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Chapter 7:

"Why's this in here?" Maggie asks, wide gray eyes aimed at the potted plant on my table. She drops her bag to the floor. It lands upright, the end of a baguette poking out the top.

"Um..." I keep my gaze on the baguette and tug on my pendant until I feel the press of the chain at the back of my neck. Barren of explanation, I shoot a frown to Emily hoping it's eloquent enough to voice, I told you she'd be mad you left it here.

Emily's a bit wide-eyed herself.

"Oh, my God. It should be outside. In the sun." Maggie picks the pot up off my table, traipses outside with it, and sets it on the ground at the far end of my patio in full sun.

My mother—who a moment ago wondered, in the under-her-breath manner she does, why on earth I didn't have iced tea at the ready—picks up Maggie's bag and carries it to the counter where I'm sure she'll search my cupboards until she finds some tea to brew.

"Poor thing." Maggie closes the slider and when she passes us by, Emily spits out her laughter. I cover mine.

I'd roped Emily and Maggie into joining my mom and me for dinner. To me it was that way, as if I'd lassoed them about the waist or noosed their throats. But they'd agreed easily. They don't have the issues with my mom that I have. They didn't grow up with her, and she doesn't complain about my dad as much when others are around.

Of course, the pairing of Maggie and my mother resulted in the two of them parading in as though they'd entered some sort of cook-out contest, shoulder bags bursting with appetizers or desserts, and platters snug in plush carriers cradled in their arms—side dishes, main dishes. They both had to make two trips to and from their cars.

"We could feed the whole block," I said as they unloaded all over my kitchen.

My mom's dressed in a new style again, an updated version of the sixties hippie: billowy-sleeved peasant blouse and a flowing cotton gauze skirt that hangs straight to her feet but whose hem can tent out far enough to shelter small children if she is so inclined.

Her bangles clink down her forearms toward her elbows as she opens my cupboards just as I figured she would.

"No tea." I pat her shoulder. "Just coffee." I smile at her, the kind of smile that appears sweet but is actually somewhat smug because I know she disapproves. I want to tell her that a real hippie probably wouldn't have been so uptight over attending a dinner party where no iced tea was served. "There's always water or Coke. And Maggie's wine."

She gets over my neglect of iced tea—or my neglect of my company by neglecting to make iced tea—fast enough. With a bright-idea clap, she suggests we move my table out to the patio and "enjoy dinner outside."

In babysteps, two of us holding each side of the table, we lug it through the sliding glass door. Dishes, bowls, utensils, glasses, and platters flow next as we set the table. My mom places her hand-crocheted hot pads underneath platters while Maggie tops them with slightly bent, foldaway mesh domes wrangled from a bottom drawer, to protect our food from flies. The two women move in tandem like they're performing a rehearsed dance, never bumping or touching, as though they've done this together hundreds of times.

The potted plant gets to reclaim its spot in the center of the table. I notice a tiny green nub has nudged its way through the soil. Maybe it had already been there, unnoticed. I grab Maggie's elbow regardless. "Look!"

She gives me this sweet smirk, if smirks can be sweet—one that both affirms she's a miracle worker and tells me I'm welcome at the same time. "The sun," she says.

I breeze a finger over the emerging shoot. "Hi there, Sprout."

My mom orders us girls to pose in front of the yard while she takes our pictures, followed by a few of just me.

"Smile once with your mouth closed," she says.

"Something wrong with my teeth?"

"No, you just look so demure. So pretty, honey."

I give her a closed-mouth grin, but just before she snaps the picture, I part my lips, show my teeth. "Sorry," I say. "It's hard to smile that way."

She snaps a few more pictures she calls candid and when she's through she says, "Let's eat," as if the picture-taking was her form of saying grace.

Good little girls, we follow her lead. Maggie and Emily sit across from my mom and me. For a while there's only the sounds of steel clinking against ceramic, a fly buzzing here and there that gets swatted away.

It's a balmy evening, a replica of last Saturday and every day since. Breaths of warm air flutter the napkins and the ends of our hair.

Emily and I munch and sip Maggie's sulfite-free, vegan, organically-grown, harvested by maidens under the light of the full moon wine while the other two commend each other on such delicious food. Maggie asks my mom for the recipe of the finger sandwiches she made and my mom explains what she put in between two slices of bread.

