The Hardiness Zone — press II press

Adrienne Ross Scanlan

You were with girlfriends at The Octopus & The Mermaid. You waved at the bartender to get another pitcher of beer, saw me and said, you look just like my last lover, but as if he had grown up. I looked up from my whiskey and saw a woman tall as a man, wild red curls, a nice curve to small breasts, skintight black jeans. You smiled and asked for a drink. You wanted gin, and not the good stuff. You talked, and I talked, and we talked until your girlfriends ran out of beer and wondered where the hell you were and where was the beer you were sent to get. You told them to get their own beer. You didn’t tell me you were an international development consultant who traveled the world and never wanted to stop. You figured I’d find that out later.

I told you I had two names, and that made me sound a little dangerous, which you liked, but it was simple, really. One mother gave birth, waited three days, wrote down a name, signed the papers, kissed me goodbye. The other mother named me after two saints. I was sent away to a private elementary school, private junior high school, private high school. I ran races. I ran so hard and fast I won medals, and ran straight into the Army and special ops training, and read Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, and I did what I had to do in places I’d never heard of before I deployed there, and took my discharge and ran straight for my veterans educational benefits. I ran the rounds of the city’s high techs and start-ups. I ran to catch the Metro back and forth from my apartment, and I’d sit shoulder to shoulder with strangers and think I’m not alone, I’ve got brothers and sisters, maybe a father, some people somewhere. I didn’t tell you that. I figured you’d find that out later.

We knew that night, so what was the point in dating for weeks and months and years? We did that anyway until my being fired and your being hired aligned, and our schedules opened, and our passports renewed, and we moved to Tel Aviv. We wanted a modern city that wasn’t too far from the countries where you worked but far enough away from the wars where I’d fought. You trained women in leadership and organizational change. I trained start-ups in strategic operations and data management. We had stints in Deli. We hauled travel packs out of rusty taxis and heard our boots thudding on the white floors of airports when we staggered off the red eye. Cairo. You brought photos of your sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts. Muscat. I brought my unfinished memoir. Manila. You bought red and gold carpets in Damascus. I bought a tailored black silk suit in Astana. We went to parties where the local beers were foreign and got drunk in languages we didn’t know. We made friends with other ex-pats, even ones we didn’t like. We learned where we’d always be Americans. We had friends and rented flats and new friends and new sublets.

I want to go home, I said. Where’s that, you asked. I Googled Earth. I found a town near the Cascade Mountains bordered by a bay to the west and a national park to the north. Some place I’ve never been, you said. You cashed out your 401K. I took my meager inheritance. We bought an old farmhouse with bay windows, a brick fireplace, an orchard alongside a red barn, and a note taped to the fridge giving the hardiness zone, so we’d know what we could plant that would survive cold days and long nights, and what wouldn’t. We unpacked sci fi novels and biographies we hadn’t read in a decade, wool blankets woven with cold and frayed with moth holes, that marble chess set I thought was gone forever, your old Pentax. You still left on assignments, and I still went with you, but that one time, you were in Doha before I could join you, and we didn’t talk about what happened. I knew from the quiet. We came back home.

I said I want a son, a daughter, a family that’s blood and bone and genes. You said, I have three brothers, half a dozen nieces and nephews, you’re all the family I need. I found a fertility doctor. You took the hormones and had black and blue marks on your thighs and butt from the two-inch needles. We failed. I said, you tried, at least it wasn’t a chance I never took, thank you. You were relieved, but you never said so. I drove you to the hospital the next summer after we’d tried again. You had a miscarriage. I tried to sleep next to you on the hospital bed, but it was too narrow, so I unrolled my sleeping bag on the floor and slept there until the night nurse tripped over me.

We came home. We took what was supposed to be our kid’s room and put in two desks, two ergonomic chairs, two computers, two printers, and knocked two windows into the west wall to see the snow geese gathering each winter out on the bay. You started an online coaching business for women. I became a marketing consultant, attacking through statistics and spreadsheets, campaigning for sneakers, toothpaste, apps, uploads. We still had martinis at seven pm. You bought me parrots and turtles, creatures that would be with us for a long while. I learned to see salal, salmonberry, all those other plants that were once a seed carried on the wind or dropped in critter shit, only to end up here and making the best of it. We went for walks to Box Waterfall and Alder Creek, learned the neighbors across the road were the McGartys. You swore off the Johnsons who didn’t know the world was larger than their sorghum field. I learned to see serviceberry and white shooting star and snowberry, but no matter where I looked, there were so many trees and flowers and bushes I’ll never know enough names to know this place.

You joined the volunteer fire department. I looked for my birth mother, thought it over, and stopped. You took up skiing and alpine rescue. I became a Big Brother to Leo, who liked car camping and chess and needed someone to talk to his teachers. You started a Facebook group for women travelers. I found my travel journals in a cardboard box marked #6 / Important! You made me a turkey sandwich on whole wheat, while I hunched in the back of the closet amid mismatched socks and t-shirts that had fallen into the dust, and I ate and read and wondered if somewhere, I had left behind a child I didn’t know.

We pulled on fleece jackets and mittens some nights and set up the spotting scope and hauled out onto the garden daybed. We looked into the small lens and searched the endless black for Venus, stars and shooting stars, comets and constellations. You said, we’re so small, what do our lives matter when it’s so vast out there. I held your hand and said, yeah, we’re all alone together. You’d read on other nights, or surf Facebook to find friends left behind from travels years ago, and those nights I walked alone under Douglas firs so high it’s hard to see the stars, so wide I can’t touch my hands around the trunks, trees that were young when the grandparents I’ll never know hadn’t been born. I heard owl hoots, coyote howls, my footfalls, a rustle in the bushes, and I’d think of my tour of duty and the men I killed in faraway places. I imagined a love of British mysteries, a church Sunday with parents and children and grandparents, a confession, a trust in grace, salvation. I thought about those men when I opened the door and came home.

I’m still here. I close the door. I pause in the stone-walled anteroom, breathe on my hands to get the blood flowing, yank off muddy boots and jeans and fleece sweater. I walk down a dark hall and slip into bed and nuzzle your shoulder, and you wake up, and I bury myself deep inside you. I come back into life just as you fall back asleep. I rest my head against your breasts, still here in my small life that feels enormous, that fills my remaining days. In the cold air are the ghosts of men I killed, the ghosts of children I won’t have, Leo who left for college and the rest of his life, the sweet scent of the love I do have, my love for you, it’s all I have, this life. I trust it. I have to.