The Flower Arrangement (7 page)

She broke eggs into a bowl. The second one had a double yolk. If they weren't pregnant within six months, she had decided, they'd try IVF. That would mean a chance of twins. She thought about the havoc, the challenge of juggling two babies and a full-time business, and could not imagine anything lovelier.

She melted butter in a copper pan and cut slices from a crusty loaf. She dipped them in the egg, drizzled them with maple syrup and dropped them into the sizzling butter.

She had craved white bread when she was carrying Ryan, the yeastier the better. She remembered Michael driving to the all-night petrol station at 2 a.m. to buy her yesterday's baguette. Bringing it to her in bed spread thickly with butter.

For the first time in five years, she let herself imagine being pregnant again—the surge of life in her body, the thrill of it. Then she allowed herself to imagine the thing she had not been able to think about since Ryan died. Holding a healthy newborn baby in her arms. A small head tucked beneath her chin, the beat of a tiny heart against her ribs.

“Lara!” She opened her eyes and saw Michael standing in the doorway. She flushed.

“You're up!” he said. He was wearing jeans, an old check shirt,
scuffed Caterpillar boots. Lara felt a flutter of desire for him, a winter creature waking up from a long hibernation.

“And you're dressed!” She smiled at him. “I was going to bring you breakfast in bed.”

“Oh.” He looked surprised.

She could still feel the baby she'd imagined against her heart. She was smiling as she walked over and put her arms around him. Her heart began to race.

He blinked down at her warily.

“I've been thinking,” she said softly, “that I'd like us to try for another baby.”

She had expected his face to light up, but it clouded over.

“I know we've left it late, but I thought we could give it six months, then if nothing happens we could think about IVF. I can take the money out of the shop.”

He wouldn't meet her eyes. “I can't do this to you.”

“You're not doing anything to me. It's my own decision.” She wished he would look at her. “Look, I fell apart after Ryan, but I promise I'll be okay whatever happens this time. And this is our last chance. I don't think I could stand it if we don't at least try.”

He pulled away from her and she saw that the color had drained from his face. He looked as if he might be about to pass out.

She pulled out a chair. “Don't move! I'll get you some water.”

He sank into the chair and took the glass she handed him, but he did not drink from it. She crouched down beside him, the nightdress pooling on the tiles around her, and looked up at him.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to spring this on you. I've been thinking about it for months. Dad's illness”—she shook her head—“it's kind of put things in perspective for me.” She fiddled with a button on Michael's cuff. “I'm not sure whether he's going to get better, and when I drove him to the hospital, he asked me to try again.”

“He asked me too.” Michael stared down at the glass. “A few weeks ago. I should have told you then.” He gave her an anguished look.

“Told me what?” Her heart slowed down to a sickening thud. She hoped he wasn't going to say that it was too late, that they were too old to think about being parents.

“It's not working, Lara,” Michael said in a whisper. “This. You and me.”

“I know.” She put one hand against his cheek. “I just realized that this morning. We've drifted apart, Michael. We shouldn't have let it happen, but we can change that . . .”

“We can't.” He shook his head sadly. “I can't.”

She stared at him, trying to understand. “What do you mean?”

“I'm sorry!” he said, almost to himself.

“For what?”

He closed his eyes and took a long, shuddering breath. “Lara”—his voice was so faint that she had to lean forward to hear him—“I'm gay.”

She wondered for a moment if she was still asleep upstairs. If the whole morning had been a dream that she was about to wake up from. Then the kitchen filled with an earsplitting shriek. For a shocked second she thought the noise was coming from her, then she realized it was the smoke alarm.

She stood up and went to the cooker, turned off the gas and covered the smoking pan with a lid. When she turned around, Michael was on his feet following her, but she shook her head and he stopped where he was. They stood looking at one another across the small kitchen through the wall of noise that shook the air between them.

