Kinship of Clover Read online

  Finally one lettuce ended up in the cart, the other tossed back on the slanting pile. “You think she’s eating a balanced diet?” her father frequently asked. Zoe always nodded, but really she had no idea what Flo did with the bok choy and beets and speckled radishes. Like, what did Flo eat for breakfast or lunch? She never bought cereal or bread for sandwiches.

  But that was Flo’s business, right? She seemed pretty healthy for an old woman. “Your grandma’s not that old,” Sam liked to remind Zoe, but Flo seemed ancient to her. Anyway, Zoe hated having people in her face, nagging about what she ate, watching her weight, the dangers of fried foods and trans fats. Flo made it this far. Hadn’t she earned the right to run her own life?

  At the extra-wide checkout line, Zoe hung back while Flo arranged her prizes on the moving belt, lining them up from heaviest to lightest, from indestructible to most fragile. She handed the cashier her colorful collection of cotton bags with the logos from every nonprofit she supported, from public radio to the survival center, civil liberties to Occupy Wall Street.

  “What’s he doing?” Flo asked Zoe.

  “Who?”

  “That young man who is supposed to be bagging my food.”

  “He’s texting.”

  “Why isn’t he doing his job?”

  “He will. Be patient.” Pretty funny, Zoe thought, her telling someone to be patient.

  Zoe handed the reward card to the cashier and sent an urgent mental message to the bagger. He looked vaguely familiar. Maybe he went to her school? If he knew what was good for him, he’d stop texting and pack Flo’s food. Very carefully.

  “Young man.” Flo wasn’t waiting for the completion of his text or receipt of Zoe’s mind memo. “Stop that foolishness and do your job.”

  Zoe maneuvered her wheelchair around Flo and opened the NPR bag for the Fuji apples. The bagger glanced up, frowned, and returned to his phone. Zoe couldn’t decide between broccoli and unripe pears—which was more fragile? Finally the bagger slipped his phone into the shirt pocket with Kenny stitched in purple and took the decision from her hands. He packed the broccoli and pears on top of the apples and then slipped Flo’s perfect lettuce into the Occupy bag.

  The bagger’s phone buzzed. One-handed, he took it from his pocket and punched an icon. Eyes on the small screen, he added bananas to the bag and reached for three large sweet onions.

  Zoe slid the credit card through the slot while transmitting another message to Kenny’s brain: No, you don’t want to do that. Please. Why didn’t the cashier stop him?

  “Young man!” Flo’s voice was loud. “You just put my lettuce on the bottom of the bag. Didn’t anyone teach you how to pack food properly? Your mother, doesn’t she make salads? Shmushed lettuce is no goddamn good!”

  Flo was working up to a fury.

  Kenny the bagger threw her a look more mocking than contrite. He didn’t rescue the lettuce from the assault of the onions. Eyes still on his phone, he held up his other hand and backed up two steps. Which was clearly more than Flo could bear, because she reached across the counter, grabbed an onion, and threw it hard at Kenny.

  He ducked.

  Someone—the dementia surveillance team?—must have been watching through the one-way glass upstairs. Within seconds a manager, a security guard, and three other adolescent baggers crowded around their station. By then, Flo had the second onion poised and ready to fly. The security guard gripped Flo’s arm and moved her out of the aisle. The other baggers elbowed Kenny and made jokes. The manager gathered their bags and pushed Zoe’s wheelchair to follow Flo and the guard.

  “Get your cotton-picking hands off my chair,” Zoe said, then mentally slapped herself. She’d picked up the phrase from her mom and it materialized on her tongue whenever she was furious, even though Flo insisted it was racist. But the manager was white, so it was okay this time, wasn’t it?

  In a small office tucked behind the Employee of the Month display board, the security guard escorted Flo to a chair in the corner, across from the manager’s desk. Zoe maneuvered her wheelchair next to her grandmother. The guard stood at the door, arms crossed over her chest. The manager sat at his desk. He looked from Flo to Zoe and back.

  “Would you like to tell me what happened out there?” he asked Flo.

  “He was doing that thing with his phone …”

  “Texting,” Zoe added.

