The Architect of Flowers Page 3

  Sometimes I’d drive through town and not find him, not see the Impala, not have anywhere to go but home. Awful to just wait for him, just watch the phone on the wall, catch myself listening for the sound of tires in the drive, feel my hopes going all tiptoes toward the door or window, curtains hanging in long breathless folds, daylight lasting forever. Were times I’d get back in the car and still not find him. An hour of looking and past the Elks, the Lions, the Knights of Columbus, and the Impala there at the Legion Hall at last. Car still in the parking lot when I’d check an hour later, still there when he’d call to say he was running late.

  And if I said anything?

  Well isn’t that just perfect? he’d say—and he’d sweep his hand over the living room or dashboard or whatever happened to be in front of him—Bob asking where’d I think this all came from anyway? The house, the car, the jobs, he’d say, the whole operation flows straight from the Elks. It’s my job to sit in that place, he’d tell me, his voice thick. I’m on the fucken clock when I’m down there, Anna.

  I know how hard you work, Bob.

  You don’t know the first thing about anything, he’d tell me—and he’d start toward the door—man bouncing the keys in his hand, saying he’d be down at the Legion Hall. Little overtime down at the office, he’d say, if you know what I mean.

  Only later would I know what to say to him. In my mind I’d explain how I once pictured ourselves—how I imagined our life as a bridge—nothing as pretty as the Brooklyn Bridge, yet nothing as bad as the Lincoln Tunnel, more the Manhattan Bridge in my dream, two of us some Tinkertoy set of beams and cables lifting from one place, rising high over river, and setting down in a brand-new world.

  August, and the baby arrived early. Beautiful little boy, everyone healthy, happy, whole world out in front of us, my mother and sister driving up from the city, flowers and balloons in hospital room, Bob on good behavior with family there, man changing diapers, feeding baby at night, my sister and mother back to Greenpoint in a few days, Bob still good even after everyone had gone, still good after Labor Day, still good without anyone there to watch except his son and me.

  Last of the roosters gone, Bob would slip an egg under Matilda every few nights for me to find. Real sweet of him. But like the flowers and ice cream and chocolates he brought home now, I knew it was just sympathy he felt for me.

  And when I told him this?

  Maybe, he said—though he looked hurt to me—no sly grin on his face, Bob saying he didn’t think it was sympathy at all.

  September, and I’d be breastfeeding in the middle of the night, entire world asleep except for this beautiful child and me, Bob in the bedroom, his breaths like waves rolling in to shore. October, and checkups for the baby and me still catching myself holding my breath, as if no one deserved to be as happy as this, me whispering to this baby how lucky we were, how lucky we’d been, how lucky we were going to be. November, and everything soft and sunny and Indian-summer warm, and one Saturday afternoon I pulled into the yard to find a surprise of Impala sitting home, Bob on the patio with his friends Domo and Georgie.

  Just the way they started toward the car, and then the way they helloed big and loud to me, Bob helping get the baby out of the back seat, Domo and Georgie carrying grocery bags to the house, felt I should be careful of my wallet around them, pocketbook clutched tight under my arm. All right, I said, why you being so nice to me? What d’you want?

  Well, actually, said Bob, we were thinking—and at that I saw Matilda on the patio, bird standing under a chair, string tied to her leg—Domo and Georgie grinning when I turned back to them, baby wide-awake in Bob’s arms, Bob saying to let him explain.

  Seemed Georgie had been bragging how he knew the way to kill chickens, which got Domo incited over this secret recipe of his, which started Bob thinking how he happened to be in possession of a certain hen. And, yes, said Bob, we have been drinking a little.

  Okay, I said—and I went over to Matilda—picked her up and untied her leg and handed her to Georgie. So, I said, let’s see who knows how to kill a chicken, and then who knows how to cook it, yes?

