The Architect of Flowers Read online

  And he meant it, aluminum bat in his hands, Kenny chasing his brother into the corner of the yard, stalking him to the back fence, and taking a swing—a hard, mean, full swing at his brother—Kiki with his hand up by reflex, the sound like a chicken wing snapping. He was cradling his arm, trying not to cry, his eyes wild and afraid. I don’t know what came over me, but I rushed Kenny and tackled him from behind, started punching ears and twisting fistfuls of hair. And it was me making all the noise—I was the one crying and yelling and unable to stop—Joy-Dee across the yard, pinching my neck and lifting me away.

  She moved between us. What the hell? she yelled. What the frick’s with you?

  I wiped my mouth and stared at her, the cords in her neck all tight, and she would have hit me if I hadn’t stepped away. She said she’d slap that grin off my face if she saw it there for another goddamn second. I couldn’t help it—I laughed—and she seemed shaken and not sure where to even start with me, Joy-Dee hesitant in a way that was new with us, as if we were dogs she didn’t know or trust anymore, dogs that didn’t back down or look away or care, dogs with our ears down and the hair on our necks up. And we must have understood this, because Kiki stood there, cradling his arm, and told his brother to drop dead and started running toward the street. I watched them watch him go—and then I flipped them the bird and followed Kiki, Kenny disappearing into the house with Joy-Dee, Kiki and me in the yard by the pool. My hands trembled as I put them into the water and wet my face, Kiki trying to move his arm, the boy both crying and not crying at the same time.

  Hard to say how much time went by—even then it was a blur—Joy-Dee coming outside with that long sad diaper face of hers, telling me it was time to get cleaned and dressed and ready to go, my mother out of work early that day, her Chevelle pulling into the driveway before lunch, and the next thing I knew I was sitting in the back seat, all clean and changed, wearing a brand-new suit and shirt, my hand held out of the open window, riding the air like a plane. We ate at a burger place on the way out of town, my mother and I, and then we were on the highway, me leaning forward in case my mother wanted to say anything to me.

  Part of me hoped she’d take me aside and explain it all, part of me grateful she didn’t say a word, my mother digesting her thoughts and her feelings alone.

  We rode for miles of silence.

  Companionable silence.

  In a previous life our Chevelle had been a driver’s education car, my mother never bothering to remove the extra brake on the passenger side. Not only was that a luxury we didn’t need to spend the money on—or so she’d tell me—but the brake pedal gave her a simple excuse to keep me in the back seat, allow her some privacy as she drove. Perhaps my mother never liked me very much, perhaps I reminded her of my father, reminded her of what had gone wrong in her life. I don’t even know what went wrong, but many times I felt that she’d have been better off without me, that I was a bad luck charm for her, a bad omen for them.

  When I asked to be next to her, and promised not to touch the brake, she’d insist there wasn’t any room, that the Holy Ghost liked to ride shotgun next to her, that she needed the space to spread out her things. Became a routine with us, my mother trying to joke me aside until she thought I forgot, her voice looping up high as she told me to keep myself occupied back there, to just let her drive for a while in peace, to let her concentrate please.

  Pretty big front seat, Mom. Couldn’t the three of us fit? You know, me, you, and the Holy Ghost. I’ll be good. I promise.

  No, no, she’d say, that’s all right.

  Lotta room up there, I’d say. Holy Ghost must be pretty massive.

  Just be a good boy, she’d say. Just stay back there, please.

  Well, actually, Mom, if he’s so big maybe he’d be more comfortable in the rear. Whole back seat for him here, you know.

  That’s enough already, she’d say—and when she lifted her arm to the back of the seat and turned to look at me, I could see a dark ring of sweat in the armpit of her dress—and it put my heart in my throat for some reason, as if that triangle under her arm was an injury I could see and feel as my own.

  We weren’t driving far—little more than an hour to the farm in Franklin—the place where my father lived after he left. It’s interesting to me now, all these years later, to think how close he was to us on a map, yet how little we saw of him. I don’t remember, just for the record, ever really missing him, his absence not affecting me at all.

