The Language of Flowers

Annemarie looked more relieved than disappointed when I told her the news. January would be fine, she said, better than fine. The holidays were busy; the month would be a blur. She wrote down her phone number, wrapped her body tightly with the red belt of her coat, and walked out the door after Bethany, who was already halfway up the block. I had given her ranunculus: You are radiant with charms.

Grant was early, as he had been the week before. Renata invited him in. He sat at the table, watching us work and eating chicken curry out of a steaming foam container. A second container, unopened, sat beside him. When I finished the table arrangements, Renata said I could go.

“The boutonnieres?” I asked, looking into the box where she was lining up the bridesmaids’ bouquets.

“I can finish them,” she said. “I have plenty of time. You just go on.” She waved me out the door.

“You want to eat here?” Grant asked, handing me a plastic fork and a napkin.

“In the car. I don’t want to waste light.” Renata looked at us with curiosity but didn’t ask. She was the least meddlesome person I had ever met, and I felt a twinge of affection for her as I followed Grant out the door.

The curry and our breath fogged the windows on the long drive to Grant’s house. We drove in silence, the only noise the constant hum of the defroster. It was wet out, but the afternoon was clearing. By the time Grant opened the gate and drove past the house, the sky was blue. He went inside for the camera, and I was surprised to see him enter the square three-story building and not the house.

“What’s that?” I asked when he returned, gesturing to the building from which he had just come.

“The water tower,” he said. “I converted it into an apartment. You want to see inside?”

“Light,” I said, looking to where the sun was already starting to descend.

“Right.”

“Maybe after.”

“Okay. You want another lesson?” Grant asked. He stepped toward me and dropped the camera strap around my head. His hands brushed against the back of my neck.

I shook my head no. “Shutter speed, aperture, focus,” I said, turning dials and repeating the vocabulary he had thrown at me the week before. “I’ll teach myself.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be inside.” He turned and walked back into the water tower. I waited until I saw a light flip on in the third-story window before I turned toward the rose garden.

I would start with the white rose; it felt like a good place to begin. Sitting in front of a flowering bush, I dug a blank notebook out of my backpack. I would teach myself photography by documenting my successes and my failures. If, next week, I developed the film and saw that only one photo was clear, I needed to know exactly what I had done to produce the image. I numbered a sheet of paper from one to thirty-six.

In the waning light I photographed the same half-opened white rosebud, writing down in descriptive, nontechnical terms the reading of the light meter and the exact positions of the various dials and knobs. I recorded the focus, the position of the sun, and the angles of the shadows. I measured the distance of the camera to the rose in multiples of the length of my palm. When I ran out of light and film, I stopped.

Grant was sitting at his kitchen table when I returned. The door was open, and inside was as cold as outside. The sun had disappeared, and with it all warmth. I rubbed my hands together.

“Tea?” he asked, holding out a steaming mug.

I stepped in and closed the door behind me. “Please.”

We sat across from each other at a weathered wood picnic table identical to the one outside. It was pushed up against a small window that framed a view of the property: sloping rows of flowers, the sheds and greenhouses, and the abandoned house. Grant stood up to adjust the lid on a rice cooker that was spewing liquid out of a small hole. He opened a cupboard and retrieved a bottle of soy sauce, which he set on the uneven table.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” he said. I looked at the stove. Nothing was cooking except the rice. “You want a tour?”

I shrugged but stood up.

“This is the kitchen.” The cupboards were painted a pale green, the countertops gray Formica with silver trim. He didn’t appear to own a cutting board, and the counters were dented and scraped from slicing. There was an antique white-and-chrome gas stove with a folding shelf, and on the shelf sat a row of empty green glass vases and a single wooden spoon. The spoon had a white sticker with a faded price on its tip, leading me to think it had either never been used or never been washed. Either way, I was not particularly anxious to sample his cooking.