Love in Bloom

by Arlene James

  They drove in silence to Bygones, turning west onto Church Street from Granary Road. Tate steered the truck past the church and on through town to a shady glen about a half-mile outside the city limits. The wrought-iron gate that arched over the graveled road into the cemetery gave two establishment dates, 1870 and 1970. Lily surmised that the cemetery had been moved from its original site, probably next door to the church, to this beautiful place when it had outgrown its space in town.

  Eve’s grave lay on a small rise, marked at one end by a pink granite bench and on the other by a matching headstone, identifying her as a beloved wife and mother who had left this life too soon. Isabella read her booklet and picked the south side of her mother’s headstone for the rosebush. Grimly Tate dug the hole to the required specifications. Lily opened the plant food and dumped it into the hole, then covered it with the prepackaged soil. Together Tate and Isabella gently removed the bush, dirt and all, from the pot. They placed the entire thing into the ground, covered the lump of dirt with more of the potting soil and then with soil that Tate had dug out of the hole. While Lily and Isabella gently packed the soil around the plant, Tate went to a hydrant and filled the watering can, then he came back and helped Isabella water the ground all around the bush.

  “We have to come back every day and water it unless it rains,” Isabella told him.

  “We will,” he promised.

  Father and daughter stood side by side and stared at their handiwork for a long time, while Lily stood next to the bench and silently prayed that the bush would flourish with so many blooms that the canes would bow before the heavens and butterflies would paint the skies.

  “A wish is like a prayer when you say it to God, isn’t it?” Isabella asked softly. No one answered her, but she didn’t seem to require an answer. She looked up at her father then and said, “I have another wish. Remember?” Tate looked down at her, and she softly said, “I wished my daddy would go to church with me on my birthday.”

  Lily reeled back a step, but Tate did not move a hair for the longest time. Then suddenly he turned and strode for the truck, bending to snatch up the shovel and watering can in mid stride. Isabella ran to Lily and clasped her hand.

  “It’s not really my birthday yet,” she said hopefully, so obviously seeking reassurance that Lily could have wept. In fact, Lily felt perilously close to tears.

  “Sweetie,” she said, sitting down on the bench, “God is not Santa Claus. He does answer our prayers, depending on what is best for us. Sometimes He says Yes, and sometimes, No, and sometimes, He just wants us to wait for a while. Sometimes, though, what we want depends on someone else, someone other than God. In that case, free will applies. You see, God won’t make any of us do what we don’t want to do, even if we should do it and it’s good for us. He might make us awfully miserable for not doing it, but He’ll wait for us to do the right thing.”

  “But Daddy makes me do stuff I don’t want to do ‘cause it’s good for me.”

  “I know, but you’re a child. Your grandma and grandpa don’t make your daddy do things now that he’s an adult, do they?”

  Isabella had to think about it. Finally, she shook her head. “No-o-o.”

  “Well, God is like that. He gives us every chance to do what is right and best on our own, to teach us and lead us, but ultimately, we choose our behavior. Understand?”

  Isabella looked to the truck where her father waited. The doors stood open, and the shovel and watering can had been stowed. He stood next to the driver’s door, arms folded, head bowed.

  “I think so,” she whispered.

  Lily hugged her. “You made good wishes. You must have been thinking about how to please your Mommy for a while now.” Isabella nodded.

  “Grandma says Mama watches us from Heaven.”

  “I believe that’s so.”

  “Well, I can’t give her gifts on her birthday, so I tried to think of something else.”

  “You see, God knew that,” Lily told her, tapping her on the tip of her nose, “and He put the idea of the rosebush into my mind so He could answer your wish when you made it. Now He’s working on your daddy’s heart. One day, I’m sure, your daddy will go to church again. Just don’t be too disappointed if it’s not tomorrow.”

  “Grandma says he’s still getting over Mama dying.”

  “I’m sure she’s right about that.”

  Isabella sighed. “I guess ‘cause I don’t remember her I got over it already.”

