In Jeremy’s first childhood memory, at age five or six, he stepped outside with his mom and Tim after a spring rain and sniffed the earthy air.
“What’s that smell?” he had asked.
“Petrichor,” Francie told him. “It’s a mix of bacterial secretion with plant oil. Rain after a long dry spell releases it into the air.”
“Yuck!” Tim held his nose. “I don’t want to breathe bug oil.”
Jeremy loved the smell and he loved the sound of the word peh-tra-chore and he loved that his mom had worked in Forest Park and knew about plants and nature. Jeremy’s first homeschool project was studying petrichor, how the oil protected the plants and kept them from germinating until conditions were right for their growth.
“Don’t you love that smell?” he asked Zoe the next morning. The rain had stopped and the park sparkled. “It’s called petrichor. Peh-tra-chore.” He sang the syllables in time to his footsteps. “Peh-tra-chore.”
They were walking—well, Zoe was rolling, but the details really didn’t matter—along the main road looping around the playing fields. He couldn’t stop smiling, which could have been the perfect weather or could have been Zoe. He took her hand.
Zoe giggled. “I need them both.” She demonstrated what happened when she pushed her chair one-handed.
“Guess I’ve got you going in circles,” Jeremy said. He was amazed; he’d never talked like that to a girl. Had never imagined he could flirt like people in the movies.
She laughed. “Not exactly. But listen, I want to know what’s going on with you. Last time, the lurgies saved you, but there are no strings of cheese or banana here. So talk.”
The last thing in the world he wanted at that moment was to think about hard stuff. He wanted to sit on a park bench and kiss Zoe until it got dark. He wanted to feel carefree and happy and silly. The serious look on her face made it clear that she had other ideas.
“First,” he said, “tell me what’s happening with your grandmother.”
“She’s dying. After our walk, I’m going back to sit with her.”
“Can I come with you?”
“Sure, but don’t try to change the subject. Why don’t you start with the FBI visit,” she prompted, “and then move on to Mary-the-terrorist and your friends with the Molotov cocktails. After that, you can fill me in about whatever it was that got you sent to the hospital.”
“Health Services,” he said. “Not hospital.”
“Okay,” she said. “Health Services.”
“First of all, they’re not really my friends. I mean, I knew them for a few weeks in Brooklyn and we worked together planning Earth Day. But they never told me anything about Molotov cocktails and I didn’t even like them much.” He looked at Zoe. Did she really care about this? “In some ways, I care about them more now that they’re in trouble, if that makes any sense.”
“That’s because you’re a good person,” she said. “What did the FBI want?”
He described the agents and their questions, and their return visit the day before. “I think they were just fishing, trying to intimidate me, to get me to say something bad about Sari and Carl.”
“You didn’t, right?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know much.”
Zoe frowned. “You know what you heard.”
“I’m not even sure about that any more.” He pushed the mental picture of Sari’s backpack and the bottles further into the secret part of his brain, where he stored the images he couldn’t look at. “I keep thinking about Mary telling the feds about people. That feels so wrong.” He shook his head again. Mary’s son was nine. What would happen to him?
Zoe nodded. “What about Health Services? What’s with that?”
How to explain the episodes? How to be truthful without sending Zoe running for the hills, or wherever a sixteen-year-old girl from western Massachusetts would run to escape a wannabe boyfriend regularly imagining plants growing out of his body?
“It’s hard to describe,” he began. “I’ve had a couple of these … episodes where plants seem to be growing out of my hands.” He wiggled his fingers at her.
“Wow,” Zoe slowed down. “That’s pretty intense. Are they, like, hallucinations?”
“I guess so. Tomorrow I have another meeting with Patty—she’s the nurse practitioner at Health Services.” He looked at Zoe. “It’s not that big a deal.”
“Sounds like a pretty big deal to me. And scary.”
He didn’t want her sympathy and would rather talk about anything other than his plant delusions. But he had to know. “Does it scare you?”
“Doesn’t bother me,” Zoe said. “I’ve got some challenges too, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“One more thing about the Brooklyn people,” he said, glad to change the subject. “They got me started reading books about climate change and species loss, how to fight back. Like this one book, it’s like their bible or something. It’s pretty amazing and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s both terrible and totally right.”
“What does it say?”
“That civilization is destroying the planet. They argue for ending corporations and industry and the consumer culture and the greed of the rich. They want no more fossil fuels or production of plastics and other crap. To return to a much simpler lifestyle.”
Zoe stopped rolling. “But without technology, a lot of people would die.”
“The Green Book people would say that a lot of people are dying now, every day, all around the world.”
She put both hands on her hips and frowned at him. “That’s easy for you to say, Jeremy. But I would die. Without plastic tubing and high-tech devices and medicines, it would be a race to see if hydrocephalus or kidney failure got me first. Did you think about that, Mr. Save-the-world?”
Zoe spun her wheelchair around and wheeled away toward the park entrance. Her hair streamed behind her, and he remembered how her hair flew around when she danced, how it curled around his fingers as if it belonged there.
