I can tell, when Hugo looks at me from across the dinner table, that he has
reached the end of his rope. He looks at me with his vacant eyes for minutes on end, and,
without looking away, asks me to pass the potatoes. I know he doesn't really want the
potatoes, especially the way I fix them, with lots of paprika. It doesn't change the flavor,
really, but it turns them red. I like things that are red. Hugo's eyes are sometimes red
when he looks at me from across the table, asking me to pass the potatoes that he doesn't
want but eats anyway because he is afraid to hurt my feelings.
He says to people on the telephone that I am declining. He says it very quietly
because he is afraid that I will be upset to hear him say it, but I am not upset. Just because
Hugo says something quietly over the phone doesn't mean it's true.
After potatoes, Hugo tells me to sit still and wait for him to come back to the table. He
says he has a present for me. It is a milkshake. Always strawberry, because he knows I
like red. Sometimes, if I say things in his ear and kiss him, he puts slices of bright red
strawberries in the milkshake for extra color. He looks embarrassed when I whisper to
him, but he listens anyway since it has been so long since he has been satisfied.
What he doesn't know, though, is that I know what's in the milkshake. I saw the
bottle in his pocket one day. I don't know how to pronounce it--it's a word with many
consonants and few vowels--but it makes me sleepy. So sleepy, in fact, that I can't do
anything but sit in my chair and wonder if the long string of saliva hanging from my lip is
real or imaginary. I am angry with Hugo when I am stuck in my chair, but I always seem
to forget how to yell at him. I sit there, and am angry that I am too angry to tell him how
angry I am, and also too tired to water my flowers that I grow out in the
greenhouse.
I am a florist. A flowerist. That's what I tell people when I meet them for the first time.
Sometimes I catch Hugo shaking his head and making gestures behind me when I tell
people about my profession. The people blush a little bit and bow their heads to hide
smiles when they see Hugo behind me. Then I yell at him, but only if I haven't had a
milkshake yet.
I like to make my own kinds of plants by mixing the seeds around in a special way.
No one knows how I do it. I once made a perennial Japanese cherry blossom tree because
it bothered me that the pink flowers on the natural ones only stay on the branches for a
few weeks and then fall. I still have it in my greenhouse, but it isn't my favorite piece. The
most lovely thing I ever grew--my favorite piece--is a purple weeping willow with gold
tendrils that hang loosely and bounce in the breeze. No one knows how I did it and I too
can hardly remember. Everyone in town comes to see it when the tendrils are in bloom,
around Easter time. Families come over from church on Sundays to see the tree, and I
always give the little girl with the smartest dress a tendril. They always look at it
quizzically, but they take them just the same. The girls like to arrange the tendrils around
the tops of their heads and pretend that they are princesses wearing crowns.
These days, though, the tendrils aren't blooming on schedule and the tree is doing
something odd. It bleeds. Just a little around the base of the trunk. I tried to tell Hugo,
but he wouldn't listen to me. He wouldn't even come out to the greenhouse with me. He
was afraid that I was telling the truth. I touched the blood, and it was warm and inviting.
It felt like my own. I know the tree is trying to tell me something but I don't understand. I
sit next to it and wait for it to speak to me, because it seems perfectly natural that it would
do so. It is hard to be patient. For now, I try to be amused in the red while I wait for
understanding.