looked completely blank, because Ivory tapped her fingers on the counter like an imaginary keyboard. “Ivories…the name for the keys on the piano. Get it?”
Note to Mom: Thank you for not naming me after any musical instrument. Imagine going through life called Oboe or Cello. Or worse, Tuba.
“How’d you get your name?” Ivory asked, propping her feet up on the counter and tilting her head back to peer at me from underneath the zebra.
I told her my mom wanted a name that didn’t rhyme with anything. Of course, then Ivory had to go through all of the words that rhymed with Josh. “What about posh, gosh, wash”—she counted them on her fingers—“slosh, hogwash…”
Ignoring my unamused look, Ivory continued rambling on, smoothly slipping in another one of her relationship questions after she had run out of words that rhymed with Josh. “So do you remember anything from when your parents got divorced?” she asked me while unwrapping a piece of gum.
I don’t know what made me tell her about the plants, since I hardly ever talked about my parents’ divorce with people. Mom and Dad had split up when I was five, so it was hard to remember much about it anyway. But for some reason, I started explaining to Ivory how, after the divorce, my mom had decided to move back to Boston, where she was from. All of our stuff was packed inside a big moving truck. Everything except for the plants, that is.
My mom is a big plant lover—ferns, ivy, tropical plants, that kind of thing—and she decided it would be safer to keep her plants in the backseat of our car rather than the moving truck. “I guess that’s when I finally realized that something was seriously wrong—that we were not coming back,” I said to Ivory.
I could still remember crying and blubbering over and over, “Why are we taking the plants?” as we drove away from my dad’s house one January afternoon with the snow falling around our car like a sad divorce snow globe. Never mind that we were following a big truck with half the house packed inside. It was the stupid plants that bothered me. In my mind, I could still picture those plants filling the entire left side of the car like man-eating Amazon jungle vines:
Josh Greenwood and the Attack of the Divorced Houseplants.
According to my mom, I threw such a fit about the plants that she finally stopped at a service plaza in Ohio and left the pots sitting on the curb. She often jokes about going back to look for them.
“So that’s about all I remember about my parents’ divorce—the plants,” I finished quickly, embarrassed at how much I’d said. “I was only five.”
Ivory nodded. “I can totally see that.” The situation with her dad was different, she explained, because her parents split up when she was a baby and her dad was “out of the picture,” in her words. She waved her hand. “No problem, his loss.”
The entire time we talked, nobody came into the store. By lunchtime, the jangling doorbells still hadn’t made a peep, and I had listened to enough
Phantom of the Opera
on the store speakers to last for about ten lifetimes. When I mentioned how few customers we’d had (like zero), Ivory threw an irritated look in my direction. “It’s just a slow time of day. People sleep in on Saturday mornings. What do you expect?”
We did have two customers after lunch. A mom and her screechy-voiced daughter came inside to dig through the hat bathtub. By the time they were finished, it looked like an explosion in the window display. But Ivory convinced them to buy four hats before they left. “It’s our Saturday afternoon shoppers’ special,” she said, turning on the charm. “Buy three and you get one free.”
Those hats would end up being our only sales for the day: a grand total of $22.91. Ivory claimed that sales usually picked up in a week or so, once October arrived and people started looking for Halloween costumes.
“Let’s see what the zodiac book says business will be
Note to Mom: Thank you for not naming me after any musical instrument. Imagine going through life called Oboe or Cello. Or worse, Tuba.
“How’d you get your name?” Ivory asked, propping her feet up on the counter and tilting her head back to peer at me from underneath the zebra.
I told her my mom wanted a name that didn’t rhyme with anything. Of course, then Ivory had to go through all of the words that rhymed with Josh. “What about posh, gosh, wash”—she counted them on her fingers—“slosh, hogwash…”
Ignoring my unamused look, Ivory continued rambling on, smoothly slipping in another one of her relationship questions after she had run out of words that rhymed with Josh. “So do you remember anything from when your parents got divorced?” she asked me while unwrapping a piece of gum.
I don’t know what made me tell her about the plants, since I hardly ever talked about my parents’ divorce with people. Mom and Dad had split up when I was five, so it was hard to remember much about it anyway. But for some reason, I started explaining to Ivory how, after the divorce, my mom had decided to move back to Boston, where she was from. All of our stuff was packed inside a big moving truck. Everything except for the plants, that is.
My mom is a big plant lover—ferns, ivy, tropical plants, that kind of thing—and she decided it would be safer to keep her plants in the backseat of our car rather than the moving truck. “I guess that’s when I finally realized that something was seriously wrong—that we were not coming back,” I said to Ivory.
I could still remember crying and blubbering over and over, “Why are we taking the plants?” as we drove away from my dad’s house one January afternoon with the snow falling around our car like a sad divorce snow globe. Never mind that we were following a big truck with half the house packed inside. It was the stupid plants that bothered me. In my mind, I could still picture those plants filling the entire left side of the car like man-eating Amazon jungle vines:
Josh Greenwood and the Attack of the Divorced Houseplants.
According to my mom, I threw such a fit about the plants that she finally stopped at a service plaza in Ohio and left the pots sitting on the curb. She often jokes about going back to look for them.
“So that’s about all I remember about my parents’ divorce—the plants,” I finished quickly, embarrassed at how much I’d said. “I was only five.”
Ivory nodded. “I can totally see that.” The situation with her dad was different, she explained, because her parents split up when she was a baby and her dad was “out of the picture,” in her words. She waved her hand. “No problem, his loss.”
The entire time we talked, nobody came into the store. By lunchtime, the jangling doorbells still hadn’t made a peep, and I had listened to enough
Phantom of the Opera
on the store speakers to last for about ten lifetimes. When I mentioned how few customers we’d had (like zero), Ivory threw an irritated look in my direction. “It’s just a slow time of day. People sleep in on Saturday mornings. What do you expect?”
We did have two customers after lunch. A mom and her screechy-voiced daughter came inside to dig through the hat bathtub. By the time they were finished, it looked like an explosion in the window display. But Ivory convinced them to buy four hats before they left. “It’s our Saturday afternoon shoppers’ special,” she said, turning on the charm. “Buy three and you get one free.”
Those hats would end up being our only sales for the day: a grand total of $22.91. Ivory claimed that sales usually picked up in a week or so, once October arrived and people started looking for Halloween costumes.
“Let’s see what the zodiac book says business will be
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