The Art of Arranging Flowers

by Lynne Branard

  I listen as Dr. Buckley speaks of commitments and promises, but I am watching the clouds move across the sky. It is a bright day, lovely, a warm afternoon in early summer. It is my favorite sort of day and I remember as a child that when school was over for the season, Daisy and I would wake up to sunshine pouring through our window and she would always say the silliest thing. She would sit up and shake me until I answered. “Wake up, Ruby!” And she would keep punching me until I finally opened my eyes. When I did, she would be hovering over me, her breath warm against my face. “Looks like good light,” and I would roll over, yanking the covers away from her and pulling the pillow over my head.

  I always wondered but never asked where she got such a funny line. It always sounded like something an old person would say, not a child, not your sister waking you up when it was far too early. “Looks like good light.” And it became a joke for us as we got older.

  “How’s your day?” she would call and ask when I was in college, and later, in law school, and she was still staying at our grandparents’, still struggling to find her way.

  “Looks like good light,” I would answer, and then we’d both laugh and talk about how we were, the boy she was dating, the way we missed each other and when I was coming home.

  “Looks like good light,” I whisper to myself now, thinking of Daisy sitting beside me, watching the same clouds, the same bright sun, the same exchange of vows.

  “Look at each other and make sure you never forget this moment. Soon you will make promises that will change everything. For today you shall say to the world—This is my husband. This is my wife.”

  I recognize the last two lines from Dr. Buckley’s message come from the author Robert Fulghum. They are taken from a piece he wrote titled “Union.” A lot of brides ask me about it and want to know if I have a copy when they talk to me about their weddings. I started keeping a file of such things when I became a florist because I discovered that along with bouquets and boutonnieres, there are a lot of questions about the ceremony itself and what might be read or shared. I keep this one along with several other poems and readings that might be of interest. It turns out the file, now taking up the space of one cabinet drawer, has been used quite a bit.

  Nora told me once that for someone who has never known what it is to love, I sure have a lot to say about it. I smiled when she said it because it sounded exactly like something my sister would say. And of course, they would both be right.

  Henry stumbles a bit while saying his vows, but no one seems to notice. Dr. Buckley simply waits until he finishes, and Henry sounds less like a man who stutters and more like a nervous groom in love. His disability is hardly noticed at all.

  They finish with the words, the exchange of rings, and the lighting of a candle, and I watch as Lou Ann lifts her fingers to Henry’s mouth, clearly so in love with this man, leans in, and kisses him.

  I am filled to the brim and I am utterly empty and I wonder how it is that a person can be both things in exactly the same moment.

  •THIRTY-SEVEN•

  ONE down, one to go,” I say as Clementine takes her place under the table at the shop. I’ve just returned from the church, making sure everything is in place and just right before the wedding this evening. I decided to come by and clean up a little this afternoon. After all the craziness of these last few days, it looks like a tornado hit the place and I’d rather take care of this today than start the new week off with a mess. Besides, I like a day with no distractions so that I can focus on my work. And just as soon as I have this thought, I hear a knock on the front door. Clementine gets there before I do. I peek through the window and see that it’s my date for the evening’s event.

  “Will,” I say, unlocking the door and letting the boy in. “What on earth happened to you?”

  His eye is swollen and red. He’s fallen or been in a fight or some accident that landed what appears to be a fist to the face.

  “Clarence Trembley called me a freak.” He shuffles in, pets Clementine, and waits while I close and lock the door. When I’m done, he moves around the counter and takes a seat on the stool placed against the back wall.

  “Well, let me see if I’ve got something to help with the swelling.” I head to the back room and search in the freezer unit of the small refrigerator where we keep our lunches. There’s a gel pack in there that I used on my ankle, and I take it out and return to Will. “Here, put this on your eye. Hopefully, it doesn’t smell like my feet.”

  He does as I tell him and leans against the wall behind him. “I hit him back,” he confesses.

