Tending the Garden
The drizzle starts as Ryan makes his way to the side of the house. Slow, apologetic drops spot the shoulders of his t-shirt, moisten strands of his hair, mingle with sweat already glistening on his skin.
To Ryan, the rain feels like regret, like Kirsten's tears the day that she left for rehab.
He lowers the awkward bundle he carries and lifts his face, scanning the sky. Thin sunlight threads through shifting gaps in the clouds. Somewhere, Ryan knows, there must be a rainbow, but he can't find one. They always seem to elude him somehow, those signs of hope and redemption arcing high overhead.
Disappointed, Ryan's gaze falls. His steps falter suddenly. One hand swipes his brow, trying to erase an unbidden image: himself as a child, hopping puddles on the decrepit driveway in Fresno, discovering rainbows on their oil-streaked surfaces. Gripped hard by memory, Ryan rewinds his life.
There he is, five years old, hair bleached white-gold by the sun, cheeks a downy pink, his flesh still dimpled at elbows and knees. He is crouching down, trailing a reverent finger through the iridescence, eyes wide with wonder as the colors dissolve and transform in the wake of his touch.
Like magic.
Ryan remembers wanting to scoop the rainbow up whole, a liquid gem that he could offer his mother. Only when he pulled his hand from the puddle, it emerged empty, slick and dripping with dirt. Dismayed, he scrubbed it off on his jeans.
All that remained of his rainbow was a greasy stain, a gray reminder of what was real in his world.
Ryan's heart lurches, and he opens his palms, letting the rain wash him back into the present, reminding himself what he had come to do.
This light shower isn't enough, he decides—less an actual rain than the suggestion of one, not enough to soak through the parched surface, to quench thirsty roots tangled deep underground.
Kirsten's garden still needs to be watered.
Ryan remembers the first time he surprised Kirsten here, working her plants. It was mere weeks after she had opened her home to him, when her words still echoed constantly in his mind. "Ryan is going to be staying with us now," she had said, as though it could really be that simple.
More than anything, Ryan wishes Kirsten had been right.
Now, although he understands it will hurt—like blood returning to a frostbitten limb—he allows himself to relive that time, an instant when he had let himself believe.
Sidling around the corner of the house, his hand gripping a contraband pack of cigarettes in his pocket, he jerked, stumbling, to an abrupt stop. Kirsten was kneeling in front of him, an absurd straw hat half-obscuring her face, her hands hidden inside gloves that looked two sizes too large.
"Oh!" she gasped when his shadow fell over her.
His cheeks stained crimson, Ryan shuffled away, stammering an apology. He started to retreat back where he came, but Kirsten clambered upright, quick and graceful.
"Ryan, wait!" she called. Her abashed blush matched his, but she offered him a tentative smile. "You startled me, that's all. Please, don't feel that you have to leave."
Ryan paused, pulling his hand from his pocket. Afraid that the tobacco smell would betray him, he picked up a fistful of dirt. It felt smooth, curiously clean and rich, as it ran through his fingers.
"I didn't expect . . ." he began. "I mean, I thought you had a gardener."
"We do," Kirsten admitted. She sank back, sitting on her heels, and inclined her head, inviting Ryan to join her. Awkwardly, he crouched down, keeping a respectful distance between their bodies. "This is my pitiful attempt to be my mother's daughter," she explained, lips quirking with embarrassment. "She was a real gardener. I'm not. I just try to keep these rosebushes alive." Running her thumb gently along a stem, Kirsten added, almost in a whisper, "It seems important to do it myself."
Ryan nodded, although he didn't begin to understand. "They're beautiful," he murmured.
"They are, aren't they?" Kirsten's eyes lifted under the brim of her hat, shining moist and tender as she indicated the plant near Ryan's knee. "That bush? With the flowers that look like an orange sunrise? That's Seth."
"What?" Ryan's brow creased and he blinked, confused.
Kirsten laughed, a little self-consciously. "That did sound strange, didn't it? You see, Ryan, my mother planted that rosebush the day Seth was born. She chose a different variety to welcome each new child into the family. This one--" She touched a leaf on the rosebush to her left, its petals streaked a hectic wine and gold, "this one is Hailey."
