Betty's (Little Basement) Garden (26 page)

“Llama?”

Betty turned and simply stated, “Shit.” She folded the crêpe. “Their feces look like large black beans. Thus, llama beans.” Betty explained how the beans never burn the plants, and how they can either be top-dressed on the soil or made into a garden “tea” by soaking one cup of beans to every five gallons of water and leaving the mixture out in the hot sun to brew. “It yields a quite interesting bouquet after two days in the blazing sun, but when your plants drink it in – Katie, bar the door – they explode! My girls downstairs will soon enjoy the same potent concoction.”

“So when you tell your friends about your new venture, you can blame Judi for challenging you to the tallest weed contest and using the gateway weed of mullein to get you hooked.”

“Would you stop it?” she admonished playfully. “It's none of their business!”

“When you do tell them, can I be there? It'll be like reality TV, except it'll actually be real.”

“
Jeff
?”

“
Betty
?”

“Your crêpe is ready,” she said, brushing off the banter.

She served the crêpes on two bone china plates with a raised floral edging she kept for special occasions, and then joined Jeff at the table. He complimented her heartily after his first bite. Turning the pages in the album, Jeff skimmed the various photos of Frank, Sr. and stopped on a page devoted to Frankie. Besides the photos, there was also something that looked like a partially torn page from a sketchpad. Jeff really looked at Frankie's photos, as if he were trying to figure out the boy.

“He was a gentle kid, wasn't he?” Jeff asked.

“Very much so. I'm sure Frank thought he was gay.”

“Was he?”

“No! He had a girlfriend when he was sixteen. She was artistic like he was and slightly eccentric.” Betty flashed back on the girl. “She had blond and purple hair and was actually quite pretty, even with the multiple piercings and tattoos. But there was a genuine sweetness to her. Frankie absolutely adored her. She might have even…” Betty paused briefly. “She might have been able to rescue him. However, his father banned her from our house. So that broke up their relationship.”

“Didn't you have a say?”

“I was conspicuously silent. Something I'd unfortunately honed to perfection.”

Jeff resumed looking at the photos. “He's got a different vibe to him. Almost enigmatic.”

Betty nodded. “I know. I saw it from the moment he was born. I couldn't explain it, but I embraced it. He was different.
Very
different. He was able to see things at quite a young age that others couldn't or didn't want to see.” She stared at a shot of Frankie. “I think his father recognized that. And I think it scared the hell out of him.”

“Why?”

“Because Frank Sr. enjoyed being a mystery and there was only room for one of those in our home. When your lifetime career is all about being tough and inscrutable, and your own son can see behind that façade, it tends to create a rather explosive potential.” She took a bite of the crêpe and was in heaven for the third time that night.

“What's the torn drawing?” Jeff asked.

Betty didn't answer right away, attempting to be engaged in her dessert. “I salvaged that,” she quietly said.

Jeff examined the drawing more closely. “Who drew this?”

“Who do you think?” Betty asked, taking another generous bite.

He removed the torn paper from the underside of the plastic. “Look at this,” he offered, turning the white violet print around to face Betty. He placed the torn drawing next to a section on the print. “This part of the drawing is almost identical to that part of the white violet print.”

Betty stopped eating and analyzed the two. “You're right,” she said, stunned. “But that's impossible. Frankie drew that picture when he was ten years old. And he found this antique print in the dumpster five years ago.” She leaned closer, carefully comparing the childhood drawing closer against the print. “It's like a copy. I don't get it.” Her thoughts traveled back to that traumatic night almost nineteen years ago. All those drawings on the wall…they made no sense, and yet…

“What is it?” Jeff scraped his fork against the dish to pick up every morsel.

“I don't want to ruin this night.”

“You can't ruin the night. It's already morning. Tell me.”

She regarded Jeff with slight apprehension. “I've never told anyone this before.”

He reached out and placed his hand over hers. “It's okay. I want to know.”

Betty put down her fork and gathered her nervous memories. “For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a mother. I thought I'd be quite good at it. I love to take care of things and nurture them. But I forgot that part of nurturing is protecting those you love from people or situations that could harm them.” She hesitated, struggling somewhat. “And so because I didn't do that, I failed at being a mother. I should have told his father to leave him alone. Blame it on how I was raised. Say please and thank you. Always look your best. Don't criticize. If you have nothing good to say, say nothing at all.” She rolled her eyes. “What they forgot to teach me is that it's all right to go against the grain and speak up if it will keep you or someone else from getting hurt. If I'd learned that one lesson, I could have saved my son. In retrospect, I really didn't want to be a wife – only a mother. Unfortunately, the two were not mutually exclusive where I came from.”

