The Language of Flowers

by Ванесса Диффенбау

  At the top of the steps, she approached the front door. A narrow rectangular window was set into the painted blue wood, and she leaned forward. Standing on my tiptoes, I pressed my head into the space below Elizabeth’s chin. We peered inside. The glass was warped and dirty, and gave the effect of looking at a scene through water. The edges of the furniture blurred; framed photographs appeared to hover above a mantel. A thin floral carpet disappeared under the steam of our breath on the glass. I took in the room’s emptiness: There were no people, dishes, newspapers, or any other sign of human activity.

  But Elizabeth knocked anyway: softly, and then louder. She waited, and when no one approached, she began to knock continuously. Her taps grew punctuated with frustration. Still, no one came to the door.

  Elizabeth turned and marched down the steps. Imagining the stairs caving under my feet, I tiptoed softly behind her. Ten paces away, she turned and pointed to a gable, the window shut but not curtained.

  “See that window?” Elizabeth asked. “Inside used to be the attic, where we played as girls. When I was sent to boarding school—I was ten, so Catherine must have been seventeen—she converted it into a studio. She was talented, so talented. She could have gone to art school anywhere in the country, but she didn’t want to leave our mother.” Elizabeth paused, and we both looked up at the window. Water spots and dust reflected sunlight off the glass. I couldn’t see inside the room. “She’s in there right now,” Elizabeth said. “I know she is. Do you think maybe she just didn’t hear our knock?”

  If she was inside, she had heard the knock. Though two stories, the house was not big. But Elizabeth’s eyes were hopeful; I couldn’t tell her the truth. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

  “Catherine?” Elizabeth called up. The window did not open, and I saw no motion behind it. “Maybe she’s asleep.”

  “Let’s just go,” I said, pulling on her sleeve.

  “Not until we know she’s seen us. If she sees us and still won’t come down, then she’ll have made her feelings clear.”

  Elizabeth turned, kicking the dirt in front of the nearest row of flowers. She folded over and picked up a stone, rough and round, the size of a walnut. Aiming for the window, she threw the rock gently. It bounced off the shingled roof of the gable and returned to the ground, just paces from where we stood. Picking it up, she tried again, and again, her aim unimproved with practice.

  Growing impatient, I grabbed a stone and hurled it at the upstairs window. It hit its target and went sailing through, a sound like a bullet traveling through glass, the break a perfect circle in the center. Elizabeth covered her ears with her hands, clenching her teeth and closing her eyes. “Oh, Victoria,” she said, her voice pained. “Too hard. Much, much too hard.”

  She opened her eyes and lifted her face to the window. I followed her gaze. Inside, a thin, pale hand reached up, fingers closing around a gathering of cords. A shade dropped behind the shattered glass. Beside me, Elizabeth sighed, her eyes still fixed on the place where the hand had been.

  “Come on,” I said, grabbing her by the elbow. Her feet moved slowly, as if through sand, and I pulled her gently to the road. Helping her into the truck, I turned back and swung the metal gate closed.

  5 .

  I was sleep-deprived and useless for an entire week. My fur floor didn’t dry for days, and every time I went to lie down, the moisture soaked through my shirt like Grant’s hands, a constant reminder of his touch. When I did sleep, I dreamt the camera was turned to my bare skin, capturing my wrists, the underside of my jawbone, and, once, my nipples. As I walked down deserted streets I would hear the click of the camera’s shutter and spin around, expecting Grant just steps behind me. But there was never anyone there.

  My inability to form coherent sentences and work the cash register did not escape Renata. It was Thanksgiving week, and the storefront was packed, but she relegated me to the back room with overflowing buckets of orange and yellow flowers and long stems of dried leaves in bright fall colors. She gave me a book with photographs of holiday arrangements, but I didn’t open it. I wasn’t completely awake, but flower arranging was something I could now do in my sleep. She brought me hastily scrawled orders and came back when they were done.

