The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [15]
I opened the florist’s envelope and pulled out the little card.
“Yes, go ahead,” she said. “Feel free.”
Dear Evie, thank you for the good conversation on a very bad day. As discussed, these are Apollo gladioli. Hope you like them. Yours, Andrew Stewart.
“Why Apollo gladioli?” I asked, catching the envelope as it skidded across the table in a gust of wind that rattled the wind chimes and slammed waves against the shore.
“Well, we talked about the moon landing, that I do remember. Where we were in 1969, that sort of thing. I suppose I must have mentioned my old moon garden, though it all went to seed years ago. But maybe that’s why he sent these.”
“Looks like you made a big impression.” I put the card back in its envelope, suddenly very sad. My parents had met as volunteers in a community garden just as my father was about to leave for Vietnam. Over the next year, they wrote. My mother savored his letters, the onion-skin pages in their thin envelopes filled with his slanted script. She had known my father so briefly that it was as if she had made him up to suit herself, and when she wrote back it was with a reckless freedom, telling him things she’d never shared before—her secrets, fears, and dreams.
Then one day she had looked up to see my father silhouetted against the door of the greenhouse where she worked. He was so much taller than she remembered, disconcertingly familiar and strange all at once. He crossed the room and stopped in front of her, but didn’t speak. The scent of earth gathered in her throat. Water dripped in the sink.
“I’m transplanting zinnias,” she’d finally said. As proof she held up her hands, dirt beneath her nails, her fingertips stained brown.
My father had smiled. Then he leaned down and kissed her. She kissed him back, pressing her wrists against his shoulders, her earth-stained hands lifted like wings.
I’d heard this story over and over, growing up, so I didn’t really like it, not one bit, that some man I’d never met was sending my mother flowers. Jet lag traveled through me like a wave and the world suddenly seemed vibrant and strange, as if all the colors might burst from their shapes. I put my hand on the table to steady myself.
“You okay?” my mother asked.
“Just a little tired, that’s all.”
“Of course you are, honey. I’m surprised you lasted this long. I made up the couch on the screened porch for you.”
“What about my old room, can’t I use that?”
“Do you really want to?”
She sounded reluctant, and I remembered she’d told me once that in the silence of my father’s sudden absence, the voices of the house had begun to whisper to her constantly, the trim crying out to be painted, the driveway sputtering about cracks and pits, the faucets leaking a persistent dissatisfaction. Love, said the kitchen cabinets my father had built from quarter-sawn oak. The lights in her sewing room, the slate tiles of the patio, the newly sanded floors, all of these persisted, saying love, love, love, and when the gutters clogged, when the shutters broke loose, when a windowpane cracked, she could not bear to alter the things he had last tended; nor could she stand to listen to the clamoring of the house. That was why she’d closed off the second floor, turning the glass doorknobs, clicking the metal bolts shut.
“Would you mind? I’ll make the bed and everything.”
“Of course I don’t mind,” she said, though I sensed that she did.
I found the key ring hanging inside the kitchen cupboard. The keys made soft metal sounds as I carried them to the second floor, which was warm and stuffy, the doors all closed. When I entered my old room I went from window to window, pushing up the sashes, struggling with the combination storms, letting fresh air pour in. I put a fitted sheet on the narrow bed, unfolded the flat sheet, and tucked it in, fatigue throbbing