The Art of Arranging Flowers (24 page)

I
CANNOT
arrange the flowers. I have taken every stem from the buckets in the cooler and it's like they wilt in my hands. I use wire; I try the foam; the flowers refuse to stand. They refuse to blend, refuse to deliver. I am like an artist who can't paint. I have lost my way.

I try light orange roses, orange spray roses, and Matsumoto asters. I make an attempt with yellow daisy spray chrysanthemums, red miniature carnations, orange carnations and alstroemeria; I even accent with bupleurum, but it's as if the flowers have gone on strike. Everything I bind, every bouquet I arrange is flat and dreary and lifeless. I may have to call Edna in Deer Park and consign the work to her.

Nora and Jimmy left early. They were so tired of hearing me complain and fight with the flowers that they both took the afternoon off without pay. Nora isn't even teasing me or giving me herbal tea. She hasn't mentioned Oprah once. She even knows that John Cash is single again, but she's not pushing this time. It's as if she's been silenced by what is happening, as if she knows there is no remedy for what is lost.

“Just go home,” she said before she left, before she ushered Jimmy out the back door. “Quit trying, just go home.”

And I could see the pity in her eyes; it had been there all morning as I fumbled and stumbled over the orders, the Sunday morning sanctuary flowers, a get-well bouquet, and Kathy Shepherd's order for a basket of tulips. I managed the basket although it lacks whimsy and fire, but she took the vase away from me when I started breaking the stems of the alstroemeria, the slender tendrils cracking like little bones.

“Here, give them to me,” she insisted, and she finished the bouquet for Clara Robinson, an order placed from her son in California to be delivered later today at the hospital. “And Jimmy and I will drop it off on our way to the meeting,” she added.

“Let's just give the Lutherans a plant for Sunday. Use one of the cyclamen; you've got hot pink and white. They'll be fine with one of those.”

I let her take that too. That only leaves the flowers for tonight. I still have to create the arrangements for Will.

The new family has an appointment in Judge Hennesay's chambers at four o'clock, and then there will be a party to follow. Jenny wanted the same flowers she had at her wedding, pink gerberas, with a few bunches of purple asters to aid in the banishing of the sorrows of the past. She wanted pink and purple tulips in tall clear vases scattered on the tables in the parish hall and long-stemmed pink roses to be handed out when people left. I knew she and Justin didn't have the money to afford such a lavish celebration, so I had told her earlier this week that I would donate all the flowers. I hadn't realized she wanted so many.

“It's okay if you don't have arrangements on all the tables,” Nora called from the road to say. “I know this is costly. Just make a couple of centerpieces for the serving tables and use bud vases on the rest.”

But cost was not the problem. I would give all of my inventory to Jenny and Justin. I don't care about the money.

I am bending down, leaning on my elbows over the design table. I hear Cooper come in the back. He is not due today and I wonder why he is here. He greets Clementine and then comes through the door and sees me.

“Well, great rose of Sharon, what on earth is wrong with you?”

I don't even look up. I just shake my head.

“Are you going to throw up?” he asks. “You been sniffing angel trumpet?”

I shake my head again, knowing he's referring to the deadly plant that makes people do wacky things without even being aware of their actions. I do not answer.

He walks in and jumps up, taking a seat on the counter. “No Colombian devil's breath, no oleander, no western water hemlock?” He names all the poisonous plants.

I just keep shaking my head.

“Well, then what's the word?”

He studies the arrangement set in front of me. “You practicing blindfolded?”

I glance down at the bouquet, the whisper daisies pressed against the flamingo minis, the ivy loose and shabby, overrunning the vase, the pink long-stemmed rose raised high above them all, sticking out like a too-tall girl. It's a train wreck.

“All day,” I say. “It's been like this all day.”

He jumps down and walks in my direction. He raises his hand and checks my forehead.

“I'm not sick, I told you.” And I pull away.

“Then what's wrong?” He yanks the rose out of the vase, grabs a pair of scissors, snips off the end and puts it back, then pulls apart the daisies and thins the greenery. Even without the other flowers, the arrangement already looks one hundred times better.

I shake my head and walk to the stool against the back wall. I sit down and watch as he pulls another pink rose and a stem of gypsophila out of the bucket, a lavender iris and a few white spray roses, and finishes the arrangement. He cups the flowers in his hands and leans down to smell, and then he lifts up and turns to me.

“How many more you got?”

“Just daisies and roses,” I answer. “I just need to do a few stems of pink gerberas in bud vases and then the white bucket to hold all the pink roses. That's all,” I say. “That's all I have left.”

He walks out of the room and comes back with the box of small vases and sets them out on the table. He pulls out the daisies and fills them, one by one, while I watch. Then he goes into the cooler and returns with two black buckets and he finds all of the pink buds and gathers them together. He takes them back and returns with the white bucket, which he wipes and cleans and fills with flowers. It takes him all of about fifteen minutes to complete what was taking me all day.

“Now, do you want me to take these to the church?”

And I study him, wondering how he knew what needed to be done, wondering how he knew where the flowers were going.

“Will's party,” he replies, as if he has heard the questions rattling around in my brain. “I was invited, too.” He twirls the bucket in his hand and checks to make sure the blooms are all healthy. He pulls off a couple of petals where the edges have started to brown. “Last week when I made the delivery, he told me about the party and asked me to come.”

I nod. I wasn't here when that happened, but it doesn't surprise me. Cooper and Will are friends. Cooper lets him climb up in the truck and collect the flowers I have ordered. Most of what the boy has learned has actually come from my wholesale guy, not from me.

“This is a good thing, right?” he asks.

I glance away.

“From what you've told me and what Will says, those two are great.”

I still do not speak. Of course, he is right. Jenny and Justin will make splendid parents. Will is very lucky to have them.