  And no sooner does a sentence like that leave my lips than I feel that it’s just another lie I tell myself, which I’m sure it is, a lie like the lie about the trees I must still have to believe. I never felt I needed my father, yet here I am again, casting back like this out of some deep sense of loss or deprivation, as if still trying to find a way into my father’s heart, or still trying to make a place for him in mine.

  I mean, why did we visit him only two times that I remember? Both occasions ending with me asleep on the couch in my clothes. A woodstove to my back. Their voices, my mother’s and father’s, all watery and distant in the next room. That swerve of her laugh. That can-do purr of his voice. That jib and jab of their voices lulling me to sleep.

  And when I listen like this, I feel that even then they must have loved each other in their own way, just as I know somehow my father must have cared for me, the man slapping me upside the head, or showing me how to double-knot my shoes, or taking me fishing to the pond on the farm. I must have been six or seven years old—and perhaps I’m only dreaming this as well—the two of us standing in the dusk, watching as he attracted the bats with the whir of a fishing pole. He’d whip the pole, make the sound, and down swooped the bats.

  It’s something, he’d say, the way they come down, isn’t it?

  And the bats would dive toward us, thin and unsteady, the boy just watching, mouth open, the dusk making everything granular. And the man would toss stones into the air to show how the bats followed almost to the water, poor things pulling up at the last moment, the man play-swatting his son on the back of the legs with the pole. The boy’s eyes might betray him, might blur with tears, but his mouth he could keep pressed tight as a line.

  His father could laugh—big throaty laugh of a man—and the boy could look away to the house, the windows, his mother behind those curtains somewhere. And where was she now? What was she doing all by herself in his house? Why wasn’t she with us? How was the boy here alone with his father?

  C’mon, answer your old man, he’d say.

  What d’you want me to say, Dad?

  Along the highway, the trees flared past and the stone walls snaked into and then out of the woods. Had a history of carsickness and rode with the window half open, my hand an airplane again, banking and rising with the road. Got those telltale strands of saliva, taste of burger and fries in my mouth, all the feelings I couldn’t quite swallow away, and my mother’d start asking if I was okay back there, telling me to keep my eyes on the road in front. I’m just fine, I’d tell her, but the Holy Ghost could use some more air. Not really looking so hot. Paper bag to his mouth. Should’ve let me sit up in front with you, Mom.

  She’d look at me in the rearview mirror. Almost there, she’d say.

  The funeral home was in Baltic, and the parking lot had fake puddles, mirages from the heat, the house an old Victorian with scalloped siding and a turret, traffic cones out front, the lawn the green of frozen peas. It was sunny and warm and we were standing beside the car, my mother and me, glare off the windshield, the woman with her hand on my shoulder, an awkward, unnatural moment, her leaning her weight against me, as if she needed something to hold her up, as if I was suddenly the sturdiest thing in her life.

  And what did I do?

  I pulled away from her.

  I stepped aside, told her go by herself, that I’d be fine out here alone.

  She looked at me, stared as if to ask where I’d learned to talk like this, only to realize that she knew where I’d learned, my mother bending to ki
ss the top of my head, as if to forgive me, as if to forgive herself. Her whole body seemed to relax, her shoulders, her face, her hands, everything better if I stayed out by the car like this, my mother turning on her heel and starting across the lot toward the awning and front door. She went inside. There were birds and trees and sky to watch, and I traced the hood, the fender, the roof of our car. Not too long, and this man stepped out of the funeral home. He lit a cigarette, smoke trailing behind as he made his way across the lot. He looked like a younger, slightly heavier version of my father—same nose, same squint, same part of hair to one side—his smile a watered-down version of my father’s and my own.

  He was my uncle Daniel, and was holding his hand out to me, his hand like a catcher’s mitt in mine.

