Summer Snow (25 page)

“May I touch the baby?” he asked, shifting his potato chips to one hand. He examined his empty palm and, seeing crumbs there, quickly wiped it on his shorts. “My hands are clean,” he added.

Normally I would tease him about grubby fingers or at least laugh at his childish attempt at hygiene, but there was still something insistent and unreadable resonating just below the surface. I merely said, “Sure.” I took him by the wrist and laid his hand against the hard roundness below my ribs. There was a knee or a foot or an elbow curiously prodding, trying to escape. I put my hand over Simon's.

“Ouch!” he yelped gleefully. “The baby's kicking me!”

“That happens every time.” I smiled wanly.

“He's tough. We gotta name him something cool like Bubba or … or Duke.”

“Duke?” I arched an eyebrow at him.

“His best friend's dog,” Janice explained around a mouthful of hamburger.

“Yup. Duke was big. Big, big, big!” Simon enthused, gesturing with his arms to create a dog large enough to encompass the whole of the porch. “And tough.” It sounded like he could think of no finer trait.

“Duke is a nice name for a dog. But I don't think we should call the baby Duke. Besides, what if it's a girl? We couldn't possibly call her that.” I tried not to sound so tired, but I could feel a headache creeping up the back of my neck. There was a grease spot on my T-shirt where Simon's hand had been, and I picked at it absently.

Simon didn't notice my lack of interest—he was too busy laughing at the thought of calling a little girl Duke. “What are you going to name the baby, Julia?”

I looked up to see everyone's eyes glued to me. Grandma looked curious, Simon excited, Janice unreadable. “I don't know,” I said slowly. “I hadn't really thought about it.”

Janice opened her mouth to say something but closed it before the words could pass her lips.

I studied her for a silent moment, wondering if I should pursue it, but gave up because I wasn't sure that I wanted to hear what she had to say.

Grandma very deliberately forked a tart grape, and it burst when the tines pierced the plump, ruby-colored skin. She turned to look over the low rail of the porch. Simon was already on to something else.

The glorious pull of such a beautiful day lulled Simon into a sleepy daze by midafternoon. By the time we had cleaned up lunch, he was curled on the porch swing, eyes half-closed and gently swaying from the push I had given him with my hip when I walked past with the last of our lunch things.

“Naptime,” Janice announced, emerging from the mudroom with an old quilt.

“No,” Simon protested weakly. “I'm too big for a nap.”

“I'm not,” Janice chirped, holding out her arms to him.

Simon complied without further protest and wrapped his legs around her waist, his head resting on the blanket she had slung over her shoulder. I was struck by his long, slender limbs—dark, willowy branches that draped behind Janice's ponytailed head and hung halfway down her legs. He looked so big in her arms. Simon was such a baby to me, such a little boy, and yet he had grown in the months that I had known him. He was not the same child who had almost magically appeared from the depths of Janice's car that wintry March night.

Though I hadn't planned on loving him, I did. Fiercely. I realized with a start that part of the funk I was in had to do with the thought of losing Simon. Janice had told me next to nothing about Ben, yet I couldn't shake the feeling that she was hiding something, that there was something inexact, maybe even dangerous, right beneath the surface. I could see it in her eyes when she said his name. The thought made me shiver in spite of the warm summer sun. If she left again, if things didn't work out between us the way she had envisioned, she would take Simon with her. I couldn't bear the thought.

Janice spread the blanket beneath the three dwarf apple trees that made up our meager orchard. Every other year the apples were so worm-eaten and miserable that even the horses wouldn't touch them. But on the alternating years, those three little trees produced the most delicious apples I had ever tasted. Though we couldn't remember which variety they were, the apples were small and crisp with a marbled red and green peel. The flesh was strikingly white and more sour than sweet, just the way we liked it. I could remember many early fall nights sitting on the porch steps with my dad, an old ice-cream bucket of apples between us. We shined them on our shirtsleeves and admired the perfectly shaped orbs. And while I took my apples straight, he always had a saltshaker beside him and he sprinkled a little before every bite. We ate until our stomachs ached.