His eyes widening with awed comprehension, Ryan nodded again, and he edged a bit closer. "So the pink roses?"
"The pink ones my mother planted for me."
Carefully, Ryan stroked the lacy edges of one half-opened bloom. "They look like you," he murmured shyly. "And Seth's flowers look like him. I mean . . ." He flushed, mortified, and his eyes skidded sideways. "Well, you know."
"I do know," Kirsten smiled. "And I agree."
"How did your mother know what kind to plant?"
Kirsten pressed her palms together under her chin. "That's a good question, Ryan," she mused. "Maybe, even when we were babies, my mother knew in her heart the people we would become. Or maybe somehow we just grew up to resemble the flowers she picked for us. Did your—did you ever have a garden when you were growing up?"
Ryan shrugged one shoulder evasively. "At school once," he recalled. His voice rasped, gruff and reluctant. "In third grade, we all got to plant a flower on the last day of school. Our teacher, Mrs. Neylon, she said she'd take care of them for us all summer. We were supposed to see how much they grew by the time we came back in the fall."
"Oh, that's a lovely idea, Ryan. How did your plant do?"
"Don't know," Ryan confessed, ducking his head. His gaze darkened and he bit the inside of his cheek. "That was the summer that my dad . . . I never went back to that school."
"Oh." Absently, Kirsten smoothed a mound of earth with her cupped hands. Small lines marred the smooth planes of her forehead. "I'm so sorry, Ryan."
"It's okay," he mumbled, unable to meet her eyes. They felt like lasers, burning his skin with sorrow and guilt, as though the pain was somehow her fault. It seemed strange to him, even wrong, to hear this woman apologize, to give absolution for no sin at all.
Kirsten fumbled with the garden caddy next to her knee. She pulled out a pair of clippers and handed them to Ryan. "Since you're here, would you help me?" she asked. "If you're not busy, I mean."
Ryan registered the request with something close to fear. "I don't want to . . . hurt your flowers," he demurred. He held the shears against his thigh, regarding them apprehensively. "I don't know what to do."
"To be honest, Ryan, I don't really know what I'm doing either," Kirsten confided. She waved him closer, encouraging. "But so far, I've managed to keep all the roses alive. Just trim off any dead leaves. And cut back the overgrown blooms, like this one. See?"
Frowning with concentration, Ryan watched Kirsten demonstrate, memorizing her movements. He licked his lips, swallowed, and was about to reach for a stem, when Kirsten caught his wrist.
"Wait," she ordered.
Instantly his eyes widened and he recoiled, stricken.
"You need to wear gloves, Ryan," Kirsten clarified gently, "so you won't get blisters. Here--" Digging into the tool caddy, she extracted a sturdy pair. "Try these."
She waited, smiling reassurance, until Ryan put the gloves on, then turned back to tend her plant, trusting him to do the same.
That was the only time Ryan had helped Kirsten in the garden. Still he remembers it all: the lush scent of the roses, the sun's hot breath on his neck, trickles of sweat running down his spine, the companionable silence, measured by bird songs, the humming of bees, the distant call and response of the ocean waves.
Shuddering slightly, he remembers too how disoriented he'd felt at first, dazed, and suspended out of time and place, trying to reconcile this woman, this garden with the memories he chose not to share with Kirsten.
They had just moved to Chino, Ryan, his mother, and Trey, when he finished unpacking his meager possessions and wandered outside, eager to explore. Dawn was standing on the ramshackle back porch, arms akimbo, squinting speculatively at the yard next door.
"Look at that," she muttered when Ryan edged close. She jabbed her chin toward a small patch of land, its soil painstakingly turned and weeded, laid out in neat lines. Small buds, the spring green of promises, were peeking timidly through the dirt. "What do you think, Ry? Pretty damn smart idea, huh, cutting down on grocery bills by growing some of your own food. We could do that, couldn't we?"
Ryan searched his mother's face, gave a diffident nod. "I guess. Sure we could, Mom."
"Damn straight we could," Dawn agreed. Her eyes glittered with the manic enthusiasm Ryan recognized and had begun to mistrust. "Tomatoes, some beans, carrots. Well shit, I hate carrots, but I don't know, you think we could maybe grow strawberries here?"