What just happened? He watched her dash down the sidewalk. Should he run after her? Had he ruined everything?
“Zoe,” he called. “Come back.”
“Leave me alone.”
Why couldn’t he get this stuff right? He tried to console himself; at least now he had something to discuss with Patty the next day besides vegetable matter growing out of his fingertips.
The gazebo was exactly the way Sam imagined it. The copper green roof rose to a central peak like a circus tent. Between wooden upright beams, the room was open on all sides to the hillside, the woods and river. Shrubs growing just outside sent branches twisting around the beams and climbing to the ceiling with the fuzz of tender new leaves along their length.
He sat on the bench facing the water and thought about Charlie. Would the truth make a difference? He’d always known that his mother told lies. Exaggerated, if you were inclined to soften the language. But somewhere the truth existed: either Brad was his biologic father or Charlie was. He told himself not to care. Brad did all those dad-things and Sam loved him. Why should it matter whose sperm it was?
Sometimes there’s a moment when a person changes their mind about something, after teetering on the precipice of a realization or an acceptance. After days or weeks of not knowing, a time comes when we tip over the edge into knowing. That’s what the moment felt like to Sam, when he knew that Charlie was his father.
A mockingbird’s chatter broke the silence and something—an acorn, maybe—fell onto the metal roof with a loud snap. It rolled and bounced and skittered down the slope and then stopped. He wondered if anyone ever cleaned out the gutters, if this structure had gutters. After a few minutes of sitting in the fresh green cocoon, his breathing returned to normal. He could think straight about his mother and knew he would soon lose her.
Ten minutes later he stood up to leave and the movement must have startled a bird, which sprung from the intertwined branches climbing the gazebo walls. It flew in a circle inside the small enclosure, spiraling up and around as if disoriented. At the copper peak, its gray wings fluttered hard, then rippled down like a parachute. In the next instant, the bird turned and flew through the window opening. Sam watched it soar away, dark against the open sky. It was time to return to Flo.
In his mother’s room, Mimi sat by the window and the nurse leaned over the bed, listening and touching and measuring and writing numbers on her clipboard, then turned to Sam.
“See how irregular her breathing has become?” the nurse asked. “Those longer spells of apnea, of not breathing, usually mean the patient is beginning to leave us.”
“How long?”
“Could be hours, or days. It’s impossible to say.” She looked at Sam’s face and then added, “Probably not today.”
“Can she still hear me?” Sam asked.
“I believe so.” She turned Flo onto her side, as if preventing bedsores was still critical, then put her hand on Sam’s shoulder and squeezed. “Do you need anything?”
He shook his head, unable to speak without spilling over.
The nurse paused in the doorway. “Sometimes,” she said, “dying people are waiting for something. Permission. Or forgiveness. Talk to her.”
Sam joined Mimi at the window.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “about some of Ma’s stories. Wondering what’s actually true. Like, do you know why she was kicked out of the Communist Party?”
“Not really. It was before she moved up here. Actually I’m not sure if she was booted out, or if she resigned in protest of someone else being purged from the group. She would never tell me the complete story, but it had something to do with interracial dating. She ranted on and on about how misguided the Party was.”
“I thought the Party approved of interracial relationships,” Sam said.
“Until Black Power. In the late sixties, many groups reversed their position. In particular, black men dating white women was a no-no. It was seen as devaluing black women and undermining race solidarity.”
“I don’t get it,” Sam said. “Why should that get my mom kicked out? Unless.”
“Unless she was involved with a Black guy,” Mimi said. “It’s possible. By the time I met Flo, she was pregnant with you and married to Brad. Of course, she could have resigned as a political statement.”
“Being kicked out is more dramatic.” He tried to smile. “Ma and her stories. She always had a flexible approach to the truth.”
“She has imagination,” Mimi corrected him, standing up. “We’ll probably never know the whole story. I’m going home for a while. I’ll be back this evening.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
“Talk to her, Sam,” Mimi said as she left.
Talk to her. Easy for them to say. When it came to conversation with his mother, Sam always spent a lot more time listening than talking. He pulled the guest chair close to the bed and took her hand. Forgiveness or permission, the nurse had said.
“I’m here, Ma. I love you.” He hesitated. “And, if there’s anything you want forgiveness for, which I very much doubt, consider yourself forgiven.” No, that sounded snotty. “Really,” he added, feeling foolish.
The black cat jumped onto the bed. He gazed at Sam for a moment, looking dubious, before curling up against the twin chenille hills of Flo’s feet.
“Okay,” he told his mother. “I forgive you for being outrageous when I was old enough to be embarrassed by you. For being permissive, when I desperately wanted some rules. For demonstrating that a person didn’t have to toe the line, when all I wanted was to find my own line, so I could figure out how not to step over it.” His words became whispers and the whispers became wisps of memories and the memories became a kind of peace.