Michael's face began to crumple as he sat again. She had never seen him cry, not even when they lost Ryan. His lips were moving but she couldn't hear what he was saying, then suddenly the alarm stopped.

“I don't want to hurt you, but I can't stand the lies and the deceit anymore.”

“I don't understand,” she whispered. “If you're gay, why did you marry me?”

“Because I love you. Because you are the most beautiful, kind person I've ever met. And because I wasn't sure that I
was
gay, not completely.
And I didn't want to be. All I wanted was to be with you. For us to have a life together, a family.”

His words flew around her, like shards of something solid that had been blown apart and could not be put back together again.

His eyes were brimming with tears. “We tried so hard for those three years and it just didn't happen. I knew I had to tell you, but then you got pregnant. After Ryan died, I couldn't walk away from you. You were so lost. And when you walked out of Green Sea to start the flower shop, I was afraid it would all come crashing down around you. I had to stay, I had to look after you.”

Lara wrapped her arms around her chest as if she could hold on to the baby she had imagined a few minutes ago. “We could still try. And if it happened, we could stay together, bring a child up together as friends.”

“There's something else, Lara.” Michael put his hand over his eyes as if he couldn't bear to look at her. “Someone else.”

Even as she waited for him to speak, she knew who it was.

“It's Glen.” Glen, who had befriended Lara, brought her croissants and coffee, complained that there were no eligible men in Dublin.

“Nothing has happened between us—I swear I would never betray you like that—but it's made me realize that I can't give you what you need.”

It came back, then, what Michael had kept saying after Ryan had died. That it had happened for a reason. Now Lara knew what that reason was. Michael had never wanted Ryan in the first place, not really. Having a child might have stopped him from leaving her. She turned away. “I have to go.”

“Where?”

“To the hospital. To the shop. I don't know. I'll pack some things.”

“If one of us is moving out, it should be me!” Michael stood up.

“No!” She could not bear to be left in the house they had poured so much love into. It was like their marriage, a beautiful, carefully constructed lie.

Somehow she managed to climb the stairs to the bedroom. She pulled off the nightdress and hauled on a long jersey skirt, a T-shirt, a cardigan, socks, her leather boots. She filled a carry-on case. Michael was waiting in the hall when she came downstairs. He made as if to put his arms around her, but she shook her head and he stepped back.

“Where will you go?” His face was chalky, his eyes were red-rimmed.

“I'll go to Dad's. He'll be in the hospital till Tuesday.”

But her dad didn't come out of the hospital on Tuesday. The cancer had spread. He had less than a month to live.

*   *   *

Lara pushed Michael out of her mind. She spent every hour she could at the hospital and all the hours she couldn't at Blossom & Grow, using work like a drug to manage the pain. Phil came to stay with her at their dad's house, both of them sleeping in their old childhood bedrooms, making a circle of their father's life, the end like the beginning.

She had never told her dad that her marriage was over. She had kept her wedding ring in her purse and slipped it on when she walked from the parking lot into the hospital.

“You have to tell him,” Phil said one evening when they were sitting in the coffee shop with cups of vending-machine mushroom soup in front of them. Lara was pressing little crescent moon shapes into the lip of her plastic cup with her thumbnail.

“He thinks we're trying for another baby,” she said quietly. “If I tell him the truth, it'll break his heart.”

Phil reached across, moved her cup, took her hand and pressed it between his the way she'd taught him when he was small; made what they used to call a “hand sandwich.” “You have to tell him anyway. Before it's too late.”

“I'll think about it,” she said.

But it was already too late. By then, their dad was slipping in and out of something that was darker, deeper than sleep.

So Lara told him lies instead. She told him she'd been mowing the lawn and weeding the beds but that she'd leave the pruning for him to do when he got better. She told him that Michael was as excited about trying for another baby as she was.

She read him the P. G. Wodehouse stories he'd read to her when she was a little girl, pages he had turned over thirty years ago. When he seemed too far gone to hear her, she held his hand and told him that she loved him in every language she could think of.

