Chapter 5
Luke
I don’t know much about weeds. I’ve never had a proper lawn, never had to prune out the bad to make more room for the good.
I grew up in Chicago in a million-dollar brownstone. It sat shoulder to shoulder with a row of three-story, six-bedroom, four-bath behemoths, each on less than a tenth of an acre. My mom, for all her complaining about Dad’s fancy lawyer job, hired someone to tend to the meager backyard.
Joe Russo came every Saturday morning in the summer and mowed the little square of grass. If he ever pulled weeds from the flower beds, I never saw him do it. Not that I paid much attention. I did occasionally see him walking around with a plastic container on his hip that connected to a small hose that connected to a long metal tube. He sprayed a chemical that smelled like wet paper. Weedkiller. Our tiny backyard was always impeccable, no thanks to Mom or Dad.
In L.A., I opted for apartment living. I didn’t want the hassle of plumbing repairs, appliance maintenance, or lawn upkeep. My business was my life, and I didn’t want a house to distract me from it.
When I was looking for a house in Charleston, I knew I wanted a decent backyard, a place I could stretch my legs, spread out, dabble in plants and dirt. I scored this 1800s home with a little luck and an offer well above asking price. The moment I saw it, I knew it was the one.
I know as much about flowering plants as I do weeds, but my real estate agent mentioned antique camellias, native azaleas, hydrangeas, viburnum—all residents of my new yard. I’m intent on learning about the different species and studying their care, so they continue to flourish under my watchful eye.
Since much of my acre is grass, I’ll also have to figure out lawncare. I know based on general observation that dandelions, clover, crabgrass, and the like can quickly take over if no evasive measures are taken. I’ve resigned myself to calling in a professional for regular weed and feeds, but there’s one square of yard I plan on weeding myself. Starting today.
I pause beside the twelve-by-twelve square of raised garden beds, six beds total, and pull on a pair of suede gardening gloves that I bought at a little mom-and-pop hardware store. I bought suede because there are some thistles and thorns among the more benign weeds.
While the rest of my yard came well-manicured, this little garden is the opposite. It seems the previous owners had good intentions to grow fresh vegetables and herbs but lacked the follow-through. I could pull the beds out and throw down grass seed, but I’d rather try my hand at growing something wholesome and tasty, maybe tomatoes, basil, garlic, onions—all the makings of a killer pot of spaghetti sauce.
I bought a weeding tool at the mom-and-pop too. It didn’t come with an instruction manual, but I get the gist. Poke the tool near the root and pop out the weed. Easy enough.
I shut my eyes and imagine a simmering pot of spaghetti sauce, garden fresh. Cassie and me in the kitchen together. I’m stirring while she stands next to me in her bathrobe. She holds her hair back as she leans over and sucks in a lungful of aromatic steam.
“I never knew you could cook,” she says.
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me.”
Something like that. I’m not James Bond or a double agent with a dark history or anything. But Cassie and I have been apart for a long time. We have a lot of catching up to do.
All is not lost. Our dinner date didn’t end well, but I have another trick up my sleeve. One last attempt to reconnect with Cassie. If it doesn’t work, I’ll accept reality—that there’s no winning her back—and move on.
I eye the bed closest to me, settling on an overgrown dandelion plant the size of a dinner plate. A sphere of cottony seeds flutters in the morning breeze. I know about those seeds. One puff and you spread them far and wide, hundreds of potential weeds dancing in the wind waiting to be fertilized. The dandelion might be a handsome flower if it weren’t for its bad habit of procreating beyond any reasonable sense.
“Not in my yard, you don’t,” I say to the dandelion like it can hear me. Verdict is still out on whether plants are intelligent. They can divide and conquer. That’s got to count for something.
I plunge my weeding tool into the dirt next to the plant’s base. The soil is soft, thankfully, allowing me to poke around until I hit resistance. I think it’s the root, so I jab a little further and apply some muscle. With a pop, the root lets loose and the soil around the dandelion mounds. I grab the flowering stem, careful not to disturb the seeds, and expose the root.
Yep. Easy enough.
I hunch over another dandelion and do the same.
The first time I cheated on a girl I was fourteen, a wanderer in the hallways of Hamilton Junior and Senior High. My voice had just dropped, and I had no real sense of myself. For some reason, the girls kept chasing me even though I barely showered.
I agreed to be Darcy Cawthrowe’s boyfriend. One of her cute friends came up to me at lunch and asked me if I would. My friends all had girlfriends, so I assumed it was the thing to do.
Darcy and I danced to every slow song at the Valentine’s dance, but she never talked, and I had no idea what to say. As we were dancing, I noticed Tiana. She noticed me back, and we kept stealing glances over the top of Darcy’s head.
A guy with any sense would have broken up with Darcy before making out with Tiana behind the bleachers, but that wasn’t me. I didn’t have sense. I knew you shouldn’t kiss another girl while you were some other girl’s boyfriend, but it didn’t fully compute until Darcy called me (we’d never talked on the phone before this) and laid into me. It was the most I’d heard her speak.
