“NO, FINLEY! YOU JUST HAD A SQUEEZY YOGURT. NO MORE SNACKS. And remember—you’ve got all those pregnancy hormones rushing through your body. They can make you feel crazy. Hang in there. I’m sure once you get settled, and when the baby comes, everything will be different. Better. You’ll see.”
My gaze drifts back to the vegetable garden and the yellow-spotted tomato plants. I sigh. It’s sensible advice, which is the only kind Vivian gives. And though I hate it when she’s right, this time I really do hope she is.
* * *
There are only seven tomato plants at the True Value—six of them have little green orbs of fruit weighing down the stems and the seventh’s leaves are yellowed and hangdog like the ones in my garden. I gently rub a leaf of the pitiful one between my finger and thumb, wondering if it has the same affliction.
“Epsom salt,” says a gravelly voice behind me.
Instead of the man I expect to see, my eyes meet those of a gray-bouffanted woman. She’s tall and thin, with wrinkles of skin gathered at her jowls. Underneath her red apron is a flowery blouse open at the neck, where a thick necklace of shiny blue beads rests in her clavicle. Her name tag reads: Jules.
“Excuse me?” I ask, unsure if she was speaking to me, even though she’s looking right at me.
She gestures to the plant I’m holding. “Soil’s probably got a magnesium deficiency. Epsom salt can help. It’s not a lack of water, because it’s been getting the same amount as these others. And I don’t think it’s fungal—no black spots on the leaves.”
She glances back at the cash register where a man with a thick neck and even thicker hands is counting change for a customer. Then she ducks her head closer to me, so close that I can smell the sourness of her breath. “Marty will probably give it to you for free, if you buy a couple of these others. It’s past planting season and he wants to get rid of ’em.”
“Oh, I already have tomato plants,” I say. “But they all look like this one. I was hoping to get some advice.”
“Mm,” she grunts. “Epsom salt,” she repeats. “We don’t sell it here, though. You’ll have to head over to the Giant.”
“Thank you,” I say.
She nods and turns to go.
“Wait,” I say, wishing I could download all the information from her head into mine somehow. I was so naive in thinking that taking care of a garden would be simple—that the hard part of planting was already done and in a few months I would be harvesting waxy purple eggplants (if there are even eggplants in the garden—I can’t tell what half of the vegetation is) and big plump tomatoes that Harrison could turn into spaghetti sauce or salsa or whatever else you can make with tomatoes.
She looks back at me, patient. “Yes?”
“Do you guys have a service—like people that will come out and do garden care or something? I’m new to all of this and not quite sure what I’m doing.”
“You want a lawn service?”
“I mean, I don’t need my lawn mowed or anything—” Although, on second thought that might be nice, too. Harrison can barely keep up with how fast the grass grows and it takes him two hours to do the back on the riding lawnmower he bought when we moved in. I offered to do it, but he cited my delicate condition and I didn’t argue with him. Mostly because I didn’t really want to mow the lawn.
“Well, we don’t do that anyway,” she says. “You’ll have to call a landscape company. We do have garden classes, though, once a month. May was on crop rotation, but there’s another this Saturday. I think it’s summer annuals, but I’d have to check.”
“Thanks,” I say, and she leaves me alone with the pitiful plant. It’s so dejected looking, I almost can’t bear to leave it, knowing no one else will buy it in its condition. Bleeding heart. I can hear Harrison’s voice in my ear and the way he makes fun of me every time I bring home something that’s been abandoned—the futon was one such thing, left on the corner of my block; a cat I found on Sansom Street that turned out to be more feral than stray; a pink, child-size mitten left behind on a seat of a bus. I should have left that one—what if someone came looking for it, I wondered later with a pang—but in the moment, it looked so lonely, so vulnerable without its match, I couldn’t bear it. Harrison just stared at me, eyebrows heavenward, for what felt like a full twenty-four hours after I explained it to him.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, as I walk through the sliding glass doors of the Giant to buy Epsom salt, I remember Harrison saying that morning we had one spoonful of coffee left.
I pick up a basket and hook it over my arm, then head to the coffee and cereal aisle, where I stand surveying the different flavors—medium roast, Colombian, hazelnut, French vanilla—even though I’ll get the Folgers breakfast blend, like always. And then the yeasty smell of baking bread draws me to the bakery and I tuck a still-warm loaf of ciabatta into my basket. I stroll through the aisles and grocery shop the way that drives Harrison crazy—no list, just picking up things that appeal to me. Today, I choose a hunk of Gruyère, a tub of silky mozzarella rounds, tomatoes, a bag of Cheetos and a foam tray of triangled watermelon.
I walk toward the checkout and have that niggling feeling there’s something I’m forgetting. And then like a flash it comes to me—Epsom salt. Of course. The actual reason I came to the Giant in the first place. It’s from moments like this, I’m convinced “pregnancy brain” is a real affliction.
The salt isn’t anywhere to be found near the table salt and seasonings and I have to ask two different stock boys before I finally find it lurking with the health and beauty products. The only size they carry is a twenty-five-pound bag and I heft it up into the crook of my arm.
At the checkout line, I become engrossed in a tabloid cover speculating on the number of babies Princess Kate is currently carrying in her royal womb. Even though she’s probably not even pregnant, even though it’s uncharitable, I can’t help but think that she’s greedy. Doesn’t she already have three?
The clerk rings up each item and hands me my receipt. I step to the end of the lane to collect my two plastic bags of groceries from a balding older man in a black apron, when the automatic glass door twenty yards away slides open, drawing my attention. A man walks into the store.
I freeze. A cold electric current runs from the base of my skull down my spine. My heart thuds once and then stops.
Maybe forever.
It’s him. And then, as if I’ve willed him to do it, he looks up, eyes locking with mine.
“Ma’am?”
I blink.
Turn my head toward the balding man, who is holding out my twenty-five-pound bag of Epsom salt. “Oh. Right,” I say, before looking at the plastic bags of groceries I’m clutching in each hand. My mind a jumble, I futz about before finally shifting all the bags to one hand, so I can heft the salt back into the crook of my right arm.