  “But you still think of her,” Lily said, getting to her feet. “That’s what counts.”

  Isabella nodded, walked over to the discarded plastic pot and picked it up. “One wish out of two is good,” Isabella remarked happily.

  Lily smiled and put out her hand. “Very good.”

  Isabella put her hand in Lily’s, and they headed for the truck.

  “Besides, I got lots of cool stuff for Spunky.”

  “You did, and we had lots of fun, too, didn’t we?”

  They were laughing about something that happened in one of the games when they got to the truck. Tate seemed more relaxed. He shot Lily a look of gratitude, but he let her boost Isabella up into her seat again.

  When he stopped the truck in front of her apartment a few minutes later, he thanked her once more for her help that day. Lily proclaimed that she’d had a lovely time then let herself out of the truck. It all felt very proper, sadly distant and impersonal. He drove away and left her standing there on the sidewalk, wondering if she would ever see him or Isabella again.

  Oh, they would meet on the street and at the garden from time to time. She would see them around town and, in Isabella’s case, at least, in church, but after today, Lily doubted if she would ever again receive a private invitation from or a personal meeting with Tate Bronson. She had unwittingly gotten too close. She had unintentionally invaded the space belonging to his beloved Eve. She had accompanied him and his daughter to his late wife’s graveside. How much more invasive and cloying could she get?

  No, she couldn’t have driven him away more effectively if she had tried, but what did it matter? She already knew that he was not for her, and she had the consolation of Isabella’s determination to get her dad back into church. Lily would pray toward that end, and meanwhile, she would take heed of her own lesson.

  She would choose the behaviors that were good and right, trusting God to lead and inform her. She would do her best here in Bygones, and trust Him with the outcome. Everyone else would do what he or she would, but Lily would pray and choose obedience and simply trust for the best.

  Chapter Twelve

  Tate’s mother made sandwiches for dinner, saving the big meal for Isabella’s actual birthday the next day. She and Isabella talked happily about the birthday party that afternoon, and Peter polished off two big sandwiches and a mountain of potato chips, along with a mammoth chunk of watermelon, while Tate nibbled and pretended to participate. In reality Isabella’s wishes and Lily’s part in them circled through his mind, blunting his hearing and clogging his speech.

  To his surprise, Isabella said nothing to her grandparents of the rosebush or her desire to have him attend church with her the next day, but Tate’s mind was so full of those things that he knew his parents must sense something. Eventually Isabella would spill the beans, of course, but he couldn’t really think of that. He couldn’t really think at all. He was too full of feeling, too stuffed with fullness, with parenthood and spirituality and life itself, with Lily and his daughter, with the past and the present and the future. It was as if his world had exploded. All the pieces were still there, but they hadn’t settled into the right places, and he didn’t know where to begin or how to fit them back together again.

  Finally he just couldn’t pretend to pay attention anymore, so he got up from his mother’s table and said, “I need to go.”

  She didn’t question him. Instead she simply asked if it wouldn’t be best if Isabella stayed the night.

  “I think it might,” he sai
d, surprising them all, himself included. “I’ll bring clothes over for her in the morning.”

  “Will you feed Spunky?” Isabella asked in a small voice.

  Tate bent and kissed her on the top of the head. “I promise.”

  She wrapped her arms around his waist. “Good night, Daddy.”

  “Good night. I love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  He left quickly, relieved to go and, for once, to leave his daughter behind. What had she talked about with Lily, he wondered, there at her mother’s graveside? At the same time he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know.

  For some reason he couldn’t go home, at least not then. Instead he drove around aimlessly for what felt like hours, until he realized that all along he had been headed back to the cemetery. He parked exactly where he’d parked earlier that day, and he walked out to the grave with his hands in his pockets, his boots scuffing against the ground. When he got to the bench, he sat down.

