The Care and Handling of Roses With Thorns (28 page)

41

T
HE AWARDS CEREMONY IS HELD IN A BALLROOM.
T
HERE WILL
be a banquet after this that I will miss. I’m hoping my mother arrives in time for me to give her my ticket; after all, it’s included in the price.

Riley and I get there when most of the seats are already taken. Part of me thinks this whole thing is pointless, and I might as well head to dialysis early. The only thing keeping me here is Riley. She grins, excited. “I think this is the day for the Riley!” she sings.

I muster a smile, too. “I hope so.”

Ms. Lansing stands and takes the microphone. How is she always the emcee at these events? No wonder I never win. From back here, behind all these taller heads, I can see only the top of her hairdo.

“Welcome to our awards show,” she says warmly, eliciting loud applause. The lights dim and a projection screen behind her shows a rose arrangement, a palette box. “Please hold your applause until the end when all the winners are up here. Third place for palettes, Mrs. Cynthia Aguirre!” She continues up through first in the category, and when all three winners are up, we clap.

Someone slaps me gently on the back. It’s Winslow Blythe, fertilizer man extraordinaire. “Saw your rose. What a beaut!”

“I used your fertilizer recipe,” I say. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” He waves my thanks away like an errant bee.

“Are you a judge?”

He shakes his head. “That would take all the fun out of it. I’m a competitor. Always have been, always will be. They may be wheeling me out of here on a gurney, but I’ll be happy as long as I got to show.”

I take a breath. “I wish I could be happy just showing.”

He leans toward me conspiratorially, so close I can smell mint, Ben-Gay mint. “Wait until you have your first win. You’ll become addicted for life.”

Riley does not, surprisingly, leave for a snack. She sits beside me, chewing on a hangnail, looking as increasingly agitated as I feel. “Best Hybrid Tea!” the announcer says. “Best Floribunda Bloom! Best Shrub!”

I clap until my hands hurt. Finally they arrive at my category. Best Rose Hybrid. Third place goes to someone I don’t know.

Riley holds my arm. “Come on!” She is fidgeting from side to side, foot to foot.

I put my hand on her. Suddenly I am very calm, as if she has taken all my nervous energy and is burning it up on my behalf. “It’s all right, Riley.” Even if my rose gets no prize, it does not change this fact: this rose is a winner. I will reproduce it and enter it everywhere in the next few years. Today will not be its only chance to shine.

I turn my attention back to the stage and listen.

“Second. Byron Madaffer for his orange Hulthemia, Tequila Sunrise!” Byron is onstage in about half a second, looking surprised.

Riley takes up my hand.

“First prize is very important today, ladies and gentlemen.” Ms. Lansing pauses dramatically under her spotlight. “First place also gets a slot in the American Rose Society trials, to begin this year at the American Rose Center in Shreveport, Louisiana.”

Everyone applauds and cheers. Except for me. I stand rooted to my spot on the carpet.

“First prize goes to Galilee Garner for her spectacular purple Hulthemia, Riley!” The photo of the Riley rose flashes two stories high behind Ms. Lansing. A collective gasp arises from the audience, then applause. More applause as I make my way up the aisle. I feel like a bride at her wedding. I nod to people, I high-five, some flashes go off. Only my groom is that shiny first place medal Ms. Lansing dangles before her. “Riley will be tried out for two years at the American Rose Center!

“Congratulations,” Ms. Lansing says, with genuine warmth, no doubt swept away by the audience approval. She slips the medal over my head.

I take my place next to Byron, stiffly. I want to stick out my tongue and point to my medal. You can’t keep me down, Byron Madaffer, I think. Both of us stare at the audience stonily.

The photographer tells us to smile, and flashes blind me.

“Smile, Aunt Gal!” Riley shouts from behind the photographer, and she claps her hands down to her knees in a guffaw. In the flashing lights she appears to be in slow motion, her hair flying about, joy on her face.

And I laugh.

All weight sheds away. I forget about my kidney and the dialysis and especially Byron. I grin with a carefree enthusiasm not seen since childhood photographs, back when I didn’t care at all what I looked like, before I was sick.

The flashing ends. Byron gives me a quick, hard handshake. There is no trace of animosity on his face. Nor, really, any happiness. “Queen of Show is next,” he says briskly. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” Getting Queen of Show will garner a great deal of attention. It’s the best possible scenario. “But I have what I came here for. A slot in the trial garden.”

