Vanessa Diffenbaugh - The Language of Flowers

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 favorite 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.