The Language of Flowers

  When I was done, I stood in front of Renata and waited for her to look up. She glanced at the table where the full vases sat in a straight line.

  “Good,” she said, nodding her approval. “Better than good, actually. Surprising. It’s hard to believe you haven’t been taught.”

  “I haven’t,” I said.

  “I know.” She looked me up and down in a way I disliked. “Load up the truck. I’ll be done here in a minute.”

  I carried the vases up the hill two at a time. When Renata had finished, we carried the tall vase together, laying it down gently on the already-full truck bed. Walking back into the shop, she removed all the cash from the register, closing and locking the drawer. I expected her to pay me, but instead she handed me paper and a pencil.

  “I’ll pay you when I get back,” she said. “The wedding is just over the hill. Keep the shop open, and tell my customers they can pay next time.” Renata waited until I nodded, and then walked out the door.

  Alone in the flower shop, I was unsure of what to do. I stood behind the manual cash register for a few moments, studying the peeling green paint. The street outside was quiet. A family walked by without pausing, without looking in the window. I thought about opening the door and dragging out a few buckets of orchids but remembered the years I’d spent stealing from outdoor displays. Renata would not approve.

  Instead I walked into the workroom, picked stray stems off the table, and tossed them in the waste bin. I wiped down the table with a damp cloth, swept the floor. When I could think of nothing else, I opened the heavy metal door of the walk-in, peering inside. It was dark and cool, with flowers lining the walls. The space drew me in, and I wanted nothing more than to unpin my brown blanket petticoat and fall asleep between the buckets. I was tired. For an entire week I’d slept in half-hour stretches, pulled out of sleep by voices, nightmares, or both. Always, the sky was white, steam from the brewery billowing above me. Each morning, minutes passed before I pulled myself from panic, smoke-filled dreams dispersing into the night sky like the steam. Lying still, I reminded myself I was eighteen and alone: no longer a child, with nothing more to lose.

  Now, in the safety of the empty flower shop, I wanted to sleep. The door clicked shut behind me, and I slunk onto the floor, leaning my temple against the lip of a bucket.

  I had just found a comfortable position when a voice came muted through the walk-in. “Renata?”

  I jumped to my feet. Running my fingers quickly through my hair, I stepped out of the walk-in, squinting into the bright light.

  A white-haired man leaned against the counter, tapping his fingers impatiently.

  “Renata?” he asked again when he saw me.

  I shook my head. “She’s delivering flowers to a wedding. Can I help you with something?”

  “I need flowers. Why else would I be here?” He waved his arm around the room as if to remind me of my occupation. “Renata never asks me what I want. I wouldn’t know a rose from a radish.”

  “What’s the occasion?” I asked.

  “My granddaughter’s sixteenth birthday. She doesn’t want to spend it with us, I’m sure, but her mother is insisting.” He pulled a white rose from a blue bucket and inhaled. “I’m not looking forward to it. She’s turned into a sulky one, that girl.”

  Mentally, I scanned the flower choices in the walk-in, surveyed the showroom. A birthday present for a sulky teenager: The old man’s words were a puzzle, a challenge.

  “White roses are a good choice,” I said, “for a teenage girl. And maybe some lily of the valley?” I withdrew a long stem, ivory bells dangling.

  “Whatever you think,” he said.

  Arranging the flowers and wrapping them in brown paper as I had seen Renata do, I felt a buoyancy similar to what I’d felt slipping the dahlias under the bedroom doors of my housemates the morning I turned eighteen. It was a strange feeling—the excitement of a secret combined with the satisfaction of being useful. It was so foreign—and decidedly pleasant—that I had a sudden urge to tell him about the flowers, to explain the hidden meanings.

  “You know,” I said, attempting a casual, friendly tone, but feeling the words catch in my throat with emotion, “some believe lily of the valley brings a return of happiness.”

