The Heirloom Garden - A Novel - Viola Shipman Page 0,111

to the grocery store with Abby. I have gone to a movie with Cory and Lily. I even got a chance to eat at Pronto Pup before it closed.

I look over toward Abby and Cory’s. The lights are on upstairs, and smoke chugs out of the chimney.

We are to go sledding later if the weather’s not too bad.

Me! Sledding! With a family!

The wind kicks up and snow forms into tiny tornadoes that scoot across the yard before crashing into the fence.

And yet I still feel... I stop myself and ask a question: Protected or isolated? Which is it, Iris?

The skies darken even more, and I hear thunder clap. Snow falls from the sky as if God has opened the back of a dump truck.

Thunder snow! I think. What a rare occasion!

I suddenly think of my mother, who believed that thunder snow was a great mystery and portended that something mythical was about to happen.

Boom!

My heart jumps, and I watch the snow pile up.

I am living in a black-and-white world now, I think.

I put my arms around my body and head into the kitchen to make some soup. When I round the corner, I smile when I see my Christmas cactus.

“Hello, Pretty Boy, hello,” I coo. “Who’s a pretty boy? How beautiful are you today?”

My Christmas cactus is fifty-five years old. I know, I know. Gardeners would howl and roll their eyes if I said that to them. The Farmer’s Almanac says thirty years is the oldest most survive.

No one believes me, of course, and I understand why they think I might be mistaken, or lying, or simply an old woman who has grown forgetful. But I am not. I know the exact day and year I got Pretty Boy.

Shirley got me this cactus the first Christmas after Mary died, when I refused to leave the house.

“You need something to care for,” Shirley bluntly told me. “You need something to brighten your winter days.”

She had received the cactus as a white elephant work gift, but she hadn’t known what to do with it.

“This is a regift,” I told her. “You didn’t even get it for me.”

“Look at it,” Shirley said. “It already looks bad.” She knew just what to say to get me. Tell me a plant needed help, and I’d take it every time and nurse it back to life.

“You may have a knack for off-color jokes, but you never had much of a green thumb,” I told Shirley.

“Name it,” she told me. “Think of it as a dog or cat.”

“Get out,” I told her.

My mom and grandma had both had Christmas cacti, which had seemed to live forever, as well. Every Christmas they would bloom and brighten the house with color, just like the lights and ornaments on our Christmas tree.

I look at Pretty Boy and then out my kitchen window. I can still see my grampa trudging through the snow. My grampa was a black-and-white man. He never wore much color, save for Christmas Day when he would appear in a sweater as red as Santa’s hat. My grandma loved it when he dressed up that one day a year.

“Who’s a pretty boy?” she would tease him, patting his belly, pinching his cheek and planting a big smooch on his cheek. “You are!”

My grampa’s face would always turn as crimson as his sweater.

“Time to hand out the gifts!” he’d call.

I named my cactus after my grampa because—at the very least—I would still have family surrounding me, even if just in memory. I would have something to decorate my house at the holidays, too, because retrieving the ornaments was just too painful.

“Happy birthday, Pretty Boy,” I say. “You’re old, just like me now. We’ve come a long way. Both survivors. And you’re going to bloom again for Christmas, aren’t you, Pretty Boy?”

He has yet to bloom, which has me worried, but I believe in my soul that he will.

“You rest up, hear me? Get ready to bloom again, okay?”

I talk to my cacti, as I do all my flowers. Like people, they bloom when shown love and kindness.

For as long as I can remember, my routine with my Christmas cactus has never changed. I begin to cut back on its water in late October, allowing it just enough for its topsoil to remain moist. This forces it to go dormant, which is critical for it to bloom. I move the cactus to my hallway, where it receives some indirect light but fourteen hours or so of darkness every day,