The Green Curtain
Iris hung the plastic grass curtain in her daughter's room while Zoe was at school. Sixty strands of manufactured green, each one textured to feel almost real, cascading from ceiling to floor like the memory of rain.
"It's for her anxiety," Iris told her mother over video call to Scranton. "The therapist said green helps. Natural elements."
Her mother was quiet. Behind her, through the window, Iris could see the hill where they used to lie in real grass, looking up through blades that filtered sunlight into a green cathedral. That hill was a shopping center now.
When Zoe came home, she stood in her doorway, transfixed. At seven, she'd never seen a willow tree, never felt real grass that wasn't the expensive kind at the botanical garden where they charged admission to walk on lawn.
"It's beautiful," Zoe whispered, running her hands through the plastic strands.
Iris's throat tightened.
They'd moved to Fresno for Iris's job at the vertical farming facility - growing real lettuce in towers of artificial light. She spent her days tending actual plants that never touched soil, never felt rain. The irony wasn't lost on her: she grew real food in fake conditions while her daughter found comfort in fake nature that felt more reliable than the real thing.
"Can we put them in the living room too?" Zoe asked.
"They're expensive, sweetheart."
"But they last forever, right? Not like the plant that died."
The plant. They'd tried to keep a real fern. It had lasted three weeks in their apartment's filtered air before browning despite Iris's expertise. The plastic curtain would outlive them all.
That weekend, Iris drove Zoe to the last wild meadow in the county, a preserved acre that required permits to visit. They lay on their backs in the real grass, looking up.
"It's itchy," Zoe complained. "And there are bugs."
"This is how grass really feels."
"I like mine better."
Iris wanted to cry. Her daughter preferred the simulation to the source, found comfort in the controlled version rather than the chaotic original.
Back home, Iris found herself sitting on Zoe's floor, letting the plastic strands run through her fingers. They made a sound like rain if she closed her eyes. If she didn't think too hard, she could almost believe.
Her sister Claire visited from Philadelphia, where they'd just installed plastic trees along Market Street.
"Remember Dad's garden?" Claire asked, watching Zoe play behind her green curtain, pretending it was a forest.
"She doesn't need to remember," Iris said. "She has this."
"That's not the same."
"It's what we have."
Claire pulled out her phone, showing a video of their father from fifteen years ago, working in his garden, actual dirt under his nails. Zoe wandered over, watched with curiosity.
"What's he doing?" she asked.
"Growing food in dirt," Claire said.
"That's unsanitary," Zoe said, matter-of-fact, returning to her plastic forest.
That night, Iris cut one strand from the curtain and held it next to a photograph of the willow tree that used to grow behind their childhood home. In the photo, she and Claire were barely visible through the real cascade of green, their faces dappled with actual sunlight through actual leaves.
The plastic strand was more vibrantly green than the photo. More perfect. More permanent.
She thought about the vertical farm, how they marketed the vegetables as "beyond organic" because they never touched contaminated soil, never risked real weather. How customers preferred them, trusted them more than the muddy, imperfect vegetables from the last traditional farms.
"Mom?" Zoe stood in the doorway. "Are you sad?"
"No, sweetheart. Just thinking."
"About what?"
"About how good you have it," Iris lied. "Your green curtain that never dies."
Zoe smiled, returning to her room where the plastic grass caught the LED light, creating shadows that almost looked like the ones Iris remembered from lying under trees.
Later, Claire texted: "I'm sending Dad's seed collection. Even if she never plants them, she should have them."
The seeds arrived a week later - tomatoes, beans, wildflowers, grass. Zoe was fascinated by the packets, the idea that food came from such small things. She wanted to plant them immediately.
"We don't have dirt," Iris explained.
"Can we buy some?"
They went to the store, where a small bag of sterile potting medium cost forty dollars. Zoe planted one tomato seed in a cup, placed it by the window, next to her plastic curtain.
"Which do you think will last longer?" she asked.
Iris didn't answer. They both knew.
But Zoe watered the seed anyway, every day, checking for growth with the patience of someone who'd never known a world where things grew wild, where green cascaded without being hung, where grass was just grass, not a memory requiring simulation.
Three weeks later, a tiny green shoot emerged. Real, fragile, temporary. Zoe shrieked with joy, then immediately worried: "What if it dies?"
"It might," Iris admitted.
"But the curtain won't."
"No. The curtain won't."
Zoe considered this, touching the real shoot gently, then running her hand through the plastic strands. "I'll love them both," she decided. "The one that dies and the one that doesn't."