“If you want,” Byron begins slowly, “you could give me a cutting.”

I stare at him, uncomprehending.

“You can give me a cutting and I’ll start trials, too, at my farm.” Byron watches me warily, his expression still hooded, expecting, no doubt, an outburst. Perhaps even hoping for one, given his audacious request. I do not understand the man, except for this: I will never understand him.

“I don’t think so,” I say at last.

I lift a hand in farewell. Byron is already forgotten. Instead I’m wondering how quickly my mother will get here. “See you around, then.”

He gives me one nod.

I turn my attention to my niece and the people surrounding me, enveloping me in the crowd like a hug, offering congratulations.

• • •

M
OM DOES NOT GET
to the hotel until after dinner, which for me is a quick bite at a burrito stand. We pass her in the lobby as I head to dialysis at a local clinic.

She grabs my shoulders. “Are you all right, Gal? Do you need something? Want a ride?”

“Fine, no, and no.” I laugh at her concern. I will not let anything, or anyone, distract from this good mood. I’ve worked too hard for it.

Mom lifts my medal from my chest. “Did you win Queen of Show?”

“Nope.” I tell her about the rose trials. My rose will stay with the staff. They will graft the rose onto new rootstock and send it to several gardens around the United States to be tried in all kinds of weather.

“We have high hopes for the Riley,” the mustached judge told me after I claimed my medal. “This Hulthemia could be the next breakout rose.”

I shook his hand more vigorously than I’ve ever shaken anyone’s hand. “That is just the news I was hoping for, sir.”

Now, my gray-haired mother lets out a shriek not unlike that of a very small girl who’s had way too much birthday cake. Everyone in the lobby stares as she does a ring-around-the-rosy dance around me. Riley edges away and perches on a chair, pretending she does not know who on earth these two crazy ladies are.

“Okay, then.” I put my arm out to stop her.

Mom stops, out of breath, her cheeks blown out like a chipmunk’s. “Goodness. Can’t a mother celebrate without people getting all in a tizzy?”

“Not like that.” I smile at her.

An odd sound makes me look up. A shuffle, shuffle,
plop
sound. Winslow Blythe walks slowly through the lobby. He is using a cane with a tennis ball on the end, which is the noise I heard. I haven’t seen him with a cane before. He is accompanied by a man about thirty years his junior, towing suitcases. Winslow’s shoulders are stooped and skinny, the few hairs on his head all blowing askew. For the first time, Winslow is acting his age. I have an idea. “Winslow!” I hurry over to him, leaving my mother and Riley behind in the lounge area.

He stops and grins at me, the fog lifting from his exhausted gaze. “Congratulations again, miss! I tell you. What a rose. I would have given it Queen. Maybe I will have to be a judge one of these days.” He cocks his head to the side. “Although, you know, winning Queen of Show isn’t everything. Getting a spot in the trials is more important, I’d say.”

Something about Winslow makes me glad inside. Open, quite the opposite of how I’d felt with Byron. I smile. “You’re right. I’m more than happy with the prize.” Queen of Show would have been great, but now the Riley had a solid chance to prove itself.

I clear my throat before continuing. “I have a question for you.” I hesitate, feeling suddenly afraid. Afraid he’ll say no. “Would you like to get a cutting from the Riley? Try it out in your garden?”

He bows so low I’m afraid his cane will slip out from beneath him. “I would be honored, Miss Garner.”

I return to my mother, who is sitting with her ankles crossed, her arm around Riley. Riley looks considerably happier than she did when I left them, unable to control a wide grin.

Mom pats the chair next to her. “I have to tell you something else, dear. I didn’t want you ruminating over it and spoiling your good time.”

I sit. I wait. Mom’s face reddens. She glances to and fro, on the lookout for something. “Becky’s job has finally let her come back to California.”

“I don’t understand.” My brain refuses to process the words coming out of her mouth, as if Mom has begun spouting an alien tongue.

“Your sister is coming home.” Mom recedes toward Riley. “You better get to dialysis. You’ll be late.”

42

B
ECKY ARRIVES THREE DAYS LATER, A FULL DAY PAST WHEN
she is expected. Constant tardiness. I check it off on the list of mental tallies I take against my sister.

A cab pulls up to my home sometime around seven. Riley, who has been sitting by the front door for the past twenty-four hours, bursts outside shouting. She wears the charm bracelet her mother sent her, plus the one I gave her on the other wrist. “Mom!”

