The Language of Flowers

I drove the country roads as I had so many times before, with Grant, alone, and then with the baby, the last time I had come. Passing the flower farm, I pressed my palm into my left temple to block my peripheral vision. I didn’t see the farmhouse, the water tower, or the flowers. I had mustered up the courage to see Elizabeth but could not bear the thought of glimpsing Grant or my daughter on the same day.

Across from Elizabeth’s driveway, I pulled onto the shoulder of the road. A school bus passed, and then a crowded brown station wagon. When the road was empty, I stepped out into the quiet countryside and looked across the road.

On first glance, the vineyard was exactly how I remembered it. The long driveway, the farmhouse in the center, the vines running in stripes parallel to the road. I leaned back against my car, looking for signs of the damage I had caused. The vineyard had been replanted, the charred earth turned, and the ashes were long gone; even the thistle had returned to the ditch, as tall and dry as it had been the night I lit the fire. Only the thickness of the vines revealed the history of the blaze: On the southeastern quadrant of the property, the trunks of the grapevines were half as thick as those on the opposite side of the driveway. The leaves of the younger plants were a brighter shade of green, and noticeably more fruit hung on the vines. I wondered if the quality of the fruit on the new vines had yet reached Elizabeth’s standards.

I walked across the road. The house looked unchanged, but the row of sheds had disappeared—burned, I imagined, to the ground. Carlos’s trailer was gone, too, but I doubted the metal had melted; it was more likely he’d found another job or moved away, and Elizabeth had disposed of the trailer. Without the dilapidated outbuildings, the house looked more like a bed-and-breakfast than a working vineyard. The white paint was bright and spotless, and a pair of red wooden rocking chairs sat on the front porch. Inside the lace-covered window, the kitchen light was on.

Pausing on the bottom step, I heard a soft sound like a rush of wind, followed by a quiet splash. Elizabeth was in the garden. My back pressed against the white clapboard, I crept around the side of the house. Elizabeth squatted barefoot in the dirt just paces from where I stood, her back to me. Mud oozed into the wrinkles on the backs of her heels, and when she leaned forward, I saw that the arches of her feet were clean and pink.

“Again?” she asked, holding up a round wire ring with a worn wooden handle.

I moved away from the wall to get a better view of the garden. On a path in front of the roses sat a galvanized washbasin half-full of bubble solution, iridescent swirls reflecting in the thick liquid. With one hand squeezing the edge of the basin, a round-eyed baby reached for the metal ring. She sat on the ground in only a cloth diaper, and her naked body swayed, her full belly teetering on her unstable bottom. With her free hand, Elizabeth reached behind the baby’s back to steady her, and in the moment of distraction, the baby succeeded in grabbing the ring and pulling it, still soapy, into her mouth. She gummed it fiercely.

“Excuse me, little one,” Elizabeth said, tugging unsuccessfully on the wooden handle. “This is a bubble wand, not a teething ring.”

The baby did not react to the admonition. After a pause, Elizabeth tickled her bare belly until she giggled, releasing her clamped jaw from the metal ring. Elizabeth wiped the soapy residue from the baby’s mouth with her thumb.

“Now watch,” Elizabeth said. She dipped the wand and blew through the ring. Bubbles rained down on the baby, leaving wet circles as they popped on her shoulders and forehead.

Her hair had grown; dark ringlets covered the top half of her ears and curled up at the back of her neck. From hours in the garden, I imagined, her skin had browned to a darker shade of cream, and she’d sprouted two bottom teeth where months before I’d run my finger along her slick gums. I may not have recognized her at all except for her eyes—her round, deep, gray-blue eyes—which turned and fixed on my face in question, as they had the morning I’d left her in the moss-lined basket.

Backing silently away, I spun around and ran to the road.

5.

Sitting among the decades-old plants, I surveyed the scarce blooms. Grant had pruned the roses. A quarter-inch below each sliced end, a fat red bud pushed out of the stem, the point from which a new flower would emerge. Grant would have roses, as he did every year, for Thanksgiving.