Kinship of Clover Read online

  MORE PRAISE FOR KINSHIP OF CLOVER

  “Midway through this wonderful novel, you will find a woman dancing in her wheelchair. That scene is one of many memorable moments in a story about young people organizing for a sustainable future, even as their once-radical elders try to hold on to a gradually disappearing past. This is a book about time and love, politics and family, and it is sharply observant and deeply compassionate.”

  —CHARLES BAXTER, author of The Feast of Love

  “Ellen Meeropol brings her keen political sense and psychological understanding to this story of family secrets and family trauma. Kinship of Clover is compelling and the characters stay with you long after you’ve finished the book.”

  —NANCY FELTON, Broadside Bookshop

  “Kinship of Clover counters our culture’s typically insular fiction. From a teenage girl in a wheelchair experiencing her first romantic relationship, to an older activist suffering from Alzheimer’s, to a father adjusting after years in prison, to a young man affected by childhood trauma, to environmentalists worried about global destruction, to biracial characters accepting their heritage, Kinship of Clover depicts our diversity. Meeropol’s social concerns drive issues that surround these sensitively drawn characters. But the novel’s subjects are secondary to the story, one as elaborate and engaging as its ideological undercurrent.”

  —NAN CUBA, author of Body and Bread

  “Ellen Meeropol’s new novel, Kinship of Clover, is a stunning kaleidoscope of humanity, with characters so real and complicated and full of life that you’ll want to linger with them over coffee long after the last page is turned. She treats them all with tremendous generosity, but it’s her creation of Flo, the feisty revolutionary whose mind is devoured a little more each day by Alzheimer’s, who won my heart through and through.”

  —EMILY CROWE, Odyssey Bookshop

  “Ellen Meeropol, writing with heartbreaking truth, clarity, and empathy, illustrates how deeply entwined are the search for justice, the cost society imposes on political beliefs, and the price children can pay for their parents’ convictions. Kinship of Clover weaves strands of family and friends who go back decades, in connections and beliefs, until you are desperate to see the final fabric. Meeropol had me turning pages deep into the night, forcing me to think, making me cry, and, finally, having me believe in the possibility of a better world. I loved this book.”

  —RANDY SUSAN MEYERS, author of Accidents of Marriage

  “This smart, lyrical novel cooks up a cast of quirky characters dealing as best they can with a host of twenty-first–century issues: climate change and biodiversity loss, physical and mental illness, personal tragedy, alternative lifestyles and the enduring love among friends and family. Ellen Meeropol’s deep knowledge of the environment, health care, progressive politics and the human heart shines through on every page. A thought-provoking delight to read; I couldn’t put it down!”

  —JENNIFER BROWDY, PHD, author of What I Forgot … And Why I Remembered: A Journey to Awareness and Activism Through Purposeful Memoir

  “Ellen Meeropol writes with courage and tenderness about characters who are under overwhelming threat. The dangers include a trauma too difficult for a young man to integrate, an activist’s fine brain under assault by Alzheimer’s, and the destruction of our precious eco-system. Yet even when defeat and disaster seem inevitable, Meeropol weaves a tale full of heart and hope.”

  —JACQUELINE SHEEHAN, author of The Center of the World

  Kinship of Clover

  Copyright © 2017 by Ellen Meeropol

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.

  Book design & layout by Selena Trager & Cassidy Trier

  Cover leaf icon by Joey Chen from the Noun Project

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Meeropol, Ellen, author.

  Title: Kinship of clover : a novel / Ellen Meeropol.

  Description: Pasadena, CA : Red Hen Press, [2017]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016033103 (print) | LCCN 2016054025 (ebook) | ISBN 9781597093811 (softcover : acd-free paper) | ISBN 9781597095884 (Ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Botanists—Fiction. | Survival—Fiction. | GSAFD: Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.E375 K55 2016 (print) | LCC PS3613.E375 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016033103

  The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Amazon Literary Partnership, and the Sherwood Foundation partially support Red Hen Press.

  First Edition

  Published by Red Hen Press

  www.redhen.org

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am grateful to the friends and writers who have generously offered their feedback on this book. The women in my manuscript group—Marianne Banks, Kris Holloway-Bidwell, Celia Jeffries, Lydia Kann, Kari Ridge, Patricia Riggs, and Jacqueline Sheehan—read and reread these pages with insight and support. Writer and reader friends offered their knowledge and suggestions; thank you, Liz Goldman, Jane Miller, Nancy Garruba, Kathy Briccetti, and Jane Hill.

  Several people lent their expertise in my research about plants. I’m grateful to members of the University of Massachusetts community—Lilly Israel at the Permaculture Garden, Professor of Plant Pathology Daniel Cooley, and science librarian Maxine Schmidt.

  I feel incredibly lucky to work again with my publicist Mary Bisbee-Beek, and the talented and passionate team at Red Hen Press, particularly Kate Gale, Mark Cull, Keaton Maddox, and the Trager sisters.

