The Architect of Flowers Page 6
Seriously, he said, you been sniffing those fertilizers again?
I have such wonderful news, she said, and smiled as she looked at him. You’re going to be so happy, she said, so happy I’m not even going to tell you.
And she floated across the room and nudged the man from the door, bumped him along the hall and down the stairs and out of the house to the potting shed. Go on, she told him. Go make a nice vegetable or something.
He laughed as she flapped her hands to scare him off, laughed to see her standing in the yard, the old woman waiting for him to disappear into the greenhouse before she returned to her shop. And in the shop, a lone moth pattered at the light bulb, each bump and brush only making things worse. If she was crying now, at least she was crying for something happy this time, crying and laughing for this surprise she’d carry out to the hybridizer soon.
Crows in the orchard again, she could hear them, and they seemed reason enough to let herself go, woman tidying the shelves as she wept, the shop with its sad clutter and quiet. And then that jing-jang of bells, the door opening, and the auctioneer with his arms full of little dog. What’s wrong? he asked when he saw her. Why are you crying?
It’s nothing, she told him—but even the dog went quiet—the whole shop going dry and airless as she tried to smile this omen aside, the old woman saying that nothing was wrong. She fluttered over some gladioli and laughed at herself and wiped her face and held out her hands to show her fingers shaking and nervous.
Everything’s absolutely fine for once, she said. And this must frighten me more than anything. Idea of being happy. I mean, my son’s coming home. Train gets in tonight. And look at me now. Complete wreck.
She almost began to cry again, and the auctioneer set the dog on the floor and put his arms around her, the man all wires and pulleys as he hugged her, his voice tipping up with how perfect, how wonderful, how lovely this was. May I tell my mother? he asked.
Of course you may.
She’ll be so thrilled, he said—and he pulled open the door—the hybridizer standing in the bright of the driveway by the car, the auctioneer’s mother in the passenger’s window, the dog already across the grass to them. On the front steps the auctioneer offered his arm, and the hybridizer’s wife felt herself carried by him, an effervescence of air and leaves and trees, her body going soft and light as a girl as she leaned up to the auctioneer. Don’t tell him about my son, she whispered. Still a surprise.
The man squeezed her hand to say yes—and then they were at the car—the auctioneer saying what great news as he pulled away, he and his mother waving goodbye, the hybridizer and his wife standing in the drive, the two of them watching un til the car disappeared down the hill. The town seemed a toy model of a town below, rain clouds piling in the distance, and she could feel the hybridizer’s hand go to the small of her back.
What was that all about? he asked.
Oh, you, she said—and she touched his chin—her fingertips to the rasp of his beard like a match being struck. Let’s think of me as the little irritant that makes the pearl, she said, shall we?
Will do, he told her—and they started back toward the house—and again the crows in the orchard.
The birds were barking behind the gardens, calls so nagging and loud that she and the hybridizer circled around the porch to the sound. Past the gardens, past the greenhouses, and the crows weren’t even birds out in the trees. More like splashes of ink against the light. One swinging up and around as if on a string. Sunlight like lace over the trees.
Caw, caw, caw.
Was hard to tell what the crows hated so much. No more than a handful of leaves. Some kind of squirrel’s nest in the branches. The hybridizer and his wife edging forward until they stood directly under the tree. Crows loud, then quiet, then loud again. A beehive, a clot of gypsy moths, the hybridizer and his wife trying to see, and then this pale mask swiveled around to them, face as flat as a disk.
An owl!
She said it again—an owl—and the hair on her arms went electric. Those eyes just staring down. Tree so still it trembled. Bird smaller than she’d have thought. And then the crows started up again. Perhaps they never stopped, loud and crass, harsh the way they hounded the poor thing. And all the while this face—such eyes—entire lifetime passing before its head tilted up again. Everything had moved closer in the dusk, and the owl loosened itself from the tree, dropped forward and started away toward the woods.
Even the crows fell quiet, owl strong and straight to that deep blue of trees in the distance, long strokes of its wings as it went. And the crows—so black they shone—one by one they started to peel away after the owl, feathers hissing as they rowed into the distance. And she felt herself in a dream as they followed—a dream she would have liked to dream—this strange dream where once upon a time an old woman emerged from a long dark wood.
Griswald
All you know is how sunny it was—so bright you could hardly see—and how this old man kept trying to tip you back into the stream, water breathless and cool, old Mr. Griswald standing behind you, his pants rolled up to his knees, his voice strange and far above, man saying not to worry, saying he has you, he has you.
This is going to be a terrible story. Can feel it coming already—that sinking sensation whenever he returns like this—the two of you entertaining the idea of space under the shade of his porch, your mother at work in the afternoons, your father who knows where. The Elks, the Lions, it hardly matters anymore. All that matters is this boy—you—eight or nine years old, old enough to take care of yourself apparently, aren’t you? Only an hour before your mother gets home from work. Can always call the department store if you need to. Can always run to the neighbors if something bad happens.
And what’s so wrong with wandering over to the old man’s yard, anyway? He’ll appear with bottles of soda. Old man quick to invite you onto the porch, quick to show what he’s found while rummaging in the basement last night: an accordion, a wind-up-clock mechanism, an old telephone with magnets and coils of copper.