  “… instead of doing his job.” Flo flashed Zoe a look that clearly said Keep out of this. “Then he shmushed my lettuce.” She leaned back, having made her case.

  “I’ll deal with Kenny,” the manager said. “He shouldn’t have been texting. However, violence against our employees—for any reason—will not be tolerated. Besides,” the manager added, pointing at Flo, “I remember you. This is not the first time you’ve been abusive to one of my staff.”

  Not the first time? Zoe looked at Flo. Maybe Sam was right about Flo starting to lose her marbles.

  The manager turned to Zoe. “Who is responsible for this woman?”

  “I’m not a child.” Flo was yelling again. “I’m in charge of myself.”

  “I’m sorry,” the manager said, standing up. “Either a responsible adult comes to deal with this woman or I notify the police.”

  “Call the pigs.” Flo crossed her arms. “I’m not scared of them.”

  “Please don’t do that,” Zoe said, pulling her phone from her pocket. “I’ll call my dad.”

  Elbows planted on the windowsill, chin resting on both hands, Sam stared out the second floor window toward the street. When Zoe was little, he waited in this position every afternoon for the Special Ed bus to pull up at the curb. If the driver had to honk twice, if Zoe’s mother Anna or cousin Emily didn’t quickly appear on the sidewalk, he would fly down the outside stairs and score some extra time with his daughter.

  His phone chimed Zoe’s song and her photo flashed on the screen. Sam grinned. It was the oddest thing how Zoe always seemed to know when he was thinking about her and chose that moment to call. Usually she needed a ride or extension of her curfew, but still.

  “Zey, Hoey,” he said. “At’s whup?”

  Spoonerisms were the way he first connected with his daughter outside of Anna’s maternal realm. For years the silly switching of the first letters of words was their secret language. Now that Zoe lived with him, he longed for the simple bond of those days when Anna did all the real parenting—the limit-setting and three-meals-a-day and doctors’ appointments. In those days, he was the fun parent.

  Zoe ignored the spoonerism game. “Come quick. Grandma’s in big trouble.”

  It was Zoe he was used to worrying about. Her bones were fragile—would she fall and break something? Or get an infection that could destroy her kidneys? Or—worst of all—would her shunt fail? He tiptoed through fatherhood, atoning for his initial inability to parent a baby born with a glistening red sack of spinal cord and nerves on her back, a baby who was whisked off to surgery before he got a chance to count her toes or kiss her downy head.

  A baby he had initially wanted Anna to abort.

  But after the first ruined year—even his ex-wife had to admit it—his parenting made up for lost time. So when Zoe was twelve and fighting constantly with her mother amid the chaos of the overcrowded downstairs apartment, his girl moved in with him, claiming the bedroom he had always kept ready for her overnight visits.

  Now he worried even more. Zoe had rejected the crutches in favor of a wheelchair so he had fewer worries about falls. There were still so many other medical perils and he had to be vigilant about all the potential adolescent dangers lurking out there to hurt or tempt his beautiful girl.

  Driving to the grocery store, Sam tried to identify the stew of emotions he’d heard in Zoe’s voice. Her words crackled at the edge of tears, heavy with worry and fury, guilt mixed with I-can’t-do-this-any-more. Or was he projecting his own feelings on Zoe? For months he’d been monitoring his mother’s falterings, recording the memory lapses, cataloging the blan
k-faced moments of drifting someplace else, listing the incidents of objects placed in the very wrong place—reading glasses in the freezer, a magazine balanced on the rim of the open toilet, a half-empty glass of water in the oven. Most likely it’s Alzheimer’s, her doctor suggested. With his dad long gone, his ex-wife busy with her own life, and no siblings, Sam had no one to share the worries. Except Zoe.

  Turning into the parking lot, Sam parked in a handicapped spot and jogged into the store. He knew exactly where the security office was located. Knocking on that door, his face flushed with the heat of shame. In sixth grade, he and a buddy got caught stealing comic books at this store. That time, Flo bailed him out and agreed not to tell his dad. This time, she sat in the hot seat across from the manager, hugging herself, her gray hair a chaotic halo. This time he was the responsible adult.

