Kinship of Clover Read online

  I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine, she told herself. But like many of her favorite words, her recent sentences, that one was made of glass. Not ice, as she first thought, but glass, thin and smooth and fragile as an infant’s skull bones. And slick, so that words that one moment were poised elegantly on the glossy surface of a paragraph would the next moment slide off into some nether void and disappear. And there was always the possibility of breakage. That thin glass plate on which her sentences, her brain, her life, balanced could crash and shatter into shards. Sharp and glistening and deadly.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Stretched out on his bed, Tim listened to a screaming siren race closer and then fade toward downtown Brooklyn. He was massively relieved that Jeremy was on the train home, but he still didn’t sleep much the night before, so he might have dozed off. Three sharp knocks on the apartment door startled him.

  “Police.” More knocking.

  Tim opened the door to two uniformed officers.

  “Are you Jeremy Beaujolais?” the tall one asked.

  “No. He’s my brother.”

  “Is he here?”

  Tim shook his head. “He took the train home to Massachusetts this morning. What’s this about?”

  “We’re investigating a firebombing yesterday afternoon, during the demonstration. We’d like to talk to Jeremy about it.”

  “What was bombed?”

  “The offices of a fuel company, along the Gowanus.”

  That sounded like something Jeremy would be against, but Tim couldn’t imagine his nerdy brother firebombing anything at all. “By now he’s back at college. At UMass.”

  “Is he studying Molotov cocktail assembly up there?”

  Tim studied the cop’s face. Was he making a joke? “Botany. Plants. Dead ones, mostly.”

  “Was your brother involved in the demonstration on Saturday?”

  Tim swallowed hard. “He sat in and was arrested. So he couldn’t have been involved with any bombing.”

  The two cops exchanged looks.

  “You’ll have records of that, right?” Tim said. “The arrest and timing and everything?”

  “We’ll check it out. You involved with that global warming too?”

  “Not me,” Tim said. “I’m a business major. Supply chain management.” He was babbling. Stop talking too much, he told himself.

  “You know any of his friends? From the group?”

  Tim shook his head. “No, but I met the punk girl he was arrested with. Pink hair and a bizarre name. Green something.”

  The cop looked at his notebook. “Greenhope Murphy. I need your brother’s address and phone numbers. School and home.”

  Tim gave him the information, trying not to imagine how Tian might respond to cops at his apartment door asking for Jeremy. Trying not to picture Tian in Forest Park, the night he escaped from jail. The snowy night he charged the cops with a fury that still invaded Tim’s sleep.

  On the way out, the other cop handed Tim a business card. “Call me if you remember anything else.”

  Tim stood at the closed door for a few moments, resting his forehead on the painted surface and letting his heart rate slow to normal. Why was he so scared, when the cops were just doing their job? His brother might be a nut case but he wasn’t a fire-bomber. Jeremy would never touch a Molotov cocktail, not after that day in the prison visiting room. At least, Tim didn’t think so.

  But how well did he really know his brother? Tim wandered down the hallway to his room. He stared at the posters covering on the wall. Wolverine stared back. Did Tim imagine his disapproval?

  Tim didn’t feel good ratting out his brother, disrespecting their pledge. It had been him and Jeremy against the world for so long. Against the people who broke up their Pioneer Street house, the ones who sent their dad to prison. The people who made their mom cry every night when she thought the boys were asleep. Sure, he got it—those people believed his dad was responsible for Abby and Terrence’s deaths and maybe they were right.

  But damn it—was it right to punish the whole family? He felt himself getting angry. He stood up. Three steps to the wall and he faced Wolverine, man to man.

  Why did Jeremy have to dwell on the past so much? Be so damn sensitive? Sure, Tim thought about the babies sometimes. That’s how he thought of them, generically, the babies. If he allowed himself to remember how fourteen-month-old Abby climbed into his lap with her princess book, or how Terrence at two-and-a-half tugged on his shirt and whined to play catch in the back yard, well, that hurt and Tim didn’t like to hurt. He wanted to put all that weird history—the commune and his dad’s prison and Jeremy’s extinct plants, all of it—behind him. He wanted a normal life. That’s why he left Springfield. That’s why he was studying business.

