The Cloisters

"What?" Dad said, looking in his rear-view mirror. "You don't like plants and stuff?"

"She's just being a crank, that's all," I said. "She likes gardening as long as Mom lets her carry the basket with all the flowers and stuff in it. She likes to play wedding."

"So not true, you dorkus," Georgie fired back. "You're just so busy smelling and tasting all that nasty dirt and sucking on stones that you have no clue what I like at all. Dad, she sucks on stones. Says she's testing for minerals. It's so gross."

My father threw his head back and laughed and I loved him fiercely for making my favorite sound in the world.

"That's not gross if you're a geologist, Princess. Pretty standard behavior. Poppin' little rocks in your mouth, tasting their minerals as you slosh along up a stream." He started whistling "Islands in the Stream" and it shut Georgie up for a hot minute.

"All I'm saying," she said when he took a breath, "is that it seems like everything we did today is about Maddie or you. Your dry cleaning. Your bottle store. Her stupid tarot magic. And now her dirt and gardens."

"Maybe that's karma for stealing the front seat from me in the first place," I said, but I said it real quiet because deep down I was scared of her when she was mad. Dad heard me, though, and he swatted my leg even while he looked out his window.

"Hey there, Georgie Girl, you might just have a point there, and if so, please accept my sorry. Hey, look! It's one of the bridges you were named after!" We rolled right past the exit for the George Washington Bridge. "That counts for something, right?"

"Wrong."

"It's the George Washington Bridge! GeorgeAnn Tappan Zee Bridges, right? I was there, I'll have you know," he said. "Your mother was set on it, and I had no say in it, but I was there when she named you. I know the logic that went into it, and that, my love," he pointed out his window, "is one of your two heavily traveled namesakes."

A minute went by, with Georgie still steaming away back there. She was ruining the whole day.

"Ah," he said, looking at her in his mirror. "How about this: I need to talk to a man at the track after this stop, anyway. How about you guys come in, maybe even place a bet? You probably won't get to meet any of the horses this time, but you'd still get a kick out of laying eyes on them, right, Georgie Girl? Seems like 'My Own Horse' has been on your wish list since you could talk, right?"

"Yeah, like that's ever gonna happen," she said.

I turned around and looked at her. "How about you take what you can get, Georgie? Take a pill and lie down. Sheesh, what a crank!"

I think she started crying back there. She switched sides real quick, to the dry cleaning side of the car, which was risky because grownups hate when you take your seat belt off for any reason at all, but Dad ignored it. She stuck her head behind his suits, to look out the window, maybe. But I'm pretty sure she was crying.

Later, I thought maybe she was just upset about other things. Whatshisface, Thomas, at school. Her bad card back at Zana's.

My mother, when she was trying to stay calm during one of Georgie's outbursts, talked a lot about puberty coming. Maybe Georgie was growing up and getting all emotional against her will. Who knew? But when I heard her sniffling, I decided to zip it.

Whether you're a gardener or not, the Gardens of the Cloisters will just about take your breath away. The whole place looks like a medieval monastery, all arches and stone and gothic silence. Even in summer when there were people crawling everywhere, this place was quiet, and I liked pretending I was one of those monks who couldn't talk.

The gardens are all different, but now, in the wintertime, most of the tender plants had been brought into the one where we were going, the Cuxa Garden, which was glassed-in for the season. Even citrus trees did well here, all year round.

Back in the medieval days, people grew plants for medicine and magic, just like Minnie Pinnister did now. Usually, my mother came here with us; it felt odd without her.

"Mom loves it here," I offered up to no one in particular. I was getting weary of Dad's soulful songs on the radio. The same guy who had been screaming about Jungleland earlier was now whining about going down to the river. I turned the volume down.

"Well, what's not to love, right?" Dad said. His heart wasn't in it, though. Maybe he was just thinking about where to park.

I tried again. "Mom and I went to that holistic place the other day? The place that sells all those little bottles like the ones Minnie Pinnister brings to my school? Nature's Cure?"

"Hmm," he said.

"But the lady didn't have any dit-tan-y." I pronounced it in three clear-cut syllables, just like my mother had yesterday. "And she kind of made fun of it, which made Mom super mad. The lady said 'dittany' in like a British sort of accent. Dit nee?" I said it again. "Dit nee? 'E chised a fox inta the wood, dit nee?"

