The Last Forever (15 page)

I get out my phone and take photos of Pix from all angles. I take so many that it should have had its hair and makeup done. I have a film-flash image of Pix romping in a meadow and sitting thoughtfully by a stream and leaning against a fence, like the girls do in their senior pictures. Pix stars in a photomontage sequence in my head. You should have heard the music.

I wish I’d known to take more pictures of my mom. Especially during the last week that I didn’t know was our last week. I had no idea that the pictures I had were the only ones I would ever have.

“Don’t die,” I say to Pix.

*  *  *

I am driving so fast to the library that Jenny’s old van is shuddering. But I almost slam on my brakes when I see them. It’s Henry, and he’s arriving at work. He even has a brown lunch bag in his hand. I would love that about him, that brown lunch bag, but I don’t have the chance to love it. I’m taking in what I’m seeing. Of course I recognize that glossy hair—that perfect Millicent hair—and those perfectly quirky Millicent clothes: the crocheted bag, the cotton dress with the embroidered hem. They are arguing. At least that’s what it looks like. Henry’s arms are folded. She is leaning toward him, and her mouth is curved in an ugly manner. So. Millicent gets ugly when she’s mad.

I wish he hadn’t seen me, but there’s no hiding that van
as I turn into the library parking lot. They wrap up their business quickly. Whatever it is they’re discussing, it’s obviously private. Millicent strides off toward Main Street. Henry runs his hand through his hair and heads inside to work without waiting for me.

Right then, I know. What I just saw has something to do with that photograph in his room, the one that was placed downward, too painful to look at. Millicent doesn’t think Henry is so weird after all.

I rejoin Sasha, who is still sifting through my table of books. Henry is in the back somewhere. I hold up my phone. “Photos,” I say.

“Hand over the goods,” Sasha says.

I do. She peruses the pictures, cooing and clucking and saying,
Aww,
like the pixiebell’s an adorable newborn. I didn’t know librarians could be such smart-asses either.

She smacks a book down in front of me.
Botany Through the Ages.
“Get to work, Miss Marple.”

And then there he is. “Hey.” Henry slides into the chair across from me. My heart starts going crazy. Henry’s got that effect on me. The I-want-to-jump-in-his-lap effect. The I-want-to-go-somewhere-together-forever effect.

“Hey,” I say.

He doesn’t say a word about what I saw outside and what he knows I saw outside. Instead he says this: “I’m going to save that plant if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Pixiebell or bust!” Sasha’s glasses have slid down her nose
a little. She’s got
Flora and Fauna of the Rainforest Regions
in front of her and is taking notes. She stops to madly scratch her pen in circles, trying to get the ink to flow again.

Who knows what happened between Millicent and Henry. Who cares, really? Because something much more important is happening right now. This is clear: We are now on a mission.

chapter twelve

Ricinus communis
: castor bean. The most deadly seed that exists, the castor bean takes many drastic measures to protect itself from harm. First, there’s its hard, spiny, spiky outer layer, difficult to crack through even with a pair of pliers. Second, the seeds hidden within have their own hard shells. Finally, intact seeds will do no harm if human or animal swallows them, but poisoning will occur upon biting or chewing. Death will come to your average person after eating only four to eight seeds. Message? Keep out.

First there is the isolated, nearly inaccessible locale—one thousand one hundred kilometers from the North Pole. And then there is the Svalbard archipelago itself, set in the distant and largely unknown Barents Sea. And then the island in the archipelago, a remote island, a barren piece of rock really. And then the mountain. And then the ice, the years and years of ice. Then, of course, the guards, and the polar bears, and the blizzards to fight your way through. The layers of iron are next. And then the secret keys needed to open the dual blast-proof
doors with their motion sensors, the two airlocks, the walls of steel-reinforced concrete one meter thick. Finally, the separate rooms. The containers. The specially wrapped packaging. And inside, the seeds.

How many layers does it take to keep something—an object, a person, a memory, a secret—held safe forever?

I don’t know how many layers are enough. Maybe there are never enough layers. But I like to think there are. I like to think that there is a place in this world tucked so deeply into the farthest and most barren spot on earth that anything placed inside will always be there, no matter what.

