The Hard Part Is Keeping Them Alive

My boyfriend left for a week, but he hasn’t been back in a month. He keeps texting me,  “Just a few more days, babe.” His name is Gary, but his SoundCloud rapper name is G-Dirty money.  

We met in college, senior year, and he owned a rusty red truck. This was upstate New  York, where everyone owned a rusty red truck. Gary fit in. It snowed all the time that year. We  used to smoke cigarettes in the rusty red truck bed, snow everywhere, letting ourselves get buried  together. He kept a little AM/FM radio in the center console because the truck’s radio was busted.  We were in poetry class together, and I don’t write poems anymore. I work in the admissions  department at a small college outside of Philadelphia. Since Covid, I’ve been working from  home. Almost two years, I guess. Our building used to be a church, so our studio walls jut  towards the ceiling at strange angles. I call it the triangle apartment.  

Gary took all his shit when he left for Seattle. Well, not Seattle, some town three hours  north of Seattle. He even took the little AM/FM radio he used to keep in his truck, but we kept  it on the bathroom window for a year, so we could listen to the radio while we were pooping, and the other person didn’t have to listen to us poop. He took all the puzzles too, said he needed something to do on the road, which didn’t make any sense, but I don’t like to puzzle alone anyway. He took all the red cups, so I’ve been drinking straight from the faucet. He took everything except his tomatoes and the porcupine.  

The porcupine is dead, very dead. A taxidermied porcupine. She lives above our twin-size bed. Gary bought her at a thrift store in West Virginia while driving home from a show at some college in Kentucky or Kansas. Well, it was not really at the college. It was some bar off campus that had  an amp. Anyway, Gary’s been gluing feathers from all different kinds of birds to her spines. It is by far my favorite art project of his.  

The tomatoes are alive. They crawl towards the sun in the kitchen window. That’s  literally all they do, but they have devoured my life. Gary asks for tomato updates every day.  More than every day. Every few hours.  

I started out trying to describe them. Enough sunlight, still red, room temperature to  the touch, damp soil, roots invisible. But that felt too much like poetry, so I had to stop.  

Now I just send pictures. Sometimes, Gary wants multiple angles, zoom in, zoom out.  Then he sends directions. Add a tablespoon of water, elevate the left side of the pot using the blue copy of Catcher in the Rye, too angled, switch with House on Mango Street, spin once an hour for the next three days. The requests become more manic as time stretches on. 

Meanwhile, at work, I give virtual tours to prospective students. Here is what our football field looks like in the spring. Now, here’s the football field in the fall. Now, here’s the science building. The 18-year-olds silently ooh and ahh from behind their muted Zoom screens. Sometimes, they stick around afterward for one-on-one interviews where they can ask me questions about the school. This one girl, Samantha, with brown hair and red braces, asks, “Has anyone famous gone here?” I answer, “Have you ever heard of the SoundCloud rapper G-Dirty Money?” She shakes her head no, and I say, “Well, he didn’t go here.”  

In college, Gary and I hid with his friends near the admissions building parking lot,  smoking weed, drinking Fireball, throwing snowballs at a whole tour group, and then running as fast as we could to his off-campus apartment, drinking from a keg in his kitchen, making out on  his deck, snow in his eyelashes.  

Gary FaceTimes me on a Wednesday. He has been gone for exactly 32 days. It’s snowing here in South Philadelphia, blizzard conditions. I have to dig my car out and move it by 9 AM, or  I’ll get a ticket. He’s wearing over-the-ear headphones and smoking a joint, looking away from the screen when I answer. I say, “Gary?”  

He smiles at me, million-dollar eyes, like he really misses me, and then my phone dies.  

Later, when my phone turns back on, I see Gary texted me, “Still getting the beat to drop LOL babe I miss you be back next week how are the tomatoes?”  

