The Vegetable Museum Read online

  “I know,” he said. I already knew his name was Slater, but he didn’t bother to introduce himself. Instead he looked around to make sure other kids were listening. “You guys had the pest-control van come to your place yesterday, right? I hear bedbugs really suck.”

  A few kids laughed.

  “Har, har.” I wished my face didn’t feel so hot. “It was just a routine check. It’s not like the place is infested.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Jerk. I sat down, pretending to ignore the whispers behind me. I could imagine what they were saying—That new girl? Don’t get too close or you’ll start scratching too—and I didn’t bother introducing myself to anyone else after that.

  But faces are becoming familiar as the weeks go by. Once in a while I smile at some of them. Mostly they smile back. I act as if Slater doesn’t exist, which can get tricky because we walk home at the same time every day. (Except Thursdays, when he walks in the opposite direction, with his soccer cleats hanging off his backpack. I love Thursdays.) Today, I am half a block ahead. I can feel his eyes on me.

  I step onto the patchy grass in front of our building. To be honest, I don’t blame Slater for thinking we have bedbugs—or any number of other pests. A month ago this place was all long grass, flaking paint, burned-out lightbulbs and broken, faded fencing around the back parking lot. Dad’s tackled most of it, and the place is looking much better, but even if it was a dump, who is Slater MacIntyre to point that out? He lives with a creature known for carrying the bubonic plague, and his house is no palace either.

  I hear a grunt near the front door of our building. A guy my age I’ve never seen before has two bulging bags of groceries hanging from one arm, and he’s wrestling with a key in the lock. His long black ponytail hangs down past the collar of his denim jacket. Flames are embroidered up both arms, and he’s wearing sandals, despite the March rain. He yanks at the key, can’t get it out, kicks the door and howls in pain. Eventually he gets the key out of the door, which he props open with one elbow. I think of tiptoeing around to the back entrance, so he won’t know I’ve seen this whole embarrassing scenario, but now he’s trying to push a box full of food into the building with his foot. I step forward and hold open the door.

  “Whoa. Where’d you come from?” he asks.

  “I live here.”

  “Cool!”

  Together we get the box through. He puts his bags down, wipes one hand on his jeans and holds it out to me. I hesitate for a second before I shake. It just seems so formal.

  “I’m Nikko,” he says. “You must be Chloë. Welcome to the Suffolk-ating Arms!”

  I laugh. “Thanks.”

  “How’s Victoria so far? I mean, you moved here from Montreal, right? My mum told me. You’ve probably seen her around. Japanese woman, tiny glasses?” He makes circles with his thumbs and index fingers and holds them up to his face. “Not that there are a lot of Japanese people around here, with or without glasses. You’ve probably noticed that by now. This whole neighborhood is white. Not like Vancouver. Or Montreal. Are you liking it okay? Here, I mean? It must be a big change.”

  The words come nonstop. He’s out of breath by the time he finishes talking, and I smile. He’s the friendliest person I’ve met so far. I don’t want to hurt his feelings by saying how boring his city is, so I try to think of something positive to say. “I like being this close to the ocean.” That’s true, at least. I’ve gone down to the rocky beach almost every day since we got here. That, Uli’s stories and my texts to and from Sofia are the only things keeping me sane right now. Dad hasn’t said a word about when we’re going back to Montreal. Mom hasn’t either.

  Mom acts as if we’re here for good. She calls every two days, tells me about funny things students have said in her classes or about international conferences she’s looking into. Yesterday we talked about her trip here next weekend. She’s renting a car, and the two of us are driving to Tofino, about six hours away. She says she wants to try the rugged west-coast thing that Dad always raves about, but her version of rugged is a lodge by the beach. Which is fine with me. The place she booked has a TV and a Jacuzzi—much more our style than Dad’s. He’d stay on the beach in a tent in the pouring rain.

  Nikko looks at me, and I realize I’ve totally missed what he said. Something about the ocean. Not sure how to respond, I change the topic. “You’ve been away, right? That’s why I haven’t seen you around? My dad told me.”

