Chapter 24: Peonies

The raised bed ran along the sunny fence of the boat yard, and Clive had built it on a Tuesday without telling anyone.

I found out on Saturday morning when my mother came through the gate with a trowel in her purse and looked at it for a full minute.

"That's good cedar," she said.

"It's scrap from a hull," Clive said.

"It's good cedar, and you sanded the corners."

"I sanded the corners."

My mother nodded once, which meant she approved.

My father had come too, in a cap, with a folding chair he set up beside the cat's tarp.

The cat looked at him, and he looked at the cat, and they settled in together without a word.

It was the second week of April, and the air smelled like river and wet wood.

My mother knelt at the bed and unwrapped the damp towel she had carried on the train.

Three peony roots lay in it, pale and knobby, with little red eyes at the tips.

"They look dead," Clive said.

"They're not."

"They look like potatoes."

"They are the opposite of potatoes," my mother said.

I laughed so hard I had to sit on the edge of the bed.

She showed us how to do it.

The eyes face up, and no deeper than two inches, or they sulk and never bloom.

"They need years sometimes," she said. "People plant them and think nothing is happening, and then one May the whole row comes up at once."

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