Thursday, I get a ticket even though I dug out my car. 35 dollars. I do three virtual tours. The kids love it. A girl named Melanie with blonde hair and a blue sweatshirt says, “I can really picture myself falling in love at this school,” she corrects herself, “with this school, sorry, uhm?”  I just say, “That’s not really a question.” I send Gary six pictures of the tomatoes, even though he doesn’t ask for them. He tells me to turn them slightly to the right. He tells me to add two tablespoons of water. I take an edible that I bought in New Jersey with Gary after we went on a hike in some burned-out forest in the Pine Barrens. Then I Google the growing patterns of tomatoes and realize these tomatoes should be dead. 

Friday, I go on a walk to the grocery store, but there’s a line out the door, and I don’t even  have a mask. I find a feather that doesn’t look like any of the feathers on the porcupine, so I keep  it. I order Thai food from Grubhub for lunch, but I accidentally send it to Gary in Seattle, or that  town north of Seattle. He sent me a thumbs-up emoji and a hungry boy emoji, which I didn’t  know existed. I email all the kids I took on virtual tours yesterday, saying how great it was to Zoom meet them. I take another New Jersey edible and Google more shit about tomatoes, then I move the tomatoes to the bathroom, where the radio used to be. I watch a movie where all the guests eat the chefs, or maybe the opposite. 

I move the tomatoes back because I need to poop and the tomatoes should be dead, and that freaks me out. I take another New Jersey edible and eat popcorn out of the bag and scrape the unpopped kernels against the butter bag so I can suck on them. They taste like maybe I’m having a heart attack, or maybe I just miss him so much that I’m dying, or maybe I don’t miss him. Maybe I just miss how much fun we used to have when we were young and nothing mattered. I want to call him and tell him to come home, or tell him I miss him, or tell him that we’re all grown up now with jobs on the internet and plants to take care of, and can he just grow up too? But maybe the spell would wear off, and the tomatoes would die, and he would blame me, and it would all be broken anyway. Maybe keeping this all to myself is the only thing keeping the tomatoes alive.  

Saturday, icy rain. I put on a bra, then take it off, then squirm around on the bed trying to get my scream out without actually screaming. I putter around the kitchen, wiping surfaces. I text Gary pictures of the tomatoes. He texts back a thumbs up, and I wish he had something interesting to say, some elaborate instructions for how to keep the tomatoes alive. I order  breakfast from Grubhub. Pancakes, two eggs over easy, side of scrapple, waffle fries, 24 oz.  coffee, black. Sometimes my eyes are bigger than my stomach. I make sure I send it to me in  Philadelphia and not Gary in some town north of Seattle. I look at books on Amazon about  growing tomatoes, about how to be a poet, about how to sing in the shower when no one is  watching. 

The food arrives and I eat all the waffle fries while I watch How to Lose a Guy in 10  Days on Netflix. I wonder how many days it would take me to lose Gary. I drink the coffee and  throw out the eggs and scrapple, save the pancakes. I take a New Jersey edible and count how  many I have left. I take another. I call this girl I lived with sophomore year; she doesn’t answer. I  get in the bathtub in a bikini, take a picture, think about sending it to Gary, then delete it. I watch  a movie in a towel and bikini, about wolves being reintroduced to Yellowstone. They changed the rivers. I open the kitchen window and smoke a cigarette, ash it in the tomatoes, wish Gary was here, or just like anyone. I eat the cold pancakes.  

Sunday, sun, but no birds. I walk to Rittenhouse and back. It takes me longer than I  expected, and I stop for coffee at the place on Spruce. A guy in a blue mask tries to sell me his  mixtape. He offers to sign it and follows me for a whole block. I get back to the triangle  apartment and decide I’m never going outside again, but I do end up going outside that afternoon  because Amazon drops off some special pruning shears that Gary must have ordered. I write a  letter to my five-year-old self, warning her about tomatoes and falling in love. I warn her about  living in Philadelphia and Covid and how you have to stay with whoever you’re with when the world ends because it feels like no one else exists and tell her to bet on the Eagles to win it all in  2017. Gary texts me about the pruning shears, and I take a picture of the Amazon box, then I take  a picture of the tomatoes. He asks me to zoom in over and over again until he can see the ash  from the cigarette. He asks if I had people over, and if I can open up the sheers to inspect them. I  just say no, and he doesn’t respond. I imagine him kissing a girl in the rain next to some huge  pine trees in that town three hours north of Seattle. I download Hinge, then delete it. I pace the  entire one-room apartment three times, order pineapple pizza and a side of mozzarella sticks, make sure it’s coming to me.  