  The old man wrinkled his nose, the expression a combination of impatience and disbelief. “That would be a miracle,” he said, shaking his head. I handed him the flowers. “I don’t think I’ve heard that girl laugh since she was twelve years old, and let me tell you, I miss it.”

  He reached for his wallet, but I held up my hand. “Renata said to pay later.”

  “Okay,” he said, turning to go. “Tell her Earl came in. She knows where to find me.” The flowers jolted in their buckets as he slammed the door.

  When Renata returned an hour later, I had assisted a half-dozen people. On the piece of paper she’d given me was a complete record of transactions: customer names, flowers, and quantities. Renata scanned the list quickly and nodded, as if she’d known exactly who would come into the shop and what they would request. She slipped the piece of paper into the cash register and extracted a wad of twenty-dollar bills, counting out three.

  “Sixty dollars,” she said. “Six hours. Good?”

  I nodded but didn’t move. Renata looked into my eyes as if waiting for me to speak. “Are you going to ask if I need you next Saturday?”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, five a.m.,” she said. “And Sunday, too. I don’t know why anyone would want to get married on a Sunday in November, but I don’t ask. It’s usually a slow time of year, and I’ve been busier than ever.”

  “Next week, then,” I said, closing the door gently as I walked outside.

  With money in my backpack, the city felt new. I headed down the hill, looking into shop windows with interest, reading menus and scanning room prices at cheap motels south of Market. As I walked, I thought about my first day of work: a quiet walk-in full of flowers, a mostly empty storefront, and a boss with a direct, unemotional style. It was the perfect job for me. Only one exchange had made me uncomfortable: my brief conversation with the flower vendor. The thought of seeing him again the following Saturday made me nervous. I decided I would have to arrive prepared.

  In North Beach I stepped off a bus. It was early evening, the fog just beginning to spill over Russian Hill, transforming headlights and taillights into soft orbs of yellow and red. I walked until I found a youth hostel, dirty and cheap. Presenting my money to a woman behind a desk, I waited.

  “How many nights?” she asked.

  I nodded to the bills on the counter. “How many can I have?”

  “I’ll give you four,” she said, “but only because it’s off-season.” She wrote up a receipt and pointed down the hall. “The girls’ dorm is to the right.”

  For the next four days I slept, showered, and ate the remains of tourists’ lunches on Columbus Avenue. When my nights ended at the hostel, I moved back to the park, worried about the overgrown boy and the dozens of others like him but aware that I had few other options. I tended my garden and waited for the weekend.

  On Friday I stayed awake, worried I might sleep late and miss Renata. I wandered the streets all night, pacing outside the club at the bottom of the hill when I got tired, the music vibrating against my falling eyelids. When Renata’s car pulled up, I was leaning against the locked glass door of Bloom, waiting.

  She barely slowed enough for me to jump into the truck, and started her U-turn before I closed the door.

  “I should have told you four,” she said. “I didn’t check my book. We need flowers for forty tables today, and the wedding party is over twenty-five people. Who has a wedding with twelve bridesmaids?” I couldn’t tell if she was asking me or if it was a rhetorical question. I stayed silent. “If I married, I wouldn’t even have twelve guests,” she added, “at least not in this country.”

  I wouldn’t have one guest, I thought, in this country or any other. She slowed at the roun
dabout and remembered her turn.

  “Earl came in,” she said. “He wanted me to tell you his granddaughter was happy—he said it was important that I said ‘happy’ and not some other word. He said you did something with the flowers to bring it out of her.”

  I smiled and looked out the window, away from Renata. So he had remembered. Surprisingly, I did not regret the decision to divulge my secret. But I didn’t want to tell Renata. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” I said.

  She glanced from the road to my face and back again, one eyebrow raised in question. After a stretch of silence, she continued. “Well, Earl is a funny old man. Angry, mostly, but occasionally soft in ways you wouldn’t expect. He told me yesterday he’s old enough to have given up on God and come back around.”

  “What did he mean by that?”