Still—two problems. One: I can’t seem to hold on to my mother. She gets farther and farther away every day. This is a horrible admission. I am so sorry. There are those dreams, sure, the ones that seem so real, where she’s alive and we’re together and I am
so happy
. But when I wake up, she’s gone, and the dream fades, and the truth is that it was only a dream. Another day has gone past, and the days just keep adding up, the ones she’s not been in.

Two: When it comes to secrets, all those layers only compel them to rise and show themselves. Secrets want to be told. Secrets
need
to be told. Secrets are our worst and hidden failings, buried down, down, down. But they crave the light, and even more than that, forgiveness.

“If I see another picture of another plant, I will scream,” I say to Henry.

“My eyes are crossed from all that reading. Are my eyes crossed?” Henry looks at me and crosses his eyes.

“They look the same as always,” I say.

We are sitting on the floor in his room, leaning against his bed. This is the thing about Henry and me. It’s like we’ve
been
, for a long time. We have a rhythm together. He’s the boy version of me, only I’m not nearly such a genius. Or so talented. Or so attractive. Our
selves,
though—they know each other.

His mom is downstairs, having a glass of wine with a friend of hers. I can hear them laughing, two women talking about men. Every now and then, they do that
Oh my God, I know!
shriek of mutual understanding. My chest aches a little when I hear it. I keep thinking about Mom and Betts, friends since the sixth grade, sitting at our kitchen table eating chips and that horrible bean dip that comes in the can that my mother loves (loved) for some reason.

Henry’s mother, Jess, has his brown hair and brown eyes, and she is very quiet and kind, more quiet than my mom, and she made us spaghetti and asked me about school in California. It was all so ordinary. Henry put the dishes in the dishwasher. He hugged his mom and thanked her for dinner. The three of us ate ice cream in chipped bowls in the living room, and then Henry sat down at this piano they have in there.

I thought the piano was decoration. It was old and there were spider plants on top of it, and more books. But then Henry lifted the lid. He placed his hands above the keys. I thought he was joking. I even laughed. I was about to make a crack that he was Beethoven Boy when he started to play. And then nothing was ordinary. The notes were so beautiful and
Henry was so beautiful playing that I held my breath. I’d never heard anything more beautiful in my life.

“
La Campanella
,” Henry said when he was finished. “The little bell. Let’s say that was for a certain plant.”

My heart was in my throat. “God, Henry. Is there anything you can’t do?”

“Car mechanics,” his mother said, but her voice was soft. The way he played, as if he felt every note—it shifted your soul around.

But now we are sitting in his room, and I notice that the framed picture is no longer on his desk. Henry shuts a book he unearthed from under the bed. It’s volume P–R of an old encyclopedia from the early 1900s. I tap his foot with my foot. I am ready for Henry to stop thinking and talking about plants. I’m ready for him to kiss me, although this hasn’t happened yet. The unkissed kiss sits between us. I feel it, held back and becoming more and more desired. The absence of it has its own energy. Absence in general does.

“I don’t understand why we can’t find it anywhere,” Henry says. “I can’t stand an unsolved puzzle. There
is
an answer. This is driving me
crazy
.”

I keep kicking him and poking him. I want him to stop thinking about the pixiebell now. I want him to
see
me. I want him to look all the way in and not see anything else. “
I’m
driving you crazy,” I say.

He ignores me, persists. “Okay, you said your grandfather stole the seed.”

“Right. From a professor.” I tap his toes again. I shove my shoulders against his shoulders to knock him over a little.

But then I picture it. It is Christmas, sometime in the early 1950s. There is a party in a large brick house. There is mistletoe hanging in the doorways and Christmas carols coming from a radio, and the professor’s wife has made a spread of food on the banquet table downstairs. Grandfather Leopold excuses himself—

“
How
did they know each other?” Henry asks.

“They were friends, I think.” They were friends, so Grandpa Leopold had been to this house before. He knows where the professor keeps his collection: in the long, thin drawers of his study. He knows which drawer holds the professor’s biggest prize. He excuses himself after everyone is tipsy, after the professor is distracted with hot rum and tinkling glasses and the cutting of the bûche de Noël—

“Friends?”