Monday, Gary facetimes me while I’m on a virtual tour with an individual family. The mom is some big-time alumna. Outside, it’s snowing. I text him while they are mesmerized by the football fields in different seasons. I say, “what the fuck I’m at work.” He says, “I miss you did you ash a cigarette in the tomatoes?” I finish the tour. The mom gives me a thumbs up in the  Zoom chat. I FaceTime Gary, and he doesn’t pick up. I check his SoundCloud, and he has 2 more followers than he did yesterday, up to 4,112. His listen-to-like ratio is 14:1. He’s just good enough that he’ll never quit. I move the tomatoes to the bathroom and cook a frozen pizza with vegan cheese and cauliflower crust. I email my boss that the woman gave me a thumbs up in the chat, and she emails me back a thumbs up. I text Gary and tell him that I moved the tomatoes to the bathroom window where we used to keep the radio. He texts back a shocked emoji, a laughing emoji, a skull emoji. I don’t respond, and four hours later he texts me, “I miss you babe are the tomatoes really in the bathroom?” with four question marks. I try to FaceTime him, but he doesn’t answer. I poop in the bathroom and eat one of the tomatoes. It tastes fucking disgusting,  so I spit it into the soil. I sleep in my work clothes and forget to brush my teeth.  

Tuesday, ice blue sky, so cold the windows hurt to touch. I take the porcupine off the  shelf and glue my found feather onto one of her spines. I Postmates some big black trash bags  and orange cheddar Goldfish. I call out sick from work and puke in the bathroom. I open the  window, let the cold in, and go sit in my car for three hours, letting the triangle apartment air out.  I bring the porcupine and gossip to her while watching people walk past outside. The girl I lived  with sophomore year calls me back, and I answer, “Hey?” She tells me all about her life in  Brooklyn, the cat, the hamster, the job at the museum where she has to wear fancy clothes all the  time, her new boyfriend, her old boyfriend, the books she’s reading for pleasure, the possibilities.  I get out of the car and leave the porcupine in the passenger seat. It’s cold outside. I walk and  listen. The city breathes cold, misty breaths everywhere around me. Men in heavy peacoats stand outside the Wawa, eating sandwiches on trash cans. Grubhub drivers in blue masks, bundled to the brink, teeter between traffic.  

Gary Facetimes me while I’m still on the phone with the girl from sophomore year. I  have to hang up with her to answer him. He’s all blue eyes and smiles. He tells me he got a new  tattoo, a small bird on his rib cage, a thrush. He shows me, and I can see his nipple. I imagine  kissing him, holding his body as close to me as I can. I imagine running my hands along the  small bird on his side. He asks me about the tomatoes, and I say they’re fine. He asks if he can see them, but I tell him I’m outside. He asks me to send him pictures when I get home, to give them plant food and six tablespoons of water. He tells me to wipe off any dust I see on the  leaves. He tells me to rotate them exactly 24 degrees to the south-southwest, and to please never  joke about putting them in the bathroom again. He tells me he misses me, and that he’ll be home  soon. 

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About the Author

MJ McGinn received his MFA from Adelphi University and was a VCCA resident. His work has been named to the Wigleaf 50 best very short stories and has previously appeared in LIT Magazine, X-R-A-Y magazine, Bridge Eight, PEN America, and elsewhere. He lives in Philadelphia.