nothing is more certain than the flower...
by Velma
~.~
They catch his eye at the supermarket, little bunches in a basket, 2 for $10, and before Chris realizes what he’s doing he’s grabbed a couple, put them in his cart, and pressed on. He doesn’t think about it much.
Daffodils were his grandma’s favorite flower. He can remember how his mother always made a point of bringing them to the house when they visited. It didn’t matter how tight money was, she’d always splurge and buy a bunch or two. His grandma’s eyes would light up and she’d fuss over them, get a glass and tuck them inside and wink at Chris while she dropped a penny or two into the water.
“Keeps ‘em alive,” she’d say, smiling. “The copper. It’s like magic for the flowers.”
Years and years later, when Chris went back to Pennsylvania to visit, he’d bring them by the dozen. Her mind was failing by then, her body wrecked from years of hard work. Sometimes she wouldn’t know his face, not at first, but she always knew the flowers.
“You brought me sunshine,” she’d grin, and her hand, soft and rough all at once, would close over his and squeeze. “Did you know daffodils are little rays of sunshine you can take with you?”
He’d nod and smile and find vases to put them in, amuse her with silly coin tricks he learned after months spent on buses, making a penny disappear and reappear. She’d ooh and ahh before pursing her lips in confusion as he dropped it into the water, watching it settle at the bottom of the clear glass. “The real magic is the copper,” he’d say as she looked to him for explanation. “Makes the flowers last longer.” There’d be a flicker of recognition in her eyes, in the smile she’d give him, before she’d look away, then back at the flowers.
“Did you know daffodils are little pieces of sunshine?” she’d ask him and he would swallow, hard, before he nodded softly, lips quirking up gently. They’d sit together in silence until she noticed them again.
He doesn’t have anywhere to take the daffodils anymore, anyone to take them to, but he buys them anyway, fills his house with them. They are light, even when things are grey.
~.~
Russia was cold and bleak, a harder place than Lance thought it would be. Not just the training, which he expected to push him more than he’d imagined possible, but the land itself. He was from the South, Mississippi, Florida, and his body didn’t seem to get, even after weeks of exposure, what the country was about.
The financial situation made everything that much more desolate. He took to walking, as alone as he could be, with a bodyguard trailing him from a healthy distance, Freddy tucked away somewhere out of sight, and, for those few hours, out of mind. He used the time to try and push everything from his head, the money, the funders, the bottom line.
A door pushed open in front of him, a couple stepped out in a burst of warm air, and Lance stopped in his tracks. He looked to the door, to the greenhouse inside, and in the seconds before the door swung shut he thought he saw it. Creamy white with a tinge of pink, like the blossoms his mama always had on her bureau, fresh each day.
He opened the door and stepped inside, and it wasn’t the sudden warmth that overwhelmed him. It was the smell, fragrant and lush and home. Magnolias in Russia. He lowered his head and laughed at the lunacy of it, the idea that these things would find somewhere to grow and bloom in such an unfriendly place.
The buds were soft between his fingers, and if he closed his eyes he could imagine himself on the porch of his parents’ place in Clinton, on a warm summer night. Cicadas in the trees and his parents' laughter drifting out from inside and more stars than one could possibly imagine, blinking down at him from unbelievable heights.
That’s where it had started, on that front porch. And now he was going after the sky, out of his league and far away from everything that was familiar. Except for the stars. And, he thought, as he made his way to the counter and negotiated with the shopkeeper for weekly delivery, his mama’s magnolias.
~.~
JC’s family went camping a lot. There were more long summer weekends than he can count, the five of them piled into the van, destination not quite known. His dad would have someone pick a direction and they’d just take off and see where the road took them.
His dad was a lot more of a romantic than JC gave him credit for.
He loved the way the road felt under him, the way the land stretched out on all sides, seemingly endless. His mom always collected random knickknacks, postcards from gas stations they stopped at along the way. Eventually they’d end up in a scrapbook back home. There was one for every year, filled with the places they’d gone, the things they’d seen, interwoven with other big events of the year.
