Kimberlee Conway Ireton

When I got home from school the Monday after the funerals and went into my bedroom, the first thing I saw was the bouquet on my pillow. Fourteen pink and white roses—one for each year of my life—several sprigs of lavender, and a single purple hyacinth tied with a sheer ribbon that flapped in time to the whir of the ceiling fan. I stared at it and all I could think was it must have taken him an hour to tie that ribbon. I felt chilled, in spite of the heat.

“Grandpa?” I called. No answer. I checked his room, in case he was napping. He wasn’t.

I went out to the shop. “Grandpa?” He wasn’t there either, and his station wagon wasn’t in the driveway.

I walked back into the house and went to Mama’s room to use the phone on her nightstand. As I picked up the receiver, I saw the bouquet that he’d made for her, lying in the center of her bed. Lisianthus—her namesake flowers—tied with a white ribbon. And a purple hyacinth. My fingers felt cold and clumsy as I dialed Mama’s work number.

“Grandpa’s not here,” I told her.

“He’s probably doing a delivery, sweetheart.” She had the phone sandwiched between her ear and her shoulder, I could just tell, and was doing something else, maybe licking stamps or envelopes.

I didn’t tell her about the bouquets, just as I hadn’t told her about the wreath. “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

***

Rose, white (Rosa alba). Innocence, purity of devotion.

The week before, we’d had huge orders for three funerals. I’d snapped off thorns and wired roses after school each day till my fingers cramped. Grandpa hadn’t been able to manage the wiring for a couple of years now, his arthritis had swollen his fingers that much.

By Friday, small cuts lacerated my fingers and palms, and my joints ached. I rummaged around in Grandpa’s corner cupboard to try to find the stem strippers I knew were in there somewhere. When I was seven or so, I’d found a small metal tool shaped like a V with little claws on the open end. “What’s this?” I’d asked him.

He’d glanced up from the tulips he was arranging. “Stem strippers.”

I clicked the little claws together. “What are they for?”

“Some people use them to strip the leaves off flowers, mostly they’re for roses.” He took a red rose from a bucket and held out his hand to me. I placed the strippers in his palm. He wrapped the claws around the top of the rose stem and pulled the strippers all the way down to the bottom. In half a second, all the leaves and thorns fell to the floor.

“Wow!” I said.

“Yes.” He handed the rose to me. “But see this?”

I looked closely at the stem. There were little cuts and tears all along it. Bits of the rose’s skin hung along the edges of the rips. When I touched it, the delicate stem felt rough where it was torn. Grandpa shook his head. “I refuse to treat my flowers like that.”

Now, as I rifled through the cupboard, I figured my bleeding hands could use a break, but when I found the stem strippers, I felt Grandpa’s eyes on me as he artfully placed roses and eucalyptus in a tall thin vase. I put the strippers back and picked up my knife.

***

Lavender (Lavendula spica). Constancy.

It was nearly one o’clock on Saturday by the time we finished the wreaths and arrangements and loaded up Grandpa’s ancient station wagon.

“A pill, please, Rosie,” Grandpa said when we were through, and I ran into the house and grabbed another pain pill for him—he’d been on his feet since seven, and even though Mama had told me over and over that I shouldn’t let him take more pills than he was supposed to, I couldn’t stand to see him in pain. I grabbed a box of Wheat Thins, too, which we munched on while he drove to Bailey-Stokes.
We delivered all the family pieces—a casket spray, a wreath, two urn pieces, a standing spray, and a floral rosary—plus 15 condolence bouquets, an insane number that I had grumbled about all week. Then Grandpa headed home and we loaded up the car again before going over to Green Lawn.

I noticed as I hustled back and forth between the station wagon and the funeral home lobby, carrying in the family pieces and the four other arrangements, that Grandpa was moving awfully slow, even for him. I made five trips in the time he made one.

When we got back into the car, he leaned his head on the headrest for a moment before he started the engine. He closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and pushed in the clutch. Shifting gears was so painful for him, he’d nearly always grimace. Sometimes, he’d even make a low moaning sound, which I pretended not to hear. I sat in the passenger’s seat, mindlessly eating Wheat Thins, and tried not to look at Grandpa when he had to push in the clutch.

***

Lisianthus (Eustoma grandiflorum). My thoughts are with you always.

“Isn’t he home yet?” Mama said as she passed through the dining room to the hallway.

I sat at the table, Richard III open in front of me, and pretended to be doing my English homework.

A minute later, she came back out in her stockings, with her blouse half unbuttoned. She held her bouquet in her hand. “What’s with the flowers? It’s not my birthday.”

I tried to focus on the words in front of me.

“What’s the hyacinth mean?”

I said nothing.

“Rosie?”

I kept my head down, pretending to read.

I could feel Mama’s eyes on me for several moments before she opened the glass door to the bookshelves that lined the dining room. I did not have to look up to know which book she was grabbing. Flowers and their Meanings was dog-eared, its spine broken, pages spilling out. I’d read it so many times I nearly had it memorized. Mama set it on the table across from me and thumbed through it. I watched her face as she found what she was looking for: Hyacinth, purple.

