The Art of Arranging Flowers (16 page)

W
ELL
,
can't you just apologize?”

Will, Clementine, and I are sitting at his mother's grave. We have already put some flowers at Daisy's plot and after cleaning up Diane's, we have put her arrangement in the vase by the headstone and now we're just resting.

Will asked me what was wrong with Jimmy and Nora because he walked in right as they drove away. He told me that he had waved at them but that Nora was crying and Jimmy wouldn't even look at him when they passed. When he asked me at the shop what had happened, I explained that I had said a horrible thing and I had hurt their feelings.

“I will apologize,” I answer him. “Just as soon as I talk to them again.” They weren't answering their phones. I figure they either went to a meeting or were just refusing to take my calls.

“What was it that you said?”

I look at the boy and try to think of what to tell him, how to edit the grown-up version. “I told Nora to mind her own business and I said something bad about her and Jimmy. I didn't think Jimmy was there, but he was, and he heard me.”

Will is sitting cross-legged facing his mother's headstone. He has a stick and he's drawing lines in the dirt. I am sitting beside him. Clementine leaves us and starts sniffing along the line of the trees that borders the cemetery.

“I said something about Mama's boyfriend once. I thought he was gone and I yelled at her for dating such a loser. He was in the bathroom and when he came out, he hit me with his fist.”

“Yeah, well, I wish Jimmy had hit me,” I say, recalling the long, silent way he had looked at me, the hurt in his eyes as he turned and walked away.

“Not like this guy hit. He almost knocked my tooth out.”

“Ouch!” I reply, and rub the top of his head. “You're right, I wouldn't want to get hit.”

“Why did Nora make you mad?”

I didn't really expect to be analyzing my recent argument with a ten-year-old.

“She thinks I need a boyfriend,” I answer.

“Do you?”

I smile. “I don't think so,” I say.

“Mama always had a boyfriend,” Will tells me. “Some of them were okay, but some of them were not very nice.”

“Like the one who hit you in the mouth.”

“Yeah, he was the worst.”

Clementine makes a dash into the woods. She's chasing something, but I know she'll be back soon. She never strays too far away.

“I asked her once why she needed a boyfriend all the time,” Will says. “Especially because she would always tell me that we were a good team together, that we didn't need anyone else.”

“What did she say?” I lean back on my elbows and watch the stars begin to appear.

“She said she gets lonely sometimes when I'm at school and that she thought I needed a man around.”

“Did you think you needed a man around?”

He shakes his head.

“Did your mom ever marry any of the boyfriends?” I realize that I don't know much about Will's family, about his mother, his father.

“She wanted to marry them all,” he says. “But I guess they didn't want that.”

I glance up to see if Clem is heading back in our direction. I don't see her.

“I think it was because of me,” he adds softly.

“Why would you think that?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I heard somebody say one time that a child changes the situation.”

I look at Will and it's easy to tell that he too had been privy to a conversation not meant for his ears. “Did you hear your mom say that?”

He turns away so that I can't see his eyes. He doesn't answer.

“Will, I didn't know your mom so I can't speak for her.” He's still facing another direction. “But what I know is that she came back for you when she could. She came back and got you from your grandparents, and she didn't have to do that.”

I hear a sniffle.

“Right?” I ask.

He doesn't respond.

“If she had wanted to get married, and if having you kept her from that, she wouldn't have come for you. She wouldn't have fought for you in court. Maybe some of those guys didn't want a child, but your mom did. She wanted you. She came back for you.”

I wait to see if he's going to say anything.

“Right?” I ask.

He nods slightly.

“That's right,” I answer myself. “She may have wanted a boyfriend or a husband, but she wanted you more. And that's something,” I say, thinking about my mother's choices, remembering how she left and never came back, how she walked away from Daisy and me and never came back.

“The doctor said she took too many pills,” he tells me. “He said she died because she took a lot of pills.”

“Yeah, that's what I heard, too.”

“How did your sister die?”

And I breathe out a long, slow, deep breath. I haven't told this story in a long time. But I suppose if anyone deserves to hear it, it's Will. Still, I would rather tell the short version instead of the one I remember, the one reliving every single detail. I don't think anyone wants to hear that one anyway.

“Even when she was a little girl, Daisy would sometimes get very, very sad. And when she got that way, she would go to the hospital and they would give her some medicine that would help her not feel so sad. And then she'd come home and she'd feel better for a while. One time—the last time,” I say, remembering that terrible day, “she went to the same hospital but it was a different doctor and he gave her the wrong medicine and it made her really, really sick. And by the time they knew what had happened, by the time they figured out she wasn't just pretending to be sick, she died.”

I feel my voice catch in my throat, the tears gather in my eyes.

“Did the doctor say he was sorry for giving her the wrong medicine?”

“No, he never did.”

“Are you still mad at him?”

I look at the little boy and I think about the question I have never thought to ask myself, and in the same way he had answered my last question to him, I nod, ever so slightly.

And for the longest time we don't speak. Will makes lines in the dirt with his stick and I just sit and watch the sky. It isn't for almost half an hour before I realize Clementine hasn't returned.

I
T
is exactly how it was when Daisy died. I feel completely pulled out of my body and it is as if I am watching everything from some other angle, from some other person's viewpoint. I can see everything that is happening but I am not within myself. I am not who I think I am.

I don't know how I got from the cemetery to John Cash's house. I don't remember picking up my dog and carrying her for more than half a mile to the truck, Will running ahead of me, yelling and screaming to hurry up. I don't know how I knew where to go, how I didn't crash driving up the mountain, then back down to his office, and I still don't know how Nora and Jimmy found out and met us there and I don't even know if they have forgiven me. I don't feel the porcupine quills in my hands and chest that dug into my skin when I pulled the spiny rodent away and gathered up my dog. I don't feel my ankle swelling from the second fall I took when I put Clem in the truck and tried to run around to the driver's side, slipping and falling and trying and trying to get up.