"Dried tomato hummus. That's what I'm tasting," Maggie says. "Glorious."

It's on the tip of my tongue to mention Edward's simple burgers, his salad, the sage cheese, to explain that no recipe was involved and it was still delicious. Only ketchup added between burger and the bun, not even cheese because, distracted, I'd never answered his question.

I let it all simmer on my tongue and take a bite of my sandwich, try to taste the glorious hummus. I take it apart and look for it. My mom pokes my wrist, her nail digging, and asks me what I'm doing. I tell her "nothing" and put my sandwich back together because how can I tell her that I was looking for hummus? That I think she may have skipped a slice?

"Your manicure looks lovely." My mother takes my fingers into her hand and rubs a thumb over my nail bed. "Very nice."

My thoughts jack-knife from sandwiches and hummus back to Edward. I see his lips, moving to form his words, a smile outlining each one. The hair at my neck stands on end. I can even feel the downy hairs on my back, chills, and I pull my hand from her hold giving her a flat, "Thanks."

I take a bite of my sandwich and recall how, when my guard was down with Edward, my surroundings felt softer, like sinking into cushions after a hard day, although that day hadn't been hard.

I remember walking through the door on the first day of art class and how, when I saw Edward taking a seat at a table, a start went through my body. In all four years I had never shared a class with Edward. All the tables were the same, seating two, and it was still early enough that he sat alone. His sketchpad and pencil were already in his hands.

Many seats still available, my first inclination was to find another table. I hesitated at the door.

Go for it, I thought. It was the last semester of my high school career, and my last chance to get close to Edward. I knew how it worked in these elective classes, different from the required classes with their assigned seating arrangements. Here, wherever we chose to sit on the first day would become our permanent seats. That's the way it always was.

I tried to look as casual as possible. I slipped my earbuds from my pocket, untangled the cords as best I could in this moment and popped them into my ears. I walked to Edward's table, eyes on the ground, and sat down as if it was any other seat in the room. I let my bag fall off my shoulder and slide to the floor.

"Hey, Bella," he said. He looked me in the eye.

I don't know why I was surprised he knew my name. Of course he did. We'd gone to the same school for four years. We'd even talked to each other a few times. But still, my name from his mouth surprised the breath out of me. I inhaled and pretended to turn off the iPod I'd never actually turned on.

"Hi," I said. And it was my chance to say more. His pencil was in his fingers, his fist hovering over his sketch like it might just start drawing all on its own. Ask him what he's drawing, I told myself. Ask him if he's had Molina before. All I could do was look at him and open my mouth slightly, like whatever I released would be the determining factor of how the rest of our lives would turn out. Like do or die. Like, this is it. There will never be another chance again like this one.

"What are you listening to?"

"Um..." I lowered my gaze to my iPod. For the life of me I couldn't remember what I had last listened to or think of a single song title in existence.

"You don't remember?" His smirk cut through me. I could've sunk to the floor.

"I – it was on shuffle and..." I paused. Perhaps that was enough of an explanation. But he was still looking at me like he anticipated more. Why did it matter? Why did it matter what I had been listening to? "You know," I said and cleared my throat, sat farther back on my stool, "a person's music is a personal thing."

He grinned first, his eyes shining, and then he laughed. He looked down at his drawing with a chuckle and small smile that stayed, and I thought, I did it.

I still make him smile like that. Or he just smiles like that, in general, for anyone, whenever he's moved to.

And now here I am, having dinner with my friends, my family, and I'm thinking of him while he probably, and rightfully, thinks of Gianna. So healthy. So... me.

"I'm going to remove it tonight," I say of my nail polish. "I'm not really into the color."

"Try burgundy," Maggie says. "It'll be so striking against your fair complexion." Then she asks my mom to please pass the pasta salad.

"Bella tells me you're moving," my mom says as she hands over the dish, surprising me once again with evidence that she actually hears what I say.

"In June." Maggie spoons pasta onto her plate.

"They're getting the smallest house in the richest neighborhood." Emily stretches her neck, lifting her face like she's proud. "They'll have to deal with snobs but at least not the derelicts, right Mago?"

"Well, I didn't say..."

Emily starts laughing and leans over to give Maggie a one-armed squeeze. "We love ya just the way you are, darling. Wouldn't change you for the world."