  “Sam Tobin.” He introduced himself to the manager, then turned to his family. “Are you guys okay? Zoe, Ma?”

  “They’re fine,” the store manager said. “Kenny is the one who was assaulted.”

  “He’s fine too,” Zoe said. “Flo threw an onion at him, but she missed.”

  “He deserved it,” Flo said. “He shmushed my lettuce.”

  Sam arranged a suitably stern expression on his face, then turned to the manager. “I’m very sorry for the trouble. May I take my mother home?”

  “Certainly. If she apologizes to the employee and promises it won’t happen again.”

  “Ma?” he asked, wondering what happened to the customer is always right.

  Flo’s face could no longer camouflage her emotions. She was tickled pink with herself. She’d been pleased with Sam that day with the comic books too. “Stealing is wrong,” she lectured him on the way home. “But toeing other people’s lines your whole life is worse.” That’s when he figured out—at age eleven—that he wasn’t being raised to have a regular, nine-to-five life. Flo certainly never lived that life. She was her own boss, recording narration for progressive television programs and left-wing videos and indie documentaries. Until the year before when one of her long-term clients called with concerns about her mental status, and Sam had to close the business.

  The store manager tapped his finger on the desk but Flo didn’t offer an apology. Sam gestured to the manager to follow him into the hallway.

  “I apologize for my mother,” Sam said. “She probably doesn’t remember that she threw the onion. She has Alzheimer’s.” The words stung and burned. He hadn’t yet shared the medical diagnosis with Zoe or Anna; this was the first time he said them out loud.

  The manager’s face softened. “I’m sorry to hear that, but—”

  “I know. I’ll make sure nothing like this happens again.”

  Walking out of the store a few minutes later behind Zoe’s chair, Flo striding ahead with her cane, Sam had no idea how he could keep that promise. They could shop at a different grocery, but the competition’s baggers were not likely to be more respectful of lettuce.

  Face facts, he told himself. Flo was only seventy-three, awfully young for dementia, but the symptoms were getting worse, and quickly. He had to consider moving her someplace where she could get the care and supervision she needed. Even if she agreed, it wouldn’t be easy to find a place where she would fit in, with her big mouth and her Stalinist politics. With Flo, the dementia might be the easy part.

  Chapter Three

  Tim and Jeremy dozed during most of the trip to Manhattan. More accurately, they each faked sleeping so they wouldn’t have to talk. There’s something about traveling on a train, the rocking motion maybe, that makes a person feel invisible and outside of time. It invites introspection, and so each brother, wrapped in his cloak of pseudo-slumber, privately dissected the events of the last fourteen hours. Neither shared their suspicion that the plan of bringing Jeremy to Brooklyn was unwise, that maybe they should have called their parents. No, that felt like a last resort and they weren’t there yet. The train arrived at Penn Station during evening rush hour.

  Trying to follow Tim’s zigzag path through the crowd, Jeremy felt minuscule and utterly insignificant in the crowded space. Staring at the circles of lights on the ceiling, he bumped into a spiky-haired woman standing in the middle of the concourse yelling into her phone.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, hurrying to catch up with his brother.

  “You got to keep up,” Tim said. “I have a class tonight.” He grabbed for Jeremy’s duffle bag, but Jeremy pulled it back.

  They ran down the stairs to the subway. Tim swiped his Metro card for Jeremy, who held his duffle high above his head, and they pushed through the turnstile just in time to slip through the closing doors. No seats were available on the Shuttle or on the Brooklyn-bound 5. Jeremy grasped the pole with one hand and hugged his duffle with the other. He closed his eyes. Once his body found the rhythm, it was soothing to stand jammed in so tight with these strangers, swaying back and forth to the clacking pulse of the train. He could imagine falling asleep with the rocking and the singsong phrases from the speakers and the gently blinking colors of the stations lit up in a line on the wall.

  Except that the lit-up station names didn’t correspond to the static-blurred PA system announcements.

  “What’s with that?” He nudged Tim, pressed against his right shoulder, and pointed to the display.

  “That’s for the 2 train,” Tim said. “To the Bronx.”

