and read about a character who sounded like me. He’d written about everyone else, but never me. God, it sounds so childish and selfish to say it out loud.”
“It’s not selfish,” I say after a swallow.
“And considering all the hours I spend talking to him about these drafts,” she says.
This is new.
“He shows you drafts?”
“Always,” she says. “That’s how I wound up going into life coaching. He’s the one who said I should try it. He said I helped his books so much. It wasn’t that I was a great editor, he said, but I could listen and help him figure out what he needed to write. How to teach and write at the same time . . . I don’t think he believes I’m a very compelling character. But you . . .”
She taps my chin.
“Clearly he thinks you deserve a whole book.”
“That doesn’t make it okay,” I say.
“I know. And I shouldn’t be trying to spin this so that you’re not entitled to your anger, but please understand—I wouldn’t mind being someone’s muse.”
I have to laugh at the way she says the word muse, like she just turned French for a second.
“I still have the story you and Chris wrote about me,” she says. “Do you remember? What was it called?”
“‘Mom-Bot’? It wasn’t flattering, Mom. I feel bad we ever wrote that.”
“No, it was not flattering at all,” Mom agrees. “You made me a robot.”
“It was one of our first stories,” I say with a groan. “It barely made sense.”
“I didn’t care. Did you know how happy it made me? You wrote that story, and I thought, well, I’m in the narrative, at least. My daughter is living with my mother, and I cannot keep a relationship together, but I’m worthy of being Mom-Bot.”
“Mom-Bot wanted to make better children, the kind who could take care of themselves.”
“By removing their insides and filling their bodies with machines. I remember.”
I am giggling now. “Mom-Bot” was not quality material.
“I wrote it to be mean,” I admit.
“I didn’t mind. It meant you were paying attention to me.” She squeezes my foot.
“Are you telling me to forgive him?”
“No,” she says. “I’m just pointing out that your uncle Seth is paying attention.”
I nod, even though it’s not an answer.
She clears her throat.
“He says he’ll stay, Lor,” she tells me, her voice barely loud enough to hear. “He says he’ll move to Natick and help maintain the house for a year. He’ll watch you until graduation. Then we’ll sell it. And if it’s what you want, I’m not going to pull you away, as much as I want you here.”
It takes a second for this to sink in.
“Are you serious?”
“I told Seth I’d approve—with rules. And more visits, both ways.”
I scramble closer to her. “What are you saying?”
“If you’d listen for a second, you’d know.”
“Sorry, sorry,” I say. “Keep talking.”
“I was making decisions too quickly,” she says. “You only have a year of high school left, and you’re right about consistency and college applications and being able to tell these admissions people that you’re the editor of your magazine. I do believe that.” She squeezes the turquoise around her neck.
“I need to meet you where you are and see your human needs in the present, through your lens.”
Mom is starting to use self-help speak, but instead of making fun of it, I try to understand.
“Seth has human needs too,” she continues. “He needs a new purpose. He also needs to move out of that apartment. Ethan needs to start over.”
“You know about them?” I ask her.
“Yes,” she says. “He and I do talk. He’s my twin brother, Lori. He probably didn’t tell you, but he came to stay with me for a week after they broke up.”
“He didn’t tell me anything,” I whisper. I can’t imagine Mom advising Seth on his career. I can’t even picture him at her house, bonding over whatever was happening with Ethan.
All these adults have secret lives.
“Listen,” Mom says, moving on, “I’ve told Seth that it would be helpful for him to catalogue the house, prep it for sale, and help with you. He could use the time to write. And as long as you came to see me once a month and for holidays, and I could come up to you once a month . . .”
“I want this,” I tell her. “But he’ll be watching me. Writing about me. I’d have to forgive him.”
I’m so confused. I am still hurt by Seth, but also so hopeful that I’m tapping my toes the way Chris does.
“At this point,” Mom goes on, “Seth plans to move to Natick for the year no matter what, to figure out what’s next for himself. He wasn’t sure if you’d still want to be around him. You should think about what you want from him and what you’re willing to live with. He is who he is. None of us are perfect parents.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to be,” I tell her, and I finally get that.
Chapter 17
Jessica, Jason, Chris, and I have been taking turns jumping on Devin Coogan’s trampoline for the past hour.
The invitation has always been open to do this, but I’ve never wanted to. After coming back home, for whatever reason, I wanted to try.
Jason flops to his back. “I gotta go,” he says. “I’ll come over tomorrow, though.”
“Sounds good,” I say.
Jason has volunteered to help Seth and me take Grandma’s coats, the ones in the front hall closet, to the donation center. We’re starting there, to make room for some of Seth’s things.
