Vanessa Diffenbaugh - The Language of Flowers

Many nights I slept in the water tower. Grant had taken up cooking in a serious way, and his kitchen counter was stacked with illustrated cookbooks. As I sat at the kitchen table and read, or looked out the window, or told an obnoxious bride story, Grant chopped and seasoned and stirred. After dinner he would kiss me, only once, and wait to see my reaction. Sometimes I kissed him back, and he would pull me to him, and we would stand intertwined in the doorway for half an hour; other times my lips remained cold and unmoving. Even I didn’t know how I would react on any given day. About our deepening relationship, I felt fear and desire in equal, unpredictable parts. At the end of each night he walked outside to wherever it was he slept, and I locked the door behind him.

On a weeknight in late May, after months of this ritual, Grant leaned forward as if to kiss me but stopped just inches from my lips. He put his hands on the small of my back and pulled me to him so that the length of our bodies touched but not our faces. “I think it’s time,” he said.

“For what?” I asked.

“For me to have my bed back.”

I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth and looked out the window.

“What’re you afraid of?” he asked, when I had been quiet for a long time.

I thought about his question. He was right, I knew, that it was fear that kept us apart; but of what, specifically, was I afraid?

“I don’t like to be touched,” I said, repeating Meredith’s long-ago words. But even as I spoke them, I knew they sounded ridiculous. Our entire bodies were pressed together, and I didn’t pull away.

“Then I won’t touch you,” he said. “Not unless you ask me to.”

“Not even when I’m asleep?”

“Especially not then.” I knew he wouldn’t.

I nodded. “You can sleep in your bed,” I said. “But I’m sleeping on the couch. And I better not wake up with you beside me or I’m driving straight home.”

“You won’t,” Grant said. “I promise.”

That night I lay awake on the love seat, trying not to fall asleep until Grant did, but he wasn’t sleeping, either. I heard him rolling around above me, rearranging the covers, knocking over a stack of books. Finally, after a long period of silence, when I was sure he had fallen asleep, I heard a soft tapping on the ceiling above me.

“Victoria?” A whisper came spiraling down the stairs.

“Yeah?”

“Good night,” he said.

“Good night.” I pressed a smile into the orange velour.

After a full season of jonquil, Annemarie was a different person. She came in every Friday morning for a fresh bouquet, and her skin was pinker and her body, finally free from the belted jacket, curved underneath thin cotton sweaters. Bethany, she told me, had gone to Europe for a month with Ray and would come back engaged. She said it with certainty, as if it had already happened.

Annemarie brought her friends, many with frilly-dressed little girls and all with disappointing marriages. They leaned on the counter while their children pulled flowers out of buckets taller than they were and spun around the room. The women discussed the details of their relationships, trying to reduce their problems to a single word. I had explained the importance of specificity, and the ladies clung to my words. The conversations were sad, and amusing, and strangely hopeful all at the same time. The relentlessness with which these women tried to repair their relationships was foreign to me; I didn’t understand why they didn’t simply give up.

I knew that if it were me I would have let go: of the man, of the child, and of the women with whom I discussed them. But for the first time in my life, this thought did not bring me relief. I began to notice the ways in which I kept myself isolated. There were obvious things, such as living in a closet with six locks, and subtler ones, such as working on the opposite side of the table from Renata or standing behind the cash register when I talked to customers. Whenever possible, I separated my body from those around me with plaster walls, solid wood tables, or heavy metal objects.

But somehow, over six careful months, Grant had broken through this. I not only permitted his touch, I craved it, and I started to wonder if, perhaps, change was possible for me. I began to hope my pattern of letting go was something that could be outgrown, like a childhood dislike of onions or spicy food.

By the end of May I had nearly completed my dictionary. I captured images of many of the remaining, elusive plants at the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. After printing, mounting, and labeling each photo, I put X ’s in my dictionary and scanned the pages to see how many flowers were left. Only one: the cherry blossom. I was upset with myself for the omission. There were plenty of cherry trees in the Bay Area, dozens of varietals in the Japanese Tea Garden alone. But their bloom period was short—weeks or even days, depending on the year—and I had been too distracted by spring to capture their brief moment of beauty.

Grant would know where to find a cherry blossom, even now, long past its season. I wrote the single missing flower on a scrap of paper and taped it to the outside of the orange box. It was time to bring it to him.

I put the box in the backseat of my car and strapped it in with a seat belt. It was Sunday, and I got to the water tower before Grant got home from the farmers’ market. Letting myself in with the spare key, I opened the cupboard and helped myself to a loaf of raisin bread. The box, bright orange on the weathered wood table, took up more space than it should have. It felt loud and new in the small kitchen of quiet antique appliances. I was about to take it upstairs when I heard Grant’s truck settle into the gravel.

He opened the door and went immediately to the box.

“Is this it?” he asked.

I nodded, handing him the scrap of paper with the missing flower. “But not quite complete.”

Grant let the scrap of paper fall to the floor and opened the lid. He flipped through the cards, admiring my photographs one at a time. I turned one over to show him the printed flower meanings, then replaced it and shut the lid on his fingers.

“You can look later,” I said, retrieving the note from the floor and flapping it in the air in front of him. “Right now I need help finding this.”

Grant held up the paper and read the missing flower. He shook his head. “A cherry blossom? You’ll have to wait until next April.”

My camera tapped against the table. “Almost a full year? I can’t wait that long.”

Grant laughed. “What do you want me to do? Transplant a cherry tree into my greenhouse? Even then, it wouldn’t bloom.”

“So, what can I do?”

He thought for a moment, knowing I wouldn’t give up easily. “Look in my botany textbooks,” he suggested.

I wrinkled my nose and leaned forward until I was close enough to kiss him, but I didn’t. Instead, I rubbed my nose against his stubbly cheek and bit his ear. “Please?”

“Please what?” he asked.

“Please suggest something more beautiful than a textbook illustration.”

Grant looked out the window. He seemed to be debating something internally. It was almost as if he had possession of a late-blooming cherry blossom in his pocket and was trying to decide if I was important and trustworthy enough to receive it. Finally, he nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Follow me.”

Grant walked out the door. I put my camera around my neck and walked in his footsteps. We crossed the gravel and climbed the steps of the main house. He withdrew a key from his pocket and unlocked the back door, which opened into a laundry room. A pale pink woman’s blouse fluttered on the drying rack. Grant led me into the kitchen, where the curtains were drawn, and the counters were dusty and dark. All the appliances were unplugged, and the absolute quiet of the refrigerator was unsettling.