The Language of Flowers (14 page)

“It’s manual. Do you know how to use it?” I shook my head. He pointed to the buttons and dials, defining photography terms I had never heard. I was paying attention only to the distance of his fingers from the camera hanging around my neck. Whenever he got too close to my chest, I took a step back.

“Try it,” Grant said when he was done explaining. I held the camera up again and turned a dial to the left. An open pink blossom went from blurry to unrecognizable. “Other way,” Grant said. I turned the dial to the left again, ruffled by his voice too close to my ear.

His hand closed around mine, and together we turned the dial to the right. His hands were soft and did not burn where they touched. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s right.” He lifted my other hand to the top of the camera and pressed my index finger onto a round metal button. My heart stopped and started again. The lens clicked open and shut.

Grant withdrew his hands, but I did not lower the camera. I didn’t trust my face. I didn’t know if he would see joy or hatred in my eyes, fear or pleasure written on my bright-red cheeks. I didn’t know what I felt except breathless.

“Wind the film to take another picture,” he said. I didn’t move. “Want me to show you?”

I stepped back. “No,” I said. “That’s enough.”

“Too much information for one day?” Grant asked.

“Yes,” I said. I took off the camera and handed it to him. “Way too much.”

We walked back toward the house. Grant did not invite me inside. He walked straight to his truck and opened the passenger door, holding out his hand to me. I paused and then took it. He helped me inside and closed the door.

We drove back to the city in silence. It began to rain, slowly at first, and then with a blinding, unexpected ferocity. Cars pulled over to wait out the storm, but it only strengthened. It was the first strong rain of the fall, and the earth opened to its long-awaited watering, releasing a metallic scent. Grant drove slowly, guided by his memory of the turns
rather than the sight of the road. The Golden Gate Bridge was deserted. Water rose from the bay and fell from the sky with equal force. I imagined the water coming into the car, the level rising over our feet, knees, stomachs, and throats as we drove.

Nervous to reveal the location of Natalya’s apartment, I asked Grant to drop me off in front of Bloom. It was still raining when he stopped in front of the store. I don’t know if he waved; I couldn’t see him through the water on the windshield.

Natalya and her band were setting up their instruments when I opened the door, and they nodded at me as I slipped up the stairs. Pulling my keys out of my backpack, I opened my small door, crawled inside, and curled up on the floor. The water from my wet clothes soaked into the fur carpet, and the whole world was wet and blue and cold. I shivered with my eyes wide open. I wouldn’t sleep that night.

“Ready?” Elizabeth asked
.

I was surprised to see the short distance we’d traveled. Elizabeth had parked behind a locked metal gate, in a driveway. To the right was the parking lot where the farmers’ market was held, and just beyond that, the vineyard. Somewhere beyond the vast expanse of asphalt, I realized, the two properties likely connected.

Stepping out of the truck, Elizabeth withdrew a skeleton key from her pocket. She slipped the key into the lock, and the gate swung open. I waited for her to come back to the truck, but she beckoned for me to get out.

“Let’s walk,” she said when I joined her. “It’s been a long time since I’ve set foot on this land.”

She walked slowly up the driveway toward the house, pausing to pinch wilted flowers and stick her thumb an inch into the soil. Surrounded by flowers, I was struck by what I now understood as the magnitude of the sisters’ quarrel. Nothing I could think of would make Elizabeth angry enough to give up not only her sister but also these endless acres of flowers for as long as she had. It must have been the worst kind of betrayal.

Elizabeth picked up her pace as she neared the house, smaller than ours, and yellow, but with a similar peaked-roof shape. As we walked up
the front steps, I noticed the wood was soft, as if it hadn’t quite dried out from the past spring’s rain. The yellow paint was beginning to peel in large sections near the front door, and the gutter, knocked loose, hung low over the top step. Elizabeth ducked underneath it.

At the top of the steps, she approached the front door. A narrow rectangular window was set into the painted blue wood, and she leaned forward. Standing on my tiptoes, I pressed my head into the space below Elizabeth’s chin. We peered inside. The glass was warped and dirty, and gave the effect of looking at a scene through water. The edges of the furniture blurred; framed photographs appeared to hover above a mantel. A thin floral carpet disappeared under the steam of our breath on the glass. I took in the room’s emptiness: There were no people, dishes, newspapers, or any other sign of human activity.

