The Light of Hidden Flowers

by Jennifer Handford

  “I adore good wine,” I said, thinking of my favorite variety of red: its bouquet, ruby hue, plummy sweetness.

  “I wish I knew more,” he said. “But I’m sure I couldn’t tell the difference between a ten-dollar and hundred-dollar bottle of wine.”

  “What did you like about the show on Napa, then?”

  “I’m a huge history buff—geography fascinates me,” he said. “Interesting terrain out there.”

  Interesting terrain out there.

  “You must be interested in touring Europe then, right? If you’re a big history enthusiast?”

  “I’m sure it would be fascinating,” Lucas said. “But there’s so much to see here in the States. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface.”

  “True,” I said, thinking I was foolish for pushing the point, seeing that I was the girl who had to be escorted off the last plane she boarded. Still, in my mind, I took a step back. In front of my eyes was Lucas Anderson, a guy who valued a good plan, discipline, and routine. If I were to list the qualities I respected in a man, Lucas’s stability, reliability, and sensibility would top my list. So why then was I perseverating over the fact that he didn’t want to eat, drink, or travel?

  When the waiter brought the dessert menu, I chose a flourless chocolate torte with salted caramel pecans. Lucas shook his head no, said he was stuffed. When I pointed out that there was pie and ice cream, he brightened. “Vanilla?” he asked.

  “I’m sure they have vanilla,” I said.

  That was it, then. If Lucas Anderson were a flavor, he would be vanilla. I filed away this bit of information. Not a pro nor con, just a data point for me to chart out later. After all, I had nothing against vanilla.

  Lucas drove me home and then walked me to the door. I unlocked it and pushed through. In the entryway, he pressed me against the wall and kissed me. I closed my eyes and thought about the clam chowder, the crusty bread and salted Irish butter, and when I did, Lucas’s mouth became delicious.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Goddamn it!” Dad roared from his office.

  On the other side of the wall we shared, it sounded like a gang of wild raccoons was ransacking the place. I stood up and stared at our common wall. “Goddamn it!” he bellowed again, followed by a thunderous crash. When I ran from my office to his, I found him standing in front of his executive leather chair, regarding the bare expanse of his mammoth mahogany desktop, which he had evidently just wiped clear of its entire contents. On the floor were his lamp and day planner and iPad. Papers were scattered everywhere.

  “Goddamn it,” he repeated, this time in a small voice, an apologetic one.

  I closed the door behind me. “What’s going on?” I whispered. I kneeled onto the rug and began gathering the mess.

  “Leave it,” Dad said.

  “Dad, what happened?”

  Dad slumped into the corner of his leather sofa, wiped his eyes with his giant hand.

  “My brain!” he said. “The shrapnel in my brain!”

  “What happened?”

  “I couldn’t remember the ticker symbol for Chevron. I’ve owned that stock for forty years.”

  “CVX,” I said. “No big deal. So you forgot.”

  “It’s not just that, damn it.”

  “Then what?”

  “I looked it up; I saw that it was CVX,” he said. “But when I went to write it down—after I had just seen it—I couldn’t remember how to make a C, for God’s sake.”

  “It’s time to see the doctor, Dad.”

  “Donny Kaye had a stroke. He’s told me before that some days he feels like he’s losing his absolute mind.”

  “Mr. Kaye had a ministroke,” I said. “And, yes! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. There’s a possibility that you’ve had something like that. We need to get you checked out.”

  That night I researched transient ischemic attacks and learned they were named “ministrokes” because the symptoms were like those of a stroke, but didn’t last long. A ministroke occurred when blood flow to part of the brain was blocked, often by a blood clot. The blood eventually broke free and flowed again. Most likely ministrokes were warnings of a real stroke. Sudden numbness, tingling, weakness, or paralysis in the face, arm, or leg were some of the symptoms, along with vision changes, trouble speaking, and confusion. Brain cells could be affected within seconds of the blockage.