She looked off to the side and smiled. “But I kind of got my wish of just being a mother when Frank went to the Persian Gulf back in 1990. He was going to be gone for a full year and everyone was so worried about me. But I was secretly in heaven. The year he was gone was the best year of my life, because Frankie finally calmed down. His stomachaches went away. His nervous anticipation vanished. Even the nightmares stopped. He finally felt free to do what he enjoyed and to do it with abandon. One of his passions was drawing, but Frank didn't think it was a manly pursuit.”

“So you signed him up for art classes?”

“Damn right I did,” she declared proudly. “He was only nine when he started the class, but the teacher was astonished by his talent. They let him draw whatever he wanted, and he got better and better. Pretty soon, his entire bedroom was wallpapered with his pictures. Even the ceiling was covered. And I'm not just bragging…they were
incred
i
ble
drawings for a child his age.” She paused, recalling the past. “I didn't always understand them, though. There wasn't a central theme. In fact, nothing he drew made much sense, but they were all really well done.”

“What kinds of pictures did he draw?”

“Well, he drew a picture of the house I grew up in back in Houston. He must have seen a photo of it somewhere. He had a few drawings of chairs and furniture from our house.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, let's see. It was so long ago.” She forced herself back in time. “I used to have chair with a needlepoint seat in the living room. It sold
for a song last weekend at
The Gilded Rose
. He drew a picture of that chair from various angles. Oh, and that Biedermeier? Yes, he was fascinated with that for some strange reason. He must have had twelve drawings of it in his room.”

“I was fascinated with your Biedermeier, too,” Jeff added with a sly smile.

Betty returned his smile but contemplation quickly took hold.

“What is it?” Jeff asked.

“Why that chair? Why the Biedermeier?” Betty quietly mused.

“What else did he draw?”

Betty visualized her son's bedroom. Suddenly, a memory surfaced. “Motorcycles…”

Jeff looked at her incredulously. “Really?”

Betty seemed far away. “Yes. I'd forgotten about those. It was the same motorcycle drawn from various angles.” She continued to remember. “Then there were all the sketches of white violets and even a…” She stopped.

“What?” he asked with great interest.

“A…mullein stalk.”

“Your tallest weed?”

“Yes…But he drew that years before I won that silly contest.”

“What else?”

“As it got closer to the time when his father would return from the Middle East, his art became darker. Even his teacher was concerned enough to make an appointment with a counselor. I think Frankie wore down every black, brown and red pencil in the box.” Her face sunk. “They were very disturbing. There were dozens of them, all with a boy a little older than he was, either sitting in a hole or lying in a cemetery.” She recalled another drawing. “I never forgot the one with the giant.”

“The giant?”

“Yes, he drew himself, very small, lying in a bed. And standing over him was a giant man with his arms reaching out to attack him. Obviously, the giant was his father.” She continued to recall more of Frankie's artwork. “There was another one that didn't make any sense. It was a boy lying on a bench in some city…” Her voice trailed off. “Oh, my God…” Color drained from her face. “He was found dead on a bus bench in Denver. He was drawing…his life.” The realization astonished her.

“He was drawing your life too,” Jeff added.

“You believe me?” she asked, still not sure of her discovery.

“Of course, I believe you. There are people out there with gifts we can't explain. Sounds like Frankie was one of them. Where are all these drawings? I'd love to take a look at them.”

She pointed to the torn page in the scrapbook. “This one is all that's left. The night Frank came home from Desert Storm, he walked into Frankie's bedroom and saw all the drawings covering the walls and ceiling. He erupted. I'd never seen him so vicious. He tore every single one off the walls and ceiling and burned them in the fireplace. And I didn't do a damn thing. I just stood there holding Frankie and waiting for his father to stop screaming. Then he yelled at me and told me I'd coddled our son when he was away, and he would have none of that. Frankie was crying and I tried to comfort him, but Frank Sr. got between us and told me our son would never be a real man if he expected comfort whenever he was hurt.” Betty lowered her head. “And so I let him go and his father just kept yelling at him. At one point, he grabbed Frankie and slapped him across the face. All I can remember is the way Frankie looked at me right at that moment. It was as if…as if he was begging me to speak up. But I couldn't. I didn't know how.”

