***Named one of "the 7 best books from indie publishers right now" in 2017 by PBS
From the author of House Arrest and On Hurricane Island comes a thrilling new activist novel that begs the question, “How far is too far?”
He was nine when the vines first wrapped themselves around him and burrowed into his skin. Now a college botany major, Jeremy is desperately looking for a way to listen to the plants and stave off their extinction. But when the grip of the vines becomes too intense and Health Services starts asking questions, he flees to Brooklyn, where fate puts him face to face with a group of climate-justice activists who assure him they have a plan to save the planet, and his plants. As the group readies itself to make a big Earth Day splash, Jeremy soon realizes these eco-terrorists’ devotion to activism might have him—and those closest to him—tangled up in more trouble than he was prepared to face. With the help of a determined, differently abled flame from his childhood, Zoe; her deteriorating, once–rabble-rousing grandmother; and some shocking and illuminating revelations from the past, Jeremy must weigh completing his mission to save the plants against protecting the ones he loves, and confront the most critical question of all: how do you stay true to the people you care about while trying to change the world?
***Named one of "the 7 best books from indie publishers right now" in 2017 by PBS
From the author of House Arrest and On Hurricane Island comes a thrilling new activist novel that begs the question, “How far is too far?”
He was nine when the vines first wrapped themselves around him and burrowed into his skin. Now a college botany major, Jeremy is desperately looking for a way to listen to the plants and stave off their extinction. But when the grip of the vines becomes too intense and Health Services starts asking questions, he flees to Brooklyn, where fate puts him face to face with a group of climate-justice activists who assure him they have a plan to save the planet, and his plants. As the group readies itself to make a big Earth Day splash, Jeremy soon realizes these eco-terrorists’ devotion to activism might have him—and those closest to him—tangled up in more trouble than he was prepared to face. With the help of a determined, differently abled flame from his childhood, Zoe; her deteriorating, once–rabble-rousing grandmother; and some shocking and illuminating revelations from the past, Jeremy must weigh completing his mission to save the plants against protecting the ones he loves, and confront the most critical question of all: how do you stay true to the people you care about while trying to change the world?
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Overview
***Named one of "the 7 best books from indie publishers right now" in 2017 by PBS
From the author of House Arrest and On Hurricane Island comes a thrilling new activist novel that begs the question, “How far is too far?”
He was nine when the vines first wrapped themselves around him and burrowed into his skin. Now a college botany major, Jeremy is desperately looking for a way to listen to the plants and stave off their extinction. But when the grip of the vines becomes too intense and Health Services starts asking questions, he flees to Brooklyn, where fate puts him face to face with a group of climate-justice activists who assure him they have a plan to save the planet, and his plants. As the group readies itself to make a big Earth Day splash, Jeremy soon realizes these eco-terrorists’ devotion to activism might have him—and those closest to him—tangled up in more trouble than he was prepared to face. With the help of a determined, differently abled flame from his childhood, Zoe; her deteriorating, once–rabble-rousing grandmother; and some shocking and illuminating revelations from the past, Jeremy must weigh completing his mission to save the plants against protecting the ones he loves, and confront the most critical question of all: how do you stay true to the people you care about while trying to change the world?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781597093811 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Hen Press |
| Publication date: | 04/04/2017 |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Ellen Meeropol is the author of two previous novels, House Arrest and On Hurricane Island , as well as Carry it Forward , a dramatic program about the Rosenberg Fund for Children. A former nurse practitioner and part-time bookseller, Ellen is fascinated by characters balanced on the fault lines between political turmoil and human connection. Her short fiction and essay publications include Bridges, DoveTales, Pedestal, Rumpus, Portland Magazine and The Writers Chronicle .Ellen is a founding member of Straw Dog Writers Guild and lives in western Massachusetts.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
The first time Jeremy saw the plants go crazy was at the cat’s funeral, held in the family greenhouse crowded with teas and herbs and medicine-plants growing in pots and flats, their vines spiraling up wooden stakes against the walls. The air was earthy and moist and candles—dozens of them, hundreds maybe—shimmered and the plants danced in the flickering.
