by Mary Rickert
Ruthie is apparently under the impression that they all know what a Flower Feast is, though none of them do. They are to dress for dinner, but not wear shoes, which Nan finds distressing. She has gotten over vanity for the most part, but her feet are particularly unpleasant, odd little misshapen things with bunions and crooked nails that she would rather not reveal. What has made Ruthie so bossy? Nan shakes her head as she looks through her closet, lingering over the old velvet dress several times before deciding no harm can come of trying it on. Velvet in summer doesn’t usually work, but it is her favorite frock.
Nan is relieved to discover that the dress holds a lovely scent of lavender, not the dusty odor she thought it might. Oh, how she loves velvet! She steels herself against getting her hopes up. It probably won’t fit, she thinks as she drapes it over her head. For a moment in the dark, she thrills at the feel, the scent, the swish sound of the lining. Nan thinks she can almost forgive Ruthie the silly rule about bare feet, if that is the exchange she must make for wearing this dress again. It’s the dress she plans to be buried in, so isn’t it a pleasant surprise to be wearing it tonight? Why, Nan thinks, my white hair looks quite nice with the midnight blue, and my cheeks, not pink of course, but there is something there, something vaguely lifelike.
Nan turns in a slow circle, enjoying the feel of the skirt brushing her legs, her bare feet strange on the hardwood floor but also nice, which Nan would clarify had not that single turn left her a little dizzy. She sits on the edge of the bed, waiting for the spinning to stop.
Ruthie is another issue they have to work around. Earlier, Mavis pointed out all that Ruthie’s done, from helping in the garden to making breakfast, as well as preparing tonight’s entire feast. From the sound of it, poor Ruthie hasn’t taken a break since her arrival; she must be exhausted. Even so, Nan has to consider the possibility of a fatigued Ruthie lingering around for the ceremony which she would not approve of. This is an uncomfortable issue for Nan, who has worked hard to maintain her lifestyle without endangering herself, her home, or Bay (though Nan suspects Bay has been persecuted on her behalf), but what can be done about it? When Mavis mentioned locking Ruthie in the basement, Nan wasn’t sure it was a serious suggestion, but pointed out that such a drastic measure would probably cause more trouble than it would be worth. Besides, Ruthie is a guest.
The room returned to focus; Nan stands to brush what there is of her hair. She has kept it long all these years, even when it began falling out during menopause. It’s quite thin now, a matter she usually covers by bullying it into an untidy bun, which she likes to think creates the illusion of volume. She turns her head, trying to determine if the pink of scalp shows through. It does a little, but when will she ever do this again? When will she ever wear this dress, if not in her casket? When will she ever wear her hair down, if not in her grave?
Nan shakes her head as she sets the brush firmly on her dresser. Just like that, she remembers. The night garden dotted with points of light. Candles brightening at her approach until she was surrounded by an aura, like a moon glow brightening a dark corner of the yard, a neglected plot, hidden behind the trees, where a blue poppy bloomed, and then she disappeared? No, that’s not right; it was more like a melting, but without a burn. She just faded into everything. It sounds frightening, but it wasn’t. It was a lovely dream.
Nan faces herself in the mirror. Her hazel eyes blink back at her. “What are you still doing here?” she says softly to her reflection, and watches herself not answer before she turns away to join the party.
VERBENA Very effective for ailments of the womb, verbena also arrests the diffusion of poison, mollifies enemies, and helps reconcile differences. If a dining room is sprinkled with verbena-steeped water, the guests will be merry.
Feeling too excited to sit still in their party dresses, Bay and Thalia flit about like butterflies. Banned from the kitchen and barred from the dining room, they whisper, giggle, talk too loud, and are struck silent when Howard appears in a tux, which he models for them with a flourish. Coming upon them like this, Stella runs to the kitchen and hollers, “Howard is wearing shoes!” which causes Ruthie to push through the swinging kitchen door to order him to take off his sneakers. “It’s the Flower Feast after all,” she says, as though Howard has lost all reason. She hurries past them to the dining room, opening the pocket door just a crack, a space impossibly small, which she nonetheless slips through.