"Maybe," Ryan said, hands clenching tight inside his pockets. "But Mom, you know, plants don't just . . . grow, I don't think. You have to . . . do things."
"Well hell, baby," Dawn snorted. Ryan flinched when she extended her hand, but his mother just ruffled his hair affectionately. "You think I don't know that?"
Ryan expected Dawn to forget the idea, but two days later, he discovered her, sitting cross-legged in the dirt behind their house, a scarf restraining her frowsy hair, her thighs and naked back reddening in the sun.
"Look," she called exuberantly. "Look what I got for us, baby!" Surrounding her were flats of seedlings, some of them heedlessly overturned, a few others burned dry, their leaves brittle and colorless. "Close-out sale at the nursery," Dawn explained, looping an arm around Ryan's neck and pulling him close. "Swear to God, they were a steal. So, you gonna help me plant them, Ry?" Her face set in hard lines as she added bitterly, "I already asked your shit of a brother, but hell, Trey couldn't be bothered, could he?"
Ryan cringed at her tone, but his head automatically bobbed assent as he knelt beside his mother. They worked until almost sunset. Dawn chattered feverishly about a hundred different things, interrupting herself to complain when she broke a nail, more frequently for cigarette breaks, and to dash inside for something to drink, because "Shit!" she exclaimed, "this gardening stuff is damn thirsty work, kiddo."
By the time they were done, all of the seedlings were planted, even the ones Ryan suspected were already dead. But it looked slipshod when they finished, the spacing irregular, the ground barely tilled, clumps of weeds still erupting stubbornly.
A parody of a garden, nothing more than a sad patch of cleared dirt.
In the end, of course, it didn't matter. Dawn lost interest in the plants within a matter of days, and Trey openly scoffed, sneering that if they couldn't raise marijuana what was the fucking point? To Ryan's surprise, a couple tomatoes actually did start to bud, but he didn't know to stake them, and Dawn didn't bother, so when the plants grew top-heavy, they collapsed on themselves. Ryan found them one morning broken on the ground, gnawed, and already starting to decay.
Their spilled juice looked like blood, the raw edges like open wounds.
He is determined now that Kirsten's roses won't die the same way.
The rain is already stopping by the time Ryan assembles all his supplies. He begins gingerly to prune the Hailey rosebush, pausing before each cut, hoping he's not doing more harm than good. It is clear, though, that the plants need attention. In the weeks before everything—Caleb's death, the intervention, her departure from home—Kirsten evidently forgot them, and since the gardener knows that she owns their care, the flowers have languished, untended, unnoticed.
Methodically, Ryan works his way around Hailey's plant and then Seth's. By the time he finishes aerating the soil surrounding their roots, his muscles have begun to cramp. He stands, stretches, flexes his fingers, takes long breaths of the clean, perfumed air, and finally moves over to Kirsten's rosebush. His heart clenches at the brown spots he finds, the limp petals that wilted, curled in on themselves. For a moment his vision clouds, and before he can blink it clear he grasps a stem in the wrong place and a thorn pierces the thick canvas of his glove.
It goes deep in his thumb and lodges there.
When Ryan pulls it out, he can feel a drop of blood follow. He strips off his glove and examines the wound, shocked at how much it throbs, how all his nerve endings suddenly center in that single, tiny spot.
Instinctively, he presses the thumb to his lips.
Just at that moment, Seth saunters around the corner of the house. His head bobs to whatever music pulses through his headset, and he is chewing a bagel in time to the beat. When he sees Ryan, Seth stops nervously, lifting his palm in an uncertain greeting.
"Hey," he says.
In his voice, Ryan hears that odd reticence that he has detected ever since Trey was shot. It's as if Seth runs his words through a five-second delay, ensuring that they are safe, that they contain nothing that might ignite Ryan's rage.
"Hey," Ryan answers, mumbling around his thumb.
"So." Seth peels off his headset and shifts from foot to foot. "Yeah. Well. I was looking for you, dude, but I had pretty much figured you didn't want to be found. Only, hey, here you are. Not that I need to tell you that, right? Because you would know where you are when . . . well, when you're there."
Ryan can't help it. The words are ridiculous, deliberately so, and he rolls his eyes, the corners of his lips flickering upwards.
