Dead Flowers Read online

  Deadly serious, I said. I’m just not sure it’s the right thing to do, to make such a sacrifice tonight.

  Do you want to get out of here? he asked.

  God yes, I said, and I stood up to go, but then so did the boy. Oh, I said, now I see what you mean. But that would mean learning something new.

  The boy asked me if I was a virgin. I told him it was awfully rude of him to ask, and finally broke away from the boy and the living room. Back in the kitchen I found Annie still talking with Julia. I came up next to them and instinctively reached for our bottle of wine. At that moment I felt just such a terrific thirst for a mouthful of wine, but our bottle was empty. There were others though, other bottles, several of them lined up on the counter. There were whites and reds and bottles of booze, so I took a red and uncorked it.

  Just as I was raising the bottle to my lips, a girl came in, saw what I was doing and screamed, Is that my fucking Chianti?

  I was so startled that I dropped the thing. It landed without breaking, but the force of its impact against the floor sent a streamer of wine up into the air, which hung for a moment before raining down over everyone and everything. There was a long silence during which Annie, Julia and the girl all looked to me, as if for an explanation.

  I sighed. You know, I see this primarily as an issue of private ownership.

  Nobody said anything, so I cooed like a pigeon. Annie laughed so hard that she fired a mouthful of water out of her nose.

  Afterward I offered to tidy up, but Julia brushed me off. I apologized instead, both to the hostess and to the girl. Annie apologized once more to Julia on my behalf and we excused ourselves, went out the back, through the yard and around the house again. It was slow going as we rode our bicycles home. It was uphill all the way.

  Annie left for Europe in May. She would be gone for ten weeks, and in that time she would keep in touch by writing emails regularly. She would write them as if they were letters, making them long and sentimental, the first coming out of Amsterdam. Annie wrote that she had landed the day before and that Franklin had come to meet her at the train station. He looked good, she wrote. He seemed happy. He seemed genuinely glad that she was there. Later that afternoon, after getting acquainted with the city together, they had gone and eaten magic mushrooms. And that day was like a blossom, Annie wrote, like an opening in the very heart of hearts, with all of life expanding outwards, past and future outwards both, growing from a singular point. Simple objects resonated, she wrote, with significance, and no city ever looked so good. In the evening she and Franklin had had a dispute with the owner of a hotel. They had already planned to stay the night and had reserved a room at a given rate, but now the owner was demanding more money. Franklin made a big scene of it, yelling at the man and even kicking the desk, but really it was only a joke. Together they stormed out of the hotel, laughing, hollering, slamming the door. They slept that night in a public park, lying in the grass under the trees.

  Sometime later Annie wrote me an email from Greece saying she and Franklin had fallen in love. Now every night before going to sleep they took turns reading to each other. They were reading out of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. Have you ever read Rilke? she wrote. It really is something else. It feels like nourishment, like something fulfilling, exquisite and sensual. It’s like a slice of melon, perfectly ripe. Annie even went on to quote some lines they’d been reading the night before: It is good to love, because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being, that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.

  Following her suggestion, I did try reading that book, but I didn’t get far. Something about it bothered me, annoyed me, made me angry. Because here was Rilke, a formidable poet, writing letters to a younger one, saying how, for instance, we are alone in the deepest, most important things, saying how one person never can know the life of another one, and should therefore never try to guide or to counsel. While on the other hand here was Rilke, an older poet, playing mentor and teacher, playing wisdom itself, laying his own conception of life heavy-handedly onto the younger one. It was just so very hypocritical, besides the fact that I didn’t care at all for the way he wrote. It annoyed me that with Rilke everything needed be so deep and meaningful. So potent, grave and so full of ache. I put that book aside, but then a few weeks went by and I thought I might try and give it another shot, if only for the sake of Annie. This time Letters made me feel so sick and mad that I ended up tearing the book in half. I mean, without thinking, taking it in my hands and tearing it along the spine, and more or less instantly any feeling of sickness and anger was gone. But now I had these two halves of a book, so I did what anyone would do and put them on a shelf, after which I thought about Annie. I thought about her and her being in love. I thought that maybe when it came to this book I had overreacted in a way. I had been hard on Rilke, and by extension, had been hard on my friend. But that was as much as I thought before I had to turn my attention to other things. Right at that moment, my own life was in the midst of being flipped and turned around. With Annie in Europe, I hadn’t been able to afford to keep the apartment, and so had to pack up my things. I took a few boxes that Annie had left behind and brought them to a friend’s for storage. But there was nowhere to store the piano.

  The piano belonged to Annie, so I asked her what she wanted done with it. At first I didn’t get any response, so I tried calling her parents. I thought that maybe because it had been a gift, they might have some idea of what I should do. I got her mother on the phone, but all she could say was that I ought to talk to Annie about it. I tried writing to Annie again, and this time she wrote me back, but still she forgot to say anything about the piano. Finally, it was almost the day when I had to leave, and still I didn’t know what to do. At the last moment I arranged to have the piano sold and used the money to pay off the last of our bills. I boarded a Greyhound bus and rode it inland overnight, over the mountains and into the flatland town where my mother lived.