  One slit behind the ear, according to Georgie, put the bird down on the ground, watch it jump three times, and just like that it’ll be dead. Juggler vein, said Georgie—and he touched just behind his own ear—Domo laughing and asking which vein was that again?

  What, said Georgie, the juggler vein.

  Jug-u-lar, said Domo, it’s called the jug-u-lar vein.

  That’s what I said, asshole, said Georgie—and everyone laughed, even the baby in Bob’s arms smiled, Bob and I saying that was what Georgie said—Domo calling us all dumb-ass crazy as he went to start the grill. Meanwhile, Georgie held the bird, said a little prayer, cut just behind her ear, and set her down on the ground. Damned if she didn’t jump three times and keel over dead on the grass.

  Men all looked over to me—not to worry, I smiled, no pangs from this farm girl—Georgie starting to pluck and clean the bird, feathers melting away at his touch, giblets in one dish for gravy, bird washed and cleaned and ready before we even knew.

  Domo sprinkled rosemary on the chicken, salt and pepper, garlic powder, and took a can of beer from the cooler at our feet. Opened the beer and made a joke out of putting the can inside the bird. Excuse my reach, he coughed. Sorry, old girl, pardon me now.

  Waste of a perfectly good beer if you ask me, said Georgie.

  But no one asked you, said Domo—and he stood the bird on the grill and closed the lid—and Bob wondered who was thirsty. Passed ice-wet cans of beer from the cooler, sun dappling through the trees, air pouring cool and clean over the yard. We drank our beer, bundled the baby against the dusk, and ate the chicken. It tasted delicious. We wiped our plates with pieces of bread.

  Later that night I dreamed a rooster into the yard—some prodigal bird starting to crow from the roof of the garage—and I woke to the sound of a baby crying. How lonely and faraway it sounded. I hoped this child had someone to take care of it, a mother to see if everything was all right, a father to lift it from the crib, check its diaper, pat it quiet on the back. Felt my milk let down—that sweet draw of ache from deep inside—and I started toward the baby’s room and heard Bob’s voice from the dark.

  It’s okay, little guy, he was saying. Just woke up funny. Had a bad dream is all. There, there, there, there, there.

  The Ghostwriter

  And the Lord says, Go to Peoria.

  Give away all you possess, and go.

  If you desire to do my will, if you wish to be my servants, then I have a place for you there.

  Now stop—just stop for a moment and feel that voice—Go to Peoria.

  Imagine being told to give up your present life, give away everything, and follow this command. God’s just come to you, told you exactly what to do with your life, and now what? What kind of choice would you have? Scared to obey, scared not to obey, and then there’s your family, your friends, your mother-in-law, your neighbors. You have to break the news to them all. Have to quit your jobs, turn off the gas and electric, stop the mail, shut off the phone. Have to pull the kids out of school. Have to pack up a van and say goodbye to everything and everyone you’ve ever known.

  You barely know where Peoria is, but God’s been pretty clear and direct on this. You find yourself driving a van all day and night until you reach, at long last, Illinois. Couple more hours and you’re on the outskirts—Peoria—next six exits. The city line, and you pull over to the side of the highway, traffic rushing past, fields lying flat with dirty snow.

  I’m the ghostwriter who spends all morning with this man. I listen as he calmly tells how he and his family sat there with day fading to night, lights of the city in the distance, his wife and three kids shivering in the cold. All five of them wait and pray on the shoulder of the highway. God had directed them only as far as Peoria, so they didn’t know what to do except wait for His next directive. And, yes, it all sounds completely crazy to him too, he says, which makes me
like this man. He knows this is all beyond reason. No one could understand it, he tells me, none of it rational, the way he received word from God, the way God was so specific, the way they unloaded everything they owned, the way they followed this voice to Illinois.