  Dad could have suffered a ministroke that day at our seminar, when he froze in the headlights, when his jaw jutted back and forth, when his eyes looked as terrified as a man witnessing an execution.

  I added a ministroke to my list of worries, alongside the possibility of a brain tumor. I hadn’t a clue whether either was the culprit, but what I did know for sure was this: Dad’s blunders could not be attributed to simple senior forgetfulness.

  Three days later, Dad saw Dr. Bell who, because of Dad’s high blood pressure, high cholesterol and triglycerides, ordered blood tests, an echocardiogram to check the heart’s shape and its blood flow, and an electrocardiogram to measure its rhythm.

  After the appointment, I grilled Dad on the details. “Did he take a CT scan to look at your brain?”

  “He was checking out my ticker today,” Dad said.

  “Dad! Did you ask him about the possibility of a brain tumor? Don’t you want to know if you had a stroke?”

  “Daughter,” he said, “I’m good. For now, I’m good. Enough tests for one day.”

  “This is crazy, Dad,” I cried. “Did you tell him about the forgetfulness?”

  “I want to get on with my life,” Dad said. “Golf, work. Enough of this nonsense.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I had never been so angry with my father in all my life. I cursed his stubbornness. The man needed to have his brain checked, not his heart! For all the years he had accused me of living in denial of a larger life, who had his head in the sand now? I pulled the cork out of a half-full bottle of Merlot and emptied it into a water glass.

  As I gulped wine, I distracted myself with Facebook. One of my dad’s brother’s grandsons had graduated from high school, another was accepted to a prestigious writing program for the summer, and a few of the little grandchildren were away at camp, canoeing and hiking and sleeping in cabins.

  And Joe. His children were growing, too. The little guy, Jake, celebrated a birthday. But Joe’s posts had decreased significantly. In June and July he had posted only once, a photo of the kids at the Jersey shore. In August, there were no photos, just one post he had reshared, a charity event for Wounded Warriors. I imagined Joe had a number of buddies who were wounded. I felt for them, and for Joe. Had my old sweetheart ever seen frontline action? Had any of his buddies been injured or killed?

  Our first year of college, Joe and I did an admirable job of keeping in touch. This was the late 1990s, and e-mail was just beginning to sweep the nation. We each had AOL accounts and I, in the computer lab at W&M, and Joe, in his computer lab at VMI, wrote each other messages back and forth on our dial-up connections. As I waited for the screeching and squawking of the modem to connect, I’d flutter my fingertips above the keyboard, anxious to tell him about my day, to hear about his. On a few weekends, we’d meet back home in Alexandria, and for a while, it was like we had never left. Joe camped out in the quiet of Dad’s and my house, and on the days when we went to Joe’s, I drank in the chatter and laughter and mayhem that were the Lincoln Logs of Joe’s family home.

  Over Thanksgiving break, Joe and I went away to Virginia Beach, stowing away in a quaint seaside bungalow named the Sand Dollar. The little cottage was wood-paneled with floral curtains framing the windows that welcomed the afternoon sun. We walked on the beach, collected seashells, and lounged in the Adirondack chairs as we stared out at the shore. That night, we barely spoke except through our eyes, which conveyed the imperceptible looks we had grown to decipher in each other.
I want you, I love you, I trust you completely. In the golden glow of the early evening light, Joe undressed me, and I, him. I kissed the pulse on his neck, the peak of his lips, the ledge of his cheekbone. He pressed his hands on the small of my back, traced the ridges of my ribs, pulled me closer to him than I had ever been.

  That night, we made love for the first time.

  “I love you,” Joe said. He was on his side, and I ran my fingertips over his gorgeous body, his muscular biceps, his sculpted chest.

  “I love you, too,” I said, reaching to touch his hip bone, letting my hand curl around it.

  “Never not,” he said, leaning into me, his body filled with heat, covering mine. “I’ll never not love you.”

  “I’ll never not love you.”

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said, and at that moment, with the golden light, with the refusal of the shore to stop roaring, with our flesh sharing space, I felt more beautiful than ever.

