Kinship of Clover Read online

  Jeremy blinked at the bright sunlight. “Thanks for posting my bail.”

  “It’s just a loan,” Tim said, guiding Jeremy down the stairs and toward the subway. “You’ve got to pay me back, and soon.”

  “Jeremy—wait!” A woman’s voice called from the top of the stairs. Both men turned around.

  “That’s Greenhope,” Jeremy said. “We were arrested together.”

  Tim tried not to smirk at the woo-woo name and pink hair. Didn’t he know her from someplace?

  “Are you okay?” The way she touched his brother’s arm made Tim wonder if there were other things Jeremy hadn’t told him. Probably not. Girls had always liked his bro but Jeremy was clueless.

  Jeremy nodded and withdrew his arm. Maybe not. “Just tired. I think I’m glad I stayed, although I have no clue if we accomplished anything.”

  “You were pretty strange there, you know, before they busted us. Muttering Latin names and waving your arms around.” She paused. “I was worried about you.”

  Terrific, Tim thought. Was Jeremy going to freak out again?

  “He’s fine.” Tim turned to leave. “We’ve got to get home. I’ve got an econ exam tomorrow.”

  “Wait,” Jeremy said. “Have you heard from the others? Carl or Sari?”

  “Nothing. I don’t think anyone else from our group was arrested.” Greenhope hesitated. “Did you hear the explosion, right before they dragged us out?”

  “Explosion?” Tim asked. This gets better and better.

  “I’m not sure,” Jeremy said. “Maybe. And what about Mary? I’m so bummed about her.”

  “There was an email from her collective saying that the terrorism charges were totally bogus. A frame-up. Look.” Greenhope touched her tablet screen and brought up the message and photo.

  “Hey,” Tim said, looking over Jeremy’s shoulder. “Haven’t I seen her before?”

  “It’s Mary,” Jeremy said. “Remember her lecture?” He turned to Greenhope. “How old is her kid?”

  “I don’t know. Eight or nine, maybe?”

  A hard age to lose a parent to prison, Tim thought. He looked at Greenhope. “What did she do?”

  “Maybe nothing. I’ll call you when I hear details.” She touched Jeremy’s shoulder and turned away.

  “Terrorism and explosions? What the fuck have you gotten me into now?” Tim asked.

  “Hey. You’re the one who dragged me to that lecture, bro.”

  “Just to try to shock you out of your dead plant funk,” Tim said. “I totally regret it now, introducing you to those people. You’re pathetic, but they’re nuts, off their rockers.”

  “So what are you supposed to do,” Jeremy asked, “when you care so much about something and no one in power will listen?”

  Tim shrugged. “No idea. But what exactly did this accomplish today, besides throwing away four hundred bucks?”

  Not that he expected Jeremy to have a good answer. Damn, one of these days his bro had better get his head straight and fly right. First he wastes his time studying dead plants and now he’s turning into some kind of Greenpeace terrorist. Jeremy had always been odd, even in high school. Sketching flowers instead of playing soccer, staying in their room with Wolverine instead of hanging out with girls who liked beer and messing around. But this was truly weird.

  “Mom and Dad are going to be majorly pissed off about this,” Tim said.

  “So don’t tell them,” Jeremy said. “You’ll get the money back.”

  “It’s not just that,” Tim said. “What was going on with you, with the Latin chanting and all? Sounds like you even weirded out your pink punk friend. You’re here to get over that craziness, remember?”

  Jeremy stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing people to walk around them. “You know, Tim. You can’t spend your whole life running away from things, from what happened to us. From Abby and Terrance.”

  Wouldn’t Jeremy ever let up about the past?

  “Don’t you think about them at all?” Jeremy asked. “I wonder about Abby and Terrance all the time, like if they’re buried with Bast—you remember how much they loved that cat? Don’t you ever speculate about what they’d be like now, like teenagers? About where their graves are, what plants grow in the earth above them?”

  It seemed like he was going to say something more, and Tim waited. But Jeremy shook his head and turned toward the subway entrance. “You wouldn’t understand,” he muttered.