“And I’ll see you tomorrow night?” Jessica says, moving to follow him.
“Sure. At like six,” I say. We’re going to the mall together to get new stuff for school. We are going alone, as a duo, and I am excited.
I lie back on the trampoline next to Chris, who’s in no rush to run off.
“So,” Chris says.
“So.”
“I’ve been thinking. How is Seth going to get around?” Chris asks. “You can’t drive him everywhere.”
“He has a license—technically,” I explain. “He just hasn’t driven in more than twenty years. He says he’s going to learn all over again.”
“Has he shown you any more pages?”
That’s our agreement. I get to see what he’s writing.
“I think I’d rather let him get some more chapters together,” I say. “I know a lot of what he wrote won’t stick.”
It wasn’t a long talk that got Seth and me to this place, where we are roommates. Where he is a guardian who’s just trying to figure it out.
He apologized, and I listened. He told me how much he wanted me to stay.
I realized that Grandma would always seem like the better parent because she’d already answered the big questions about her life. I got to be her do-over. Mom and Seth are on their first drafts with parenting—they’re working out the details in real time.
I feel like I’m getting to know the real Seth now. The genuine one, as opposed to the one who had to be my idol, showing up with gifts on holidays.
Chris says, “hmm,” and then we’re quiet, looking at the stars. The evening is clear and cool, and it smells like fall is coming.
I am getting everything I want. I don’t have to leave.
And yet.
I feel sad. It’s about Grandma Sheryl, I’m sure. It’s finally becoming real that I’m here and she’s not. The house—and my life—will become something else without her.
“I’ve decided I don’t want to be your best friend anymore,” Chris says, startling me.
“Excuse me?”
He pauses long enough for me to let out a nervous laugh.
“You’re demoted,” he continues. “Jason is my best friend now.”
“Wow,” I say, giving his right leg a little kick with my left. “I didn’t realize I could get demoted. Or that you had a ranking of seconds. I guess Jess will have to be mine.”
We both start laughing, but I’m a little uncomfortable because I don’t get the joke. I wiggle an inch away from him, which is difficult to do on the springy trampoline bottom.
He turns to me then, which makes me roll back in his direction, facing him.
“I won’t let you screw this up,” he says, now serious. “This year is a gift. We should be together.”
I hold my breath.
“Together?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Nothing has changed, Chris,” I tell him after an exhalation.
“I just changed it,” he tells me. “You don’t want to lose whatever we have, but I’m telling you it’s gone. The minute you told me how you felt, it was over. It’s different now—and now, lying here like this, pretending . . . it doesn’t work.”
“Chris . . .”
“Lori, I’m not supposed to be the stable thing in your life, the person who’s there like family, always, no matter what. I didn’t ask to be that. And I quit.”
He takes my hand, which has been resting on my hip, and places it on his neck. I’m confused at first, but then I realize where he’s put it.
My eyes widen.
“Christian Burke,” I say.
He laughs, and I feel the movement in his chest.
“I don’t get it,” he says, his voice hoarse.
“I can’t explain it,” I say, tracing his clavicle for the first time.
He places his hand on top of mine, stilling it.
“What if we break up?” I ask, swallowing my nerves, feeling the arrival of new tears.
“Well . . . that would make a really good story,” he says. “I’m sure I could come up with an illo for it.”
We hear a rustling, and we sit up, startled. Devin Coogan is staring at us.
“You guys,” he says. “I gotta practice now.”
“Sorry, my man,” Chris says. “Get to it.”
We both slide off the trampoline, and Devin pounces on top and begins jumping. He has his soccer ball with him, and he bounces it off the mesh that surrounds him on all sides.
“Why don’t we go write for a bit,” I say, my heart beating wildly, and Chris nods and follows me across the street and up to my house. We pass Seth, who’s on the couch in front of his laptop. He grunts a quick hello.
We go straight upstairs, where my floor is already covered with Chris’s first-draft drawings of what could be the N-Files’s first cover of the year. There is a ghost floating over a building. Her name is Marge.
I close the door, and Chris stands by the bed. I know he’s wondering if I’m going to change the subject or whether I’ll let him keep talking about what we started on the trampoline.
I’m not sure I have anything else to say. Also, I am tired. He has quit, and I have too.
I look at him. He has a few more freckles because it’s the end of summer. They’ll be gone in a month or two. His fingernails are messy from pens. He is tapping his foot. Slowly.
I turn off the overhead light, which seems like the thing to do. I get into bed and turn on the small lamp on the end table. Chris joins me under the covers.
Our kisses are awkward at first, because it’s new, and I find it so interesting. Even though I have learned to predict every word he says, every drawing he’ll make, I have no idea what he will do next with his hands, and his body. I sweep my hand across his chin to see if he’s shaved.