  It had been a year since I’d left this town, and although my coming back was only meant to be temporary, it felt like I had failed at something. If I had managed to do better, I thought, if I had done things somehow differently, then I wouldn’t need to spend the summer at home.

  The town was smaller than I had remembered it. My mother’s house was smaller too. I felt like Alice in Wonderland when she winds up stuck in the rabbit’s house, afraid that if I moved too suddenly my limbs might burst out the windows or the door. At night I would walk through the house, moving slowly from room to room. I would stop along the way to study objects, each item so familiar, but also like something I remembered from a dream.

  Most nights I would need to leave the house. At one or two o’clock in the morning I would go out through the patio door, quietly easing it shut behind me, always careful not to wake up my mom. I didn’t have any reason to be sneaking out, I just didn’t want to explain myself, to answer questions about where I was going or what I was doing and why whatever I was doing needed to be done at such an unusual hour.

  On those nights I would walk to the river, find a bench to sit on and roll a joint. I would drink a cup of tea at the coffee shop on the highway, which was open all night. Sometimes I would wander streets at random, going up and down, past houses, parks and the landmarks of my youth. Every place I went was quiet. The town was calm, vacant, so I felt as if I were walking on a stage. Everywhere was lit artificially, the streetlights bearing onto summer leaves, the shadows cast like puddles that I went stepping in and out of.

  Pretty soon the days began to resemble one another. I realized I didn’t have any friends. Most of the people I’d known here had by now left and hadn’t returned, and all those who remained had become disconnected socially. That, at least, was my impression of things. But the truth is I didn’t really make any effort. I wasn’t looking to find anyone. After all, sleeping
all day and walking through town every night stoned wasn’t a life that I wanted to share with anyone. I wasn’t looking for company. I was more or less killing time.

  The problem was of writing to Annie. It was a problem because multiple times every week she would send me a description of where she had been, and her emails were full of feeling and inspiration. But what could I offer her in return? What could I give to her? What did I have?

  One night I thought I must be losing my mind, being certain I heard the wind calling out my name. At the time, I was near the high school, passing through the fields out back when I heard it. I turned this way and that, looked all around, but there was no one there. I strained my ears and thought, Oh shit, because there it was again. After what felt like a long time of standing like a duck in the field, I spotted someone in the distance. Whoever it was was waving their arms in the air, trying to get my attention. This person was on the bleachers by the baseball diamond, and as I started in that direction, he started toward me. Only when we were close did I realize it was Paul, someone I had known in high school.

  First he asked what I was doing out here. I said that I could ask him the same thing. Instead of answering, Paul started to laugh.

  I’ve seen you lately out and about. At first I wasn’t sure it was you, but nobody else I know ever walked like that, said Paul.

  Walked like that? What is that supposed to mean? I asked.

  Paul just laughed again.

  Paul and I dated, but our relationship had been a mistake. We weren’t friends before we dated, so it was never clear if we even liked each other that much. We used to argue all the time about stupid things, and we never spent any time alone. I felt like he was dragging me out just to parade me in front of his friends, though not because he thought I was beautiful or pretty, or even nice, but to show them that here was a girl who would follow him, who would go wherever he wanted to go and do what he wanted to do. Since then though, something had changed in him. Something had softened. He looked tired, but he was smiling.

  We left the field behind the school and wound up walking together, wandering until we found a picnic table in a park where we sat and rolled a joint. After smoking, Paul told me a little about his life. He said he had started working in his uncle’s automotive shop. He was only an apprentice so he did a lot of menial work, things like rotating tires and changing oil, filters and fluids. He told me that at night he didn’t get much sleep. When he got home from work he’d typically smoke a bowl and have something to eat, then he’d lie on the couch for a while and try not to think about anything.

  I asked, What do you wind up thinking about?

  I think about all fucking kinds of things, Paul replied.

  So it doesn’t work? I asked.

  What doesn’t work? It’s all the same. Nothing, everything. The problem is that I can’t help going out at night, driving all around, moving in circles with circular people. Everybody’s always getting drunk and high, and the next thing I know it’s five in the morning and the birds are out making a racket. I’m lying in bed, but I can’t get to sleep. That’s when I start to feel sick. I panic and I wonder how I’m going to do it again and again and again. I mean, if I really can’t sleep, what’ll I do tomorrow, and then tomorrow after that? How can I get through it? Where’s the end of it? How can I function? It’s pretty miserable, and that is by far the worst part of my day.

  What’s the best part of your day? I asked.

  The best is when I do get to sleep, when for an hour or two I get to be totally wiped off the face of the Earth. I don’t dream about anything. I don’t see anything, hear anything. I don’t think. I don’t even feel anything.

  I laughed. I’m sorry, I said. I know I’m not supposed to laugh.

  It’s fine, said Paul. I get it.

  We stayed in the park until Paul said he had to go. I went home but was too stoned to sleep. For a while I lay in bed and, while watching the daylight grow at the window, thought about the difference between nothing and everything.