I give them a minute to be alone. This doesn’t mean I don’t furtively watch them through the living room window, standing back several feet so there’s no chance I’ll be spotted.

Becky swings her legs out of the cab, clad in a surprisingly pedestrian pair of sweats, a matching zip-up sweatshirt, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her face is scrubbed clean of makeup. Her face, so skeletal the last time I saw her, has filled out again. She clasps Riley to her, pulls back, cradles Riley’s face in her hands. An easy physical affection, so difficult for me to show. Riley says something and Becky throws back her head and laughs, a big easy guffaw that shows all of her wide, white teeth.

I stumble backward. I have to get away from the window.

In my bedroom, I sit on the bed with the door closed. I hear a noise like water churning, like the dishwasher is on, and I listen. It’s the sound of my own blood in my ears.

I reach for the phone. I can call Dara for a pep talk. Or my mother. Or even George. He’s had experience in dealing with slightly crazed, unstable people who want something you have. The image of Becky and Riley hugging outside burns in my mind. It might be me who wants something Becky has, not the other way around.

There is a knock. “Aunt Gal? My mother’s here,” Riley says from the other side, her voice the same placating tone my own mother uses. I hear her murmuring to Becky, probably telling her Aunt Gal has occasional fits, nothing to worry about.

I open the door.

My sister stands not two feet away from me. The whites of her eyes shine unblemished in the dim light, two hard-cooked Easter eggs. Her face dimples into a grin. “Gal!” She steps forward and hugs me.

I hug back, barely. She feels muscular and light. “Have you been working out?”

“The building where I lived had an indoor pool.” She steps back and twinkles at me. Positively glows.

“You must be exhausted,” I say. “You want to lie down?”

“No thanks. I slept on the plane.” Becky looks around the living room, at the photos of roses on the walls, the new pictures of Riley. Riley with her trebuchet. Riley at her summer job.

I stiffen. “Oh.”

“I didn’t take a pill,” Becky says. “I always fall asleep on planes. The altitude does it.”

“Good thing you’re not a pilot.” Riley has ceased following her mother around, but will not take her eyes from her. When Riley was a newborn, swaddled up in her bassinet or carrier or in another’s arms, she had done the same. Fixated on her mother with an intensity that surprised everyone who witnessed it, her small eyes trained on Becky as she moved about the room without her, as though she was willing her mother to return.

Riley offers to take her mother out to eat. “Would you like to come, Aunt Gal?” Riley says, after the fact. Hastily. She has forgotten me.

“You go ahead.” I wave them off. I don’t want to be the third wheel.

• • •

W
HILE THEY ARE GONE,
I get out my photo albums. Beginning with my childhood. Becky and I, so close together in age, so different. My moonfaced countenance peering from every photo is painful to see, the associated memories making it so. Becky grinning through childhood. Sticking out her tongue at me. Turning sullen and withdrawn by her eleventh birthday.

• • •

R
ILEY AND
B
ECKY
do not get home until much later, about eight o’clock. I look up from the television and its Hercule Poirot rerun. “You better get cleaned up and ready for bed, Riley,” I say calmly, though my insides dance and scream. “It’s a school night.”

Becky nods at her daughter, who stands reluctant at the door. “Go. Listen to Aunt Gal.”

“If you need us,” I say to Riley, “we’ll be out in the greenhouse.” I need to talk to Becky alone, where Riley cannot hear us. I cannot take this pussyfooting around one more minute. This pretense that we are adhering to all these social niceties. I am going to explode.

Two vertical lines appear between Riley’s brows as she looks from me to her mother, then back again. We both smile at her in unison, pretend we are two happy sisters, until at last Riley nods silently, retreats to the bathroom.

Becky follows me outside. The late October nights are cold, and I shiver a little in my thin cable-knit sweater, too hasty to grab a jacket.

A new moon casts dim watery light as we crunch across the gravel path. “You’ve done a lot with the place,” Becky observes. “All these roses. I haven’t been here since you bought it.”

“That long?”

“I got no invitation.”

My mother and father spent every Christmas with me, figuring that at least Becky had Riley, while I had no one at all. I had told Becky, when Riley was small, she could come along. “There was always a standing Christmas invitation.”

“There’s not enough room.”

“I would have given you my bed.”

Becky makes a noise like a disappointed field mouse. “Mom wouldn’t have allowed it.”