  On Friday, the rush of the holiday past, Renata sent me to the workroom to sweep the floor and sand the table, which was beginning to bow and splinter under years of water and work. When Renata came to check my progress an hour later, I was asleep on my stomach on top of the table, my cheek against the rough wood.

  She shook me awake. The sandpaper was still in my hand, the pads of my fingers textured where they clutched. “If you weren’t in such demand, I would fire you,” Renata said, but her voice was filled with amusement, not anger. I wondered if she believed me to be love-struck; the truth, I thought, was much more complicated.

  “Get up,” Renata said. “That same lady wants you.” I sighed. There weren’t any more red roses.

  The woman leaned on folded elbows at the counter. She wore an apple-green raincoat, and a second woman, younger and prettier, stood next to her in a red coat of the same belted shape. Their black boots were wet. I looked outside. The rain had returned, just as my clothes and room had dried from the week before. I shivered.

  “This is the famous Victoria,” the woman said, nodding in my direction. “Victoria, this is my sister, Annemarie. And I’m Bethany.” She reached her hand out to me, and I shook it. My bones melted within her strong shake.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “I’ve never been better,” Bethany said. “I spent Thanksgiving at Ray’s. Neither of us had ever cooked Thanksgiving dinner, so we ended up throwing away a half-baked turkey and heating up cans of tomato soup. It was delicious,” she said. It was obvious by the way she said it that she was referring to more than the soup. Her sister groaned.

  “Who’s Ray?” I asked. Renata appeared at the doorway with the broom, and I avoided her questioning stare.

  “Someone I know from work. We’ve never shared more than complaints over ergonomics, but then Wednesday, there he was at my desk, asking me over.”

  Bethany had plans again the next night with Ray, and she wanted something for her apartment, something seductive, she said, blushing, but not obviously so. “No orchids,” she said, as if this was a sexual flower and not a symbol of refined beauty.

  “And for your sister?” I asked. Annemarie looked uncomfortable but didn’t protest as her sister began to describe the details of her love life.

  “She’s married,” Bethany said, emphasizing the word as if the roots of Annemarie’s problems could be found in the very definition of the word. “She’s worried her husband isn’t attracted to her anymore, which—look at her—is ridiculous. But they don’t—you know. And they haven’t for a long time.” Annemarie looked out the window and did not defend her husband or her marriage.

  “Okay,” I said, taking it all in. “Tomorrow?”

  “By noon,” Bethany replied. “I’ll need all afternoon to clean my apartment.”

  “Annemarie?” I asked. “Is noon okay?”

  Annemarie didn’t answer right away. She smelled the roses and dahlias, the leftover oranges and yellows. When she looked up, her eyes were empty in a way that I understood. She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Please.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said as they turned to go.

  When the door closed, I looked up to see Renata, still in the doorway with the broom. “The famous Victoria,” she chided me. “Giving the people what they want.”

  I shrugged and walked past her. Grabbing my coat off the hook, I turned to leave.

  “Tomorrow?” I asked. Renata had never given me a schedule. I worked when she told me to.

  “Four a.m.,” she said. “Early-afternoon wedding, two hundred.”

  I spent the evening sitting in the blue room, mulling over Annemarie’s request. I was well acquainted with the opposite of intimacy: hydrangea, dispassion, had long been a favor
ite of mine. It bloomed in manicured gardens in San Francisco six months out of the year, and was useful for keeping housemates and group-home staff at a distance. But intimacy, closeness, and sexual pleasure—these were things for which I had never had a reason to look. For hours I sat underneath the naked bulb, the light yellowing the water-stained pages of my dictionary, scanning for useful flowers.

  There was the linden tree, which signified conjugal love, but this didn’t seem quite right. The definition felt more like a description of the past than a suggestion for the future. There was also the difficulty of identifying a linden tree, removing a small branch, and explaining to Annemarie why she should display the limb on her dining room table instead of a bouquet of flowers. No, I decided, the linden tree would not work.

