twenty-two
Lapeer County, September
“Cardinal de Richelieu, Charles de Mills, Hénri Martin, and Rosa gallica officinalis. Those are my best guesses.” Tyrese stood near the center of the garden and pointed at each of the four rosebushes in turn.
“Cardinal Richard, Charles de Mill, Henry Martin, and Rosa gallifinakus,” I said.
He laughed. “I’ll write them on the map.” He pulled out two pairs of long leather gloves and handed one to me. “You’re going to want to get some of these.”
“Another trip to the nursery.”
It had been three weeks since he’d taken the cuttings, weeks during which I had been to the nursery at least half a dozen times. I’d buy landscape fabric and gravel, then realize I didn’t have any stakes to keep the fabric in place. Then there wasn’t enough gravel. Then I remembered the edging to keep the tiny gray stones corralled. Then it seemed like I needed more plants. I always decided to make do, but Nora would push some cash into my hand and send me on my way.
“May as well do things the right way,” she’d say. “If you rush things, they don’t always turn out as good as they might have if you’d been just a little more intentional about them.”
Sometimes Tyrese was there and sometimes he wasn’t. But each time I saw him he would assure me he was “working on it.” After stopping at the nursery, I’d sit for a half hour or so in the Kroger parking lot and follow the trail of little green leaves on Ancestry.com. I found Nora’s parents, Daniel and Mallory, and discovered that while Daniel was my great-grandfather, my great-grandmother was not Nora’s mother but a woman from an earlier marriage. More importantly, I found Nora’s husband—William Rich—and the tumblers in the lock on my brain all fell into place and things started making sense.
Nora had said that William cut the lawn, but of course that was Tyrese. She’d said that William had freshened up what was the mustiest room on the planet. She’d said that William had planted the nearly dead tree in the backyard. That one might be true. The scanned marriage license proved that they had indeed been married in Detroit in 1963. But why had they moved? And when had William dropped out of the picture? So far my research had uncovered no death certificate.
“Why would someone plant roses in an herb garden?” I asked as Tyrese gathered up the thorny canes he’d pruned and slipped them into paper yard bags I held open.
“People used to make rose water to freshen their linens. You can use the hips for tea. And they just look and smell nice and give the garden a little height. Not everything in an herb garden is for eating.” A look of concern came over him. “You do know what you’re doing with this stuff, don’t you? There are some plants that you just shouldn’t mess around with. There are a number of dangerous plants that look a lot like edibles. Or sometimes one part of a plant is okay to ingest, but another is not. Like, you might eat rhubarb stalks, but the leaves are toxic.”
He was looking around the garden, I assumed for all the things that would kill me. He walked over to a patch of what I had determined was either Queen Anne’s lace or caraway.
“This is water hemlock. You need to get it out of here. It’s in the carrot and parsnip family—the roots even smell like carrots—but it’s not edible. In fact, it’s quite deadly.”
Oops.
“Isn’t that what killed Socrates?”
“That’s the rumor. Wear gloves when you pull it up, make sure you get the roots, and wash your hands well afterward.” He dumped some more clippings into the bag.
“Hey, how do you know so much about this stuff?”
“I majored in plant sciences at Michigan State. I planned to work for the Department of Natural Resources when I got out, but they didn’t have any spots available and Dad needed me at the nursery.”
“Your dad works there too?”
“He’s Anthony Perkins. He owns it. Well, we own it now. He made me his partner last year.”
I tried not to look surprised. “Why are you mowing lawns if you own the place?”
He tossed a full bag into the bed of his pickup. “I started mowing the lawn here right when I got home from college. The nursery got a call from that James Rich guy and I happened to answer it. He gave me his spiel, told me how much he’d be paying me, which was ridiculous for just mowing a lawn, and I took the job. Had to repay my college loans, you know?” He tossed another bag in. “Then I just got used to doing it. Now I put all that lawn money into a savings account and don’t touch it. That way when I have my own kids maybe they won’t need student loans for school.”
When the last of the bags was in the truck, he got into the cab, shut the door, and then leaned out the open window. “I’m working tomorrow from ten to five. Want to come out and I’ll get you hooked up with some rose gear?”
“Sure. I think that would work.”
“Great! See you then.”
He drove off, leaving a cloud of dust behind him, and I headed back into the kitchen where Nora was wiping the counter.
“Was that the young man from Perkins?” she asked, though I was pretty sure she knew it was.
“Yes. He came to tell me more about the roses. You know he owns that place? Him and his dad.”
“Yes, of course. Tony Perkins bought it from Frank Wilson in the late 1980s.”
I wondered why she didn’t think it was strange for a business owner to be mowing her lawn. But it was none of my business. If I started to pry, Mr. Rich’s cover might be blown.
“Think we’ll see him again soon?” she asked.
“I’ll see him tomorrow if I go in to get the gloves I need. Want to come with me?”
She draped the wet dishrag over the edge of the sink. “No, no. You go. I’d just get in the way. I have plenty to do here.”