I am in a fog, some unbelievable, indescribable, terrible, terrible fog.

I hear the vet telling Nora to take me to the hospital, to get me to a doctor to check my foot and to pull out the quills, but there is no way I'm leaving Clem.

Will is crying and Jimmy is talking to his grandmother on the phone, holding him, and I cannot even speak to tell him it's going to be okay. I cannot even console this little boy who saw what I saw when we rounded the corner at the end of the line of trees after we walked away from his mother's grave, trying to find my dog.

I knew porcupines lived around Creekside. I knew they foraged for food in forests, that the drought had forced them closer to human habitations. I knew they were dangerous to dogs, their quills sharp as needles, and that they would attack if provoked. I know I heard a story once about a family pet being killed by a porcupine, an infection taking over and causing death, pictures on the Internet of the quills covering the face of an unsuspecting bulldog; but I had never known to be afraid. I had never worried that Clementine would be in danger from a porcupine. I had thought of cars and cancer and poisonous food; I knew of dysplasia, bad joints, decaying teeth; but I had never worried about a rodent at dusk. I have never known to be afraid of that.

What else?
I think. What else have I overlooked? What other calamity can strike and put an end to this life I have made for myself? What else have I missed?

“Drink this.” And Nora puts a cup of something warm to my lips. It is tea or coffee, I don't know which, but it is bitter and I obey. I swallow.

I cannot see what the vet is doing. I am sitting in a room outside but sometimes I hear a movement from the other side of the door. Sometimes I hear him speaking softly and I want to go in, but Nora holds me back.

“Drink some more.” And I do as I am told.

“Now, take this.” And she hands me a pill and without asking what it is or what it will do, I swallow that, too.

There is an ice pack on my ankle. I do not remember who put it there, how long it has been resting on my foot. I think it should be cold but I don't feel it.

“I'm going to pull out some of these quills,” Nora says, and I lean back against the chair.

“I don't understand how you got these stuck in you.” She takes in a breath. I see her turn to Jimmy, who just shakes his head.

“Did the animal attack you, too?” And she pulls at one and I watch it come out of my hand. There is a little blood.

“Maybe you got them when you picked Clem up.” And she yanks out another. “Do these stick on both ends?” She is placing them on the floor beside her and I see them, these tiny narrow spines that had covered my dog and then covered me. I see them and I want to pick one up, hold it close to my eyes, study it, try to understand how it could render my dog motionless, how it made her so quiet, so still. But I only look at them from where I am sitting. I do not try to reach down.

I see Juanita when she pulls up and I watch as she walks into the office. I see her go over to Will and I hear him cry and scream that he doesn't want to leave, but I watch as Jimmy picks him up and carries him out, places him in the backseat of her car. I watch as she drives away.

I wouldn't let him touch Clementine. He tried to help me get her in the truck, but I told him to get away until I could cover her with a blanket and then I let him get in, kneel in front of her, out of a seat belt, out of a seat, to keep her from rolling onto the floor. Clem was in shock or already dead, I don't know. She didn't cry or try to move. She didn't flail around or yelp in pain; she just lay there, so very, very still. And I kept touching her where I could, where there were no quills—her back, a tiny place on her neck—telling her it would be okay, telling her I wouldn't let anything bad happen, telling her the very same thing I said to my sister when she took her final breath and I knew I had failed.

“Just a few more,” I hear Nora say, and I look down at the bloody mess on the inside of my hands and I keep thinking I should be feeling something, I should hurt or wince or somehow know physically what she is doing, but there is this absolute and complete absence of pain or ache. I am still somewhere beyond myself.

“He's a good doctor,” she adds. “Clem will be fine.” And she pulls another quill and I think that perhaps I shall be full of holes when she is done. I think I shall look like a cartoon character shot in a hundred places. I imagine drinking some juice and watching it squirt out of all the holes. I think of a garden hose punched with tiny openings, made to irrigate a flower bed.

Jimmy returns to the room where we sit and takes a chair across from me.

“Get me a wet towel,” Nora instructs him, and he leaves and returns with a small towel, dripping with water. She holds it against the palms of my hands.

“I need another one.”

He leaves and comes back with another.

She places it on top of the first one.

“Get me the peroxide,” and he goes out again and then reappears at my side. And then she nods at him, and I think I see him leave.

“Lift up your shirt.”

And I think I must be wrong and that Jimmy is still there, just out of my view, and maybe she needs his clothes for something, but then I realize she is talking to me and I watch her pull at the bottom of my shirt and feel it lift off my head.

I look down and see the quills stuck all across my chest and I wonder if one has pierced my heart and if that is the reason I cannot feel anything, if my heart has been punctured and everything has drained away. I wonder if I am already dead, watching things just before I'm sucked like a vapor into heaven. I wonder if this is what all those books are written about, if this is one of those near-death experiences I have heard about.

“Jesus,” Nora says, and I close my eyes and feel her lay me down on the row of chairs as she begins to pull the needles from my skin.

I must stay there for a long time. I feel her near me, yanking and pulling, blotting a towel or gauze pad on my chest. I hear Jimmy coming and going. I hear voices. I sense people floating around me, talking about me, saying how awful such a thing can be. But I do not see Clementine. I keep searching and searching but I cannot find my dog.

I start to feel a kind of throbbing in my ankle and I wonder whether I have come back. I think about all those people who write those books, about Jesus and the stone, and I wonder if I have died and come back.

“Ruby,” I hear, and I open my eyes and Dr. Cash is standing over me.