All Over Creation (18 page)

“Why, it's morning.” He sounded surprised that I should need to know.

“It's four o'clock in the morning. It's the middle of the night.”

“Oh, my!” His resolution crumpled. “Is it?” Thoroughly deflated now. “But I thought—” Breathing harshly, he tried to understand, but then, “Oh, no—” and his voice broke off. “I must have been dreaming. . . .” His words trailed into a low sob that ended in a hiccup.

“Listen, Dad, we'll talk later, okay? Will you be all right until morning?”

“Oh—” he said, the syllable echoing through all the failing chambers of his heart. “Yes. I . . . I suppose so.”

“I'll come by tomorrow. I'll talk to the doctor.”

“Yumi, wait!” he cried, rallying.

“What is it?”

“Where's your mother?”

“She's here, Dad. I brought her home. She's with us. She's fine.”

“Bring me home, too. Please! Get me out of here!”

“I can't do that. You know I can't. You can't manage on your own, and there's no one here to take care of you.”

“But you . . .”

“Dad, this is temporary. I'm only here for a visit. I don't live here, remember?”

“Oh . . .”

“Try to get some sleep.”

“Oh, Yumi, I can't sleep! That's the problem. They keep waking me up. All this fussing. No sleep at all . . .”

When I hung up the phone, I heard Ocean calling. “Mommy . . . ?” I scooped her up and carried her into bed with me. “Is it Christmas yet?” she asked.

“Almost, Puddle,” I told her.

“Don't call me that.”

“Okay. Go back to sleep now.” I had stayed up late stuffing their stockings, and the whiskey I'd been drinking tasted thick on my tongue. I closed my eyes and pulled her in close, to calm her with the authority of my own body's exhaustion.

But Ocean was full of sleepy worries. “Mommy, I know who that was on the phone. It was Santa Claus, right?”

I rubbed her forehead. “Ocean, honey. You don't believe in Santa Claus, remember?”

“I know,” she said. “But Poo does. It's a good thing Santa found us all the way out here, isn't it? In the middle of nowhere.”

“It's not nowhere,” I said. “It's Idaho.”

“Is he going to get here on time? We're a long way from Pahoa.”

“Yes we are. Now go to sleep.”

 

 

We celebrated Christmas at Cass and Will's house. We unwrapped presents under the tree in the living room, and the kids disappeared into Will's office to try out their new games on his computer. Poo was busy shredding wrapping paper on the floor under the tree, and Momoko was attempting to retrieve some of it before he ruined it all, smoothing it and folding it, to use again in Christmases to come. I was looking at the gift I'd just unwrapped. It was a photo in a frame.

“I found a bunch of them,” Cass said. “Momoko had them hidden in your bureau drawer. She wanted to give you that one.”

I turned the little picture over in my hand. The frame was made of a light-colored maple, its beveled edges carefully oiled and polished.

“Will made the frame,” Cass added. “He's good at carpentry.”

Will shrugged, embarrassed.

“It's beautiful,” I said. “Thank you.”

Inside the small frame, behind the glass, was a faded photograph. Lloyd, as a young man—dressed in a V-neck cotton undershirt and an old pair of khaki trousers that must have been from his army days—standing on the edge of a vast tilled field. Above his head, balanced on the palm of his large hand, was a black-haired baby. Me, of course. He was holding me by the belly, like a model airplane. I was wearing a diaper and nothing else. Maybe I was flapping my pudgy arms and kicking my legs, or making cooing noises, but my face was lit with a bright-eyed infant rapture.

The black-and-white photo had browned over the years, but you could tell that Lloyd's hair would have been paler than the dusty earth and his eyes would have matched the color of the sky, cloudless, above the horizon. Momoko must have taken the picture, and she had timed it well, catching my gaze when I was looking right into the lens of the camera. I looked very Japanese at that age—there was little of Lloyd apparent in my face, but that didn't matter to him. He held me carefully, and it was easy to imagine my delight as he piloted my small body, cutting and banking through the blue, no, the sepia sky. He held the promise of an entire life in the palm of his hand. This was an awesome amount of power, but you could see he felt good with it. Looking at his face, you got the feeling that he was relaxed and happy. Handsome. And, above all, proud.

 

 

He had fallen asleep in his wheelchair, with a pad of paper on his lap and a pen in his hand. Someone had pinned a sprig of holly, tied with a bit of red-and-green ribbon, to the lapel of his threadbare bathrobe. It hung there, askew. I hesitated in the doorway, hugging the doorjamb.

“Merry Christmas, Dad.”

He opened his eyes and looked up at me.

“How are you feeling?”

He shook his head. “I'll be fine. As soon as I get out of here.”

A Christmas party was under way in the dayroom. One of the staff was playing an out-of-tune piano, and the patients were singing carols. I'd left the kids and Momoko there eating cookies and drinking sweet punch.

“Ready for the party?”

He groaned and covered his face with his hand. I went to his side to wheel him out, but when I reached down to take the pad and pencil from him, he tightened his grip. Then I caught sight of the words, centered at the top of the page in his spidery handwriting, FULLERS' SEEDS. VENDIMUS SEMINA, and below that, “Mrs. Fuller and I . . .”

My heart sank. I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Dad, I just don't see how you're going to manage.”

“Manage what?” He clutched the pad to his chest.

“Anything. Living at home, never mind keeping Fullers' Seeds going.”

