I did not want to see an herb or a spice again in my life. I would not have them anywhere, anytime. The herbs and spices had warned me, I had ignored the warning, now Tate was in a coma because his heart had stopped. There would be another operation today to relieve swelling and pressure in his head. He could die.
Because of me, my son could die.
My son! I hurled a wicker chair straight through a broken window. Stupid, stupid chair! Now you can live in the rain!
Tate was essentially dead now. Kept alive artificially. Tubes, machines, blinking lights, doctors and nurses, including Ethan.
I sent the other chair tumbling out into the rain, too. Stupid chair!
“Don’t kill your greenhouse, Jaden,” Brooke begged. “Please, don’t.”
She was crying, her skinny body shaking. I finally focused on my sister, my younger sister whom I had adored for years, whom I had lost to a mess of drugs. She had been my friend, my playmate, and she had poisoned our family and hurt Tate. She had hurt Tate! Tate was almost dead and she had hurt him! Where had she been all these years! How dare she hurt my son!
“Please, it’s beautiful out here, Jaden. Tate loves it.”
“Tate!” I raved, my chest heaving. “What the hell do
you
know about Tate?”
She reached out a hand to support herself on a wood table, now strewn with smashed plants and piles of dirt.
“Do you know how much you’ve hurt him? Do you have any idea at all, you selfish sister?” I rammed two blue pots into the floor. They broke into a hundred blue pieces. “Do you know what your walking out did to him? He knows I’m not his biological mother. You are! He doesn’t even know who his father is because you don’t!”
“You’re his mother, Jaden, I know that—” She put shaking hands to her face.
“I know that! I am his mother! And he had me, and Caden and Caden’s kids and Mom. He knows we love him, but he lived with knowing his mom abandoned him. He would worry about you, and yet—” I hurled two red pots, filled with tulip bulbs, across the greenhouse, getting an odd thrill from the bomb-blast sounds they made. I threw a yellow pot, too.
Boom, boom!
“You didn’t deserve his worry. You didn’t deserve him caring about you. You didn’t care about him.”
Brooke leaned more heavily on the table. She knew she deserved my rage.
“He wanted to know that you were okay, he said he worried about you being cold, alone, crying, but you never, not once, stopped enough in your life to check on him, did you?” I took a climbing spotted frog off the post and pitched it through the broken glass, then I grabbed another frog and did the same thing, and a third. Flying frogs! Off they went! Hop hop!
“I asked Mom how he was all the time—”
“You asked Mom,” I mocked, panting. “During the infrequent times that you stumbled home, stoned?” I suddenly hated my colorful Chinese lanterns from San Francisco and grabbed a rake and swung at them, bringing them to the floor. So long, happy lanterns! I hate you! I swung at my dried lavender, the dried roses, then crushed them with my shoes.
“Do you know how many hundreds of nights Mom and Dad didn’t sleep because they knew you were out in the world somewhere, drugged up and in danger? Do you know Mom’s been on sleeping pills for years? She’s seen a therapist once a week since you left. Remember when twice during the run of her show she was either put into a coma, how ironic is that now”—I smashed another yellow pot—“or stuck in a mental institution on the show? It was because she had nervous breakdowns. She fell apart because of you, Brooke. Dad did, too. They couldn’t take it, couldn’t take that any day you could die of a drug overdose, be a victim of a crime . . . it drove them out of their minds.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I am sorry. I’ve never stopped being sorry!”
I brought down the last purple Chinese lantern with a swing of my rake, then started on the hanging wicker baskets. “Sorry isn’t good enough. It will never be good enough, never! You ruined years of our lives. Years. And now you’re
here.
”
“You asked me to come—”
“Yes, I asked an addict to come—”
“I know I’m an addict—”
“And you are a selfish, weak, and thoughtless person. You destroyed part of my childhood because you didn’t have the backbone to get yourself cleaned up. You wouldn’t do the hard work to get sober.” I stomped on the Chinese lanterns. I didn’t want any color in my life anymore, anyhow! “You had to relentlessly hurt our family because you were too into yourself, your pleasures, your highs to get it together.”
“I know that, I’m trying—”
“Trying?
You’re trying?
” My chest was pounding with exertion. I grabbed a pot of zinnias and out it went! I never wanted to grow anything again! Nothing! “You’re not
intending
to stay clean? Is that too much to ask? Do you think that you are on this planet all by yourself and you can do anything you want?”
“No, no, I don’t—” She used both hands to prop her skinny self up, her eyes huge in that too-thin face.
“My son is in a hospital.” I hated my greenhouse now! I hated my herbs and spices and flowers and bulbs. “He may die. And after all this time, you show up.”