  “Yup, I was visiting my grandparents. In Revelstoke. That’s on the other side of BC, in the mountains. I go every winter.”

  “Nice. Must be good to get a break from school.”

  “Nah,” he says, “I homeschool. I can log on from wherever, and believe me, my grandparents make sure I do. They’ve never quite understood the whole homeschool thing. At first they thought I was going to wind up completely illiterate and antisocial. They’ve chilled out a bit now, but they’re strict about how many hours I study a day.”

  “Huh.” Homeschooling explains his outfit. He’d never last a day at school with Slater.

  “Your dad’s doing a great job.” Nikko nods at the lobby walls. Dad painted them last week. He cleaned the carpets too, and this week he plans to put in better lighting. Somehow he still finds time to go hiking or kayaking every day. He’d never kayaked in his life before we got here, but within days of arriving he’d signed up for lessons and joined a club that rents out boats. Go figure. It’s like all those weeks on the couch at home, he was storing up energy that burst out when we got to the west coast. He keeps threatening to take me out on these outdoor adventures too. In the summer, he says, we can swim in something called the Gorge. He swears it’s cleaner than any of the nearby lakes. But what’s wrong with a proper indoor pool, I’d like to know?

  “The last caretaker was a bit of a disaster,” Nikko says.

  “No kidding.”

  “Estelle on the third floor got on his case all the time. She’s the capital S in Suffolk-ating Arms, by the way. Have you met—?”

  “Yes.” I interrupt because it seems like the only way to make him pause for breath. “She showed up on our first day with a list of stuff for Dad to do. She called every day until it was done.”

  Nikko tells me about some of the other neighbors, an old guy on the fourth floor who’s the building’s friendliest, a lady on the second who is some kind of fortune-teller, and Estelle’s cat, who watches everything that goes on in the parking lot when Estelle can’t be there to do it herself. Soon Nikko’s talking about the cars and how he can tell who’s coming and going by the sound of each engine. “Our family doesn’t have a car though. We bike everywhere. Mostly, anyway. We’re part of a car share too, but mostly we bike. We should go together sometime. On a bike ride, I mean. I’ll show you around. Maybe you’ve already been exploring, but I could show you some places you might not have discovered yet.”

  The thought of me on a bicycle makes me almost laugh out loud. Sofia has been bugging me to learn to ride for years, but I never saw the point. Everything I wanted to do was within walking distance. “No bike. Sorry,” I say, although I’m really not.

  Nikko looks at me, wide-eyed. “You can’t live in Victoria without a bike. You’re missing too much! I’ll find one for you, and then I’ll show you the city.” The elevator doors open. He places the box of food on one hip, hoists up the bags and hobbles into the elevator. “I’ll let you know when I find you some wheels.”

  The doors close. I shake my head, but I’m smiling as I pull out my phone. I haven’t texted Sofia since yesterday, when I sent her a selfie of me standing on the rocky beach.

  Greetings from the west coast. Note the lack of sports gear.

  From the moment I’d told Sofia that I was going west, she’d teased me about becoming a granola-eating yogi who went everywhere by bike and dressed like a hiker for every occasion. She said that’s what happens when people move out here. I’d laughed it off, but it still felt important to point out that the same old me could enjoy
the beach without becoming someone else entirely.

  I’m sure Sofia was laughing when she answered my text.

  Matter of time. Happy metamorphosis!

  Now, on my way down the hall, I tell her about Nikko.

  Met the other kid in our building. Wants to know if I have a bike.

  Her answer is instantaneous.

  Congrats, my beautiful butterfly!

  Flap. Flap. Flap.

  THREE

  “Hi, Chloë-bear.” Mom sounds tired. It’s eleven o’clock in Montreal. I wonder if she’s just getting home from work.

  “What’s up, Mom?” I cradle my phone on my shoulder so I can keep knitting. I’ve almost finished the pair of socks I started when we got here. Turquoise and purple with a Turkish heel. Mom’s size.

  “Honey, things are turning out differently than I expected.”