  Probably not, Tim thought, and he didn’t think he wanted to. Truth was, Jeremy frightened him.

  “Listen, bro,” he said. “I think it’s time for you to go home. Today.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “It’s a beautiful morning,” Flo said. “Don’t you ever go out? Ride a bike or take a hike? Go on, you can leave me alone. I’m fine.”

  Sam sat next to her on the sofa. “We have to talk.”

  I’m fine, Flo repeated to herself. She closed her eyes but that made the smoke smell stronger so she opened them. How long would her skin secrete this smoky scent? Anyway, she knew this conversation was coming. In the week since the fire, Sam had been unnaturally kind—cooking the comfort foods she once made him as a boy and bringing mystery novels home from the library, even though she couldn’t seem to follow the plots. Several times he brought up the topic of Assisted Living. So far she had been able to postpone the discussion, but she knew it was coming and she didn’t want it. She shook her head side to side, willing him to go away. I’m fine.

  Sam took her hand. Another bad sign; he wasn’t going away. “Ma, it’s time. Your apartment is ruined and it’s not safe for you to live alone.”

  She pulled her hand back and squeezed her eyes tighter.

  “I’ve signed the papers for Hillside Village. A special Memory Unit there. It’s a nice place. You move today. Zoe will help us.”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  He persisted. “You have Alzheimer’s, Ma, and it isn’t going away. You’ve got to be someplace where you can get the help you need.”

  I’m fine, she thought or did she speak the words out loud? She knew they weren’t exactly true, but words contain power. “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine, Ma. You lost track of time and caused a fire and your cat died. Next time it could be you. We have no choice.”

  Sometimes when she tried to concentrate on something, like proving to Sam that he was wrong, the words slid away and were replaced by a buzzing. It started in her ears like a thousand bees and it moved into her brain and it got so loud she couldn’t think. The sound grew enormous, vibrant and electric and insistent and it pushed everything else out of her head. First it banished the words and sentences, then moved on to feelings. Right now, the bees were demolishing her sorrow about her poor Charlie-cat who didn’t deserve to die of breathing smoke. It was her fault, but the brain-buzzing meant she didn’t have to feel so bad about him any more. Maybe the bees would sting her skin a thousand times and she could just die and not hear them buzzing any more, not feel so lost and scared. She leaned forward until her head fell onto her lap and hugged her knees and gave in to the terrible and welcome noise.

  “I’m so sorry.” Sam put his arms around her.

  Sunday mornings were made for sleeping until afternoon, but Zoe hadn’t argued the night before when Sam asked her to set her alarm for 9:30. Not when he told her where they were going.

  “Flo wants you to come with us,” he said. “To the place.”

  “You mean you want me to come.”

  “That too.”

  In the morning, Zoe was groggy as she stood behind her grandmother. Leaning her belly against the chair back for support, she helped Flo towel off her wet hair. She had never before noticed the spiral cowlick on the crown of her grandmother’s head, like a tornado had touched down there and flattened the sparse gray fields. People in wheelchairs rarely had the opportunity to look down at anyone’s head.

  She brushed Flo’s slate gray hair, try
ing not to tug the tangles too hard. When she was finished, she pulled a few thin strands from the new hairbrush and tucked it into the small duffle bag with the other necessities Sam had bought, the pajamas and underwear, sweatpants and flannel shirts. The duffle was covered with daisies but it still wasn’t cheerful and neither was Flo. Zoe would be devastated if she lost her things. Zoe couldn’t begin to imagine how it would feel to lose all her clothes and books, all the silly things saved because they meant something, even when nobody else got why. Like those olden albums of Sam as a baby that Flo loved. Steadying herself with one hand, Zoe leaned forward and kissed the tornado place on her grandmother’s head.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Flo said.

  “It won’t be so bad. You know? I’ll visit lots, and my dad too.”

  “I know. I’m fine. Now scram. I can dress myself.”

  “Yeah,” Zoe said, settling back into her chair.