“I'll just take these to the van,” he notes, heading out the back.

And I just sit and drop my face into my hands.

I
'M
going to take a walk,” I say, getting out of the van and heading in the direction of the cemetery. Clementine joins me when Cooper opens the back.

“Do you have a layout design in mind for these?”

I hear the question but I don't answer. I just keep walking. Cooper can put the flowers where he wants them. It's not that hard to put vases on tables. He'll be fine.

I walk up Flowery Trail. This street name always makes me smile, but not today. I don't even think of it. I don't notice the traffic. I just make sure Clem is far enough off the road, but that's about the only sensible thing I can manage. I don't know what's wrong with me. I should be happy for Will. I should be happy for Jenny and Justin and Will.

Jenny will make a wonderful mother. She will play computer games with Will and bake him cookies. She will help him with his math homework and make sure his room is clean and tidy and that his clothes fit. She will ride a bicycle with him and buy him a dog. She will be like a big sister, a really cool babysitter. She will adore him.

And Justin is a great guy. He will teach Will how to repair a flat and drive a stick shift. He can take him to monster truck shows and hockey games at the arena in Spokane. They'll have the father-son talk and Will can learn how to work with his hands, how to fix things and paint. Soon they'll have a couple of babies and Will can be a big brother and teach someone else the things he's learned from Justin. It's perfect. It's absolutely perfect.

But I am still a mess.

I get to the grave and sit down. I cross my legs and lift my face to the sun. Clementine sits beside me. She doesn't wander as much since the fight.

“I don't know why I can't be happy,” I say to my dead sister. “I have my own business. I have a house, friends. I finally figured out how to order movies on the television.” I look at the headstone.
DAISY JEWELL
, it reads, bold and frozen in the rock.

“He's good with them,” I add. “He's better off with them.” And I stretch my arms behind me and lean back. I think about Daisy and me and the one emergency foster home where we were taken after Mama hit me with the belt buckle and everything came apart. It was a large house, ranch style, three levels with a basement that was made into a game room. We shared a bedroom where there were two single beds, thin headboards painted white. There were pink bedspreads and pillows with ruffles and two desks with writing paper and crayons, both of them set against the wall, making the room look like a college dormitory.

There were three other children in the house: a teenager, a shy, clumsy boy who had a room to himself downstairs, and two toddlers who shared the nursery, which was on the other side of the parents' bedroom. We were there for three days before Grandmother finally found us, Daddy calling her from the road, telling her what had happened and how he couldn't take it anymore. Once she found us, however, we were still not allowed to go. There was apparently some discussion among social workers and the foster parents about whether we should be allowed to leave with family. I've since learned that the common thought at that time was that if one parent abused drugs or hit her children, the other parent was considered just as negligent and the grandparents were also thought to be unfit. There appears to be a different philosophy today, but back then, removing the child from the family was the ideal solution.

While Daisy and I waited for the papers to be filed and the issues to be sorted out, we worked out an escape. We drew plans and even stole money from the teenage boy, and on our second night at the foster home, after finishing our chores, eating our supper, and enduring the family Bible study, we went to our room and made our preparations to leave. We had apples and crackers we had taken from the pantry and we filled our pillowcases with a change of clothes and bars of soap. We counted our coins, stuffed our pockets with socks and underwear, and waited until everyone was asleep. That was when we planned to sneak out.

“Do you have a flashlight?” Daisy asked.

“I stole one from the garage,” I answered, feeling the lump under my head, the pillowcase filled with the supplies. “But I don't think it has batteries.”

“Then how do we see?”

“I'll try to buy us some when we get to a store.”

“What store?”

“The Family Dollar,” I answered. “It's right there on the corner.” We had stopped there before we arrived; the social worker had needed to make a call before she drove over and left us at the house.

“Do you think we'll find a nice person to take us?” Daisy asked.

We were in our beds, under the covers, pretending to be asleep in case the foster mother peeked in to check on us.

“Maybe,” I answered. And I thought of the two of us standing on the side of the interstate, the lights of cars speeding past. We had planned to walk to the highway and then hitchhike to Grandmother's.

“If we waited until morning we might have a better chance of getting a ride.”

And I suddenly realized that Daisy was having second thoughts.

“If we wait until morning, we can't sneak out,” I reminded her. The foster mother had a tendency to hover. I guess she had experienced runaways before.

Daisy didn't respond.

“Are you scared?”

She didn't answer, but I could imagine her nodding.

“Come over here,” I said, and she jumped from her bed and crawled in beside me, bringing her pillowcase, stuffed with clothes and snacks and soap.

“We don't have to go,” I said, wrapping my arms around her. “It's not that bad here.” I thought of the chocolate cookies we had that afternoon, the gentle way the father smiled, the toddlers crawling into my lap as we watched TV.

“I thought you said we should.”

“I don't know, Daisy. I don't know what to do.”

And she grabbed my arms, pulling me tighter around her.

“It's okay if we stay,” she said.

“You sure?” I asked.

“It's not so bad. And we're together, right? That's what matters most, isn't it?”

And it wasn't long before I heard her breathing deepen and grow steady and felt her grip loosen. We didn't run away that night; we just fell asleep together.

“But we were kids,” I say to Daisy now, knowing the memory was from her. “Of course we believed that back then we were just kids. All we knew was having each other. Being a parent is different. There are different things you have to know, have to take care of. He's a boy. He's almost a teenager,” I argue.

I hear nothing from my dead sister. She has said her piece.

I watch the sun as it hides behind the clouds, shows itself, and then disappears again. It is like a child playing.

“It's too late now anyway,” I say, peering at the time on my watch, realizing that the papers have been signed, the deed done, the party started.

Clementine raises her head and looks over to the other side of the cemetery. She jumps up and races to the grave we have visited before.