The Language of Flowers

I scrambled up the side of the ditch a few inches to get a better view but still didn’t see anything purple. I picked up a rock and threw it as hard as I could in frustration. It hit the opposite wall and flew back in my direction so that I had to jump out of the way. Elizabeth laughed.

Leaping back into the weeds, I parted the brush with my hands and examined every dry stalk. “Here!” I said finally, snatching a clover-sized bud and throwing it into the jar. The flower looked like a small golden puffer fish with a faded tuft of purple hair. I climbed back to Elizabeth to show her the flower, which was bouncing around inside the jar like a living thing. I clapped my hand over the top to keep it from escaping.

“Thistle!” I said, handing her the jar. “For you,” I added. I reached out awkwardly and patted her once on the shoulder. It was perhaps the first time in my entire life I had initiated contact with another human being—at least the first time in my memory. Meredith had told me I was a clingy baby, reaching out and clutching hair, ears, or fingers if I could find them—the straps of my infant car seat if I could not—with pulsing purple fists. But I didn’t remember any of this, and so my action—the quick connection of the palm of my hand to Elizabeth’s shoulder blade—surprised me. I stepped back, glaring at her as if she had made me do it.

But Elizabeth just smiled. “If I didn’t know the meaning, I would be thrilled,” she said. “I think this is the kindest you’ve been to me, and all to express your hatred and mistrust of humankind.” For the second time that afternoon her eyes filled, and, like before, she did not look sad.

She reached out to hug me, but before she could draw me in, I slipped out of her arms and back into the ditch.

14.

The solid form of the chair on which I sat began to liquefy. Without knowing how I got there, I lay on my stomach on the library floor, books spread in a semicircle around me. The more I read, the more I felt my understanding of the universe slip away from me. Columbine symbolized both desertion and folly; poppy, imagination and extravagance. The almond blossom, listed as indiscretion in Elizabeth’s dictionary, appeared in others as hope and occasionally thoughtlessness. The definitions were not only different, they were often contradictory. Even common thistle—the staple of my communication—appeared as misanthropy only when it wasn’t defined as austerity.

The temperature in the library rose with the sun. By mid-afternoon I was sweating, swiping at my forehead with a wet hand as if trying to wipe memories from a saturated mind. I had given Meredith peony, anger but also shame. Admitting shame was closer to an apology than I ever hoped to get with Meredith. If anything, she should be coming to me with bunches and bunches of peony, quilting peony-covered bedspreads, baking peony-covered cakes. If peony could be misinterpreted, how many times, to how many people, had I misspoken? The thought made my stomach turn.

My choices for the flower vendor hung as a threatening unknown. Rhododendron clung solidly to the definition of beware throughout every dictionary before me, but there were likely hundreds, if not thousands, more dictionaries in circulation. It was impossible to know how he had interpreted my messages or what he was thinking as he sat in the donut shop. It was past five o’clock. He would be waiting, his eyes on the door.

I had to go. Leaving books scattered on the library floor, I skipped down four flights of stairs and walked out into the darkening San Francisco sky.

It was almost six by the time I got to the donut shop. I opened the double glass doors and found him sitting alone in a booth, a half-dozen donuts in a pink box before him.

I walked over to the table but did not sit down.

“Rhododendron,” I demanded, as Elizabeth once had.

“Beware.”

“Mistletoe.”

“I surmount all obstacles.”

I nodded and continued. “Snapdragon?”

“Presumption.”

“White poplar?”

“Time.” I nodded again, scattering before him the few thistles I had collected on my walk across the city. “Common thistle,” he said. “Misanthropy.”

I sat down. It had been a test, and he had passed. My relief was disproportional to his five correct answers. Suddenly starving, I dug a maple bar out of the box. I hadn’t eaten anything all day.

“Why thistle?” he asked, helping himself to a chocolate old-fashioned.

“Because,” I said between huge bites, “it’s all you need to know about me.”

He finished his donut and started on another. He shook his head. “Not possible.”

I took a glazed and a sprinkled donut out of the box and set them on a napkin. He was eating so fast I was afraid the box would be empty before I finished my first.

“So, what else is there?” I asked, my mouth full.

He paused, and then looked into my eyes.

“Where’ve you been for the past eight years?”

His question stunned me.

I stopped chewing and tried to swallow, but I’d put too much in my mouth. I spit a brown ball onto a white napkin and looked up.

All at once, I saw it. The realization was as shocking for its obviousness as for the fact that we had met again; I couldn’t believe I hadn’t recognized him instantly. The boy he had been lurked inside the man he had become, his eyes still deep and afraid, his body, filled out now, still curved in at the shoulders, protective. I flashed on the first time I’d ever seen him, a lanky teenager leaning against the back of a pickup truck, tossing roses.

“Grant.”

He nodded.

My instinct was to run. I’d spent so many years trying not to think about what I’d done, trying not to remember all that I’d lost. But as much as I wanted to flee, my desire to know what had become of Elizabeth, of the grapes, was stronger.

I covered my face with my hands. They smelled of sugar. In the space between my fingers I whispered my question, not at all sure he would answer: “Elizabeth?”

He was silent. I peered at him through lines of flesh. He didn’t look angry, as I’d expected, but tormented. He pulled at a patch of hair above his ear, the skin stretching away from his scalp. “I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t seen her since—”

He stopped, looking out the window and then at me. I dropped my hands from my face, searching for his anger. Still, he looked only distressed. The silence was thick between us.

“I don’t know why you asked me here,” I said finally. “I don’t know why you’d want to see me, after everything that happened.”

Grant exhaled, the tension in his eyebrows releasing. “I was afraid you wouldn’t want to see me.”

He licked a finger. The fluorescent light illuminated his eyes and reflected off the stubble on his chin. I was unaccustomed to men in general, having spent my adolescence in all-female group homes with only an occasional male therapist or teacher, and I couldn’t remember having ever been in such proximity to a man who was both young and handsome. Grant was so different from everything I was used to—from the size of his hands, heavy on the table, to the low, quiet voice that echoed into the silence between us.

“Your mother taught you?” I asked, gesturing to the scattered thistle.

He nodded. “But she died seven years ago. Your rhododendron was the first message-laden flower I’ve received since. I was surprised I hadn’t forgotten the definition.”