“Your grandpa made them,” Cass explained. “For your grandma. Sometimes she forgets the names for things.”
She’d helped me round up bedding before she left, and I’d gotten the kids settled. Phoenix had claimed the attic, with its sloping room and chipped iron bed, but Ocean and Poo lay tangled in blankets in a corral of sofa cushions on the floor of my old bedroom, sleeping under my ceiling of faded stars. Now, downstairs, the CLOCK said it was almost midnight. I wanted a whiskey, but I knew there wouldn’t be any, so I heated water for tea instead. A sticky film of amber grease speckled the sides of the kettle. The plywood under the Formica counter by the faucet had swollen, and the laminate was lifting and peeling away. The faucet coughed, spit air, then began to flow, and the plumbing shuddered. As the kettle filled, I looked down and noticed two small patches on the floor where the linoleum had worn through. They were the imprints of Momoko’s feet, unlabeled, of course, the by-product of hours and years she must have spent standing there washing dishes. I aligned my large feet with the marks made by my mother’s small ones, covering them up. My demented mother, who forgot the names of things.
As the kettle boiled, I opened a drawer or two, then shut each one quickly as the contents, duly labeled, threatened to spring out and overwhelm me. More by-product. Certain objects tickled recognition: the plastic corncob holders, the meat thermometer, the metal skewers used for stitching bread crumbs into a turkey. I rubbed my eyes to rub away the images before they unfurled into memories. I poured boiling water over a dusty tea bag from the drawer and walked into the living room.
I remembered exactly where the switches were located. In an unconscious sequence of automatic gestures, my hand reached toward the wall just as my foot crossed the threshold, resulting in a flood of illumination that startled me—the spatial relationships were familiar, but the details of the room confused me with their sudden clarity. For a moment I wondered where I was.
But not for long. For one thing, there was a sign that read LIVING ROOM, stuck to the opposite wall. Then, gradually, like a photograph developing, the room found its resolution and I began to recognize objects: love seat, Lloyd’s desk, couch, Lloyd’s recliner, coffee table, TV. I sat on the couch for a while, then moved to the desk. I shuffled through a stack of papers, old bills mostly, some farm reports, some invoices, and a few old catalogs from Fullers’ Seeds.
Cass had gone through the correspondence and kept up with the bills, but inquiries and orders for seeds were starting to come in, and she had put these all to one side for me to deal with. A pad of ruled paper sat next to the pile, something Lloyd was working on before his heart attack. The spidery handwriting wobbled across the page—slow loops, trembling with the effort of toeing the lines. Was he really so decrepit? So feeble? I took a recent Fullers’ Seeds catalog over to Lloyd’s chair and started to read:
FULLERS’ SEEDS
M. and L. J. Fuller—Seedsmen
Liberty Falls, Idaho
Vendimus Semina
Since 1984
To Our Customers:
This will be the 15th year that Mrs. Fuller and I have been joyfully trafficking in seeds. We are proud to announce that this year there are 17 new listings, including many new European heirloom varieties, as well as exciting additions to Mrs. Fuller’s “Oriental Collection,” such as the Momordica charantia (Chinese Bitter Melon), the showy Bombax malabaricum (Red Silk Cotton Tree) from India, and the venerable “Hindu Datura,” important medicinally and religiously in the Old World.
And while we are on the subject of Exotics, there is a idea in circulation that these socalled “aggressive” nonnative plants are harmful, invasive, and will displace “native” species. How ironic to hear these theories propounded by people of European ancestry in America! Just consider this: Not a single one of the food crops that make the U.S. an agricultural power today is native to North America. Our plants are as immigrant as we are!
Mrs. Fuller and I believe, firstly, that anti-exoticism is AntiLife: “God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body” [1 Corinthians 15:38]. Secondly, we believe anti-exoticism to be explicitly racist, and having fought for Freedom and Democracy against Hitler, I do not intend to promote Third Reich eugenics in our family garden. Finally, we believe anti-exoticism to be propaganda of the very worst kind. I used to farm potatoes, and I have witnessed firsthand the demise of the American family farm. I have seen how large Corporations hold the American Farmer in thrall, prisoners to their chemical tyranny and their buy-outs of politicians and judges. I have come to believe that anti-exotic agendas are being promoted by these same Agribusiness and Chemical Corporations as yet another means of peddling their weed killers.
Mrs. Fuller and I believe the careful introduction of species into new habitats serves to increase biological variety and health. God in His great wisdom has given us this abundance. “O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches” [Psalms 104:24–25].
And one final note: Mrs. Fuller has asked me to remind you to plant her favorite exotic, a living fossil from the Orient, the noble Ginkgo biloba! A relic species, with fossils dating back to 200 million years ago, this hardy tree grows to 120 feet, with handsome fan-shaped leaves that turn a beautiful golden color in the fall. Now, here is a tree that is extinct in the wild and owes its survival to dissemination and cultivation by the hand of man! Mrs. Fuller tells me that the seeds are eaten in Japan and China, and that both seeds and leaves are useful for a variety of conditions associated with aging, in particular memory loss. So don’t forget! Plant one for your retirement now!
The seed listings that followed were arranged alphabetically into major vegetable families and genera: the Allium, the Brassica, the Chenopodium. I flipped through them quickly, barely seeing, overwhelmed by the orderly force of my father’s opinions. Suddenly the room was full of him, and I remembered the way he would come in from the fields, and Momoko and I would be waiting, and the house would shrink and conform around his approbation. It made me queasy to think about. I stood up quickly and replaced the catalog on the pile of unanswered correspondence. I returned to the KITCHEN, rinsed my cup in the SINK, and climbed the stairs to my bedroom.
I used to close myself into this room, so I could think my thoughts alone. Now I lay down on my little bed and stared up at my starry ceiling, listening to my children breathe. Lloyd had raised these heavens for me—they were luminous decals that came in a kit. The Friendly Stars That Glow. The day he applied them, he stood in the middle of the mattress, my tall, rickety father, as I jumped up and down. He was trying to consult his map of the nighttime sky, something he could not do well with all my bouncing. He told me to hold still, so I lay down on my back to watch. He stood on his tiptoes and stretched across the heavens with Polaris balanced on his fingertip. I could feel the mattress tremble beneath his feet. With the North Star correctly affixed, he smiled, then moved south toward the next horizon.
I was excited at first but soon grew tired of the project. Order in the heavens didn’t matter much to me—I must have been about six or seven, Ocean’s age—and besides, it was still daytime. The stars were pale green and disappeared against the white ceiling, and I couldn’t even see them. Be still, Lloyd said. Be patient. But patience wasn’t in my nature. I fidgeted, and when he reprimanded me, I lay there, arms rigid against my sides like a plank, making a big show of being perfectly still, exactly like Ocean would do now. And just like Ocean, I soon got bored with this game, so I bounced my bottom just a little to see if he’d fall down. Yumi, I said that’s enough! But I already knew that, and I gave one last tremendous bounce off the mattress and ran out the door, leaving him stranded, tall and precarious, wobbling to keep his balance.
But that night, after Momoko had