The Architect of Flowers Page 4

  How humbling to consider all the boxes of mail, year after year, all these cards and stories arriving, and then to think of all the stories not written and not sent? What about all the families that must pass unnoticed for every Peoria, all the dim urges that never quite work out in our lives, and then, by extension, all those cruel and vengeful and unspeakable hungers of ours, those terrible impulses that we can neither resist nor understand?

  Again, Uncle Walt, talk to me:

  It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,

  The dark threw its patches down upon me also,

  The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious,

  My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they

  not in reality meagre?

  Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,

  I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,

  Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,

  Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,

  Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly,

  malignant,

  The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me,

  The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous

  wish, not wanting,

  Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness,

  none of these wanting,

  Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest . . .

  I keep Whitman at my desk like a pint of whiskey—the wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me either—and I stare out my window at the city, the sky, the buildings like so many piles of nickels and pennies in the light. Sun going down, people going home, and I too have been living the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping . . .

  Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,

  The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as

  great as we like,

  Or as small as we like, or both great and small.

  After Whitman, I study Emerson for a puff piece about a house where he once stayed, which is now a bed-and-breakfast. I read all about Emerson for days—Knight of Grief, Patron Saint of Self-Reliance—and I keep coming back to the moment when he opens the coffin of his wife. Little more than a year since her death, and there’s Emerson, walking to the cemetery, standing in the cool of the tomb, lifting the lid of the box with a need to prove what? That it’s all not just some dream? That she is dead and gone and will never answer the letters he continues to write to her in his journals? That, in his words, though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till?

  I am already two or three stories away from Peoria by the time the galleys come back to me, the page proofs sitting on my chair when I arrive at work one morning. We aren’t allowed major edits at this point in the issue—nothing that will change the formatting or layout of the page—only the stray typo to catch, the inevitable wince of overwriting, the awkward phrase, all the missteps that bump you out of the narrative spell.

  There’s no reason to call, no unfinished business about this story, yet I can’t help but phone the church pastor in Peoria under the pretext of fact checking. I want to hear again what happened, how the family appeared in his pews one day, how the congregation had been waiting for them, how there was a house sitting ready, walls freshly painted only a few days before. I ask for details about life in Peoria, about the mills, the layoffs at Caterpillar, the heavy trains of the Central Illinois pounding through at night, all the little proofs that lead up to this family just arriving.

  They came to us from nowhere, he tells me again, his voice quiet and calm and patient. Was just a miracle, he says, really, and I can’t explain any of it to you.

  The Architect of Flowers

  I.

  Sometimes a single flower, a single petal on the ground, and she’d go all shattery. A bird trapped in the greenhouse and she’d be unable to move, knees trembling against the front of her skirt, the old woman expecting always to find the man dead in the orchard, or dead in the gardens, or dead in the crawlspace under the begonias, where he kept a cot and some grubbing tools. It was a fear she’d held so long she’d begun to secretly crave it—the hybridizer slumped over his seedbeds at last—part of her flustered and hurrying out through ferns and palms to him, part of her dawdling over zinnias and hoyas, lingering under this déjà vu of leaves and trees, wandering as if his death was just some long-standing social effort before her, the ballet or the dentist, just some dread dinner engagement she hoped to slip completely.

  And a fear, she knew, a fear must be a secret kind of wish, a seed from which some fruit must follow. Her husband gone, the greenhouses gone, the flowers all scattered to the wind. She longed for these things to fall like truncheons on her body, yearned for the worst to simply happen, her heart going like a bird in her chest at times. And not a small bird either, her heart like a pigeon or a crow, its wings trying to open inside the cage of her ribs. She’d try to steady herself against this rush of feeling, hold a stack of clay pots or a wooden trellis of ivy until the moment passed, her skin like velvet brushing one way, her skin like velvet brushing the other. Back and forth like this until she gradually came to herself once more, the old woman lost again in these fragile houses of glass, lost among the flowers of the gift shop, her shop with its packets of seeds, its tins of grafting wax, its watering cans, trowels, and fancy hand-carved dibbers.

  And for such a small shop on an old post road away from town, the bells on the door never seemed to stop ringing. The whole room would be caught off guard, and she’d turn each time to the open door, her eyes first hopeful, then crestfallen, as if he might have surprised her just this once, some new consolation of flowers in his hands. She’d recover quickly enough—as practiced in her disappointments as she was—yet who could miss that sad air of regret in the room? The way she hiked the smile back onto her face?

  Students, tourists, garden societies from the valley, but never her husband, never her son, never anyone she truly wanted to see in the doorway. Forever just the mailman, the beekeeper, the auctioneer with that little dog in his arms. A kiss to one cheek, a kiss to the other, and the auctioneer would set his dog on the floor and assume a cup of tea, a wedge of lemon, and a tiny silver spoon, which he’d stir and keep stirring.

