Pressed Flowers

Five years in, Kelsey was still astonished at the dryness of Texas soil come August. You could soak it with a hose twice in a ten-hour span and you’d still wake to find it parched or even cracking the next morning. Still, she and the garden did their dance every new day: drench the soil, prune the flowers, pluck the tomatoes from their sprawling vines. Every few days she had the grim privilege of crushing a parasitic worm between her bare fingers, just to shake things up.

Always, she rose with the sun to replenish the garden and stalked back through at dusk to check that her care hadn’t been undone while she was away at work. Some nights, she woke from horrid hallucinations of her leafy progeny, besieged by locusts and withering to dust just out of her reach. The whole process left her emotionally and physically exhausted.

She loved it. If she didn’t she wouldn’t have found herself, soaked in sweat and sprawled on hands and knees, in the garden at high noon in the third trimester of pregnancy.

There’s a busyness that seeps into us all -- invited or unbidden -- when our ill-equipped bodies long to do the work our minds reject. Kelsey knew this busyness was her lot, and she intended to maintain it until her swelling belly and sore joints prevented her from crouching beside the plants. At that point, it would be up to her husband. God help those poor seedlings.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” she whispered, tapping the petals of her favorite marigold. “But I should warn you that I don’t always get the final say.”

She groped blindly at the ground beneath her stomach, seizing a faded pair of sheers just before crashing into an undignified sitting position. The brim of her hat flopped lazily in the breeze as she worked, teasing her with half-hearted promises of comfort. She pushed her damp bangs back into the fold of the hat, not caring about the dirt that tracked across her temples in the process. The work was almost done, and the time for caution had long since passed.

With the flowers trimmed and their most choice blossoms clutched in her fist, Kelsey shoved herself back onto her feet. She half-skipped her way inside, grateful for the rush of cold air that fell over her at the threshold. Together with running water, Air Conditioning had to be the thing for which she was most grateful after a long day in the yard. She knew, because she forced herself to count them every week.

She gave thanks for the cold water as it splashed against her angry skin, then again for the hot version as she sat on the shower floor and let the dirt swirl away. She thanked the ceiling fan for its undying spirit as she lay beneath it in her underwear, her skin prickling in the wake of the blades. The accidental nap that followed was a bonus.

The hum of the fan gave way to the buzzing of cicadas as reality crept away. Kelsey was back in the garden, but it was cool and aromatic. More so than it had ever been. A young girl, head full of bouncing blonde curls, shadowed her as she worked the soil. Here, there were no caterpillars or grubs. No thorns or weeds or parched earth. Just the bounty of the garden she had envisioned a thousand times but never quite nurtured. Her daughter reached out toward the marigolds, a devious grin on her face. Kelsey started to warn her, but it all fell away before she could call out a name.

The squeak of a door and the thump of boots welcomed Kelsey back to the bedroom. Ryan came through the door just as she blinked away the last memories of those golden ringlets and the precious face beneath them. His shirt clung to him, darkened by sweat that mingled with grass and hot polyester to produce his signature Saturday scent.

“Is it safe to mow?” he shouted over the sound of his headphones.

“Yeah, I’m done.”

“Cool. Give me an hour and then we can grab lunch?”

“Sounds good.”

She busied herself again, dumping clothes into the washing machine and starting a grocery list as the mower droned in the background. It buzzed back and forth in the distance, muffled by the walls but never quite hidden. Kelsey did her best to fill the time: sweeping and scrubbing and waiting for the waiting to stop. Eventually, she swept through the house in search of her Kindle, pausing to soak in the silence of the empty room across from theirs. Entranced, she settled into a lonely rocking chair beside the window and leafed through a photo album on the stand beside it.

By now, she had memorized the outline of the sonogram on Page 1. She traced over it again, fingers lingering on the tiny head that should have borne those immaculate curls. Let her fingers slide down the page to the first pressed marigolds she had taped in place years ago. Turned the pages that marked each passing season with new flowers but no photos. Her hands settled on her bulging stomach.

“You left these on the counter,” Ryan said, stepping into view with the marigold cuttings. “They look good this year. I think they’re coming back stronger than ever.”

“It’s a new plant,” Kelsey intoned. “Marigolds are annuals. They self-seed in the same spot.”

“Still beautiful.”

“Yes, but not the same.”

“No,” he said. “Not the same. Not better. Not worse. Never the same.”

He pressed the cuttings into her hand and closed her fingers around them. Kissed her knuckles before retreating to the shower. Kelsey dropped the flowers into the spine of the album as water hissed through aging pipes in the distance, but she couldn’t bring herself to snap the book shut. She left it there, blank pages staring down the ceiling, vibrant flowers budding from its heart.