  When the sun came up, I was still awake and finally felt like I might have something to say, something worthwhile to write about, so I got out of bed and went straight to the computer room, but by the time I turned the computer on, waited while it booted and opened my email, I had lost whatever it was. I had wanted to write something about Paul, to tell Annie what it had been like running into him, and what it had been like to have dated him, and what it had been like to have grown up in this place, and what it was like to be back. But now, I figured, what was the point? I challenged myself for a moment to vividly remember something of my childhood, to remember really anything, but it all felt jumbled and blurred. What was any person’s history worth, I thought, if poorly depicted and poorly defined?

  Annie had now returned from Europe, but instead of going back to the city, she had taken a job at a fishing resort located someplace north, up the coast. She told me it was isolated, lonely, remote, by which she meant to say it was beautiful. Her job consisted of helping the mostly wealthy visitors of the resort as they entered their boats in the morning. She loaded their tackle and coolers, their rods and reels. Her shift began at five in the morning and she would push them off into the mists. Annie described herself as standing on the docks in her Cowichan sweater, wrapped up and bundled against the cold. Later, the sun would rise over the bay and dispel the mists, shortly after which the boats would start to make their ways back in. Annie would catch their ropes, tie their knots, help the boaters and their gear ashore. Then, once everyone was off the water, Annie’s shift was over. She was usually off in time to catch brunch at the bistro, she explained, and for the rest of the day she was free.

  I feel happy, Annie wrote. I’ve been reading lots and writing some too. I’ve met all kinds of people. Some are guests who have come and gone, others stay longer, mostly other staff members.

  In one of her emails Annie mentioned the name of Elliot Lamn. She put it like this: Elliot’s here.

  Elliot was a cook at the resort, but he was also a student at the university. Last spring I’d seen him on campus and pointed him out to her several times. I’d said: He’s over there, the one with the black hair, the round face, and when he smiles you see his teeth.

  He’s got teeth like a woman, Annie said. He’s got little round teeth like a woman.

  I told her I was in love with him.

  For a while I was seeing him everywhere, all over campus, wherever I looked. He’d be standing in front of the library or sitting by the fountain reading a book. He was waiting in line at the sub or standing at a bus stop talking with a friend. He even turned up in my Intro to Anthropology class. It was a lecture class with a large number of students. I always sat a few rows behind Elliot, off to one side, but I never spoke to him. I never even came close. It was only through a mutual friend that I learned his name.

  Now Annie was writing, Elliot’s here. Saying, Elliot and I have become friends. Telling me that at the end of his shift they would sometimes meet one another in the banquet hall. The place would be dark and deserted. They would lie on top of tables and talk, looking at the ceiling. Apparently this resort was near the place where Elliot had grown up. Annie wrote that his parents still lived in a cottage somewhere nearby and that he’d told her he would take her there, some weekend soon, and that they would walk in his mother’s garden and spin records in his father’s den. Annie wrote, I’ve told him everything about you, and as you can imagine, he’s very intrigued.

  According to another one of her emails, this resort and the whole of the northwest coast was a place of both beauty and of significance. Annie wrote, You can’t help feeling the weight of it. The way the hours progress, or fall, or crash like waves against the rocks. Whenever it rains here, there’s a deluge and it isn’t possible to be outside so everyone gathers together, all the visitors, all the staff. We sit in the bistro or the lobby bar. We eat, drink, sit and talk, play cards and other games. And then it’s like worlds have collided. You realize that e
veryone here has found their way through wit and happenstance to this place. To be sitting here, most of us far from home… Every so often though, each of us peels ourselves away from the group. We see out the windows, through the curtain of rain. We look and see the great, grey, dismal, desperate sea and we are practically broken then, each of us. We are temporarily crushed. But always we return, we come back to the room, back to the food, the drink and the din. We come back to the voices, back to the faces, back to the others around the table.

  From my seat at the computer, I turned to look out the window, but since it was dark, I only saw a wane reflection of myself against the glass. Now it was time for me to write, but I struggled, wondering what I should say.

  Dear Annie,

  I figured out recently that if instead of walking in circles I decided to walk in a continuous, straight line, and that if I only kept walking indefinitely, I might make it out to the ends of the Earth. I mean, I know you really can’t walk to the ends of the Earth, but what I realized is that life could be as simple as a march down the length of a singular road. You just walk until you can’t anymore. You walk until you die.

  As for me, I’m too scared to try it. I go out, but I stay within the limits of town. I always eventually turn around, go home and get back into bed. And then inevitably it’s already morning. And the sky is already turning blue. And I can’t get to sleep for the birds…

  2.

  For the next school year, Annie and I found a different place to rent. This place was a house, a big old house, so big in fact that it made us laugh. There was so much more space than we would ever need, more than we would ever be able to use. There were four bedrooms, a kitchen, dining and living rooms, even a basement downstairs and a sprawling yard out the back. We could have had roommates, other friends, but we decided to keep it all to ourselves. It was a kind of luxury, and one we could afford because the house was cheap. It was cheap because it was a little run down and out of the way, standing at the end of a long road full of farms and fields, all set against the edge of the woods.