Raising Hope (17 page)

“The middle school’s okay,” I reassure him. “It’s really not that bad.”

He doesn’t say anything, and I say, “You’ll make new friends, you know. You’ll really like it.”

He turns and smiles a little, his braces shining in the sun. “Thanks, Hope.”

We’re quiet for a minute, and then I ask, “Where do you live?”

“Easton Street.”

“Hey, that’s right near my house!”

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Yeah, you kind of pass my street if you’re heading from here to Easton.”

He stands up and puts his hands in his shorts pockets. “Well, I’ll walk you back that way,” he says. “I should probably get home pretty soon. I’m supposed to be helping my stupid dad with the yardwork.”

“I have my bike,” I say, “but I’ll walk it.”

“Okay,” he says. He kicks a little rock with his sneaker as I grab my bike from the rack and wheel it alongside him.

“What kind of yardwork do you have to do?”

Dan snorts and grimaces. “Who knows? My dad’s all into fixing up the landscaping. Putting in more shrubs along the side of the house. And guess who has to do most of it? Me. My dad’s an idiot.”

“At least you have a dad.” It pops out of my mouth before I can stop it.

He looks sideways at me and says, “Sorry. I didn’t know. Your dad . . . died?”

I shake my head.

“Divorced from your mom?” he asks.

I shake my head again, looking down so my hair covers my cheeks.

“Well, what’s the story?” he asks.

I don’t say anything, and he says, “I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s cool.”

I take a breath and look up, shaking my curls off my face. “No, it’s okay.” I quickly look at him and then at the ground again. As I walk my bike, the wheels make a clicking sound as they spin around and around. I listen to the
click-click-click
for a minute, and then I say all in one breath, “My mother died when I was born, and my father left. I haven’t seen him since I was, like, a week old; and I don’t know where he is.”

“No kidding?” he asks like I’m telling him a tall tale or something. As if.

“Do you think I could make up something like that?” I ask flatly. He’s annoying me all of a sudden, and I wish I hadn’t told him. I wish I could put the truth about my family right back inside me.

“No, no,” he says. “Sorry. I mean, I’ve just never known a real orphan before.”

I stop my bike and glare at him. “I am
not
an orphan. An orphan is someone who doesn’t have any parents. I have a father. It’s just that I don’t know where he is.”

I start walking again, and I focus on the
click-click-click
of my bike wheels to stop myself from crying or screaming in frustration.

“So who do you live with?” he asks.

“Never mind,” I say, my voice all tight.

Now he stops walking and turns to me. “Look, I’m sorry if I’m not saying the right thing.”

“Do you promise you won’t tell anyone?” It’s what comes out of my mouth, all in a rush.

He looks puzzled. “Tell anyone what?”

“About my father.” I’m pleading with him.

“Whoa,” he says. “You’re weirding out on me. Don’t people know that your father’s gone?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say impatiently. “Of course they do. But I’ve sort of . . . I’ve kind of led them to believe that I know where he is. That he, you know, calls me up and writes me letters and stuff.”

He still looks puzzled, his eyes squinched up like he’s trying to figure things out. “Why would you do that?”

I stamp my foot on the pavement and half shout, “Oh, never mind
why
I did it. Just don’t tell anyone, okay?”

“Okay, okay.” He pulls his hands out of his pockets and puts them up like he’s showing me he’s innocent of everything I might be accusing him of.

My heart’s beating fast as I start walking my bike again. “That was what I was doing today,” I say in a low voice. “Trying to find him on the Internet.”

“Jeez,” Dan says. “Like, you have no idea where he is?”

Why are boys so stupid? I swear, Ruth’s right when she says God was just practicing on Adam and didn’t get it right till he made Eve. “Ri-ight,” I say exaggeratedly, nodding and trying to get it through his thick head.
“I have no idea where he is.”

“Jeez,” he says. Then a minute later he shakes his head and says it again. “Jeez.”

“Are you just going to keep saying ‘Jeez’?” I ask.

“No,” he replies, sounding hurt. “Jeez.”

I can’t help it. I laugh. I shake my head and look up at the blue sky and laugh. Hopeless. He’s absolutely hopeless. It’s Hope and Hopeless walking up Main Street here. I have to stop and wipe my eyes from laughing so hard.