  Leaning forward, he rubbed his hands over his face. The moon hung low over the horizon, waning but very nearly full, a great pale orb against the charcoal velvet of the sky, smudged at the top by the wispy suggestion of a cloud. He didn’t know why he had come. Eve was not here. Her corpse lay in an ornate box beneath his feet, but Eve was not here. He had never felt that she might be here, never pretended that she might be, never sought comfort at this place. This, as he had told his daughter, was a place of remembrance, nothing more, so he remembered.

  He remembered the laughing girl who had worried that her teeth were too big and that his mother didn’t like her. He remembered how she’d made him feel as if he were the solution to all her problems, the center of her world. He remembered how that had subtly shifted after they had married. Their home and then her pregnancy and finally her faith had taken center stage in her life. He had gone from her knight in shining armor to the husband who worked too many hours and left her alone too much.

  He pictured the rosebush, growing wild and untamed, heavy with pink blossoms, butterflies flitting about them. Eve would love that as much as Isabella. Eve would want him to go to church, too. Eve would want him and their daughter to be happy. Eve would not want him to be alone and angry.

  Eve, who had loved him and wanted to be a mother. Eve, who had thought he worked too much and had too much to prove and took things too seriously. Eve, whose cooking had left a lot to be desired, and who had wanted to live in town and worried that they were too far from the hospital. Eve, who had laughed so often and cried so easily. Eve, his high school sweetheart and first love but perhaps not his only love, forever young while he would grow older and hopefully wiser.

  He thought of all the things he had said he would never do. He would never forgive. He would never understand. He would never forget. He would never go back. He would never love again, never risk the kind of loss and pain he’d already suffered.

  “I don’t understand,” he said aloud. He still couldn’t make any sense of what had happened. What possible purpose could Eve’s death serve? How could God let it happen like that, so suddenly and swiftly on the very day of their daughter’s birth? “I can’t forget.”

  As for the rest…maybe he could take some risk. He didn’t have to risk all, but some risk might be acceptable.

  He got up and looked around him. It was peaceful and lovely here, a good place.

  “I love you, Evie, but I know you’re in Heaven and that you like it there. I hope you like your butterflies. Goodbye.”

  He remembered how he used to drive by Eve’s grandmother’s house when they were in school. Her parents were killed in a trucking accident when Eve was small, then old Mrs. Hoyt had died during Eve’s senior year in high school. Eve had lived with friends until she’d graduated and they had married. Tate used to drive by at night, and she’d wave to him from the window. He walked back to the truck and drove away, ready for home and bed.

  * * *

  Pink roses and daisies were not a combination that Lily often used, but something about them, when mixed with baby’s breath and ivy, just sang Isabella to her, so that was what she chose for the white patent leather handbag that graced the altar that Sunday morning. They made a very pretty display atop the grass-green runner bisecting the top of the carved wood altar. Lily had signed the list and provided the flower arrangement herself, though Ginny Bronson had come into the shop and offered to do it the very day after Lily had penciled in her name. Lily had done it because she’d wanted to choose the flowers, though at the time she hadn’t known what she would choose to go with the pink roses. The rest had come to her after she’d decided on the container, as was often the case. Something about that prissy little handbag said Isabella.

  Miss Mars, who had again provided the inspiration, was beside herself with pride. “I had one just like that in 1965 and the shoes to match!” she gushed from the pew on Lily’s left that Sunday morning.

  “Didn’t we all?” asked Coraline, who sat next to Miss Mars.

  Lily glanced at the bottom of the printed program, where it was announced, in italics, “Today’s altar flowers are given in honor of Miss Isabella Bronson’s eighth birthday.” Lily hoped Isabella would be pleased, that the flowers would be enough to make up for any disappointment she might suffer due to an unfulfilled second birthday wish. Who’d ever heard of a second birthday wish, anyway? Lily was quite prepared to say as much if the girl should turn up gloomy. She’d taken a seat at the end of the row so she would be sure to spot the girl and her grandparents when they came in.

  Even as that thought presented itself, a murmur of voices and flurry of activity had her turning her head to the right. Suddenly Isabella was there, hugging Lily’s neck and whispering loudly, “It’s my wish, Lily! It’s my wish!”