“My grandfather once gave a speech at the college where the professor taught. Grandfather Leopold was an inventor. Didn’t you think inventors were only in Disney movies? Because he actually discovered some kind of adhesive used in making shoes.”

“What did he want with that seed?”

“Well, he was a klepto.”

“Oh.”

“And the plant was supposed to have some kind of healing powers or something.”

“Healing powers?” Henry’s eyes light up. “You should have said so before. This is a good lead.”

I have stopped poking and tapping Henry. “I forgot all about that part. Until just now.”

Yes: Grandfather Leopold sneaks up the stairs and looks both ways before crossing the hall to the professor’s study. He tiptoes across the floor. He slides open that drawer. It’s as if the seed is being offered to him. It is right there, in a tiny glass box labeled
Pixabellus imponerus.
“Wait,” I say. “I know it! I know the Latin name. I’ve heard it before. My mother said it. When she told me the story.
Pixabellus imponerus
?
Emponeris
? Something like that. ‘Emperor.’ I remember thinking it sounded like ‘emperor.’ ”

Henry stares at me. I stare back. I’m excited, but I’m not sure if I’m even right. Something feels like it clicks into place, but the memory is hazy enough that I can’t trust my sudden insight. We’ve been reading Latin words all day. Still, I can hear my mother saying this. I can even see her. She is cleaning out a closet. She tosses me a fedora, and I put it on. I am maybe ten. The hat smells musty. I take it off because I wonder whose head it was on before mine.

That was Grandpa Leopold’s. More stolen goods,
she says.
My plant in the kitchen? The last pixiebell?
Pixabellus imponerus.
He
stole
it! That’s my
father
we’re talking about! Well, actually, he stole its seed. A rare seed. From an extinct plant. He snitched it during a Christmas party. My own father! No one ever wanted to have him over. He’d slip your stuff into his overcoat. He’d steal
your
overcoat under
his
overcoat! That man could never stand to follow the rules.

“Imponerus?”
Henry repeats.

“Yeah.”

He’s thinking.

“This is great news, right, Henry? We know how to find it now.” I make a bold move to celebrate. I sit on him. I straddle his lap and look right at him. I am happier than I’ve been in so long.

“That’s right,” Henry says. The tips of his ears are red. I’ve embarrassed him, I think, by landing on him like this. But I don’t care.

“This is it, Henry. We’ve got hope now. It just came out of nowhere.”

“This plant. It’s really important to you,” he says.

“Really important.”

“Because it was your mother’s. And before that, her father’s.”

“It sounds stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” he says.

“It’s just a stupid plant.” I can see her in her sweatsuit, and she is healthy and making blueberry muffins from a box, stopping to fill a coffee cup with water and pouring it gently into Pix’s pot.
You old thing,
she says to it.
You keep on keeping on.
My throat tightens. I might cry.

Henry doesn’t know what to do with his hands now that I am sitting on him. He uses them to prop himself up, and then
he sets them on my arms as if to balance me, and then he gives up the struggle and takes my hands in his. I like this idea best. “Tell me something about her,” he says.

“Ah.” I look up at the ceiling. So many things. I love it very much that he asks. “Okay,” I decide. “She was a pretty peaceful sort of person. I mean, she liked to read, like us. She didn’t like big noisy places. My dad loves them. He loves anything big and noisy. But Mom, no. Hated Costco. Hated shopping malls. But she went to Splash Kingdom on my third-grade field trip.”

“Water park?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Five million screaming kids?”

“Exactly. I wanted her to go
so
bad. She even rode the bus with us. It was, like, an hour and a half of ‘Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg.’ ”

“She really loved you.”

“I don’t like the past tense yet.” Damn it. My voice gets wobbly.

“
Loves.
Loves you.”

“And it wasn’t like she was some great big hero because she died. People make it sound like that. She was just her. She worked part-time in a dentist’s office. She loved Oreos. She got lost whenever she had to drive somewhere new. She was just my mom.”