  “But how would you know where to get off, if you were a stranger?”

  Tim grinned. “If you were a stranger, you’d be fucked.”

  In Brooklyn the crowd thinned and they found seats. A woman on the opposite bench was reading a paperback novel, the slim fancy kind English majors carried. Jeremy couldn’t see the title but the author photo on the back cover was a match for the woman reading the book. An artsy black-and-white pose, but clearly her. He considered pointing it out to Tim, the author reading her own book, sharing a brotherly moment of scorn at her expense. But he didn’t. If he ever accomplished something like that, wrote a book or had a show of his drawings or saved some plant species, he’d want to show it off too. At the moment achieving anything of importance seemed increasingly unlikely. If he blew this semester, he might never even graduate.

  “Tim,” he said. “I really appreciate you coming to the rescue, but what about my classes?” He already missed botany lab, Professor Clarke’s eloquent lectures about biodiversity loss, his single room dusty with drying plants and sketchbooks, the radio station hush in the wee hours. “What am I supposed to do in Brooklyn?”

  Tim looked down at his lap. “I don’t know. Homework, maybe? Drawing? Or just take a leave of absence and chill.”

  Leave of absence? How many species would disappear while he chilled in Brooklyn? A white-capped wave of anxiety broke against Jeremy’s chest. “Orbexilum macrophyllum,” he murmured. “Nesiota elliptica. Begonia eiromischa. Camellia sinensis.”

  Tim gave him a nervous look and stood up. “Next stop is ours.”

  Tim hated it when Jeremy started chanting his pathetic dirge of dead plants. He couldn’t remember when it started. Sometime in high school, Tim thought. What if his bro freaked out again, like whatever happened last night that landed him in Health Services? Would this be like the months of not-eating and barely-talking that their mom went through when Tian first went to prison? Or like Tian’s creepy post-prison habit of wearing a mess of rubber bands on his wrist and snapping them all day? This freak-out stuff must be genetic, so how long would Tim be safe? Like Jeremy, he inherited the same peculiar mix of Tian’s dark skin and Francie’s blond hair, but so far—knock on wood—he had avoided the nutty genes.

  Still, Tim didn’t get why Jeremy went all convulsive about dying flowers. If he cared so much about the health of the planet, he should major in something useful, like business or even medicine. Tim’s economics professor said that global warming wasn’t even real, just a commie plot to destabilize the fossil fuel companies.

  Why on Earth had he invited Jeremy ho
me with him?

  Not only that, but Jeremy had asked a damn good question on the train, Tim thought as they trudged up the stone stairs at Borough Hall. What was Jeremy going to do with himself? Tim hadn’t thought beyond the fact that his apartment-mate got a last-minute opportunity to study in Spain for the semester, so the second bedroom was empty and paid for. Maybe Jeremy just needed a few weeks away from all those science labs and his dying species obsession. Spring was coming. He could sit bare-chested in the Japanese garden at the Botanical Gardens, commune with nature and contemplate his navel until he was ready to resume real life. The image made Tim laugh out loud.

  “What’s so funny?” Jeremy asked.

  Tim guided them around the corner onto Court Street. Jeremy probably wouldn’t be amused by his fantasy. “I was just thinking that Brooklyn has these awesome Botanical Gardens. You could hang out there. And you could, maybe, you know, get some plants for the apartment. Make it look nice.”

  Jeremy’s reaction was visceral and unmistakable. Tim held up his hand, acknowledging his mistake, but Jeremy said it anyway. “It’s not about prettying up the house like, what’s-her-name, Martha Stewart. It’s about whole species of living organisms disappearing from the Earth forever. That’s huge, you know?”

  “I know,” Tim said. “Sorry.” He brushed his hand over his close-cropped hair. “We’ve got barber shops too. You could get a haircut.”

  Ten blocks later, Tim unlocked the apartment door and kicked his backpack out of the way so they could enter. He had lucked into this primo rental because the owner desperately needed help keeping the accounts of the bookstore downstairs. It was a sweet deal—for eight hours of work each week, he got a two-bedroom apartment. His roommate’s rent paid most of his other expenses. Tim could afford to help his brother.