  Lily felt herself nudged none-too-gently, both elbows and knees prodding her. Miss Mars, tittering like a cuckoo, shifted down the pew, so Lily did the same, Isabella in tow, still talking.

  “And the flowers. They’re so beautiful! Grandma said you did ‘em all on your own. Thank you. Thank you.” This last was punctuated with noisy kisses that snapped Lily’s head back.

  “All right, all right. We’re making quite enough of a scene already.”

  The sound of Tate’s chuckling voice sent Lily’s jaw to her knees. She batted at Isabella’s riotous curls and finally disengaged the exuberant child’s arms to settle the little one into the pew so she could gape past her red head.

  “Good morning, Ms. Farnsworth,” Tate said, reaching past his daughter to curl a finger beneath Lily’s chin and gently close her mouth for her.

  “You’re here,” she declared stupidly, staring at him in his gray suit.

  Isabella slid her hand into Lily’s and lifted her feet onto the edge of the pew, avidly watching the byplay between the adults. Tate calmly brushed Isabella’s Mary Janes down again.

  “So I am.” He grinned, and tapped Lily on the end of the nose. “So are you.”

  Lily burbled with laughter, unaware that tears rolled down her cheeks until a tsking Tate dropped a folded handkerchief into her lap. Using her free hand, she picked it up and dabbed at her cheeks. The pianist began to play just then, and the music leader stepped up to ask the congregation to stand for the opening hymn. Tate reached out to take Lily’s arm, lifting both her and Isabella with him as he rose. When he reached down for the hymnal, she leaned forward at the same time as Ginny and Peter Bronson. Their gazes met across the aisle, and they nodded to Lily, as if giving her credit for the phenomenon sitting next to their granddaughter.

  A lump in her throat, Lily gave her head a little shake. She hadn’t done this. Tate wasn’t here for her. This was Isabella’s doing, Isabella’s and God’s. Surely Isabella had told them so. Looking to her left, Lily traded teary smiles with Miss Mars and Coraline.

  Her mind awhirl, Lily faced the altar. Behind it an arch framed a tall cross of rough wood. The stained glass of the narrow upper row of sanctuary windows cast rays of color across the room, creating a p
rism of color of the morning light around the cross. That old wood cross had never looked so lovely to Lily. It had never carried such meaning for her. The God of salvation and love answered prayers, even when they came in the form of a little girl’s birthday wish.

  As the voices of the congregation lifted in a song of praise, Lily lifted a silent prayer of thanksgiving to the Almighty.

  * * *

  Tate had known, of course, that it wouldn’t be as simple as showing up in a suit and parking his behind on a pew. The light gray suit was the same one that he’d worn to his sister’s wedding over three years ago. He’d been surprised to find that it fit a bit too snugly across the chest and in the upper arms. It would do for today, but he’d have to plan a trip to purchase a replacement. A man shouldn’t be without a good suit, after all, especially as he had no doubt that regular church attendance was once again in his future.

  Strangely he didn’t mind. Just the opposite. It was time, time to come home.

  Things had changed, and nothing had changed. Instead of making announcements at the beginning of the service, as they had used to do, they began with a congregational song, saving the announcements for last, according to the bulletin. Other elements of the service had also been juggled, but all were familiar.

  Tate had missed singing. He hadn’t realized it until he’d opened the hymnal and actually started to sing, but he’d missed the feeling of lifting his voice, especially in concert with others. He wasn’t the best singer or the worst, but he could carry a tune, and singing with others seemed to make him better. Something more happened, however. He realized that he had a need to praise God, not just to sing about Him but a need to actually praise Him, to worship.

  He remembered a time when he had foolishly told himself that he would never be able to truly worship again. He’d told himself that his doubts, anger, disappointment and grief would forever taint his reverence for the Almighty. Somehow, over time, that had all changed, however. Without him even realizing it, his hunger for God had slowly and quietly grown until even his anger could not stand against it. In the end, a little girl’s “second birthday wish” had been all it had taken to overcome that.