  She’s probably trying to tell me she has to bring work to Tofino this weekend. As if this is big news. She always works part of the weekend. The most important thing is that she’ll be here, on this side of the country. She booked the lodge the day Dad bought our flights to Victoria. She stuck the reservation printouts in my How-to-Survive-This-Move kit, along with a homemade calendar so I could count down the days. She promised we’d spend every second catching up, but I’m fine with a few hours on my own. It’s not the end of the world.

  “I have to resubmit a major piece of research by Tuesday.” Her voice is tight.

  “Don’t worry about it, Mom. You’re flying across the country to see me. I’m not going to be offended if you have to work a bit while you’re here.”

  Silence stretches between us, and my stomach twists. “You’re still coming, aren’t you? I mean, you’ve already got a ticket and—”

  “I’m sorry, Chloë. You know how much I was looking forward…”

  I feel like hurling the phone across the room.

  Mom’s babbling on about how she’ll make it up to me when I press End. I’m moving in slow motion. If I move any faster, I might explode. I pick up her homemade calendar with its cute drawings, and I shred it in two, then four. The pieces flutter to the bottom of my wastebasket.

  Next I consider my closed door. I need to get out. Now. But on the other side, Dad is cooking supper. One look at me and he’ll know what’s happened. If he sees me now and he tries to help, I’ll fall apart completely.

  I climb out the window and head for the beach. Easy escape. Our crappy first-floor apartment has something going for it after all.

  “Here we go.” I set our plates on the table and slide into a chair next to Dad.

  “Thanks for supper.” Uli picks up his burrito. It’s Tuesday evening, which means we eat at a restaurant and do the grocery shopping afterward. On Thursdays, we all go for a walk together, same time every week, same route down to the ocean and back. Dad calls Uli daily but doses out visits like medication, measured to the minute. Tonight’s restaurant is a Mexican one downtown, hidden away in the middle of a mall. I don’t know how Dad finds these places.

  We always ate at home in Montreal. “Why pay top dollar for something you could make yourself?” he’d ask if I mentioned a new Afghan place on the corner or the Sri Lankan one down the street. Then he’d go online. A few days later he’d present his homemade traditional Afghan mantu (meat dumplings) or Sri Lankan green jackfruit curry. Not that I’m complaining. I love his cooking. But it’s strange that now, after we have moved to Dullsville, he’s so into eating out.

  “Weather’s warming up,” says Uli. “Planting time. Should have had the soil ready by now.”

  Dad gives him a sharp look. “You’re not planning on gardening, are you? That’s way too much bending and lifting for you.”

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Uli says.

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  I look back and forth between them. They glare at each other.

  “I made a promise,” Uli says, “to the people who gave me the seeds. Darned if I’ll go back on it now.”

  Dad takes a deep breath, lifts his burrito and starts eating like he’s the only one at the table. I feel sorry for Uli. The whole vegetable thing reminds me of when Sofia visited her great-aunt last summer, and the old woman wanted help sorting her plastic-bag collection. What do you say to a super-old person with who knows how much longer to live who wants nothing more than to sort plastic bags (or grow vegetables that no one wants)? How do you tell them they’re wasting their precious time?

  The silence is getting awkward. Someone needs to say something. It looks like it’ll have to be me. I turn to Uli. “Where did you get the seeds for your vegetables anyway?”

  “I’ve got a list of people as long as your arm. The first old fellow, I met at a retirement home I gardened for. He’d come sit on a bench while I planted flowers or pruned the trees. One day he gives me a small envelope. Purple beans, he says. His great-great-great-grandmother grew them back in Italy, and his mother smuggled them over here when they moved to Canada. He grew them himself for years but didn’t have anywhere to plant them anymore. He wanted to know if I’d grow them. To keep the line going.”

  “The line?” I ask.

  “Line of seeds,” he says. “Let ’em sit around too long, and they lose their growing power. Get too lackadaisical with this kind of thing, and the only string beans left on the planet will be the flavorless supermarket kind. Blech. Wait till you try the varieties people used to eat. The flavor will knock your socks off.”