This starts the four of them laughing, though Bay cannot set her mind on what is so funny. She wonders if, after all these years, she finally understands her Nana’s experience of unreasonable laughter, a sobering thought as Bay does not like to think of inheriting such odd behavior. Thalia laughs so hard she collapses on the stairs, the white dress merengueing around her. Stella, her hand on the staircase newel, creates a perfect arch up her arm and over her shoulder, to the curve of neck, where laughter flutters in her throat as though she just swallowed a hummingbird. Howard tries to stand on one foot to take off his shoe, but failing this (he totters but does not fall) sits on the floor to untie the laces and remove the socks, revealing hairy toes and crooked nails accompanied by an unfortunate odor, which no one comments on, but does have a subduing effect on the assembled.
When Mavis appears at the top of the stairs, first Howard, then Stella gape, which causes Bay to turn; she doesn’t know what she was expecting, though certainly not this. Thalia whispers, “Oh my gawd,” but no one else speaks as Mavis comes down the stairs, her gaze impervious. She slows considerably near the bottom, giving Thalia (with a prompt from Bay) time to unfroth herself and step aside.
Mavis is wearing a one-shoulder gown in leopard print, paired with an orange feather boa twisted about her neck, draped like its namesake across her chest and down her back. Her bare feet make intermittent appearances, revealing toe rings and crimson toenails (the color at the edge of a scab) which is also the unfortunate color of her lips. At the bottom of the stairs she turns to Howard and says, “I’m sure your shoes and socks will not be lonely without you,” which causes Thalia to giggle. Howard backs out of the room to discard the offending items.
With a rattle, the dining room door slides open just enough to reveal lace and candlelight. Ruthie sidles out like one who’s had much experience with narrow passage, though she immediately spins on her heels, apparently having forgotten something. Bay tilts her head to spy on Ruthie dipping her fingers into a bowl and flicking the air a few times before once more squeezing through the slim opening, pulling the door firmly shut behind her. The whole thing makes Bay uncomfortable, but then Howard returns, creating his own splendid entrance, though he is not in any way changed, but one of those fortunate people whose very beauty, even bruised, will cause a stillness from which they are broken by the sound of an upstairs door closing. Bay is surprised by the quickening of her heart. Of course her Nana is not dead, what a thing to have thought, but why is Bay’s heart beating like this? She doesn’t know if she’s excited or afraid.
Nan walks down the hall with her familiar lope, the blue velvet dress revealing her vein-lined calves and small bare feet. She looks good, Bay thinks. Nan looks pretty with her hair down, like an angel, and why, oh why does Bay feel like crying?
Nan descends the stairs in her own quiet way, greeted at the landing with compliments exchanged all around. They tell each other how pretty they look, how beautiful, how handsome. There is twirling of skirts, adjusting of tie, fingering of boa, and brushing of velvet, accompanied by much smiling, interrupted finally by Ruthie, whose return went unnoticed, clearing her throat until they pay attention, at which point she invites them into the dining room.
When Nan sees the closed pocket doors she shoots Bay a look. Bay tries to signal everything will be all right; Ruthie has gone in and out of the room several times without incident. The doors slide open with only the vaguest complaint, revealing the dining room in splendor of lace, candlelight, and flowers. Who knew, Nan thinks, that I
had so many candles? They shimmer soft golden light just like that poem, what is it again, the one by Yeats?
“Go ahead,” Ruthie says. “Sit.”
Howard hurries to pull out chairs for Nan and Mavis. Stella, Thalia, and Bay seat themselves. Bay remembers the lace tablecloth but never noticed the gold thread before. Nan is thinking the same thing as her fingers gently brush the material. Stella holds a white lily, looking at it as though it were strange. There is a lily at Bay’s place setting as well. Mavis sticks hers in her hair, though Bay can’t figure out how she makes it stay. Thalia has placed hers in her water glass, where it floats with the lemon. Howard tucks his into his pocket as a boutonniere.