This fall would be a good season for apples. I couldn't quite imagine October with Janice still in my home, but I also couldn't help hoping that Simon would be around to taste our extraordinary fruit. It was a double-edged longing, both bitter and sweet.

When Grandma came out of the house wearing an old pair of jeans and carrying her gardening gloves, I did a double take. I had assumed that she had gone inside to curl up on her bed for a little Sunday afternoon nap.

“What are you doing?” I asked, and though I didn't mean to sound so surprised, I did.

Grandma laughed. “I'm going to weed the garden,” she announced happily.

I gaped. “It's Sunday.” Grandma was usually very rigid about Sabbath observance, and I had never before seen her do any sort of work on what she referred to as the Lord's Day.

“I know,” she said with a smile. But she saw the utter disbelief on my face and kindly went on. “What is my favorite thing to do in all the world?”

“Besides hanging out with me?” I kidded.

Grandma flicked her floral-print gloves at me. “Nothing makes me feel closer to God. I can't think of a more beautiful day to sit in my garden. Can you?”

I shook my head as she started down the stairs.

“Besides,” Grandma shot over her shoulder, “unless you tell someone, no one will ever be the wiser that I once gardened on a Sunday!”

Although I had thought about disappearing upstairs for a little shut-eye myself, watching her walk across the ocean of blue-green lawn had an almost tangible effect on me. The grass was resplendent in a striking June gown of emerald and sapphire, and I craved the subtle touch of it between my bare toes. I wanted to sit beside my grandmother, a black half-moon of cool earth arching beneath each of my fingernails.

I changed quickly and left my shoes in the mudroom, stepping onto the boards of the porch barefoot for the first time since last summer. Smiling, I tossed an old beach towel around my neck and waved at Grandma, who was already halfway through a row of lettuces.

“You came!” she exclaimed with a grin.

“I couldn't think of a better thing to do today,” I replied.

Because my belly was in the way, I had to sit sidesaddle on the towel between the rows. The garden was still very new, and plants like diminutive trees vaulted out of the ground, casting curved necks heavenward and spreading several small leaves toward the sun. A few things—the radishes, the lettuces—were more mature, and in their leafing greenness I could imagine the splendor that Grandma's garden would become by the middle of July.

The weeds were easy to spot amid the freshness of a newly growing garden: they were big and sprawling, greedily taking up space that did not belong to them and staking daring claims with roots that choked and spread far beyond the extent of their foliage. I dug viciously with a trowel, attacking thistles and crabgrass that appeared to have been growing since March. The odd button weed was an easy-to-extract treat, and I relished unearthing the volunteer maples that sprouted from the profusion of helicopters that had fallen the previous autumn.

“Good idea,” I assured Grandma after we had worked in peace for the length of two rows.

“It's all I wanted to do today,” Grandma agreed, wiping her cheek with the back of her wrist. There was a smear of dirt along her jaw like some ancient tribal mark. “Is it sacrilegious to say that I think gardening should be considered one of the sacraments?”

“I'm the last person to ask,” I admitted with a laugh. “What are the sacraments again?”

Grandma narrowed her eyes at me good-naturedly. “You know exactly what they are. And I know that you're not nearly as lost as you sometimes think you are.”

Her comment jarred somehow, and the uneasy feeling that had rested on me for days returned like a tidal wave surging over a dry expanse of beach. It was uncanny how Grandma could understand me better than I understood myself sometimes. I wanted to press her, ask her what she meant by such a statement, but I didn't know how to be inquisitive without staging an inquisition. So instead I said nothing and inched along the rows, pulling more weeds in silence.

When we reached the carrots—nothing more than a line of sea-green fuzz tickling gently at the sky—Grandma spread out her towel and sat cross-legged to regard me. “Did you have a good night with Janice?” she asked out of the blue.

I had been anticipating this question, maybe even hoping for it. I had so much to say, so many things to examine, poke, and prod before I could claim at least a bit of understanding. But as soon as the query was out of her mouth, I found myself speechless. I had so much bottled up inside, so much that wanted to come out, and yet what was there to say? Truthfully, it had been neither good nor bad. It was an experience, a collection of moments to store away and spend the next months, maybe even years, deciphering.