  “You’re gorgeous,” I said, lifting my face, letting his mouth brush mine.

  Such was our teenage love, an intensity that bordered on insanity, a myopia that didn’t see beyond our four walls, an urgency that the sky was falling and the only bunker was in each other’s arms. That weekend, did we eat? I barely remember leaving the room. There were chips and soda, Red Vines and Snickers bars. But it was wholly perfect in every way.

  Years later, when I was in my late twenties, I drove back to that seaside motel. It took a few passes down the drag to find it, for I had remembered it as quaint, immaculate. I had remembered the glow of the golden sun, the powder of the white sand, the turquoise scales of the ocean waves. Yet when I drove down the strip, I only saw motels and cottages and more motels—all the same. When I found the one named Sand Dollar, it hardly matched my memory. I parked, entered the lobby. In my heart I could still smell the cinnamon candle that was burning atop the registry counter, could still taste the banana of the saltwater taffy from the bowl next to the brochures, could still feel the moisture in the sea air.

  “Can I help you?” asked a teenager behind the counter, some Jerry Springer yell-a-thon blasting behind him on the TV.

  It was just a cheap beach motel, no better or worse than the one right next door. “Just looking,” I said, inhaling deeply, a desperate, last-ditch effort to find the candle that once burned there. Down the pathway to the room where we once stayed, I closed my eyes and listened for the ocean’s kiss against the shore, but all I could hear was the incessant moan of traffic.

  Joe was my first love, but he was also my best friend back then. Would it be so wrong to send him a message, to say hello? It wasn’t as if I were pursuing him. After all, I was serious with Lucas. I curled my fingers above the keyboard, took a giant gulp of air, and typed.

  Hi, Joe! I see your postings from time to time. Your family looks amazing. How blessed you are! I hope I’m not bothering you. I’m sure you’re busy. Just wanted to say hi. No need to respond. Thanks!

  I took another breath, positioned the cursor on “Send,” closed my eyes, and thought it through. It was just an innocuous “Just saying hi” message, no big deal. I weighed the upside potential: he could write me back. I considered the downside risk: he could ignore the message.

  I tapped my finger on the mouse. I was involved with Lucas. It was a risk I could manage. I sent the message.

  And then I felt as though I’d vomit. I thought I had considered all of the possibilities. But I now imagined Joe being notified that he had a message, and then him reading it with a confused look scrunching his face, his finger hitting “Delete” before “nothing me” caused problems in his wonderful present life. Or I could imagine him telling his stunning wife over a gourmet weekday dinner she had made—coq au vin, perhaps, with a glass of heavy Cabernet—how his high school sweetheart sent him a message. How it was kind of cute, kind of sad. He was sure she had never married. Her profile just listed her profession, still working with her father. Never left Virginia. His wife would slice and butter a piece of French bread she had made from scratch. Don’t be cruel, she’d say. Not everyone gets to find what we’ve found. Count your blessings, she would say. Then they would share a look—the kind that beautiful, popular people shared—that said, But still, it was kind of sad. Then they would laugh. At me. That night they would have sex like they hadn’t had since their wedding night—grateful, we-are-so-lucky-not-to-be-alone sex.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  JOE

  Some days my knee ached more than others. I thought maybe it was the rain, but tonight it was as clear as could be outside. Though I had been lucky in keeping my knee, the surgeries to reconstruct it had been tricky and numerous. Lots of scar tissue, fried nerve endings, infection. The phantom pain was chronic. Even though the cut was made above the zone of injury, sometimes I wondered whether it should have gone a few inches higher.

  I was on a run to the store. We needed milk for the morning. “Kate, you’re in charge,” I had said, trying to give her a job, a sense of worth, a boost to her ego. I just wanted to see some light in her eyes. I just wanted to see her sweet smile. She gave me the thumbs-up, promised she wouldn’t let Olivia and Jake play with knives or fire. I was glad she still had her sense of humor.