Sure, it was weird to have a funeral for a cat, even a cat named after a deity, but Jeremy understood there were many strange things about his family. Like that someone killed Bast and left his body in a carton on the front porch because some people didn’t like cults and thought his family was one. Like that there were a bunch of adults and kids in the Pioneer Street house but they weren’t organized into families like in library books. He knew that Tim was his twin brother and Francie was his mother and Tian was his dad, but his parents had other kids with other grown-ups and it rarely seemed to matter much who went with who.
What mattered was that things weren’t going well for his family.
Even at nine, Jeremy realized that they were mourning more than Bast. The candles and chants were also for his little brother and sister who froze to death the year before in Forest Park. That was another thing about his family: they didn’t believe in dwelling on unhappy things. That—and because the small bodies weren’t found until summertime and then the cops put his father and Murphy in jail and Pippa had to wear an ankle monitor that didn’t let her leave the house—meant that Abby and Terrance never got a proper funeral all their own. So the family members who still lived on Pioneer Street gathered in the greenhouse. They sat on cushions in a circle on the floor, chanting and singing for Bast and their lost babies.
Jeremy leaned back against the leg of the potting table and stared at the candles and the plants. He loved how the leaves in their many perfect shapes and shades of green quivered in the light of the dancing flames. Then the leaves were moving too, undulating and twisting in time to the chanting and the music.
Jeremy poked his twin brother’s shoulder and pointed at the dancing vines. Tim shook his head and swatted Jeremy’s hand away. Recently Tim had been extra mean. He didn’t want to be a twin any more, he said, and he wouldn’t talk about it. He refused the identical clothes Francie brought home. Jeremy loved the tangible connections to Tim, so he wore undershirts or socks that matched Tim’s, items that didn’t show.
No way would Tim want to talk about plants that moved impossibly all on their own.
Jeremy watched the plants swing and sway and spin for several minutes before the next thing happened. When the stems and branches and leaves reached out to him, he was halfway expecting it. Green vines circled his arms and slid under his shirt and skimmed along his back. Soft stems tickled his neck with their delicate suckers. He thought he heard a broad, red-veined leaf whisper in his ear. “We have names,” it sounded like, but he knew plants couldn’t talk. Soon they were burrowing under his skin and inside his body and as he patted the cardboard box with Bast buried in it, his hands left fern-prints in the moist dirt.
Jeremy was surprised but not afraid. The plants felt familiar, comforting even, and they connected him to all the plants and animals growing on the earth, then and forever, and he liked it. He thought maybe he’d like to learn their names, for when the plants visited again.
They didn’t return for eleven years.
***
Eleven years later, Jeremy carried the news clipping about his father’s release tucked in his wallet between his UMass student ID and a creased photo of his little brother and sister. The article was three weeks old, from the Springfield newspaper’s Friends and Neighbors section, which was pretty ironic since their neighbors said a loud chorus of good riddance when Tian Williams was sentenced to prison.
Nobody on campus asked Jeremy if he was related to the Francine Beaujolais mentioned in the article. Few people knew his last name and they were unlikely to connect the quasi-nerdy botany major with an ex-convict cult leader. Tian was released just before February break and Jeremy spent a few days in his parents’ apartment. His father was so different and his presence after ten years so unreal that Jeremy checked the article at least once a day for confirmation.
Like tonight, walking across campus to the radio station in the middle of the night. He tried to picture his parents in their apartment twenty-seven miles to the south, but no images came. He paused in the well-lit protection of a campus bus stop to unfold the fragile folds of newsprint, and read the short paragraph yet again.
After serving almost ten years at the State Correctional Institution at Cedar Junction, city resident Sebastian Williams was released on parole. Williams was convicted in June 2005 of multiple charges, including criminal negligence in the deaths of his daughter and a male child associated with a cult located on Pioneer Street in the Forest Park neighborhood. Neither Williams nor his common law wife Francine Beaujolais was available for comment.
Even with the stop, Jeremy was right on time for his program and the DJ on the board was running predictably late. He glared at her through the glass and pointed at the wall clock; she held up her index finger, signaling him to chill. Sure, it was only a college radio station in the middle of the night—probably six students listening out there and five of them sucking on a hookah—but even so, people should take pride in their work and stick to the schedule.