“Sorry,” I gasp. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m just—”

“Go ahead and laugh,” he says, waving his hand. “I don’t mind.”

“Really?” I ask, stealing a peek at his face. I get so mad when someone laughs at me, but he’s just looking all peaceful, like I haven’t totally been making fun of him.

“Can I help you find him?” he asks. “Not to sound stupid or anything, but I kind of like mysteries.”

I think about it for a second. “Okay,” I tell him. He doesn’t seem so bad. Besides, I’m not exactly progressing very far on my own. “Yeah, you can help me.”

Chapter 12

M
y stomach’s in my throat, where it never is. Where it shouldn’t be. I swallow hard and remind myself that this is nothing more than a work arrangement. Sam Johnson just wants to see the lavender garden for his painting, and I’m living in a fantasy world if I believe he’s the slightest bit interested in me. Or I in him, for that matter.

So why is my stomach in my throat as I’m driving to pick him up for our little garden visit? Why are my hands on the steering wheel practically trembling? I squeeze my fingers tightly around the wheel and remind myself that he’s not even my type, although I admit he’s handsome in his lanky, blond, open way. My type is broad-shouldered, dark, and aloof. My type is Bobby.

Right, Sara Lynn.
I shake my head and
tsk
my tongue.
Your type is Bobby. Well, then why aren’t you with him now? I’ll tell you why,
I lecture myself.
Because we were too different, about as unlikely a pair as one could imagine.
Almost as unlikely a couple as Sam and I would make.

I can’t help it: Thinking about Sam, even in the abstract, causes an image of him to float through my mind. His blue eyes, his easy grin, the way he raked his fingers through his hair when he asked if he could go to the garden with me. I shiver a little, then frown, reminding myself to show some of the common sense for which I’m known.

Oh, if Mama only knew the way I’ve been thinking about that man, the fantasies he’s been headlining in my mind ever since I made the plan to take him to Langley’s Lovely Lavender Gardens (what an idiotic name) with me. “That’s your problem, Sara Lynn,” she’d say, and she’d be looking me up and down while she shook her head. “You fall head over teakettles for the most inappropriate men.”

Well, for goodness’ sake. I’m not falling head over teakettles for anyone. So what if I think he’s good-looking? So what if I’ve been counting the days until today? It doesn’t mean a darn thing. Just a little last hurrah, I suppose, before everything shuts down and I ride into the sunset, leading my sensible, no-nonsense life till the end. I might not have made it as a big-time lawyer, but, dammit, at least I’m sensible. I laugh, more bitterly than I intend to.

Darn it all, I’ve finally made it across town over to Lake Road, and I’m supposed to be taking a left right here, across from the gas station. I don’t see any lefts, though, just a narrow driveway. Well, there’s nothing to do but drive up it, so I put on my blinker and turn slowly onto a dirt road full of stones and potholes. Take it nice and easy, now; don’t wreck the Mercedes. I smile a little, thinking of my father and how he taught me to drive on some of these dusty dirt roads on the outskirts of town.

Dad. Now there was a sensible man. “You’ll want to have your oil checked every three months, Sara Lynn.” “In the winter, always keep your tank at least a quarter full.” “Don’t drive over the speed limit; nothing’s so important that you need to get yourself killed trying to get there.” My father taught me about automobiles; my mother taught me about sex. His information was more useful by far.

As I reach the end of the narrow road, I spy a little gray-shingled cottage, and there’s Sam, sitting out on the peeling, sagging steps, squinting at the sun reflecting on the lake. His hands twist in his lap as if they don’t like being still, as if they’re used to swinging a racket or holding a paintbrush. He leaps up and grabs his backpack in one motion, smiling like he’s glad to see me. It’s breathtaking, really, the way that man moves. But I’m not going to think about that right now. Everything’ll get terribly muddled if I start thinking about that.

When he gets into the car, he says, “Did you find the place okay?”

“Yes,” I lie, turning the car around so I don’t have to back straight out of that narrow road. “No problem.”

We’re back on Lake Road and then through town and then on the highway. He’s looking out the car window, and it’s not until we’ve been driving a bit that he speaks. “I brought my camera. Will it be all right if I take some pictures?”