  It’s hard to imagine getting that excited about beans, but who knows? Maybe they’ll surprise me. “If they’re so great, why don’t the stores carry them?”

  “They don’t keep as well,” Uli says. “If you grow them yourself, that doesn’t matter. You just pick them when you need them. The thing is to grow them every year, though, and save the seeds for the next season.”

  “Or give them to someone who believes in endangered vegetables.”

  “Bingo. I’ve got more seeds and stories than you can shake a stick at now. Pink broccoli from Russia. Blue kale from Scotland.”

  “All smuggled?” I ask.

  “Probably, but decades and decades ago. Families grew them here for generations before I got them. I wouldn’t have taken them otherwise. Seeds from far away are too risky. They might have diseases that could wipe out a whole garden.”

  “Huh.” I had to admit this was more interesting than I’d imagined—family heirlooms you can keep growing generation after generation. Who knew our family even had any keepsakes to pass down?

  I glance at my dad. His face has relaxed again. Maybe Uli’s noticed that too, because he makes another attempt at conversation. “Muriel brought me the paper today.” His home-care nurse is always doing thoughtful things like that. Much as Uli hated the idea of someone coming around to the house every day, I think he enjoys her visits now. “Saved it for you, in case you want to read it.”

  “Thanks,” Dad says. “Anything interesting?”

  “Only read the gardening section. It was all about flowers though.”

  “Flowers aren’t your thing?” I ask.

  He shakes his head and gives me his strange half smile. “I’d rather read about pre-Civil War peanuts, or fish peppers, but no such luck. There was an interesting article on earthworms though. Did you know the worms in an acre of soil can till eighteen tons of dirt each year?”

  I picture an army of worms with little hoes and cowboy hats on. You’ve got to admire a guy who gets excited about something so simple. It reminds me of Sofia’s little brother, Jordan, who’s three and does a happy dance every time he finds a bug in their garden.

  I take another bite of burrito. It’s better than I expected. Uli keeps talking, telling us how Charles Darwin spent years proving that earthworms make conscious decisions about how to pull leaves and pine needles into their burrows. “He wrote a whole book about it.”

  “I bet that was a bestseller.”

  “You bet your bootstraps, young lady!”
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  I laugh, and Uli keeps feeding us earthworm trivia. When that runs out, we all focus on our food. We’re the only quiet table in the whole restaurant. I can’t help thinking about Mom, probably in her office, hunched over her computer. When I told Dad she had bailed on Tofino, he was furious. That same night, he booked two tickets to Montreal. We go home in ninety-nine days. He booked return flights too, but I didn’t dare point out that there’s no way I’m coming back here with him. I’ll deal with that later. Meanwhile, we’ve both agreed not to talk about Mom right now.

  “Excuse me. Nature calls.” Dad stands up to go to the bathroom, leaving me alone with my grandfather. I seize the opportunity.

  “Hey, Uli. Remember a few weeks ago, when you talked about the bombed-out cities? You promised you’d tell me about it sometime.”

  He takes a deep breath and glances after my dad. “You know where I was born, I guess.”

  “Germany,” I say. During the Second World War. I think that’s what Dad said.

  Uli shakes his head. “Poland. My family was German though. Russians invaded, and my mother and I escaped with the clothes on our backs.”

  And somehow Dad never thought to mention this to me?

  “I was three,” Uli continues, “so I don’t remember that part, but we stayed with relatives in East Germany for a while before crossing to West Germany. That part I do remember, running in the dark with bullets flying. We slept wherever we could—in barns, sometimes in bombed-out churches.”

  My burrito has turned to stone in my stomach. It’s one thing to read about the war in a textbook, another to hear about your grandfather sleeping in a bomb crater.

  Dad returns, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Ridiculous. The bathroom’s at the end of the earth, you need a key, which is back here, and they’re out of paper towels—hey, are you two okay?” He looks back and forth between us.

  I realize I have tears in my eyes. “Uli was telling me about escaping from Poland when he was a kid.”