The Flourishing of Floralie Laurel

by Fiadhnait Moser

  Mr. Tullier muttered, “Hmph,” again.

  Floralie huffed away the curl, and said, “Your turn.”

  “Hmm?” said Mr. Tullier.

  “Your turn,” repeated Floralie. “That was my half of the bargain; now it’s yours. I’d like to see your floriography, please.”

  Mr. Tullier shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He downed the rest of his coffee, then said, “Tomorrow.”

  “What?” breathed Floralie.

  “Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the flower dictionaries.” He dropped the letter back into the box and slid it back to Floralie.

  “No—no, it’s got to be today—you promised.”

  “I did no such thing.” Mr. Tullier guffawed. “I said I’d tell you after you told me about your mother. Tomorrow is after.”

  The sound of pen scratching against paper caught Floralie’s ears, and she turned to Nino. You want to find her, too, though, don’t you? he wrote, but not to Floralie. He handed the notebook to Mr. Tullier, who narrowed his eyes at Nino, then turned to Floralie again. “What’s wrong with him?” he said, nodding to Nino.

  Floralie huffed. “Nothing’s wrong with him. What’s it to you if he doesn’t like to talk?”

  Mr. Tullier’s lip curled. “Odd bunch, you are,” he muttered, and then he read Nino’s note. He seemed to read it five more times before sighing. “I’ll tell you in the morning. If I am in a better mood. And if you, mademoiselle”—he glared at Floralie—“manage to hold your tongue while I am speaking.”

  “But, Mr. Tullier,” said Floralie, “we’ve nowhere to sleep.”

  “Is that my problem?” said Mr. Tullier.

  Floralie sighed. “It’s just, your house is so large . . .”

  Mr. Tullier rolled his eyes. “There are three spare rooms in the west wing, past the Gare Saint-Lazare painting. You shall sleep there. Now go.” Mr. Tullier grunted as he pulled himself out of his chair and shuffled toward the door. “And you two”—he gazed down at Floralie and Nino—“enfants, I will not insult you so much as to tell you not to go exploring my property.” And then he left the kitchen.

  Floralie looked up at Miss Clairoux. Her jaw was clenched. Nino scrawled something into his notebook and handed it to Floralie. Are you sure this is a good idea?

  Floralie nodded. We’ll be fine. He’s creepy, but harmless. And he’s my grandfather, after all. We’ve just got to give him time, I’m sure of it. But really, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure why Mr. Tullier wouldn’t help her right then and there, and she wasn’t sure why he seemed so hostile to his newfound granddaughter. But most of all, she was beginning to feel unsure about Mama. Why had Mama never told Floralie about Mr. Tullier, if she really had known him? And why would she, Viscaria, vivacious eyes and laugh like bells, have been friends with someone as stony-hearted as Mr. Tullier?

  “She’s my wife, Ma,” said Papa, gathering his briefcase for work.

  Grandmama stopped him at the door and looked him in the eye. “She’s a wretch with a pretty face. Your biggest mistake.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Papa. “I’m sorry she took me from you.”

  It was as if Mr. Tullier had vanished. Floralie, Nino, and Miss Clairoux could not find him anywhere in the corridors, so they snaked their way through the maze of flowers and vines to the west wing, where, indeed, they found three vacant rooms by Monet’s painting of the famous railway station.

  “This house is huge,” marveled Floralie. “How d’you think he ended up getting it from Monet? And what d’you think he uses it all for, anyway?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest, my dear,” said Miss Clairoux. “Now, if either of you two need anything, come straight to my room. Understand?”

  “Yes, Miss Clairoux,” said Floralie, and Miss Clairoux disappeared into her room.

  The sparrows in the rafters of Floralie’s room fell asleep before she did that night. The walls, covered in Monet’s paintings, kept Floralie’s eyes locked open. There was something familiar about the paintings, something that gnawed at Floralie’s heart. Each one portrayed a girl wandering through a garden. She had daisy-blond hair and looked perhaps two, three years older than Floralie, but otherwise, her features were blurred in the sweeps of paint. It wasn’t really the features that were familiar, but rather the way the figure seemed to move—as if she were made of feathers and silk and air.