  That’s why he hardly ever went back to Springfield. Just for a quick visit when his dad was released and again for Gabe’s party. But he wasn’t going back again, not for a long time.

  And that’s why he told Jeremy to go back to UMass. Because it wasn’t right for Jeremy to get all nutso on him. He took a step closer to Wolverine and poked a finger in his chest. Not right and not fair.

  He and Jeremy both liked Wolverine best, but Tim could see the strength of the others too, even that stiff Cyclops. Sometimes Tim fantasized that his parents had died in that plane crash like Cyclops’ folks did, sending him and Jeremy to earth in parachutes. He knew that was wrong, but he dreamt about it anyway. He imagined having a wicked optic blast and hot women and everything. Being a stiff was better than prison and shame.

  It wasn’t right for Jeremy to make him think about the old days. Tim grabbed the top of their favorite Wolverine poster. He only hesitated for a moment, then started ripping. It felt good to tear the paper. He was so pissed off. He pulled harder and the paper tore jaggedly though Hugh Jackman’s thick hair shaped like weasel ears and his never-smile face, bisecting the white muscle shirt.

  Okay. So maybe Jeremy wasn’t the only twin haunted by their past. But at least Tim fought it. He tore the poster again, in the other direction, ripping through the steel blades that crossed his angry face like prison bars.

  Take that, Wolverine. Take that, greenhouses and tea and communes and everything else his crazy family stood for.

  He tore again across the steel blades/prison bars and that made him stop for a moment. Was that why they both loved that particular poster best? The bars? Never mind. It felt good to tear the paper. Powerful even, and he moved to Cyclops next. Then on to the other Wolverine posters and Storm and the group shots with Xavier, ripping and tearing them into shreds. He got a trash bag from the kitchen, stuffed the tatters inside, then tied the top. Tomorrow he’d buy new posters, cool up-to-date ones that had nothing to do with the past. He was moving on.

  But first he had to call their mom and warn her that Jeremy was losing it.

  The city bus let Jeremy off four blocks from his parents’ apartment. Tramping up Forest Park Avenue with his duffle bag, he thought he probably should be majorly pissed off. At Tim for kicking him out, at his parents for telling him to catch the city bus instead of picking him up downtown at the Greyhound station. Most of all he should be angry with Mary for doing whatever she did to get herself in big trouble. But he was so tired, and surprisingly glad to be home.

  The glad feelings lessened as he climbed the stairs to his parents’ second-floor apartment. By the time he unlocked the door they were mostly gone.

  “I’m home,” he called. He walked through the living room and dining room of the railroad flat, then detoured to the bedroom he once shared with Tim. He dropped his jacket and duffle on the bed and kicked off his sneakers. He spent a moment looking at the posters on the wall and wondered what it meant that his practical business-major brother, who said he’d left behind their oddball childhood, had replicated the décor of this room in his Brooklyn apartment. He touched the taped place on Wolverine’s left leg, then rubbed his finger along the soft black leather covering his shoulder.

 
Secretly Jeremy had always liked Storm best. If he could be any X-Man, he would be her. She was closest to nature, to the world of earth and its plants; she lived inside the weather. Every molecule of her body was connected to the natural world and he was envious of that bond. Maybe Storm’s powers could even reverse global warming. But of course he could never admit any of this to Tim, even now that they were grown up, because Storm was a girl.

  The kitchen was empty. It was almost 6:00. You could never predict about Tian, but Francie was usually awake and cooking dinner by now, gearing up for her night shift on the hospital switchboard. When the hospital telephone systems went digital, Francie had worried her job would disappear too, along with her imprisoned husband and their commune, but the hospital still needed real voices to respond to anxious relatives and transfer not-quite-emergency calls to the right department.

  He lifted the cover of a pot bubbling on the stovetop. Lentils. He smiled. Of course.

  “Out here,” his mother called.