"Yeah, right." Maggie scrunches her nose at Emily.

"My yard should be completed by then," I say.

Maggie says she hopes it is because then her "Begin Anew Party" will be perfect. That's what she calls it. Going Away Party sounds too depressing.

"And I want to see it before I go. But if it isn't finished yet, it looks like I'll just have to come back and visit sooner than expected." She brings her glass to her smile.

I like when people end a remark or their part of a discussion with an action. Sometimes you don't know if a person is finished having their say so you wait, not wanting to interrupt, or you do interrupt. But this way, the way Maggie ended it, it's visual punctuation.

.

Emily was the first to arrive this afternoon to help me transform my house into a mother-approved state of cleanliness, and she's the last to leave.

We slouch against my sofa, kick our legs up on the coffee table, and finish off Maggie's wine. Like a twelve year old, Emily wants to play truth or dare. Of course it's my turn first and she dares me to ask the "gorgeous gardener" out.

"He's married." I squirm lower into the plush cushions. Emily shoots upright.

"What?" She sets her wine glass down on the table. "Bella, what?"

"I know."

"What is wrong with you?"

"I don't know."

"Marcus, Eric, Jacob, Edward. And plus Edward before this. That's Edward twice."

"Yeah. I caught that, Sweetheart."

I could flip the conversation on Emily, ask if she's met anyone. But we don't talk about men in relation to her. Not since Sam. So I put myself in the ring and hang out there. I don't mind doing that for her.

"When was the last time you fell for someone who wasn't attached? And I don't mean settled, I mean who you really and truly fell for."

I down the last of my wine. "Alistair, my Nineteenth Century Women's Lit. class."

"And he was gay."

"Is gay. I don't think his preference has changed and he isn't dead." I sit up, readjust my top and start picking invisible crumbs from it.

"It's not your fault. You're like one of those cartoon guys with the storm cloud over your head. All we need to do is bring in some sunshine." She wiggles her fingers above me like she's sprinkling something over my head.

"This time is different. It doesn't seem real. I keep forgetting. God, he's still a teenager in my mind sometimes. I have to remind myself that he's married. I'm in denial." I don't elaborate on my struggles, don't tell her of my daydreams or night dreams—the fact that he's with me, in some way, in bed—or how his presence affects me. I don't tell her of the wall I'm trying to build up to keep him out or of the forcefield I surround myself with to zap errant thoughts or imaginings, even old memories.

"Oh, Bella." She tugs at the ends of my hair. "We all make our way to that destination at some time or another. Lucky you know now before it got worse. And I'll work on popping that rain cloud." She pokes a finger at my imaginary cloud. "I know this guy—"

"No, no, no." I cover her mouth. "Do not think about setting me up."

She moves my hand. "But he's good looking. And single."

"I don't care."

"How about a woman? Because I know this woman..." She laughs first and I follow.

"Only if it's you," I say as I lay my heavy head in her lap. She runs her hand over my hair.

I'm reminded of when I was young, before high school, middle school, even before elementary school. A preschooler in a faded, pilled flannel nightgown, curled up on my mother's lap like a pet, my legs scratched up from dried grass in the field behind our house where I'd captured and freed ladybugs, and my hair ratty from hours of big wheel riding. I can still hear that constant sound of pebbles crushed under my tires.

I should've hugged her goodbye tonight. We don't normally do that. Embrace. We say our awkward "goodbyes," our "see ya soons," and tonight was no different. Except I did hug Maggie. Why couldn't I have hugged my mom, as well? Why did it seem so forced and awkward to think about reaching my arms out to her, pulling her to me, my head on her shoulder or my cheek to hers? It wouldn't have killed me. It wouldn't have killed either of us. The last genuine embrace between us that I can remember was back when my parents still referred to themselves as "we."

After school that day of the first semester, my mom took me to get the required art supplies off the syllabus. In my room, I attempted to draw a portrait of Edward in my diary. The forehead was too small, the chin too wide, but the nose was the hardest feature to shade correctly. I erased it and, to the sound of the low mumblings of my parents' argument, tried and tried and tried again. Their voices, the tones, not the words, found my ears through the vents. When the nose was finally acceptable, it was over a blob of eraser-mark gray.

