“Now, do you want me to take these to the church?”
And I study him, wondering how he knew what needed to be done, wondering how he knew where the flowers were going.
“Will’s party,” he replies, as if he has heard the questions rattling around in my brain. “I was invited, too.” He twirls the bucket in his hand and checks to make sure the blooms are all healthy. He pulls off a couple of petals where the edges have started to brown. “Last week when I made the delivery, he told me about the party and asked me to come.”
I nod. I wasn’t here when that happened, but it doesn’t surprise me. Cooper and Will are friends. Cooper lets him climb up in the truck and collect the flowers I have ordered. Most of what the boy has learned has actually come from my wholesale guy, not from me.
“This is a good thing, right?” he asks.
I glance away.
“From what you’ve told me and what Will says, those two are great.”
I still do not speak. Of course, he is right. Jenny and Justin will make splendid parents. Will is very lucky to have them.
“I’ll just take these to the van,” he notes, heading out the back.
And I just sit and drop my face into my hands.
•FORTY-FIVE•
I’M going to take a walk,” I say, getting out of the van and heading in the direction of the cemetery. Clementine joins me when Cooper opens the back.
“Do you have a layout design in mind for these?”
I hear the question but I don’t answer. I just keep walking. Cooper can put the flowers where he wants them. It’s not that hard to put vases on tables. He’ll be fine.
I walk up Flowery Trail. This street name always makes me smile, but not today. I don’t even think of it. I don’t notice the traffic. I just make sure Clem is far enough off the road, but that’s about the only sensible thing I can manage. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I should be happy for Will. I should be happy for Jenny and Justin and Will.
Jenny will make a wonderful mother. She will play computer games with Will and bake him cookies. She will help him with his math homework and make sure his room is clean and tidy and that his clothes fit. She will ride a bicycle with him and buy him a dog. She will be like a big sister, a really cool babysitter. She will adore him.
And Justin is a great guy. He will teach Will how to repair a flat and drive a stick shift. He can take him to monster truck shows and hockey games at the arena in Spokane. They’ll have the father-son talk and Will can learn how to work with his hands, how to fix things and paint. Soon they’ll have a couple of babies and Will can be a big brother and teach someone else the things he’s learned from Justin. It’s perfect. It’s absolutely perfect.
But I am still a mess.
I get to the grave and sit down. I cross my legs and lift my face to the sun. Clementine sits beside me. She doesn’t wander as much since the fight.
“I don’t know why I can’t be happy,” I say to my dead sister. “I have my own business. I have a house, friends. I finally figured out how to order movies on the television.” I look at the headstone. DAISY JEWELL, it reads, bold and frozen in the rock.
“He’s good with them,” I add. “He’s better off with them.” And I stretch my arms behind me and lean back. I think about Daisy and me and the one emergency foster home where we were taken after Mama hit me with the belt buckle and everything came apart. It was a large house, ranch style, three levels with a basement that was made into a game room. We shared a bedroom where there were two single beds, thin headboards painted white. There were pink bedspreads and pillows with ruffles and two desks with writing paper and crayons, both of them set against the wall, making the room look like a college dormitory.
There were three other children in the house: a teenager, a shy, clumsy boy who had a room to himself downstairs, and two toddlers who shared the nursery, which was on the other side of the parents’ bedroom. We were there for three days before Grandmother finally found us, Daddy calling her from the road, telling her what had happened and how he couldn’t take it anymore. Once she found us, however, we were still not allowed to go. There was apparently some discussion among social workers and the foster parents about whether we should be allowed to leave with family. I’ve since learned that the common thought at that time was that if one parent abused drugs or hit her children, the other parent was considered just as negligent and the grandparents were also thought to be unfit. There appears to be a different philosophy today, but back then, removing the child from the family was the ideal solution.
While Daisy and I waited for the papers to be filed and the issues to be sorted out, we worked out an escape. We drew plans and even stole money from the teenage boy, and on our second night at the foster home, after finishing our chores, eating our supper, and enduring the family Bible study, we went to our room and made our preparations to leave. We had apples and crackers we had taken from the pantry and we filled our pillowcases with a change of clothes and bars of soap. We counted our coins, stuffed our pockets with socks and underwear, and waited until everyone was asleep. That was when we planned to sneak out.
“Do you have a flashlight?” Daisy asked.
“I stole one from the garage,” I answered, feeling the lump under my head, the pillowcase filled with the supplies. “But I don’t think it has batteries.”
“Then how do we see?”
“I’ll try to buy us some when we get to a store.”
“What store?”
“The Family Dollar,” I answered. “It’s right there on the corner.” We had stopped there before we arrived; the social worker had needed to make a call before she drove over and left us at the house.
“Do you think we’ll find a nice person to take us?” Daisy asked.
We were in our beds, under the covers, pretending to be asleep in case the foster mother peeked in to check on us.
