The Language of Flowers

In mid-August, perched at the top of the play structure in McKinley Square, I spotted Grant. He was coming straight up Vermont Street, climbing the hill with his eyes scanning the modern lofts and old Victorians. He stopped and exchanged words with a painter on slanted scaffolding. Turquoise paint dripped from a brush and landed on a drop cloth near Grant’s shoe. He reached down and touched the wet paint, then called something up to the painter, and the man shrugged. Grant was three blocks down the hill, and I couldn’t hear his words, but I could see he wasn’t out of breath even after the steep climb.

I scrambled through the bushes, zipped my bag, and pulled it across the street and into the corner store. When I’d first moved back to McKinley Square, I’d told the store’s owner I was running from an abusive family. I asked him to hide me if my brother ever came looking. The owner had refused, but as time passed and I purchased every meal from his always-empty neighborhood store, I knew I would not be turned away.

The owner looked up when I ran in with my heavy bag and quickly opened the door behind him. I raced around the counter, through the door, and up a flight of stairs. Dropping to my knees, I crawled to the front window of the small, sparsely furnished apartment. The hardwood floor smelled like lemon oil and felt slick against my shins. The walls were painted bright yellow. Grant would not look up twice.

Crouching low under the bay window, my eyes peered over the sill. Grant had already climbed the stairs to the park and passed the swings, the empty seats swaying in the breeze. He spun in a circle, and I ducked down. When I lifted my head again, he stood at the edge of the grass, where thick green sod met the wild forest undergrowth. He pressed a boot into the trunk of a redwood tree before walking across the soft layer of duff and kneeling in front of the white verbena. I held my breath as Grant looked around the sloping hillside, afraid he would notice the carved-out heath bush and the outline of my body, belly round, beneath it.

But he didn’t pause at the heath. He turned back to the verbena and bowed his head. I was too far away to see the delicate clustered petals in which he dipped his nose, too far away to hear his hushed words, but I knew he was praying.

My forehead pressed against the glass, and I felt my body being pulled toward him by the strength of my own desire. I missed his sweet, earthy smell, his cooking, and his touch. The way he placed his square palms over each side of my face as he looked into my eyes, and the way his hands smelled of soil, even after they had just been washed. But I could not go to him. He would make promises, and I would repeat his words because I wanted to believe in his vision of our life together. But over time we would both find my words meaningless. I would fail; it was the only possible outcome.

Closing my eyes, I forced my body away from the window. My shoulders fell forward, belly pressed against parted thighs. The sun warmed my back. If I had known how, I would have joined Grant in prayer. I would have prayed for him, for his goodness, his loyalty, and his improbable love. I would have prayed for him to give up, to let go, and to start over. I might have even prayed for forgiveness.

But I didn’t know how to pray.

Instead, I stayed as I was, folded over on the floor of a stranger’s living room, waiting for Grant to give up, forget about me, and go home.

2.

“Six months,” Elizabeth said.

I watched Meredith drive away. After visiting weekly for two months, she had finally decided to set a new court date. Six months away.

Elizabeth slipped an extra strip of bacon into a sandwich and set it in front of me. I picked it up, took a bite, and nodded. She hadn’t given notice, as I’d expected, but she was different than she’d been before the failed adoption, nervous and apologetic.

“The time will go quickly,” she said, “with the harvest and the holidays and everything.”

I nodded again and swallowed hard, wiping my eyes, refusing to cry. In the time since our missed court appearance, I had replayed scenes from the year before in my head endlessly, looking for clues to what I had done wrong. The list was long: cutting down the arm of the cactus, hitting the bus driver over the head, and more than one declaration of hatred. But Elizabeth seemed to have forgiven me for my violent outbursts. These, she seemed to understand. I’d come to the conclusion that her sudden ambivalence was because of my growing clinginess, or else my tears. Feeling my eyes well again, I shut them and folded over, my forehead pressed against the table.