2

IT IS NEWLY DARK WHEN DARA BRINGS ME HOME, THE AIR chill. A California chill. People from the East would be wearing shorts; I have on a heavy jacket. I thread my hands together on my lap. Dara and I have been avoiding talking about the test. We generally do not speak about the severity of my situation. If I dwelled on that garbage, I’d be more of a basket case than I already am. I say it anyway. “If I ever have to do that again, it’ll be too soon.”

The MRA test I’d just had was more like a medieval torture chamber than a modern medical exam. First, they injected me with a protein-based dye. Then they strapped me to the top of an iron frame and stuck me in the machine. Turns out I’m claustrophobic, because it wasn’t long before I was hitting the panic button. They gave me a sedative, so I was able to lie still for the ninety minutes I had to listen to the machine whirring around, hoping no one had left metal in the room that would go flying. The only way I got through it was by closing my eyes and visualizing my rose breeding. It worked. I came up with an idea for a new parent combination to try out when I get the seeds this fall.

“You got through it. You always do.” My friend glances at me.

Dara pulls onto my street. I’m glad to see the lights blaze in the greenhouse and a beat-up faded red Honda Civic is parked on the street. Brad’s silhouette is inside and the hose rushes water.

“He’s here late.” Dara frowns. “Doesn’t watering at night make fungus?”

“Drainage is what matters. As long as your soils drain well, you can water at night.” He was supposed to be out and done by six. It’s seven.

We make our way up the front walk as the lights turn off and the greenhouse door closes. Brad bounds up, his teeth shining in the porch light, the bright light of his cell phone shining open in his hand.

“Sorry. Practice ran late.” He flips his hair out of his face, worn in that fashion requiring such constant flipping, one bang over one eye. It’s a little girly-looking to me. Brad himself is almost too pretty for a boy, with a finely turned nose and very light green eyes marked by lashes so black it looks like he’s wearing eyeliner. He’s got the strong chin of his father, though, and the big ears, which offset the femininity.

Brad Jensen is a scholarship student. At some schools, this might mean he would be an outcast. At our school, he’s the most popular. Hardworking, bright, and polite. Everything you want your kid to be. Every mother of every girl he’s dated has practically adopted him. No one begrudges him his scholarship, not when his mother died in Iraq when he was a toddler and he’s being raised by his single dad, the school janitor.

“I’d rather have you home studying than here too late.” I take my key out, fumbling for the lock. Dara watches for a second before taking it out of my hand. “Hey, I can do that.”

“Don’t want to wait all night.” She undoes the deadbolt.

“It’s no problem, Ms. Garner. I told you I’d do it and I did.” Brad shakes his hair back again. I really don’t know why the girls love it so.

“You should get a haircut. You’ll see better.” I go inside. “Good night, Brad.”

“G’night.” Before I get all the way inside, his car has started.

“That kid. What isn’t he interested in?” Dara turns on the light. “Do you know what he was talking to me about in study hall? French cinema.” She snorts. “As if he knows anything.”

“Trying to impress you, I expect.” Dara’s the prettiest and youngest teacher at the school, a mere thirty-two. Of course all the boys have crushes, though she is never anything except professional. I put my hand on the hallway wall, making my way to the bedroom, past the very clean and nearly unused powder room. If you’re on the kind of dialysis I am, you don’t have to pee. Ever. The one convenient thing about it. “He’s a very well-rounded kid,” I continue. “I think he’ll have his pick of colleges. I’m only sorry he’s graduating.”

She goes ahead of me. The bedroom is pale green with pink accents. The bed is my four-poster from childhood, with a white canopy I’ve replaced with gauzy white curtains. I’ve spent more money in here on bedding than I have on my living room furniture. It’s the place where I spend the most time.

She turns down my covers. “There you go. All ready.” Dara sags against the door frame.

Suddenly I realize how tired she must be. Almost as tired as I am. “Thanks for staying with me, Dara.”

“I’ll stop by and see you tomorrow.” It is Friday night.

She’s got too much to do as it is. I am time-consuming. “No. I’ll be fine. I’ve got cans of chicken soup to eat.”

“You’re ridiculous if you think I’m not checking in.”

I wave her away. “Get along, now.”

I hear the front door latch as she leaves.

The red light is blinking on my machine, and I know it’s my mother before I check. I am not ready to talk to her. I get up and turn on the strong outdoor porch lights that lead the way into the greenhouse.

I should be lying down; a sedative still runs through my veins. But right now, I feel more relaxed than doped, and I want to do just a quick check on the roses.

The greenhouse is divided into different sections. At the short wall opposite the entrance, I have a desk, with shelves of my notebooks detailing my parent plants and how they were bred over the past decade.

In the middle of the greenhouse, I have three shallow boxes, four feet wide by six feet long, containing potting soil and topped with peat, which looks like white pearls sitting on top. These are my seedling boxes, where I sprout my new roses.

