The flagstone felt rough on my bare feet as I stepped outside. The patio was shaded, but I still squinted against the morning sun. The intense glare made the landscape rock sparkle and had burned the Bermuda grass to a yellow green.
Dad looked up from his potting bench, and his mouth dropped open. “What are you doing awake so early?” He looked up at the clock hanging on the patio wall. We’d only had it a few weeks, but already the copper had oxidized and turned a speckled green.
I yawned and shuffled around a bag of potting soil. I dropped into a lounge chair. “I forgot to close the blinds last night. The sun got me.”
“What time did you get home?”
“About eleven. Mom said you were already asleep.”
He went back to pouring soil into a wide, round pot. “Did you have fun?”
“Yeah.” It wasn’t the most descriptive word, but then again, I wasn’t going to tell my dad about Devon. I wasn’t going to use the word “magic.” Or confess that I was completely in love and that Megan had been so right about Respecting the Sizzle. I couldn’t tell him it was the most perfect night of my life, right up until the second when Mrs. Yeats had shown up, opened her mouth, and ruined everything.
Dad’s work area was a mess. Tools and gloves and empty pots were stacked on the shelves of the hutch, and bags of soil and fertilizer sat half open and leaking over the flagstone. But somehow, out of the disaster area, he created amazing things.
“That looks pretty,” I said. He’d combined white zinnias with orange marigolds. I watched him tamp down the earth around the flowers. It always relaxed me, watching him work with flowers. It felt simple, natural. Why couldn’t life be like gardening?
I let out a long breath.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Why does something have to be wrong?”
“You just thought it would be nice to sit outside in hundred-degree weather on a Saturday morning and watch your dad plant flowers?”
I played with the hem of the shorts I’d thrown on with the cami I slept in. “Mrs. Yeats asked me to brunch tomorrow.”
Dad paused, looking up. “Really? Does she invite all the Benedict’s applicants?”
“I’ve kind of started hanging out with Devon.”
“Ah,” he said. “I take it you like Devon?”
I nodded, my heart answering with a squeeze. “He’s really cool, Dad.”
Lines fanned out from the corner of his eyes as he studied me. “And he thinks you’re really cool?”
“He asked me to be his girlfriend last night.”
“What?” He shook his head. “You’re too young to have a boyfriend.”
“You sound like Zeydeh.”
“Probably because Zeydeh also knows the rules: no dating until you’re sixteen.”
“I know,” I said, shifting deeper in the chair. “We’re just going to hang out. Talk on the phone, that kind of thing.”
“I suppose that’s all right.” He puffed up his chest, and showed off his biceps. “But if I have to, I’ll give him my scary-dad routine.”
I laughed. “You have no scary-dad routine.”
“I can work on one,” he said, depuffing. “So what’s the problem?”
“Turns out it’s not just Sunday brunch.” I looked at him through the curve of my eyelashes. “As long as I’m joining them for lunch, Mrs. Yeats asked why didn’t I also join them for church.”
His hands stilled. “Uh-oh.”
“Yeah.” I swallowed. “It’s a Lutheran church, so she’s sure I’ll feel right at home.”
“You did give her that impression.” He gave me a sharp look, then went back to his flowers.
“I’m thinking I can chalk it up to religious exploration. You and Mom always say Benny and I should be open-minded.”
He set the finished pot at my feet and reached for another one. “Is that what this is really about? Open-minded, honest exploration?”
“It could be,” I said slowly.
“Or it could be a lie, which is why you feel bad about it.”
“Who says I feel bad about it?”
“You’re not still in bed sleeping like a baby.”
I sat up, folding my legs under. “You’ve done it, too,” I said defensively. “Remember a few months ago when those Bible-thumpers came to our door?”
“No.” He sprinkled some plant food into the pot.
“You told them you were Jewish, which you’re not. Just to get rid of them.” I twisted my hands around the metal armrests. “People lie about their religion all the time. Even Zeydeh’s grandfather changed his name when he came to America.”
“It’s not the same, Ellie.”
“Why isn’t it?” I asked. “I watched that show on PBS—Jews lied about being Jews to get into colleges all the time.”
“Because there was discrimination—quotas—it was their only chance.”
“Well, this is my only chance,” I said stubbornly. “Isn’t discrimination still discrimination?”
He paused again. “Is that what this is?” he asked. “Discrimination?”
I rested back in the chair again, only every one of my muscles suddenly felt stiff and tight. “It turns out, the weird thing she has about Jewish people … is that she doesn’t like them.”
“You serious?” He stared at me, his mouth hanging open. “What happened to your spitting in her eye?”
“Devon said it wouldn’t do any good,” I admitted. “The only way to fight discrimination is not to let it affect me.”
“But it will affect you, Ellie. It already has.”
“But why should it? Religion is supposed to be about good things. Besides, Christians and Jews have a lot of things the same, like the same God. The Christians just have one more dead guy than we do.”
He wiped the back of his hand over his chin. “That’s one way of looking at it.”
“Shouldn’t religion be about being a good person? What’s it matter what you call yourself? It’s all the same thing.”
He rested his hands on the edge of the pot, the tips of his fingers as brown as the dirt. “It’s not the same, Ellie. Grandma Taylor isn’t a Christian because that’s what she calls herself. She’s a Christian because she believes that Jesus lived and died for her sins. She finds great comfort in her beliefs, and in the church.”
“Then why don’t you go to church?”
He wiped his chin again, this time leaving a thin line of dirt. “Do you know who George Bernard Shaw was?”
I frowned. “A writer?”
He nodded. “He once said, ‘The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.’ ” He looked at his plants. “This is my church. This is where God lives for me.”
“It makes Grandma mad, doesn’t it?” I said. “That you’re not more religious? Was she mad when you married Mom?”
He shook his head. “Not really. The hardest part for her was when you and Benny were born. She wanted to baptize you.”
“You mean, put water on our heads?”
“Something like that. She worried you wouldn’t go to heaven.”
“Of course I’m going to heaven.” I made a face. “But maybe she should worry about Benny. I have my doubts.”
He smiled.
I leaned down and wiped a clump of dirt from the edge of the pot he’d finished. “I wonder if God cares? Or if it seems dumb from up there? You know, how things feel so big on earth—like a house seems big, but when you get up in a plane, it’s barely the size of a bread crumb.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I do know that no matter how much distance you try to put between yourself and a lie, it’s still a lie.”
I swallowed. “I promised Devon I would go.”
“It’s your choice, Ellie. Just be sure you’re thinking it through.”
I could feel his eyes on me, even though I didn’t look up. “I wish we were more like flowers.” I traced a finger over an orange petal shot through with a curl of yellow. “Zinnias and marigolds are different, but look how nice they are in the same pot.”
He sighed. “Amen to that.”