Vanessa Diffenbaugh - The Language of Flowers

“White roses are a good choice,” I said, “for a teenage girl. And maybe some lily of the valley?” I withdrew a long stem, ivory bells dangling.

“Whatever you think,” he said.

Arranging the flowers and wrapping them in brown paper as I had seen Renata do, I felt a buoyancy similar to what I’d felt slipping the dahlias under the bedroom doors of my housemates the morning I turned eighteen. It was a strange feeling—the excitement of a secret combined with the satisfaction of being useful. It was so foreign—and decidedly pleasant—that I had a sudden urge to tell him about the flowers, to explain the hidden meanings.

“You know,” I said, attempting a casual, friendly tone, but feeling the words catch in my throat with emotion, “some believe lily of the valley brings a return of happiness.”

The old man wrinkled his nose, the expression a combination of impatience and disbelief. “That would be a miracle,” he said, shaking his head. I handed him the flowers. “I don’t think I’ve heard that girl laugh since she was twelve years old, and let me tell you, I miss it.”

He reached for his wallet, but I held up my hand. “Renata said to pay later.”

“Okay,” he said, turning to go. “Tell her Earl came in. She knows where to find me.” The flowers jolted in their buckets as he slammed the door.

When Renata returned an hour later, I had assisted a half-dozen people. On the piece of paper she’d given me was a complete record of transactions: customer names, flowers, and quantities. Renata scanned the list quickly and nodded, as if she’d known exactly who would come into the shop and what they would request. She slipped the piece of paper into the cash register and extracted a wad of twenty-dollar bills, counting out three.

“Sixty dollars,” she said. “Six hours. Good?”

I nodded but didn’t move. Renata looked into my eyes as if waiting for me to speak. “Are you going to ask if I need you next Saturday?”

“Do you?”

“Yes, five a.m.,” she said. “And Sunday, too. I don’t know why anyone would want to get married on a Sunday in November, but I don’t ask. It’s usually a slow time of year, and I’ve been busier than ever.”

“Next week, then,” I said, closing the door gently as I walked outside.

With money in my backpack, the city felt new. I headed down the hill, looking into shop windows with interest, reading menus and scanning room prices at cheap motels south of Market. As I walked, I thought about my first day of work: a quiet walk-in full of flowers, a mostly empty storefront, and a boss with a direct, unemotional style. It was the perfect job for me. Only one exchange had made me uncomfortable: my brief conversation with the flower vendor. The thought of seeing him again the following Saturday made me nervous. I decided I would have to arrive prepared.

In North Beach I stepped off a bus. It was early evening, the fog just beginning to spill over Russian Hill, transforming headlights and taillights into soft orbs of yellow and red. I walked until I found a youth hostel, dirty and cheap. Presenting my money to a woman behind a desk, I waited.

“How many nights?” she asked.

I nodded to the bills on the counter. “How many can I have?”

“I’ll give you four,” she said, “but only because it’s off-season.” She wrote up a receipt and pointed down the hall. “The girls’ dorm is to the right.”

For the next four days I slept, showered, and ate the remains of tourists’ lunches on Columbus Avenue. When my nights ended at the hostel, I moved back to the park, worried about the overgrown boy and the dozens of others like him but aware that I had few other options. I tended my garden and waited for the weekend.

On Friday I stayed awake, worried I might sleep late and miss Renata. I wandered the streets all night, pacing outside the club at the bottom of the hill when I got tired, the music vibrating against my falling eyelids. When Renata’s car pulled up, I was leaning against the locked glass door of Bloom, waiting.

She barely slowed enough for me to jump into the truck, and started her U-turn before I closed the door.

“I should have told you four,” she said. “I didn’t check my book. We need flowers for forty tables today, and the wedding party is over twenty-five people. Who has a wedding with twelve bridesmaids?” I couldn’t tell if she was asking me or if it was a rhetorical question. I stayed silent. “If I married, I wouldn’t even have twelve guests,” she added, “at least not in this country.”

I wouldn’t have one guest , I thought, in this country or any other . She slowed at the roundabout and remembered her turn.

“Earl came in,” she said. “He wanted me to tell you his granddaughter was happy—he said it was important that I said ‘happy’ and not some other word. He said you did something with the flowers to bring it out of her.”

I smiled and looked out the window, away from Renata. So he had remembered. Surprisingly, I did not regret the decision to divulge my secret. But I didn’t want to tell Renata. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” I said.

She glanced from the road to my face and back again, one eyebrow raised in question. After a stretch of silence, she continued. “Well, Earl is a funny old man. Angry, mostly, but occasionally soft in ways you wouldn’t expect. He told me yesterday he’s old enough to have given up on God and come back around.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“I’m guessing he thinks you consulted with Him before choosing the flowers last weekend.”

I snorted. “Ha.”

“Yeah, I know. But he told me he’s coming back today, and he wants you to pick out something for his wife.”

I felt a quick thrill at having been given a new assignment.

“What’s she like?” I asked.

“Quiet,” Renata said, shaking her head. “I don’t know much more than that. Earl told me once that she was a poet, but she rarely speaks and never writes anymore. He brings her flowers nearly every week—I think he misses the way she used to be.”

Periwinkle , I thought, tender recollections . It would be hard to make into a bouquet but not impossible. I would wrap it with something tall and sturdy-stemmed.

The flower market was not as crowded as it had been the week before, but Renata still burst through as if the last bouquet of roses was on the auction block. We needed fifteen dozen orange roses and more stargazer lilies than would fit in the buckets I carried. I walked the flowers outside and came back for a second load. When everything was locked in the truck, I returned to the bustling building, looking for Renata.

She was at the booth I had been avoiding, arguing the price of a bunch of pink ranunculus. The wholesale price, scrawled on a small black chalkboard in nearly unreadable print, was four dollars. She flapped a single dollar bill above the tubs of flowers. The vendor neither responded nor glanced in her direction. He watched me walk down the aisle until I stood before him.

Our interaction the week before had plagued me, and I’d scoured McKinley Square until I found the right flower to defuse his unwarranted interest. I took off my backpack and withdrew a leafy stem.

“Rhododendron,” I said, placing the clipping on the plywood counter before him. The cluster of purple blossoms was not yet open, and the buds pointed in his direction, tightly coiled and toxic. Beware .

He studied the plant, then the warning in my eyes. When he looked away, I knew he understood the flower was not a gift. He picked it up with his thumb and index finger, and tossed it into a trash bucket.

Renata was still bargaining, and with a quick motion of his hand the vendor stopped her. She could have the flowers, he said with an impatient gesture, waving her away.