Betty turned the scrapbook toward her. “I found that torn drawing behind his bed. I guess it'd fallen back there when Frank went ballistic in his bedroom. I hid it in my bureau and after Frank died, I put it in this scrapbook. After that night, Frankie's stomachaches started again and his anxiety was off the chart. Nothing I could do or say seemed to help. And two years later, when he was twelve, he started smoking pot and drinking.” She looked at Jeff. “And the rest…well, you know the rest. The coroner wasn't sure if it was suicide or an unintentional overdose. I wanted to tell the man that it was suicide, and that my son started killing himself the day his father returned from Desert Storm. But, as usual, I kept my mouth shut. If you can't say anything good…”

Jeff reached across the table, clasping her hands in his. “Can you finally accept that your kid's drug problem was a symptom of all that emotional shit and not the cause of it?”

Betty felt as if a weight suddenly fell from her shoulders. “Yes.” She considered it. “It's like the chicken and the egg. What came first? The pain or the pill?”

“The pain always comes first. And we can spend the rest of our lives either overcoming it or killing it.”

“Or killing ourselves?”

He sat back. “Not me. Remember? I'm in the health business. I prefer to watch people thrive, not just survive.” He got up and held out his hand to Betty. “Speaking of which, I need to be at the store in fewer than nine hours. Come on. Let's see if we can catch a few hours of sleep.”

She smiled. “You can sleep when I'm dead.”

He was drawing your life
.

Those words reverberated in Betty's head as she awoke the next morning. Was that even possible? It was one thing to casually admit Frankie had second sight; it was quite another to take the plunge and realize there was concrete merit to his predictions. Could a child so young and perceptive have the ability to telegraph points in the future on a sketchpad? If she only had those drawings now, she could verify it. But then what? Could she show it to anyone besides Jeff? Maybe Peyton. But certainly no one else. They'd argue about the meaning of the drawings and find every conceivable excuse to chalk it up to coincidence. A thought crossed Betty's mind that perhaps by Frank burning them, he unintentionally ignited those images into reality.

What an odd thought, she said to herself, rolling over and finding Jeff gone. The sound of the shower assured her he wasn't far away. Propping up her pillow, she turned to the sunny window that looked out to the backyard. The tap-tap of the old canopy elm got her attention. Not every impression by Frankie burned up that night nineteen years ago. The curious carving he left on that tree was now starting to make more sense.

Jeff opened the bathroom door and walked into the bedroom. His hair was loose and wet, making him look a bit rough. But when he smiled at Betty, any perceived edginess melted away. “Good morning,” he said softly. He whipped off the wet towel and crawled across the bed toward Betty. “I had an idea. I can be back around six with dinner, and we can take a ride on my bike up to the lake.”

“I don't ride on the back of motorcycles.”

“Bad experience?”

“No. I just don't do things that have the potential to kill me.”

“So you don't cross streets? Or drive a car? Or get up on ladders?”

She put her hand over his mouth. “I'm not riding on your motorcycle. But you can still bring dinner and we can eat it here.”

“Here?” Jeff pointed to the bed.

“Sure. You can eat your whole wheat crackers in my bed any day.” She leaned over and kissed him.

“God, Betty. It's been a long time since a woman has kissed me the way you do.”

“Maybe you needed an older woman?” she whispered.

“The same way you needed a younger man?”

Betty grinned and got out of bed, donning a heavy cotton robe from the closet. “I'll make you breakfast.”

He got off the bed and collected his clothes from around the room. “You don't have to cook for me. I'm a big boy. I can figure it out.”

“I want to. I like to cook.”

“Okay. But don't turn me into your latest project.”

It was staggering to Betty how much Jeff could read her intentions, even before she had a chance to formulate the perfect stratagem.

She walked downstairs and raised the flag outside the front door. Turning to Jeff's motorcycle parked in the driveway, the thought briefly crossed her mind that there might be chatter in the neighborhood as to who owned that bike. She hated idle gossip. So intrusive. Just then, the little five-year-old girl who lived next door rolled past her house riding her tricycle. Betty drew the robe tighter around her body and waved to the child. She stared a little longer at the motorcycle before turning to go back inside. Jeff was leaning against the credenza, pulling on his boots. His hair was combed and pulled back into a neat ponytail. Even though his clothes had spent the night draped across furniture and the carpet, he still looked well put together.

“That was fast!” Betty exclaimed.

“I'm not enamored with mirrors.”

She started toward the kitchen and turned. “Have you ever considered cutting off your ponytail?”