Why should he care so much? His radio show started as a six-week community education project about endangered species for his fall semester biodiversity class. He aced the course, but when it ended he didn’t want to stop. The station manager said no one else wanted that time slot, so he trekked to the dingy studio at the edge of campus at 2:00 a.m. every Wednesday morning to broadcast a half hour of lament into the empty winter sky.
The DJ finally finished. Jeremy sat at the control board, switched on the mic, and started the Missa Luba CD. Each week he chose different music to play softly in the background, ranging from Erik Satie to Billy Bragg. His dad had played Missa Luba a lot when he and Tim were little, before their family fell apart. The combination of joy and despair in the Congolese rhythms matched his mood these days.
He took a deep breath and launched into his introductory remarks.
“You’re listening to Plants in Peril,” he began. “There are three stages of peril: Threatened means that the species is vulnerable, declining in numbers. Endangered means that the numbers are critically low, and if nothing is done, the species will soon be extinct. Extinct species . . .” He paused to swallow, to soothe the sharp ache in his throat. “Extinct species have completely disappeared from the earth, with no hope of recovery.”
Each week he varied the approach, listing plants alphabetically or by continent, by when they were last observed in nature, occasionally showcasing a favorite Order or Family. Tonight was special; he had researched background details about the extinct instead of just a list of names to read.
Jeremy knew the show was peculiar even before his brother visited and listened to a broadcast, stretched out half-asleep on the sagging studio sofa. “That was truly weird,” Tim said as they walked back to the dorm. “Why would anyone listen to you read the names of plants they’ve never heard of and will never see?”
“That’s the point,” Jeremy said. “If I don’t say their names, no one will remember them.”
“That’s creepy,” Tim said.
Jeremy shrugged. I don’t want them to die alone, he thought but didn’t say.
“You’re pathetic,” Tim added. That was a brother for you and besides, Tim was a business major, so you couldn’t expect him to care about the universe of vanishing vegetable matter.
“ Begonia eiromischa ,” Jeremy continued, “was discovered in 1886 in Palau. But its forest habitat was cleared for agricultural cultivation and no sightings have been reported in over a century.”
Even after six months, he was amazed by the way his voice was transformed by its journey from microphone to soundboard, altered by radio waves and electronics and headphones, and returned to his ears exposed and new. The first week of the program he had been astonished to hear alien emotions threaded through his words—sentiments that he hadn’t known he felt and barely recognized. Now he listened to discover his feelings and in the past three weeks, since his father’s release, he heard his voice sounded poised at the edge of tears.
Tonight, the tears threatened to spill over.
“Bigleaf scurfpea, or Orbexilum macrophyllum , was formerly found in Indiana and Kentucky.” He savored how the Latin names balanced on his tongue, draped across his teeth, and fell from his lips. He didn’t speak the language, but he was fluent in its elegies.
“Next we have Thismia americana from Illinois. Last seen in 1916 and declared extinct in 1995.” He felt a particular kinship with this plant and his voice thickened with sorrow. Thismia was declared extinct the year he and Tim were born, delivered by midwife into a greenhouse filled with his family and growing plants. He grew up playing in the foliage, digging in the soil while the women of the family watered and harvested the plants and dried the leaves for tea. His drawings of spearmint and raspberry leaves, of Camellia sinensis sinensis and Camellia sinensis assamica , had decorated the walls of their house and of the nearby Tea Room. Studying the plants came much later, a concession to his mother’s demand for a major that could lead to a job.
“ Vanvoorstia bennettiana , a.k.a. Bennett’s Seaweed.” He paused to blow his nose on the bandanna stuffed in his jeans pocket. “First collected in 1855 in Sydney Harbor, Australia. Declared extinct in 2003 due to habitat loss secondary to trawling. Dredging. Infrastructure development.” His voice rose with each assault of civilization and broke on the last word. “Settlement. Tourism. Recreation. Fisheries. Agriculture. Sewage.”