  “I’m guessing he thinks you consulted with Him before choosing the flowers last weekend.”

  I snorted. “Ha.”

  “Yeah, I know. But he told me he’s coming back today, and he wants you to pick out something for his wife.”

  I felt a quick thrill at having been given a new assignment.

  “What’s she like?” I asked.

  “Quiet,” Renata said, shaking her head. “I don’t know much more than that. Earl told me once that she was a poet, but she rarely speaks and never writes anymore. He brings her flowers nearly every week—I think he misses the way she used to be.”

  Periwinkle, I thought, tender recollections. It would be hard to make into a bouquet but not impossible. I would wrap it with something tall and sturdy-stemmed.

  The flower market was not as crowded as it had been the week before, but Renata still burst through as if the last bouquet of roses was on the auction block. We needed fifteen dozen orange roses and more stargazer lilies than would fit in the buckets I carried. I walked the flowers outside and came back for a second load. When everything was locked in the truck, I returned to the bustling building, looking for Renata.

  She was at the booth I had been avoiding, arguing the price of a bunch of pink ranunculus. The wholesale price, scrawled on a small black chalkboard in nearly unreadable print, was four dollars. She flapped a single dollar bill above the tubs of flowers. The vendor neither responded nor glanced in her direction. He watched me walk down the aisle until I stood before him.

  Our interaction the week before had plagued me, and I’d scoured McKinley Square until I found the right flower to defuse his unwarranted interest. I took off my backpack and withdrew a leafy stem.

  “Rhododendron,” I said, placing the clipping on the plywood counter before him. The cluster of purple blossoms was not yet open, and the buds pointed in his direction, tightly coiled and toxic. Beware.

  He studied the plant, then the warning in my eyes. When he looked away, I knew he understood the flower was not a gift. He picked it up with his thumb and index finger, and tossed it into a trash bucket.

  Renata was still bargaining, and with a quick motion of his hand the vendor stopped her. She could have the flowers, he said with an impatient gesture, waving her away.

  Renata turned to go, and I followed.

  “What was that, Victoria?” Renata asked when we were out of earshot. I shrugged and kept walking. Renata glanced back at the booth, then at me, then again at the booth, her eyes puzzled.

  “I need periwinkle,” I said, changing the subject. “They won’t sell it cut. It’s a groundcover.”

  “I know periwinkle,” she said, nodding to a back wall, where plants sat in buckets, their roots intact. She handed me a wad of cash and didn’t ask any more questions.

  Renata and I worked frantically throughout the morning. The wedding was in Palo Alto, a wealthy suburb thirty-five miles south of the city, and Renata had to take two trips to deliver all the flowers. She took the first half of the arrangements while I worked on the second. While she was gone I kept the door closed and locked, the light off in the showroom. Customers lined up outside, awaiting her return. I was content in the dark solitude.

  When she returned I was busy examining my work—pinching pollen and trimming an occasional awkward leaf with sharp scissors. Renata glanced at my bouquets and nodded to the stream of people behind her.

  “I’ll start the bridal party; you take over the shop.” She handed me a laminated price list and a small gold key to the cash register. “And don’t think for a second I don’t know how much is in there.”

  Earl was already at the counter, waving to me. I walked over to where he stood.

  “For my wife,” he said. “Didn’t Renata tell you? I only have a few minutes, and I want you to pick out something that will make her happy.”

  “Happy?” I asked, looking around the room at the available flowers. I felt disappointed. “Is that as specific as you can be?”

  Earl tilted his head and was thoughtful for a moment. “You know, now that I think about it, she’s never really been a happy woman.” He laughed to himself. “But she was passionate. And smart. And interested. She always had an opinion, even about things she knew nothing about. I miss that.”

  It was the request for which I had prepared. “I understand,” I said, setting to work. I pinched tendrils of periwinkle at the roots until they hung in long, limp strands, and grabbed a dozen bright white spider mums. I wrapped the periwinkle tightly around the base of the mums like a ribbon and used florist’s wire to create loose curlicues of the leafy groundcover around a multilayered explosion of mums. The effect was like fireworks, dizzying and grand.