  Floralie squeezed shut her eyes. Heat weighed upon her chest as she lay on the hay-stuffed mattress, waiting for sleep. Waiting, waiting, waiting. She traced the words onto the back of her hand, and then those words melted into the words that so often dissolved into Floralie’s mind: Ballet. Papa. Air. Flowers. Ballet. Papa. Air. Flowers. Ballet. Papa. Air. Flowers. Ballet. Papa. Air—

  Air. Floralie needed air. She felt as if a ghost were strangling her throat. She pushed back the flannel sheets. Flannel, why do they have to be flannel? Then she tiptoed over to the window, yanked up the glass, and pushed as hard as she could on the shutters.

  “Come on,” she muttered.

  Floralie leaned a shoulder against the window, gave a great push, and the shutters snapped open. Dust erupted in her face, settled into the crooks of her eyes, but a moment later she was breathing in the tulip-scented air.

  A breeze swept through the room, shaking the bedpost and the wardrobe doors. In the corner, a rocking chair cloaked in a pink crochet blanket swayed back and forth. Floralie wondered what use Mr. Tullier had for such a blanket; it would hardly be big enough to cover Floralie, no less a full-grown man. And for some reason, the creaking of the wardrobe reminded Floralie vaguely of the sound of a baby rattle. Floralie remembered Miss Clairoux saying Mr. Tullier had had two children, one being Viscaria. But what had happened to the second child? How old was he or she now? Where had they gone?

  A gust of wind whipped through the room, and one of the wardrobe doors swished open. Floralie tore herself away from the window and went to close it. As her fingers met the rough oak, however, something silky brushed against her hand. It was seeping out from inside the wardrobe.

  Floralie narrowed her eyes and opened the wardrobe door wider.

  “No . . . ,” whispered Floralie. As she gazed into the wardrobe, Floralie felt very much like she was four years old again and seeing a sunflower for the first time. How small she felt against the grandness before her.

  Inside the wardrobe hung ballet costume after ballet costume. Puffs of tulle skirts covered in lace and feathers and silken flowers. Gossamer sashes fluttered in the breeze and gemstones twinkled in the moonlight. Five pairs of threadbare pointe shoes huddled together in the corner like desolate schoolgirls. As the wind rattled the wardrobe once more, one of the shoes toppled out to Floralie’s feet. She picked it up, the weight of it taking her by surprise.

  And when Floralie peered inside the shoe, she almost dropped it, for etched in black ink on the grayed-away sole were three initials: V.A.C. The very same as those engraved on Mama’s box of flowers—Viscaria Alice Clairoux.

  Floralie stumbled back, gripping tight the shoe, and then raced out her room. She flung open Nino’s door, and whispered, “Nino?”

  There was a rustling of sheets, and Nino sat up, rubbing his eyes. Upon glimpsing Floralie, he leaped back and gathered up his sheets to his neck.

  “Shh! It’s all right, it’s just me,” said Floralie, and Nino relaxed. He pushed back his sheets, then lit a candle on his bedside table as Floralie sat down beside him.

  Nino took his pen and notebook from the table and scrawled, What are you doing here? Are you okay?

  Yes, wrote Floralie. Yes, I’m fine, but look at this, and she held up the shoe for him.

  A pointe shoe? Where’d you get it?

  The wardrobe, and look! Floralie held the shoe up to the candle and pointed to the initials. I think these shoes belonged to my mother.

  Nino took the shoe and rubbed the toe box. She must have lived in your room when she lived here.

  Floralie remembered now the photograph in A History of Dre
amlands, the girl with vivacious eyes and daisy-blond hair standing beside the young Mr. Tullier and Claude Monet . . . Floralie took the pointe shoe from Nino and ran her fingers along the splitting seams, across the tattered block, over the smooth, smooth sole, molded by her mother’s foot. Floralie felt as if she were holding a piece of Viscaria in her own two hands. A ghost of her, perhaps. She felt close. Nino?

  Yeah?

  There was a room that I want to see. I know Mr. Tullier told us not to go looking, but I’ve just got to see it.

  It was the door. The door with the flowers, wasn’t it?

  Floralie nodded. That’s the one. I’ve got to know what’s inside. I have this feeling about it.

  Just then, Philomenos leaped out from beneath Nino’s sheets. Floralie smiled and patted the mouse as it began to squeak. Nino smiled crookedly at Floralie. Mice and feelings, he wrote, are never to be ignored.