He rummaged through the sketchbooks in his backpack. Somewhere he had a pen and ink drawing of Bennett’s, one of the first assignments in his Botanical Drawing course. He could picture the algae: rusty reddish and lacy, the deep veins so heartbreakingly delicate, so vulnerable. The Kyrie ended and the on-air silence surprised him. He quickly located the dog-eared page in the IUCN Red List and read aloud from their comments on the vanquished Vanvoorstia : “There is no reasonable doubt that the last individual of this species has died.”
He couldn’t help how his voice turned the last word into a keening. Or how the wail in his mouth vibrated with the vines that sprouted without warning from the control board, from his backpack, from the stack of CDs on the table, from his own fingertips. The vines weren’t real—he knew that—they couldn’t really be Vanvoorstia bennettiana or Rafflesia borneensis —but they were perfectly accurate and they looked real. They felt real too, as they curled around his wrists, tucked shiny leaves into the crook of his elbows, pushed small sucker mouths into the skin of his upper arms. One thick shoot sprouting lacy algae leaves slithered up his arms and looped twice around his neck, snug but not tight.
The studio door opened a few inches, startling Jeremy. His time couldn’t be up already. The manager was rarely in the studio this late, but there she was, hair sticking out as if she’d been rousted out of bed. Did she sleep at the station? She spread her arms in a what’s-going-on gesture. Jeremy smiled and gave her a thumbs up, it’s-all-right response before returning to his notebooks. Somewhere he had an image of the Saint Helena Olive flower—miniature white trumpets with fuchsia gullets—that he drew from a photograph of the precious last living specimen. There it was!
“Nesiota elliptica was a small tree endemic to the island of Saint Helena in the southern Atlantic.” His voice deepened and his words became a requiem. “Threatened by timbering, plantation development, and the introduction of goats into their habitat, the last wild specimen died in 1994. A few cuttings survived in cultivation.”
The ruby-throated white trumpets budded and their annihilated blossoms flowered from the bones of his knuckles. He cleared his throat and pushed the words through, one by one. “Despite extensive efforts to rejuvenate the species, the last surviving St. Helena Olive seedling succumbed to a fungal infection in December 2003 and the St. Helena Olive Tree was declared extinct.”
The door opened again and this time a security guard followed the station manager into the studio. The manager’s face and her wrap-it-up gesture left no room for discussion: the program was over. He stumbled over the station identification, then punched in the underwriting message and two PSAs before switching off the mic.
Exhaustion and something else—relief maybe, mixed with sorrow—flooded over him. He stood and rubbed his eyes with both hands, surprised to find his cheeks wet. The station manager took the headset.
“That’s enough for tonight,” she said, her voice kind. “This program is over.”
“Were you listening?” he asked.
“No.” She took his seat at the control board. “The night shift security guard at the University Ave post called me. He was worried about you.”
Jeremy glanced at the guard. It was strange, given the circumstances, but he was pleased that someone listened, even if the guard was only moved to rat him out.
The security guard gripped Jeremy’s upper arm and led him outside. “Sorry, man,” the guard said, “but your roll call of extinction was majorly scary.”
“It’s okay.” Jeremy tried to twist away. “I’m fine now.”
“Sure. But I’m taking you over to Health Services. They’ll check you out.”
“Not necessary. I’m fine.” And he was. The vines were gone, and the tiny white trumpet flowers.
The security guard looked dubious.
“Really,” Jeremy said, giving the guard his best smile and a fist bump. “I’m cool.”
The guard tightened his grip on Jeremy’s arm. “Okay, you’re cool, but you’re still going to Health Services. We got liability, you know?”
***
The nurse practitioner had hoped to devote the last three hours of her shift to her backlog of paperwork. Shaking off fatigue, she waved the guard out of the exam room and hesitated in the doorway. Wondering how her new patient came to have café con leche skin with such blond curls, she smiled and introduced herself as Patty.
Jeremy liked that she used her first name, and that she didn’t wear a white coat, just a mustard-colored sweater the exact shade of a cat his family had when he was little. He liked that they sat next to each other on chairs instead of him perching on the crinkly paper on the exam table. She asked questions, her voice all silk-spoken and cushioned with concern like his mom’s, before everything went sour. Patty was about his mom’s age too, and just as pretty.
