two-story white farmhouse sits on the back of the property.
The driveway is crowded with trucks and cars, and I can hear the laughter
from inside. I wonder what would happen if I just walked in and sat down and
made myself at home. I go up to the front door and knock.
I am breathing
hard, and I should have waited to knock so I could catch my breath, but
No
, I
think,
I’m in too much of a hurry
. I knock again, louder this time.
A woman with white hair and the soft, round face of a dumpling answers,
still laughing from the conversation she left. She squints at me through the
screen, and then opens it because we’re in the country and this is Indiana and
there is nothing to fear from our neighbors. It’s one of the things I like about
living here, and I want to hug her for the warm but confused smile she wears
as she tries to figure out if she’s seen me before.
“Hello there,” I say.
“Hello,” she says. I can imagine what I must look like,
red face, no coat,
sweating and panting and gasping for air.
I compose myself as fast as I can. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m on my
way home and I just happened to pass your nursery. I know you’re closed and
you have company, but I wonder if I could pick out a few flowers for my
girlfriend. It’s kind of an emergency.”
Her face wrinkles with concern. “An emergency? Oh dear.”
“Maybe that’s
a strong word, and I’m sorry to alarm you. But winter is
here, and I don’t know where I’ll be by spring. And she’s named for a flower,
and her father hates me, and I want her to know that I’m thinking of her and
that this isn’t a season of death but one for living.”
A man walks up behind her, napkin still tucked into his shirt. “There you
are,” he says to the woman. “I wondered where you’d gone off to.” He nods
at me.
She says, “This young man is having an emergency.”
I explain myself all over again to him. She looks at him and he looks at me,
and then he calls to someone inside, telling them to stir the cider, and out he
comes, napkin blowing a little in the cold wind, and I walk beside him, hands
in my pockets, as we go to the nursery door and he pulls a janitor’s keychain
off his belt.
I
am talking a mile a minute, thanking him and telling him I’ll pay him
double, and even offering to send a picture of Violet with the flowers—maybe
violets—once I give them to her.
He lays a hand on my shoulder and says, “You don’t worry about that, son.
I want you to take what you need.”
Inside, I breathe in the sweet, living scent of the flowers. I want to stay in
here, where it’s warm and bright, surrounded by things that are living and not
dead. I want to move in with this good-hearted couple and have them call me
“son,” and Violet can live here too because there’s room enough for both of
166
us.
He helps me choose the brightest blooms—not just violets, but daisies and
roses and lilies and others I can’t remember the names of. Then he and his
wife,
whose name is Margaret Ann, wrap them in a refrigerated shipping
bucket, which will keep the flowers hydrated. I try to pay them, but they wave
my money away, and I promise to bring the bucket back as soon as I can.
By the time we’re done, their guests have gathered outside to see the boy
who must have flowers to give to the girl he loves.
The man, whose name is Henry, drives me back to my car. For some reason, I
expect it to take hours, but it only takes a few minutes to reach it. As we circle
back around to the other side of the road, where
Little Bastard sits looking
patient and abandoned, he says, “Six miles. Son, you ran all that way?”
“Yes, sir. I guess I did. I’m sorry to pull you away from dinner.”
“That’s no worry, young man. No worry at all. Is something wrong with
your car?”
“No, sir. It just didn’t go fast enough.”
He nods as if this makes
all the sense in the world, which it probably
doesn’t, and says, “You tell that girl of yours hello from us.
But you drive
back home, you hear?”
* * *
It’s after eleven when I reach her house, and I sit in Little Bastard for a while,
the windows rolled down, the engine off, smoking my last cigarette because
now that I’m here I don’t want to disturb her. The windows of the house are
lit up, and I know she is in there with her parents who love her but hate me,
and I don’t want to intrude.
But then she texts me, as if she knows where I am, and says,
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
