Carole (24 page)

Dear Diary:

Summer vacation started a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been spending almost every day at the stable. Our riding class is a little smaller now, since Roger (ugh!) dropped out and Lauren moved away. It’s funny, when I first came to Pine Hollow a little less than a year ago, I was sure that Lauren was going to end up being a really good friend. I thought we had so much in common—same interest in horses, same age, same school. But now that she’s gone, I realize I don’t even miss her that much. We didn’t end up getting that close after all, especially once I started spending more time with Stevie. Stevie can be kind of crazy sometimes, and I don’t always understand how her mind works, but I really like her. And she definitely helps take my mind off worrying about things at home
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Mom seems to get weaker every day. Her doctors say they’re doing all they can, but I can’t believe that, because the treatments seem to hurt her more than they help. Still, whenever she has the energy, Mom spends time in her little garden in the backyard. Dad dug it out for her, and she’s been planting all kinds of vegetable and flower seeds there, even a few little shrubs. Actually, Dad and I have done most of the digging and planting. Mom sits in the shade and supervises, or sometimes she’ll sprinkle seeds in a trench we’ve dug or pull a few small weeds from between the tiny plants
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I don’t really understand why she cares so much about that stupid garden. It’s getting harder and harder to ignore
the fact that she isn’t getting better, that the cancer isn’t going away
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It’s kind of hard to watch her keep on planting things. I mean, what’s the point if she’ll never get to see the flowers bloom? It hurts to watch the plants in the garden grow stronger as Mom gets weaker
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Dear Diary:

I just got home from Pine Hollow. Max was talking about some Fourth of July picnic, which is coming up next weekend. I guess they have it every year. Stevie says it’s fun—all the riders and their friends and families get together to eat and talk about horses and have fun, and then everyone watches the town fireworks from a hillside behind the stable. I told Dad about it, and he says we can go for a little while if Mom is feeling okay that day. Actually, he says I should go and have fun no matter what, but I really hope we can all go as a family. I think it would be good for Mom to go out somewhere other than the hospital for once. I even told her about the small rosebushes that Mrs. Reg just planted by the driveway at Pine Hollow, hoping that would make her want to go. But all she’ll say is “We’ll see.”

Dear Diary:

After what happened yesterday, I wasn’t planning to go to the Pine Hollow picnic at all. Mom went to the doctor for her usual checkup, and I was hoping they’d tell her she was
looking better, so she could go to the picnic. Instead they said her blood cells were in more trouble than ever, or something like that, and they put her on this new medicine that makes her so tired she can’t even get out of bed. She has to ring a bell whenever she needs to go to the bathroom, and then Dad or Nurse Thompson has to help her in there and stay with her
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So like I said, I wasn’t going to go today. I wasn’t exactly in a celebrating mood, especially after I woke up in the middle of the night and heard Mom crying in her room. But then Stevie called this morning to see where I was. I sort of explained—I didn’t go into much detail, but she already knew I was hoping my family could come—and she asked to talk to my dad. I thought that was kind of weird, but Dad came to the phone and said hello. He listened for a second, then said, “Yes, I think that’s a very good idea. Thank you.” He hung up, then said that Stevie’s parents were coming by to pick me up and take me to the picnic
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I was surprised and a little annoyed. I wanted to stay and help Mom, and I said so. But Dad put his foot down. He said things were under control there, and there was no reason I shouldn’t go and have a nice time with my friends
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I was still pouting when Stevie and her family picked me up. It didn’t help much that Chad was in the car, too. I still feel a little embarrassed when I remember that whole finding-a-boyfriend fiasco from a few months ago. Luckily I guess Chad really thought that Stevie was behind it all, so I think he’s forgotten it ever happened
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Anyway, I felt a little better when we got to Pine Hollow
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I sat with Stevie’s family while we ate, and they did their best to make me feel comfortable. At least Stevie and her parents did. Her brothers mostly made fun of the stable and teased Stevie until she started pelting them with grapes and watermelon seeds whenever the adults weren’t looking. But that was okay, too. It took my mind off Mom and the way she’d looked that morning, so pale and still, looking really small and thin and weak in her big bed at home
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Later, Stevie and I decided to go for a ride before it got dark. We tacked up Delilah and Comanche. We didn’t want to miss the start of the fireworks, so we decided to just ride in the fields surrounding the stable instead of going into the woods. Most of the picnickers were around at the side, and there were some skittish yearlings in the big back pasture, so we chose the front pasture, the one that runs along the road
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We played a few games, like follow the leader and Simon says. Then we just rode along the fence line for a while at a walk, side by side, letting the horses cool down. We didn’t talk much, but that was okay. Part of my mind was letting me have fun with Stevie, but a much larger part was still occupied with thoughts and worries about Mom
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We were coming around the corner of the fence by the driveway when I noticed the roses. Those little rosebushes that Mrs. Reg had planted a while back were getting bigger, in their sunny spot, and as we got closer, I saw a tiny pink bud on one of them
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I’m not sure quite what happened, but something inside me snapped. It was totally unfair. Everything else in the whole world seemed to be thriving and blooming and living
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except for my mother. My mother wasn’t thriving, she was weakening. She wasn’t blooming, she was fading. And she wasn’t living anymore. She was dying
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I didn’t stop to think. I just acted. I kicked Delilah, startling her into a trot, then a canter. Wheeling her around, I built up some distance, then turned her back toward the fence. I know I wasn’t quite myself right then, because normally I would never ask a horse to jump a fence that high. But Delilah sailed right over it as if it were nothing more than a fallen log. When we landed on the other side, I turned her toward those rosebushes. The pink bud looked like a little mouth laughing at me. I rode right toward it, letting Delilah trample it into the ground. I didn’t stop until all the bushes were flattened. Then I burst into tears
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I guess Stevie didn’t know what to do, so she went and got Mrs. Reg. “Carole!” Mrs. Reg cried, running down the driveway toward me. It was dusk by then, and at first I was crying so hard I didn’t recognize her. “Carole! What have you done?”

I slid down out of the saddle, suddenly horrified. My first thought was for Delilah’s legs. I checked them quickly, but luckily the roses were too small to have large thorns yet. Aside from a tiny scratch on her left fore, she seemed okay
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The roses were another story. Their stems were broken, the leaves trampled into the ground. Just about the only thing that wasn’t totally destroyed was that one pink bud. It was lying on the ground at the end of its stem, which had been snapped off. I bent and picked it up, staring at it as what I’d done sank in
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I think Stevie stepped forward around then and took Delilah’s bridle to lead her back to the stable. I’m not sure. Mrs. Reg put her arm around my shoulders. “Carole,” she said gently, lowering herself to the grass at the edge of the driveway and pulling me down with her. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I didn’t. At least I didn’t think I did. But suddenly I found myself telling her everything—about Mom’s last doctor’s visit, the new medicine, her garden in the backyard, everything. Mrs. Reg didn’t say much. She just nodded and listened
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When I finished, she pulled a tissue out of her pocket and gave it to me to wipe my face. “I understand why you did what you did,” she said gently, gesturing at the broken roses. “But Carole, it doesn’t solve anything. I know it’s hard for you to realize it, but the world goes on no matter what. I learned that when I buried my dear husband, Max, your Max’s father, a few years ago. Some lives end, others begin, most just go on in between.” She shrugged and sighed. “I think your mother knows that already. I expect her little garden is her way of looking to the future, creating something special during a very uncertain time. Those plants she’s helped bring to life will go on, perhaps even after she’s not around to care for them anymore. They’ll grow and thrive and make people happy—perhaps they’ll remind people of her own life—and that makes her feel a little better about the future. Probably the same way she feels when she looks at you.”

That made my tears start to flow again. “But it’s not
fair,” I mumbled, dabbing uselessly at my cheeks with the soggy tissue
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“I know, Carole,” Mrs. Reg said. She looked up at the sky then, where the first stars were beginning to come into view, and blinked a few times. “It certainly isn’t fair. But the only thing we can do is work with what we’re given and try to make the best of it. Try to make ourselves and the people we care about happy for as long as we can, however we can. We really don’t have another choice.”