“Why am I here?” he asked.
“Because people are concerned. Something happened during your radio program?”
He was too surprised to answer. Could other people see the vines too?
“Your program? It’s about plants?”
“All these species are disappearing and people don’t seem to care.” Jeremy shrugged. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“You’re a biology major?”
“Botany. Plants and flowers. Trees, too. They’re so intricate when you really look at them. Amazing and so perfectly designed—whorls and ferns, branching and spirals—expressing Fibonacci numbers.” His voice trailed into silence as he recognized the blank look on the nurse practitioner’s face. Didn’t medical people study science?
“How do you hope people will feel when they listen to your program?”
Jeremy snorted. “I doubt if anyone listens, unless it’s just background noise to studying or getting laid. Nobody gives a hoot about the plants and that really bothers me.”
“What would you like your radio program to accomplish?”
“I don’t know exactly. The security guy called it a roll call of extinction and I like that. I want people to acknowledge what’s happening and to feel something.”
“What do you feel?”
“Sad,” he said. “Respectful. See, it’s like a vigil, a deathbed.”
“Can you tell me what happened tonight?”
No way. They’d never let him out. “It’s hard to explain. I felt incredibly connected to the extinct plants I was describing. That’s all. It’s no big deal. I just got carried away.”
“Has anything like this happened before?”
He shook his head. Not for many years, anyway, and that was none of her business.
“You seem to care very deeply. I’m wondering if you use alcohol or other substances to help you handle your feelings.”
“Nah. A beer every once in a while. For fun, not to handle anything.”
“Anything else you’d like to tell me?”
She wasn’t so bad and for a split-second he wanted to describe the vines, how they’d wrapped around him, hugged him so close, burrowed into him. Nope, not a good idea. Then she’d really think he was pathetic, or nuts. Was he nuts?
“Nothing else,” he said.
She paused, then asked softly. “Do you feel sad enough, angry enough, to hurt yourself?”
“It’s not like that. I don’t think so, anyway.” It was his turn to hesitate. Sometimes he pictured molecules from all the dead plants of the planet circulating through his arteries and veins, red blood cells mirroring the whorls and spirals of once-vital blooms. He imagined himself hemorrhaging their extinctions.
“Do you sometimes think about hurting yourself?” she asked again.
He didn’t have to. The dead plants were exsanguinating him.
“No,” he said. “What I think about is how do you stand it when you care about something so much and you can’t make it better. I mean, what do you do?”
“What would you like to do?”
“Wave a magic wand and make it better.” He grinned. “That’s crazy, isn’t it?”
She smiled too. “Not crazy. Wouldn’t it be great if we could do that? But we can’t, and this seems to make you very unhappy. I’m wondering how I can help you.”
“I don’t need help. I’m fine. Just let me go home and I promise, no more radio program.”
“Fair enough. How about we call your roommate, so you’re not alone tonight?”
“I have a single.” He twirled a long strand of curl around his finger. He needed a haircut, one of the many things he’d let slide this semester.
“What about your parents?”
Right, Jeremy thought. Calling Francie and Tian at 2:00 a.m. would make a bewildering situation so much worse. His mom would be at work, in the middle of her night shift on the medical center switchboard. His dad would be wandering the four-room flat, snapping rubber bands against his wrist and unable to fall asleep until Francie got home. No way Tian would be able to keep his cool with Health Services, with any bureaucracy.
So he lied. “They live in Springfield, but I can’t reach them. They’re in Europe.”
“I’d feel better knowing you’re with a family member. Grandparent? Brother or sister?”
He shook his head.
“How about a girlfriend, a buddy?”
There was no one. Not even a cat. He was pathetic. Especially when you think what a big and glorious family he had before his dad went to prison and their commune fell apart.
“There’s my twin brother,” he said. “But he lives four hours away.”
He and Tim Skyped every Sunday. Jeremy always felt better watching the image of Tim’s dumbo ears sticking out from the tight blond curls they both inherited from their parents’ racial mix, except that Tim was a business major and cut his hair so short the curls were irrelevant. The warm twin feeling rarely lasted through the week. Besides, Tim had moved to Brooklyn to get away from them all. The thought of Patty calling his brother made Jeremy’s chest feel squirrelly with shame. Tim already thought he was a loser.
