The Language of Flowers

by Ванесса Диффенбау

  I wrote the date first in the upper-right-hand corner, as Elizabeth had taught me to do. Still trembling, I scrawled her name. I couldn’t remember if a colon or a comma should follow; after a pause, I put both. I looked down at what I had written. My script was sloppy from nerves, a far cry from the perfection Elizabeth had always demanded. I crumpled the paper and threw it to the floor, starting again.

  An hour later I reached for my last piece of paper. Balled attempts littered the room all around me. This one, no matter what, would have to do. The pressure of the final sheet made my hand shake even more, and my handwriting looked like that of a young child, unsure of the shape of each letter. Elizabeth would be disappointed. Still, I continued, slowly, purposefully. Finally, I succeeded in inking out a single line:I lit the fire. I’m sorry. I’ve never stopped being sorry.

  I signed my name. The letter was short, and I worried Elizabeth would think it rude or insincere, but there was nothing else to say. I folded the paper into an envelope, and sealed, addressed, and stamped it. The stamps I had purchased the previous spring held a drawing of a daffodil—new beginnings—yellow and white on a red background, gold letters celebrating the Chinese New Year. Elizabeth would notice.

  Walking quickly to the end of the block, I pulled the heavy metal handle of the mailbox, dropping the letter through the slot before I had time to change my mind.

  2 .

  On an afternoon in September I sat in the cavernous office space, checking the alphabetization of my cards out of habit and waiting for a couple to arrive. The couple would not marry until the following April but had insisted on meeting with me now. The bride wanted to coordinate everything—from the color of the place settings to the words in the song of their first dance—to her flower choices. Over the summer I had worked with countless brides, but coordinating music and flowers was new even to me. I was not looking forward to the meeting.

  I checked my watch. Four forty-five. Fifteen minutes until my clients were set to arrive. It was time to make tea. I drank only a strong chrysanthemum tea I bought in Chinatown, the blossoms uncurling and suspending in the dark liquid. It was a nice touch for my sessions, and something my clients had come to expect.

  In the kitchen, I brewed a pot and drank a cup before descending the stairs. The bride had arrived, sitting on the stoop in front of the glass doors. She sat alone, looking up and down the street. In the straight line of her back I could see her impatience. Her fiancé was late or absent. It was a bad sign for a marriage, and brides knew it. The long-term success of my business, I had decided months before, was dependent on the fact of arranging flowers only for couples whose marriages would last; I’d refused more than one couple for tardiness or spiteful conversations over the cards.

  I set down the tray and walked to the door. Pressing my palms against the glass, I stopped suddenly. Outside, brakes squealed. Then, in front of my door, an old gray pickup truck lurched past, Elizabeth behind the wheel. At the stop sign on the steep corner, the truck rolled back before peeling into the intersection and disappearing up the hill. Turning, I raced up the stairs and into Natalya’s old bedroom, where I crouched down below the window to wait for the truck to return.

  In less than five minutes, it did. Elizabeth drove more easily down the hill than she had up, and in a moment she’d turned the corner and was out of sight. I took the stairs two at a time and walked outside. The bride on the curb stood up when she saw me.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “He’ll be here any minute.”

  He wouldn’t, though. There was something rehearsed about her apology, as if she’d used the same words to excuse her fiancé for months or years.

  “No,” I said, “he won’t.” Maybe it was the chrysanthemum tea, but I suddenly wanted this woman to know the truth. She opened her mouth as if to protest, but the expression on my face stopped her.

  “You won’t do our flowers, will you?” She turned away from me, knowing the answer to her question. She would try Renata next; they always did. Renata had the only other flower dictionary identical to mine. I’d asked Marlena to make her a copy a few months before, when we began to have more business than we could handle. Daily, we directed clients to Bloom.

  I started up the hill, and from the top I saw Renata descending. We met in the middle, as Grant and I had once done, the afternoon he brought the jonquil. In her hand was a pale pink envelope. My fingers trembled as I took it. I sat down on the curb and placed the envelope in my lap. Renata sat down next to me.

