All he could think of was how he did not want the nurse to drive up right then, and all he could see was Nancy standing in the flower bed staring at his grandmother, and all he could feel was his grandmother’s fingers digging into his arm, and all he could hear was that terrible word loiter loiter loiter; and something else, a remembered sound that came back sometimes—his mother’s long, sucking, ratchety breaths, coming again and again, strangled and desperate, until he had to cover up his ears.

But then Nancy came up to them, reaching out a hand. “Please don’t think that,” she said. “He’s not loitering, he keeps me company and helps me with the flower bed.”

After that day, to make it the truth, Nancy put Mel to work spreading mulch. When the nurse finished vacuuming the next Saturday, Nancy said, “My new helper.”

The nurse came over and sat down at the picnic table. “I wish I had a little flower garden like that.”

“Why can’t you?” said Nancy. “Everybody should be able to have some kind of little garden.”

“I live in a third-floor apartment.” The nurse sat backward on the bench and leaned against the table. “Just a little square of ground, in a quiet place, where I could go and sit sometimes.”

The next Saturdays they planted the summer garden—nasturtiums, marigolds, and zinnias. Nancy taught Mel names—rattlesnake root, butterfly ginger, false dragonhead; and she told him what would happen in the summer and then in the fall. “Your best gardening is always in the future,” she said. Sometimes there would be some plants left over in the flat and Nancy would give them to him, their roots wrapped in wet newspaper: “You take these home to your grandmother.”

It was time to separate the rabbits. They were going by a book, Raising Rabbits for Fun and Profit. “You will find great satisfaction in efficiency,” said Mel’s grandmother, grabbing the big, old buck rabbit and wrestling him through the little swinging door of the next pen.

Soon the female rabbit began lining the box with fur, and one day the nest was heaving with little pink squirmers. “See that?” said his grandmother. “Life marches on.”

Then it was summer, and the marigolds and zinnias spread and shaded out the weeds. There was plenty of rain and for a while there was nothing to do in the flower bed at the Citgo, and Nancy only came every other Saturday to pick up trash. Even as early as ten it was too hot to sit at the picnic table and visit, so the nurse just waved from the vacuum machine. “Where’s your helper?” she called.

“Off somewhere growing up I guess,” said Nancy.

“Uh-oh.”

The baby rabbits grew a little soft, white down, and their eyes opened. “This is a good mama rabbit,” said Mel’s grandmother. “Look how fat they are.”