That did it. Like magic. Both Dad and Georgie laughed, and I knew we were all back on track.

Once we parked, we climbed up the stone steps into the monastery and Dad paid for our tickets. The Cloisters are part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but you'd never even know you were still in New York City because it's surrounded by parks and trails and peace. We made our way up the stone steps, where arched windows let in what little winter sun was left, past gothic stained glass windowed rooms where stone people lay on top of stone coffins. We weren't supposed to touch them, (there were signs everywhere), but I did. I had to.

One room was lined with big tapestries of unicorns. It took my breath away every time I got to see it. I loved the magic of this place, the hushed and solemn shuffle of people's feet as they stopped to look, to pretend not to touch.

The halls that surround the outside courtyard gardens look out to a world of color in the summertime, but today it was just brown and white. The snow was everywhere and coming down harder now. I looked out into the courtyard where the Quince trees' gnarled old branches seemed weighted down with white frosting.

"Pretend you're a Quince tree, Georgie!" I twisted my arms and fingers every which way and curled down, hoping the dancer in her would follow my lead.

Instead, she was quiet, and her forehead was all wrinkled up.

I slipped my hand into hers and she pulled it away. I guess we were getting too old for that, which made my heart hurt a little.

"What's black and white and red all over?" I tried.

She blinked. "A nun falling down the stairs with a knife in her hand?"

Well, let me tell you I started laughing and couldn't stop. It wasn't just church laughter, either; it was the real belly kind of laugh, the kind that you're pretty sure is going to make you wet your pants. Dad was guffawing, too.

Funny what laughter can cure. Suddenly, she was fine again.

Dad asked the guard at the bottom of the tower's steps if we were allowed up there, but it was a definite no. Something about the stones and how human touch wears away even rock. Since all the stones of the Cloisters were brought to America from actual old monasteries in other countries, they didn't want to take their chances, I guess.

Probably for the best, I thought. Being up there in the tower might remind Georgie of her rotten tower tarot card that had soured her in the first place.

Instead, we went to the halls where they kept the plants, now safe and sound behind the winterized windows. Like Dad had mentioned, the gardeners here actually forced spring flowers to bloom early, just to entertain people like us.

Dad said he had to make a call, so Georgie and I busied ourselves guessing plant names before reading the little signs in their pots. I watched my father out of the corner of my eye as he paced outside underneath stone arches that were still decorated for Christmas. Holly leaves and berries, clumps of red and green apples, and English ivies hung over his head. The arches looked just like my tarot card's queen, sitting under all those leaves and fruit.

We called Dad's telephone the "car phone" because that's pretty much where it lived. He didn't usually carry it around with him because it was as big as a brick, so this was weird for us, seeing him walking and talking at the same time, flapping his free arm to make a point. His face was all red, like it got when he and our mother yelled at each other.

"Cyclamen!" I shouted. "Dwarf Pomegranate!"

She had gotten distracted for a second by Dad's argument, so I gave Georgie's coat sleeve a tug.

"Narcissus!" I chirped. Her gaze finally fell from him, and she played along.

"Paperwhites!"

"That's the same thing, Georgie. Paperwhites are Narcissus."

"Nope. Narcissus are Daffodils, Dumdum."

"No name-calling! Narcissus is how both of them start, Georgie. But their last names are too hard to remember. So we're both right. Look! Stars of Bethlehem!"

Stars of Bethlehem always shut people up. They're delicate little white things that dance like fairies in the wind. Well, that's if they're outside. These were inside, so no dancing, but they were still little beauties. We both squatted down, and I thought about the sadness that comes when holidays come to their ends. Mother often talked about Christmastide during the Middle Ages, the time when everyone had to eat up all the food they had stored because it would rot if they waited any longer.

Just thinking about them all feasting made my stomach growl. Why the heck hadn't we stopped after Zana and had something to eat?

"Hey, Hyacinths!" Georgie got up and I followed her to sniff in the glory of a clump of purple and white flowers.

"Very Easter-y," I said.

"That's not a word."
I just bit my tongue. It just wasn't worth it to argue.

"Hey, look!" I ran to a terra cotta pot where a fuzzy-leaved plant grew. It had beautiful new flowers that hung like green and purple bells from its delicate little stems.

"It's Origanum dictamnus," I whispered.