The Art of Arranging Flowers

by Lynne Branard

  In this garden, this dream of paradise, there are no greenhouse tricks, no irrigation hoses, no fertilizers, no fields plowed and seeded. There are only wild blooms, flowers found in rich woods and sagebrush plains, alpine ridges, and thick swampy bogs. Monkshood and larkspur, sky pilots and shootingstars, fireweed and globemallow, plumed avens and parrot’s beaks, harebells and chickweed. These flowers are not the ones I get from the back of a truck, not the ones I keep in buckets, in refrigerated air, not the ones I snip and trim and domesticate.

  These are divine flowers, tiny pieces of indescribable beauty like patches of some heavenly quilt, and all I want to do, all I have to do, is breathe, open my eyes, open my heart, and see. It is the easiest thing I have ever done and I let myself go, let myself come undone in this brilliance. And even as I am immersed in this otherworldly revelation I hear myself say, “This is what he meant. This is the epiphany. This is the thing that changes you forever.” I kneel and then fall back and I stay in this wonder for what seems like a very long time.

  When I finally begin my return, finally start to come back to myself, to my world, to my body and hospital bed, the first person I think I see is Captain Dan Miller smiling at me from across the room. He knows. I can tell he smiles at me because he knows and I need not tell him a thing about where I have been and what I have seen. He has walked this splendid field.

  “Ms. Jewell . . . Ms. Jewell . . .” I feel someone tugging at my arm, shaking me, pulling me back, yanking me away from the meadow, away from the dream, the astronaut.

  “Ruby . . .” The voice is sharp, demanding, and I open my eyes as I know I am being told to do. “You need to wake up. You’ve been under anesthesia too long now. Wake up!”

  And I do. And as I look around, a heavyset woman dressed in white is standing right beside me, the one who calls, the one who will not be denied. And sitting in the two chairs situated around my bed are Nora and Jimmy. I guess they have been here all night. Captain Miller is nowhere in the room.

  “Hey.” It’s Nora. She gets up and stands at the other side of the bed while the nurse shines a light in my eyes, raises my arm, slips a cuff around it, and begins to pump a small black bulb. She is checking my blood pressure. She places the tiny cup of the stethoscope on the inside of my arm, which I can see is just like the palm of my hand, welted and red.

  “Are you in any pain?” the nurse asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Right here is the pain medication.”

  I follow her eyes to an IV stand, a small box, a bulging bag hanging at the top.

  “You see this little lever?”

  I nod.

  “You just squeeze it when you start to hurt, okay? You’re in charge of your medication.”

  Again, I nod.

  She checks the numbers on the cuff, releases the air, pulls it off my arm. She moves the stethoscope to my chest, delicately, and listens to my heart.

  “The surgery went well. And we’ve got you pretty numbed up so you shouldn’t be in too much pain tonight. But you’ve got a lot of wounds.” She studies the tiny holes, makes a kind of clucking noise as if she disapproves, checks the IVs and lines coming from my arm, and then finally raises the sheet and checks my feet. I feel her cold fingers on my legs.

  “Do you need anything?”

  I shake my head.

  “Ice chips, water?”

  “No,” I whisper.

  “Okay, you can talk to your friends a little bit, but then they need to go so you can rest. It’s very late,” she says, and gives them a look like a third-grade teacher.

  They nod, dutiful students.

  I smile and she is gone.

  “Clem?”

  I see the tears gather in Nora’s eyes. “She’s fine. Dr. Cash just texted that he removed all the quills. Not a one got in her eyes and he removed the one from her throat. He’s pleased with how she is doing.”

  I glance over at Jimmy and suddenly I remember what happened between us. “I’m sorry I said what I said,” I tell him.

  He looks at me carefully. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replies.

  I feel the sweet relief of forgiveness and even though I want to say more, I don’t.

  I close my eyes and drift off to sleep. I doubt I will return to the meadow of my dreams, but I am hopeful there might be more color.