“But you said Tate wanted to meet me, Jaden,” she whispered.
“He did. And now I think it was a mistake. What are your plans, Brooke? To walk away, to stay? What?” I started hacking at the white Christmas lights, bringing the strands to the floor. I would never want to have Christmas without Tate.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know—”
“You don’t know. You don’t know shit because you haven’t been around this family enough to know anything.” I ignored the hot tears that were falling down my cheeks and hers. “Did you know that Dad died fearing for your life? He was always scared you would die. He lived with your possible death hanging over him.”
“I know.” She broke into another round of sobs. “I know it. You think that doesn’t follow me around? I know that I did that to him. I know it was all my fault.”
I checked my rage for a minute, there was something else here. “What do you mean,
you know it was all your fault?
What do you know?”
“Nothing, oh God, nothing—”
“Yes, you know something, Brooke. What is it?” I whipped a strand of lights to the floor.
“Not now, I don’t want to tell you now, I don’t want to talk about Dad—”
“Tell me, damn you, Brooke, tell me.”
She cried, hands to mouth.
I picked up one of my teapots and threw it. It burst three feet from her feet. “Tell me, Brooke! Right now!” I picked up another one, broke it, too, right close to her.
“Oh my God!” She screeched, then turned her shoulders in, huddling into herself. “I know because I called him that night. I called him because I was in Portland and I was tripping and I needed help and I wasn’t sure where I was and I thought I was dying.”
What?
I grabbed a teacup and sent it crashing across the greenhouse. Never would I drink tea again. I wanted to drink it with Tate. Only Tate. “You called him? When?”
“That night.”
My air seemed to be stuck, not moving around in my body. “You called him that night he died?”
“Yes, I called him.” She started to hyperventilate but I had no pity for her. “I told him the names of signs, street signs, a store in Portland that I could see, I was stoned.... And he said he was on his way and he came to help me, to save me. He came to save me. Daddy came to save me. Save Brooke, save me. . . .” Her voice grew small. “To save me . . .”
“Oh my God, oh my God.” That was it. He was driving that night to her. To Brooke. That’s why he was going too fast, he never drove fast. We thought he’d gone for chocolate mint ice cream for me. . . . He’d told me there would be ice cream when I came home.... I picked up a rosemary plant, my rage quivering, and threw it through a window, then thyme, then oregano. “Damn you, Brooke!”
“I called him and he went over . . . over . . . over that cliff.”
I envisioned his car, careening out of control, flying into the inky blackness, his face when he realized there was no road under his wheels. He would have thought of my mother, of his children.
I reached for another rosemary plant, but found I had no energy to break it, probably because I couldn’t catch my breath, couldn’t stand any longer. I sank onto the messy floor of my greenhouse as my legs gave out, my knees weak, the rosemary plant in my lap.
“I’ve had to live with that since then, Jaden. I killed Dad. I am responsible for Dad dying.” She groaned, primal and raw. “I killed him. I killed my own dad. I killed yours and Caden’s dad. I killed Mom’s husband. He was worried about me dying, he wanted to save me, but I killed him.”
“Stop, stop, don’t say anymore. I can’t take it.” I rocked back and forth, filthy with dirt, filthy with black emotions. “Good God, I can’t take it. I can’t take any more. Not of this, not of you . . .”
“I killed Dad.” Brooke tilted her head back, gasping for air, hardly even with me anymore, lost in her own hysterical turbulence. “It was me. It was my fault. All my fault. Forever it’s been my fault, all of it. I’m sorry. Mom, I’m sorry, Jaden and Caden, I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry. . . . I can never be sorry enough.”
I pushed the rosemary plant off my lap and turned over, ripped and exhausted, face down to the ground, to the dirt, and cried a thousand tears while Brooke wailed, the wail escaping out the broken glass of the greenhouse, across the grass and to the country house that Faith and Jack built, where her quilts still hang, her banister my banister, her view of the maple trees my view now. Brooke’s soaring wail surrounded the gardens where I grow Canterbury bells, hollyhocks, lilies, irises, sweet peas, cosmos, red poppies, peonies, and rows of roses, the same flowers Faith and Grace grew.
No, Brooke could never be sorry enough.
I sobbed so hard I thought my body would burst.
There was such a heavy load of abject misery in that greenhouse if misery could demolish a building, it would have been demolished, with us in it.
Later, with Brooke shrieking and hyperventilating, I struggled up, dirt dropping off me. I wanted to continue killing my greenhouse, the place where death was stored in my herbs and spices.