That picture lived in my diary for just under a week before I tore it out and threw it away. For one, I was afraid some snoop might find it, or that I might die in some freak accident and everyone would find it. For another thing, I'd heard that over the weekend Edward had taken Leah Clearwater to the movies and that they made out and maybe more in James's parent's spare bedroom.

"Who needs men?" Emily says. "We've got each other."

I kiss her knee. "That's right, baby."

.

Mr. Crowley reminds me again to call him Roland, but I can't do that. It feels wrong after knowing him as long as I have as Mr. Crowley.

Hunch-shouldered, he leads me through their disheveled living room. The ironing board is perched in front of the TV, a man's shirt draped over the top of it, a basket of waiting clothing beneath it.

In the kitchen, he takes the covered aluminium pan from me, peels back the tinfoil, and checks out the leftovers I've brought: pasta salad, finger sandwiches, sliced veggies, and dip.

"Mm-mm," he says, and I resist the urge to brag about the glorious hummus.

"Where's the missus?" I ask, borrowing his title for his wife.

"On a ride."

I know he means bike ride. Mrs. Crowley has these deep wicker baskets that I'm convinced she wove herself attached to the sides of her bicycle for when she runs errands at the market place at the end of our street.

"She says we're low on bread." He sets my pan on the island and crosses to the bread box. He lifts the door. It's full of bread. Then he opens the refrigerator and points out more loaves.

"Here." He pushes a loaf of sourdough toward me. "Take it." When I take it he tops it with another loaf. "This one, too. Running low." He shakes his head. "Thinks she needs an excuse to go on a ride. Wants to feel like she's accomplishing something. She can't just... go." He swipes an arm out in front of him to demonstrate how easy "just going" should be. But Mrs. Crowley, she reminds me of my grandma in the way she needs to keep busy, to feel useful.

I tell him they're starting work on my yard tomorrow. "I wonder how long before I'll get to bring you fruit and vegetables from my garden."

"Young people, always looking ahead."

"What do you mean?"

"No," he says. "It's right. What comes next? Good to wonder. Me and the missus, we spend our time in the past. We remember our boy growing up. His kids as infants. Might as well, long as the ole noggin is ticking. The memory fades, we won't pretend it don't. So we talk about it all we can." He gives his forehead three finger-taps. "Keep it clear and fresh like it was yesterday. Feels like it was sometimes."

"What about the present?"

"Don't believe in it." He scratches the beard that has filled in over his jaw.

Doesn't believe in it?

"The present's nothing but a blink. How can anyone hang onto that? It flips you right off. A buckin' bronco."

"But why do you garden? You must look to the future a little if you garden."

"Oh, maybe. Come here." I follow him to his back doors—French doors, the kind I'd love to have. I'd even take the fingerprints on the glass. We step outside and I breathe in, fill myself with the mixed scents of florals.

"See the vine over the trellis? Wisteria. The missus ain't gone a day of her adult life without wisteria in her backyard." He points to the tall shrubs growing all along his fence. It makes it seem as though there isn't a fence and his yard keeps going on, like woods. "The kids used to hide back there. One day the missus was searching and searching for Tyler back here. Calling him. Calling him. It took her to say she was going to get madder than he's ever seen her for him to show himself." He drops his voice to a whisper and scrunches up his eyes as if he's mimicking his wife. "'Madder than hell.' Sure enough, he giggled. And she looked down and saw his face right there at the height of her knees. And he climbed out like he was Tarzan or something. Makes her laugh whenever we talk about that. Funny Indian Hawthorn," he says of the plant. "That's what they are."

He points out more plants, all with particular memories to go along with them. I understand even more now why he sees his yard as an extension of himself. He keeps his gardening up to keep his memories alive. Inside me something is lifting, like air in water, a strong sense of nostalgia that doesn't belong to me.

I never knew gardens had voices, told stories, could make a person laugh. I didn't know plants grew histories. Would mine do that?

Over the fence I can see part of my yard. Not the whole thing from here, but enough. It's nothing compared to this yard. But it will be.

Looking to the future, I think. How will I feel when my yard is finished? Where will I be? And where will I be when it's time to do my first winter pruning? Will my life be the same? I hope for different. Something different.

"Thank you," I say, and Mr. Crowley gives me a perplexed look. "Um, for the bread." I lift it up. "We've traded food." I laugh, hide my discomfort. I walk with him to the front door, his bread in my arms, but more than that—the future's in my arms.