  •THIRTY-ONE•

  I MISSED Easter and the high school spring dance, the social at the club, and at least three birthdays, what else?” I have been out for only two weeks, but for a florist used to a tight community schedule, that can feel like an eternity.

  We closed the shop for one week and Nora has been filling the orders for the last several days. She had some help from the florist in Deer Park, Edna Lane, a woman who helped me start my business and has always assisted me when needed, and from what I hear, Cooper arranged the bouquets for the two church services and the one funeral for Miss Lucy Waller, who has lived twenty years over at the nursing home.

  Cooper stayed with Jimmy a couple of days in Creekside, even stopped by the hospital to check on me, brought me a thick bunch of fresh daffodils and a few stems of fancy leucadendrons that he found at the market in Seattle. And he was quite the gentleman, didn’t try to get in bed with me but once. Still, even with all the help, it’s time I get back to business. It’s time I get back to what it is I do.

  “Henry’s come by a couple of times, but he won’t tell me what he wants or who he’s buying for, just keeps saying he’ll come over when you’re better.”

  She glances across the street in the direction of the barbershop and then she glances back at me. I wait for the questions, but she seems to think better of it and doesn’t ask what I know about Henry’s love life.

  Without saying anything to Nora, I do wonder how things are progressing between Henry and Lou Ann. I wonder if he’s found the courage finally to speak to her, tell her that he’s the secret admirer who has been sending her flowers. I wonder if they went out on a date.

  “Conrad proposed to Vivian. He came by and wanted the same arrangement you made when he took her out for Mexican food in February.” She has picked up the stack and is going through the receipts of the past week. “He said it gave him good luck.”

  “Dendrobiums,” I respond, reminded of the other couple I have been trying to help along. I think of Vivian and Conrad and remember the purple orchids and the date to Rancho Chico in Colville, the risk I took in giving him those blooms.

  She nods. “Cooper was here when he stopped in. He seemed to know exactly what you had put in the arrangement, made it up in a few minutes. He said that he was here when you put it together and that the floral choices were actually his idea.”

  I smile, recalling the conversation from months ago that Cooper and I had about the couple, the way he persuaded me to do what I did. “I guess he’s right. He was pretty pushy about the Thai blooms.” I think about Conrad and Vivian, how long they’ve been dating, the heat that finally rose between them this winter. “Did you hear her answer?”

  “They already set a date for July.”

  I count the months on my fingers. “Wow, that’s not very far off,” I say.

  “She’s going to call about the arrangements,” Nora tells me. “She’s thinking sunflowers and blue irises. Who knows where she got that combination.”

  I consider the two plants and sort of like the idea, tall slender stems of long azure blooms mixed in with the round full faces of sunflowers. I hadn’t expected that Vivian had such a creative mind or that she was so confident in her choices of wedding flowers, and I wonder if it was the orchids that sealed the deal for the couple or if Vivian had been ready and waiting all along and it was Conrad who had actually needed the extra push.

  Clementine gets up from her spot near my wheelchair and moves under the design table. I watch her carefully even though she no longer seems to be in pain or have trouble walking. She has recovered much faster than I have and except for a few welts along he
r snout, some loss of appetite, she is fine. A little more to herself, reserved, less social, as if she’s still trying to process a fight with a porcupine, but fine.

  The vet has her on antibiotics for another few days and wants to see her in a few weeks for a follow-up, but beyond that she is released from her doctor’s care. I suddenly think about John Cash, his kindness, his gentle way with Clem and with me, and I feel a slight fluttering inside. I shake my head when I remember the phone call he took during one of Clem’s appointments, the way he left the room and returned, the flustered way he finished telling me about the medications, the way he kept rubbing his left ring finger.