I stumbled to my cutting and mixing area and grabbed as many spice jars as I could. I would dump out the spices and the herbs into one pile for my bonfire. I would add all my teas! It would be a bonfire of spices, herbs, and teas! They would all be burned to ash. With shaking hands I started to gather them up to incinerate them and I accidentally knocked over paprika and coriander, which broke on the floor.
I swore up a blue streak.
A jar of parsley fell to the ground, too, and shattered on the floor right on top of it. A box of peppermint herbal tea fell, too, and I smashed it with my boot.
“Hell, double hell! Fine, then! I’ll break all of you! You’re all going right now! You’re dead!” I raised my arms up and with one mighty swoop, spice jars went crashing to the floor and their scents—ginger, sage, chervil, tarragon, nutmeg, dill, oregano, thyme, bay leaves—all floated up, twirling together with the peppermint herbal tea, blending and folding into one another.
When I had finally broken or destroyed anything I could get my hands on, I stopped, panting, in the midst of that total destruction, windows shattered, pots crumbled, dirt scattered, tables overturned, lanterns smashed, my sister trying to breathe while chanting, “It’s all my fault, all my fault, it’s all my fault.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled, deeply, my heart palpitating, racing. I breathed in again, one more time. A third time.
My eyes flew open.
I couldn’t believe it.
It couldn’t be.
I dropped to my knees and breathed in all those herbs, spices, and teas at one time . . . one breath, two . . .
I didn’t smell death
.
I inhaled again, exhausted and ruined, utterly crushed . . . but one more time I breathed in . . . then another . . . I couldn’t be wrong . . . I couldn’t hope if there was no hope, I couldn’t believe, if there was nothing to believe in. I could not imagine something that wasn’t there, because it would kill me.
But there it was.
It was.
There.
A scent I had longed for, hoped for, prayed for. . . . There was no death wafting up from the herbs, spices, and teas. No blackness, no threat, no rot, no rancid fume. None.
All I smelled was . . . Life.
Life.
I smelled life.
My cell phone rang.
20
“T
he doctors are looking for you!” my mother said, sprinting on
bare feet,
toward Caden, Brooke, and me as we burst through the front doors of the hospital, then ran down corridors to the ICU. My mother had never abandoned her high heels, never. Neither had she ever abandoned makeup, but she had given that up, too, and her hair was as messy as mine. Unprecedented. “Come in, come in quick! They want to talk to us right now! Hurry! Hurry!”
With Caden’s help, I wobbled and limped down the last corridor, as if my balance was gone, despair mixing with the hope of the impossible, the hope of a wispy scent of life.
We took the elevator up to the fourth floor, Caden tapping his foot and repeating, “Atta boy, Tate, you can do it, my boy.” Brooke clung to my mother’s hand, my mother whimpering, gripping the cross on her charm necklace. When the doors opened we stumbled toward the nurses’ station, as I fought to stay upright, weak from terror. My mother was propped up by Caden, as the doors at the end of the hallway, leading to the ICU, opened. My sister leaned against a wall, sickly, frail, and I reached out a hand to hold hers.
She took it. I leaned over, my other hand on my knees to keep me upright, my charm necklace swinging.
We saw Ethan, Dr. Raminsky, and two other doctors emerge in scrubs. Ethan pulled off his paper mask.
He was ripped with fatigue. He had hardly slept, same with Dr. Raminsky. They both had lines deeply drawn on their faces. The two other doctors with them were both ghastly looking, too. One of the doctors wiped a hand over her brow, her blond ponytail swinging behind her, the other rolled her shoulders.
They did not see us at first, my mother, Caden, Brooke, and me, a ragtag bunch of desperate people now only half sane. The doctors were not smiling, they were talking back and forth, rapid fire, their tones abrupt, terse.
It was a serious, intense discussion.
Ethan turned and saw me, hardly able to stand, my hand gripped in Brooke’s, Tate’s Other Mother.
I waited, my eyes begging him,
begging,
as they filled with yet more tears and the tears rushed down my face as if in anticipation of confirmation of an irreplaceable loss. I heard my mother sucking in air, hoarse and raspy, and my brother’s continual, “Oh my boy, Tate, oh my boy, save him, Lord,” muffled because he could hardly speak through his sobs. Raw sounds of hopelessness tore from Brooke’s throat.
“Please, Ethan,” I croaked out. “Tell me he’s okay. Tell me he’s all right.”
Oh God, please. For my son, for my son. For Tate. Please, God, anything. Anything. I want my son.
All four of the doctors turned to us, the Bruxelle family, beyond desolate, beyond lost, clinging to their last shred of hope....
They smiled.
Tate was alive.