I switch on the greenhouse lights.

Becky stands blinking in the sudden brightness, walking down the aisle of roses. “This is impressive, Gal. A real operation you have going on here.”

“That’s what they tell me.” I feel suddenly proud, pleased at my sister’s compliment. I sit on the rolling stool as she makes her lap around, not bothering to give her the tour. Just watching.

She does seem clean, I have to admit. Her mind is the sharpest it’s been since she was pregnant with Riley. Not that I have seen her too often, I remind myself.

She gets back to me and sits on another stool. We are face to face, my height comfortable on the short stool, Becky looking somewhat crunched up, as though she is in a kindergarten classroom. “So,” she says.

“So,” I say.

I know what her next words will be before they’re out of her mouth. “I want Riley to come back with me.”

“Back to where?”

“San Francisco. I’m back home.”

I turn away, staring at the empty containers for the seedlings. Next month, these will be filled and planted with new seeds. Another cycle begun. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I’m not.” Becky scoots closer to me. “Gal. I don’t take pills anymore. Not a drop of alcohol, either. Or pot.”

I move away.

“Gal, I’m clean. I’ve been clean. I’m good.” She looks down at her hands. “I’ve missed her. More than I knew I would.”

“Like you did when her father had her?” I can’t look at her or I will break. I put my hand on the wooden frame, feeling its splinters on my palm. “You haven’t been there for her for years.”

Becky says nothing, is silent for so long I swivel to see if she’s asleep. She is looking at me steadily, her eyes big and wide. “That is true,” she admits.

I stand. “You know what I don’t understand? How you, who has everything, all the health, intelligence, and looks anyone could ever need in three lifetimes, how you can just throw it all away.” My voice is loud but steady.

“Gal.” My sister swallows. “I know it was hard on you, but it was hard on me, too.”

“What was so hard on you? Not having anything wrong with you?” I cannot keep the sarcasm out. Becky, playing the victim. No more. I won’t have it.

“Your disease.” Becky stands now, moving away from me. “You always got whatever you wanted, no matter what it was. For Mom and Dad, you could do no wrong. Hell, if I wanted extra allowance, all I had to do was get you to ask. They’d say no to me but never to you.”

“And you gave me a cut.” I smile, a little ashamed. My parents were so easy to manipulate, I couldn’t tell I was doing it. It was all I’d ever known.

Becky laughs bitterly. “Yeah. Me, I was left alone. I wasn’t sick, so it didn’t matter if no one came to my school concerts or took me to soccer practice. There was always next year.” A look of anguish passes over her. “Do you know how much time I spent alone, in front of the television, while you were at the hospital?”

I remember being jealous of my sister for getting to stay home, not having to go to the doctor every other day. “At least you weren’t in the hospital getting things cut out of you or poked into you,” I point out. “At least you got to grow up to be a normal size. Have a kid.”

Becky stares at me. “Do you know how much trouble I had to be to get any attention at all? Heck, when I fell out of that tree, all Mom said was, ‘Stop your whining. At least
you’re
going to get better.’”

“She did not say that.” I refuse to face the truth of her words. It still does not excuse what she did.

Becky sighs. “I’m paraphrasing.”

“Is that what your therapist told you to say?”

She blinks. “Gal. Don’t be hurtful.”

I press on. “It’s not hurtful. You can’t explain away messing up Riley’s childhood, Becky. It is your fault. No one else’s. You should see how far she’s come. You can’t throw it away again. Not now.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Her voice rises now. “You think I don’t understand how messed up I’ve been? I do. But I’ve got news. I can’t go back in time and fix it.” Her voice breaks. “All I can do is fix what I have. In the present.”

I look into my sister’s face, expecting to see tears. There are none. She has her head up high, her jaw set. Ready for extended battle.

“I am her legal guardian,” I say.

“I am her parent,” Becky says. “She is old enough to choose.”

I look around the greenhouse. The roses forming their hips, getting ready to give me their seeds. I think of all the hours Riley has spent in here working with me. I swallow. “Just so you know, I would have preferred to be a little bit bad when I was a kid, too.”

She smiles wistfully. “I know.”

I stand undecided. For the first time in many years, I want to hug my sister. Doing so feels like admitting something, my wrongness, my culpability. I have done nothing wrong. I never asked for any of this. But Becky stands there trembling, vulnerable. If I don’t, she might shatter.

I hug her.