Page 3 of Kiss Me Now
“I did for the morning, but they’re not running the air conditioner until school starts in two weeks, so it got too hot and stuffy to get much done. I came home and did some more planning until I got too antsy and came out to weed. Come see.” I beckoned Miss Lily to join me among the tomato plants. “I did the whole row.”
“Well done,” Miss Lily said. Her words were simple, but her proud smile warmed my heart. “You did a fine job.”
“Thank you. When do you think they’ll ripen?” I asked. “I can’t wait to try one of your tomato sandwiches.”
“It’s one of the greatest pleasures in life, I assure you,” Miss Lily said. “I can’t believe you’ve gone this long without experiencing one.” She bent down and inspected the orange fruit on a few of the plants. “Soon,” she pronounced when she straightened. “Right around the time school starts.”
“School” caused the same small flip in my stomach that it had since Lincoln High School had hired me as their new biology teacher for the fall. I’d worked hard to complete my credential and student teaching in just a year, but I hardly felt prepared to greet the 150 sophomores who would expect me to explain the fine points of genetics and taxonomy as Ms. Spencer the Science Teacher when school began.
Working on Uncle Fred’s—no,myhouse—and helping Miss Lily in her garden helped keep my mind off the spectacular ways I might fail at my new career. Well, that and the mantra that I couldn’t fail worse in this one than I had in my last one.
The familiar buzz of anxiety began to thrum in my chest, and I crouched by the next row, looking for more weeds to pull. Unfortunately, I’d taken care of this one a few days before and there wasn’t much there.
“It’s fine,” Miss Lily said, waving me back up. “You’ve done more than enough for today. Why don’t you come on up to the house and have some iced tea and visit?”
I wouldn’t dream of hurting Miss Lily’s feelings by turning her down. The woman had been my first and fastest friend in Creekville, a town that wasn’t used to newcomers, but I felt a mighty urge to keep my hands busy so my mind couldn’t wander into my school worries.
We all have to get through the learning curve. Everybody hates it, but you’ll do fine.I’d repeated this strangely comforting piece of advice from my mentor teacher more times than I could count over the last week as school drew closer and closer to opening.
I didn’t even realize I’d gotten lost in my own thoughts again until Miss Lily’s silvery laugh broke in. “I can see you’re going to be better off if we stay out here and work longer. But the squash needs our attention more than the beans. Let’s go pick some.”
“Really?” I darted to the end of the row. So far, I’d only been able to pick asparagus, bell peppers, and cucumbers. Every time Miss Lily let me harvest something new from the garden, it felt like Christmas. If Christmas were eighty degrees in the shade, that is. I hurried to the butternut squash and waited impatiently for Miss Lily to catch up.
“All right, hold your horses,” Miss Lily said, another laugh in her voice. “They’re not going anywhere.” When she reached me beside the patch, she rewarded me with a big grin. “You know that these gardening lessons I’m giving you are an excuse to get you to do the work my back is too old for these days. You have been Tom Sawyered all summer long.”
“I’m a willing sucker,” I assured her. “I’m so glad you’ve let me do this. I feel more confident about starting my own garden next summer.”
My place was much smaller, but it still sat on a half-acre, which was more than enough to plant a garden for one. But the very afternoon I’d met Miss Lily, I had mentioned how overwhelmed I was by renovating my uncle’s aging home while tackling a garden too. She’d insisted that I come learn in her garden and take all the vegetables I wanted when they came in. My garden time with Miss Lily had become my favorite part of every day.
“You’ll do fine,” Miss Lily assured me, “but my garden is big enough for both of us. Didn’t I tell you it would produce more than even the two of us could ever eat? Just work it with me again next spring. Now, let’s pick some butternut squash. Mary makes a marvelous ravioli with it.” Mary was her housekeeper and cook, and I had eaten at Miss Lily’s table enough times to take this claim as gospel truth.
I did as Miss Lily directed, looking for squash that had grown to a size I might see at the farmer’s market, then checking to make sure the color was uniform and showed no green spots on the rind.
“Make sure the skin isn’t glossy either,” Miss Lily said when I declared I’d found one. A few minutes later, I’d twisted and plucked three lovely butternuts from their vines and settled them in Miss Lily’s basket.
“One of these should go home with you,” Miss Lily said. “I would send you home with two, but Ian’s coming tonight.”
Ian. Her grandson. Miss Lily had spoken of him often. “I didn’t know you were expecting him.” I tried to keep my voice neutral, but despite Miss Lily’s constant and clear pride in the guy, I wasn’t impressed. I’d lived here five months already, and he hadn’t come to visit his grandmother once.
“I’m not sure he even knows he’s coming tonight, but he’ll be here.” Miss Lily wore a content smile.
A flicker of irritation toward Miss Lily’s delinquent grandson fluttered through my chest. I was going to be even less impressed if Miss Lily went to bed disappointed tonight, let down again by Ian.
“So, tell me how school is going,” Miss Lily said as we moved on to the green beans. “You feeling ready yet?”
I sighed. “I don’t think I ever will. I was working in my classroom until after lunch, putting up a display of the metric system. And as I’m trying to staple butcher paper to the wall and think of cute puns, I’m thinking, ‘Am I rearranging deck chairs whileThe Titanicsinks?’ It won’t do me any good to have clever bulletin boards if I freeze when those lab tables fill with students.”
“You worry too much,” Miss Lily said. “It’s a cliché for a reason, but truly, those children want to know how much you care before they care how much you know. Stand up there and let your true self shine through and the rest will take care of itself.”
Miss Lily had taught high school English for twenty-five years, so I wanted to believe this, but I didn’t have that same twinkle in my eye that Miss Lily did, the one that invited whoever met her to come join her mischief. But I kept any further worries for myself. Burdening Miss Lily with them would be a poor repayment for all the kindness she had shown me in the last few months.
We worked in comfortable silence for a while, plucking crisp string beans and adding them to Miss Lily’s basket. I had always liked green beans well enough, but they’d been a revelation when they’d ripened a couple of weeks ago and I’d brought my first batch home to stir fry straight from the vine. They’d popped and burst in my mouth, tasting like good earth and sunshine. “I can’t imagine I’ll love anything else from this garden as much as I love fresh beans.”
“Wait until the sweet corn comes in next month. Nothing like an ear picked from the stalk then walked right into your kitchen and cooked.” Miss Lily paused for a minute to pat at her glistening forehead with a hand-embroidered kerchief from the pocket of her gardening shirt. She glanced over the rows and smiled. “Gardens are how I get to know God, and how he shows his love for me. Sweet corn is proof.”
I wished I had that same kind of faith, but I was glad I could at least borrow from Miss Lily’s unshakeable belief. In gardens. In corn. In me. Every time Miss Lily spoke one of these little nuggets, it felt like my world steadied a bit. Not so long ago, I wouldn’t have believed that I could ever regain the faith that people were fundamentally good and kind. But Miss Lily was slowly convincing me that at least one twinkly-eyed octogenarian on this earth was exactly that, and one was better than none.
Immediate annoyance followed the thought.Her Ian is an absolute idiot for not coming to soak this all up. Miss Lily had seven grandchildren, and two lived in other states, so it was understandable they didn’t come to visit often. I had met most of the other five. Landon, Ian’s brother fresh out of law school, had been by a few times. And Ian’s cousins all visited to check on Miss Lily. But Ian, the one who lived closest, somehow could not be bothered to check on his grandmother.
