FOUR

“Maybe your grandfather wouldn’t let your dad marry his high-school sweetheart,” Sofia says when she calls the next day. “Your dad was so mad that he didn’t talk to his father for years. Then, this winter, when he realized Uli wasn’t long for this world, he decided it was time to resolve past issues.”

No matter how messed-up life gets, I can always rely on Sofia to make me laugh. “Trust you to turn family politics into a sappy romance novel.”

“I’m just saying anything could have sparked their fight. They didn’t deal with it, and they got angrier as time went by. Remember the Blue Sweatshirt Incident?”

I sigh. “We were six, Sof. And I’m sure my grandfather never accused my dad of stealing a Dora the Explorer top. Besides, it only took a week for us to make up, not twenty-five years.”

“But it was the longest week of my life,” she says. “By the time my aunt found my sweater in her car, I already had seven pieces of proof that you’d stolen it.”

“Seriously?”

Silence. “I never told you? Anyway, I was wrong, okay? I apologized. Several times.”

“Yeah, but you never told me about the seven pieces of proof,” I tease. “Good grief. It’s a wonder you didn’t call the police.”

“I’d punch you in the shoulder right now, if you were here.”

“I love you too,” I say. “If you were here, we’d solve the Mystery of the Enraged Family Members together.”

“Keep me posted on how it goes.”

“You know I will.”

I’m halfway through my English homework when I hear the buzzer and dash into the living room. Dad’s already answered the ancient intercom though. “Yes, she’s here,” he says to the box. “Do you want to come in, or should I send her out?”

“Who is it?” I ask.

“Your grandfather.” He nods and disappears into the kitchen, leaving me to answer the door.

“Chloë! Just who I wanted to see!” Uli lifts his good arm to put around me, and I hug him, too stunned to speak. He has never come to our apartment before.

I take his elbow and lead him into the living room. With the secondhand lamps and furniture that Dad scored, it looks a whole lot better than it used to. The walls are now a trendy Montreal-coffee-shop orange. I like it. “Did you guys declare a truce or something?” I ask Uli.

“I’m not here to see your dad, actually.” He lowers himself onto our couch. “I asked him if I could come over, and he said yes. I have a question for you.”

I sit down beside him. “Shoot.”

“Would you help me with my garden, please? Weeding and planting seeds?”

“For weird vegetables?” The words fly out of my mouth before I can stop them. Fortunately, my grandfather laughs.

“The heirlooms, yes.”

I glance over to the kitchen, but Dad’s off in an invisible corner, whistling a song I recognize from his Best of the Nineties playlist. I’m on my own. I really do want to help my grandfather, even if only to hear more stories without having to worry about Dad glaring and sighing through every one. Still, Uli should know what he’s getting into if I help him. “I don’t have much of a green thumb,” I admit. “I grew a bean plant once, but that’s it. Our place in Montreal doesn’t even have a garden, just a tiny patch of dirt by the front steps. Dad grows sunflowers there.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Uli says. “You’ll learn.”

“But I might, you know, pull out the wrong plants or something.”

“I’ll keep an eye on you. You provide the muscle. I’ll provide the know-how.”

Dad’s still whistling. Loud. He’s into another song now. This one I don’t recognize.

“I’m not all that strong.” I lift one skinny arm.

Uli grabs his droopy one and holds it up. “Better than what I’ve got.”

I have no more arguments left. “When do I start?”

He beams at me, like I’ve just given him a winning lottery ticket. I love that it’s so simple to make him happy, and I wonder again what my father’s held against him for so many years. With any luck, I’ll soon find out. Hopefully, not too many plants will die in the process.

“What about right now?” he asks. “No time like the present.”

“This tree’s grandmother”—Uli points to the bare-branched one in his front yard—“grew behind the house where I was born.”

How is that possible? I picture my great-grandmother, escaping the Russians with a toddler in one arm and a potted tree in the other. “Didn’t you escape with only the clothes on your backs?”

“Mother had an apple in her coat pocket,” Uli says. “She told me the story all the time when I was growing up. After my dad was killed, she woke me up early one September morning, before sunrise. She told me we were going on a trip. I started to cry because I wanted to play on the swing in the apple tree behind the house, so she picked an apple and made a promise. When we got to where we were going, she said, she’d plant another tree and build another swing. That calmed me down. We set out, and we ate the apple eventually—small and sour, but we were so hungry it didn’t matter. She kept the seeds. Every few days she’d take them out. We’d talk about the beautiful country called Canada where we’d plant our tree.”

I’m quiet for a moment. “She never made it.”

He shakes his head. “I brought the seeds with me though. I planted them way in the back of my aunt’s property, where no one would notice a few extra trees.”

“So what was your aunt like anyway?” I ask. “Now that Dad’s not here, can you finish the story?”

“She was crazy,” Uli says. “She said she heard voices, saw foxes in the living room, you name it. Her husband was a boozer, and his farm was going down the tube. That’s why he sponsored me to come over. He needed someone to work the farm. I was a city kid by then though. No use to him. He flew off the handle a lot when he was drinking. One time he got so mad he broke my arm. That’s when I left, hitchhiked to Edmonton to seek my fortune.”

“You should write a book,” I say.

“Nah. Too much work. I’d rather be planting seeds.” He shuffles down the garden path toward the gate in the hedge. “Come see the garden.”