  The story was sent to the magazine where I work, a religious-minded monthly where my job is to rewrite these true stories of hope and inspiration. We’re not sold on newsstands, but we have almost four million subscribers and have been rolling out our brand of good news to the world for more than fifty years—first-person accounts, taken from actual events, all of which serve as testaments of faith of some sort—or as the magazine’s mission statement says, our articles present time-tested methods for developing courage, strength, and positive attitudes through faith.

  My job is to make sure that the piece conforms to the expectations of our readers. In short, each story needs its all-walks-of-life beginning, its crisis of faith, its turnaround and ultimate triumph of spirit, its upswing of happy and positive and purpose-to-it-all ending. I make all the narratives fit this template and shepherd the authors through the process, so that they sign off on the pieces, attesting that everything is real and true and completely their own.

  All stories must be personal experiences of God’s goodness—whatever that may mean—and this goodness must shine through somehow in the unfolding events. In-house, we call this “God factor” in a story its cello, as in the musical instrument. And when line edits come back to us, we ghostwriters get suggestions like more cello or less cello or where’s the cello?

  Every aspect of our job is meant to serve the cello, and the cello is supposed to build to the story’s ultimate payoff: that bright-lit moment when we understand that everything has worked out, that the family has found a home in Peoria, that their home was wherever God wanted them to be.

  The stories I’m assigned run the gamut. A guy rescues manatees in Florida. A crop-duster or beekeeper or fisherman survives some great accident or addiction or loss. Someone finds an unopened letter from World War II and forwards it to the widow. The variations are endless for us line-workers at the epiphany plant, the meaning of life packaged into nice, tidy, fifteen-hundred-word servings of conflict, crisis, and radiant revelation.

  We crank them out like widgets—these little air pockets of cello—no story complete without its takeaway. In the epiphany business, each takeaway must be as short and sweet and hopeful as possible. In the jargon of the office, the classic stories boil down to some variation of IPIG—I Prayed I Got—or ITIJ—I Trust in Jesus (and that’s made all the difference).

  Truth is, my days are fabulous, literally alive with people who talk to God—help this, rescue that, thank you for these, may I please have those—the typical silence of God becoming a kind of Rorschach test for the protagonists. My narrators usually fill this silence with the needs or fears or desires of their lives and circumstances. What makes the Peoria story so fascinating to me is that God not only spoke to these people, but He did so in such a specific and puckish way.

  I love the image of them on the side of the highway, can feel the tug of trucks rushing past, can see the guardrails, the stray muffler, the shreds of tire, the man and his family stranded on Interstate 74, all of them wondering what to do, where to go, how to continue. They’re cold and hungry and afraid. It’s quiet and getting dark. The cars, the trucks, the darkness, and they wait for as long as they can, but nothing happens.

  It’s the middle of the week and they drive to the first motel they find. All five of them in a grubby little room. Two, three, four days passing. Five days of praying and watching television. Sunday morning, down to their last twelve dollars, they check out of the motel and go a few blocks to the nearest church. They are the only black family in all the pews, the columns and windows and tall space of the church around them, the last of their money going into the collection plate, their last possession released. And here they are—those first quiet chords of cello—because at the end of the sermon, as everyone files out of the church, the pastor stands on the front steps to greet the parishioners, to receive these new visitors, thank them for attending the service, small talk about the weather and the sermon and the church, cello rising as he asks where’s home for them, anyway?

  We came from New York, they tell him, but we have nowhere to go. The Lord told us to come to Peoria, that he would give us a place here, and we found your church.

  The pastor calls everyone back to the steps, his voice lifting over the cello, the man announcing that this was the family they’d been expecting, these were the people they’d been told to prepare for. And by the end of the day—whole string section of cellos and violins and violas by now—soundtrack soaring as this family finds a home in Peoria, a set of jobs, a new school, furnishings and clothing and food and everything they need, this little parish waiting for their arrival all along.