Ruthie taps the side of her glass with her knife, ringing it as though silencing a noisy room. They wait for her to stop, which eventually she does. Bay notices that Ruthie is the only one without a flower, and hopes this is not a bad omen. She sits at the head of the table, the windows open behind her, the sheers hanging in the still air, her hands folded, which is all the prompt the rest of them need. Stella follows Ruthie’s example, while the rest do vague imitations, hands in lap, or hand resting on hand, a gesture of respect if not solidarity. Ruthie does not bow her head and close her eyes, though Howard does.
“On this, the occasion of our first annual Flower Feast, we thank the darkness of the earth, the light of the sun, the nourishment of the rain, and the cold months that will soon be here. In this way we honor the living and the dead among us. No flower blooms forever. We are the living and the dead. Tonight we celebrate that cycle.”
Ruthie fixes each of them with her small blue eyes, a matter lost on the still-bowed Howard. “Who mourns the cut flower?”
They hesitate, not clear about what is expected, until Ruthie stands so suddenly her chair scrapes across the wood floor. “I can’t believe I forgot music.”
Nan bites her lower lip, not sure if the evening is off to a wonderful start, or if it is too strange for success. She offers to help Ruthie, who only waves her hand, saying she has it all under control, leaving the dining room to a silence they mostly maintain. Thalia drinks from her water glass, working around the flower. Nan adjusts her silverware, though it is placed correctly. Stella starts to say something but is cut off by soft piano music, the source of which Nan cannot place. She’s meant for years to put in a sound system but has never gotten around to it. She peers at walls and ceiling, looking for the speakers, but finds none. What a strange thing to forget, she thinks, and really, what is Ruthie talking about: “We are the living and the dead?”
Ruthie returns, carrying a large tray she sets on the sideboard. The room is immediately filled with summer, the warmth of sun, the sweet scent of grass, blossomed flowers, the scent of laziness, Nan thinks, though of course that doesn’t really make sense. She remembers the feeling of being in a young body without bones compressed in tortured shrinking. The scent of honeysuckle!
Ruthie spoons tiny white blossoms from a crystal bowl onto the small pink plates Nan uses for Christmas pudding. A few blossoms flutter to the floor, making a flower snow, forging a strange confluence for Nan, who remembers, in a single breath, the honeysuckle that grew wild near Eve’s back door, and the snow drifting beneath the streetlights that terrible morning.
Mavis eyes the blossomed plates with raised eyebrows and a smirk, though thankfully, she doesn’t say a word. Stella looks at her plate for a long time, presenting the top of her dark-haired head with its jagged white part, until she sits back with a composed expression. Thalia watches Bay, whose confusion incites a giggle. Howard, served last, holds a blossom between thumb and forefinger, turning it this way and that.
“These are honeysuckle,” Ruthie says. “Howard’s correct. They are meant to be eaten with your fingers.”
“Are you certain they’re edible?” Stella asks.
“Of course they’re edible. Do you think I would feed you dangerous flowers?”
When no one disputes the notion, and in fact Bay is first struck by the possibility of it, Nan says, “Some flowers are poisonous, you know. The prettiest things can be quite lethal.”
Bay glances nervously from her Nana to Stella to Ruthie.
“Howard,” Ruthie says, “show everyone how foolish they’re being.”
Bay has not, until this moment, believed it at all possible that Ruthie, of all people, is a murderer, but here she is, urging Howard to eat the suspect flower. Before Bay can stop him, he places the blossom in his mouth, chews, and swallows.
Stella, apparently understanding Bay’s anguished gaze, almost imperceptibly shakes her head. “Actually,” she says, “I do remember reading about honeysuckle. They’re perfectly safe if grown without pesticides.”
“As these are,” Ruthie says.
Howard picks up another and tosses it into his mouth.
“They aren’t meant to be shoved in your mouth like popcorn, but savored,” Nan says. She uses her thumbnail to cut into the blossom and pull the stamen down to lick the flower’s narrow throat, terribly disappointed that the first two are duds she tosses onto the table. Finally, the third blossom releases the sweet, honeyed flavor of her youth, too quickly gone.
“Doesn’t this remind you of anything?” Ruthie asks.