  Part of the journey of this book was learning about the science and politics of global warming. I’m grateful to my climate change study group for our readings and discussions. Thank you, Marty Nathan, Robby Meeropol, Elliot Fratkin, Susan Theberge, Rene Theberge, Andrea Ayvazian, and Joel Dansky.

  A portion of the book was published in Writing Fire: An Anthology Celebrating the Power of Women’s Words called “The Girls’ Club” (Green Fire Press, Housatonic, Massachusetts, 2015).

  As with every book, I am deeply indebted to my family. Robby, Jenn, and Rachel read multiple drafts, offering critical feedback and ongoing encouragement.

  for Josie and Abel, in the hope that we can figure out a way to fix this mess and leave a healthy planet to the children of the world

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter One

  Th
e first time Jeremy saw the plants go crazy was at the cat’s funeral, held in the family greenhouse crowded with teas and herbs and medicine-plants growing in pots and flats, their vines spiraling up wooden stakes against the walls. The air was earthy and moist and candles—dozens of them, hundreds maybe—shimmered and the plants danced in the flickering.

  Sure, it was weird to have a funeral for a cat, even a cat named after a deity, but Jeremy understood there were many strange things about his family. Like that someone killed Bast and left his body in a carton on the front porch because some people didn’t like cults and thought his family was one. Like that there were a bunch of adults and kids in the Pioneer Street house but they weren’t organized into families like in library books. He knew that Tim was his twin brother and Francie was his mother and Tian was his dad, but his parents had other kids with other grown-ups and it rarely seemed to matter much who went with who.

  What mattered was that things weren’t going well for his family.

  Even at nine, Jeremy realized that they were mourning more than Bast. The candles and chants were also for his little brother and sister who froze to death the year before in Forest Park. That was another thing about his family: they didn’t believe in dwelling on unhappy things. That—and because the small bodies weren’t found until summertime and then the cops put his father and Murphy in jail and Pippa had to wear an ankle monitor that didn’t let her leave the house—meant that Abby and Terrance never got a proper funeral all their own. So the family members who still lived on Pioneer Street gathered in the greenhouse. They sat on cushions in a circle on the floor, chanting and singing for Bast and their lost babies.

  Jeremy leaned back against the leg of the potting table and stared at the candles and the plants. He loved how the leaves in their many perfect shapes and shades of green quivered in the light of the dancing flames. Then the leaves were moving too, undulating and twisting in time to the chanting and the music.

  Jeremy poked his twin brother’s shoulder and pointed at the dancing vines. Tim shook his head and swatted Jeremy’s hand away. Recently Tim had been extra mean. He didn’t want to be a twin any more, he said, and he wouldn’t talk about it. He refused the identical clothes Francie brought home. Jeremy loved the tangible connections to Tim, so he wore undershirts or socks that matched Tim’s, items that didn’t show.

  No way would Tim want to talk about plants that moved impossibly all on their own.

  Jeremy watched the plants swing and sway and spin for several minutes before the next thing happened. When the stems and branches and leaves reached out to him, he was halfway expecting it. Green vines circled his arms and slid under his shirt and skimmed along his back. Soft stems tickled his neck with their delicate suckers. He thought he heard a broad, red-veined leaf whisper in his ear. “We have names,” it sounded like, but he knew plants couldn’t talk. Soon they were burrowing under his skin and inside his body and as he patted the cardboard box with Bast buried in it, his hands left fern-prints in the moist dirt.

  Jeremy was surprised but not afraid. The plants felt familiar, comforting even, and they connected him to all the plants and animals growing on the earth, then and forever, and he liked it. He thought maybe he’d like to learn their names, for when the plants visited again.

  They didn’t return for eleven years.

  Eleven years later, Jeremy carried the news clipping about his father’s release tucked in his wallet between his UMass student ID and a creased photo of his little brother and sister. The article was three weeks old, from the Springfield newspaper’s Friends and Neighbors section, which was pretty ironic since their neighbors said a loud chorus of good riddance when Tian Williams was sentenced to prison.

  Nobody on campus asked Jeremy if he was related to the Francine Beaujolais mentioned in the article. Few people knew his last name and they were unlikely to connect the quasi-nerdy botany major with an ex-convict cult leader. Tian was released just before February break and Jeremy spent a few days in his parents’ apartment. His father was so different and his presence after ten years so unreal that Jeremy checked the article at least once a day for confirmation.

  Like tonight, walking across campus to the radio station in the middle of the night. He tried to picture his parents in their apartment twenty-seven miles to the south, but no images came. He paused in the well-lit protection of a campus bus stop to open the fragile folds of newsprint, and read the short paragraph yet again.

  After serving almost ten years at the State Correctional Institution at Cedar Junction, city resident Sebastian Williams was released on parole. Williams was convicted in June 2005 of multiple charges, including criminal negligence in the deaths of his daughter and a male child associated with a cult located on Pioneer Street in the Forest Park neighborhood. Neither Williams nor his common law wife Francine Beaujolais was available for comment.