  I was sitting at a light, rubbing at my thigh, massaging the quadriceps, as I obsessed on my unhappy daughter, when a horn blared from behind me. My cell phone beeped in the same instant—an e-mail—and the jumble of noises shot me out of my skin. Anyone who’s been in a war zone stays a little jumpy, at least for a while. And sometimes forever. Way oversensitive to loud noises. Sights and smells, too, for that matter.

  The light had turned green. Once I’d cleared the intersection, I pulled over and shifted into park, flexed my leg and opened my e-mail.

  A Facebook message from Missy Fletcher. No way. Fifteen years. A lifetime ago. No way. I logged on and read the message.

  I read her note over and over. Missy Fletcher, after all of these years. I knew we were “friends” on Facebook, but here was the thing: Missy never posted a darn thing.

  Missy Fletcher—the coolest person in our school nobody ever got to know.

  Before I dated Missy, I was with a girl named Whitney. Whitney’s goal in life—at least in high school—was to be just right. We’d meet outside the basketball stadium, but we couldn’t walk in until exactly halftime; otherwise, what would people think? She’d want me to buy her fries, but would only eat them if Sheila and Laura were around, girls who thought it was cool to binge and purge. If Marlene and Darlene (cheerleaders and identical twins) were around, she’d scowl at the fries in disdain. “Look at all that fat!” Whitney wasn’t dumb, I don’t think, but in her mind, it wasn’t cool to do homework or stand out in any way.

  Missy didn’t give a thought to any of that kind of nonsense. She loved school, was a total brain, and wouldn’t even consider not doing her work to impress the Whitneys of the world. She chomped into food, and the sheer joy of eating was written all over her face. She read nearly a book a day, worked extra math problems for fun, and sometimes strolled through the Smithsonian on the weekend all by herself. I’d be away at baseball camp and then ask her what she had been up to. “There was a contemporary art exhibition at the Corcoran,” she’d say. As if it were totally normal to spend a Saturday doing that.

  Missy was the most confident girl I ever knew. I told her that once and she nearly fell over laughing. “Me?!” She told me that she hated everything about herself, knew she was wrong in a thousand ways, but was helpless to change. One time she admitted she couldn’t believe that I liked her. I thought she was nuts, but later I saw that she really did have this crazily limited, restrictive view of herself and her potential.

  We were getting ready to apply for colleges and Missy all of a sudden dug in her heels, saying that she wanted to stay in Alexandria, that she wanted us to keep dating. This was nuts, considering she had already aced the practice SAT and
colleges were courting the hell out of her. She had a 4.0 GPA and had proven aptitude in math and science. The colleges were all over her, throwing scholarships at her like candy. Every now and then she talked to me about studying abroad or traveling through Europe. I even think she filled out the Peace Corps application, but never sent it in. Something stopped her. She worried with anxiety about everything. I think it affected her more than she knew. Growing up without a mom probably played into that apprehension, I would guess.

  Of course, she had her father. Frank. God, that guy was one of a kind. He loved me in an entirely different way than my parents did. My parents were good but we were just getting by. Their goals were maintenance: keep the kids fed, the mortgage paid, and never miss Sunday Mass. But Frank . . . the guy would take me out to lunch—just the two of us, sometimes—and talk to me, ask my opinion about things: politics, sports, and the stock market. He made me feel like my thoughts mattered. He valued me. My dad was great in a lot of ways, but I never once had lunch with him alone.

  Later that night, I logged on to Facebook and wrote Missy back:

  Missy, has it really been fifteen years? I look at your profile picture and you look exactly the same to me. Then again, I still feel like the same guy I was in high school, but you’d never believe how far from the truth that is. I spent most of the past fifteen years in the Marines. I served three tours. Now I work for a government contractor. But all in all, I don’t have a reason to complain, not a reason for not being happy. I’m healthy and employed, and have three great kids. Katherine is thirteen, almost fourteen. Olivia is eleven, and Jake just turned nine. How are you and Frank doing?