  If you ignored the slanting floor and mosquito-sized rips in the screens, the small back porch was the nicest part of the apartment. His parents sat at the round wicker table, Tian balancing on the back legs of his chair with his bare feet on the table and a book in his hands, and Francie hunched over the checkbook and a stack of bills.

  “Hello, Son,” Tian said without looking up from his book.

  Jeremy hated being called “Son.” It was generic, as if his father couldn’t remember his name. Had he always done that, before prison? Jeremy couldn’t remember.

  “You still boycotting online banking?” Jeremy asked as he kissed Francie’s cheek.

  Tian looked up from his book then. “You still refusing to accept the fragility of the Internet?” he asked. “One brilliant hacker and the entire global financial structure will crash and burn, taking along civilization as we know it. Might not be a bad thing, either.”

  “Nice to see you, too, Dad.”

  Tian wasn’t that old, forty-five or six last November, but during his last year in prison he stopped shaving his head and his hair grew in gray. Steel wool, Francie called it when she tried to tease him into shaving again. “I’m not that man any more,” Tian reminded them. It wasn’t clear what kind of man his father was, other than one who read a dozen history books from the public library every week and wore a mess of rubber bands on his wrist. The gray hair didn’t bother Jeremy; it was his father’s facial expression that haunted him, like he’d deserted his own life. That look and the rubber band bracelets drove Jeremy nuts.

  “What’s with the rubber bands?” Jeremy had asked.

  “Cut him some slack,” Francie said, but Jeremy couldn’t stand the sharp crack of the rubber, over and over and over. “It’s like a stress reliever. He’s doing his best.”

  Francie closed the checkbook and put it on top of the pile of envelopes. “I’m glad you’re home, Jeremy. We’ve been so worried about you. About what you’re doing with your life.”

  “I’m fine,” Jeremy said. “Spending a few weeks in Brooklyn was cool, even though now I’m going to have to hustle to make up the work.”

  “Tim called,” Francie said.

  Great. His brother probably didn’t even wait until Jeremy was out the front door to tattle. “What did he say?”

  “That the cops were at his apartment this morning, looking for you. Something about a firebombing.”

  It took a few seconds to catch his breath. “That has nothing to do with me.” That must have been the explosion when he was in the courthouse. Sari’s backpack flashed across his mind, but it didn’t make sense. His friends wouldn’t be involved in something like that.

  Francie looked at her lap. “He also said you’re having spells or something, chanting in Latin and acting really strange. He’s worried about you and so am I. I want you to see someone, a counselor.”

  “I don’t get it,” Tian said. “What’s your problem? Why can’t you move beyond the dead plants?”

  Okay, Jeremy thought. Here goes nothing. “Plant extinction is not my problem. It’s my work and it’s just as important as your history books. I can’t stand by and let things fall apart. I want to make a difference.” He hesitated, then decided to keep going. “Also, I can’t stop thinking about what happened to our family and the commune. How everything fell apart for us.”

  Tian started fiddling with the rubber bands, pulling them and twisting them and finally letting them snap hard, one by one, against his skin. Jeremy rubbed his own wrist.

  “What do you mean?” Tian asked, finally looking up. “You weren’t arrested. You didn’t spend all those years in prison.”

  Francie reached over and covered Tian’s wrist with her hand, cutting off the sharp sounds. “That doesn’t mean we didn’t suffer too, Tian. You know that.”

  Jeremy stood up. “I lost a brother and a sister. I lost you. And ever since, I’ve felt like our family is on the wrong side of things.”

  Tian tapped his finger against his book and then pointed it at Jeremy. “If you studied history, you’d understand. That’s what they do. They target us and lock us up. Then they blame the victim.”

  “I don’t want to be a victim. I want to change things.”

  Tian’s expression, part grimace and part frown, contained eons of sorrow and regret. It was the saddest expression Jeremy had ever seen on a human face.

  “That’s a young man’s dream,” Tian said. “It was mine too.” He didn’t add, Look what happened to me. He didn’t have to.

  Jeremy shook his head. He couldn’t do this. They would never be able to talk to each other about this. He turned away and walked into the kitchen.