  Seemed endless, spoon back and forth in the teacup, the auctioneer browsing whatever houseplants and clutter she had for sale, his little dog tottering about the aisles, its leg lifting to magazines and books piled near the wall. Always left her speechless, that scrabble of the animal’s toenails over the wood of the floor, the auctioneer standing cool and nonchalant as he set the spoon on the counter in front of her just so, the man so offhanded and casual as he priced a pair of lamps, an antique harrowing rake, an old farmer’s sink invaluable to certain collectors in the city, all the things he could sell for her. The auctioneer talked so calm, so matter-of-fact, he made her nightmares seem ridiculous to her, which made her nightmares somehow worse.

  A sip of tea and he’d ask about the greenhouses, the orchards, the seed stock, all of his questions so perfectly reasonable that they made her wince at herself. What would happen to the gardens when the hybridizer was gone? What would become of the flowers? And then what would become of her? What did her son say? What did her husband say? What did she say about all of this?

  She never lied to him—unless silence was a kind of lie—but she did have a way of turning such questions into answers all their own. A glance, a finger to her lips, and she steered the auctioneer around to pruning shears and a new batch of lilies, and how about a pinch of caramel ivy for him to taste? Here, she said, and smiled. Take some rose-hip jelly for your mother.

  She patienced him out onto the porch, the auctioneer calling zoom-zoom for his little dog. And what a relief as he drove away finally, his car cresting the hill, the woman feeling she’d just survived anothe
r brush with death, her body full of birds once more, sparrows this time, hundreds of them, her lips pressed tight against the din. A deep breath and she would turn back to her husband, the hybridizer out in the orchard or potting shed or forcing house.

  II.

  He came from a long line of flower makers and was prolific and lucky and could bring almost any scent or color to life. There was once a rose of chocolate that he made for her, its buds like little fruit moths all powdered with cocoa. There were asters and orchids and clover that he invented, a foxglove for her birthday, a candied basil for their son. He sometimes stumbled across those forgotten heirlooms in the woods—a tiny iris in the weeds of an old cemetery, a patch of gardenia in a field of unmown hay—and even the old hybridizer would begin to wonder if they’d only dreamed the flowers.

  He’d be working in the greenhouse or the garden, transplanting hoyas or sweetpeas, and he could sense his wife’s approach in the leaves around him, the stems and branches tightening like the cordage on a ship before a storm. He’d be right in front of her—the hybridizer alive and well as ever—up to his elbows in bedding plants when she found him, that crooked smile on his face.

  Oh, shush yourself, she’d say—and he’d not have said a word, of course—his wife starting in about star-nosed moles in the orchard, about the auctioneer with his little dog, about the caladiums going all to hell right here under his very nose. Didn’t they look a little leggy to him? Maybe hold off water a couple days to harden them up? Maybe some cow’s milk?

  He watched as she busied herself with cyclamen and gardenia, pinched off stems and flowers, the woman cleaning the marigolds to within an inch of their lives, the hybridizer smiling at the way she’d glance every so often to him, as if she was genuinely irritated to find him here.

  Now don’t start with me, she told him—and he laughed out loud to her—his wife brushing her hands clean, wiping her nose, and mussing the leaves of the caladiums once again. The hybridizer enjoyed the way she’d flit over the plants like this, her eyes and face and voice her own again, the woman telling about the day’s mail, the local weather reports, her afternoon at the shop.

  You know, she said, I could use a little nice from you.

  Just a little?

  A little would be a start, wouldn’t it?

  He laughed and she shooed him from the greenhouse toward the rest of his day. Had errands to run, didn’t he? Caraway and fennel to the village bistro, aloe to the glassman, and if he so much as glanced back to the house, he knew she would be standing on the side of the road, her arms raised for him to keep it moving, the old woman watching until he disappeared down the hill.

  As he walked, he didn’t mean to become like his wife about such things, but the hybridizer swore he could hear her huff herself back into the house. Was a trick of cathedrals—that faint sound of cutlery and dishes carrying from the kitchen—the woman telling the cupboards how unappreciated she was around here, how the man couldn’t build the first weed without her. Be like going without sunlight or soil or whatever else his stupid flowers seemed to need. Like selfishness, apparently. Must take great gobs of selfishness to make the ugliest little plant. Selfishness, obstinacy, and who knows what else? Sure can’t hurt to live like a hermit, it looks like. And to be uncivil and short-tempered and flatulent and—oh, yes—have I mentioned selfishness yet? Selfishness, pishy-pash, and complete utter madness, that great trinity of flower making—more important than seeds or sun or rain or the mystery of a good goddamn wife! Ha!

  Fresh flowers to bring to the church, eucalyptus and poppies to the apothecary, it all seemed normal enough, little scraps of gossip swirling endlessly after him as he breezed into town—a geranium said to be more venomous than a snake, his wife rumored to poison the man every evening, their son known to have escaped like bittersweet from the gardens—and the hybridizer with his usual stops to the blacksmith, the stationer, the glassworks.

