Red Roses. One dozen in a blue glass pitcher. Is this where the story begins? She slits apart the slender white box with a knife and finds her prize, nestled within waxed green tissue paper. For me? The only gift of twelve long stemmed red roses from a florist she’s ever received in her entire life. The tag says Garnet roses.
Before she reads the card, she knows what they mean. Red is for passion. Pink, sweetness and joy. Yellow means friendship. White is purity. Red roses, in the language of flowers, convey love. A man sends you a dozen long stemmed roses to declare his devotion. Get ready for the proposal.
She removes the roses to arrange and remembers the time they drove up to the hot springs, Joni Mitchell singing “Help Me” on the radio, when he grabbed her hand. The heady sensation of letting go. Was it then that she knew? Trust. Love’s anchor. Everyone around the muddy pool removing their clothes. Sitting in warm silky water, inhaling the sulfur smell and knowing he had eyes only for her.
Or was it earlier, their first date, walking along the waterfront when the wind blew a strand of her hair across her face and he brushed it away. Gently. Tucked it behind her ear. An intimate gesture. Not lovers yet, she leaned forward hoping he’d kiss her. How much she’d wanted him, the person she’d conjured in her fantasies right down to the aroma of his skin, a hint of musk.
She finds his rich and subtle scent at the fragrance counter. The most expensive brand sold at Macy’s. For work he wears dark khakis and sports jackets. She cooks him dinners and mends his jeans. There is a hole in the knee. He is still paying off student loans. She irons his shirts.
The roses arrive while she is visiting her parents for a month three thousand miles away. The card says, “I miss you.” Looking up at the stars at night, she wonders if they look the same here at the lake in Maine as they do in California. He has never traveled east. Absence does make the heart grow fonder, she tells herself.
Such rich colors. She snaps a photograph of the garnet roses in the cobalt blue pitcher to remember the moment. She will leave the flowers behind for her parents to enjoy.
He is late to pick her up at the airport. It’s confusing. Taking the Red Eye, too excited to sleep, she recalls the year she went home for Christmas and when she’d returned, he’d grown a beard. Gotten a new roommate at his apartment, a woman who slept on the couch. Sometimes this friend slept in his bed, a friend from childhood. “Don’t worry. It’s platonic,” he’d told her. Skeptical, she tries to believe him, tries an open relationship, dates other men.
To show her independence, she meets someone nice, a biologist who smells faintly of the chemicals used in the lab to wash petri dishes. Takes belly dancing lessons with her friend Ingrid and is invited to a coffee house to perform.
He gets jealous. The childhood friend leaves his apartment. They make love eleven times in one weekend. He serves her breakfast in bed.
He is pulled under by a wave while surfboarding. He goes straight to her apartment. Standing outside the door, still in his wetsuit, he reminds her of tall sleek seal with a man’s face. “I almost died,” he says.
I can’t live without you, she thinks.
He is often late for their dates. No surprise that despite those beautiful red roses he is late meeting her flight. He makes no room reservations. They will go camping. “Didn’t you always want to go camping?”
She hears the sounds of the highway. No tent. Little privacy. He tries to teach her how to drive his van, work a gearshift. “Didn’t you always want to learn standard transmission?” She is nervous as she remembers all those other times she’s been unhappy. Their cross country ski trip. His familiarity with the terrain. Speed gliding down trails while she struggled to keep up. His confidence in making friends. In the dining hall she sees him flirting with the redheaded waitress and remembers she has been hearing another woman’s name too many times in their conversations. Carla.
It was Carla who showed up on her birthday to his apartment to drop off some documents and to talk. “We’ll just be a few minutes,” he says. Another woman on her birthday. It is with Carla the new administrator in the mayor’s office where he works, with whom he’ll have lunch. Just a friend.
She thinks of the roses. Long stemmed roses. Sitting in the center of the dining room table. The way they opened gradually, their scent filling the room. The way she felt so safe, secure in falling for him, thinking this is the one. He’ll take care of me and I’ll take care of him. This is love. Trust me.
The photograph she took of the roses, she keeps, frames and exhibits. An image to contemplate each time she tries to remember what it was like to be so innocent and trusting. Opening her heart. Vulnerable.
Did she know? This is where the story ends. A break up shortly after her return. Another woman’s panties underneath his bed. A premonition. Scratched by a thorn, she studies the dark drop of blood on her finger, red like the roses. Beautiful roses. One dozen she arranges in a blue glass pitcher.