Any boy would have kept going to this porch. One day you’re leaping from the back steps of his house, lost in musty parachutes, cloth around you like clouds. He flew in the war, old man telling how he was wounded, showing how bits of metal are still embedded in the scars, slivers of gray he picks from the skin of his elbow. He keeps the shards in a baby-food jar that he shakes like a rattle at you.
So it’s parachutes one afternoon, swing sets in the park the next, the old man coaching you to pump your legs and swing higher, that moment of weightlessness at the top of each arc, the old man hollering if you can feel it there, and then right there? And you traipse into town with the man, the library ladies knowing all about him, two of you scuttling around to the racks of newspapers and magazines. His reading glasses are thick and filmy, frames bent out of shape, and his hands shake as he turns the pages, books about astronauts and satellites and planets and dark empty space, maps of the moon, charts of the stars. He reads an explanation of gravity to you and calculates your weight on each of the planets. On the moon you’d weigh 11 pounds. On Jupiter you’d weigh more than 160. In space you’d float weightless, no gravity at all. He says that would be something—weightlessness—and he musses your hair to start you home. We should go, he says, before anyone gets too worried about you.
Somewhere along the line you wonder aloud to him if it’s actually possible—if you could travel in space one day—and the old man’s teeth are so yellow they look green when he smiles, his hand on your shoulder as you walk together, the man saying, What a sweet boy you are.
Anything’s possible, he says, this man so kind to you, his hand at the collar of your shirt.
Maybe you remind him of someone. Maybe it’s that receding chin of yours. Whatever the reason, you arrive in his yard like a lost dog, and he calls you kiddo and hands you a glass of iced tea and asks what he can show you today. He proposes to get you ready, the old man promising to prepare you for your future, your
destiny, your ultimate escape.
And now it’s a story on the news, a sprinkler in a yard in the sunlight, a yellow school bus with its lights flashing, something always brings you back to the old man like this. All you really remember is how sunny it was, old man explaining how astronauts trained in water, how you could approach weightlessness this way, lying back in the stream, sun straight above and so bright and warm, stones slippery with algae, and him standing in the water behind you, saying not to worry, he has you, holding you by the wrists, saying he has you, he has you.
And years from this place, you’re still not sure what he’s trying to do with you exactly. Even now you worry what you’re feeling as the water strokes your back and legs. Even now you tell yourself it’s nothing at all. Just an old man trying to be nice to a boy. A lonely man, a lonely boy, the sun so bright you can hardly see, that cold, mentholated feel of the air after you get out of the stream and start home, this little kid crossing the street in his underwear, little kid carrying his clothes in his arms, sensing something is wrong, something about that hangdog look of the man, this scrawny little boy hurrying across the lawn on tiptoe.
And this boy—you—he never told anyone what happened, because maybe nothing happened, maybe it was nothing at all, and maybe it’s still nothing at all. All these years later and maybe it’s just a strange accident the way he returns to you like this, your father calling him a scrubby old queer, your father calling to him from the front walk, calling loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear, your father standing there as if daring the old man to step out of his house, taunting the old man to appear to us, wishing he’d step out of that goddamn house.
And the rest of your life, it seems, you pretend not to notice the old man on his porch, feign distraction as you pass his house, old Griswald waving for you to come over, you almost not even noticing him, as if a stranger lives in that house, as if you don’t know the chess set on his coffee table, the magazines in piles by his chair, the smell of stale tobacco in his couch, as if you don’t watch that house of his in the moonlight, those yellow windows awake all hours of the night, those shades drawn, those rooms unable to fall asleep either, no one having to know about this little boy watching, no one having to see this little kid lying in bed like this, no one else having to know these nights all stuffy and sleepless, these nights not existing at all, these days not happening, nothing ever happening—and nothing still happening—nothing happening forever, right?
Thin End of the Wedge
We were always something. All sorts of trouble, according to Joy-Dee, little mischief-makers, little pain-in-the-ass dickheads. We’d go open-handed to her, girl bribing us with candy, coins, television, bribing us with glimpses of her cotton-white underwear, bribing us with smiles so sly and pretty to us, girl promising to leave us alone if we left her alone, shooing us away as she talked on the phone—us being Kenny, Kiki, and me, ages eleven, nine, and eight—two brothers and me, their mascot, the three of us always hovering around, always hoping to get some reaction out of her, always wanting to see her all shrill and harried and chasing us across the yard, those short shorts and long legs, a high school senior with soft brown hair and smooth tanned skin, Joy-Dee trying to reason with us, trying to bargain with us, trying to explain the rules of the summer to us, her job to make sure that we didn’t kill or maim one another on her watch.
And what else do you need to know? Want to know how later that next winter their house would burn down? Should I tell how they moved a few exits north, just across the state line, just far enough to never quite see the Hamiltons again? And how about the odd occasion that brings me home again now—a funeral or holiday—and that strange pull of this kid I used to be? Can I tell how I can’t help but drive down the old street and expect to see that big rambling house from my memory, that dull white paint of the clapboards rubbing onto our hands, that third-floor attic room we used to play in? In its place is the same disappointment of raised ranch that has stood there for the past thirty years—dull brown face of the house saying, Don’t look at me, kid—sorry little carport shrugging me aside. The garage next door, the fence around the yard, the cars parked on the street, all of it saying, You’ve got the wrong place, saying, You’re not remembering correctly, saying, You must be lost.