  Down the corridor, they crept, footsteps soft as maple seeds spinning to a pine-needled floor.

  “This is it,” said Floralie when they reached the aurora borealis door.

  Thorns prickled her fingers as she twisted open the doorknob . . . They stepped inside.

  The lady sold dance shoes in the parking lot of the village church. Floralie watched her mother try on twenty-seven pairs before she chose her pointe shoes. When paying the lady, along with the money, Mama gave her a dog rose. “They will hurt for a while, my dear,” the lady said. And indeed they made Mama’s feet bleed. She wore them to bed each night to break them in, and when Floralie asked if the shoes hurt, Mama always said, “They make me happy.”

  Floralie’s bare feet sunk into cool, moist dirt. Soft air tickled her eyelashes, waltzed with the pointe shoe ribbons. The crickets sang a lullaby, and frogs croaked a drumbeat. Gnarled trees arched over Floralie and Nino, and as they made their way through them, a pale light filtered down from above. Floralie looked up to the full moon, hung like a silver coin in the sky. This was not a room. This was a garden. A bizarre indoor garden, glass-dome ceiling, and earthen floor.

  It was as if her wallpaper had bloomed to life, as if her enchanted forest had taken root. Flowers bloomed low and high of every variety Floralie could imagine. A stream gurgled in the distance, and cicadas chirped in the hedges. In the center of it all grew a willow tree barely any smaller than Floralie’s cottage at the end of Whitterly End. Its leaves rustled as if whispering lullabies in an intangible, yet ever so present, wind.

  Nino trailed his fingers along a tiger lily. Floralie knelt down to a patch of tiny purple flowers. They danced in her fingers like miniature ballerinas, and Floralie knew.

  “These are viscarias,” she muttered.

  Nino tilted his head.

  “The flowers—they’re viscarias.” She hadn’t a clue how she knew it, but she did. She felt it in her bones.

  Something sparked in the corner of Floralie’s eye, and she squinted up at the great willow tree. “Fireflies!” she yelped, looking to Nino.

  Nino glanced up, and the two sprinted toward the tree. Floralie swished under the waterfall of leaves and pulled Nino along with her. The willow’s trunk was wide and knobby, as if it had been growing there for hundreds of years.

  “Look!” exclaimed Floralie. She dropped Mama’s ballet shoe and pointed up to the fireflies, flickering like candle flames in the twisted branches. “Try and catch one.”

  It was then, as Floralie and Nino grabbed for the air, that Floralie realized she had not painted since Tom tore down her wallpaper. As a firefly lit up at the base of the tree, she scurried over and cupped her hands around it.

  “Come look, Nino! Look, I’ve got one.” The firefly stumbled along the ridges of Floralie’s palm, lighting up her skin so it glowed a rosy pink. And as she held the firefly, Floralie thought about how catching fireflies was a little like painting. How she could hold freedom in her palms, how paintbrushes were like fireflies, and how wallpaper was like hands. Wallpaper caught colors, just like hands caught fireflies. And Floralie thought about how impossible—contradictory, really—it seemed to catch freedom, yet how simple it really was. All you had to do was open a palm. All you had to do was speak.

  “Nino?” whispered Floralie.

  Yeah? wrote Nino in his notebook.

  Floralie held the firefly in her left hand and took the pen in her right, trembling. Why won’t you speak to me?

  I am speaking to you.

  No. I mean, really speak to me. I want to hear your voice.

  I can’t.

  Why not?

  Because you might leave, or turn on me, or laugh. You’d probably laugh. Like all my friends at the orphanage.

  But I’m not like that. Don’t you know me at all? Remember how you told me that the gaps in my teeth were like the gaps in Sappho’s poems? That that’s what made them beautiful?

  Nino paused, and then etched, faint as mist, Yeah.

  Well, if beauty isn’t perfection, then what is it? What is beauty?

  Nino’s mouth twitched, and he buried himself in his notebook. Floralie let the firefly crawl over her thumb and back into her palm until finally, Nino held up his notebook.

  Firefly

  By Konstantinos

  Poetry is a firefly

  Caught in your night-struck hands.

  And you contain chaos

  Under thumb, between palms.