He surprises me by getting on top of me.
I start laughing because I’ve imagined it too many times.
Everything he does makes me dizzy, and when I look beyond him, behind him, I see the drawing on the ceiling, the one of the mall and the portal, the most important place in my universe, and I can’t help but grin.
Chapter 18
Chris is leaning against my bed, his sketchpad on his knees, and when I lean over to see what he’s drawing, I find that it’s an illustration of a bunch of people who have animal faces. Like dog ears on their heads or cat whiskers on their noses.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Just playing with something,” he mumbles. “Like, what if everyone’s face filters—the ones they posted—just stuck and became their actual faces. What if people woke up one day and they were puking rainbows forever, or they looked like a tiny dog with baby ears.”
“How about those people who use filters that show you what you’ll look like when you’re old,” I offer. “Those people would wake up and their faces would be all wrinkly, but their bodies would still be young.”
“Oh, that’s good,” he says.
“We can fine-tune it some more,” I add because there is no rush right now.
He starts to put his pencils away, and I sigh. Our second week of school starts tomorrow, and now that I am not going anywhere, we are back to rules. Chris has to be home by dinner on weeknights, unless he has permission to stay, and Mrs. Burke has told Seth that we are not allowed in my room alone with the door closed.
Seth does not enforce that second rule, but he does request that we try to be discreet.
“Imagine the rules my mother would have set, and follow them,” he tells me. “For god’s sake, don’t get it on with the door open,” he adds. “It feels like that should be the rule, right?”
“It’s time,” Chris says, and I know we’re done for the night.
I nod and stand up so I’m facing him. He leans in and gives me a long kiss.
Then I follow him down the stairs. I’m hungry, and I have a writing date with my other story partner.
* * *
Seth does a lot of his work while I’m at school. He wakes up, writes for four hours on Grandma’s bed, teaches a class or two online, and then gets to work on the house. He’s starting with the basement, which will take him a while. Yesterday he found cans of beer that he hid behind a dresser in the ’80s.
That’s like forty-something years of life in this home to dispose of and organize. Some days are really hard for him because of all the memories. Sometimes we find fun things, like my mom’s diary from when she was a teenager and loved Keanu Reeves.
“Good taste on her part,” I’d said. “Stood the test of time.”
“Whatever, I loved him first.”
I have more homework than I used to. College essays and applications. Math is really hard for me. On Wednesdays I stay late to get tutored. On Tuesdays I stay late to work on the magazine.
On Thursdays, though, Seth and I have a standing appointment. We order take-out from the mall and sit across from each other at the dining room table, sometimes looking out the window at the Garden Girls, who meet here weekly, provided it’s not raining, to trim trees, water plants, and take big clippers to whatever needs pruning.
While they work, some
times coming inside to check on the houseplants, Seth and I bring out our laptops and work on the same story. Well, two stories—very different stories—about the same thing.
Both tales are about a beautiful matriarch who dies and leaves her family a list of gardens where she’d like them to place her ashes.
I’m pretty sure both stories are about the way a family changes when someone has to leave—how a death reshuffles everyone’s duties, and how people who love one another have to learn to lean on one another in new ways.
Seth will write the story his way. It will be real and poignant, and based on recent drafts, I love the heroine. She is loud and sarcastic and has very good style. She can apply eyeliner without a mirror.
My version of the story is a bit different. There are haunted flowers that seek revenge, and three ghosts named Dorothy, Edith, and Sheryl. There’s also a team of magical people made of petals who know how to cast magic spells. One is named Jill. Another, Kevin.
Seth says it’s okay that we’re both telling similar stories in different ways. So many great writers do.
He tells me not to rush my work, that he will read the drafts when I’m ready.
It is not a competition, he says. A good writer takes her time.
Still, I’m pretty sure mine will be more interesting, especially because of the illustrations.
And I know this much: I will be done first.
Acknowledgments
Leslie Goldstein—my talented mom—was an incredible piano teacher, mother, and friend. She left a note in her will saying that she wanted to be cremated and placed near “things that grow.” I, a very confused Jewish woman, wound up at a very Irish-Catholic Boston funeral home with my sister Brette, my aunt Nancy, and our friend Brian Taylor (an honorary Goldstein). It was a surreal day—and a painful one—but it sent me on a joyful adventure that continues. Thanks, Mom, for giving us a reason to explore the world in bloom. Readers, if you would like to visit some of my mom (there are multiple boxes of her, of course), I’ll give you two hints: Paris and Chopin. We didn’t have a permit, but I promise we were respectful. The view there is gorgeous. Bring her some espresso.
Things That Grow Page 24