Farther down along the walls, I have tables of my older potted roses, the parent plants, spaced carefully apart from each other to prevent accidental pollination, two and half feet apart to ensure proper air flow. Each one is carefully tagged on the pot and cataloged in a notebook as well as in my computer.

And then I have my top-secret rose, the repeat bloomer, G42, in its special spot on my worktable. Though I’m hoping for fragrance this year, as a repeat bloomer it will be enough to get me into the market.

Outside, on my property, are rows and rows of my flowers. These are also categorized. Nearest the greenhouse, separate from the others, I have pots of my rootstock. After you get a good seedling, you take it and graft it onto rootstock to generate more of the exact same kind of seedling. Then you try growing these outside to see how they do. Not all will do well outdoors; a good many will die off. Some will return and surprise you in unexpected ways.

Then I have other roses grouped by type, mounded together with dirt paths in between. Though Hulthemias are my favorites, I have all manner of roses out here: hybrids, teas, climbers. Some of these are my second favorites: English roses, David Austin roses, big-headed and fragrant, almost like delicate cabbages.

My landscaping is functional and farmlike, not an aesthetically pleasing garden. Many casual rose growers plant other flowers that will bloom when the roses finish. Freesias with heady fragrance or ranunculus bobbing on their stick stems are popular. I don’t bother.

Out here is where the bees roam free, where I let nature take its course, more or less. In November, birds eat the rose hips and crap out the seeds during their migratory flights. I’ve thought of placing a tracking device in the rose hips to see where they end up.

There, I unlock the door and survey the scene. The hoses are put away, the water is off, the pruning shears are placed back on the pegboard hanger. I turn off the lights and lock the door, making sure the key is not under the mat.

Now my sleepiness hits me. I go back indoors.

It’s dark inside. The only sounds are the refrigerator humming and my own breathing. I make my way through the unlit house into the bedroom, taking a carefully worn path so I don’t run into any furniture. I switch on the dim bedside lamp and regard the blinking light of the answering machine again. I take a breath, dialing my mother back on speaker as I take off my shoes and socks and change into my nightshirt, a long football jersey handed down from my father.

“Hello, how are you?” I ask when she picks up. My voice sounds unnaturally loud in this house, and I fight the urge to whisper.

“Fine, thanks, and you?” This we must go through, no matter how many times per day I speak with her. “Let me call you back.” She hangs up and so do I. Mom does not want me to incur long-distance charges.

The phone rings. “How did it go?” Mom tries to sound cool, but underneath, worry vibrates as plainly as tight violin strings wail.

“Dara took me. I’m fine.” These are two things Mom wants to hear: that I’m not alone, and that I am all right.

“Will they make you do the IVP test?”

“I don’t have any results from this test, Mom.”

The MRA test was a last-ditch effort to measure my blood flow. The best way to get the results is through an intravenous pyelogram, or an IVP test, and I’m allergic to the dye. I’ve gotten a CO₂ test, where they pump carbon dioxide through you: results inconclusive. And now this MRA. If the MRA doesn’t work, the doctor will insist on the IVP test, allergic or not.

I change the subject. “How was the library art show?”

“Great. I sold a watercolor. Gal, I can be out there tomorrow morning.”

“You sold a watercolor?” I don’t want her to visit. “Congratulations! That’s major, Mother. How much?”

“It doesn’t matter. Do you want me to come?”

This is one reason I left my birth city. If my mother is here, she will be all over me, too guilty and busy to go outside and make her plein-air landscapes.

“It was noninvasive, Mother.” I muffle my sigh in my pillow. My parents are going to France soon, to sit in the French countryside, visit Champagne wineries, and eat moldy cheese that would be outlawed here. I am not going to have my mother miss her trip for me, though she always buys travel insurance “in case Gal has something come up.”

“Are you sure you’re all right? You sound off.” If she were here, she’d be making me tea and stroking my hair. For a moment I want her here.

“I’m on a sedative. I’ll be more coherent tomorrow.” I put my glasses on the nightstand and rub the bridge of my nose. I want to change the subject. “Heard from Becky lately?”

She hesitates, oddly. “I have.”

My eyes close. I am so close to sleep that I regret asking, yet I can still detect there’s more to come. “What’s up? She lose her job again?” Becky is a pharmaceutical sales rep, traveling her region and selling pills to doctors. Like me, she has a degree in biology, and on the surface, she looks like a well-respected suit-wearing white-collar worker, with flat-ironed shiny hair and carefully applied makeup.

“Not lost it. She got a new one. More travel.” Now Mom’s voice sounds funny. “Riley’s coming here to stay with us. After we get back from France.”

“Really?” I yawn. Riley is Becky’s daughter. Father in and out of the picture, out for good now.

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea.” Pot lids clang on Mom’s end, meaning she is more nervous than usual, even after one of my operations. “We’re to visit Aunt Betty this summer after her knee surgery . . .” She trails off. “Teenagers are a lot to handle.”