And it must be true, as the street itself tries to tell me, because the apple tree is gone as well, and next door squats another house where the aboveground pool used to be, and even the trees are not like I remember them. They strike me as small and misshapen now, stunted and diseased, most of them scooped and carved to make way for telephone and electric wires. Yet when I picture my childhood it takes place under big bouquets of elms and oaks and maples, shade spreading like picnic blankets over the grass and houses. The rest of the street might be familiar to me—those tired sags of the porches, the clotheslines, the garages, the furniture on the lawn—but it’s the trees that make me wonder if I haven’t been making up everything in my mind, making it all so much better than it actually was.
I can accept that the people, the houses, the sidewalks have all changed or disappeared in the years since my father died, but for some reason I can’t fathom the trees diminished as much as the rest of us. It makes me question much more than just trees, of course, because if I’m not remembering something as basic as those trees correctly, where does that leave my father? I mean, when did he actually leave my mother and me? How come I don’t know something as basic as that? And why did my mother keep his pints of whiskey tucked under the kitchen sink? Did she open the caps at night—one breath of whiskey or aftershave bringing my father back to her—or am I only imagining this kind of longing? And where does this leave my mother? Her dripping faucet, her flooded basement, my mother blaming my father for everything wrong in her life, the woman nothing if not disappointment, her days solid-through with loss. And then what about me? From the trees to the Hamilton brothers to my father in that coffin, the man lying as if in a bath of flowers, have I been dreaming this up all along?
Strange, sad, scary how it won’t lie still for me. Almost funny how I keep circling back to this—variations on a theme—my ur-story, my rhyming action, my template for everything that follows. That everything being my father gone, my mother wounded, and myself this boy trying to lay it all to rest somehow.
But maybe there’s nothing to lay to rest—that absence so central to me that I may never be able to look at it directly— and I’m hiding again in some fiction of trees that must spread healthy and huge over this boy’s childhood. Easier to imagine these things present than to imagine them gone. The Hamilton brothers eating breakfast in the kitchen, the house standing so sturdy and bright, Mr. Hamilton leaving for work with his lunchbox, Mrs. Hamilton working in the department store with my mother, Joy-Dee sitting us for the summer.
As I recall, we were interested in the idea of turning the pool into a vortex. We scraped the powder out of firecrackers and flares to make a bomb out of a mailbox. We were these great little kids carrying out their one glorious summer together, three boys left to their own devices. And all I know is that for me—that boy of eight—his father’s death would be more inconvenient than anything else.
One minute a boy might go all annoyed at being dragged away from his summer for the funeral, and the next he’d be grateful that the man was gone for good, no absence to explain away anymore, no mealy-mouthed excuses for the man, no trying to remember what story he said to whom. The boy no longer had to lie because now he had the truth to tell. His father was dead. Big deal.
Besides, if someone’s father had to die, it might as well have been a father that no one would miss. Kenny and Kiki’s father, Mr. Hamilton, he coached baseball, ran a scout troop, fixed bicycles in the yard, took his sons camping, washed and waxed his car on weekends. He even stopped as he left for work to ask if everything was all right with me. I was sitting on the side steps that morning, and he put his hand on my shoulder and said he was sorry about my father—he meant he was sorry ab
out my father’s death—and he said not to worry, that everything would be all right. I had to go to my father’s wake that afternoon, and Mr. Hamilton turned to the house and hollered for his boys to get outside and play with Jeffrey before he had to leave.
A crab-apple tree reached over the pool—the Hamiltons had an aboveground pool, had a double lot for baseball, had a kind of shed with broken bikes, old appliances, tires, a heaven of scrap wood and old wheels and electric motors—and we started every morning by fishing apples out of the pool, skimming the scum bubbles that collected against the liner, the insects that swirled around in the foam. Anything particularly disgusting—a salamander, a drowned mole—we’d leave in the kitchen or next to the telephone. We loved to hear Joy-Dee go shrill, her voice a siren.
That day was like any other. We cleaned the pool, checked the chlorine, banged the bugs and leaves from the filter, all the usual chores. We must have thrown apples down the street, tossed them like golf balls onto the roof, that smell of apples so thick sometimes we could hardly breathe. Must have ended up playing baseball, the game always bringing out the brawls in us. It’d be me versus Kenny, Yankees versus Red Sox, archrivals with Kiki as the designated pitcher, the rattled southpaw, always more on my side than his brother’s. Earlier, trying to be funny, Kenny had thrown my glove into the pool, and as payback Kiki unloaded a fastball that caught his brother on the side of his face. Took a while, Kenny on the ground, me and Kiki nervous and hectic, the two of us bouncing over the mound, calling him a drama queen, telling him to get up and fight. And when Kenny pushed himself off the grass, finally, he calmly said he was going to kill us, his face and shirt bright with blood.