  She pulled the office door behind her with a soft click. She would visit, she promised herself. Every week, twice even.

  Sam sat on the sofa, head in his hands. Zoe rolled up close to him, as knee-to-knee as the footplates would allow. She let her head fall forward to rest against his.

  “Sad, huh?”

  “Just thinking,” he said.

  “Hey,” she said. “Can we go through the apartment and see if anything survived the fire. I bet she’d love some of her things.”

  “Tomorrow,” Sam said. “Her landlord said I could go in before the clean-up crew starts. He warned that there isn’t much to salvage. The fire burned really hot.”

  “I want to go with you. I know the things she treasures.”

  Sam nodded. “But first we have to survive today.”

  Sam drove slowly. He didn’t want this short trip to end and he couldn’t wait for it to be over. Next to him, Flo stared out the window. She had refused his offer to put her new duffle bag in the trunk, cradled it instead in her lap. In the back seat, Zoe was plugged in to her music. Sam wished he could zone out too.

  Flo’s voice broke into his worries. “I miss my car.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Where is it?”

  “You sold it two years ago, remember? After the accident.”

  Her car had been part of the negotiations. She agreed to sell the Dart, and he promised no Assisted Living. He bit his lip. That was then and this is now, he told himself. Circumstances change.

  “Whenever you need a ride,” he said. “Just call. I’ll drive you wherever you want to go.”

  She looked at him like he was the demented one.

  “I’m sure Mimi will too,” he added.

  “Where is Mimi?”

  “Home, I guess,” Sam said. “She’ll come visit soon.”

  “Visit me in prison?” She paused. “How long until spring?”

  “It is spring,” he said. “Late April.”

  “Oh.” She was quiet for a moment before continuing. “You know, the trees are beautiful. They have dignity.”

  He gripped the steering wheel harder, to resist crumbling at the image of dignified maples and elms.

  She shrugged. “It bugs me that the houses here are made of wood, that’s all. They’re brick, where I live.”

  It wasn’t worth reminding her that she’d lived in Springfield for forty-five years, since before he was born.

  “How long until spring?” she asked again.

  Sam sighed. “Sometimes you ask a question when you already know the answer, don’t you, Ma?”

  “I’m getting used to the wooden houses,” she said. “It takes a long time.”

  “Yes,” he agreed.

  “You know what I love?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “The trees. Do you think they’ll cut them down and build houses here someday?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They do that. Cut them down. I miss my car. I miss driving. If I had my car, I could escape from this prison place you’re taking me to.”

  “I know, Ma.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do with a car any more.” She closed her eyes. When he turned off the engine at Hillside Village, she opened them. “I like the trees. We don’t have them, where I live.”

  Zoe hated medical facilities of all kinds. At least this place was totally accessible, which made getting around and helping Flo easier. But easier movement meant more energy and more room for memories. Whenever she rolled into a medical facility, ghosts of disease and difference appeared—the sicky-sweet smell of the brown soap and the scratchy elastic of the hat she wore to the operating room, and the prick of the needle stuck in her arm.

  She’d been lucky, she knew that. Her last surgery was over a decade ago, and it was hard to remember much about it because she’d been so young. Other kids with spina bifida had it much worse—bladder surgeries and spinal fusion and wounds that wouldn’t heal. She knew because she lurked on the SB websites. She never posted. She’d spent her whole life being as normal as possible.

  This place wasn’t so bad, Zoe thought, if you ignored the piano. After his first visit to Hillside Village, Sam told her about the two old women who’d had strokes and played two-handed, together. Sure, that was very cool. But he didn’t mention that the grand piano, sitting right in the middle of the lobby, was where they put the announcement when people died. With framed photos taken decades earlier and a few pathetic paragraphs about long-ago jobs and awards and when they moved to Hillside and a little guestbook for people to record their memories in shaky handwriting.