  “Who is she?” Renata asked.

  The envelope felt hot, and I moved it onto the sidewalk between us. I studied the lines of my empty palms as if looking for the answer to her question.

  “Elizabeth,” I said quietly.

  We were silent. Renata did not ask more, but when I glanced up, her face was still pinched in question, as if I had not responded at all. I looked back down at my hands. “She wanted to be my mother once, when I was ten years old.”

  Renata made a clicking sound with her tongue. With a short fingernail, she picked at a glint of metal trapped in the concrete, but it did not come loose. “So?” she asked. “What did you do?”

  It was a question Meredith would have asked, but coming from Renata, it sounded less accusatory than interested.

  “I lit a fire.”

  It was the first time I had said the words aloud, and a lump rose in my throat at the image they produced. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “My little fire starter,” Renata said. She placed a gentle arm around my shoulders, pulling me to her. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  I turned to study her. She did not smile, but her eyes were warm. “So?” I asked. “Why doesn’t it?”

  Renata pushed a clump of hair away from my eyes, her fingertips brushing my forehead. Her skin was soft. I leaned into her, my ear pressed against her shoulder so that her words, when she spoke, were muffled. “Do you remember the morning we met?” she asked. “When you stood on my stoop, looking for work, and then came back hours later with proof of what you could do? You handed me those flowers like an apology, even though you hadn’t done anything wrong, even though your bouquet was as close to perfection as I’d ever seen. I knew right then that you felt unworthy, that you believed yourself to be unforgivably flawed.”

  I remembered the morning well. Remembered worrying that she’d know the truth about my homelessness, the truth about my history. “Then why did you hire me?” I asked.

  Renata ran her hand along the line of my cheekbone. When she reached my chin, she tilted my face up. I looked into her eyes.

  “Do you really think you’re the only human being alive who is unforgivably flawed? Who’s been hurt almost to the point of breaking?”

  She looked at me deeply. When she looked away, I knew she understood that yes, I did believe I was the only one. “I could have hired someone else. Someone less flawed, perhaps, or at least better at hiding it. But none of them would have had the talent you have with flowers, Victoria. It’s truly a gift. When you work with flowers, everything about you changes. The set of your jaw loosens. Your eyes glaze with focus. Your fingers manipulate the flowers with a gentle respect that makes it impossible to believe you are capable of violence. I’ll never forget the first day I saw it. Watching you arranging sunflowers at the back table, I felt like I was looking at a completely different girl.”

  I knew the girl of whom she was speaking. It was the same one I’d glimpsed in the dressing room mirror with Elizabeth, after nearly a year in her home. Perhaps that girl had survived somewhere within me after all, preserved like a dried flower, fragile and sweet.

  Renata picked up the envelope and flapped it in the air between us.

  “Shall I?” she asked.

  3 .

  At the sound of the gavel, I blew the white, cottony buds I’d arranged in a line off the table. They scattered to the floor of the courtroom. Elizabeth stood up.

  The flowers had been at my seat when I’d arrived, th
e tangle of baby’s breath—everlasting love—reflecting on the polished tabletop, soft, round orbs bobbing deep within the glossy wood. They were stiff and dry against my fingertips, as if Elizabeth had purchased them for our first court date, before the hearing had been continued, and continued again. Baby’s breath did not wither or mold. With time it grew increasingly brittle, but otherwise it did not change. There had been no reason for Elizabeth to purchase a fresh bunch.

  As she stood before the judge, systematically denying a long list of accusations, I snapped the brown, budless stems into inch-long pieces, arranging them like a bird’s nest in the center of the table. There was a pause, and the courtroom fell silent. Elizabeth’s request echoed in my ears: I would ask that you return Victoria to my custody, effective immediately. I didn’t dare look up, afraid my eyes would betray my desire. But when the judge spoke again, it was only to ask Elizabeth to return to her seat. Her request, it seemed, did not deserve a response. She sat back down.

