Vanessa Diffenbaugh: The Language of Flowers

Grant stood up. He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me to him. “But she doesn’t have her mother,” he said. “Nothing makes up for that.”

I sighed. His words were not guilt-ridden, forceful, or said to be persuasive.

They were true.

I walked down the stairs, and Grant followed close behind. He passed me in the dining room and swept open the front door. I walked through the passageway quickly.

“Come for Thanksgiving,” he said. “There’ll be roses.”

I started walking toward the road, my steps slow and heavy. Though I’d refused Grant’s invitation to stay, I didn’t, in fact, want to leave. Having heard my daughter’s giggle, having witnessed Elizabeth as a mother, again—her voice as firm and gentle as I remembered—I couldn’t bring myself to walk away. I didn’t want to drive back across the bridge and retreat into my blue room. More than anything, I realized with surprise, I didn’t want to be alone.

I waited for the front door to click shut. When it did, I turned and ducked into the first greenhouse.

I needed flowers.

6.

The bouquet I had assembled at Grant’s bobbed between my knees as I drove the short distance back to Elizabeth’s.

I parked at the entrance to the property, jogging up the long driveway. From the kitchen window, soft orange light glowed. This late in October, I had expected to find Elizabeth already on her nightly tasting tour, Hazel in tow, but it looked as if they were still finishing dinner. I wondered how she had managed the vineyard with a baby, and whether the quality of the harvest would suffer as a result. I couldn’t imagine her allowing it.

On the porch, I paused, peering in the front window. Hazel sat at the kitchen table, buckled into a high chair. She’d been bathed and dressed since I’d glimpsed her in the garden. Her wet hair, darker and curlier, was parted on the side and pulled back with a clip. A glossy green bib fastened behind her neck was splattered with something white and creamy, and she licked the remains of what she’d eaten from her fingertips. Elizabeth’s back was to me, washing dishes at the sink. When I heard the water turn off, I stepped behind the closed front door.

Bowing my head, I dipped my nose into the bouquet I’d assembled. There was flax, and forget-me-not, and hazel. There were white roses and pink ones, helenium and periwinkle, primrose, and lots and lots of bellflower. Between the tightly wrapped stems I’d packed velvety moss, barely visible, and I had sprinkled the bouquet with the purple and white petals of Grant’s Mexican sage. The bouquet was enormous, and not nearly enough. Taking a deep breath, I knocked on the door.

Elizabeth crossed in front of the window and swung the door open. Hazel straddled her hip, her cheek against Elizabeth’s shoulder. I held out the flowers.

A smile spread across Elizabeth’s face. Her expression held recognition and joy but not the surprise I had expected. As she looked me up and down, I felt like a daughter returning from summer camp to a mother who had worried unnecessarily. Except instead of summer camp it had been my entire adolescence, emancipation, homelessness, and single parenthood, and I couldn’t rightly say that Elizabeth’s worry had been unwarranted. But now, the years that had passed since I’d left her home felt short and far away.

Pushing open the screen, she reached past the bouquet and wrapped her arm around the back of my neck. I fell against the shoulder Hazel hadn’t claimed, and we stood there, in an awkward embrace, until Hazel began to slip off Elizabeth’s hip. She jostled her back up, and I pulled away to look at them both. Hazel’s face was hidden; Elizabeth wiped tears away from the corners of her eyes.

“Victoria,” she said. She closed her hand around my fingers, and we clutched the bouquet together. Finally, she took it from me. “I’ve missed you.”

Elizabeth held the screen door open and motioned with her head for me to come inside. “Have you eaten? There’s leftover lentil soup, and I made vanilla ice cream this afternoon.”

“I just ate,” I said. “But I’ll have ice cream.”

Hazel lifted her head from Elizabeth’s shoulder and clapped her hands together.

“You had yours already, little one,” Elizabeth said, kissing the top of Hazel’s head and walking into the kitchen. She set her down on the floor, where the baby clung to the backs of Elizabeth’s legs. Leaning from the freezer to the cupboard without taking a step, Elizabeth succeeded in retrieving a metal tub of ice cream, a dish, and a spoon.

“Up you go,” she said when the bowl was full. Hazel reached up, and Elizabeth bent down to scoop her up with one arm. “Let’s sit at the table with your mother.”

My heart raced at Elizabeth’s casual reference to my motherhood, but Hazel, of course, did not flinch.

I washed my hands at the sink and sat down. Elizabeth slid the high chair to face me, but when she bent to put the baby inside, Hazel shrieked and held on to the back of Elizabeth’s neck.

“No thank you, Aunt Elizabeth,” she said calmly, cutting Hazel’s scream short. She pulled the high chair out of the way and slid a chair into its place, then sat down with Hazel pressed against her, chest to chest.

“She’ll get used to you,” Elizabeth said. “It takes her a minute to warm up.”

“Grant told me.”

“You saw Grant?”

I nodded. “Just now. I came here first, but when I saw you out in the garden, with Hazel, I was so surprised I turned and ran.”

“I’m glad you came back,” she said.

“Me, too.”

Elizabeth pushed the bowl of ice cream across the table, and our eyes met. I had come back. Maybe it wasn’t too late, after all.

I took a cold, creamy bite. When I looked up, Hazel had turned. She peered shyly at me, her thin lips parted. I refilled the spoon, lifted it in slow-motion to my lips, and just before taking a bite, turned the spoon to her waiting tongue. She swallowed, smiled, and hid her face in Elizabeth’s chest. Then, looking up, she opened her mouth again. I scooped up a second bite of ice cream and slipped it between her lips.

Elizabeth’s gaze flicked from the baby’s face to mine. “How’ve you been?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said, avoiding her stare.

She shook her head. “No way. I want to know exactly how you’ve been, since the moment I last saw you in court. I want to know everything, starting with where you went when you ran from the courthouse.”

“I didn’t get far. Meredith caught me and put me in a group home, as she’d promised.”

“Was it awful?” Elizabeth asked. There was dread in her eyes, and I knew she was waiting for me to confirm her worst nightmares of what my life had been like for the past decade.

“For the other girls in the home,” I said wryly, remembering the adolescent I’d been and all the harm I’d caused. “For me, it was only awful because I wasn’t here, with you.”

Elizabeth’s eyes welled. In her lap, Hazel banged impatient fists on the table. I fed her another bite, and she reached out, as if she wanted me to pick her up. I looked at Elizabeth.

She nodded, encouraging. “Go ahead.”

With trembling hands, I grasped Hazel underneath her armpits, lifting her up and pulling her to me. She was heavier than I expected. When I set her down in my lap, she wiggled her diapered bottom back against my abdomen and tucked her head under my chin. I dipped my face into the back of her hair. She smelled like Elizabeth: cooking oil, cinnamon, and citrus soap. I inhaled, wrapping my arms around her waist.

Hazel reached into the bowl, submerging her fingers in the melted cream. Elizabeth and I watched her eat, the ice cream dripping onto her bibless linen dress. Her brow, in concentration, was as serious as her father’s.