Planted...end

Jacob collapsed back against the chair and looked over at her. “Did you tell him I was here?”

“No, I lied. I told him you weren’t.” Jacob smiled and started breathing again. “But he didn’t believe me.” She paused. “He’s driving up.”

“When did he call?”

“Couple of hours ago.”

He could be here in five hours if he drives straight through. “Damn!” He pushed back his chair and stood. “Well, it’s time for me to go, Grandma.”

“Thought you might say that.” Wooden faced Grandma opened a drawer and pulled out a pack of Pall Malls. “So happy you could spend some time.” She shuffled to the stove, turned on the burner, bent, and lit up.

But he wasn’t listening. He was already headed to the front door where he had dropped the duffle bag. Gus started barking in the back yard, a low, plaintive yelp. Jacob walked back to the kitchen where Grandma sat smoking.

“There was another reason I wanted to come here. I mean…other than getting away from Travis.”

“Yes?” She flicked ashes in an ashtray without looking up.

“I wanted to tell you something.” He pulled on the strap of the duffle bag across his chest and shook the hair out of his eyes. “I talked to my mother.”

“Wh..What?” She stared up at him.

“Yeah…in Minneapolis. She… well, she called me out of the blue four months ago. Said who she was and that she wanted to see me. At first I didn’t believe her. But she knew too much. About me. About you. About this house. Then, when I saw her, I recognized her from the pictures you have.”

“You saw her?”

Yes, he had seen her. A dusty, twig-like figure, she came to the apartment and spent three hours. Their conversation was the exchange of strangers:

So, you live here with Travis Hicks?
Yeah.
He Lorna and Vern Hicks’ boy?
Yeah.
He your…husband…or somethin’?
Something like that.
To each his own, I guess.
I guess.

He remembered her eyes darting, never resting in one place more than a second. He could still see her hands, also never still: scratching her neck, pulling at her lip, running along the arms of the chair where she sat. Those eyes and hands, so like mine and yet so foreign.

“I saw her. She gave me these.” He took off the duffle bag, opened it and took out a white, business-sized envelope. He walked to the table and flipped open the scrapbook to the page missing photos. Into the empty slots he slipped five pictures. Two of his mother and a tall, lanky blond man. One of his mother pregnant. And two of his mother holding an infant. There were smiles in none of the pictures. Except for one: the one that remained in his back pocket.

He turned the album so his grandmother could see. She ran a trembling finger over the pictures. Gus was still barking. Jacob could hear him scratching at the backdoor. He strode to the window.

“Gus! Shut up!” He turned back. “He’s not used to being kept outside like that.”

“How was she?” Grandma was still looking at the photos. “How did she look?”

“Old. She looked old. And worn out.”

“Did she ask about me?”

“No, she didn’t.” Grandma looked down, her chin resting on her bosom. Jacob came and sat down again. “She just wanted money. She saw my name in the paper, like you did I guess, and tracked me down so she could hit me up. Some guy wanted her to go to Florida with him. She left a little while after she found out I was broke.”

Grandma patted his hand. Ash fell from her cigarette to the table.

He shrugged. “She’s not family. She just gave birth to me.”

There was quiet in the kitchen. Gus had stopped barking.

Grandma stubbed out her forgotten cigarette, stood, and walked to the kitchen sink. She scrubbed her already clean hands as if she could wash away time. “I don’t know what happened to her. She was such a happy kid. Then after her dad died, she changed. I didn’t know her anymore.” She put her wet hands on the counter and leaned her weight on them, her back to the room.

“I’m sure it’s nothing you did,” he said his voice barely audible in the silence of the room. Maybe it was…I don’t know. His grandmother was staring out the window, her mind obviously on a time when he didn’t yet exist.

Suddenly, Grandma shouted, “Omigod!” Her eyes were fixed out the window. She yanked open the blinds. “Stop! Stop!” she yelled into the garden. She turned and trotted to the backdoor stairs as quickly as her small feet and her large frame would allow, knocking over a chair and bumping into Jacob on the way.

“What is it?” Jacob shouted. “Grandma, what happened?”

He crossed to the window and looked at the sight that had propelled his grandmother out the door.

“Shit! Gus! Stop!” Then he too was running down the back stairs to the garden.

When he got down to the yard he had a clearer view of the havoc his dog had created. Gus was digging in the middle of the rose garden. Small clods of earth flew from his front paws as he dug at the base of a pink-blossomed rose bush. Well, this explains why he’s been so quiet the last few minutes. Jacob reached Gus at the same time as his grandmother. He tore Gus away from the foot deep hole he had dug. Jacob glimpsed the yellow-green of a tennis ball at the bottom of the hole, under the roots of the rose bush that was now leaning precariously forward. Grandma ignored the dog and collapsed on her knees at the base of the plant. She held the roots that now came loose from the earth. She didn’t seem to notice the thorns pricking her hands.

“Oh, God. Marie,” she choked. “Of all the plants, why Marie?” His mother’s name.

“Damn, Grandma, I’m sorry.” Jacob held Gus, who sat back on his haunches at his side, his dirty paws now still. “He must’ve been trying to get the ball.”

She wasn’t listening. She turned her brimming eyes up to him.

“Why do you always leave? All of you? Why do you always leave me here in this house? Your grandfather. Your mother. You.” She looked at the bush now in her hands, pink petals scattered about her.

Jacob pulled on Gus. He took the leash he had left on the back gate and tied Gus to the clothesline pole near the driveway. When he walked back to the garden, Grandma still knelt on the ground and held the plant on her lap. Jacob knelt down next to her and took the plant from her yielding hands.

“Look, Grandma.” He gingerly held the plant out. “The roots are still there. We can replant it.”

She looked up at him, her hands like dying birds in her lap. Jacob took the root ball of the plant and placed it in the hole Gus had dug. With one hand he began patting dirt into place. After several breaths, Grandma’s hands began pushing earth around the roots, her right hand touching Jacobs left, as together they held Marie in place.

Later they sat together on the porch, drinking Mogan David in the afternoon sun. Jacob had showered and put on a clean t-shirt and jeans. His damp hair was combed back from his forehead. He glanced at his watch. He’ll be here in a couple of hours.

“What will you tell him?” Grandma was still in her gardening clothes.

“The truth, I guess. That I thought I needed him, but I don’t. And that he obviously doesn’t need me.”

“And then you’ll send him packing!”

“You know it.” They clinked glasses. The swinging bench they both sat on creaked with the movement. Gus, asleep at their feet, looked up at the sound.

She chuckled. “How about a refill?”

“Sounds good.”

She pushed herself up and waddled towards the door.

“Grandma?” He set down his coffee mug of wine on the wicker side table.

“Hmm?” She paused at the doorway.

“You still have your Sunday night poker game?”

“Of course. Why?”

“Oh, I was just thinking of how much money we could rake in.”

She laughed. “Well, I’m glad you’ll be around. Those gals are finally starting to catch on to my tricks.” She picked a fleck of cigarette paper from her lip and turned to go into the house.

Jacob stood and stretched his arms towards the ceiling. He stepped into the sunlight and with his eyes closed let the warmth bathe his body for a moment. Reaching his hand in his back pocket, he pulled out the one photograph he had not reinserted into the album: a picture of his brown-haired grandmother smiling down at the infant in her arms.