A cold May had my fingers numb as I pried bricks from a
section of path that had become a roller coaster. Some burrowing critter may
have tunneled during the winter below the path, causing the brick to sag. I removed them in
order, stacking them according to a system that would make their reassembly
fast and accurate. When Nick came running into the garden, I took a moment to
stand and return the demanded fist bump. Six months had passed since we had
spoken. For an eighth-grader that stretch can be a time of tumult with each day
burning something new into the circuitry of a young man. For me, it had been a
sojourn oddly saturnine in places despite the Fort Lauderdale sun. When he
asked me what I had done all winter, I could not think of anything. Is that
what it means to be relaxed, or had I been afloat in my head more than in the
ocean? I was glad to be back. Glad to be in the garden. Glad to have these
repairs to make. Glad to have lugged heavy bags of gravel to fill the sunken trenches
that had made the paths swoop beneath the bricks. Glad to know that I am not
superfluous in this place. Glad for the shock of the oddly cold month of May, a
month to be remembered as DisMay.
Nick walked on the walls of the raised beds as if on a tight
rope and talked about the six months of winter that I had missed and that he
had spent at his new school.
I said, “So now you like Breakdown Academy? Remember how you
hated the idea of having to go there?” He rolled his eyes at the old joke and
opening his jacket, he pointed to the words embroidered into his shirt.
“It’s BreakTHROUGH.
And I like it a lot. But today I got a pink slip.”
“You did? Well I’m certain an opportunity to wear it will
someday present itself to you.” This went swiftly over his head, probably for
the better.
“I accidentally punched someone when we were playing.”
“And what does the issuance of the pink slip get you?”
“Like detention. You have to sit in a room and do nothing.”
“So it’s like Florida!” I added brightly. “That’s not so
bad.”
I poured the gravel into the ruts and used a rake to level
it before adding a new layer of weed blocking fabric. Nick changed the subject.
“My homeroom teacher brought his fiancé who’s a guy to
school.”
I didn’t look up from my work. So is this where we are going
now, I thought. Will this be the year when the gay thing will enter the conversation?
I had always known that sooner or later Nick would grow into the realization
that his neighbors are a gay couple. I think my going to Florida for half of
every year may have thrown him off track for a time because the ordinary
understanding of coupling precludes extended absences, but ready or not, I
would have to say the right things in response to any questions from him. I
hadn’t thought it through. I pretended this news was nothing.
“Really? For show-and-tell?”
Again the eye-roll. “We don’t have show-and-tell in
eighth-grade. It was something where parents and teachers met and teachers
brought their husbands and wives.”
A plane flying overhead made distracting noise and it
reminded Nick about something. He said, “Oh! I asked my teacher about the
Lindbergh baby.”
Last summer, we had a protracted discussion about the
kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby when I claimed it was buried beneath a rose
bush I was pruning.
“He told me that you weren’t making it up. Lindbergh was a
famous pilot.”
“Of course I wasn’t making it up. They called him ‘Lucky
Lindy.’ You ought to consider becoming a pilot. You’ll get to go places and
there’s good money to be made.”
“No, I’m going to do engineering.”
“What on earth does that mean?”
Nick was ready for another subject-change. I can only guess
as to how ideas come to the forefront of the head of an eighth-grader.
“So the three people I admire most in the world are Jackie
Chan, Homer Simpson and Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
“You can’t be serious. What about Bette Midler?”
“Who?”
“Nevermind. You know Lindbergh was interested in engineering
when he was your age. First cars, then motorcycles and then airplanes. I think
aviation is what you should focus on.”
“I’m going to figure out time travel.”
I was now replacing the bricks and my back was beginning to
ache.
“Good. You can go back in time and help get the Lindbergh
baby back to his parents. You’ll be a hero and get a huge reward.”
“How much?”
“I don’t remember the amount, but now that I think of it, if
you brought those dollars back with you into the present, you’d be
short-changed. Better to get the reward in diamonds.”
"What if I got the cash but put it into a bank before I came back to the present?”
“Not a good idea. Banks were failing in those days, and
besides, even if you picked one that survived the Depression, they wouldn’t
hold your account open for that many years, and how would you be able to
convince a bank teller that you had opened the account 90 years ago? No, get
diamonds.”
What followed was a surprisingly astute speculation on the
part of Nick as to what holds its value better in the long run, cash or
diamonds. Maybe he ought to consider a career in finance.
“I’ve got it, Nick. Here’s what you do. You take the reward
in cash and deposit it in a bank that will survive. Something like J.P. Morgan
or Wells Fargo. Mrs. Lindbergh’s father was a partner in J.P. Morgan so she can
help you with this. When you set up the savings account, you have the teller
take your fingerprints. You tell the bank that no one can access the account
unless their fingerprints match, and that the account must be kept in
perpetuity, accruing interest at the agreed upon rate. That way, when you get
back to the present, you simply walk into the bank, wave your hands, slap your palms down onto the blotter, leave your prints and get
your cash!”
Nick did not respond. He seemed to have tired of the subject
and had become lost in thought. Then he said, “I missed you when you were
gone.”
“So did I, Nick.”
“You missed yourself?” This he delivered with a mischievous
grin as he ran out of the garden and jumped on his bike.
Yes, I thought. I had missed myself. I hadn’t realized this
until Nick’s joke. I had lost track of myself while in Florida where that is so
easy to do, and where it is actually encouraged. I had filled the space of me
with sensations and with other people. I had stopped generating my own heat,
with no one, myself included, seeing the difference. Then I got into the car
and returned, glad for the work needed in this garden, glad to find that in his growing up, Nick hasn't outgrown his visits to my garden, and glad even for the searing
cold of DisMay.
