“I need to ride to work with you.”
My grandfather catches me in my room the next morning as I’m sitting on the corner of my bed and staring at the boots I should already have on. It’s like I’ve been moving through wet cement ever since I dropped Rebecca off last night and not even my grandfather’s sudden appearance can make me move faster.
I turn my head in his direction. He’s standing outside my open door, his own boots right up to the threshold and not an inch past. “Are you asking me or telling me?”
He sidesteps my question. “Grandma’s car is in the shop and I told her she could take mine to the Broadway site.”
“I need a few minutes.” I reach for my boot and my gaze snags on Rebecca’s bag peeking out from under my bed. She must have left it. Ignoring my boot, I grab it instead.
“We’ll be late.”
I don’t answer my grandfather, just stare at her bag.
She thinks she killed her father. She barely looked at me last night after admitting that, even yelling she couldn’t meet my eyes. Every time I tried to reach for her, she lashed out, cutting at me with words that sliced deeper than she knew.
I don’t know if her mom blames her, but it’s enough that Rebecca thinks she does.
Because guilt doesn’t fade, it festers.
My grandfather says something else, but I can’t look up. He’ll see my face and he’ll know or he’ll guess.
I work to try and sound as normal as possible. “What?”
“Are you sick?” His voice lowers and even though I don’t hear the steps he takes, I know he’s moving closer.
I force myself to my feet, breaking through that cement that is no longer just thick but hardening, and keep my back half to him as I walk out of the room. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”
We both end up walking toward the driver’s side door, but he yields after only a quick glance from me. We drive in silence for a mile or more, long enough for me to be grateful it’s my grandfather I’m riding with and not my grandmother. She would have already asked me a dozen questions by now. My grandfather, when he does finally talk, keeps it work related.
“I need you and Neel to eat lunch at the offices today. We’ve got some new fertilizer coming in and I want to go over some of the safety rules.”
I’m only half listening. Every few seconds I eye my rearview mirror to stare at where I tossed Rebecca’s bag in the back seat. Maybe I could use returning it as an excuse to stop by and see her, make sure she’s okay, and... “Wait, what? Why?”
“Fertilizer is highly combustible.”
I wave a hand at him. “I know, I know, ammonium nitrate.” I puff out my cheeks and make an explosion sound. “I’m up to speed, okay? And I’ve already got plans for lunch.”
My grandfather notices when I check the rearview mirror for the millionth time and he cranes his neck around to see what I keep looking at. I can tell immediately that he’s seen Rebecca’s bag, but he doesn’t comment on it.
“And where’d you learn that?”
“I don’t know. One of those books in the living room.” Maybe I should go see Rebecca before lunch?
“Which one did you read?” His voice is deceptively calm and it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Am I not supposed to touch the books? Well, it’s a little late now. “All of them, give or take.” There are only like twenty or so and a lot of them are illustrated.
“Hmmm,” is what he says in response. Then, “Are you interested in that kind of stuff?”
Two more mirror checks. “Some, I guess.”
“Enough to read an entire bookshelf some?”
I have to read, especially at night, especially since coming here. If I look at a screen too long my mind takes over and I haven’t liked the thoughts it’s been serving up lately. I wonder if Rebecca’s the same way. Maybe that’s part of what drew her to jewelry making, a way to drown out her thoughts instead of sinking under them. Had I done exactly that last night by forcing her to dredge up the past?
I mutter “shit” before remembering my grandfather can hear me. “So I read some books. All you guys have in the house are ones on plants and theology, and as interesting as I’m sure a collection of essays about a guy with an awesome beard named B.B. Warfield is, I decided to start with the plants.” Actually, I’ll probably read the beard guy book at some point too, but right now I kind of like knowing how to grow a specific kind of flower as well as draw it. Somehow even the chemistry about proper soil PH measurements didn’t bore me when connected to creating a landscape; for the first time in my life, it kind of made sense.
Rebecca said I should let my grandfather know I was interested in this kind of stuff; guess I’ll find out if she was right.
When we get to Good & Green and I see Eddie and Neel waiting for me by one of the trucks, I look past them to the clock on the wall, calculating how many hours I’ll have to wait until lunch and my excuse to see Rebecca.
“Four hours until lunch,” my grandfather says. “Come see me on your morning break and if you can answer a few more questions, I’ll let you keep your lunch plans. Just say hi to Rebecca for me and your grandmother.”
“How’d you know I was going to see her?”
He gives me a look that makes me feel dumber than usual. “There are only two things you’ve ever really cared about. Not hard to guess which one is on your mind today.”
I don’t have to wonder what he means. It doesn’t matter if I’m away from one or the other, Mom and Rebecca are never far from my thoughts. And yet, for the first time since I left LA, today I only thought about one.
My grandfather turns to head up to the office then stops and looks back at me as though a new idea just occurred to him. “I could bring home some more books for you tonight, good starters on botany, landscaping. If you want.”
My thoughts are still torn in two different directions, but I find myself nodding and smiling.
“I’m watching a movie with Rebecca tomorrow,” Neel says, when I join him in loading fertilizer bags onto a truck.
I halt, half bent over to pick up a bag. “Oh yeah?”
Neel climbs up into the truck bed and gestures for me to throw him one. “I think I might be making some progress in the whole let’s get back together thing.”
I maybe throw the next bag harder than I should.
He grunts. “Ease up. You want this to bust open all over me?” He makes the mistake of spreading his arms out wide and I choose that exact moment to throw another bag of fertilizer. It smacks him dead in the chest.
I mutter an apology when he yells at me, but the whole scene just causes Eddie to come over and yell at both of us. It’s a good time all around.
“What is going on over here?” Eddie props his hands on his belted cargo shorts. “This is company property, not toys for you to play with.”
“It’s a sack of sh—” I edit myself midsentence because one lecture at a time feels more my speed this morning “—fertilizer. What kind of toys did your parents make you play with?”
“You break it you buy it. You know how much one bag costs?”
Neel and I share a glance and he shrugs.
“Twenty bucks?” I guess.
Eddie snorts. “Try close to fifty. So watch it.” He takes a few steps backward. “Because I’ll be watching you.”
I sigh and we continue loading the truck. “How did you deal with him before I got here?”
Neel shakes his head. “I just ignore him. You should try it.”
I think about that and just barely keep from getting into a staring contest with Eddie. “It’s not in my nature to ignore.”
Neel makes a show of silently agreeing with me which pulls me up short.
“What does that mean?”
He waves for another bag, but I hold it back until his arms drop to his sides. “Just something Rebecca said. You hang on to things really hard. I think she meant it as a compliment,” he adds, seeing my expression. “Like you’re loyal, you know?”
I don’t know anything, or that’s what it feels like as I work the rest of the day—even through lunch. Like does Rebecca need space or comfort, and if it’s the latter, does she want it from me or someone else?
Instead of going home after my shift, I drive for a while hoping to clear my head. It doesn’t really work until I spot a rare—according to the book I’d read last week—Baja lily growing in somebody’s sand-covered yard so I pull over on an impulse and search the car until I find an old takeout napkin and a pen under the seat. I stare at the indigo blooms and start drawing. This will be the first flower I’ve left for her since coming back and I need it to be a lot of things, a promise, an apology, and a question all at once. I don’t just draw the flower this time. I write a few words underneath: See you tomorrow, so she’ll know that I’ll never say goodbye that way again.
When I finally get back to my room that night, I find a stack of books on my desk along with a note in my grandfather’s bold, scratchy writing that says:
Start with the one by Stern. We can talk about it tomorrow on the way in to work.