Sleeping Tigers (8 page)

“It’s his house.”

“But you pay rent, right?”

“A token.” Cam stretched out his long legs and meditated on the steam rising from his coffee. “Without him, I’d probably be living in People’s Park. So, how are things with you? I take it you wised up and never married that petty bureaucrat with the great hair?”

“No, I took a lesson from you and ran like hell,” I joked, then hesitated, wondering just how much to tell Cam about Peter and me, or about what I’d been through.

I hadn’t told Cam anything at all about the breast cancer. I had started several letters, but gave up. My explanations sounded too self-pitying, even when I tried joking about the Barbie doll wigs I planned to buy if I had to go the chemo route, or how I’d be sure the plastic surgeon took inches off my hips if I needed a hunk of flesh to replace a missing breast.

What could I possibly tell Cam that would sum up my current state of mind, when I wasn’t even sure what it was anymore? That I was scared and lonely? That I could scarcely even look at my breasts in the mirror, because the scar reminded me that someone had sliced and diced my body, taking out a melon ball or two of flesh?

Sitting next to a brother who had become a stranger over the past two years, I realized that I couldn’t say any of these things. My guard was up against both his pity and my own. I would have to wait and work up to that conversation gradually. I babbled instead about my teaching, the break-up with Peter, and friends we both knew back home, until at last Cam put a hand on my arm and forced me to take a breath.

“You did the right thing, leaving that guy,” he said softly. “He wasn’t worthy.”

I sat up straighter in the chair, automatically ready to defend the man who had once been, mistakenly or not, the love of my life. “You hardly knew Peter!”

Cam shook his head. “I didn’t have to. Remember the wet money?”

And I did, so suddenly it was as if Cam had suddenly opened a pair of drapes across a window: I saw Peter on a blustery summer day two years ago. Cam was visiting my mother, home from a trip to India, so Peter and I had driven to my parents’ house from Boston to see him.

Cam and I borrowed a sailboat that weekend to take Peter out on the lake. Peter had dressed the part of “an old salt,” as he put it, in a bright blue striped shirt and khaki shorts, new Topsiders and blue visor. He’d even bought new sunglasses with a braided plastic rope to hang them about his neck. But then we’d come about on the water and started scudding, and Peter had forgotten to duck beneath the mast. He was knocked clean off the boat and into the water, arms outspread and waving like a great blue heron flapping onto the water’s surface.

Cam and I laughed, but Peter climbed back aboard with a grim, set mouth. Once we were back in my parents’ house, he immediately asked my mother for the ironing board and iron. Peter changed his clothes, stuffed his wet things into the dryer and then stood in the kitchen to iron his money, bill after bill of it, until the green rectangles were smooth and dry and warm on the kitchen counters, laid end-to-end like an enormous chain of green chewing gum wrappers.

“Peter was a little compulsive,” I admitted now. “But he kept me organized.”

Cam rolled his eyes. “You need somebody to help you jump fences and whistle in the dark, Jojo, not keep you confined to your safe little sawdust cage,” he said. We sipped our coffee in silence for a minute. Then Cam finally asked, “So what’s with the ‘rents? Is Mom still up to her eyeballs in handicrafts?”

“She’s onto crocheting now.”

“What, like afghans?”

“And hats. Lampshades. Toilet paper covers.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Nope. Cows, Santas, the Virgin Mary, fleecy lambs with pink tongues. They’re amazing, really. You’d never guess there was a roll of toilet paper under them.”

Cam cracked up, tipping his head back. “Amazing? Yeah, Jordy, that’s one word for it. Jesus. And how about Dad? Still mowing down the roses?”

“He took a pretty good chunk out of the big lilac bush the day before I left.”

We were both laughing hard by now. Dad had mowed the lawn every Saturday for thirty years, even on the weekend after his hernia operation. Four years ago, everyone in the family–even Cam, though minimally–had chipped in to buy him a riding mower for his fiftieth birthday. Our father had kept it buffed and shining: Dad’s chariot, we called it. Unfortunately, the mower had more horsepower than our tiny yard could withstand. So far, Dad had flattened the knee-high boxwood hedge, Mom’s flowerbeds, a neighbor boy’s bike, and even the mailbox. It was like launching a speedboat in a duck pond.