  Meredith sat between Elizabeth and me at the long table, flanked by attorneys. My attorney was a short, heavy man. He looked uncomfortable in his suit, leaning forward as the judge spoke and pulling his shirt away from the back of his neck. His notepad was blank, and he did not appear to be carrying a pen. Under the table, he checked the time on his watch. He was ready to leave.

  I was ready to leave, too. Only half listening as Meredith and the judge debated my level of need, I manipulated the collection of broken stems on the tabletop, arranging them into the shape of a three-finned fish, a pointed crown, and then a lopsided heart. The brittle pile distracted me from the proximity of Elizabeth, less than five arm lengths away. A level-ten group home, the judge ordered, pending availability. Meredith wrote the decision on my case plan, crossing the courtroom to the bench with a thick stack of papers in her hand. The judge paused, told Meredith to add my name to all the waiting lists for transitional housing, and then signed the top sheet. When I emancipated in eight years, I would still be alone. Without stating it in precise terms, the judge’s words defined my future.

  The judge cleared her throat. Meredith returned to her seat. In the silence that followed, I understood that the judge was waiting for me to look up, but I did not. With my finger, I poked a hole in the twiggy heart I’d created from the stems, pulling it open until I saw my own face reflected in the tabletop within. I was surprised by how old I looked, and also how angry. Still, I did not look up.

  “Victoria,” the judge said finally. “Do you have anything to say?”

  I didn’t respond. On the other side of my attorney, the county prosecutor tapped her long, polished fingernails against the table, red ovals pressed onto wrinkled hands. She wanted me to testify against Elizabeth in criminal court, but I’d refused.

  I stood up slowly. From my pockets I pulled handfuls of red carnations, browning heads I’d plucked from a holiday bouquet in the hospital gift shop. Over two months after the night of the fire, I was still in the hospital, moved from the burn unit to the psychiatric ward until Meredith could find a placement for me.

  I ducked under the table and crossed the courtroom.

  “I want you to think about the consequences of refusing to testify,” the judge said as I stood before her. “This is more than just about standing up for yourself, and standing up for justice. This is about protecting other children.”

  The adults in the room believed Elizabeth to be a threat. I almost laughed, the idea was so absurd. But I knew if I laughed I would start to cry, and if I started to cry, I might never stop.

  Instead, I piled the red carnations on the bench. My heart breaks. It was the first time I’d ever given a flower to someone who didn’t understand the meaning. The gift felt subversive and strangely powerful. As I turned to go, Elizabeth stood, taking in the meaning of the flowers. Our bodies faced each other, and in the brief, quiet moment, the energy between us was as hot as the fire that had torn us apart.

  I started to run. The judge pounded the gavel; Meredith called me back. Throwing open the doors of the courtroom, I raced down six flights of stairs, pushing open an emergency exit and walking outside. I stopped in the bright afternoon light. It didn’t matter which way I ran. Meredith would catch me. She would drive me back to the hospital, place me in a group home, or lock me in a detention center. For eight years, I would move from one placement to the next, whenever she came for me. Then, on my eighteenth birthday, I would emancipate, and I would be alone.

  I shivered. It was a cold December day, the bright blue sky deceptive. I lay down on the ground where I stood, pressing my cheek against the warm cement.

  I wanted to go home.

  4 .

  Ten years had passed, and still, Elizabeth wanted me.

  Her letter, folded into a small square and tucked inside my bra, pressed into my skin as I worked beside Marlena that evening. I let you down, she’d written. I’ve never stopped being sorry, either. And then, at the very bottom, just above her name: Please, please, come home. Two or three times an hour I removed and reread the short sentences, until I’d memorized not only the words on the page but the exact shape of every letter. Marlena didn’t ask, just worked harder to make up for my distraction.