“Maybe,” I answered. And I thought of the two of us standing on the side of the interstate, the lights of cars speeding past. We had planned to walk to the highway and then hitchhike to Grandmother’s.
“If we waited until morning we might have a better chance of getting a ride.”
And I suddenly realized that Daisy was having second thoughts.
“If we wait until morning, we can’t sneak out,” I reminded her. The foster mother had a tendency to hover. I guess she had experienced runaways before.
Daisy didn’t respond.
“Are you scared?”
She didn’t answer, but I could imagine her nodding.
“Come over here,” I said, and she jumped from her bed and crawled in beside me, bringing her pillowcase, stuffed with clothes and snacks and soap.
“We don’t have to go,” I said, wrapping my arms around her. “It’s not that bad here.” I thought of the chocolate cookies we had that afternoon, the gentle way the father smiled, the toddlers crawling into my lap as we watched TV.
“I thought you said we should.”
“I don’t know, Daisy. I don’t know what to do.”
And she grabbed my arms, pulling me tighter around her.
“It’s okay if we stay,” she said.
“You sure?” I asked.
“It’s not so bad. And we’re together, right? That’s what matters most, isn’t it?”
And it wasn’t long before I heard her breathing deepen and grow steady and felt her grip loosen. We didn’t run away that night; we just fell asleep together.
“But we were kids,” I say to Daisy now, knowing the memory was from her. “Of course we believed that back then we were just kids. All we knew was having each other. Being a parent is different. There are different things you have to know, have to take care of. He’s a boy. He’s almost a teenager,” I argue.
I hear nothing from my dead sister. She has said her piece.
I watch the sun as it hides behind the clouds, shows itself, and then disappears again. It is like a child playing.
“It’s too late
now anyway,” I say, peering at the time on my watch, realizing that the papers have been signed, the deed done, the party started.
Clementine raises her head and looks over to the other side of the cemetery. She jumps up and races to the grave we have visited before.
•FORTY-SIX•
HEY, what are you doing here?” I followed Clem to Will, who was putting a pink rose at his mother’s site and one at the new grave dug beside it. I assume he got them from the church and from the bucket of flowers to be handed out as people leave.
He shrugs. “I just missed them.”
I nod.
He sits down in front of his mother’s grave and I make a place beside him.
“Everybody at the church?”
“Yeah,” he answers. “I told Jenny I’d be right back.”
“How did the meeting with the judge go?”
He shrugs again. “Okay, I guess.”
“Did you like him?”
“He had hair growing out of his nose.”
“Like Mr. Jackson?” I ask, remembering Will telling me about the guidance counselor at his school.
“Yeah. It was kind of gross.”
I nod.
“Cooper said you were probably out here.”
“Well, he was right.” I pick a few rocks from under me and smooth down the place where I am sitting.
“He also said that you were acting weird all day.”
I smile. “Coop exaggerates,” I tell him.
“He said you were trying to add bark to the orchids.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I hadn’t exactly remembered doing that, but it wasn’t that unlikely, the way I was feeling.
Will turns to me as if I have just said something most outrageous. “You don’t add bark to them. It dries out the plant. You use sphagnum moss for orchids.”
I punch him in the arm. “You’re too young to know that much about orchid care.”
“I only know what you’ve taught me,” he answers.
I study the boy. He is beautiful with those long lashes, those big brown eyes. He can see I’m admiring him, and he blushes and turns away.
“So, how’s it been with Jenny?”
“She’s cool,” he replies. “She and Justin have Xbox and Blu-Ray.”
“What’s that?”
He gives me that look again, and I grin.
Now he hits me in the arm.
“I know what they are, it’s those cartoon channels on cable.” And I rub my arm because he packs a punch with that little fist.
He rolls his eyes. “Clementine doesn’t go sniff around the fence anymore?”
I glance over at the dog resting in front of us beside the headstone.
“No, I think she’s decided that she’s smelled enough from that corner of the universe.”
Will picks up a stick and tosses it near the fence.
Clementine yawns.
“It ain’t happening,” I say.
“When did you come get the flowers?” he asks, referring to the arrangements that had been placed at his grandmother’s grave after the service.
I turn to the grave beside us and see that there are still a few bouquets left, the ones with heartier blooms. Most of the others had wilted and died sometime during the day. Sometimes I collect them so that the family doesn’t have to bother with them.
“Yesterday,” I answer. “I figured it would be okay with you and Claude to pick them up.”
He nods. “There were a lot of them.”
“Yep,” I say. “Juanita had a lot of friends.”
“She told me that friends are the family members we get to choose.”
“That makes sense,” I agree.
“What about family members?” he asks.
And I don’t follow him. “What about them?”
“Do you think we choose them, too?”
“You mean like before we get here?”
“Yeah, do you think we’re given to a certain person because we need them or they need us?”
I study him. “Who have you been talking to?” I ask. The question sounds like it is way above his head.