Summer to summer they’d stretch, not calendar year, and what struck JC most was when he opened them, little bits of dried flowers would fall out on his lap, crumble into dust as he reached to brush them away. His father would always find some deserted back road and pull over, see, the five of them tumbling out and stretching and wandering into the grass of the wayside. Wildflowers as far as the eye could see, sometimes high enough off the ground that he’d lose sight of TJ and Heather as they ran through the brush.
While his brother and sister burned off energy, he’d join his mom, scooping up periwinkle and black-eyed susans, forget-me-nots and bellflowers. She showed him how to dry them, folding them between blank pages in the scrapbook later, dim reminders of fields full of color.
Years later, as the tour bus streaked across highway after highway, JC would think back to those summers as he watched the landscape fly by. Sometimes, if they were running ahead of schedule, he’d talk the bus driver into stopping so he could take a closer look. Often he’d return to the bus with a handful, flowers he’d carefully press and dry and send to his mom.
~.~
Justin had a thing for lilies. He was never sure how it started, except he remembered Easter Sundays, dressed in his finest, pressed into a seat between his mom and Paul, every open space around the altar covered with them, the air in the church thick with their perfume.
They were flowers that made an impression. They lasted. Their aroma lingered long after they were gone, and he kind of liked that.
The first flowers he ever bought for a girl were lilies. A single one, actually, for Britney, back when a few dollars for a flower seemed like an enormous sum of money. He was just a kid, and he had no idea what he was doing. She’d giggled and smiled, though, and eventually she took to wearing a perfume that echoed its scent.
He’d send her lilies, when he was on the road, great big vases of them. It was never really a romantic gesture, so much as something he liked to do. Tiger lilies and calla lilies and cascade lilies, bright vibrant colors that looked beautiful against the gold of her skin.
He lost his taste for lilies in a club one night. He was out with Trace, waiting for Britney and her posse to join them, when Wade arrived, a little rumpled, grinning widely as he bumped shoulders with Justin. The club was loud, noisy, and Justin couldn’t hear what Wade was saying so he leaned in close, Wade’s mouth next to his ear when it hit him.
Cloying this time, heavy and strong and Wade reeked of it.
He still keeps a vase in his house, stark white blossoms that sit in the foyer. A reminder more than anything, of who he can and cannot trust.
~.~
Joey’s mom told him once, on his way out on a date, a bouquet of daisies shoved under an arm, that the flowers symbolized innocence and purity. It was an offhand remark, made less so when Steve cut in with a jibe at how inappropriate they were, given Joey was trying to get lucky with Maria Catalano. Which was true, but that didn’t stop Joey from smacking him hard before he left for the night.
Turned out the daisies were more appropriate than he’d thought, given that Maria didn’t put out.
The sentiment stuck with him, though, came back to him at odd moments in his life. When he found himself standing in the hospital gift shop, trying vainly to figure out what kind of flowers to get Kelly after Briahna was born, his eyes kept returning again and again to the daisies stuck in the back corner, tucked behind more popular flowers.
He ended up getting Kelly some mishmashed assortment, something fancy and colorful, while he bought a smaller bunch of daisies for the little girl who wasn’t old enough to even recognize them yet. His little girl. He ended up having some painted into the mural on her wall he liked them so much.
Daisies were sturdy, solid, the kind of flower you didn’t always notice but was immediately familiar. He liked that, too.
He’d bring bunches home a couple nights a week, and Kelly would roll her eyes and smile indulgently, which Joey appreciated. The best thing, though, by far, was once Bri was old enough to know what they were, she’d come tearing across the floor and grab for them, clutch them close to her chest and shower his face with kisses. She called the daisies the sun, and the way they made her face light up, he didn’t have the heart to correct her.
-fin-
(with many, many thanks to halo for the beautiful graphics)