“Can you believe our gene pool?” Cam shook his head. “There’s Mom, vacuuming up sandwich crumbs around our lunch plates, always in her pearls, like June Cleaver on Speed. And then there’s Dad in his recliner, soaking up Fox News. Christ, Jordan. Remember that time on the town common? Our perfect All-American Fourth of July picnic?”

I had just taken a sip of coffee. Now I laughed and snorted the coffee up my nose. I’d nearly forgotten about that. My father had become increasingly patriotic through the years, obsessed with war because he hadn’t served in Vietnam. During that Fourth of July picnic, Dad spotted a trio of young men lounging on a blanket made of American flags. Without warning, he had risen from our family blanket and stormed the group, my mother shrieking after him to stop.

“Those guys scattered like pigeons, didn’t they?” I gasped. “It was horrible. Dad was out of his mind.”

“He always was a pissy drunk. Mean as a snake,” Cam reflected.

“At least he eventually quit,” I reminded him. “AA or not, that must have taken guts.”

“Jesus, Jordy!” Cam shook his head. “Why do you always defend the guy? He was a bastard. Dad quit drinking only because his doctor said his liver was blowing up like a balloon. So what if he lost his job? Lots of people don’t have jobs, and they don’t take it out on their kids.”

I flicked my brother’s wrist with two fingers hard enough to sting. “You’re never going to forgive Dad for being human, are you, Cam? Even if he’s the guy who always found a way to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads? Even if he’s the one who taught you how to ride a bike and throw a ball? He drank and he made mistakes. He wants to apologize to you for that, if you’d ever let him.”

Cam snorted. “Oh, really?”

“Yes, really! He keeps telling me so. And maybe you don’t want that, but Cam, if you hang onto this kind of anger, you’ll die with it eating a hole in your heart.”

Cam poked a finger into his own chest. “What’s that you say? A hole in my heart? And here I thought it was from a bullet!” He grimaced, mimed writhing and dying, then said, “Sorry, but the old man’s going to have to go to his grave without me making it easier for him to pass through the pearly gates. I’ve never been the saint in the family. That position was already filled when I was born.” He pointed at me.

We finished our coffee in silence, then sat with Cam’s roommates and ate eggs, potatoes, toast, bacon, and coffee cake in the greenhouse on a rickety picnic table painted white and stenciled with moons and stars. Whoever did the artwork around here had a thing for night skies. The stars were sloppy; they looked more like a child’s hand prints. Vegan Val and the other woman, Melody, sat on either side of me, across from Jon, Cam, and Domingo, the third man. Val, of course, nibbled on a separate breakfast of fruit and nuts.

“You grew all of these orchids? They’re amazing,” I said to Shepherd Jon, staring at the plants hanging above us and stacked in clay pots on metal shelving. We were seated in a forest of flowers, the scent of so many orchids overpowering, cloying.

“My father started the collection. I’ve just kept it going,” Jon answered. “He was a botany professor at Berkeley. Took I don’t know how many trips to the Amazon. Even had a couple of flowers named after him. When he died a few years ago, I decided to keep things going as a tribute to him. I’ve been collecting orchids in Nepal, working with a conservation group there as a volunteer.”

“Doing what?”

He shrugged. “Whatever. Last time I was there, I was mostly helping them train the customs officials to spot orchids being smuggled out of the country. There’s one in particular,
Panch Aunlle
—means ‘five-fingered’– that’s very valuable because people believe it can give you more energy.”

I looked around the greenhouse. “It must take a huge effort to keep so many plants alive.”

“Not really. Orchids are a common vascular plant, and they’re hardier than you’d think. Just give ‘em humidity and they’re happy campers.”

I craned my neck to see the plants hanging at the far end of the greenhouse. We were surrounded by blooms of every color and size; many had leathery leaves that looked like dry green tongues. “I never knew there were so many different kinds.”