“Do I have your permission to talk to your brother?” she asked. “I don’t think you should be alone right now. And I think you could benefit from talking to someone, a counselor. Perhaps even some medication. May I give you a referral?”
Jeremy stood up. “No, no, and no,” he said. “Thanks for everything, but I’m fine. I just want to go back to my dorm. I have a lot of stuff to do.”
“What is more important than taking care of yourself?” Patty asked.
“Our planet is dying, a holocaust of plant species. Isn’t that pretty important?”
Patty nodded. “Yes, it is. But right now, I think that your mental health has to take priority over politics.”
“You don’t get it,” Jeremy said. “This isn’t political. I’m just sad about the plants.”
“I think I understand how strongly you feel about the plants and I’m concerned that you’re so upset tonight. I’d really like to contact your brother.” She handed him a clipboard with a release form, and then a business card. “You can call me any time, if you need to talk.”
Jeremy sighed. “Okay, okay. Call Tim. But he won’t be able to come. And it’s no big deal. I just get upset sometimes.”
Patty was quiet for a few seconds, then spoke in a soft voice. “Is that why you’re crying?”
Jeremy touched his cheek and looked at the glistening wet on his finger.
***
When the phone rang, Tim was dreaming about the long-necked girl who sat in front of him in macroeconomics class. The phone display read 3:13 a.m., which meant it had to be bad news. Probably about his dad, whose transition from prison to home had been rough. His mom was chronically stressed trying to buy food and pay rent and two college tuitions and now deal with Tian too.
“Is this Timothy Beaujolais?” asked a woman’s voice.
“Yeah. Who’re you? What’s wrong?”
“My name is Patty Longwood. I’m a nurse practitioner at Health Services at UMass. Your brother Jeremy was brought in this evening. He’s emotionally distraught and I don’t think he should be alone.”
“Distraught? What’s wrong with him?”
“He became agitated during a radio broadcast.”
“The dead plants thing, right? Jeremy is totally obsessed with that shit.”
“Yes, he’s talking about extinct plants, but I wonder if there are other issues. He’s vague about whether or not he might hurt himself.” She paused. “Jeremy says your parents are out of the country and you’re his only other relative.”
Out of the country? Their parents might be out of touch, but as far as Tim knew they were in their second floor apartment on Sumner Avenue. Francie was likely at work, but he doubted that Tian had left the apartment in three weeks except to check in with his parole officer.
And no way was Jeremy suicidal. A little too sensitive, that’s what their mom always said. Jeremy was two minutes older but Tim was the practical one. Jeremy’s problem was that stupid radio program. One night when Tim was home for winter break, Jeremy dragged him down to the station. Reading those long Latin names, Jeremy acted like he was transported to a scene of carnage someplace far away, like Rwanda or Syria or Tiananmen Square.
“So, can you come get him?” the nurse practitioner asked. “He shouldn’t be alone.”
“You mean tonight? I’m in Brooklyn. I have classes tomorrow,” Tim said. “There’s no train until morning.”
The nurse practitioner’s sigh slid into silence. Tim tried to banish the mental image of Jeremy in the locked ward of some hospital, medicated up the wazoo, rocking back and forth and wondering why Tim broke their pledge.
They made the pledge the summer they were ten, the first time Francie took them to visit their dad in prison. Sitting in the family visiting room, Tian had been so remote he could have been carved of ebony, and tears wandered down Francie’s cheeks to darken her T-shirt. The twins sat close together at the scarred visiting room table, whispering about X-Men characters until Francie told them to cut it out, didn’t they want to talk with their dad?
By then, most members of the commune had deserted the big house on Pioneer Street. In the back seat of the old van driving home to Springfield from the prison, Jeremy and he promised each other that no matter how weird their parents were, no matter what the other adults in the commune did, the two of them would always be strong for each other. No matter what.
“Okay,” he told the nurse practitioner. “I’ll catch the morning train.”