  “I still don’t see how you can make arrangements sitting down.” Nora is looking first at me, then at the table, then back at me. She is shaking her head. “Even with that contraption that Jimmy made you, I don’t know how you can balance a vase with all the flowers you put in. Why don’t you just limit your orders to what I can do until you’re back on your feet? People will understand.”

  I continue trimming the ends of the stems of freesia on the narrow board that stretches across the arms of my wheelchair. Jimmy measured and cut a piece of wood, sanded it down, and sealed it, and I think it works perfectly. As long as Nora will bring me the flowers from the storage room, I can do my work from the chair.

  “It’s just for a couple more weeks,” I reply. “Then I get a soft cast and a boot and I’ll be able to stand and hold on to the table,” I add, thinking this will be a long spring season trying to do my work on one leg. I hold up another stem and cut away the thin narrow leaves at the bottom.

  I am making a bouquet for Evelyn Barr, the nurse who took care of me after the surgery. She said she loved freesia, that the smell always made her think of goodness and that the funnel-shaped blooms were to her a symbol of grace. She told me the story of her favorite flower when she helped me get out of bed for the first time and when she learned I was the town florist. She isn’t from around here, so we had never met.

  “There was a teacher at nursing school who used to wear a perfume with that scent. She was old, had been teaching for thirty years when I took her class in pharmaceuticals. One day I was sure I had failed a test and wouldn’t graduate and she found me sitting outside on the back steps crying. She made me get up and she gave me a big hug and told me she was certain that I had not failed the test and that even if I had it wouldn’t keep me from graduating. She told me that I would make a fine nurse and I remember that she smelled like a garden of freesias. Since then I have always loved those flowers.” She let me lean against her while I hopped on one foot. “That fragrance takes me back to one of the most important moments of my life and reminds me of someone who made me feel good about myself.”

  I ordered ten bunches of them as soon as I was discharged. Evelyn is a very good nurse and she deserves to feel special.

  “Jenny’s back in the hospital,” Nora mentions, changing the subject. “Justin’s mother stopped by a couple of days ago to buy a plant for her sister-in-law in Idaho Falls. She said the treatments have caused an infection and she has to stay on IV drugs for a few days. And she’s having some heart problems now.” She puts the receipts back by the cash register. “Poor girl, she has certainly been through it.” She pauses for a second. “At least she’s here at St. Joseph’s and not on the cancer ward in Spokane. Makes it easier on Justin.”

  “Call Cooper and see if he’s left the warehouse yet. If he hasn’t, tell him to bring me a few dozen stems of lily of the valley when he comes in the morning.” I know they help with cardiac issues. “I’ll add them to the pink and yellow peonies I ordered. That’ll lift her spirits.”

  Nora gets a pen and writes down the instruction.

  “When I go to take these to Evelyn tomorrow, I’ll stop by and drop them off.”

  “Are you supposed to be driving?” she asks.

  “I can get around town okay,” I answer, remembering the doctor’s order. I’m not officially released to be behind the wheel until the cast comes off, but it’s Creekside. You could drive in reverse around here and still be safe. I’ll be fine for a couple more weeks.

  “You want to have dinner with me and Jimmy tonight? We’re going to the Chinese place. They have a new fish platter that Carl has been raving about.”

  I just shake my head.

  “I thought you liked Chinese food,” she says, and she studies me. “Wait a minute. Do you have something else to do?”

  I smile, thinking about the visit a few days ago, glad for the chance to spend time with Dan and tell him about my dream, compare notes of epiphanies.

  “John?” she asks, the hopefulness ringing in her voice. I have not told her about my suspicions. I have not mentioned the phone call that was such a distraction or the way he seems to long for his wedding ring.

  “Captain Miller,” I reply.

  She raises her eyebrows. “Another date with the astronaut?”

  And I want to tell her the truth. I want to tell her that Dan and I are friends, that I have felt a deep connection to him since we flew to Seattle, since I walked out of the meadow and saw him waiting for me. That he is sick. But like so many things that I think and even know, I keep it to myself. After all, these last couple of weeks Nora has seen me wounded and broken and bloody and naked. As far as I’m concerned, for at least a while in this relationship, I have shared enough.