  Below me, Natalya’s band started up, and I reached for a pair of earplugs. The pages of the book vibrated on my lap. I found flowers for affection, sensuality, and pleasure, but none, on their own, felt like enough to combat Annemarie’s empty eyes. Growing frustrated, I reached the last flower in the book and turned back to the beginning. Grant would know, I thought, but I couldn’t ask him. The asking alone would be too intimate.

  As I searched, it occurred to me that if I couldn’t find the right flowers, I could give Annemarie a bouquet of something bold and bright and lie about its meaning. It wasn’t as if the flowers themselves held within them the ability to bring an abstract definition into physical reality. Instead, it seemed that Earl, and then Bethany, walked home with a bouquet of flowers expecting change, and the very belief in the possibility instigated a transformation. Better to wrap Gerber daisies in brown paper and declare sexual fulfillment, I decided, than to ask Grant his opinion on the subject.

  I closed the book, closed my eyes, and tried to sleep.

  Two hours later I got up and dressed for the market. It was cold, and even as I changed my clothes and put on my jacket, I knew I could not give Annemarie Gerber daisies. I had been loyal to nothing except the language of flowers. If I started lying about it, there would be nothing left in my life that was beautiful or true. I hurried out the door and jogged down twelve cold blocks, hoping to beat Renata.

  Grant was still in the parking lot, unloading his truck. I waited for him to hand me buckets and then carried them inside. There was only one stool in his booth; I sat down on it, and Grant leaned against the plywood wall.

  “You’re early,” he said.

  I looked at my watch. It was just past three in the morning. “You, too.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. I couldn’t, either, but I didn’t say anything.

  “I met this woman,” I said. I turned my stool away from Grant as if I would help a customer through the window, but the market was nearly empty.

  “Yeah?” he said. “Who?”

  “Just some woman,” I said. “She came into Bloom yesterday. I helped her sister last weekend. She says her husband doesn’t want her anymore. You know, in a—” I stopped, unable to finish.

  “Hmm,” Grant said. I felt his eyes all over my back, but I didn’t turn to face him. “That’s tough. It was the Victorian era, you know? Not a lot of talk about sex.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. We watched the market begin to fill in silence. Renata would come through the door any minute, and I would think of nothing but someone else’s wedding flowers for hours.

  “Desire,” Grant said finally. “I would go with desire. I think that’s as close as you’ll get.”

  I didn’t know desire. “How?”

  “Jonquil,” Grant said. “It’s a form of narcissus. They grow wild in the southern states. I have some, but the bulbs won’t bloom till spring.”

  Spring wasn’t for months. Annemarie didn’t appear as though she could wait that long. “There’s no other way?”

  “We could force the bulbs in my greenhouse. I don’t, usually; the flowers are so associated with spring, there isn’t much of a market for them until late February. But we can try, if you want.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Not long,” he said. “I bet you could see flowers by mid-January.”

  “I’ll ask her,” I said. “Thanks.” I started to walk away, but Grant stopped me with his hand on my shoulder. I turned around.

  “This afternoon?” he asked.

  I thought about the flowers, his camera, and my dictionary. “I should be done by two,” I said.

  “I’ll pick you up.”

  “I’ll be hungry,” I said as I walked away.

  Grant laughed. “I know.”

  Annemarie looked more relieved than disappointed when I told her the news. January would be fine, she said, better than fine. The holidays were busy; the month would be a blur. She wrote down her phone number, wrapped her body tightly with the red belt of her coat, and walked out the door after Bethany, who was already halfway up the block. I had given her ranunculus: You are radiant with charms.

  Grant was early, as he had been the week before. Renata invited him in. He sat at the table, watching us work and eating chicken curry out of a steaming foam container. A second container, unopened, sat beside him. When I finished the table arrangements, Renata said I could go.

  “The boutonnieres?” I asked, looking into the box where she was lining up the bridesmaids’ bouquets.

