The Language of Flowers

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. I meant the words to be gracious, but they sounded dismissive. Grant’s face fell, and I felt a flash of anger (not at Grant but at myself, for never having mastered the subtleties of tone). I moved a step closer to him, an awkward gesture of apology.

“I know it doesn’t,” he said. “I just stopped by because I thought you’d want these—for your friend.” He lowered the box. Inside I saw the six ceramic pots of jonquil, the yellow flowers tall and open in bouncing clusters. An intoxicating sweetness wafted from the blossoms.

I reached inside and grabbed the pots, attempting to extract all six simultaneously. I wanted to surround myself in the color. Grant lowered the box, and through a gentle tug-of-war I succeeded in lifting all six. I buried my face in the petals. For only a moment they balanced in my arms, and then the middle two slipped out of my grasp. The pots shattered on the sidewalk, the bulbs coming unburied and the stalks bending at angles. Grant dropped to his knees and began to gather the flowers.

I hugged the remaining four to my body, lowering them so that I could watch him over the petals. His strong hands cupped the bulbs and straightened the stems, and he wound long, pointed leaves around the stalks where they had been weakened by the fall.

“Where do you want these?” he asked, looking up.

I dropped down, kneeling beside him.

“Here,” I said, and motioned with my chin for him to lay the flowers on top of the ones I held. He parted the clusters and set the exposed bulbs on top of the soil, the broken flowers nestled among the rest. His hands idled among the stems, and in his slow, regular breaths, I could feel him preparing to leave.

I loosened my arms, and the flowerpots slid out of my lap as if in slow motion, settling by my thighs on the steep sidewalk. Grant’s hands fell onto my knees. I picked them up and brought them to my face, pressing them to my lips, my cheeks, and my eyelids. I wrapped his hands around the back of my neck and pulled him closer. Our foreheads touched. I closed my eyes, and our lips touched. His lips were full and soft, even as his upper lip scratched my own. He held his breath, and I kissed him again, harder this time, hungry. On my knees, I shuffled up the hill, knocking over the pots in a desire to be closer to Grant, to kiss him harder, longer, to show him how much I’d missed him.

When we pulled apart, finally, out of breath, a single pot had rolled to the bottom of the hill, its blossoms straight and tall and almost blindingly yellow in the winter sun.

Maybe I was wrong, I thought, watching the clusters sway in the breeze. Maybe the essence of each flower’s meaning really was contained somewhere within its sturdy stem, its soft gathering of petals.

Annemarie, I knew, would be satisfied with the jonquil.

14.

Sitting on the front porch, I sifted through the pile of tiny white chamomile blossoms at my feet. A five-foot string connected Elizabeth and me, a needle on each end. We worked quickly, spearing spongy yellow centers and pushing flowers into the middle. Every few minutes I stopped, distracted by an insect or a splinter of wood, but Elizabeth did not pause in her movements. After an hour the task was complete, a delicate, petaled ribbon connecting us.

“Definition?” I asked. Elizabeth was folded over, stringing a square of paper onto the end of the ribbon. I glimpsed August and the number 2, along with a repetition of the word please, and a line that struck me as a lie: I can’t do this without you.

Elizabeth coiled the flowered rope. “Energy in adversity.”

Nothing could have more succinctly captured her mind-set. Since deciding to communicate with her sister through flowers, Elizabeth had been constantly in motion, planting seeds, watering, checking the progress of half-open buds, and waiting—a waiting that was like an action itself, dynamic and pacing—for a response.

“Come with me,” Elizabeth said, climbing into her truck and setting the coiled chamomile between us.

We drove to Catherine’s. Elizabeth left the engine running as she hopped out, wound the flowered string around the wooden post of Catherine’s mailbox, and tucked the note inside. Climbing back into the truck, she continued driving down the road, away from the vineyard.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Shopping,” Elizabeth said. Her hair flapped around her face in the wind, and she pulled it back into a rubber band quickly, steering with her knees. She shot a mischievous smile in my direction.

“Where?” I asked. There was a general store less than a mile away, where Elizabeth had purchased my rain parka and gardening shoes, but it was in the opposite direction.