Seth grins happily in response. "Dude!" he exclaims, doing a comic double take, even though it's too late for the reaction to be spontaneous. His shoulders shimmy, and his eyes lock significantly on Ryan's mouth. "I never took you for a thumb-sucker, man. Now see, Mom broke me of that habit when I was four. Well, four or fourteen. You know, somewhere in there."
Mortified, Ryan yanks his hand from his face, stuffs it back in its glove. "Thorn," he reports tersely. "Pricked myself, that's all."
"Of course you did, bro."
Ryan glares, and Seth's smile widens until his dimples dance. In almost one movement, he plops himself on the grass, spins up in surprise and twists around, craning his neck to try and inspect the seat of his pants. "What the--?" he demands.
"Seth," Ryan points out patiently, "it rained this morning, remember? The ground is still damp."
"And a good time to mention that little fact might have been before my ass made contact, dude," Seth replies. He scans the area for somewhere else to sit, but there are no chairs, so he raises his hands in surrender and drops back to the ground.
Ryan's eyebrows lift incredulously.
"Hey, I'm already wet anyway, right?" Seth explains. He settles in place, trying to appear completely at ease, waiting for some response. When the silence stretches beyond his comfort level, he looks up, eyes dark with entreaty. "You don't mind, do you, Ryan?" he asks. "If I hang out here with you, I mean?"
Ryan hesitates. He measures the peace of his privacy against Seth's hopeful expression, his own need to reconnect against all the risks that involves. Then he factors in the cost to them both if he sends Seth away.
"No, it's cool," he says finally and returns to his task.
Hugging his knees to his chest, Seth watches as Ryan strips dead blossoms from the Kirsten rosebush. Slowly, his expression grows pensive, then regretful.
"Grandma's garden," Seth observes softly, his voice tinged with guilt and sorrow. "Man, I pretty much forgot about this place."
Ryan recognizes the tone, glances over in sympathy. He crouches to pick fallen blossoms off of the ground, wondering what consolation he can possibly offer. "Yeah, well, it's tucked out of the way back here," he says. "Not like you see it every day or anything."
"You remembered it, though."
"Not really. I just kind of . . . found it."
He doesn't elaborate. To himself, though, Ryan admits that until last night, he never thought of Kirsten's roses either. He rediscovered them by accident after he awoke, sweat-soaked and breathless, from another nightmare. Desperate for relief, he wandered out of the stifling pool house. He was trudging the grounds wearily, trying to purge emotion in movement, when he stumbled upon the tangled rosebushes.
Even in the thin moonlight, he could tell how much they had suffered.
Seeing them clinging precariously to life, Ryan resolved to salvage what he could. When he returned to the pool house, soothed by a sense of peace and purpose, his eyes closed almost as soon as he crawled back into bed, and he fell into a warm, dreamless sleep.
He rouses himself now, realizing that Seth has continued their conversation, and is gazing at him expectantly.
"Mom used to call this our Secret Garden. You know, like in the book?"
Ryan shakes his head, mystified, although he files the phrase 'secret garden' away. He likes the sound of the two words spoken together, what they suggests about this hidden place, where the flowers whisper stories that strangers can never hear.
"Yeah, no, it's really a girl's book, from what I could tell. A really old-fashioned girl's book even. I never could make myself finish it." Seth's head lolls dreamily as Ryan begins to run water from a hose into a pail. "So, dude, taking care of Mom's rosebushes for her," he drawls. "Groovy, man. Very hippie, very flower power of you."
Ryan turns off the spray and coils the hose, frowning at Seth over his shoulder. "Flower . . . power?" he repeats skeptically.
"Okay, yeah, probably not so much," Seth admits, holding his fingers up in a peace sign. "I'm just sort of free-associating here." He leans over, peering into the pail as Ryan stirs in the grainy contents of a plastic bag. "Hmm," Seth murmurs. "Looks like lime Jell-O—well, in its not-quite jelled stage, I mean."
Ryan tests the consistency of the mixture, adds a little more water. "You mean it's green," he concludes.
"Um, yes. But lime green," Seth clarifies. "Hence the whole Jell-O connection."
"Yeah, well, it's fertilizer."
