I’m compelled to push, but why invade a space where I am not welcome?
My questions have multiplied, twisted, taken on new form. Will they ever be answered? Is ten percent enough? The most important part? Or will my questions drive me to the edge before I have the answers?
Can a thing like me even be pushed to an edge, or will I simply crash in a puff of smoke?
I gently ease open the door.
Lily is at the far end of the greenhouse. Her head turns in surprise when she sees me, but her arms are full with a large palm she is wrestling into a pot and just as quickly her attention turns back to it.
I take two more steps in. The greenhouse is at least thirty feet long. All the broken windows have now been replaced, and half the aluminum tables already hold plants. I am surprised at how warm the air inside is. Outside the sun is shining, but the February air is cool. In here, it is warm, moist, like a womb.
Lily grunts as she lifts the palm-filled pot onto the table. She turns and goes to the corner of the greenhouse where several bags are stacked, and she begins dragging one across the floor. She pauses. ‘I could use some help here,’ she says.
I stumble over my feet trying to reach her before she’s already finished the task. She lets go of one corner of the bag as I reach for it. We both pull the bag the rest of the way and then heave it up on the table with the potted palm. She stabs into it with some shears and draws them across. Another stab and the bag is laid open and soil spills out. I don’t remember this Lily, the one who is so quiet, intent, angry. The one who is so unpredictable. The pieces of Lily I remember, my nana, were not a mystery. A smile was a smile, and a sharp word was rare. Bits are still missing, but all the pieces in between are memories of her smiling every time she saw me. I wasn’t just Mother and Father’s North Star, but hers, too. And in many ways, I wonder if she was mine.
My teen years with her are hazy, and more often I can hear them rather than see them. Let her be, Claire. And then, I think her hair is just fine. And still later, Give her space. I can hear her voice lifting weights off me I didn’t even know were there.
Now she is cynical, sullen, and a deeper mystery every day. She uses a small spade to transfer soil to the pot, using her bare hands to tamp it down into the sides. I stand, silent, by her side, wondering if this is all we will ever be now, both twisted versions of who we once were. The world hasn’t changed. We’ve changed. The questions that drove me here are lost in some crippled synapse between us.
‘Your mother was right, you know,’ she says, interrupting my thoughts.
‘What?’
‘You couldn’t have remembered the time you almost drowned. You were only nineteen months old. You weren’t even talking yet. They say you can only remember events when you have the words to name them.’
‘But I do remember, don’t I?’
‘Yes.’
‘So maybe they don’t know as much as they think they do.’
‘No,’ she says. She sets aside her spade and examines me. ‘I don’t suppose they do.’ Our gazes rest on each other uncomfortably.
‘How do I go on from here?’ I blurt out. ‘Do you know?’
She turns away. My question, it seems, came too fast and asked too much. ‘You’re the only one I can ask,’ I add. ‘The only one I know who will tell me the truth.’
She shakes her head. ‘You’ve put me in such a position. Choosing between my daughter and—’
‘I’ll leave. I shouldn’t have expected—’
‘Jenna.’
The sound. My name. The sound of years ago. Jenna.
She spins back around. ‘There are things you should know,’ she says. ‘Things I swore not to tell. Claire’s my daughter. She means the world to me, and I would do almost anything for her’—she hesitates, drawing a deep breath—‘but I think you have a right to know.’
For the first time, I am aware that I don’t have a wildly beating heart—only the memory of one. But the memory is enough. My thoughts beat out of control.
She pulls two crates out from under the table and sits on one. She offers me the other. We sit knee to knee.
‘I know you don’t remember everything yet, but maybe I can refresh one memory. You were sixteen. You and your mother were having an argument. I had happened to stop by, but I was trying to stay out of it. She wouldn’t let you go to a party. She didn’t like who was giving it. The argument was going on and on, in circles, until she had finally had enough and ordered you to go to your room. Do you remember what you did?’
I shake my head.
‘You laughed at her. You said you weren’t seven years old and then stomped out the front door.’
‘I know we had arguments but—’