  And what, I wonder, could he have said to me, besides how nice the weather was, how warm the sun, how soon would school be starting again? And those Red Sox, he said, what did I think of them this year? And what could I—an eight-year-old kid—what should I have asked of him, truly? My father’s brother, what would I want to know or not know from him? If the same meeting happened today—if my thirty-nine-year-old self could stand in for that boy—if I could return to him now, I’m not so sure I’d hold up better than I did back then. The older me would probably fill that silence with small talk about who knows what? The wires in Joy-Dee’s neck when she got mad, my baseball glove like a turtle at the bottom of the pool, God knows what kind of nonsense I’d pull.

  But the boy was perfect. He stood there silent and calm, his uncle flicking that cigarette away, asking if he’d ever been to a ball game. I’ll drive up, said the man, see if we can’t get your mother to come with us. You a Red Sox fan?

  The boy shrugged.

  Luis Tiant? Carlton Fisk? Butch Hobson?

  The boy said he was more a Yankees fan, and the man smiled and tut-tutted him. A car pulled into the lot—a Bonneville, big and blue—and the boy’s uncle said to hang tight, he’d be right back. The man crossed to the other car, and the boy looked away to the sky, which was empty and bright and blue. He tapped the antenna of the car and tried to think of what to think of next. His father, fishing, bats, and the word nocturnal, meaning that they slept during the day. And mammal, meaning that they were warm-blooded. Echolocation, meaning they saw by sending clicks from their mouth or nose and listening to the sound bouncing back from trees or insects or stones thrown into the air. All seemed incredible, the things of the world, and sometimes it was all a boy could do to believe that a fish breathed water, or that a butterfly flew all the way from Mexico, or that water froze into ice, or any of the seemingly endless miracles of the universe. Everything, if you looked closely enough, was a mystery. The most normal things, the most obvious things in the world, the things we took most for granted, often these were the most impossible, the most mysterious.

  Uncle Daniel produced a quarter from behind my ear when he returned. You must have dropped this, he said, and tickled more coins from the nape of my neck. I squirmed, flinched away from him, held out my hands when he jingled a fistful of change to me.

  Look at that, he said, got the same grin as your father, don’t you?

  He shook his head and let his smile melt away—a car passed on the street—and my uncle handed me the change and said I should come inside and be with the family for a little while. I took the money, put it in my pocket, and followed him toward the house, into the funeral home. Was like stepping into winter, that foyer, the air conditioning so cold, the hushed way everyone seemed to move, it all seemed snowbound inside.

  And from the doorway, I had everything I needed: my mother in her black dress by the windows, soft clutter of flowers, the spotlights on, people talking, music low, and my father lying in the midst of it all, as if asleep in the bath.

  Like my uncle, I dipped my fingers into the pedestal of water, made the sign of a cross, and kissed my fingertips. Strange, but it seemed my eyes touched things, everyone turning when I looked at them. My mother must have felt my glance on her shoulder, and she crossed the room to me, whispered something in my ear, though all I heard was the feathers of her breath. She tried to turn me from the room, but I was already moving toward him, my father drawing me forward, against my will, until I was standing where everyone must have stood, this little kid pretending to pray. Felt my father trying to steal things from me, things that I needed, like my mouth, which couldn’t open, like my legs, which couldn’t move, like my lungs, my ability to breathe all of a sudden gone.

  It was awful, and I could see that he had rouge on his cheeks, that his lips were red like lipstick, that his face seemed made of candle wax, cheeks molded smooth by thumbs. Not supposed to touch the face of a dead person, even if it was your own father, even if you were trying to turn him into a thing, your hand reaching forward slowly, just to make sure, his hair hard and sticky with spray.

  My mother drove us home that afternoon, sun in dots and dashes through the trees, radio tuned to pianos. We rode quiet together, not saying anything for almost the whole highway. I pretended to be so tired in the back seat, didn’t want her to explain or ask anything. I didn’t want reasons or excuses, didn’t want her, didn’t want him, didn’t even want myself. A turn, a traffic light, and eventually we were on our street and in our driveway, her face sad and heavy as she stood in the yard, and I wanted for some reason to add to that pain of hers, as if she could carry more guilt and regret and anger on her face, as if she should be punished even more for this.

