I pick up the receiver, put it down again and stare out the window.
     Everywhere now, there’s a hint of green where just last week there was nothing but bare gray branches and brown grass.
     It’s almost noon and the pile of work on my desk is as high now as it was at eight-thirty. And I know it’s going to stay that way unless I start concentrating. But I also know I’m not going to be able to concentrate until I make this phone call.
     “So do it,” I tell myself. “Just pick up the dumb phone and call him.”
     This time I press the numbers fast and try not to think about the five months since Mark and I have seen each other. I tell myself that it really won’t be that hard, that he’ll understand I’m doing this for Pop. And he’ll want to do it, too.
     “Mark Jameson.”
     Suddenly my mouth is as dry as a desert. “Mark. Hi. It’s Joy.”
     “Joy,” he says, and then again, “Joy.” He clears his throat. “I was just thinking about you this morning. I saw yellow crocuses on my way to work.”
     They were the first flowers we planted after we moved into the house. Yellow crocuses along the walkway to the kitchen door.
     “Is everything okay?” he asks.
     “Yes,” I say, “everything’s fine. It’s just that I have to ask a favor.” I pick up my pen and start to draw a tiny crocus on my note pad. “It’s a pretty big favor, Mark.” I sigh. “Pop doesn’t know about us yet. I’ve meant to tell him, but I just can’t seem to get it out. And now this weekend is May fifteenth and he’s expecting us.” I sigh again. “He left a message on the machine. He has your favorite beer in the fridge.”
     “So you want us to go up there together and tell him?”
     I  nod, even though he can’t see me. “Yes,” I say, finishing the crocus and putting down the pen. “But maybe we could do that after we plant his garden?”
     He doesn’t say anything for a second, and then, “Sure, Joy.  I’ll go with you.”
     And it’s settled, just like that.
     Saturday morning, I’m wide awake at six. Mark’s supposed to pick me up at ten, and I start to make a coffee cake, but coffee cake on Saturday mornings was a ritual of ours, and so I decide to have something neutral instead, cinnamon buns. Though I did stop and pick up a bag of Mocha Java coffee beans on my way home last night, because that’s his favorite, and I want him to know I appreciate what he’s doing.
     When he knocks on the door, my heart breaks into a jog, even though I’ve been telling myself all week I can handle this, that it’s really like seeing an old friend who’s been away for a while.
     But when I open the door and Mark is standing there in his familiar old corduroy slacks and the cotton sweater I gave him for Christmas two years ago, with his slightly crooked smile and his hair curling over his collar because he always puts off getting a haircut, all my insides go mushy.
     “Do you feel as much like a sixteen-year-old on a first date as I do?” he asks.
     It’s something he was always good at, saying exactly the right thing at exactly the right time, and it makes me laugh and takes away the mushy feeling, so I’m not nervous any more, just glad to see him. But sad, too, because what we had once was wonderful, and then it wasn’t anymore, and now it’s gone...both the good and the bad.
     We ask polite questions over coffee and buns, and try to avoid anything that brings us too close to the new lives that neither of us has really started yet. Then we run out of things to say just as we’re walking out to his car. But thankfully there’s a Bob Marley CD to listen to, so we don’t have to say more than a dozen words to each other for an hour and a half, until we drive up Pop’s long gravel driveway.
     “Remember the first time we came up here,” I say, “and you’d never gardened in your life and you planted all the onion sets upside down?”
     He grins. “And you made ice cream sundaes that night, and mine had the cherry and the whipped cream on the bottom just to rub it in?” He pulls up beside the barn and turns the key.
     “And you put up your ‘raccoon proof’ fence that Pop bet you ten dollars wouldn’t work. But it did, and it still does.”
     A nuthatch lands on the barn, pecks a few times, then flies away.
     “And then he beat me at poker that night,” Mark says, “and I ended up having to give him an IOU.”
     “I think he still has it,” I say.
     Mark shakes his head. “I couldn’t make myself concentrate on the cards. Those were the days when I couldn’t concentrate on anything if you were within ten feet.” He glances over at me and smiles in a way that says that was all a long time ago. Then he opens his door. “Ready?”
     I nod.
     Pop meets us at the door. I haven’t seen him in two months, and he looks a little older, his shoulders a little less broad. Ever since Gram died, he’s insisted he can take care of himself just fine.
     “Started lunch,” he says, giving each of us a hug. “Still got some of that green tomato relish you two like so well. And there’s a couple of extra jars for you to bring home. Unless you still have plenty.”
     “I’m all out,” I say. “I finished my last jar weeks ago.”
     “I still have a couple,” Mark says.
     Then we look at each other.