He turned the pad over. “I don't see how it's any of your business.”

“The doctor says you need to be in a nursing home. She says you're not—”

“She's a fool. She doesn't know what she's talking about.” He stared at me until I looked down, and then he picked up his pen. “It has nothing to do with you. You can take all those children of yours and go on home now. Go back to your tropical island. You've done your duty. I'm not dying. I'll try to let you know when I am.”

The imperious dismissal felt like a slap. “I am leaving,” I said. “Believe me. I'm just trying to help you understand, is all. The doctor was real clear. They're not letting you out of here unless you have someone at home to take care of you.”

He grew pale hearing that. His voice wavered. “They can't. They have no right. . . .”

“You can barely walk,” I said, feeling righteous and calm. “You can't make it up and down the stairs by yourself, or even to the bathroom. And Mom can't cook or clean anymore. She barely even remembers what a stove is.”

“Your mother's memory is fine. We have a system. . . .”

“The doctor says it's Alzheimer's. Cass has been bringing you food for months now, even before this last attack.”

“Cassie Quinn's a good girl. She was just helping out. Besides, she's a neighbor.”

A good girl. I hated him even more for saying that. “She told me you can't even change your
bag
by yourself.”

The words punctured his hide. His head dropped and swayed, and he raised his swollen hands from his lap. “My fingers,” he said, spreading them in front for me to see. “They're too thick.”

“Dad,” I said coldly, pressing my advantage, “changing a colostomy bag is more than neighborly. It's what a nurse does.”

“Your mother tries to help me,” he said. “But she can't remember.”

“You live too far out for social services. They can't send health-care workers all the way out to the farm.”

He fell silent and thought for a while. “What . . . ?” He couldn't finish the question.

“The doctor suggested a long-term managed-care facility.”

“A what?”

“Managed care.”

“Sounds like a prison,” he said, trying to joke. “Maximum security . . .”

“It's not like that, it's—”

“No!”
He put every last ounce of strength he had into that word. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again and searched my face, he saw his future as I saw it, and the vision horrified him. “Please,” he begged, so humble now. “I can't go to one of those places. I won't survive. . . .” His words started coming faster, frantic, while his fingers plucked at the folds of his bathrobe. “Everything's going all wrong, Yumi. You don't know what it's like. They won't leave me alone. Always pushing and poking. I can't get a good night's sleep. They keep trying to make me eat. And the food . . . I'll die here, I know I will. I have to get back home. It's my only chance!”

“Oh, Dad! For God's sake!” The exasperation in my voice stopped him short. “What am I supposed to do?”

Tears were pooling in his eyes, and a thin line of spittle leaked from his lower lip down the stubbled chin. He wiped it off. His hand trembled. He hadn't shaved.

“Stay,” he said.

“I can't. I've got a job and classes to teach, and the kids have school. . . .”

The fight leaked out of him. He bent his head, and the knob of his spine protruded from the neck of his robe. He stared into his hands, as though the key to his failure lay in the lines of his upturned palms. “Not for me,” he said. “For your mother. If I can't take care of her, they'll put her away. She won't have her garden. Her seeds. They're all she remembers, Yumi.”

I felt like I'd been punched. I got to my feet.

“All right,” I said. “Only long enough to get you out of here. Then you'll have to figure something else out.”

He raised his face, but I couldn't see his expression. I was already standing behind him, kicking off the brakes on his wheelchair and shoving him forward.

 

To Our Customers:

As you know, Mrs. Fuller and I make it a policy only to sell open-pollinated seeds, which we encourage you, our customers, to grow and save and multiply as you choose, in accordance with
God's Plan.

We have been hearing recently about some very worrisome developments in the world of the Agricultural Sciences, concerning what is called Genetic Engineering, and Mrs. Fuller and I would like to share our thoughts on this troubling new trend.

In the past forty years, scientists have made rapid advances in this field of genetics. They have made many discoveries about DNA, and they have learned how to splice genes from one of God's creatures to another.
They are now able to create novel life forms that have never before existed on God's earth.
Scientists now appear to understand the innermost workings of Life Itself. But do they? Is this something mankind can
ever
know?

Some say that it is entirely appropriate for us to engage in Genetic Engineering. God made Man in
His Own Image,
after all, so it is only natural that we should strive to emulate Him. In fact, say these apologists, it would be an insult to God
not
to use the intelligence He bestowed upon us to its fullest potential. But even up to, and including, the very
Act of Creation?

We believe this is mere rationalization, one that should sound familiar to all of us, and not just to the pomologists amongst our readers! For, having eaten the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, now mankind knows sorrow and death; and here we must ask: Is our answer to that original transgression, once again, to defy
God's Will
and to set our sights on the
Tree of Life Itself?
Do not forget, the Lord put a flaming sword at the entrance of Eden, to keep Man away,
“lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever”
[Genesis 4:24].

Having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, we should know the difference between good and evil, but we do not.
We are not gods.
Scientists do not understand Life Itself, and when they meddle in its Creation, they trespass on God's domain. Beware of the ungodly chimera they manufacture in their laboratories!

It is our nature and our sorrow to confuse Man's mortal hubris with
God's Divine Will.
Mrs. Fuller and I hope that there are enough of you out there who share our views, and who will choose to cultivate wisely this Garden that we were given, rather than to turn it into a wasteland.