He put his head on her pillow, close to hers. With his free hand, he played a silent lullaby on the pink chenille spread over the small mound of her hip, thinking of a tune she tried to teach him as a boy. He had refused to play the piano, but now he could hear the song in his memory. She moved her head a little, as if she was listening, as if she could hear the melody he would not play.
Permission, he thought. Flo in her life never needed permission from anyone. At least, not in Sam’s lifetime. But then, she had never before been in a situation like this. Dire and final.
“It’s okay for you to go, Ma,” he whispered, then closed his eyes. “Whenever you’re ready. I love you.”
Twenty minutes later Zoe and Anna found them sleeping that way, heads sharing the pillow, Sam’s face burrowing in her hair. His hand rested on his mother’s shoulder. The cat slept across Flo’s feet.
Zoe wheeled over to scratch behind his ears. “Hey, Boots,” she crooned.
At the sound of her voice, Sam’s eyes opened and he blinked, then sat up.
“Anything new?” Anna asked.
He shook his head.
“You need a break?”
He shook his head again, then started weeping.
Zoe quickly pushed to his side and hugged him. “Oh, Papa. I’m sorry we left you here alone.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “It’s just harder than I expected.”
Anna patted the top of his head. “A failure of imagination on your part, Sam. What do you expect when your mother is dying?”
He visibly cringed at that word, then looked at Zoe. “I thought you were hanging out with Jeremy.”
“Yeah, that didn’t go so well. He’s a jerk,” she said, grabbing Anna’s canvas bag and pushing her wheelchair out of the room. “My turn to make tea.”
Anna sat at the foot of the bed. “I’m so sorry, Sam. How can I help?”
Sam shook his head. How could anyone help? He felt small and alone. He felt cold and couldn’t imagine being warm again. If only he and Anna were still together, and he could slip into their bed, be warmed by her skin and the down comforter she used all year round. Until Flo got so sick, he didn’t realize how lonesome he was.
Jeremy couldn’t decide what to do with himself. He had planned to spend the day with Zoe. He pictured himself the perfect boyfriend, taking her for a walk to distract her from her grandmother’s dying, and then supporting her at the bedside. He liked that image of himself, as the helper instead of the needy one. But somehow—and he wasn’t quite sure exactly why or how—all that changed in a few sentences.
He stretched out on his bed and studied the posters on the walls. The odd thing was that he didn’t feel much for them beyond a faint nostalgia for a long-ago childhood memory. If he was going to spend the summer in this room, he didn’t want to look at Wolverine and Storm and the gang every day. Tim might be upset with him, but Tim lived in Brooklyn so he didn’t get to decide.
Carefully, Jeremy pulled the tape from the edges, trying not to tear chunks of paint from the wall. First the group photo, then Cyclops, Storm and the others. Finally, his favorite poster of Wolverine, the one with the rip across his left leg. He made a pile on his bed, then folded the papers in half, in half again and again and again. He carried the mess into the kitchen and shoved it deep into the blue recycling bucket.
When he returned to the room, a text message flashed on his phone. Can’t Skype today, it read. Studying for my big econ final.
Jeremy didn’t quite believe him, not after their uncomfortable conversation last week. Okay, he texted back. Good luck with the exam.
When he stretched out on the bed this time, the bare walls were comforting, like a clean slate. He couldn’t remember why he felt such a kinship with those characters in the first place, why the posters mattered so much. Maybe he could talk about that with Patty the next morning. And about Zoe’s reaction to a perfectly reasonable intellectual discussion. He felt silly making a mental list of things to discuss with Patty. Silly, but good.
The bedroom door swung open and Tian stuck his head in.
“I thought you were spending the day with that girl.”
Jeremy shrugged. “I thought so too. Seems I pissed her off.”
“How’d you do that?”
Jeremy glanced at the emotional barometer of his father’s wrist, searching for an explanation of the uncharacteristic paternal concern, but there were the same few rubber bands. “I was telling her about this book I’ve been reading. The authors claim that the only way to reverse global warming and species destruction is to get rid of corporations and big industries and return to a simpler lifestyle.”
“Makes sense she’d be angry, given her situation.”
Jeremy looked at him.
“I mean, those ideas probably didn’t go down too well with your girl,” Tian continued, “what with her needing medicines and such for her condition. Right?”
Jeremy was sidetracked for just a moment by Tian’s “your girl” comment, then realized how dense he had been, that even Tian would get that about Zoe, when he didn’t have a clue. What was wrong with him?
“Yeah,” he said. “She got pretty huffy about it.”
“Sure she did,” Tian said. “She wants her boyfriend to always be thinking about her well-being. So what’re you going to do about it?”
Jeremy shrugged. “I dunno.”
“Well,” Tian said. “I’m clearly no Father Knows Best, but seems to me that you’d better go talk to her.”
“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “I guess. Tomorrow.” Yes, tomorrow. He’d show up at the nursing home and help Zoe with her grandmother, whatever that meant.
Tian nodded. On his way out of the room, he gestured at the bare walls. “Redecorating, I see. Looks good.”