I was thinking about that when there was a sudden loud boom. I nearly jumped out of my skin, and I felt Mrs. Reg start beside me as well. Then another bang followed, and we both realized that the fireworks were starting. We couldn’t see them from where we were sitting—they were hidden by the crest of the gentle slope leading up from the road to the hill behind the stable building
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I’m not sure why, but we both started to laugh then. I think it was because the fireworks had startled us so much, or maybe because we were sitting there in the dark on the grass. Anyway, we got up and brushed ourselves off
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“I’m really sorry about your roses, Mrs. Reg,” I said. “I’ll save my allowance until I can pay for new ones.”

She patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You save your allowance for something more important. Max didn’t like having the roses here, anyway—he started fretting the moment I brought them home, saying it was only a matter of time before a horse got into them and scratched itself to pieces.”

I had a feeling she was only being nice, but I accepted it
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because she’d just given me another idea. As we walked up the driveway toward the stable, following the sound of the crowd oohing and aahing at the fireworks exploding somewhere over the hill, I stared at the rosebud I was still holding. Now it seemed to be smiling at me, as if to say that it liked my new plan. I only hope Mom likes it. I can’t wait until tomorrow comes and I can find out
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Dear Diary:

This morning as soon as I got up, I emptied my piggy bank and asked Dad for this week’s allowance. He seemed a little surprised, but he was distracted because Nurse Thompson was just arriving, so he said yes
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I still wasn’t sure I had enough, though, so I took the bus over to Pine Hollow. Stevie was there, and when I explained my plan, she gave me all the money she had in her pockets. Unfortunately that was only about fifty cents. But then she went and somehow managed to borrow money from Red, Betsy, Adam, Max—just about everyone who happened to be around. She told each of them a different story about why she needed it, from needing to make a long-distance call on the pay phone (Betsy) to wanting to buy a new package of gauze for the first aid kit (Max). She even got a dollar out of Veronica diAngelo by claiming she was collecting for a food drive at her family’s church and that all the best families in town were making big contributions
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In the end, I still only had about ten dollars total. But I figured that would have to do. After thanking Stevie for her
help, I walked over to the garden center near the shopping plaza and went straight to the rose section. There were so many different types that I wasn’t sure what to do. Then I noticed the tag on one of the roses: Sparkling Scarlet. That reminded me of Scarlett O’Hara, the heroine of
Gone with the Wind,
which is one of Mom’s favorite movies. There were only a few of those, though, and only the smallest, scraggliest one was less than ten dollars. I bought it and carried it home on the bus as carefully as I could
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I was planning to head upstairs and show it to Mom when I got home. But as I walked toward the house from the bus stop, I spotted her in the front yard, watching Nurse Thompson watering the petunias Dad and I had planted earlier that spring. Mom still looked weak, but she was smiling and sitting up on her own, which was a big improvement from that morning. It turns out her body finally adjusted to that new medicine—it just took a couple of days
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I was so happy to see her looking better that I almost forgot about the rose plant I was holding. But Mom saw it and asked about it
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“I bought it for you. Well, for us,” I explained, setting it on her lap. “I thought we could plant it together.”

Mom seemed to like that idea. “Let’s do it now,” she suggested. So we went around to the sunny side of the house, with Nurse Thompson having to help Mom only a little. We picked a spot halfway between my bedroom window and Mom and Dad’s, right up against the wall. Mom said the rose I’d picked was a climbing rose, and that she would ask Dad to put up a trellis so that the plant could climb up it as
it grew. She said eventually it might cover the whole side of the house!

I’m not so sure about that. Like I said, the plant didn’t seem all that strong, and even though Mom didn’t say so, I don’t think it’s really the right time of year to plant roses anyway. But I guess that’s not really the point. We went ahead and planted it, with me digging the hole the way Mom told me to, and then Mom kneeling beside me to help settle the little plant in the dirt
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I can see her now if I lean out my bedroom window. I’ve started thinking of the rose plant as Scarlett because of her name. She looks so small that I can’t imagine she’ll ever have a flower on her, let alone climb all over the house. But like I said, it doesn’t really matter. I’m still glad I got her
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