“Did you tell her that?” Mom lets Becky walk all over her, sending her money whenever Becky goes over budget, which I’m sure is more often than even I know. “Did you say she didn’t need to create another new problem?”

Mom ignores this, so I know she didn’t say a thing. “I’m sure it will work out.”

“Always does, one way or the other. Even if it’s badly.” I smile at my little joke.

“Ha ha.”

My mind drifts. Poor little Riley. The last time I saw her, I was still living at my folks’ house. I haven’t seen her in, what, seven years? She’s fifteen now.

When Riley was a toddler, perhaps two years old, I’d stopped by Becky’s townhouse in San Diego. Becky had been laid off from her first pharmaceutical sales job. At the time, Becky had been a party girl, a pot smoker and drinker, perhaps more. We suspected “laid off” was a nicer term for “let go because you showed up hungover.”

I was dropping something off. I don’t remember what. The door was unlocked. Her cat meowed at me.

“Riley? Becky?” I moved into the house.

Becky was stone-cold passed out on the couch.

I shoved my sister. She didn’t respond. I slapped her face. “Becky? Where’s Riley?”

“Uhh?” Becky managed to open her eyes, but could not focus.

Then I heard crying from the backyard. Riley was on the patio, dressed only in a sagging diaper, clutching the nape of the old yellow golden retriever Becky had inherited from her ex. Her eyes were reddened and stood out Christmas tree green, her face was filthy, her arms covered in mud, but she was all right. She held her arms out to me.

I scooped her up and took her over to my parents’ house. It was hours before Becky woke and realized her daughter was gone.

Riley went to live with her father after that, and we thought everything was all right. His mother watched Riley while he worked. Becky cleaned up, stopped partying, and saw her daughter regularly. We chalked the incident up to immaturity.

A few years later, Riley’s grandmother passed away, and Riley’s father got another woman pregnant. A woman who didn’t like the fact that Riley’s father had had another family before hers. He married her and moved to Boston, and Riley went back to Becky. I understand that Riley’s father hadn’t offered more contact than his monthly signature on the support checks.

Becky had moved to San Francisco for her new job, at a different drug company. Now, if Becky partied, she made sure to show up to work sober, or at least functional, because she’d held on to this job for years. I’d suspected that though she’d slowed with the alcohol, she wasn’t averse to the occasional super-strength pain reliever, palmed out of her samples. I could hear the fog in her voice on the rare occasions when we talked on the phone. Though she pulled in a good salary, she was always, somehow, in financial straits. Her boyfriends had been numerous, and always had questionable job titles like “nightclub promoter.”

My mother refused to believe anything was wrong. “Riley would tell me,” she would always say. Mom would fly up to get Riley, fly back down with her, keep her for weeks at a time during the summer. I had to think my parents had a stabilizing influence, as had her paternal grandmother, during her very young years. I had to believe Riley couldn’t remember her earlier neglect.

“Riley doesn’t want to be taken away from her mother,” I said. At eight, Riley showed a fierce and undeserved loyalty to my sister.

“Everything is fine, Aunt Gal,” she told me on the afternoon of her eighth birthday, when I phoned.

“Look in your cupboards and tell me what’s there,” I challenged her.

She had responded immediately. “SpaghettiOs, pizza, and a lot of vegetables. A lot of vegetables. My mother makes me eat them.”

I caught her out. “You keep pizza in your cupboard?”

“I thought you meant freezer.”

And it was always like this, Riley protecting and covering up for her mother, Becky wheedling whatever help she could get out of my mother, without admitting she should have given up her daughter long ago.

I remember this as I stare at the ceiling, listening to my mother make excuses for my sister. At last I say, “What Riley needs is a good education in a stable home. Her mother’s ruined her.” I think of my colleagues with children. The first child gets free tuition. It had always pained my frugal little heart that I could not take advantage of the program. “She oughta come here. Get a free private school diploma.”

“You couldn’t handle her.”

“You haven’t seen me in action with my students.” I chuckle. Oh, I’m close to sleep. I think I’m on the beach in San Diego, dipping one toe into the frigid Pacific. “Pollution levels are high,” I mumble and slur. I’m dreaming of another high school science project, testing the ocean water.

Her tone softens. “I better let you get to resting.”

It’s all I can do to hit the End button on my phone receiver. The pain medicine is better than a sleeping pill. The moonlight comes in, dappled through the chiffon curtains, making abstracted rose patterns on the ceiling. I close my eyes and picture my rose family pedigrees. Hulthemia. They rise three dimensionally around me, dancing like I’m Alice in Wonderland visiting those snotty flowers. I smile in my delusion. Maybe I can breed the pink to the yellow. I cross Hulthemias in my head, their offspring reborn as quick as film passing by. Until I fall asleep.