“I’m considering throwing myself in this lake in the hopes I’ll get bitten by a piranha and will have to spend a few days in the hospital.”
“You know there are no piranhas in Lost Lake, right?”
“What about sharks?”
“It’s going to be fine,” Erick said as he turned the boat to steer it away from a submerged tree. “It’ll be over before you know it. They’ll show up, you’ll introduce me to everyone, we’ll stick close to each other, we’ll eat, we’ll have a couple glasses of wine, we’ll have dessert and then we’ll do that thing where we serve coffee so people know it’s time for them to leave. Then poof—” He blew on his fingers. “They’ll be gone.”
“That’s why people serve coffee at parties? To get their guests to leave?”
Erick nodded. “Best trick in the book. It’s a subtle way of saying, ‘Wake up and go away, please.’”
“Coffee. Good idea.”
“What is it you’re so worried about? What do you think’s going to happen?”
Clover shrugged and shook her head.
“I think they’re going
to be mean to you.”
Erick burst into laughter, and the sound bounced off the water and echoed into the trees.
“Mean to me? You’re worried they’re going to be mean to me? Like ‘punch me in the face and call me Shorty’ mean? ‘Shove me into lockers and steal my lunch money’ mean? I’m a grown man, Clover. What could they do to me? Give me a wedgie? I’ve survived worse.”
“Well, no. They’re not going to be mean like that. They’re just kind of snobby sometimes.”
“Ah. And I do manual labor for a living. But so do you.”
“Yeah, and they’re rude to me about it.”
“What do they say to you?”
“Mom says I’ll wreck my back by doing so much gardening and it’ll make it hard for me to pick up my children.”
“You don’t have children.”
“Not yet, but she’s planning on it already. She says I should get an MBA like Hunter did since I’m business-minded. I could teach instead of ruining my body with all this physical labor I’m doing.”
“I’ve seen your body. If that’s what ruined looks like, sign me up for ruination.”
“Meanwhile Kelly says my life is so much easier than hers because she has to keep her kids alive whereas nobody cares if plants die. And Dad has said repeatedly I should have been a botanist.”
“Is that bad? Suggesting you should have been a botanist?”
“It’s bad when ‘You should be a botanist’ is followed by ‘instead of working retail.’”
“Working retail? Shit, that’s what they think you do?”
“I ring up customers sometimes when they buy my plants at the nursery. Ergo, I’m working retail. That I own the business doesn’t seem to compute with Dad.”
“Wow. Your family is a bunch of snobs, aren’t they?”
“The worst part is that they don’t even know they’re doing it. So you can’t call them out on it because it just won’t register. I once told my sister, ‘Please don’t act like my work is unimportant just because you don’t care about plants.’ And she said, ‘Oh, Clover, don’t be ridiculous. I think your work sounds so fun.’”
“Fun. But not important.”
“They hear what they want to hear. And there’s not much I can do about it except grin and bear it and then go back to my happy and busy life until the next holiday when I make myself grin and bear it again. This is why April through September is my favorite time of the year—it’s the busiest time at the nursery and no major holidays.”