She liked it when I brushed my hand gently down her back, my hands soft at first, then more and more calloused with the years of tending to the little house and the garden; years of pounding nails into the deck, then sanding it until it was smooth enough for her to walk on, barefoot, a mug of steaming coffee in her hand, smelling faintly of just a hint of nutmeg.
She liked it, too, though she’d tried to hide it, when Sam, sleepy-eyed, her flour-white hair wispy, a mess of ghostly curls, climbed into bed with us and then kicked with her bony knees, always at Laura’s back. She’d turn then, and throw her arm around our child, and whisper her nightmares away. As long as it took.
She liked it most of all when the boy plucked a lily from someone’s yard–Mr. Rubowsky’s, we’d learned afterwards–and handed it to her, his eyes downcast, an apology in his very posture for offering her this one limp stalk.... I knew in those moments that someday we would have a garden, so the boy could pick the right flowers to give to her; so he wouldn’t feel unworthy of her boundless love. And we did, many years later. When the boy was too busy to think of flowers for his mother; and when Samantha didn’t venture into our bedroom even when we’d called for her, not if she could help it–her nightmares gone for good, her knees kicking at her boyfriend’s and then husband’s back. The kids were too old for the magic of gardening by the time we’d finally saved enough to move to this old Victorian from the trailer we’d lived in for all the years when they were small enough to have enjoyed playing in the dirt.
We never did plant any lilies; never discussed it either.
It was somehow understood that the boy wouldn’t like it if we had. The same way we knew the boy never would call me ‘dad’ no matter how many times I’d wished to hear it. Maybe today he would. I blinked hard, the sting of the memory making my eyes burn–the boy just turned seven sitting next to me by the lake, a mottled pebble limp in his hand. “Do you love her? I mean....really love her?” He seemed small for his age then, fragile somehow, a beaten dog.
“I do, Bobby, I really do,” I’d said then, and meant it.
“I already have a dad,” Bobby said, not quite looking at me. Kicked at a small pebble, sending a cloud of dust swirling into the water. “I won’t call you ‘dad’ or ‘father,’ is what I’m saying.” And he never did. But he was there, watching me, then helping with the sanding and painting and wallpapering, not ever saying much beyond what had to be said to get the job done. And he was there, too, asking me to help with his tie for his first dance, and later still, asking me, awkwardly stumbling all the way through it, for condoms. And that one night, when he ran to my shop all breathless, and I’d thought something terrible had happened to him, but it was only that he’d given white lilies to the girl he liked, and Laura came home too early, and she’d seen them, and of course he couldn’t take it back.... but he wasn’t thinking, it just seemed right in the moment, but he should’ve known better. Because it wasn’t the sort of thing one shared that way. I told him then that it was. That it was alright to share those things. Alright to share people too, in that way. Because some people, the good ones—they had enough love for everybody.
“Sir?” I’m startled by the high pitched voice from behind the counter. “Will these do?” I nod to the young girl, her hand unlined by age, ringless, wrapped around dozens of stems of white lilies. I want to chide her for pressing too hard, but it’s not my place. And the lilies are already dead, or in any event well on their way to dying. And I hope, forlornly, stupidly, that the boy will come. And Sam. And that maybe, for a small, beautiful moment, Laura will know. Will remember why she liked these strange drooping flowers in the first place. And she’d know the boy then, and me, and the ghost of a child who’d slept her nightmares away in our bed for so many years.
That she’d know herself, and the life she’d lived. As only she could.
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