Mavis, working a stamen from between her teeth, glowers at Stella, who makes soft moaning sounds of pleasure.
Bay searches her mind for a memory that tastes like honeysuckle, then realizes Ruthie is probably not addressing her. Thalia frowns as she chews, apparently still not having come to that conclusion and, good student that she is, trying very hard to find the answer.
“Eve,” Mavis says, pushing away the small plate still littered with blossoms.
“They grew around her house. They’re also known as woodbine, said to keep out evil,” Nan says, picking up a blossom and tearing it apart.
“Remember?” Ruthie says. “How it smelled like honeysuckle after she died?”
Nan has no memory of that at all.
“‘There in due time the woodbine blows,’” says Stella, plucking petals in a dreamy fashion. “‘The violet comes, but we are gone.’ Tennyson.”
Ruthie excuses herself to clear the plates, “Sit, sit,” she says, though no one has offered to help. “I can do this myself.”
“I guess I don’t have to worry about meat, huh?” Thalia whispers to Bay.
“You told me Eve liked to swim,” Stella says. “I don’t know anything about honeysuckle.”
“It grew by her back door.” Nan shivers at the unwelcome memory, but no one seems to notice. “Her mother, before she died, used to have honeysuckle all through the house.”
“Oh? Grandma never said anything about that.”
“Why would she?” Nan asks. “How would she know such a thing?”
“That’s right, you don’t know. My grandma’s maiden name was Stenkle. Theresa Stenkle.”
“Tiny Stenkle?”
“Uh-huh.” Stella picks up a blossom, tosses it into the air, and swats at it as it flutters down, though she misses. “She told me they used to call her Tiny when she was young.”
Nan and Mavis exchange a look. Why hadn’t they thought of this? Eve’s brother, Daniel, married a local girl.
Ruthie returns, carrying a large tray, the glass bowl filled with spiny green globules. “Our next course is artichokes,” she says, “because of the heart.”
“Well, something around here has to have a heart,” Stella says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It was a joke, Mavis.” Stella abandons her game of swatting at honeysuckle to assess the artichoke before her.
“Just discard the leaves onto your plate,” Ruthie says as she passes out ramekins of melted butter.
Nan frowns at her beautiful lace tablecloth with its never-before-appreciated gold thread, disturbed to think of it stained by oily drips.
“How do we eat these?” Bay asks.
Ruthie instructs the young people, while Stella, Mavis, and Nan begin pulling off tender leaves, dunking them in butter, drawing them between their teeth.
“Ruthie, I haven’t had an artichoke this good since I was in California,” Stella exclaims, winking at Bay, who pretends not to notice. “Visiting my grandmother. I couldn’t have been ten years old, and I thought she was trying to poison me.”
“Oh, well.” Ruthie pulls a tender leaf from her artichoke. “A little poison drama is just one of those things in a family.”
“It is?” Thalia asks, her eyes wide.
“I saw too many movies,” Stella says. “My grandmother never would have done something like that.”
“Well, it’s always the least likely, isn’t it?” Ruthie smiles softly.
Stella’s hand hovers over the artichoke, then flutters back to her lap.
“My husband wasn’t the type either. Do you think that on my wedding day I thought I was marrying a man who would one day poison me?” Ruthie asks.
Everyone is taken aback. Also, the party as a whole has apparently lost its appetite for artichokes; they sit, half-eaten, on plates littered with teeth-scraped leaves. Nan shakes her head; she is not thinking clearly. “Did you say your husband actually poisoned you?” she asks, trying to keep her tone neutral.
“Well, obviously he didn’t fully succeed,” Ruthie says, which makes everyone laugh. Mavis’s laugh turns into a cough, finally soothed with water.
The artichoke eating resumes, all the way to the strange hearts that Thalia, Bay, and Howard greet with trepidation but devour with relish once the whole process is explained to them.
“That was filling,” Thalia says.
“I hope not.” Ruthie clears the plates onto the tray, carrying it into the kitchen and back again, refusing any help, returning on her fourth trip with the soup tureen. She announces the course: fennel consommé with lovage.