“Did I have a good night?” I repeated to myself. All my words had melted away beneath the warmth of the sun.

Grandma saw me fumbling. She peeled off her gardening gloves to massage her arthritic knuckles and sighed. “I know it probably wasn't a
good
night, but did it go okay?”

“I suppose so,” I answered slowly. “I think I learned some things about her. I think she learned some things about me.”

“That's a good thing,” Grandma encouraged. “Making progress?”

“Maybe,” I said. “It was very hard.”

“Nothing wrong with hard.” Grandma put her gloves back on, a finger at a time, and turned her attention to the dirt.

But I didn't want the conversation to be over. “You know,” I began, “I was wondering about something.”

Grandma didn't look up, but she murmured a little under her breath.

I continued. “Where did Janice get the money for all those things? The dress, the shoes … The necklace alone must have been, what, over a hundred dollars?
Hundreds
of dollars?”

Without giving it any thought, Grandma came out with the truth. “Janice bought the dress on sale. I paid for the shoes. And the necklace had been Janice's—she wanted to give it to you.”

I stopped with my fingers in the soil, grasping the root of a small maple that could only be considered a sapling. “
You
bought the shoes?”

Grandma pursed her lips at me. “Janice wanted everything to be special. I offered to help out and buy one small thing.”

“But she made me believe that they were from her!”

“Did she? Did you ever ask her?”

“No,” I conceded.

“Maybe you just assumed.” Grandma's attention turned back to her task. “Janice would have told you the truth if you asked, just like I did now. It's not like we were trying to keep a secret from you.”

“What about the necklace?” I asked after a moment. “I don't want a hand-me-down gift from … from …” I faltered. I almost said,
from one of her boyfriends
, but that was simply too harsh, too black-and-white for a day of such delicate and muted color.

Grandma exhaled heavily. “Why do you care where the necklace came from? It was obviously special to Janice, and she wanted to give you some little, meaningful piece of herself. She's trying, Julia.”

“So am I,” I said quickly.

“Are you?” Grandma stared at me hard, holding my eyes captive in her own before sighing a bit and turning to the soil at her finger-tips. She picked up a handful of earth and let it fall through her fingers, breaking the chunks so they tumbled down gently and hit the ground with the softest of thuds.

I watched her, wondering if she was waiting for me to say something, to defend myself somehow.

Before I could open my mouth, Grandma spoke again. “I don't think there is anything quite so beautiful as grace,” she said almost to herself. “Problem is, we can easily see when others are withholding it, but we are blind to the times we clutch it greedily to ourselves.” She brushed her hands together, ridding her palms of the last of the dirt.

Grace.
It was a word I had heard often, and yet I wasn't sure that I could accurately define it.
Freely given
came to mind.
Undeserved. Extravagant. Easier said than done
, I thought.

The maple had deep, mature roots, and I needed leverage to wrench it out of the ground. Rising to my knees, I plunged my hands into the dirt and secured the plant in an iron grip. I pulled on the woody root of the maple until my palms burned. I yanked and tore and jerked. My fingers began to sting.

Grandma watched my efforts. “You know, there is a parable about soil. And grace, too, I think.”

I gave the sapling one last mighty heave and fell back on my haunches, angry red lines of torn skin intersecting my dirty palms. I peered at my hands and didn't respond to Grandma's comment, which she took as permission to proceed.

“God is a generous gardener. Liberal even.” Grandma gestured at the neat rows of vegetables that we had planted weeks before. “We like things neat and orderly. But God scatters seed enthusiastically.”

Of course I knew the parable. I had heard it in Sunday school and caught snippets of the familiar verses in many different sermons and lectures when I was older. But I always skipped straight to the part about the soil, more or less ignoring the metaphor of the seed. It never occurred to me that when God sowed, it looked nothing like the way we planted. I remembered preparing the garden with Grandma only weeks ago and the painstaking way we found a home for each and every seed. We staked out perfect rows and positioned everything carefully with our fingers. There was nothing extravagant about the way we planted.