“Have you ever considered shaving your head?” He put his arm around her, gave her a quick goose in the rump and followed her into the kitchen.

Half an hour later, as they were wrapping up breakfast, the front doorbell rang. Betty froze slightly and darted out of the kitchen. When she saw the Prius in the driveway, there was a sigh of great relief.

“Peyton!” she said, ushering him inside. “It's rather early for a visit. Is everything all right?”

He wore his usual low-slung blue jeans and a black t-shirt with white lettering that read: C.O.D. = Cannabis On Demand. “A-okay, Betty. I'm on my way to work and thought I'd drop by and tell you I got a thumbs-up phone call from Dottie. She's crazy happy to be working with you! And I got a new patient for you to contact.” Peyton's eyes drifted behind Betty. “Okay. This is awkward.”

Betty turned to see Jeff standing there.

“Hey, Peyton,” Jeff said casually.

“Hey, there.”

The silence was heavy and clumsy for a few seconds.

“Whew,” Peyton finally said. “I just had a flashback to when I was six years old and walked in on my folks –”

“
Okay
,” Betty interrupted. “Why don't you go down to the girls' room and see the new sisters I brought home last night?”

“Cool,” he headed toward the basement door, giving a rushed goodbye to Jeff.

Jeff walked over to Betty and kissed her. “See you tonight, Boopsie.”

“Boopsie?”

“Yeah. A take on Betty Boop. I'm auditioning it.”

“No, no. It sounds like you're saying
Boob
sie.”

“That's got potential,” he said with his usual dry humor.

Betty shook her head, smiling when she heard Peyton's roar from downstairs.

“Oh, fuck!
Betty
! Come here!”

Betty furrowed her brow. “God, he sounds just like Frank.”

She kissed Jeff again and quickly went downstairs. There was Peyton looking shell shocked, holding the three White Russians clones.

“These weren't on the list I gave you, Betty!”

“So what? Dottie said she wanted me to make her a salve and apparently that's a great strain for that purpose.”

“Oh, no denying it. It's got tons of THC but it's also known for being a PM magnet.”

Betty gathered her thoughts. “Oh, dear. Well, I'll return them.”

“No, that's pointless. They've been introduced into your environment. The PM is already in the room and the vents.” He set them down on Frank's desk and calmed down enough to think clearly. “Here's the plan. I come and show you how to do a sulfur burn tonight. You gotta do it when the lights go off. So, that's nine o'clock –”

“You can't sulfur the girls tonight.”

“Betty, we gotta get on this immediately. I told you how PM can wipe out your entire crop if you don't stay vigilant.”

“I understand that. But it's not happening tonight.”

Peyton regarded her with an irked expression. “Why?” There was a self-conscious silence between them. “Oh, okay. You and he have plans.”

“Now, hang on a second, Peyton. I understand this is important, and while I might have gone off your list and purchased a strain you don't recommend, waiting one day to sulfur this area won't change anything. I understand about priorities. And that's why I'm saying that you and I can do this tomorrow night.”

He looked crestfallen. The old Betty would have hugged him and cooked a heaping portion of his favorite food, with enough leftovers to provide lunch for several days. But the new Betty stood firm and offered some advice. “In the meantime, pull up your pants. They're drooping again.”

“Maybe I like them this way.”

“Are you planning on being single the rest of your life?”

“Huh?”

“There's hip and there's horrible. When I can see the part of your body that only your mother and a mirror have gazed upon, it's time to purchase a pair of pants that fit and a belt that ensures that outcome.”

He made a weak attempt at staring her down but it was pointless, given Betty's height and commanding posture. Finally, he spoke up. “You gotta re-pot all these plants in five-gallon containers,” he instructed with a terse tone. “Use the nitrogen seaweed and guanos in the water to feed them. We gotta get them growing as fast as possible. They usually only light feed the clones at the dispensaries. And foliar spray them with the B-vitamins only. If we're gonna sulfur, you can't have anything oily on the leaves. Oh, and don't forget to pH the water. God only knows what kind of crap is in your water.”

Betty didn't move. “I'll take care of it today,” she calmly replied.

Peyton seemed a bit lost. “Well, okay, then. Here.” He handed her a piece of paper. “That's Doctor Dave's info. He's your next patient.”

“Don't these people have last names?” she implored. “They worked so diligently to earn their degrees. Why must everyone refer to them in the same way a three year old would?”

“Got me. He was a trauma doctor in Vietnam. I think he's got more things to think about than what people call him.”