“It’s just something I heard,” he answers.
“From where?”
“From Captain Miller.”
“You talked to Captain Miller about choosing your parents?” I didn’t even know that Will had spent much time with Dan.
“He came over after Grandma died. He brought me some books about space, a couple of his model airplanes.”
I nod. That sounds like Dan. “And he told you we’re assigned our parents?”
Will shrugs. “I asked him what it was like in outer space; you know, if it was like heaven and there were angels and stuff.”
I’m paying attention.
“And he told me about how he figured some things out when he was there, how he felt like he was a part of everything and in everything, and that everything and everybody is connected.”
“Yep, he told me the same thing,” I say. “It’s a little freaky, I think.”
“Anyway, I asked him if he thought there was some big plan of the universe, like they say in church.”
“Okay.”
“And he said he thought there was, and especially when it came to the people in our lives. He said that we find the people we need and that they stay with us until we don’t need them anymore. And then they go to another planet and they find someone else.”
“Hmm. And what do you think?” I ask the boy.
“I like it better than just thinking they die and leave us.”
I close my eyes and think about it. I must say I like it better, too.
We don’t speak for a few minutes. There is a little noise from the road, a dog barking in the distance. Clementine hears that one too. She rises up.
“So, it’s official?” I ask.
Will turns to me. His face is a question mark.
“You and Jenny and Justin? You got adopted.”
And he looks away without answering.
“They’re real nice,” he says, and I suddenly feel strangely light-headed, as if I may faint or fall. I feel unstable and I reach down to hold on to the ground.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m going to stay with them,” he adds. “You know, for a while.”
“But you didn’t get adopted?”
He shakes his head, and it’s as if my chest is going to burst.
I close my eyes and feel his slender hand on top of mine.
I take a breath, the air filling my lungs, my cells thick with oxygen, and I am suddenly and completely conscious while the thin edge around me loosens and falls open.
•FORTY-SEVEN•
THERE’LL be lilies.”
Nora has just told me her news. She’d burst through the front door like a police officer making an arrest. She glows.
“Of course we’ll have lilies,” she replies. “Those pretty pink ones that have the little lip of green.”
“Callas,” I say, knowing exactly the one she means.
“Yes, pink and yellow calla lilies.” She claps her hands. “Divine.”
I also decide to order a few stems of the white orientals, adding a little touch of class.
“And I want you and Will to walk me down the aisle. Carl will do my hair and makeup. And I will buy a new dress.”
“Nordstrom’s?” I smile.
“Of course.”
“I’m not sure I can handle another shopping trip to Nordstrom’s.”
She laughs.
“Will it be an outside venue?” I ask.
At the moment I’m still working on Vivian’s wedding. She’s changed her mind again, shifted themes from Asian to French country to seaside, even postponed it by a couple of weeks, and I told her that I refuse to place an order with Cooper until she is absolutely certain of what she wants.
I wish now I had never played with that fire. Vivian is more complicated than I imagined. I’m not sure Conrad knows what he’s gotten himself in
for.
“Outside, inside, I don’t care; I’m too old to be worrying about all those silly details.” She fans herself and moves behind the counter. She opens the register and takes out twenty dollars. “I didn’t get a chance to pick up the wire you needed,” she explains, and closes the drawer.
“Does Jimmy have a preference?” I ask. I’m arranging the same orchids that were used to seduce Vivian. She suddenly remembered what an effect they had on her, and today she thinks she wants to use those for her bouquet. I’m putting a few small bouquets together so she can get an idea of how they would look. It’s only two weeks until the new date of the blessed event and I know that if she wants orchids, she needs to decide now. It always takes a little longer to get those from the buyer.
“Jimmy doesn’t care one way or the other. He just wants me happy.” She clutches the money to her chest. “He’s such a good man; I don’t know why it took me so long to notice.” Suddenly she understands what I’m doing. “Why are you messing with the orchids? I thought Vivian was going Asian.”
“She said she thought she was too big to go with an Asian theme, that she kept looking at all the websites and pictures and that all the brides were tiny little women and she finally decided that she was too tall for the patterns and décor.”
Nora shakes her head. “You know, they seem like normal, well-balanced women and then they get an engagement ring and they just fall off their rockers.”
“Well, be careful what you say . . . you may turn into a bridezilla, too!”
She waves away the comment. “All I care about is the cake. I want a big, frosted, fattening chocolate cake.” She holds out her arms to demonstrate how large a cake she means. It’s big.
I look at her and smile and I suddenly remember the last time she acted like this. It was when Will and I arrived at the church and broke the news, and she opened her arms wide and ran clear across the parish hall, picked us both up and swung us around. I’m pretty sure she’s had weekly appointments with the chiropractor since then, but I think even knowing what she knows now about picking up people, she’d do the same thing again. Like everyone close to us, she is still overcome.
The Art of Arranging Flowers Page 22