  It’s a crazy, miracle-laden story, which barely makes any sense. Yet talking to this man, I see he’s not the unquestioning fanatic I first imagined. In fact, by the middle of our conversation—which ranges from the poetry of Walt Whitman to the grace of rivers and trees to why pride is the last possession we seem able to release—and I know that something extraordinary has happened to this man. I’m almost envious as I jot the details, the role of faith in his life, that echo of God’s voice in his words. It’s easy to obey and serve the Lord when you have security, he says to me. It’s quite easy when your insurance and rent are paid. But try giving away everything, putting yourself at stake for something in the world, because that is where faith and trust and believing begin.

  And as I copy my shorthand notes, as I line up the elements of his story, I’m more and more convinced that he made this cold-sweat leap, that he trusted himself to something greater than himself, that he had his doubts every step of the way, and that, as a result of this test, he has touched some deep and profound belief. Whether you call this religious or not, you can’t go through an experience like this without something spiritual happening to you.

  I edge a photograph of the man and his family onto my computer screen—all of them smiling and dressed in royal-blue choir gowns—and just the idea of them in Peoria seems enough to fill me with a sense of hope and well-being. I feel like a tuning fork as I work on the story of the man and his family, the faint hum of my own commandments coming to life in the calm tone of the man’s voice.

  Later that week, when I turn in my draft, I am high on the piece. I go office to office, saying good night to everyone. I ride the elevator down to New York City and find myself outside, walking in the twilight and the passing crowds and steam of midtown, the braying car horns and burning smell of rubber and pretzel salt. I’m on my way home to Brooklyn with this feeling, this glimmer of what it’s like when what you believe and what you do are one and the same thing.

  I am flying—cello, don’t fail me now—and am part of the well-join’d scheme that Whitman always sings about, myself disintegrated, everyone disintegrated, all of us disintegrated yet part of the scheme:

  Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,

  Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,

  Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d,

  Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hurried . . .

  And all I can say is yes.

  To the whole wheeling world, I’m saying, Yes.

  Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

  And when I get the story back for revision the next morning, my editor has written over that cello-soaked takeaway of mine:

  PREACH IT, BROTHER BILLY!!!

  PREACH IT!!!

  And the truth? The truth is that I hear commandments as well—vague and small-voiced—and I believe, for better or worse, everyone else hears them too. And what, in the end, is the difference between Go to Peoria and Write the book? Or Marry the girl? Or any of the countless pa
ssions that guide our days? Who are we, truly, if not these dreams, these pursuits, these acts of faith? What are we but these urges? What else carries us through our lives, gives us meaning, helps us make sense of the accidents that befall us? And when I think of it like this, I actually feel—or believe—that the best in us is utterly mad. The meaning of our lives, our purpose, everything we care about starts as a dim voice, a small urge driving us on to our own kinds of Peoria.

  I feel like a whistleblower telling you all of this, spilling the inner workings of the ghostwriter, the daily life of the anonymous content provider, humble commodifier of insight and faith. The less flattering side, of course, is that I milk a good week and a half out of the Peoria story, revise it a few times at my leisure, and then it’s gone from my life.

  The next ditty arrives on my desk, another wave on the shore, roughly two or three per issue. This week astronaut lady, next week I wo Jima guy, someone always climbing a mountain or surviving a flood or shipwreck or farm accident—these are the bread-and-butter events of God—and we line-workers rarely do justice to the stories that deserve it, just as we do too much justice to the stories that don’t.

  Still, there are worse ways to make a living. I spend my days learning about manatees and listening to people who live with angels and other spirits. I have an editor who saves the most interesting assignments for me, who teaches me to care about things, who helps make my work the best it can be. What more could I ask? I mean, he only needs to goose-line a word or write in the margin WCDB—We Can Do Better—and I understand exactly what he sees and needs. I have a place in the world and sit in editorial meetings and read from the hundreds of prayers that arrive every week, my colleagues passing snapshots of clouds or trees that resemble Moses or Mother Teresa, the likeness often uncanny, the letters and newspaper clippings never ending.