  Even with the stop, Jeremy was right on time for his program and the DJ on the board was running predictably late. He glared at her through the glass and pointed at the wall clock; she held up her index finger, signaling him to chill. Sure, it was only a college radio station in the middle of the night—probably six students listening out there and five of them sucking on a hookah—but even so, people should take pride in their work and stick to the schedule.

  Why should he care so much? His radio show started as a six-week community education project about endangered species for his fall semester biodiversity class. He aced the course, but when it ended he didn’t want to stop. The station manager said no one else wanted that time slot, so he trekked to the dingy studio at the edge of campus at 2:00 a.m. every Wednesday morning to broadcast a half hour of lament into the empty winter sky.

  The DJ finally finished. Jeremy sat at the control board, switched on the mic, and started the Missa Luba CD. Each week he chose different music to play softly in the background, ranging from Erik Satie to Billy Bragg. His dad had played Missa Luba a lot when he and Tim were little, before their family fell apart. The combination of joy and despair in the Congolese rhythms matched his mood these days.

  He took a deep breath and launched into his introductory remarks.

  “You’re listening to Plants in Peril,” he began. “There are three stages of peril: Threatened means that the species is vulnerable, declining in numbers. Endangered means that the numbers are critically low, and if nothing is done, the species will soon be extinct. Extinct species …” He paused to swallow, to soothe the sharp ache in his throat. “Extinct species have completely disappeared from the earth, with no hope of recovery.”

  Each week he varied the approach, listing plants alphabetically or by continent, by when they were last observed in nature, occasionally showcasing a favorite Order or Family. Tonight was special; he had researched background details about the extinct instead of just a list of names to read.

  Jeremy knew the show was peculiar even before his brother visited and listened to a broadcast, stretched out half-asleep on the sagging studio sofa. “That was truly weird,” Tim said as they walked back to the dorm. “Why would anyone listen to you read the names of plants they’ve never heard of and will never see?”

  “That’s the point,” Jeremy said. “If I don’t say their names, no one will remember them.”

  “That’s creepy,” Tim said.

  Jeremy shrugged. I don’t want them to die alone, he thought but didn’t say.

  “You’re pathetic,” Tim added. That was a brother for you and besides, Tim was a business major, so you couldn’t expect him to care about the universe of vanishing vegetable matter.

  “Begonia eiromischa,” Jeremy continued, “was discovered in 1886 in Palau. But its forest habitat was cleared for agricultural cultivation and no sightings have been reported in over a century.”

  Even after six months, he was amazed by the way his voice was transformed by its journey from microphone to soundboard, altered by radio waves and electronics and headphones, and returned to his ears exposed and new. The fir
st week of the program he had been astonished to hear alien emotions threaded through his words—sentiments that he hadn’t known he felt and barely recognized. Now he listened to discover his feelings and in the past three weeks, since his father’s release, his voice sounded poised at the edge of tears.

  Tonight, the tears threatened to spill over.

  “Bigleaf scurfpea, or Orbexilum macrophyllum, was formerly found in Indiana and Kentucky.” He savored how the Latin names balanced on his tongue, draped across his teeth, and fell from his lips. He didn’t speak the language, but he was fluent in its elegies.

  “Next we have Thismia americana from Illinois. Last seen in 1916 and declared extinct in 1995.” He felt a particular kinship with this plant and his voice thickened with sorrow. Thismia was declared extinct the year he and Tim were born, delivered by midwife into a greenhouse filled with his family and growing plants. He grew up playing in the foliage, digging in the soil while the women of the family watered and harvested the plants and dried the leaves for tea. His drawings of spearmint and raspberry leaves, of Camellia sinensis sinensis and Camellia sinensis assamica, had decorated the walls of their house and of the nearby Tea Room. Studying the plants came much later, a concession to his mother’s demand for a major that could lead to a job.

  “Vanvoorstia bennettiana, a.k.a. Bennett’s Seaweed.” He paused to blow his nose on the bandanna stuffed in his jeans pocket. “First collected in 1855 in Sydney Harbor, Australia. Declared extinct in 2003 due to habitat loss secondary to trawling. Dredging. Infrastructure development.” His voice rose with each assault of civilization and broke on the last word. “Settlement. Tourism. Recreation. Fisheries. Agriculture. Sewage.”

  He rummaged through the sketchbooks in his backpack. Somewhere he had a pen and ink drawing of Bennett’s, one of the first assignments in his Botanical Drawing course. He could picture the algae: rusty reddish and lacy, the deep veins so heartbreakingly delicate, so vulnerable. The Kyrie ended and the on-air silence surprised him. He quickly located the dog-eared page in the IUCN Red List and read aloud from their comments on the vanquished Vanvoorstia: “There is no reasonable doubt that the last individual of this species has died.”