Dead Flowers

From "Love Letters," Stories V!
by Scott McClanahan

"Sarah,
This isn't the cheapo $5 bouquet either. This is the real deal $10 one. Please love me. I'll make it worth your while in the long run.
-Bubbies"

Do we all remember playing those games? He loves me, he loves me not... I remember playing in the front yard in grade school, pulling the petal leaves one by one from the flowerhead. Daisies seem ideal for this game--I mean the Anthemis 'Sauce Hollandaise.' The classic daisy--long white petals stemming from the golden center disc. They're perfect for the game. They possess enough petals to make it interesting, keep our attention--irises and lilies have too few petals, the game ends as soon as it begins--yet, there are not too many that we cannot still eye the count to manipulate the outcome. With daisies, it's a rigged score as they say. Tulips and roses with their folded petals involve too much risk, and roses have thorns.
Neil Young taught me my flowers and ways in love when he sang
Love is a rose, but you better not pick it.
It only grows when it's on the vine.
A hand full of thorns, and you'll know you've missed it.
You lose your love when you say the word 'mine.'

But daisies can be dangerous too, especially when one gives them in all sincerity.

I never liked the idea of giving flowers to a girl. It always seemed so cliche and worn out like the guy who's messed up and now thinks it's going to be all sweet and rosy again once he hands over the stupid boquet tucked beneath his arm. Even worse is the valentine, dumbly waiting beyond the front door, stupid grin and, of course, red roses and red heart-shaped box of chocolates in his hands. I cringed at the lack of originality, and I doubted myself when I first decided that I would give the gift of love in some fresh-cut stems wrapped in cellophane. It sounds so suffocating.

Of course, her favorite as she told me was the white daisy with the golden center. I looked up the local florists to see where I could get a deal. April's Florist set me up with a nice vase, an arrangement of white daisies with accent foliage, and a pretty bow to seal the deal and show how much I cared. I felt stupid walking from the florist shop to the bus stop, carrying my sign of love. I felt even more stupid when a coworker saw me at the stop and asked, "Who are the flowers for?"
"April," I embarrassedly answered, looking at my feet. And yes, I bought flowers from April's Florist for my girlfriend April.
She cooed annoyingly, and I could feel my temples reddening. My eyes refusing to meet hers.
She continued," Is it her birthday?"
I shook my head "no."
"Are you going on a date tonight?"
I shook my head "no."
"Is something special going on?"
Again, I shook my head "no."
She cooed and awwed. I thought maybe this is a good thing as I stepped onto the bus.

At the time it did turn out to be a good thing, and I probably scored some points that day in this rigged game, but I forgot to count the number of petals when I started. I ended up surprised in the end, when I pulled that final leaf on a "love me not." Like all good perennials, the daisies came back for a couple of years, until I finally uprooted them for good. Since then, there have been plenty of bouquets, plenty of vases, only a couple of bows, but none of them seemed as real or sincere as that first. I'm not much of a flower guy--hardly any grew in my garden last summer while the vegetables and fruits thrived. Perhaps, it's because I find them deceiving. They look so dazzling and alluring above ground, but beneath, the roots are battling, strangling one another in a brutal struggle for survival against their own as well as the invading weeds. We give flowers to show our love for one another, but in order to do this, we must cut the flowers--kill them essentially, and to preserve them longer and longer, we continue to make that angular cut, allowing a new part of the stem access to the water, which often contains a preservative. The most common preservative is sugar. The sucrose provides sustenance, but what it really does, for me, is provide a sugar-coating in the way that we often use weak gestures like flower boquets to apologize for or symbolize something that we should be communicating much more effectively.

Maybe love is a flower, and those cuts are the things of relationships and life. The sturdier will survive and continue, perhaps reach more brilliant colors and greater fruits than any other. But maybe, in the end, all love eventually dies with our flowers, the sugar coating trying its best to prevent the inevitable only as long as its sweetness can.



Day 9, who's counting...