“Of what?” I ask, and then I could kick myself. What, did I think he wanted to take a picture of me? “The garden, of course,” I say hastily. “Yes, I’m sure it’ll be fine.” I take one hand off the wheel and gesture toward the backseat. “There are some tear sheets of photos taken by the magazine’s photographers in that folder back there. Go ahead and look at them if you’d like.”

He reaches an arm back, and it brushes against my shoulder. “Sorry,” he says, and I blink my eyes fast behind my sunglasses.

As he looks through the photos, he says, “Wow. This is beautiful.”

“It is interesting, isn’t it.” I relax my shoulders a little. If there’s one thing I can talk about—with anybody—it’s gardens.

“Mmm. It’s a composition about purpleness, you know what I mean?”

I nod. “Yes, I do. There aren’t any other notes in the garden—no whites to cool it down or reds to heat it up. It’s just purple. So you find yourself really seeing how pure and, and . . . purply . . . purple is.”

He laughs and reaches over the seat to replace the folder. “It’s hard to put into words. I guess that’s why I paint. Because it’s the only way I know how to show the purpleness of purple.”

I turn to look at him for a second before returning my eyes to the road. “That’s why I garden, too. It’s a way of communicating something I don’t know how to say, something about color and harmony and beauty.”

“Oh, I think gardening is very much like painting,” he agrees. “Only it’s braver, in a way, because it’s an ephemeral art form. Once a canvas is done, it stays the same. But gardens change.”

“Yes!” I’m surprised he understands this about what I do. “When you’re creating a garden, you have to take into account when plants will bloom, how big they’ll get, what they’ll look like in different seasons—all sorts of variables. It’s one of the biggest challenges of planning a garden—the fact that its composition is constantly changing.”

“Tell me about your garden at home.” He leans back in his seat and waits for my answer, adding, “Hope told me it’s beautiful.”

“She did? Really?”

“Yeah. She’s a cute kid. She likes to chat as much as she likes tennis.”

“She’s a talkative child.” I shake my head and smile, thinking about Hope prattling on and on.

“So . . . ?”

“Hmm?” I take my eyes off the road and look at him.

“Your garden.” He smiles. “You were going to tell me about your garden.”

“My garden.” I smile back at him. You know, Hope’s right the way she raves about Sam. He’s really quite nice. All that anxiety I felt driving over here is dissipating, and I’m starting to enjoy being with him. “Well, it’s . . . hmm . . . it’s actually several gardens. There’s the woodland garden, where it’s shady and cool and quiet. Then there’s the meadow garden, which is sunny and, well, full of color and life. I’ve . . . I’ve got perennial beds in the front. They look different each season. Right now, they’re sort of like a Monet painting—lots of color, one blending into the next.” I laugh. “Listen to me, going on. Ask a gardener about her gardens, though, and that’s what you get.”

“Tell me more.”

“Only if you tell me about your paintings.” I’m not flirting with him. This doesn’t feel like flirting to me. We’re just talking, and it feels very comfortable.

“I aim for my paintings to be just the way you described your perennial beds—lots of color, one blending into the next.”

“Hmm . . . what colors do you like?”

“I’m in a green phase right now.” He laughs and shakes his head. “That sounded very pseudoartiste.”

“I like green, too,” I reassure him. “You should see my woodland garden. Standing in the middle of it is like being in an ocean of different shades of green.”

“I’d like that. Could I see it sometime?”

I can feel my telltale blush creeping up my cheeks again. Just when I was starting to lose my self-consciousness, too. “Sure,” I say cautiously. “That would be fine.”

Mrs. Langley is a delightful interviewee, chatty and well versed about gardening. I’m terribly glad I have a tape recorder with me, though, because I’m taking in one out of every three words she utters. My mind is elsewhere—on Sam, if I’m honest. I just can’t wait for the ride home with him so we can continue our conversation. But at the same time, I’m dreading it because I’m liking him more and more and, oh, it’s just stupid and silly when there’s no way he thinks of me as more than a friend. A nice, older friend at that.

Finally I’m through, and I switch off my tape recorder, thank Mrs. Langley, and walk through endless billowy mounds of purple lavender over to where Sam sits on a bench, sketching. He grins at me and tilts up his notebook so I can see.

“Oh, it’s beautiful!” I say, leaning over to look at the sketch he’s done of one branch of lavender. I trace my finger over the tiny leaves and flowers, each drawn with immense care and detail.

He stands up. “How’d the interview go?”