She held his hand all day that last day, pressed pansies between their palms as if she could keep him there, tethered to the world with her fingers and her flowers.

*   *   *

Ciara was cashing up when Phil came into Blossom & Grow. Her head was bent over the book, her blonde fringe falling into her eyes.

“Hi,” he said as he tucked his leather gauntlets under his arm and took off his helmet.

“Sssh!” She held up one hand. “I'm adding something up.”

Ciara could add two figures together a dozen times and get thirteen different answers, so Phil stopped where he was, halfway between the door and the counter. He glanced around, waiting for her to finish. Buckets jumbled together without any eye for color. A fine layer of dust on the leaves of the orchids. Two bulbs blown in the low chandelier. Not a single lantern lit.

He had a feeling that even if they spent the whole evening sweeping and cleaning and rearranging, the shop would still look like shit. He wouldn't dream of saying it out loud, but it was as if Blossom & Grow was a living thing that could not survive without his sister.

Ciara threw down her pen. “I can't get this right. Can you give it a go?”

“Having a good day?” he asked drily.

“Fabulous,” Ciara snorted. “I managed to piss off the wildflower man. A woman who rang up to order a sixty-euro bouquet canceled
when she found that Lara wasn't here to make it up. Oh! And I made a little girl cry.”

“How did you do that?”

“The way I upset most of the regulars.” Ciara rolled her heavily mascaraed eyes. “By not being your sister. It was that little red-haired girl, Zoe, who comes in Saturdays with her dad. I forgot to put out the vase of free flowers this morning. I tried to give her a bloody African daisy but she didn't want it. Apparently Lara lets her pick her own. She practically drowned in her own tears.”

“She'll get over it.” Phil put his helmet on the counter.

“Maybe by the time she's twenty. I managed to do the wedding flowers, though. They're in the cold room, and those incredibly fiddly boutonnieres are in the—” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Shit! I put a punnet of cherries in the fridge this morning.” She dashed out to the small kitchen with Phil on her heels, but it was too late.

The ethylene from the fruit had already spoiled the edges of the petals on the roses. A hundred euros' worth of flowers ruined. “Sorry,” Ciara sighed. “My bad. I'll stay late and make them up again.”

“Do we have enough roses?”

“We do, but only because I ordered them twice by mistake.” Ciara plucked at her sleeve. She looked as if she might be going to cry. “I can't seem to do anything right.”

“Why don't you do these at home?” Phil threw the ruined boutonnieres in the bin. “Have a bit of R and R. A glass of wine with your husband.”

“Really?” Her face brightened. “It's Mort's only night off from the bar. I could put them together while we watch a movie.” She clumped off upstairs in her high shoes to collect wire and scissors, and Phil went back out into the shop and looked at the order book.

Ciara had stapled the till receipts to the edge of today's page. He didn't have to add them up to see that sales were way down. It was there in the blank lines where phone and email orders should have been listed. Walk-ins and corporate work were keeping the shop going, but
two hotels had canceled their regular arrangements since Lara had stopped coming in. He had told Ciara to cut back on stock, but still, looking around, he saw that they would be throwing out far too much again this week.

Ciara reappeared carrying a cardboard box of roses and rolls of wire and ribbon. She had put on lipstick that was an even brighter pink then her cycle helmet. She nodded at the book. “How does it look?”

“Not too bad,” he said, trying to keep the worry out of his voice.

“Phil, we're going have to get someone in if Lara doesn't come back soon.”

“I know.”

“Do you think she will come back?”

“Course she will.” He closed the book, hoping that saying it might make it true. He had promised his dad that he'd look after her, but it wasn't easy.

Ciara switched off the chandelier and they started for the door.

“Oh my God!” she hissed, gripping his arm. “It's him.”

Phil looked past the tall heads of the lilies in the window and saw the owner of the Camden Deli across the street. He was locking the door. He darted a quick, nervous look over his shoulder and hurried away.