  The administrator, Trixie, met them at the piano of death and showed them to the Memory Unit, punching in a code on the keypad to unlock the door. Prison, just like Flo said. Trixie introduced Sam to the social worker to sign papers, and walked Zoe and Flo around a peculiar circular hallway to Flo’s new home. The room wasn’t too awful and at least there was no roommate. A little generic, but no hospital bed or rails or bars or anything. Flo glowered at Trixie so Zoe thanked her, and followed her grandmother into the light blue room.

  “Hey, that’s nice.” Zoe pointed to the recliner in front of the window, with a table and lamp next to it. “Perfect for reading.”

  “It’s stupid.” Flo kicked the bedside table, although Zoe couldn’t see anything wrong with it. “Stupid,” Flo muttered again, then slumped onto the bed, curled up on the blue and green paisley comforter, and closed her eyes.

  Before the fire, it would have been impossible to fit all her grandmother’s belongings into the room. That morning it only took a few minutes to unpack the clothes they’d bought her, and arrange the framed photographs Sam had selected from their fireplace mantel along the top of Flo’s new dresser.

  With a permanent marker Zoe printed “Flo Tobin” on the white label inside each nightgown, each stiff new flannel shirt and elastic-waist denim pants, before stacking them in the drawers. This was so not how Flo dressed. Maybe they could plan a trip, in a day or so, to the mall to get the right clothes—real jeans and bright T-shirts with outdated political slogans about boycotting grapes and sisterhood is powerful—so Flo would feel like herself again instead of some generic some old lady.

  That thought made Zoe stop writing, because you probably couldn’t buy those political T-shirts at the mall and maybe Flo would never find herself again. Flo Tobin, she printed on the last pair of sweat pants. She hoped Sam would return from doing paperwork at the nurses’ station soon, before she got to the underwear.

  When Sam got back, he sat on the bed next to Flo.

  “You awake?” he asked.

  “Go away.”

  “I signed the papers,” he said. “The social worker will be in soon to talk with you.” He hesitated. “They suggest that Zoe and I leave, so you can start getting accustomed to the place.” He touched her cheek. “Why are you crying?”

  “Duh,” Zoe whispered but Sam ignored her.

  “Tell me, Ma.”

  “I miss Charlie.”

  “I
know,” Sam said. “He was a good cat.”

  “Not the cat. The man Charlie.”

  “What man?” Sam raised his hands, palms up, in a questioning gesture.

  “I loved your father,” Flo told him.

  “I know. He was a good man.”

  That is so lame, Zoe thought. She never knew her grandfather, but couldn’t his son think of any adjective other than good?

  “Not Brad,” Flo said, opening her eyes and looking into Sam’s. “Your real father’s name was Charlie.”

  Charlie? Sam heard his mother’s words but they didn’t make any sense. More and more often her words came zooming in from some other planet, like her comment about dignified trees on the drive. The Alzheimer’s website recommended not arguing with the imagined memories, the untrue statements, because you couldn’t use logic or evidence against the disease. He knew all this, but his mother was one of the smartest people he knew. When she talked nonsense, well, he couldn’t stand it. He leaned down and kissed Flo’s cheek and tried to keep his voice from breaking.

  “Rest, Ma. I’ll sit here with you.”

  Flo pulled the pillow over her head. She didn’t have the strength to hear Sam’s response. Why did she say that, just now, about Charlie? She hadn’t planned to, at least not right now, not today, but the words just came pouring out of her mouth. She’d been thinking about Charlie more and more recently, as the barricade she had constructed to not-think about him disintegrated and tumbled away. Her memory, her apartment, her clothes and her photos and her sweet cat—how much loss could one woman take? Still, she had not planned to blurt it out like that to Sam. He deserved better.

  Or maybe not. Maybe he deserved being clobbered over the head with his paternity, and she hadn’t even mentioned the zinger. Maybe that was exactly what he deserved for locking her up in this place just because she had a little accident with a stove and some kitchen curtains.

  Okay, a big accident—a fatal one to the feline Charlie. But still, this place was a prison and she wasn’t going to accept it, not without a fight. Because she was a fighter, always had been, and a survivor too. And no matter what this disease thought it could do to her brain cells, she would win.