But Elizabeth knocked anyway: softly, and then louder. She waited, and when no one approached, she began to knock continuously. Her taps grew punctuated with frustration. Still, no one came to the door.

Elizabeth turned and marched down the steps. Imagining the stairs caving under my feet, I tiptoed softly behind her. Ten paces away, she turned and pointed to a gable, the window shut but not curtained.

“See that window?” Elizabeth asked. “Inside used to be the attic, where we played as girls. When I was sent to boarding school—I was ten, so Catherine must have been seventeen—she converted it into a studio. She was talented, so talented. She could have gone to art school anywhere in the country, but she didn’t want to leave our mother.” Elizabeth paused, and we both looked up at the window. Water spots and dust reflected sunlight off the glass. I couldn’t see inside the room. “She’s in there right now,” Elizabeth said. “I know she is. Do you think maybe she just didn’t hear our knock?”

If she was inside, she had heard the knock. Though two stories, the house was not big. But Elizabeth’s eyes were hopeful; I couldn’t tell her the truth. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

“Catherine?” Elizabeth called up. The window did not open, and I saw no motion behind it. “Maybe she’s asleep.”

“Let’s just go,” I said, pulling on her sleeve.

“Not until we know she’s seen us. If she sees us and still won’t come down, then she’ll have made her feelings clear.”

Elizabeth turned, kicking the dirt in front of the nearest row of flowers. She folded over and picked up a stone, rough and round, the size of a walnut. Aiming for the window, she threw the rock gently. It bounced off the shingled roof of the gable and returned to the ground, just paces from where we stood. Picking it up, she tried again, and again, her aim unimproved with practice.

Growing impatient, I grabbed a stone and hurled it at the upstairs window. It hit its target and went sailing through, a sound like a bullet traveling through glass, the break a perfect circle in the center. Elizabeth covered her ears with her hands, clenching her teeth and closing her eyes. “Oh, Victoria,” she said, her voice pained. “Too hard. Much, much too hard.”

She opened her eyes and lifted her face to the window. I followed her gaze. Inside, a thin, pale hand reached up, fingers closing around a gathering of cords. A shade dropped behind the shattered glass. Beside me, Elizabeth sighed, her eyes still fixed on the place where the hand had been.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing her by the elbow. Her feet moved slowly, as if through sand, and I pulled her gently to the road. Helping her into the truck, I turned back and swung the metal gate closed.

I was sleep-deprived and useless for an entire week. My fur floor didn’t
dry for days, and every time I went to lie down, the moisture soaked through my shirt like Grant’s hands, a constant reminder of his touch. When I did sleep, I dreamt the camera was turned to my bare skin, capturing my wrists, the underside of my jawbone, and, once, my nipples. As I walked down deserted streets I would hear the click of the camera’s shutter and spin around, expecting Grant just steps behind me. But there was never anyone there.

My inability to form coherent sentences and work the cash register did not escape Renata. It was Thanksgiving week, and the storefront was packed, but she relegated me to the back room with overflowing buckets of orange and yellow flowers and long stems of dried leaves in bright fall colors. She gave me a book with photographs of holiday arrangements, but I didn’t open it. I wasn’t completely awake, but flower arranging was something I could now do in my sleep. She brought me hastily scrawled orders and came back when they were done.

On Friday, the rush of the holiday past, Renata sent me to the workroom to sweep the floor and sand the table, which was beginning to bow and splinter under years of water and work. When Renata came to check my progress an hour later, I was asleep on my stomach on top of the table, my cheek against the rough wood.

She shook me awake. The sandpaper was still in my hand, the pads of my fingers textured where they clutched. “If you weren’t in such demand, I would fire you,” Renata said, but her voice was filled with amusement, not anger. I wondered if she believed me to be love-struck; the truth, I thought, was much more complicated.

“Get up,” Renata said. “That same lady wants you.” I sighed. There weren’t any more red roses.