  “I can finish them,” she said. “I have plenty of time. You just go on.” She waved me out the door.

  “You want to eat here?” Grant asked, handing me a plastic fork and a napkin.

  “In the car. I don’t want to waste light.” Renata looked at us with curiosity but didn’t ask. She was the least meddlesome person I had ever met, and I felt a twinge of affection for her as I followed Grant out the door.

  The curry and our breath fogged the windows on the long drive to Grant’s house. We drove in silence, the only noise the constant hum of the defroster. It was wet out, but the afternoon was clearing. By the time Grant opened the gate and drove past the house, the sky was blue. He went inside for the camera, and I was surprised to see him enter the square three-story building and not the house.

  “What’s that?” I asked when he returned, gesturing to the building from which he had just come.

  “The water tower,” he said. “I converted it into an apartment. You want to see inside?”

  “Light,” I said, looking to where the sun was already starting to descend.

  “Right.”

  “Maybe after.”

  “Okay. You want another lesson?” Grant asked. He stepped toward me and dropped the camera strap around my head. His hands brushed against the back of my neck.

  I shook my head no. “Shutter speed, aperture, focus,” I said, turning dials and repeating the vocabulary he had thrown at me the week before. “I’ll teach myself.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be inside.” He turned and walked back into the water tower. I waited until I saw a light flip on in the third-story window before I turned toward the rose garden.

  I would start with the white rose; it felt like a good place to begin. Sitting in front of a flowering bush, I dug a blank notebook out of my backpack. I would teach myself photography by documenting my successes and my failures. If, next week, I developed the film and saw that only one photo was clear, I needed to know exactly what I had done to produce the image. I numbered a sheet of paper from one to thirty-six.

  In the waning light I photographed the same half-opened white rosebud, writing down in descriptive, nontechnical terms the reading of the light meter and the exact positions of the various dials and knobs. I recorded the focus, the position of the sun, and the angles of the shadows. I measured the distance of the camera to the rose in multiples of the length of my palm. When I ran out of light and film, I stopped.

  Grant was sitting at his kitchen table when I returned. The door was open, and inside was as cold as outside. The sun had disappeared, and with it all warmth. I rubbed my hands together.

  “Tea?” he asked, holding out a steaming mug.r />
  I stepped in and closed the door behind me. “Please.”

  We sat across from each other at a weathered wood picnic table identical to the one outside. It was pushed up against a small window that framed a view of the property: sloping rows of flowers, the sheds and greenhouses, and the abandoned house. Grant stood up to adjust the lid on a rice cooker that was spewing liquid out of a small hole. He opened a cupboard and retrieved a bottle of soy sauce, which he set on the uneven table.

  “Dinner’s almost ready,” he said. I looked at the stove. Nothing was cooking except the rice. “You want a tour?”

  I shrugged but stood up.

  “This is the kitchen.” The cupboards were painted a pale green, the countertops gray Formica with silver trim. He didn’t appear to own a cutting board, and the counters were dented and scraped from slicing. There was an antique white-and-chrome gas stove with a folding shelf, and on the shelf sat a row of empty green glass vases and a single wooden spoon. The spoon had a white sticker with a faded price on its tip, leading me to think it had either never been used or never been washed. Either way, I was not particularly anxious to sample his cooking.

  In the corner of the room was a black metal staircase, spiraling through a small square hole. Grant began to climb, and I followed him up. The second floor contained a living room big enough for only an orange velour love seat and a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. An open door led to a white tile bathroom with a claw-foot tub. There was no television and no stereo. I didn’t even see a telephone.

  Grant stepped back onto the staircase and led me to the third floor, which was covered wall to wall with a thick foam mattress. Crumbling foam was visible where the sheets had peeled away from the edges. Clothes sat in piles in two corners, one folded, the other not. Where there should have been pillows, there were stacks of books.

  “My bedroom,” Grant said.

  “Where do you sleep?” I asked.