-21-

Moving Day finally arrived. The van was set to unload that morning, and that very night Virginia (and Anax) would be able to sleep in her own bed in the new house. Steve had promised to stop by in case she needed any help. Amanda told her to text when it was done, and said she would drive by to see the transformed house on her way home from work.

Virginia stuffed the dirty clothes into a plastic bag and the clean ones into her suitcase. She talked to Anax nonstop. “You’ll see,” she said. “You’ll get used to the place in no time.”

She checked again to be sure she was leaving nothing in the bathroom. “One more walk around the park, Anax,” she told the dog, “and then we say goodbye to this part of our life.” Anax always listened carefully to what she said, especially when one of the words was her own name.

She pulled on her MINNESOTA sweatshirt and took the dog across the street. Coming toward her was a couple she had seen frequently. The woman swung her arms vigorously, while her husband trailed behind as if embarrassed to be connected with her. The woman stopped dead when she saw Virginia. “Are you from Minnesota?” she asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Saint Cloud.”

“I went to Macalester. It was the only time I left Colorado. I couldn’t wait to get back.”

“My husband taught at Macalester. Economics.”

“Oh. I didn’t take any Econ. Well, have a nice day.” She started swinging her arms again.

And that was that. One final exchange conveying little or no information to a person she would almost certainly never see again. Virginia felt a pang as she turned her back on the park she and Anax had begun to think of as their own. She forced herself to think of this as an opportunity for advancement. Somewhere in their new, yet to be explored neighborhood they would have to find a new source of non-ideas and worthless chitchat, a place to exchange pleasantries with faceless humans pretending to be demonstrating social cohesiveness while providing a minimum of exercise for their canine companions.

The movers were coming at nine, so she took the dog over at eight and let her roam around the house while she made coffee. Anax had been to the house with her a couple of times already and had had a chance to sniff the yard pretty thoroughly. As soon as the truck got there and the guys needed to leave the door open, Anax would be out in the fenced back yard chasing squirrels. She wondered how long it would take for the squirrels to move house.

There were leaves to rake and, in the back yard, roses to prune. This would be a new experience. There had been a row of well-grown lilac bushes, small trees actually, in their yard in Minnesota, but she had never tried to plant roses. They were rumored to be difficult. The bushes here in the backyard looked as if they had been there since the house was built, some thirty years ago. Virginia, always one to consult sources, had looked up How to Prune Roses, and she had purchased new pruning shears for the occasion. She didn’t have wifi in the house yet, so there was nothing else to do while she waited for the movers. They were supposed to call a few minutes before they arrived. She could stay in the backyard with Anax for a little while. She pulled on a pair of garden gloves and picked up the shears.

The first rose had long, solid branches extending eight to ten feet in every direction. A few of them trailed on the ground. She lopped one off, and as it dropped, its thorns raked across her arm. “Sorry,” she said to the bush. She felt a wave of resentment in return. She paused and spoke soothingly. “It’s for your own good,” she assured it. “You know that. I’m not trying to hurt you.” She reached for another branch, and as she closed her fingers between stickers, a thorn on a nearby branch poked through the cloth garden gloves. “I can see I should have bought leather ones,” she said aloud. “I didn’t realize.” She disengaged her arm and leaned over with the shears, chose a spot carefully and snapped them closed. The branch in her hand dropped away, and she laid it on the ground to dispose of later.

“I’m your friend,” she told the bush. “See?” She grabbed a handful of grass that had invaded the soil at the foot of the rose bush. She yanked, and the clump came free. Again her hand came against a thorn. “What, is the grass your little pal?” she asked. “Are you afraid you’ll be next?” There had never been any angry interaction when she pruned the forsythia in front of her former house after it bloomed in the spring. Of course it didn’t have thorns. “I like roses,” she said. In her mind echoed the follow-up, “Some of them are my best friends.” This one wasn’t, that was obvious. She stood well back and trimmed a few branches without incident, then as she moved toward another one, the bush seemed to jump at her. She stopped to disentangle herself. “Okay, okay,” she said. “I get the message.”

The other rose bush, on the other side of the back steps, appeared to be minding its own business. She had heard plants communicated through their roots, although they certainly had other ways of making themselves understood, as the hostile bush had just demonstrated. Would the first bush transmit its enmity to its mate, or would the other one make up its own mind? She chuckled at the idea that a rose bush had a mind, but she had to admit that it felt as if it did.

Hi there, she thought at the bush. Surely there was no need to speak aloud—the bush itself didn’t. I’m going to trim your branches back so you can start fresh in the spring. It will help you achieve the beauty you deserve. And I’ll try to keep up with the bindweed that’s choking you. She unwound some of the vines clinging to the rose stems. Then she set the shears and clipped one of the thinner branches. There was no wave of antagonism from the plant. It endured her pruning with admirable stoicism. She was really at a loss to understand why the first bush had so much animosity. Maybe the last person who was rude to it looked a lot like me. That was no excuse. She turned in the direction of Bush Number One. “Let’s try to get along,” she admonished it. “Who knows? It could be a long and fruitful relationship. Well, maybe fruitful is not the right word. Flourishing, let’s say.”

What if she were a rose bush, minding her own business, doing her photosynthesis thing, reaching for the sky, and someone came along with no warning and started lopping off her branches? Would she be the passive kind, with a shrug and a “Whatever,” or would she be a prickly one, who gave as good as she got? No doubt about it; those thorns were there for a reason. She felt a lot more sympathy for her erstwhile adversary.

Something stirred in her memory. She remembered herself as a child, watching the family puppy digging at the base of a rose bush her mother had planted. The puppy was enthusiastic, but she knew her mother would be furious. That puppy and that rose bush were far in the past, nearly sixty years ago. But it felt close, as if it were not just yesterday, but right now. Jody, they had called the puppy. Virginia could feel the dog’s presence, her cheerful digging at the base of the bush, her chewing on the leaves and stems, her romping in the yard, a yard Virginia hadn’t seen in well over fifty years. Did that yard still exist? But what a silly question—of course it did! It was right here and now, it was tangibly present; she could see the dog, feel her eight-year-old self merging with the time and place, she knew that every atom of that scene, the sunlight warming them, the rough grass under them, the crunching sound of the dog’s teeth, the scent of the early summer air—all of it was here and now, all of it constituted her world; none of it was lost.



She wasn’t looking at the little girl; she was the little girl. At the same time her mind rebelled. That wasn’t her. This brain had never inhabited that body. It might require only a slight but significant shift in her brain for her to actually be there again. She shivered. Never would she want to be eight years old again. Despite abundant evidence, she found it hard to believe that she had ever been that child. Every single cell must have been replaced by now, or at least enough of them to make this a different body in all but name. How accurate was the memory? She had experienced often enough the tricks her brain played on her. She had been so sure that her cousin Rosalie had been with her that time she drove all the way to Bemidji for a colleague’s wedding, but she resolutely denied ever having met either the bride or the groom. The phone dinged. The movers were on their way.