“He's military?”

“Yeah. He was an Army surgeon. He's like sixty-nine but he's real fit. He's been a friend of Mary Jane since the war.” Peyton intently stared at Betty. “A military guy is okay with you,
right
?”

“That's fine,” she replied.

Peyton looked around the room. “You gotta get some tunes in here. The ladies grow better with music. Supposedly, it makes their root stalk grow really fat.”

They walked back upstairs. There was still an uneasy undercurrent coming from Peyton that Betty continued to ignore. He stood by the front door and took a gander around the room. Gradually, his edge softened. “It's getting lighter in here.”

“Brighter?”

“No. Lighter. It's not as weighty. Like you just threw some bricks out of the room and the room is diggin' it.”

By noon, Betty was still in the same robe she donned when she woke up. For three hours, she'd been glued to her computer downloading music. But this wasn't just any music.
This
was for her girls. Plants, it turns out, really do need music and specific sounds that are conducive to growth and vitality. As sound vibrates, Betty learned, it creates either harmonious or inharmonious wavelengths that affect not only plants, but pets and people. Many people have studied this intriguing science and determined that plants thrive best when exposed to rhythms that mimic the human heartbeat. Top of the list were waltzes, with Strauss'
Blue Danube
the favorite selection of plant enthusiasts worldwide. Baroque music was also popular, with Bach's Adagio from Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 and Barber's Adagio for Strings, op.11, the two top picks.

Vivaldi's Spring and Summer pieces lent an uplifting mood to the grow room, according to one classical music aficionado, while the more meditative Larghetto from Lute and Harp Concerto op. 6 allowed plants to “wind down” and remain stress free. Staying away from anything jarring or driven with too many discordant drum beats was essential, as this pulse was counter to the natural human heartbeat and thought to stunt plant growth and even increase the likelihood of compromising the health of the plant, leaving it open to opportunistic diseases.

But perhaps the most fascinating sound that plants adore is the sound of chirping birds. More specifically, chirping birds at
sunrise
. Apparently, scientists discovered that the stoma – or pore – on the leaf surface naturally opens with the sound of waking birds. Once the stomata are all open, anything sprayed on the leaf surface at that time is more readily absorbed and utilized by the plant. Thus, a sunrise rain would theoretically hydrate a plant more so than an afternoon rain. Foliar feeding plants when the stomata had their collective mouths open and hungry would also be more beneficial.

Yes, Betty learned, someone who had a lot of free time made a recording of birds at sunrise and then duplicated and layered it repeatedly, until it sounded as if one were in a forest and three billion birds were rousing simultaneously. Thanks to computer manipulation, the creator of this incessant chirping was able to incorporate an ebb and flow in the recording so one didn't feel as if they were listening to a scene from “The Birds” for the duration. She watched videos where gigantic speakers were placed in fields of corn and this persistent chirping was broadcast across the acreage thirty minutes prior to sunrise. Then, when the stomata were wide open, the water and feeding sprays commenced, dousing the corn as the recording of the chirping birds continued in a melodic manner. After thorough coverage, the corn sat waving in the wind, embraced by two more hours of birds chirping their little beaks off. The proof of this experiment impressed Betty. The cornstalks in the fields that had been exposed to the chirping birds were taller, the ears were heavier, the leaves remained greener and the pest population was negligible. One farmer noted that “the bugs just jumped off the corn.” After half an hour of downloading and listening to a chirping bird CD, Betty was ready to jump off the corn too.

Armed with her symphonic CD arsenal, Betty located a large boom box that had belonged to Frankie and situated it in the basement so her girls could benefit from the penetrating waves of green music. For thirty minutes, she dutifully blared the chirping birds sequence, bathing her clones in a dense aura of synchronized aviary harmony. Somehow, she was able to tune it out after about twenty minutes. Locating a stack of five-gallon plastic pots, she carefully re-potted the girls in the rich, organic soil. She top-dressed them with worm castings and scratched a small amount of nitrogen-rich bat guano into the soil around the rootstalk before giving them a light water feeding of nitrogen-targeted seaweed and fish fertilizer concentrates. As the musical tweeting and cheeping continued, Betty filled a spray bottle with liquid B-vitamins and painted the tops and bottoms of each leaf with the solution. Once she was done, she stood back and looked at her transplanted beauties. They looked like sad, little dogs left out in a downpour. Certainly, plants known to attract powdery mildew were not best served by leaving them dripping wet.