  I pull the chair around and sit across from him. Clementine takes her place between us. “Well, I guess he had it coming,” I say, noticing the grass stains on the boy’s pants, the rip in his T-shirt. I try to remember if I know Clarence Trembley, but I don’t recognize the name. “When did this happen?” I wonder if he’s come straight from the fight. Maybe I should call his grandmother.

  “Just now,” he answers, without moving. “We were at church. I told Grandma I was coming over here.”

  “Well, Sunday school must have changed since I was a regular. Last I remember, they were teaching nonviolence as a means to settle differences. Of course, there is that story of Jesus getting mad and turning over all the tables in the fellowship hall.” I wait to see if he thinks I’m funny.

  He doesn’t.

  “So what happened with you and Clarence Trembley?” I ask.

  There is no response.

  “Why did he call you a freak?”

  Will sits up, lifts the gel pack off his eye. It’s an honest-to-goodness shiner and I wonder if a pack of frozen peas would do a better job of reducing the swelling. I always heard that’s best for black eyes, but it doesn’t really matter because I don’t keep frozen peas.

  “He said that because my mama used drugs, I was born addicted, too, that I’m a drug addict and a freak.”

  I haven’t heard if Will’s mother was using drugs when she was pregnant, but knowing some of her history and knowing my own story of an addicted mother, I figure it’s pretty unlikely that she stayed clean and sober for nine months. Still, I haven’t seen any of the usual signs in Will of a child born with an addiction.

  I think about the boy and his fight and recall that when we moved in with our grandparents, both Daisy and I were given extensive psychological testing when we started school. Somewhere along the way someone had diagnosed us both with fetal alcohol syndrome. We were lucky because we didn’t have the disease. Neither of us was hyperactive or demonstrated fine or gross motor developmental delays, although I was described as uncoordinated by my physical education teacher when I was in junior high. Still, we never seemed to suffer from our mother’s addiction. And when I think about Will and our time together in the last six months, I realize that I’ve never seen him display impaired language development or problems with memory or poor judgment. He showed me his report card from this past year at school, and while he won’t likely be selected for advanced placement in his classes, he’s doing quite well overall. And even if he does have developmental problems as a result of his mother’s addiction, Clarence Trembley isn’t the one who ought to be passing out information about a diagnosis.

  “You’re not a freak,” I say, and he stares at me. “Although you’re looking a little weird with that massive blob for an eye. What’s that monster with one big eye named, Cyclod?”

  I see the faintest possibility of a smile. He thinks it’s funny when I get names wrong. Once I called an Aucasaurus, his favorite dinosaur, an Unclesaurus, and he cracked up, laughed about it for weeks.

  “Cyclops,” he says, playing along. “But his eye was in the middle of his forehead.”

  “Oh.” Will certainly knows his monsters and dinosaurs.

  “Well, even with only one good eye, you’re not a freak. You are a smart, funny, caring boy, and Clarence Trembley is a jerk.”

  He puts the gel pack on his eye and leans back. “Can I still go with you to
the wedding?”

  “Of course,” I answer. “Are you going to change clothes?” I ask.

  He shrugs.

  “Yeah, it’s fine with me if you want to wear what you have on; we just need to clean off some of those grass stains. Do you have another T-shirt?”

  He nods.

  I get up from the chair and decide I will start with straightening up the paperwork. Nora does a great job keeping up with the bills and receipts, but I like things in a certain order. She hasn’t figured that out yet. I pull out the books and begin organizing. I think I’ll pay the bills first.

  “Is Jenny going to die?”

  The question surprises me. I turn around and he’s no longer leaning against the wall, but rather sitting up and watching me closely.

  “I guess we’re all going to die,” I answer, knowing that’s not really what he’s looking for. “But no, I don’t think she’s going to die anytime soon.”

  He nods.

  “What makes you ask that?”

  “I heard Grandma talking on the phone. She was talking to Miss Duncan from the church and she said she thought they moved up the date of the wedding because Jenny is dying. She said she thought it was a desperate act.” He puts the pack on his eye, leans back. “What’s a desperate act?”

  “It’s doing something because you feel overwhelmed or really anxious.” I study him. “Like hitting a boy who calls you a freak.”