The woman leaned on folded elbows at the counter. She wore an apple-green raincoat, and a second woman, younger and prettier, stood next to her in a red coat of the same belted shape. Their black boots were wet. I looked outside. The rain had returned, just as my clothes and room had dried from the week before. I shivered.

“This is the famous Victoria,” the woman said, nodding in my direction. “Victoria, this is my sister, Annemarie. And I’m Bethany.” She reached her hand out to me, and I shook it. My bones melted within her strong shake.

“How are you?” I asked.

“I’ve never been better,” Bethany said. “I spent Thanksgiving at Ray’s. Neither of us had ever cooked Thanksgiving dinner, so we ended up throwing away a half-baked turkey and heating up cans of tomato soup. It was delicious,” she said. It was obvious by the way she said it that she was referring to more than the soup. Her sister groaned.

“Who’s Ray?” I asked. Renata appeared at the doorway with the broom, and I avoided her questioning stare.

“Someone I know from work. We’ve never shared more than complaints over ergonomics, but then Wednesday, there he was at my desk, asking me over.”

Bethany had plans again the next night with Ray, and she wanted something for her apartment, something seductive, she said, blushing, but not obviously so. “No orchids,” she said, as if this was a sexual flower and not a symbol of refined beauty.

“And for your sister?” I asked. Annemarie looked uncomfortable but didn’t protest as her sister began to describe the details of her love life.

“She’s
married
,” Bethany said, emphasizing the word as if the roots of Annemarie’s problems could be found in the very definition of the
word. “She’s worried her husband isn’t attracted to her anymore, which—look at her—is ridiculous. But they don’t—you know. And they haven’t for a long time.” Annemarie looked out the window and did not defend her husband or her marriage.

“Okay,” I said, taking it all in. “Tomorrow?”

“By noon,” Bethany replied. “I’ll need all afternoon to clean my apartment.”

“Annemarie?” I asked. “Is noon okay?”

Annemarie didn’t answer right away. She smelled the roses and dahlias, the leftover oranges and yellows. When she looked up, her eyes were empty in a way that I understood. She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Please.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said as they turned to go.

When the door closed, I looked up to see Renata, still in the doorway with the broom. “The famous Victoria,” she chided me. “Giving the people what they want.”

I shrugged and walked past her. Grabbing my coat off the hook, I turned to leave.

“Tomorrow?” I asked. Renata had never given me a schedule. I worked when she told me to.

“Four a.m.,” she said. “Early-afternoon wedding, two hundred.”

I spent the evening sitting in the blue room, mulling over Annemarie’s request. I was well acquainted with the opposite of intimacy: hydrangea,
dispassion
, had long been a favorite of mine. It bloomed in manicured gardens in San Francisco six months out of the year, and was useful for keeping housemates and group-home staff at a distance. But intimacy, closeness, and sexual pleasure—these were things for which I had never had a reason to look. For hours I sat underneath the naked bulb, the light yellowing the water-stained pages of my dictionary, scanning for useful flowers.

There was the linden tree, which signified
conjugal love
, but this didn’t seem quite right. The definition felt more like a description of the past
than a suggestion for the future. There was also the difficulty of identifying a linden tree, removing a small branch, and explaining to Annemarie why she should display the limb on her dining room table instead of a bouquet of flowers. No, I decided, the linden tree would not work.

Below me, Natalya’s band started up, and I reached for a pair of earplugs. The pages of the book vibrated on my lap. I found flowers for
affection, sensuality
, and
pleasure
, but none, on their own, felt like enough to combat Annemarie’s empty eyes. Growing frustrated, I reached the last flower in the book and turned back to the beginning. Grant would know, I thought, but I couldn’t ask him. The asking alone would be too intimate.

As I searched, it occurred to me that if I couldn’t find the right flowers, I could give Annemarie a bouquet of something bold and bright and lie about its meaning. It wasn’t as if the flowers themselves held within them the ability to bring an abstract definition into physical reality. Instead, it seemed that Earl, and then Bethany, walked home with a bouquet of flowers expecting change, and the very belief in the possibility instigated a transformation. Better to wrap Gerber daisies in brown paper and declare sexual fulfillment, I decided, than to ask Grant his opinion on the subject.