Danny wiped the dirt from his hands and started to work loose the soil trapped under his thumbnail. The sun was bright on the porch.
“Thanks for helping me thin and re-pot the morning glories,” said Madoka. “I didn’t know how many would come up, so I just put all the seeds in two pots.”
“I hope they survive,” commented Danny. “I don’t know if they do well being transplanted. I’ve heard that they don’t. I’ve never tried it. Still, you’ll probably get a better yield than I did.”
“What happened to your glories?”
“I started them very early indoors this year, and when I took them outside, almost all of them died in a few days. I think they couldn’t take the transition. Maybe I coddled them too much.”
A woman walked by along the sidewalk, nodding her head in rhythm with the private music playing on her iPod. Madoka reached for the broom and began sweeping the dirt that had fallen outside the pots.
“I also started some seeds in soil outside, and they did much better. I guess I’ve learned something.”
“That’s too bad,” sighed Madoka. “Your trellis looked so good last year, covered in flowers.”
“There’s still time. I can plant more. But no moonflowers this year. They don’t seem to like the climate. A huge vine, and exactly two flowers. I’d rather have a few hundred morning glories.”
Danny watched the neighbors clean out their garden for a moment. It wasn’t clear what they were trying to do, but their garden was an obvious success. Danny wondered what he could learn from them.
Madoka picked at the rose bush that was climbing the pillar at the corner of the porch. Danny wondered if the glories would climb up the rose. It might be a nice combination, if they didn’t kill each other.
A man wearing a Red Sox cap emerged from the house across the street, climbed into his car, started the stereo and then the engine, and drove away. The bump-bump-bump of the music faded as he turned the corner at the end of the block.
“Are you still thinking about California?”
“Yes,” Madoka answered without pause. “It could be very good for my career. The lab director there really wants me in his program.”
“It’s too bad you have to move around so much in your field. I’m lucky. I don’t expect I’ll ever have to move.”
“Well, it’s not just that. I want to make a new start. I’m not sure that Boston is a good place for me.”
Madoka paused for a moment.
“I also want to get away from Him. I don’t think he’ll follow me to California.”
Danny said nothing. There was nothing left to say about Him.
“When would you move?”
“I don’t know. The funding for the new project probably won’t be in place for a few months. And there’s some work I’m doing that I need to finish. Some time over the summer, or maybe early in the Fall.”
Madoka went into the house, filled a milk jug with water, and returned to the porch. Danny sat on the steps and listened to the wind softly rustle the last few dead leaves remaining from the previous autumn. Madoka slowly watered the pots until small rivulets of water began to emerge from the bottom of each pot and disappeared through the cracks in floorboards of the porch.
“I’m not looking forward to moving. I’ve never done a move like this. I have so much more stuff than last time I moved and this is so much farther. I guess I’ll sell the stuff I don’t like and just take the things I want to keep.”
“Things do accumulate, don’t they. When my wife and I moved into our first apartment, we moved all our stuff in the back of our car. By the time we moved out, we needed a professional mover and a big truck. And it just keeps getting worse. We never throw out anything big. We just get rid of the small stuff.”
“I guess I’ll need to hire movers.”
“It’s much easier. They pack so much more quickly than you can.”
“Why are they so fast?”
“Well, when I pack, I have a bad habit of looking at the things I’m packing and trying to decide if I want to keep each thing, or just letting my mind wander, reminiscing about how long I’ve had it, and the last time I looked at it, and things like that. It can take me an hour to pack a box of books, or all afternoon to pack the knick-knacks on my desk. The movers get it done in an instant. This stuff doesn’t mean anything to them. It’s not their stuff. They’re only thinking about how to get things into boxes. When we moved into our new house, they packed up the old apartment in a few hours. Everything.”
“Are they expensive?”
“It’s not cheap, but it’s worth it. Especially if you have other demands on your time. But you have to be careful, because they’re so mechanical about it that you need to watch over them sometimes.”
“What do you mean?”
“For example, if you don’t empty the garbage before they come, they’ll pack the garbage in a box. It won’t be fun opening that box a week later in California! And they’ll pack anything else that isn’t nailed down. We had to take the fireplace grate back to our old apartment–they’d packed it.
“Oh, I see. But I think moving is going to be expensive for a lot of other reasons. For example, what about my car? It isn’t worth much, so I can’t sell it for much, but when I get to California I’m going to need a car, so I’ll have to buy one.”
“Why don’t you just take it with you?”
“I don’t want to drive it the whole way.”
“You don’t need to. The movers can take it. They can put it right on the truck.”
“Really?” Madoka looked incredulous.
“Yes. When my parents moved to California, they put three cars on the truck. It was a big truck. It made things very easy for them. The movers packed up their house, and started on their way, while my parents hung out for a few days at friends houses, and then they flew out to California and got there about the same time as all their stuff.”
Madoka moved the pots slightly, to align them with the sun.
“I wonder how much it costs.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never moved a car. I’m sure you could just call a moving company and they’d give you an estimate.”
Madoka started to gather her hair into a ponytail, but then remembered that her new haircut made this impossible. Danny still found the new hair style unfamiliar. He didn’t know how long she’d had it. It was new to him.
“How long do you think it would take to drive?”
“Well, it’s about three thousand miles, and I don’t think most people can endure sitting in a car for more than about three hundred miles per day. So maybe ten days. Maybe more if you do some sight-seeing along the way. It would be a shame to just drive past everything without taking a look.”
“Yes, I’d want to stop. But then it would take forever.”
“I’ve heard it works much better if you have company. Then you can split the driving. One person can sleep while the other drives. You can cover a lot of ground that way. That’s how the movers do it. Truckers can cross the country in three days or less.”
“But I wouldn’t want to do that either. It would be fun to see America.”
Danny thought of Kerouac, Steinbeck, Clemens, Trollope, Kesey. Danny remembered how he had planned road trips in the past, but the plans had never worked out. Something had always come up.
“I’ve always wanted to drive across the country. I’ve even got a route figured out. I’ve planned it.”
Madoka smiled. “I think it would be a lot of fun. I’ve always wanted to do it too. I think a lot of people have. But I’ve never had the time.”
Danny looked at his watch. It was getting late. He had promised to be home in time for dinner.
“I’ve got to get going.”
“Thanks again for helping with the plants.”
“No problem. Oh, and if you’re really thinking about driving across the country, we should talk more.”
“Would you really want to do it?”
“I’ve always wanted to do it. But I’ll need to check with my wife.”
Madoka watched Danny climb into his car and drive away. The wheels in Danny’s head were already turning, and his mind was somewhere west of Omaha.