  I know he’s rolling his eyes, but I can’t see them because they’re both covered with the gel pack.

  “Do you think she’s desperate?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “No more than the rest of us.” With his lack of response, I’m guessing he wants more, so I go on. “Jenny is better, much better, and she decided she didn’t want to wait to get married. She loves Justin. Justin loves her and she doesn’t feel sick now and she wants to start their new life together.” I turn back to the receipts on the counter. “That’s not desperate; that’s knowing what you want and going for it.”

  “Why would Grandma talk about her like that?”

  I sort through the week’s records, separate them, and order them chronologically. “I don’t know, Will; maybe you should ask her.”

  There is silence and I turn back around, but he’s not looking because he still has his eyes covered. “You like Jenny a lot, don’t you?”

  I know that he visited her when she was in the hospital, that he kept some of the old flowers that I threw out and took them to her. When I saw what he was doing, I had first thought he was taking them to his mother’s grave, but then Jenny let the cat out of the bag. She told me he brought her so many bouquets that Justin got a little jealous. We had both been touched by the boy’s concern and his obvious crush. I had not, however, mentioned to him that I knew about his floral gifts to the bride-to-be.

  He shrugs, his face still shielded. “She’s pretty, I guess.”

  “She is,” I say in agreement. “She’s also kind and sweet and she’s beating the cancer.”

  He leans up and the pack drops off his face into his lap. He reaches for it, holds it there. “Sometimes I worry that everybody I love will die.”

  I am shocked by the honesty, the truthfulness, the ache of familiarity. I only nod. I see no reason to comment.

  He leans down and gives Clementine a rub on her neck, and I suddenly realize how hard it was for him when she was hurt. He stayed away from us for almost a week, and at the time I had not understood why he disappeared. I thought his grandmother had told him not to bother us, that it was a matter of polite parenting. I assumed he wanted to come but was kept away. But now, hearing what I just heard, seeing how he thinks, it all makes sense. He stayed away because he thought Clementine was going to die and he didn’t want to love her when she did. He thought somehow that loving others made them go away. He thought that just as it had happened with his mother if he loved someone again, she would die.

  And yet he came back. After a week, he showed up at my door with a plate of cookies for me and a dog biscuit for Clementine. He came back to us both. And now I see what a brave little boy he is, loving a dog that almost died, falling for a girl with cancer, sticking it out with me.

  Sometimes adults surprise me with their generosity of spirit, their tender acts of kindness, but really it’s the children who touch me the most. They seem to unfold the easiest. They’re the ones who love with abandon, the ones who keep putting their hearts out there to be broken. They’re the ones who teach the rest of us what it is to love.

  “Have you had lunch?” I ask, and he shakes his head. “I haven’t either. Let’s get some Chinese food. I’ll call Juanita. We can go for a walk out by the creek, then I’ll drive you over to get another shirt for the wedding.”

  He smiles and I put away the stack of bills, realizing that I can get to this tomorrow.

  •THIRTY-EIGHT•

  WELL, she’s lost about ten pounds, but that didn’t hurt her.” Dr. Cash is finishing up his exam of Clementine. She’s completed the course of antibiotics and there are no more welts or swelling. She’s mostly back to herself, albeit a smaller version.

  “I still don’t know what got into her, chasing that thing.” I am standing beside her as she sits on the table.

  “Maybe she thought it was a cat,” he suggests.

  “Maybe,” I say. That’s about as good an explanation as any, I suppose. Clem does love to chase the cats.

  “And what about you?”

  I sense him looking at me, and for some odd reason I blush. “Oh, I’m fine,” I answer.

  “No, I mean what were you doing chasing the porcupine? I never did figure out how you got all those quills in you.”

  I shake my head. “Honestly, I don’t remember. I think I tripped and fell on the thing, and then I carried this one all the way to the truck, so I don’t know. Either they came out when I landed on it or I got them from her.” I motion toward Clem, who turns away. She’s still embarrassed about the whole thing.