He was not conscious, but he was alive, his brain scans were normal, his heart was beating, and he was breathing on his own.
He was hooked up to every machine known to man, it seemed. There were medical personnel hovering around talking medical-ese, beeps and hisses, tubes and machines.
“I think he’s going to make it, Jaden,” Ethan told me, an arm linked over my shoulder, a smile on his worn-out face, bruises under his eyes from fatigue and stress. “I think he’s going to make it.”
I leaned over and kissed Tate on the forehead, my love for him coming through that kiss, all my love, my eternal, deep, protective love for my child. My tears dropped onto his face and down his cheeks, as if he was crying, too, and I remembered another day that another mother had dropped tears on his cheeks.
My Tate was still with us.
He was alive.
He had improved. There were positive signs. He would wake up. He could, possibly, possibly recover fully and live for a long, long time.
A normal lifespan for a kid who has never been normal.
I was so happy, so relieved. So utterly grateful.
I passed out.
I remember dreaming.
I dreamed of herbs dancing in giant flowered teacups. I dreamed of a singing silver spoon. I dreamed of crystal jars of spices with eyes and smiles chatting back and forth.
I dreamed of my greenhouse. I dreamed of the sun streaking through, then the rain pounding down, a rainbow arching over head. I dreamed of our white home, the maple trees dancing down the drive, the red poppies swaying, singing in a group, the rows of roses laughing, the Canterbury bells and peonies turning into flower people....
When I woke up, Ethan was leaning over me, his face pinched and worried, his hand on my forehead. “Jaden.”
I couldn’t form his name with my mouth. I knew I was in a hospital bed. I knew he was Ethan. I knew I was scared, and I knew I wanted to cry again.
My mother held my hand in her trembling one, my brother the other hand. My sister stood in the corner, and I remembered how I’d lashed out at her, a verbal fire-and-brimstone attack.
“Jaden, it’s okay, honey. You’re fine.”
“How . . .” I felt another wave of nausea. “How is Tate?”
Ethan smiled, but this time there was joy in his smile. “He’s doing great. He just woke up.”
“He’s awake?”
“Yes. As soon as you’re up to it, I’ll take you there.”
“Tate’s awake?”
My son, whose heart had stopped even though they were operating on his head? He was awake? The tears streamed from my eyes like I’d burst two waterfalls in my corneas. “Is he talking?”
Ethan’s voice crackled, and he sniffled. “He asked for you. He said, ‘Where’s Boss Mom?’ ”
He asked for you. He said, “Where’s Boss Mom?”
I was his mother.
I am Boss Mom.
I am here.
I tried to get up, but I couldn’t, the nausea swamping me.
“Lie back down, Jaden, hang on to your horses. . . .” Caden said. “I’ll carry you on in there if I have to, but get your breath, catch that breath of yours—”
“No. I’m going to Tate.” I was limp and weak, dizziness spinning my head. “Get out of my way.”
“Lie back, for a moment, honey,” Ethan said, but I fought him.
“Breathe, baby,” my mother said. “Please breathe. Pretend we’re in a bubble of bubble gum.”
I blinked at her, still struggling to get up.
“Okay, no. That was silly.” She waved her hand, dismissing that idea. “Pretend we’re in a box filled with licorice.”
What?
“Not that.” Another wave of her hand. “Together, we are at the top of a roller coaster and it’s going super-sonically fast, and suddenly the car we’re in goes off the tracks and we’re loose and we’re flying through the free blue sky—”
For heaven’s sake.
“I’m going,” I said, my head swirling. “Right now.” I tried to lever myself up through the nausea. I took a deep, deep breath. Deep enough for bubble gum and licorice and roller coaster rides that go haywire and send my mother and me careening into the free blue sky.
“Help me up, please, help me.”
Ethan had an arm around my waist, as did Caden.
“We’re going to see Tate, honey,” Caden said, sniffling. “I can’t believe it. We’re going to see Tate!”
I started to hobble out and stopped in front of my sister, who seemed to be cowering. “Come with me, Brooke. Please. Our son wants to see us.”
“Mom, I saw you.”
“I see you, too, honey.” It was Tate and me alone in his room for the moment. Mom and son. I pushed what was left of his curly red hair back. I didn’t know, exactly, what he was talking about, but I didn’t care. He was in his hospital bed. He was alive. He was awake. He was talking. That was all I needed or wanted to see.
His voice was hoarse. “No, Boss Mom, I saw you by the fountain. You were all by yourself.”
Oh. My. Goodness. “You . . . you saw me?”