“It’s not really like that, Aunt Nora. I’ve seen him five times and he’s hardly talked about anything but plants.”
She looked out the window and seemed to be remembering something pleasant. “Sometimes you just need the right moment.”
The next day was cold, gray, and rainy, a day when you must accept that summer is truly over and done with. I drove down the county highway past fields of high corn and the occasional maple tree turning an intense orange.
I’d always had mixed feelings about maples. While others pointed them out as happy harbingers of the cozy season to come, they had always seemed to me to be reckless—the first small flames of fall, each dropping leaf a burning ember that spread the fire until every tree was bare and dead and the November snows came like ash. I’d learned not to share this opinion with others, as it was universally judged as incomprehensible. Everyone loved fall.
I couldn’t say exactly why it depressed me. Maybe it was because winter in Detroit was the opposite of charming and fall was the warning sign that it was coming. Or maybe it had something to do with going back to school as a kid. Mom called it seasonal affective disorder. I didn’t know what to call it. I just knew it always brought me down.
I parked the car in the dirt lot at Perkins and rushed through the raindrops. Scanning the ever-shrinking selection, I found what I needed too quickly.
“Can I leave these here?” I asked a clerk as I put my items on the end of a closed checkout counter.
“Sure. Can I help you find something else?”
No, not something. “Do you know if Tyrese is here today?”
“Mr. Perkins is around here somewhere. Want me to page him?”
“No, that’s not necessary. I’ll just look around.”
“Be sure to check out our patio pots. Everything’s on sale right now.”
I walked down a ramp into the enormous greenhouse with metal tables that stretched on for fifty yards or more. Most were empty, but the ones near the front were crowded with chrysanthemums, that ubiquitous fall flower I had never cared for. A few workers milled about with hoses, but no Tyrese.
I slid open a heavy door and looked down at the tree and shrub area outside and saw no one at all. Then a fantastic notion popped into my head. A tree. I should buy a tree. A tree to replace the one by the garden. What had Nora called it? I put up my hood and walked down a long concrete ramp to the tree section.
Despite the rain, I started down a row of trees, looking at each plastic tag. Surely if I read the name I would know it. Crab apple, cherry, pear, serviceberry. Another row. Oak, maple, birch, ash. All of them were on clearance, but none of them were what I was looking for.
“Can I help you find something, ma’am?” came a familiar voice.
I looked up. The rain dripped off Tyrese’s hair and down his cheeks and soaked into his green fleece jacket.
“Elizabeth! I didn’t recognize you with your hood up.”
“Hi.” I hoped I did not look too pleased to see him.
“Looking for a tree?”
“Sort of. There’s that tree out back that’s just about dead and I thought I’d replace it for my aunt, but I can’t remember what she called it. I’d like to get the same kind. I thought I’d know it if I read the name, but nothing’s sounding familiar.”
“Our selection’s picked over this time of year. Why don’t you come into the booth over there out of the rain and I’ll grab a book.”
I was getting drenched, so I agreed at once. A moment later, we stood at a rough wooden countertop in a tiny booth barely big enough for two people. I could hardly turn the pages of the thick binder without elbowing Tyrese in the ribs. He smelled of earth and rain, and I turned the pages of the book slowly, more to extend the time we were stuck in that little shed than to study the pictures. Something about him made me feel relaxed, at ease, and yet all keyed up at the same time.
“That’s it,” he suddenly said, leaning close. “The catalpa.”
I examined the page. The picture was of a tree with large, teardrop-shaped leaves. “Are they messy? She said it was messy.”
“Oh yeah. Those seed pods can be over a foot long and they all fall to the ground, and not at the same time the leaves do, so you have to rake them all up in the spring. Well, I have to.” He laughed. “They make a huge mess. And they get to be very big trees. They’ve sort of fallen out of favor. People mostly seem to want smaller flowering trees and statement foliage trees that give good color in fall, like maples. We don’t typically carry these.”
“But I could order one for you.”
I turned to face him. “Really? You can?”
“Sure. It would come in the spring. I’ll put in the order today.” There was that killer smile again. “I got you covered.”
An awkward silence descended as the eye contact lasted longer than the conversation.
“Well, okay then.” I turned away. “I guess I’ll just go buy my stuff at the front and see you later.”
He stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Hey, would you ever want to go see a movie sometime?”
I almost didn’t answer, so sure I was that he hadn’t actually said it. But he was looking at me as though he were waiting for a response.
“That’d be nice.”
“Why don’t I give you a call tonight and we’ll figure it out.”
“Okay. I better go.” I had to leave before the spell was broken and he changed his mind.
“Want me to walk you up?” he said.
“That’s okay.” I put my hood up. “Wouldn’t want you to get wet.”
He laughed and looked down at his already rain-soaked clothes.
I trotted back up the hill with a stupid smile fixed on my face. Maybe fall wasn’t so bad after all.