  Chaos is a firefly

  Caught in your night-struck hands,

  And you contain freedom

  Under thumb, between palms.

  Wonder is a firefly

  Caught in your night-struck hands,

  And you contain vulnerability

  Under thumb, between palms.

  And beauty is chaos

  Caught in wonderstruck poems

  Already etched in our hearts,

  But when it came to speaking out loud

  We just didn’t know how.

  Floralie read it five times. She thought of painting, the way there were a trillion emotions and shapes and colors of paint—chaos—but only once they were organized onto wallpaper would they be beautiful. Only then would they tell the story once trapped inside the artist.

  She thought of ballet, Viscaria contained on the stage, steps locked into place, her movements sculpted of freedom, but her body caught inside the choreography. Somewhere between that freedom and captivity lurked beauty.

  So, then, wrote Floralie, why won’t you speak to me?

  Nino’s honey eyes grew hollow. Why should I?

  Floralie felt ridiculous—poetics were for Nino, not her. Because . . . , started Floralie, because maybe your voice isn’t perfect, but it’s your contained chaos. It’s your beauty. Everyone’s voice is. Everyone’s voice is a firefly in a hand, forming ideas out of images out of sentences out of words out of letters out of dots and lines out of sounds. If our vulnerability makes us beautiful, and if voices are our greatest vulnerabilities, why hide yours?

  Nino dropped his pen and shook his head. His hair flopped over his eyes, and there was just something about them that drew Floralie in. You know everything about me, Nino, but you won’t even speak to me. Floralie realized she had drifted closer, an inch from his ear, and she breathed, “You don’t have to be afraid.” She let her mouth go slack, let the night fill the gap in her teeth. She clutched the firefly tight.

  Nino shook his head again and stood. Floralie stood, too, a branch snapping beneath her foot. Nino began to back away like a feral cat.

  “You’re a coward.” Floralie couldn’t stop the words from falling out.

  You don’t know anything.

  “But I’m trying to, and you won’t let me. I’ve put my trust in you, and all you do is take. You take all my sadness and turn it into poetry, and fine, I don’t care, but you never share anything with me. You barely let anyone even know your name. Konstantinos. Ha! Konstantinos, Konstantinos, Konstantinos; I never even get to say it. You’re my best friend, and you won’t even talk to me.” Anger flooded Floralie’s face
, seeped down her spine. “Why can’t you trust me?”

  Nino said nothing, but backed away, and then broke into a run all the way to the edge of the garden until he disappeared through the door.

  Floralie fell to her knees, dress covered in dirt. She pounded her fists on the ground and squeezed her eyes shut. Her breath came in jagged bouts, but as her breathing slowed, she realized she was still holding the firefly. Slowly, she uncurled her palm, and out fell the bug, limp, lightless, lifeless. Suffocated.

  “No.” Floralie wanted to scream. She wanted the whole world to know how mad she was and how sad she was, but at the same time, she found herself once again scared of opening her mouth and revealing the gap in her teeth, even if no one was there to see it. Because she was there, and always, she would be aware of that gap in her teeth, and always, she would be aware of the gap in every single thing she did. Everything, thought Floralie, everything I do will be ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly. She traced the word over and over again in the dirt until the letters ran together like sidewalk chalk after a rainstorm.

  And somewhere between the time she was crying beneath the willow and the time she was sleeping beneath the willow, a thought drifted through Floralie’s mind similar to the one she had had when Tom tore down her wallpaper, a thought that went something like this: Everything disappears. Nino, Mama, flowers, wallpaper. It simply wasn’t worth the trouble, caring about things that disappear.

  When Floralie remembered this day, she called it the Last Day of Everything. Floralie followed the taxi to the edge of the village. The sunflowers swallowed Mama up.

  Sleep swept over Floralie, and it wasn’t until the moon had nearly sunk to the edge of the garden that Floralie heard it. The creak of a door. Floralie sat up and rubbed her eyes, confused for only a moment as to where she was. The garden, she remembered. The beautiful, terrible garden. She held her breath, praying it was Nino, come to write poems and make everything better. But the footsteps were slow, heavy . . . not the mouse-quick steps Floralie knew so well. As they grew louder, Floralie scrambled to her feet and slipped behind the trunk of the willow.