A week or so later, I checked back, ready to remove the uncared-for corpse. But between the steady April rain and spring’s increasingly sunshiny days, the thing had managed not only to survive but actually to grow, three tiny buds sprouting at the ends of three separate spindly branches. I couldn’t help but be impressed.
I got into the habit of following its progress every couple of days, after a while Henry picking up on the new routine and accompanying me on my inspection. It was like a much slower version of when Loretta had shown me how she developed her photographs before she began sending them away to be done, the thing you were waiting to see slowly becoming itself, taking all the time it needed to be exactly what it was.
After work one night, I told Loretta about the rose bush, about how it reminded me of her developing her photographs.
“You are talking about a living bush?” she said.
“What other kind would I be talking about?”
“I do not know. But you caring for a rose bush, I cannot see this in my mind.”
“I’m not caring for it. I’m just . . . watching it.”
“I see.”
And then it didn’t rain, and it didn’t rain, and then it didn’t rain again. I asked Franklin when he came downstairs to Sophia’s for a whiskey break, “Is it raining?” and he immediately set down his whiskey on the bar, whispered, “What’s wrong?”
“Who said anything’s wrong? I just asked you if it was raining outside.”
Franklin looked at me like he was trying to remember an agreed-upon code word, silently mouthed the word rain.
“Oh, for—” I went upstairs and outside to check for myself. It still wasn’t raining.
The next day, I filled an empty whiskey bottle with water and poured it over the bush. After the bottle was empty, I poked my finger into the ground and it was only wet a quarter of an inch down. Henry followed me back inside the house while I refilled the bottle and then back to the bush while I watered it again, and then one more time after that. This time the earth was soaked deep, to the bush’s roots. To create a little flower is the labour of ages, Mr. Blake wrote. He must have been a gardener too.
The day after that, one of the buds was open when we arrived with two whiskey bottles of water. A pink rose. I let Henry go first, then I knelt down on one knee and smelt it too. Honest perfume. I smelt it again.
I’ve left Thompson the two whiskey bottles with detailed, written watering instructions. It would probably be easier if I had an actual watering can, though. Maybe when we come home next month I’ll stop in at McKeough’s Hardware and buy one. It’s not as if I can’t afford it.
David Page 27