  “What did they feel like?” he asks, and I can see Clem glance at me, happy she is no longer the center of attention, happy to have someone explain what it is to be punctured by hundreds of tiny needles.

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I didn’t feel anything at first. Then, after a day, my whole body hurt.”

  He nods, gives a sympathetic smile. He opens Clem’s mouth to examine her throat and I see that he’s wearing his wedding ring. I hadn’t noticed this before, even though I had seen him at the weekend weddings with a woman who was both a little clingy and quite beautiful. I had thought she was a new lover. I see now she was his wife.

  “The swelling is gone in her throat and tongue too. It doesn’t appear to be inflamed anymore. I’d say she’s back to normal.” He removes his hands from Clem’s snout and leans in to touch her nose to nose. It’s sweet. He takes the medical chart that is behind my dog and starts to write some notes. Clementine, happy to hear the news that she is fine, settles down on the table.

  “They were both nice weddings,” he says. “This past weekend,” he adds, explaining, as if I weren’t paying attention.

  “Yes,” I respond.

  “The flowers were beautiful,” he adds.

  I nod, even though I realize he can’t see me because he has his head down.

  Clementine is watching me. I give her my What? look, and she just sighs and turns away.

  “I didn’t know Dr. Buckley was ordained. He officiates with great professionalism.”

  “Yeah, I guess we’re the only town in Washington where the veterinarian is licensed to wed. I heard he used to run a special where he’d neuter your dog and marry you at a twenty percent discount.”

  Clementine shakes her head. I know it was lame.

  “Maybe I should get ordained too,” he says, and looks up with a smile, and man, he is beautiful. “I’m a sucker for weddings.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard marriage can be a good thing.” And I can’t help myself, but I glance down at his left hand and he knows
exactly what I’m looking at.

  He stretches out his fingers. “My ex-wife called a couple of months ago. She wants to try again,” he says, explaining the ring, his date over the weekend.

  Suddenly, I want to finish up this appointment as quickly as possible. I just nod and shift my weight from side to side. Could I look any more awkward?

  “I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear any of this.”

  I shake my head, trying to dismiss his need for an apology. “It’s quite all right,” I say. “I hope things will work out for you.”

  I keep waiting for him to finish up and take Clementine off the table. I would do it myself, but she hates it when I try to lift her. I was surprised that she let me carry her after the porcupine attack, but now that I think about it, she didn’t have a lot of say about that. Besides, I think she was in shock and couldn’t really stop me.

  “I thought we deserved another shot.”

  I’m thinking, Okay, okay . . . call Dr. Buckley and talk to him. He’s ordained; he was married. Why are you telling me this?

  “It’s just . . .”

  And suddenly, my prayers are answered. My cell phone rings.

  “Oh, excuse me,” I say, and pull my phone out of my coat pocket. I glance at the number before I answer.

  “Hey, Nora.” I am very cheerful.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asks.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I say.

  “You sound weird. Are you being carjacked?”

  “No, no, no . . .” I realize I do sound a bit too enthusiastic and try to tone it down just a bit. “What do you need?”

  There’s a pause on the other end. She’s trying to decide if there’s something wrong and if I’m talking in some code. I know her far too well.

  “I was going to see if you wanted me to wait until you got back or if it was all right to go ahead and close up.”

  I left the shop a couple of hours ago to make deliveries and didn’t mention this appointment. I knew if I did, she’d make me go home and change clothes. She thought I was only going to the nursing home to drop off a few single roses in bud vases for the monthly birthdays; take a plant, a small dish garden variety with dieffenbachia, dracaena sanderiana, variegated ivy, palm, and green philodendron to James Harvey, who was in the hospital recovering from gall bladder surgery; and a large vase of blue hydrangea, crème roses, graceful white oriental lilies, a white disbud mum, purple statice, and lavender limonium to Trina Earl, sent by her sister in Dallas, who just wanted her to know she was thinking of her. I told Jimmy I would make the deliveries because I needed to run a few personal errands. I hadn’t told either of them what time I would be finished.