“Sure. They’re one of the most adaptive plants on earth, so orchids are pretty good at carving out special niches where they won’t have to compete so hard for food and light.” Shepherd Jon tossed his blonde ponytail over one shoulder and gestured at various plants. “Some smell like rotting meat to attract certain flies. Others are designed to attract mating beetles by emitting the scent of a female beetle. Then there’s that one in the far corner. See it? Looks so much like a female wasp that male wasps actually mate with it.”

The others at the table were watching Jon silently, their upturned faces almost reverent. Next to me, Melody’s sarong had ridden high and she kept shifting her pale, fleshy haunches on the bench. I suddenly realized that she was trying to reach Jon’s feet under the table with her own. He kept talking, either oblivious to her seductive efforts or determined to ignore them.

“Are orchids edible?” I asked.

“Yep. You’re eating one right now.” Jon pointed at the slice of vanilla-frosted coffee cake on my plate. “Vanilla beans are the pods of an orchid plant.”

We all contemplated my cake until I felt obligated to take a bite. Jon smiled slightly, watching me chew, then said, “What’s really cool is that orchids are so sexual looking. It’s a real turn-on, sitting here among all of these sweet little vaginas.” He reached up and stroked a petal between two fingers. “My beauty girls,” he crooned.

The chunk of cake seemed to expand in my throat. I gulped a glass of juice to get it down. Val giggled. She still wore her sunglasses.

“What do you do when you’re not growing orchids?” I asked.

“A little of this. And even less of that.” Shepherd Jon studied me with his eyes half shut.

“Where do you work?”

Jon tapped his temple with one forefinger. “Right in here.”

What a pompous jerk. What was so difficult about answering a simple question? Talking about your job was standard, getting-to-know-you brunch fare. In this company, though, it appeared to be an invasion of privacy. Too bad. I pressed on. “And just what do you do in your home temple?”

“Try to make peace with myself and the world. The world has enough type A’s,” Jon said. “Why add to the world’s woes? I had a job on the outside once upon a time. A job with an office, health benefits, a retirement plan.”

“He was the marketing manager for a pharmaceutical company,” Melody said, shaking her head as if this tragedy had taken all of Jon’s courage to overcome. “They even gave him a company car.”

“That’s right,” Jon nodded. “But I dropped out after 9/11. Saw where I’d been and where I was going, decided to eject myself from my own life. I’d rather inflict no harm on this cesspool of a planet and simply enjoy what little beauty is left.” He caressed the orchid above his head.

“Nice work if you can get it,” I said. “Especially if you have a house handed to you on a silver platter. But what are you accomplishing?”

Jon leaned forward, his ponytail spilling down one shoulder, his green eyes unblinking. “Whether I accomplish anything hardly matters, since the world’s likely to go up in a ball of flames. So I laid to rest Jon Clemmons, Marketing Director of Salient Pharmaceuticals, and became Shepherd Jon, traveler and thinker. Someone who knows that one life is all we have to live.”

The table burst into applause. I felt like I was at an amateur dinner theater, trapped between soggy appetizer and bland entree before the tired opening number. I laughed. “That was your big deal epiphany? That we have but one life to live? I hate to break this to you, Shepherd, but a few other people have been there, done that. There’s even a soap opera by that name.”

Jon straightened in his chair. “The difference between my decision and the cliche,” he said, “is that others talk the talk, but I walk the walk. I quit my job. Scissored my suits. Shredded my credit cards. Now I use every moment to inhale life’s sweetness, to live in the present without contributing to humanity’s demise, and to volunteer my services to people and countries in need where possible. It’s an example that I hope others will follow.” He looked meaningfully around the table.

“Amen,” Val breathed.

“You go, Bro,” Cam said solemnly.

“And what happens if everyone does follow you, like sheep?” I asked. “What then? We all go back to living off the land? Is that your grand scheme?”

“In fact, yes. I’ve already got my urban garden out back, if you’d care to look, and I spin my own wool. I’ve converted the van to using biodiesel fuel and I heat the house with wood. And, when I’m not here, I’m trying to help save the world’s remaining species of plants.” Jon clasped his hands around his coffee mug. “You have a better idea for changing the world?”