Eight
Gritting her teeth with irritation for a moment, Jane said in a cool formal voice, 'Not yet.'
“You must eat, dear. You need all the nutrients you can get.”
Jane drew a deep breath and tried to overcome her upbringing in the diplomatic corps.
“Ursula, I know you mean well, but I'm an intelligent adult and can take perfectly good care of myself.”
As Shelley had predicted, Ursula took no offense. 'I know you are. I'm just concerned about you.'
“Thank you, but I'm already in bed and almost asleep, so I have to hang up now.”
Jane put the phone down before Ursula could reply.
She knew she'd been rude, but knew of no other way to get rid of this extremely annoying person. Especially when she had other disturbing things on her mind.
The doctor had told her she must be very careful of her foot. The fracture was clear across the large outside bone but still in place. If it shifted, he warned, they'd have to operate and pin it back in place and she'd be on crutches for a very long time.
And her older son was going out with a girl who had deliberately made herself look like a freak. She always thought he had abnormally good sense. Had she merely fooled herself?
Her daughter was acting like she knew everything there was to know about France after a two-week visit, which was annoying because Jane had spent several years total living in France herself when she was a girl and her diplomatic corps parents had been stationed there. Jane's own dislike of a gypsy life with no real home had convinced her that her children would have normal lives and stay in the same home until they were grown. Maybe she'd made a mistake in that.
And besides everything else that was bothering her, her foot hurt. Her arms hurt from fighting the crutches, even the other leg hurt because she was having to put all her weight on it, and her back was having alarming little twinges. When she was a teenager, she could have coped with this, but forty-year-old bodies reacted badly to change.
Then her mind turned to the reactions of others. That was a revelation to her. Perfect strangers had asked her how she did that to herself, and all sounded disappointed when she admitted she simply fell off a curbing.
She finally was able to smile to herself. Maybe she could spice up the story a bit. She crawled into bed, trying very hard not to kick the cats, who were eyeing her suspiciously, and fell asleep thinking of other explanations for the cast.
She woke suddenly an hour later when she heard the front door open and close and Mike's distinctive footsteps coming upstairs. She flipped on her bedside light and called softly to him.
“Don't forget to set your alarm,' she said when he poked his head around her bedroom door. 'You're really late coming in.'
“I always set my alarm, Mom,' he said with a grin.
He knew her too well. 'Okay, okay. Did you have a nice evening?'
“Fair to middling. Kipsy's an interesting girl. Night, Mom.”
“Mike says Kipsy is 'interesting,' ' Jane said to Shelley on the phone in the morning.
“Interesting is a long way from fascinating,' Shelley replied. 'How's your foot feeling this morning?'
“About the same. I'm more comfortable in bed than anywhere else, though. And I can't let my? self turn into a sloth. We are going to class, aren't we?'
“If you're sure you're up to it. Will you be able to walk around gardens without mowing them down with your crutches or going facedown in the begonias?'
“I hope so. I better get moving.”
Jane used the waterproof tape Shelley had bought for her to fasten the plastic bag around her leg to shower. No water came in the top, but when she finished, she realized the waterproof tape had stuck violently to the back of her knee and hurt like the devil to yank off. What's more, the bag had sprung a leak at the bottom, and the part of the cast near her toes was wet today. She'd have to buy a whole box of plastic bags at this rate.
She'd been wearing her two best casual skirts most of the time since breaking her foot. Today she'd have to shift to slacks or jeans. But she discovered that the cast made her leg too fat for slacks and had to wear the baggy shorts with the pockets on the thighs after all. Still, she managed to get ready on time, by merely whisking a brush through her hair haphazardly and slapping on basic makeup with rough abandon.
“What happened to your hair?' Shelley asked when Jane had bottom-bumped her way down the kitchen porch steps and climbed awkwardly into Shelley's van.
“Not nearly enough,' Jane replied. 'Whose gardens are we seeing today? I've forgotten my list.'
“The instructor's second home over on Linden Street. And then Ursula's yard.”
Jane shuddered at the name. 'She called me late last night to see if I had eaten her stuff. I was honest enough to tell her no. And brave enough to stand up for myself. I told her I appreciated her concern, but could take care of myself.'
“Not exactly standing up for yourself very strongly. 'Please, PLEASE, leave me alone' might have done it better.'
“Frankly, I'm afraid of finding out how high her insult threshold is. Should I exceed it, she could be a more formidable enemy than would-be friend.'
“You aren't going to let yourself get sucked into a friendship with her, are you?'
“No. Of course not. I've put up with some pretty obnoxious people that you wouldn't have put up with, but I'm not a complete moron.”
As they pulled up in front of the community center, a strange man, seeing Jane struggle to get out the door of the van, rushed to help her.
“How did you do that to yourself?' he asked.
“An elephant pushed me off a circus van,' Jane said. 'Thank you so much for helping me.”
The man looked astonished and said, 'Wow!'
“A circus van?' Shelley hissed as they went up the ramp.
“I've got a list of interesting answers. I knew he'd like that one better than anybody's liked the truth.”
The class was assembled when they entered the room. All but Ursula. Dr. Eastman, with his prize pink marigolds on display again, had just begun to speak and waited while Jane thrashed the crutches among the chairs and seated herself. Maybe she had insulted Ursula and she wasn't coming to the class any longer, Jane thought.
But her hopes were dashed a minute later. Ursula bustled in, speaking before she was completely in the room because a backpack strap had caught in the door. 'I'm sorry to be late, but I was doing last-minute tidying of my garden.' She smiled around the room, waiting for admiration.
“Let's begin now,' Dr. Eastman said.
Today his talk was about the patent process, using words like 'taxon' and 'genotype' and 'tissue culture' and 'approach grafting.' Jane was at sea and didn't want to be the dummy who asked what taxon meant. Besides, the outside of her calf was itching like crazy. She pulled a pencil out of her pocket and ran the pencil down inside the cast to try to reach the itch.
Suddenly Ursula, who'd sat behind her, reached forward and snatched the pencil from her hand. 'Lead poisoning,' she whispered just loudly enough for everyone to hear her. 'Wait a minute.”
She rummaged in one of her bags and brought up a very long, fat crochet hook with a nicely rounded tip. 'Use this.”
Jane tried to pretend to be listening avidly, while scrabbling around inside the cast, chasing the itch.
Finally the instructor came back to plain English, saying, 'The plant must remain stable in its qualities through a great many means of asexual reproduction, such as cuttings, grafting, and budding.”
He went on, 'If you're interested in trying to get a patent, there are a number of pieces of valuable advice. One: Get early and expert confidential advice from someone who really knows plant patent law, and be prepared to pay for it.'
“He's trying to convince us to try this so he can make money off us,' Shelley whispered.
“Fat chance,' Jane whispered back.