“I saw you when I was being operated on. It was weirdo. Neither physics nor cognitive brain function can explain this one. I was up in the corner watching Dr. Robbins. Another doctor with a blond ponytail had my chest open and it was gross and there was blood and I wasn’t moving. I looked dead, and then all of a sudden I was by you at the fountain.”
“I . . . Tate—”
“You told me to hang on and I told you that everything was okay.”
I collapsed on a chair by his bed.
“I told you that Billy and Bob were up and I was fighting.”
I felt faint. I had felt him close to me, his warmth, his arm around my shoulders....
“Mom, you told me you loved me, to stay with you, and your crystals came out of your hair and went into the fountain.”
I put a hand to my head. I had not been hallucinating. Tate had had an out-of-body experience. I had talked to him during that experience.
“You’re all pale, Mom, are you okay?”
“Am I okay? No, Tate,” I squeaked. “I’m not.”
“I told you I was fighting the same fight I had when I was learning advanced statistics.”
“Statistics.” I felt faint again. “Advanced statistics.”
“Yeah, and the chicken pancakes? Man, I can’t wait to have those. Remember that?”
I nodded, weakly. I remembered.
“Mom, I feel sort of sick and tired, but it’s a sick that I know’ll take off, shove off, you know? It’s the operation and the medicine, the anesthesia, but I’m going to be groovy fine, that is my new sixties word,
groovy,
so I think you need to chill out, you know, take a nap, have a beer or something. Hey! Can I have a beer?”
“No, you may not.”
“What about one of Nana Bird’s mai tais?”
“No, young man, no.”
“I’m kidding about the mai tais. I actually want a strawberry daiquiri.” He paused when I didn’t smile. “Or whiskey. Whiskey and tea, you know how Faith and Grace the witches drank it in their tea. I love all those stories you and Nana Bird have told me about them.”
“They weren’t really witches,” I said, on automatic. “They thought they were.”
“Yeah, okay. Sure. I’m tryin’ to make you laugh because you look, you look, uh . . . bad. You know, uh, Mom, you’re kind of a green color, a monster green color. And you have a lot of dirt on you, I don’t know why, and your hair is all over. Plus, under your blue eye is purplish dark. Your green eye isn’t as bad, but it’s not . . . uh, normal. But no offense, ’kay? Maybe you should sleep. I think you should sleep. Haven’t you slept at all?”
He was a kid. He didn’t get it. Parents do not sleep when their children are in critical condition. “I’ll be fine, Tate. I’ll be fine.” I shuddered from relief and sheer exhaustion and wobbled up to kiss his cheek. Yes, I would be fine. Tate was alive, that was all I wanted. “I love you, son.”
“Me, too, Boss Mom, me, too. I love you. Hey! Did we win?”
I told him, then watched while he slept, reveling in the miracle that he was here. Reveling in the miracle of a miracle.
I held his hand in both of mine and rested my head on his shoulder.
Thank you.
Many nights later, in my greenhouse, with my white lights twinkling, and my tropical mango tea nearby, I chopped and mixed up bay leaves, cloves, and paprika for Herbal Therapy time. I appreciated the colors and varied textures.
I had, as I told Brooke, killed my greenhouse.
When I came home, my greenhouse was alive again. It was peace with glass.
My mother drawled to me later, her composure securely in place to hide her most recent trauma and upheaval, her lipstick perfect, her auburn bob swinging, her stilettos on, “That was an impressive temper tantrum you threw, daughter. It would have been so entertaining to watch you heave your wicker chairs through the windows. I’m surprised you didn’t sprain your boobs.”
And, “Did you have to attack the hoppy frogs? How do you think they felt, flying through the windows?”
And, “Why so vengeful against the Chinese lanterns? We’ll have to go to San Francisco as a family to buy new ones in Chinatown. I’ll make the reservations.”
Finally, “It’s the red hair and the blue eye from Faith and the green eye from Grace that blew your mind away.”
I asked my mother, “What do my eyes have to do with my wrecking my greenhouse?”
“It’s in the family line, this temperamental witchly streak.” She hugged me and I hugged her back. While I stayed in the hospital with Tate, my mother, Caden, Caden’s kids, Brooke, Ethan, Coach Boynton and Letty, Milt and Anthony’s parents, and other friends had completely cleaned up and repaired my greenhouse.
The floors were swept, plants, flowers, and herbs that had died were thrown out, others nurtured back to life and new ones bought. My mother had a painted, wooden sign made for the door by a local artist. It said J
ADEN’S
H
ERBS AND
S
PICES
. There was a witch with red hair, one blue eye, and one green eye on a broomstick. She thinks she’s so clever. She also bought me two new spice racks.