  Behind the glassyard walls lay piles of sand and lime and soda ash, dusty stacks of glassware and bottles on wooden pallets, mounds of scrap glass broken into cullet to be stirred back into the crucible again. The glassman and his son worked in the pit as if in deep water, everything slow and highly keyed, and the hybridizer stared down at the matching whorls of hair, the long swan’s neck of a pitcher coming to life at the end of the gaffer’s tube. And as the glassman’s son carried the pitcher to the annealing ovens, the old glassman set aside the trimming tools, the light going murky as they dampened the kilns, the young man returning with a wineskin of water for his father, the glassman tipping it up like a trumpet, and there he was, that old scarecrow of a man, the hybridizer smiling down at them from the rail. The hybridizer shook his head in mock disapproval, as if they’d played the whole father-son scene a bit too neat, a tad too tidy for his taste, the glassman hollering something over the din of fans, something hunger, something thirst, his throat dry and sore and ruined by kilns.

  Out in the sun and the two men walked past the lumberyards and brickworks, that taste of river in the air as they reached the canal, the water all chromed and curdled with oil and sewage. At the tavern they could talk philodendrons and tapered stemware and whatever else occupied their minds—be it wives or work or money or children—both men had grown up in the valley and taken the trades of their fathers. The glassman’s father made his name in petticoat insulators for the railroad and telegraph, while the hybridizer’s father led an almost monastic life of seeds and soil, his own father, the hybridizer’s grandfather, once holding the patent to a variation of peppermint (Mentha piperita), which he made by crossing watermint (Mentha aquatica) and spearmint (Mentha spicata).

  And in the back garden of the tavern, the hybridizer and the glassman could eat and drink, each of them able to glance at the other and catch himself in the mirror of his friend. That same gathering of tired under the eyes and chin, the overripe ears and nose, hair all gone to seed, hands either smooth and scarred from fire and glass or else stained by soil and thickened from roots. In either case, one need only look across the table to see that time was not some vague abstraction after all, not some idea in which to believe or not to believe. Time had become, instead, the last great theme of life. And the cliché of it only made things worse, the hybridizer sitting with his glass of port, his hands having turned into gloves, all knotted and spotted and strange, his real fingers and palms still somehow soft and clean and unspoiled inside.

  Sunlight through the trees, a truck horn, a faint howl of the train in the distance, all evidence that life would go on without them, that it went along just fine without them already. Birds chittering in the leaves, an airplane across the sky, and the waitress made her rounds of coffee and finger cakes, and they ordered one more round of port, why not?

  A breeze passed over the garden, the air moving like a school of fish through the ivy and the trees. And it might have been the port talking, but the hybridizer edged forward in his chair and said he had some bad news. It would appear, he said, that she thinks I’m about to die again.

  The glassman leaned toward his friend—he’d been facing the hybridizer all along, but he seemed to face him even more somehow—Always good to know these things, he said. And how, may I ask, are you supposed to take your leave of us this time?

  She didn’t say exactly, said the hybridizer. Though it must be soon, my demise, judging by the way she’s acting.

  The glassman affected a priestly manner, pressed his hands around the glass of port. I have to say, he said, you’ve certainly looked better.

  Thanks, friend.

  Any time, said the glassman—and he finished his port and signaled the waitress for the check—and he waited and turned the empty glass on the napkin as if to focus something.

  The hybridizer hummed, church bells tolling in the distance, the hybridizer pointing to the sound. See? he said. The real problem is she’s just going to be right one of these days.

  Damn woman, said the glassman. Like a broken clock, isn’t she?

&nb
sp; III.

  A gust of birds across the yard, the dull ache of rain approaching in her knuckles, and she turned to the house again. A crow cawed from far away, and the hybridizer’s wife lifted her face to the sun and took a deep breath. Enough is enough, old woman. She scolded herself back toward the iron gate, the front walk—such a fine porch, such a handsome rhododendron—and she felt like a guest arriving to the party early. Nothing quite ready yet. No one quite here. A pair of pigskin gloves on the steps, and that long momentum of sadness as she taunted herself back into the kitchen.

  Not anything too subtle about the phone in front of her. A call to the city would make it real. Just that grainy hello of her son in the long distance, the distracted way he had of answering—his voice so busy, so brusque—if anything could bring her back to herself, if anything could put her back down in the world, it was her son so clear and far away on the phone like this. She went all bristles and tin metal, little birds in the cage of her body again, her finger ready on the cradle as her son said hello.

  I’m sorry, she said. I didn’t catch you at a bad time, did I?

  A slight hitch in the connection and she heard him swallow liquid on the other end of the line. It’s not a bad time, he was telling her, but I can’t just sit and chat right now, either, Mom.