In high school, I made the same mistake again. Twice. The first time resulted in a slap across my face in the middle of a full cafeteria—henceforth known as the LukeRy melee (a bit of an overstatement if you ask me)—and the second time resulted in my phone hitting pavement before being crushed by a tire. I had a fun time explaining that to my mom.
By then I knew when you cheat on a girl, she gets angry. Really angry.
This was no deterrent. I simply learned to be more discreet. In college, I cheated on two more girls without getting caught. To this day, I don’t think any of them know. I’m not in a twelve-step program, but if I was, I’d owe at least four people an apology. More than that. A lot more.
The garden is in shadow but sweat still drips from my brow. I wipe it with my forearm and then dislodge another dandelion. There’s a pile of them behind me, but I’ve barely made a dent. I’ve focused my effort along the borders. If I want to move further in, I need to remove the sticker bushes first, so I can continue weeding without getting stabbed by thorns.
The first prickly weed lets go with a satisfying snap. Unlike the dandelions, which came up roots and all, this one left much of its carrot-sized root in the ground. I poke at the dirt to reveal more of the root, thinking I can grab it and strongarm it out, but instead I just break off another piece.
This weed isn’t playing games. It has a ginormous tap root or it’s a mere sprout off a large, buried tuber. Either way, fully uprooting it will take more digging than I’m willing to do today. So, I move on to the next spikey abomination and stab at the soil.
After college, I gave up on traditional relationships. I’d hang out with the girl for a month, maybe longer, and then I’d ghost them. Then I met Cassie. She was my waitress at the Mudroom, and I was immediately taken by her cute nose, her grin while she was taking my order, her curly brown hair, flawless skin, and the pink flush in her cheeks.
We went to The Oak Steakhouse on Broad Street for our first date. She ordered the most expensive item on the menu, the crispy fried lobster tail in addition to her cheese plate appetizer. I knew something was up when she ordered an eighteen-dollar drink and didn’t take a single sip. She did go through the San Pellegrino though, three bottles of it. I thought she was gonna start squirting water from her nose and ears.
“You’re messing with me, aren’t you?” I said when she had barely touched her lobster.
“Me? How so?” There was cunningness beneath her innocent expression.
“You keep ordering the most expensive things on the menu.”
She looked at me, her dark eyes penetrating. “I’m just a poor waitress trying to make the most of the moment.”
“You’re still offended by my tip?”
Cassie speared a portion of lobster, twirling her fork before wrapping her lips around it. “If I was offended, would I be sitting here?” she said, after tapping her napkin to her lips.
“To milk me out of fifty more bucks, maybe,” I said with a wink.
From there our conversation returned to my promotions business, specifically the local concert I was working on featuring a host of local artists. She stopped short of saying she would go, but she didn’t say no.
Our conversation was pleasant, a rarity for me on dates. She had a dream, a plan, and a vision to achieve it, and as she conveyed them to me, I held onto her sentences like a fish on the line. I wanted to tap dance under the table.
The way she rested her elbows and played with the cross necklace against her chest captivated me. Was that cross just decoration, or did it mean something to her? It was too soon to ask.
As I was signing the check, Cassie asked me how much I planned to tip.
“Eighteen percent,” I said.
“That’s all? She took our order, refilled our drinks, brought our plates and everything.”
When we left, the carriage was waiting for us on Broad Street.
“Seriously?” Cassie said with both eyebrows raised. “If you think I’m sleeping with you tonight, you’re crazy.”
I looked down at the sidewalk. “Of course not.” I couldn’t meet her eyes. “We can cancel this.”
But she’d already climbed aboard. “I may have to stop to use the little girls’ room. I drank a lot of water.” She reached for my hand.
I laughed and pulled my shoulders back. “I’m San Pellegrino-poor thanks to you,” I said, and then grabbed her hand and climbed into the carriage.
We enjoyed the ride shoulder to shoulder, keeping our hands to ourselves the entire way.
Things were great for two years. We took it slow. I went to church with her, helped Granny into the pew, went to Nana’s house for dinner afterward—probably how Cassie is spending today. And then I ruined everything.
“Ow!”
I pull my hand from the thistle I just clutched while trying to wrench it from the ground. Somehow, a thorn penetrated my glove and poked my thumb.
I examine my glove, and sure enough, a thorn managed to thread through the seam. I fan my fingers and regard the gloves, palms-side up.
These things aren’t foolproof.
A bit of sweat trickles down my forehead again. I pull up my T-shirt to wipe my face. I’ve had enough of this heat.
Piles of weeds sit next to the garden beds—one pile of dandelions, another pile of thorns. The plants are already starting to wilt. I’m not sure what to do with them. I’ll figure it out later.
That’s enough weeding for one day.