Tumbling back in alarm, Seth wrinkles his nose, his shoulders hunching with disgust. "As Summer would say, ew, dude!" he exclaims. "Seriously. Just, ew." He stretches his neck to examine the concoction from a safe distance. "What animal produces that color waste anyway?"
"Not that kind of fertilizer," Ryan says. He feels momentarily buoyant, and he has to bite back an indulgent grin. "It's just plant food, Seth."
"So, you mean . . . what? Plants need to eat?" Seth cocks his head, mulling the idea. "Like Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors or something? Because, dude, just so you know? That whole 'feed me' business is what we call fiction. Real plants just need light and water. And, you know, sometimes the ew stuff. I know this. I got a solid B+ on a science fair experiment about photosynthesis in the fifth grade."
"Food helps plants grow strong," Ryan maintains. "Especially if they don't get enough nutrients from the soil. And these rosebushes . . . well, they've been a little neglected." Instantly, he blanches and averts his eyes, afraid that in some way he has just accused Kirsten, or betrayed her trust. He tenses, waiting for Seth's response.
Leaning forward, Seth takes a deep, solemn breath. "Yeah, I guess you're right," he agrees, looking intently at Ryan, "But I think they'll be fine."
"You do?"
"Absolutely. Hey, they've got Kid Chino on their side now, right?"
Although Ryan swallows, appears to form words in his mind, he says nothing.
Seth waits a moment, then turns his attention to a cumbersome pot sitting off to the side. "That," he declares positively, "is not a rose, Ryan. I may not know much about horticulture, but really? That much I can tell."
Ryan glances over briefly before turning his back. "It's a tomato plant," he mutters. "I thought I might find a place where it can grow. Not here in this garden, but, you know, somewhere." It had been an impulse purchase, added to his cart just as he was preparing to check out at the gardening center, but all at once, Ryan feels angry with himself for buying it.
That plant, reminiscent of Chino, of Dawn, of so many failed hopes, has no place anywhere near Kirsten's flowers.
Seth, however, is nodding approval. "Tomatoes? Cool," he declares enthusiastically. "Also edible, which I don't mind telling you I really like in a plant. 'Cause hey, pretty is good, but tasty is better. So . . . what's with the danglies, dude?"
Ryan starts, and the plant food sloshes perilously close to the top of the pail. He steadies it with both hands to keep it from spilling. "The—what?" he stammers.
"Those sticks and those dangly white things hanging on them? What are they for?"
"Seth, I thought when you said . . . well, never mind what I thought. The white . . . things are strips of cloth so I can tie the plants to posts when they start to grow. Tomatoes can't support themselves without some help."
Seth inclines his head sagely. "Ah yes, I see," he says, although it is clear that he doesn't. He is about to say something else when Sandy's voice reaches them, faint and then louder.
"Ryan? Seth? Where are you guys?"
"Out here. In grandma's garden," Seth calls. "Oh, and for the record, Dad? You've officially lost this round of hide and seek."
When Sandy appears, his brows are furrowed, but he relaxes at the sight of Seth sprawled on the ground, Ryan judiciously pouring plant food at the base of the rosebushes. "Well, what's all this?" he drawls, his whole demeanor amused and affectionate. "Have you guys picked up a new hobby?"
"Oh no. No and no again, Dad, not me," Seth declares empathically. "My man Atwood is the gardener here."
"Not really," Ryan protests. He wipes the back of his hand over his forehead, then down his cheeks. Although nothing about Sandy suggests accusation, Ryan finds himself feeling awkward, as though he owes an explanation he doesn't know how to give. "Kirsten's roses just needed a little attention."
Sandy's gaze sweeps from Ryan's flushed face, streaked with sweat and a smudged line of dirt, to the neat pile of cuttings beside each rosebush, the yard bag filled with weeds, the profusion of fresh, lively flowers. "Looks like they got more than a little," he observes. "You've done a fine job here, Ryan. Thanks for thinking of it. Kirsten would hate to come back and find her roses dying. And to tell you the truth, I'd forgotten about this garden out here."
"Yeah? Well then, welcome to the club, Dad," Seth declares. "You can be secretary if you want, but the power positions are already filled."