  Francie followed him. “Don’t give up on your dad,” she whispered. “He’s a good man. He’s started attending a group for men just out of prison. He just needs some time.” She took a deep breath. “And I think I get it, about the plants, about how important it is. But I’m worried about you. Will you see someone?”

  “I’m heading up to school this evening,” he said. “I have a lot of work to do if I want to finish the semester. But if it’ll make you happy, I’ll make an appointment at Health Services.”

  Four hours later, Jeremy cracked open the window and curled up on his dorm bed, grateful for the gazillionth time that he had a single. It was chilly for late April, surprising after such an early spring, and the air in the room smelled stale. He wrapped his quilt around his shoulders and that reminded him of the banner he and Greenhope wore during their arrest. What happened to the banner? The cops probably saw no value in it and his careful work ended up in a landfill in New Jersey or on a trash barge, waiting to be dumped into the ocean, to poison small fish with specks of acrylic paint.

  He reached into his backpack and took out his sketchpad, promising himself that tomorrow he would begin putting his life back together. He’d talk to his advisor and contact all his professors about missed work. If he groveled, his supervisor at the dining hall would assign him three or four shifts a week. He’d find Patty’s card and call for an appointment. He’d find a climate activist group on campus and get involved.

  But tonight he’d take a few hours to commemorate the plants that lived only on paper, and in his memory. It might calm him down. It might banish the competing thoughts and images and feelings ping-ponging around his brain.

  Sari grabbing her backpack.

  Mary’s photograph with its impossible headline.

  His father’s nappy gray head and his disdain.

  His own lack of clarity about how to live the kind of life he wanted.

  The feel of Zoe’s soft ballet slippers on his feet as they swayed back and forth to the music of their breathing.

  His nine-year-old self, hiding huddled with Tim in a snowy clearing, smoke from a sodden bonfire hanging around them, watching the cops take his family away.

  “Pluchea glutinosa,” he murmured. “Oldenlandia adscensionis. Myrcia skeldingii. Neomacounia nitida.”

  Chapter Nineteen
r />   Nine days after the fire, Sam fumbled for the key at the door to Flo’s apartment. The dead-campfire smell of smoke hung thick in the hallway. Inside, the damage from both fire and water was far greater than he’d expected. His shoes squished and sunk into the carpet. Good thing he’d persuaded Zoe not to miss school for this trip. He couldn’t imagine how her wheelchair tires could roll across this soggy mess or how she would handle seeing the scorched ruins of Flo’s home.

  His throat ached at the blistered finish of the old upright piano that no one ever played. He traced the deeply charred wood of the admittedly rickety coffee table he made for Flo’s birthday one year, the overlapping circular marks from her tea cups now almost obliterated by flames. Must’ve been ninth grade, the year he took wood shop. He felt particularly close to his mother that year, after his father’s heart attack. Brad’s heart attack.

  Brad, who for some incomprehensible reason in his mother’s jumbled and seared brain, was no longer his father. Not that he believed Flo for a split second, not about Brad.

  His head spun—must be the smoke or toxic fumes—and he grabbed the arm of the blackened sofa for support. The fabric was soaked and he jerked his hand away. This room was a mess, and he didn’t want to see the kitchen, where the blaze started, where the cat died. Maybe Flo’s bedroom, down the hall and farthest from the fire, was less damaged. Maybe some of her special things could be retrieved.

  He hesitated in the doorway. He grew up in this apartment but rarely entered his mother’s bedroom. When he woke up with a nightmare, Flo came to him, and snuggled in his bed until he fell asleep. Sam’s bedroom was now her office, stripped of his things two decades ago. Flo’s room had always been hers alone, mysterious and private, even when she shared it with Brad.

  The damage was minimally less in the bedroom, and draped across the bed was Flo’s favorite jacket, a patchwork of Sam’s outgrown blue jeans from toddlerhood through high school. Anna sewed it for Flo’s birthday the first year Sam and Anna lived together and Flo loved it. Sam reached for it, then realized that it had become a mosaic of soot and scorch, a fabric corpse flame-fused to the comforter.