     Mark swallows. “I mean, I found two more jars. Didn’t I tell you, Joy?”
     “Actually, I think you did and I forgot.” I give Pop a kiss on his cheek. “But we’ll still take two more.”
     “Mmmh,” Pop says.
     After lunch, the three of us sort the seeds and draw a plan for the garden. Pop tells us about the bear that took down his bird feeder just before Christmas. Mark tells about the time a skunk sprayed his sister’s girl scout troop on a camp-out. We laugh a lot and take out the old albums and Pop tells us the stories behind some of the pictures. Then I fix beans and hot dogs with sourdough bread for dinner.
     That night I sit on the bed in my nightgown, my arms around my knees. The bathroom door opens across the hall and I know Mark is just on the other side of my closed door. It’s only when I hear his footsteps going toward the stairs, that I realize I’ve been holding my breath.

     After pancakes and eggs the next morning, we roto-till the garden, fix a sag in the fence, and plant the peas and the zucchini and the spinach. Pop makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, and then we plant the potatoes and the broccoli, and start the tomatoes in the greenhouse. Just before dusk, the three of us walk down to the river. Then Mark goes off and brings back a pizza.
     As the sun’s setting, the three of us sit on the porch glider and watch the sky go from pink to orange to mauve. The stars come out.
     “Well,” Pop says, “don’t know why I’m so tired, considering you two did all the work, but I’m off to bed.” And he leaves us sitting on the glider, too close to each other now that he’s gone.
     I shiver.
     “Cold?” Mark asks.
     “A little.”
     His arm slides off the back of the glider and settles around my shoulders. It’s such a familiar feeling. And I’m glad it’s dark now, so he can’t see my face. Because then he’d know how much I’ve missed him, and that’s something I don’t even want to know myself.
     “Sometimes,” he says, “I get to thinking we’ve made a mistake, Dana.”
     I swallow. Part of me wants to say, yes, maybe we have. Part of me wants him to take me in his arms. But part of me can’t forget how we lost hold of it all. How cold and distant we were and how much we hurt each other. And what’s to say we wouldn’t do it all over again?
     “I think,” I say, “we have to be careful. It’s too easy to get caught up in all the memories here, the good ones, too easy to fool ourselves.” I look away, into the dark air. “We’re pretending, Mark. Just pretending. For Pop. At least until tomorrow.”
     He doesn’t say anything, just lifts his arm off my shoulder.

     We spend our last morning planting the rest of the vegetables, and when we’re finished, Pop folds his arms and looks at the garden, at the rich black soil, the straight rows.
     “A lot of work,” he says, “but, you know, this is the easy part.”
     We look at him.
     “It’s true,” he says. “Things are easy when you’re all full of hope and energy. Easy to ignore the sore muscles and the dirt under your fingernails. Just being outside in the sunshine’s enough. Pure joy.” He glances from me to Mark. “Right now, the garden’s all up here.” He taps his head. “But once it all starts coming up…then it gets hard. All that weeding, watering, hoeing. You gotta do a little every day, whether you feel like it or not. Gotta come out here when it’s too hot. When there’s too many bugs. Gotta mulch the potatoes when you’d rather just sit on the porch with a cool glass of lemonade.”
     Mark clears his throat. I shift the watering can from one hand to the other.
     “Course, what you got to remember,” Pop says, “is how all that hard work pays off. How sweet those peas are going to be, how the potatoes are going to last all winter, how when you get a craving for some green tomato relish some night, it’ll be there. Cuz you paid attention to those tomatoes when they needed it. Didn’t just let ‘em wither on the vine. Just cuz it seemed easier that way.”
     No one says a word. Mark and I glance at each other, then look away.
     Pop lights his pipe. “I might be old,” he says, “but I’m not blind. All it took was looking at you to see how unhappy you both are.” He blows out a puff of smoke. “Plus I can’t ever remember Mark loving that sofa so much he had to sleep on it.”
     “We… I couldn’t tell you,” I say.
     Pop looks at me. “Then maybe you better figure out why.”  He starts to walk away. “Guess I’ll go make some lemonade. You two probably worked up a good thirst.”
     Mark and I stand there looking down at the garden.
     “So why couldn’t you tell him?” Mark asks.
     I shake my head. “I don’t know.” But then I realize that’s not true. “Maybe,” I say, “because as long as Pop still thought we were a couple, there was a chance we still were.”
     We look at each other.
     “We didn’t take very good care of us, Dana, did we?”
      I shake my head.
     He comes over and puts his hands on my shoulders. “I’d like to give it another try. How about you?”
     I look into his eyes. The whole day brightens. And then he smiles.