She stared at the page for a long moment, her eyebrows drawn together, as if she were trying to solve a riddle. Then her lips flattened into a line, she sucked in a sharp breath through her nose, and her eyes filled with tears.

I looked back at my book.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice cracked. “When you called this afternoon?”

I did not look at her.

She turned and fled down the hall to her bedroom. I could hear her weeping. I read the rest of Act 1, understanding none of it.

When Mama quieted, I went to her room and stood in the doorway. “We should go look for him.”

She shook her head.

“Maybe he went to the church. Or to visit Uncle Henry. Or—”

“Rosie,” she said, and her voice was gentle and thick with tears, “he’s not at the church or at Uncle Henry’s, or anywhere else.” She gestured to the bouquet. “Don’t you see? He’s said good-bye in the only way he knows how.” She started to cry again.

I turned away and went to the living room. She was wrong. He loved me. He would not treat me like this. I took a photo of him out of a frame on the sideboard and taped it to a piece of binder paper. Underneath the picture I wrote in black Sharpie: “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? PLEASE CALL…”

Mama said there was no reason to put up posters, but when I said I’d walk to the library if she wouldn’t take me, she drove me the mile and a half, and I made a hundred copies and plastered them on every light post in town. His soft eyes and shy smile looked down on me, every time, like a benediction. My chest ached.

When I got home, it was dark. I watered and deadheaded the flowers on the steps and the porch. Grandpa would want to see them healthy and thriving when he got back from wherever he’d gone.

I went around the house to water the pots on the back patio. The hose on the west wall of the shop was gone. I retraced my steps across the patio, tripping over a bistro chair and skinning my palms, got the hose from the front yard, and dragged it around back. I did not tell Mama.

On Tuesday, she filed a missing person’s report.

On Wednesday, I put up more posters.

On Thursday, the phone rang.

***

Rose, pink (Rosa). I love you still and always will.

Even with the AC on, the air in the station wagon was wilting hot. “How can you stand it?” I asked Grandpa as I fiddled with the vents. He wore black dress pants, a white button-front shirt with a t-shirt underneath, and black dress shoes, his standard dress code for a funeral delivery.

He said, “It’s important to show respect for the dead.”

My shorts stuck to my thighs, and sweat seeped from under my bra, dripping down my stomach. I rubbed it away with my tank top. I said, “It’s too hot to show respect for the dead.”

He didn’t smile, but I could tell he wanted to.

At Clayton and Sons, our last stop, thank God, I hustled around to the back of the station wagon and grabbed the casket spray before Grandpa could. I wasn’t sure he’d be able to carry it all the way into the chapel. He lifted out the wreath—the largest of the three I’d made; it probably weighed 30 pounds. The roses and lilies on it were the same color as his shirt, except where pools of sweat had made dark rings under his arms. He was limping pretty bad.

I carried in the casket spray and went back for the other arrangements, three more roundtrips between the station wagon and the chapel. When I took out the last bouquet, I closed the station wagon’s hatch and headed back to help Grandpa with the wreath.

He was only halfway up the chapel’s center aisle, moving so slowly. As I stepped through the door, I saw his right leg buckle under him. He dropped the wreath, the sole of his left shoe clacking on the masch frame as he lurched forward and sideways and fell against the back of the nearest pew. He hung there for a moment, his body draped over the pew back; then he lowered himself into the pew behind him, his legs in the aisle, and stared at the wreath.

It lay on the floor, face down.

My heart felt like it had been sucked into my throat the way a cut flower sucks up water. I coughed. Grandpa looked up, his face anguished.

I hurried down the aisle. “Are you okay?” I knelt beside him.

He waved a hand over the wreath. I picked it up and turned it over. The lily petals were bent and broken, roses lay scattered and smashed on the crimson carpet, and bits of crumbled floral foam were ground into the rug.

Grandpa closed his eyes and turned his face away. “I destroyed all your hard work.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “We can fix it.” But the wreath was not salvageable, and we both knew it.

He grasped the side of the pew next to him and heaved himself to his feet.

“It could have happened to anyone,” I said.

He limped slowly out of the room.

***

Hyacinth, purple (Hyacinthus orientalis). I am sorry. Please forgive me.

After she got the phone call, Mama came out to the shop, where I was arranging 50 white roses for a golden anniversary celebration. “Rosie,” she said. I did not look up. For a moment the only sound was the soft snap, snap, snap as I broke the thorns and lower leaves off a rose. Her voice was quiet when she told me.

A farmer had discovered a station wagon in his almond orchard. A garden hose ran from the tailpipe into the driver’s window.

My heart split right down its stem, and for the first time that week, I cried. Mama didn’t say anything, just held me for a long time, as my tears spilled out.

Even after I stopped crying, she held me. I let her. I leaned against her shoulder and stared into the corner of the shop, at Grandpa’s cupboard. A jagged ache scraped in my chest.

Finally, I pulled away from Mama and wiped my eyes on the hem of my t-shirt. “I want to finish this,” I said and turned back to the workbench.

As Mama left, I picked a white rose out of the bucket. I looked at it a long time. Then I picked up my knife, and carefully cut off the rest of the thorns.