  “Well, that will deserve a response of some kind,” Earl said as I handed over the flowers. He passed me a flat twenty. “Keep the change, sweetheart.” I consulted the price list Renata had given me and put the twenty in the drawer, withdrawing a five-dollar bill for myself.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “See you next week,” called Earl.

  “Maybe,” I said, but he had already gone out the door, slamming it closed behind him.

  The store was abuzz, and I turned my attention to the next person in line. I wrapped roses, orchids, mums of every color, and handed bouquets to couples, elderly women, and teens sent on errands. While I worked I thought about Earl’s wife, tried to bring forth an image of the once-passionate woman: her tired, withdrawn, unsuspecting face. Would she react to the wild bouquet of mums and periwinkle, truth and tender recollections? I felt sure she would, and imagined the relief and gratitude on Earl’s face as he boiled water for tea, provoking the opinionated woman he had missed into a discussion of politics or poetry. The image quickened my fingers and lightened my steps as I worked.

  Just as the shop emptied, Renata finished the bridal party.

  “Load up the truck,” she ordered. I transported armfuls as quickly as I could. It was almost two. Renata climbed behind the wheel, directing me to keep the shop open until she returned in an hour.

  The delivery took much longer than Renata had expected. At half past five she stormed into Bloom, spewing anger over boutonnieres and bow ties. I kept quiet, waiting for her to pay me so that I could leave. I’d worked twelve and a half hours without a break, and I was looking forward to a locked room and possibly even a bath. But Renata didn’t reach into her purse.

  When her frustrated monologue ended, she opened the cash register, thumbing through wrinkled bills, checks, and receipts. “I don’t have enough cash,” she said. “I’ll stop at the bank on the way to dinner. Come with me. We’ll talk business.”

  I would rather have taken her money and fled into the night, but I followed her outside anyway, aware of the precariousness of my position.

  “Mexican food?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She turned toward the Mission. “You aren’t much of a talker, are you?” Renata asked.

  I shook my head.

  “At first I thought you just weren’t a morning person,” she said. “My nieces and nephews, don’t try before noon, but after that just pray for a moment of silence.”

&nb
sp; She glanced at me as if she was waiting for a response.

  “Oh,” I said.

  She laughed. “I have twelve nieces and nephews, but I rarely see them. I know I’m supposed to make an effort, but I don’t.”

  “No?”

  “No,” she said. “I love them, but I can only handle them in small doses. My mother always jokes that I didn’t inherit her maternal gene.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “You know, that bit of biology that makes women coo when they see a baby on the street. I’ve never had that.”

  Renata parked in front of a taqueria, and two women fussed over a stroller by the door as if to prove her point. “Go order anything you want,” she said. “I’ll pay when I get back from the bank.”

  Renata and I ate until eight p.m. It was enough time for her to eat a taco and drink three large Diet Cokes, and for me to eat a chicken burrito, two cheese enchiladas, a side of guacamole, and three baskets of chips. Renata watched me eat, a satisfied smile flicking across her face. She filled the silence between us with stories of her childhood in Russia, describing a flock of siblings traveling across the ocean to America.

  When I finished eating, I leaned back, feeling the heaviness of the food in my body. I had forgotten how much I could consume, and also the complete paralysis that accompanied my overeating.

  “So, what’s your secret?” Renata asked.

  I squinted my eyes in question, tightened my shoulders.

  “To staying thin?” she asked. “When you eat like that?”

  It’s simple, I thought. Be broke, friendless, and homeless. Spend weeks eating other people’s leftovers, or nothing at all.

  “Diet Coke,” she said, filling the silence as if she didn’t want to hear my answer, or already knew it. “That’s my secret. Caffeine and empty calories. Another reason I never wanted children. What kind of baby would develop on that?”