  I would go to Elizabeth. I had decided this the moment I read her letter, sitting on the curb beside Renata. Standing up, I’d meant to walk straight to my car, drive immediately over the bridge and through the countryside to her vineyard. But instead I’d seen Marlena working through the window, stopped in to rearrange a bouquet, then paused and reached for another. Hours passed. We had an anniversary party the following day, followed by two weddings, back-to-back. The fall had officially become as busy as the summer months had been, full of demanding, superstitious brides who would rather marry on a Sunday in late autumn than use another florist. They were my least favorite. Not wealthy enough to have simply outbid other brides for the summer months and planned extravagant weddings with grace and gratitude but wealthy enough to run in the same circles and feel the grief of constant comparison. Fall brides were insecure, and the men they were marrying overindulgent. In the past month, Marlena and I had been called in for last-minute consultations for three different brides, in which everything we had planned was scrapped and we started over the day before a wedding.

  But it was more than just the demands of our schedule that kept me idling beside Marlena. The thrill of knowing that Elizabeth still wanted me had dulled the pain of the past decade, dulled even my constant aching for my daughter. As long as I did not go to her, the promise of Elizabeth’s letter remained intact. If I knocked on her door, I risked coming face-to-face with a woman different from the one I remembered—older, without a doubt, but perhaps also sadder or angrier—and this felt like too great of a risk to take.

  That night I slept fitfully, waking every few hours with the urge to drive to Elizabeth’s. But by morning, the pull of the vineyard had weakened. I would wait a week, I decided, two at the most, and then I would go to her, fully prepared for whatever I would find.

  I had showered and dressed when the phone rang. Caroline. I’d been expecting her call. During our consultation, she hadn’t known what she wanted from a florist or from a relationship, and got weepy every time I asked a question she couldn’t answer, which was anytime I asked anything more complicated than her name or the date of her wedding. I should have turned her away, but I liked her fiancé, Mark, which I suppose was why I kept the job; he teased her in a way that somehow sounded encouraging instead of belittling.

  I answered her call on the first ring. Just as I was trying to decide whether to tell her to come over or lie and say I was busy, I walked through the bedroom and saw her sitting on the curb across the street. She looked up at me, Mark at her side. Her fists were clenched, but she opened one hand slowly to wave. I slid open the window and hung up the phone.

  “Okay, give me a minute,” I said, just as Natalya had the first time I knocked on the door, and, like Natalya, I took my time. I went into the kitchen an
d made a cup of tea, poached eggs, and toast. If we were going to start over on the bouquets—and I knew we were—I would likely be working the next twenty-four hours straight. I took my time eating and drank two glasses of milk before descending the stairs.

  Caroline hugged me when I opened the door. She was probably almost thirty but wore her hair in two long braids, and the hairstyle made her appear much younger. When she sat down at the table across from me, I saw that her blue eyes were watery.

  “The wedding’s tomorrow,” she said, as if this fact had somehow escaped me. “And I think I got it all wrong.” She gasped and pounded her heart with a flat palm.

  Mark sat down next to her and patted her on the back with a fist. She laughed and hiccupped. “She’s trying not to cry,” he said. “If she cries this close to the wedding, it will definitely show in the photographs.”

  Caroline laughed again, and a tear escaped. She swatted at it with a manicured fingernail and kissed Mark. “He doesn’t understand the significance,” she said. “He’s never met Alejandra and Luis, and doesn’t know about what happened on their honeymoon.”

  I nodded as if I remembered this couple and the flowers I had chosen for them. “So, what can I do for you?” I asked as patiently as I could manage.

  “You know that old question, if you could eat only five foods for the rest of your life, what would they be?” I nodded, even though no one had ever asked me that question. “Well, I keep thinking about that. Choosing flowers for a wedding is like picking the five qualities you want in a relationship for the rest of your life. How can you possibly choose?”

  “She says for the rest of your life like marriage is a terminal disease,” said Mark.

  “You know what I mean,” she said, examining her hands.

  I was only half listening to their conversation, thinking about the five foods I would choose. Donuts, definitely. Did I have to specify a type, or could I just say assorted? Assorted, I decided, with an emphasis on maple.