  Are you hungry? she asked. What would you like for dinner?

  Nothing, I said.

  You coming in?

  No, I told her, not yet.

  She let me stay outside as long as I wanted that night. The woods that bordered the yard were the Green Monster, Yankees playing away tonight, the lawn being Fenway, dusk flooding our house, our car in the drive, our neighborhood. Never failed to be the ninth inning, Yanks versus Sox, all tied up yet again. Stepping up to the plate, batting third, the catcher, number 15, Thur-man Mun-son. The spark, the soul, the heart of New York. One out, Bucky Dent on second, Mickey Rivers on first, and I was Munson. All scrappy and stocky. I picked stones from the gravel of our driveway and hit them into the trees with a baseball bat—that was what only children did, they invented games and ghost runners and went extra innings alone in the dark—and Munson drilled a hanging curve deep into the leaves for a double, Yaz playing it off the wall, the crowd in a fanfare of wind. The trees knew the truth when they saw it, the way they cheered and chanted in the air. Dent home for the go-ahead, Rivers holding up on third, Munson dusting his pants on second, whatever he lacked in legs or size he made up for in heart and that trucker’s mustache and sideburns of his. After his plane went down—the man practicing takeoffs and landings in his jet—the team wore armbands of Yankee blue to honor him because they’d loved him, needed him, and wished he was still there, felt the hole that he left in the lineup.

  Our house sat a little up the hill from the driveway and my mother stood in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the screen. Getting dark, I heard her say. She was right, I told her. It’s what happens at night, Mom. Gets dark.

  And I don’t like this kid very much right here either—but I do love him—and I do wish him well, just as I wish for my father, and wish for my mother, the woman saying, Dinner’s ready, saying, Why don’t you come in now, hon?

  Me pretending not to hear a single word.

  Her saying, At least put a jacket on.

  I’m okay, Mom.

  And low over the one light in the yard, I’m seeing things—small gray bats—they skitter against the sky, tissuey and tense. Standing in the grass, lawn wet and cold, trees feathering dark, I’m standing right here, yet I feel like I’m no longer here at all, this boy dissolving into the darkness, like he’s slowly turning into the darkness itself, a handful of air in the air.

  Look! he says.

  I see!

  Bats!

  Hated to confuse the bats like this, but it’s
all so fantastic, me pulling the bats from the sky, them crying after the stones that they take for food, everything so tense and tenuous. Would have loved to show Kiki and Kenny how over and over I do this, would have loved to teach them to throw the stones just ahead of the bats, the bats with that clicking sound of theirs, me constantly disappointing the poor things, the creatures pulling up at the last second and skittering away. And there I am, small stones in my hands, this kid swaying slightly as he stands alone, feeling like his father must have felt, saying, Nice, aren’t they?

  And when no one says anything, he hits me—not hard—my father knocking me on the back of the head. Answer your old man, he says.

  I see them already, I say. I mean, what d’you want me to say?

  Say they’re nice or something, that’s all.

  They’re nice already.

  There you go, he says—and he smiles and looks up to the sky, the trees—and then he looks to me again. Now, he says, why was that so hard?

  Hawkins

  Killed a deer last night. Kate and me and this creature almost completely over us. Flash of animal, tug of wheel, sound we felt more than heard, poor thing lying on the side of the road as we pulled around.

  Should have just kept driving, gone home, felt bad. Don’t know what possessed us to get out of the car. November and nothing but trees around. No cars, no houses, deer small and slender, tongue powdered with sand. Kate stood in the column of headlight, her shadow a stick in water, her hand reaching as if to untangle its legs, shoo the thing away. Such a well-traveled stretch of road, and still no one drove past as we struggled the animal onto an old blanket. Weren’t thinking it through, obviously, but there must have been something very desperate in us, something full of yearning, two of us lifting the deer into the trunk, object more awkward than heavy.