Ryan says nothing, but he gives a lopsided smile, sighs with tired satisfaction as he rolls his shoulders and shakes out his hands.
Fingering a blossom, pink and perfectly formed, Sandy closes his eyes for a moment. "Kirsten," he sighs, before he turns to Ryan and asks, "So did you finish pruning all four plants?"
"Four?" Ryan's head jerks up sharply, and he scans the garden, confused. "Sandy, there are only three rosebushes. The ones that Kirsten's mom planted."
Sandy removes an errant leaf clinging damply to the back of Ryan's neck. "Kirsten added one," he says gently. "You didn't notice? See? It's there, on the other side of Seth's."
He gestures, but Ryan's eyes don't follow the movement.
"For Lindsay," he says. His tone is husky, the words not quite a question. Ryan stands frozen, although Sandy's hand is on his elbow, urging him forward. Dimly, he is aware that Seth has clambered to his feet and now stands, bouncing slightly, on his other side.
Sandy's voice seems to come from someplace far away. "Not for Lindsay," he replies. "It's for you, Ryan. Kirsten planted it last year, just after you left for Chino. I know she intended to show it to you this spring, but . . . well, things happened. What do you think, kid? Like it?"
Ryan realizes suddenly that he had known the fourth rosebush was there. Last night, when he wandered out here in the dark, it had nearly tripped him, and he ignored it this morning, focusing on the flowers he knew as Kirsten's, the ones that needed his care.
He had thought the strange plant was a stray, not part of the garden at all.
"Ryan?" Sandy prompts.
When Ryan fails to respond, Seth nudges him, complaining with mock-jealousy, "This is majorly unfair. How do you rate the cool flowers, bro? Look at mine. They're orange!" He grimaces, pronouncing the word with disgust. "I mean, let's face it, orange is the geek in the color classroom. But what does Mom pick for you? Purple, which is not only cool, but definitely more manly, dude. At least, you know, as roses go anyway."
Despite Seth's description, Ryan recognizes that the blossoms aren't really purple. They're more a rich crimson, veined with deeper red-violet lines, but the colors are vibrant, like pain and passion and strength.
Blinking hard, Ryan drops his eyes to his hands. He rubs a callous on his index finger, wonders how he managed to get ridges of dirt under his nails when he had been wearing gloves. "Kirsten did this? Why?" he asks hoarsely. It's hard to form the words, harder to utter them, hardest of all to wait for Sandy's answer.
"Because her mother wasn't alive to do it. Kirsten wanted to make the garden complete."
Sandy has moved behind Ryan, hands resting warm on his shoulders, and unconsciously he leans back, bracing himself, breathing hard. "She didn't have to do that," he murmurs.
"Actually, Ryan," Sandy says simply, "she did."
"You know what this means, don't you?" Seth demands. His lips are folded deliberately, his tone almost solemn. Ryan shakes his head, biting his lower lip, and Seth's face erupts into a gleeful smirk. "More work for you, dude! That Ryan rosebush needs some serious . . . well, some serious something. You know, the cutting, the watering, a hearty serving of the lime Jell-O stuff. And hey, there's still the tomato plant that you have to put in."
"Sandy's eyes light up eagerly. "Tomatoes?" he echoes. "You're going to try growing tomatoes, kid?"
Ryan hunches one shoulder. From where he stands, the sturdy tomato plant still looks incongruous here, but Sandy's voice rings with enthusiasm, and Seth is putting on an absurd display of anticipation, rubbing his stomach and licking his lips. "Yeah, I thought . . . maybe," Ryan says. His gaze slides from Sandy's infectious grin over to Seth's, and unconsciously, his lips curve into an answering smile.
"That," Sandy declares, "is an outstanding idea. There's nothing like the taste of fresh tomatoes right off the vine."
"I'm not sure I can make it grow," Ryan warns, "but I can try."
"Here's a better idea," Sandy replies. "We can all help." He slings one arm around Ryan's shoulders, the other around Seth, hugging them both. "You've done terrific job so far, but Seth and I are here now." Ignoring Seth's pretense at protest, Sandy continues, "No reason we can't contribute to Kirsten's garden. So tell you what, kid. You go ahead and put in the tomato plant. But let us take care of the Ryan rosebush."