  •THIRTY-TWO•

  IT’S called spontaneous remission.” Dan is at the stove. He is making spaghetti, his favorite, he told me, angel hair pasta in a red clam sauce. He stopped at a fish market on his way out of Spokane this morning. The clams are fresh.

  “But spontaneous isn’t really the right word. It’s more like unexpected or unanticipated because most things in life are not really spontaneous. I don’t believe that things occur purely by accident. It is more likely that these remissions have a cause that just hasn’t been identified yet.”

  I asked Dan about the healing he said he experienced two other times when he was diagnosed with cancer. He’s telling me what he knows about the science of what happened to him.

  He stirs the sauce.

  “Based on what is published in medical journals, unexpected remissions occur in one out of every sixty thousand to one hundred thousand cancer survivors, but the number is probably higher than that because not all of these cases get reported.”

  He turns around to face me. I am sitting at the bar in front of him. He’s wearing a red apron and has a dish towel thrown over his shoulder. He looks like a man comfortable in the kitchen. He reaches for his glass of wine and takes a swallow. “It’s breast cancer, right?”

  I told Dan about Jenny and asked about his remissions and whether he knew someone who might help her.

  “I think it’s spread.”

  He nods.

  “I can call someone. The man I worked with is still in the States. He’s actually from India but he’s lived here for the last twenty years. He’s in New Mexico. Do you think Jenny will be open to nonallopathic procedures?”

  “What?” I ask.

  “Nonallopathic; it refers to treatment that doesn’t follow the principles of mainstream medical practice. Allopathy is the treatment of a disease using remedies whose effects are different than those produced by the disease. Nonallopathic would be the opposite of that. It is primarily focused on dietary changes as well as cognitive therapy.”

  I shake my head. Talking to Dan is like talking to a rocket scientist, which, now that I think about it, is sort of what he is.

  He smiles, turns back to the stove and his clam sauce.

  I take a drink from my glass. The wine is from California. Dan told me the exact location where the grapes are grown, somewhere in the southern region of Napa Valley, and how the grapes are picked at night and brought to the winery in darkness and that they are pressed in whole clusters and stored in oak barrels. I have no idea about the reasoning for any of these things, but he seems to believe they make all the difference in the
world and I must agree it is a very good wine.

  “Tell me about the stars,” I say. I try to arrange myself so that I am sitting more comfortably, but it’s hard since I need to prop up my foot. It hurts if it starts to swell, and letting it dangle makes it swell.

  “Here.” He has turned around and is watching me fidget in my seat on the stool. He walks over to the table, brings back a chair, sets it near the stove. Then he goes somewhere in the other part of the house and brings a small footstool. “Try this.”

  And I hobble over to the place he has made. He returns to his spot at the stove and puts a loaf of bread in the oven, checks the pot of water to see if it is boiling. He turns up the temperature.

  “A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. It begins as a collapsing cloud of material mostly composed of hydrogen, along with helium and trace amounts of other, heavier elements. When the central core is sufficiently dense, some of the hydrogen is converted into helium through the process we know to be nuclear fusion.” He stops and glances over at me. I guess he can see the glaze across my eyes. “You’re not really interested in what they’re made of, are you? You want to know about the stars that changed me, the ones that altered my consciousness.”

  “I think I’ll have a better shot of understanding that,” I answer.

  He takes another swallow of wine. “Your flowers,” he says. “In your dream, can you adequately describe what they were like?”

  I see what he’s trying to tell me. I had told him about the meadow and how he appeared as I was leaving and he is explaining to me that his stars are like my flowers; to describe either of them is to undo the hold they have on us. I nod.

  “Were you ever in love?” I ask, feeling a sort of boldness I don’t ordinarily have.