“Wait.” I’m still standing under the tree. “You didn’t tell me how this tree got here.”

He smiles. “You’re a stubborn one, Chloë. That’ll stand you in good stead. But that’s enough ancient history for one day. I have to go in to take my pills soon. After that I won’t have energy to come back out again.”

I stay right where I am, under the tree, and refuse to move until I hear the rest of the story. No one else tells me this kind of stuff. Dad’s mom died when he was a kid. My mom’s parents both kicked it before I was born. My uncle Leo lives in Shanghai. I have no cousins (which Sofia thinks is hilarious because she has dozens—enough for both of us, she says). I never thought much about the whole extended-family thing until I had to leave behind my life in Montreal to get to know one of my only living relatives. The least Uli can do is finish the stories he starts. “Please, Uli? How long would it take to tell me? Thirty seconds? A minute and a half, max?”

Uli sighs and mumbles about a chip off the old block, but he gets on with the story. “When I… moved into this house, I took a trip back to my uncle’s farm. I told the new owners my story. They let me take what I needed. That’s how this tree got here. Now enough lollygagging. Let’s go.”

I feel like he hasn’t told me the whole story, but at least he answered my question. Maybe I can get more out of him when we’re digging in the dirt. He holds open the gate for me.

“Thank you,” I say.

“Thank you.” Who knows if we’re talking about the garden, the story or something else entirely? I hold my breath as I walk through the gateway into this place that I’ve been hearing about for weeks.

Whatever I’ve been expecting, this isn’t it. It looks like a recycling depot spat up over rows and rows of leaf-covered dirt, with empty plastic bottles sticking up at regular intervals. At the back, near the greenhouse, a few tall plants with crinkly, purplish leaves stand tall.

Uli puts a hand on my shoulder. “Not much to look at now, but come summer, you’ll be harvesting more vegetables than you can fit in your fridge.” My face must tell him exactly what I think about that idea, because he bursts out laughing. “Quite the enticement for a young person, I know. I tried to bribe your father with brussels sprouts when he was a kid too. That didn’t work either.”

“It explains a lot though.”

“Still doesn’t like ’em?”

“Hates ’em.”

“And you?”

“Not a fan.” But we both know I’m not in this for the veggies. I’m doing this for my grandfather. And maybe for my great-grandmother, who I’m already imagining as some sort of tree spirit flitting around this yard, watching us and celebrating our work. My great-grandmother who desperately wanted to raise her little boy in a peaceful place and never even got to see him grow up.

I have a whole new respect for that apple tree. I wonder if I’ll feel something—some sort of DNA memory—when I bite into one of its tiny, sour apples. I look out over the leaves and empty pop bottles, picturing a whole garden of heirloom vegetables that all mean something to someone somewhere, even if they look weird to me.

“That’s chickweed,” Uli says, pointing to a big patch of tiny plants poking out of the earth.

“Who gave you that one?” I ask.

Uli smiles. “It came on its own. It’s a weed, but an edible one. Go collect some. We’ll put it in a salad.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope. Here.” He points to the little plants and holds out his hand until I bend down and pick some for him. He pops the tiny leaves into his mouth. “Go on. Try it.”

I do, rubbing off the dirt with my fingers first. “Hmmm. It’s actually not bad. For a cross between grass and spinach, I mean.” I’m not likely to ever eat it again, but I can tell that my response has made Uli happy. “How much do you want?”

“Oh, a few good handfuls. I’ll find something to put it in.” He waves me toward the greenhouse.

I follow. “What’s with all the plastic bottles?”

“It’s my irrigation system,” he says. I think he’s joking until he explains that each bottle is covered in pinholes. In summer, he fills the bottles every few days with water from the rain barrel. They leak out as much water as the plants need to stay healthy. “Best system money can buy, except I built it for free.”

He pulls open the door of the greenhouse and leads me inside. Benches loaded with planting supplies line the walls, and there’s a big table in the middle. On top is a faded brown shoebox, its corners worn. He places one hand on the lid and looks at me. “This is it. In here are the seeds for everything we’ll grow this year. All the stories too.”

He opens the box and pulls out one of what looks like dozens of white envelopes. Inside is a paper packet of seeds, a folded piece of paper and a photo of a plant. It looks like a grapevine, with tiny watermelons hanging down where bunches of grapes would be. “This one is cucamelon,” he says. “From Mexico. The waitress at my favorite diner gave me the seeds ages ago. I make pickles every year. I probably still have a jar, if you want to try them.”

He pulls out envelope after envelope, showing me pictures of purple leeks, black radishes and a bumpy light-brown bulb called celeriac. The folded pieces of paper tell the story of each seed. I read a few. Each one is like a mini travelogue, tracking where the vegetables came from, who gave Uli the seeds and when. Some even have little world maps at the bottom of the page, tracing the veggie’s journey.

“Better get a move on,” he says, closing the box. “Let me grab some tools and something for that chickweed.”

As he rummages in a corner, I look through the glass of the greenhouse out into the garden. I imagine the empty rows crowded, as Uli promised, with plant life and vegetables whose ancestors traveled here from all over the world. Uli says that some of them don’t even exist in their original countries anymore. The ones we’ll grow are the last of their kind. This is nothing like Sofia’s great-aunt’s plastic-bag collection after all. These are endangered species. And food. And history. And what my grandfather lives for, all wrapped up in one.