Last Day at the Flower House
Life’s become like someone else’s dream, I think sometimes when I wake and find Laddy not lying next to me. Old fool that I am, I’ll sometimes cry out Ladelle, before I forget she’s gone and I sold the bed and breakfast and I’ll probably go on waking up alone until the morning of the day I open my eyes for the last time. She should’ve retired, we both should’ve really retired instead of opening a bed and breakfast. What were we thinking? Neither one of us could cook or was too crisp a hand at housework. It was fun for a while though, I guess. It’s just hard to remember the good times. When I try to think back on happy moments, my mind backs right up over the most tragic thing that’s ever happened to me, back to the moment Nancy and Mark showed up at the door that afternoon. It was the off-season, which for us in that fledgling enterprise seemed to be about 48 weeks a year, so they were the only ones booked.
“Welcome to the Hyacinth House, hope you found us okay,” I said, still under the sway of my nap, which as a retiree was what I should’ve been doing all afternoon, not inviting a couple of kids in their 20’s into my home.
“We should be the ones apologizing, we’re a little early. Traffic was real light on Route 9. I’m Mark, this is Nancy,” the young man said, shaking my hand. Good firm shake on the kid, whatever it was worth. The further I got from my salesman days, the less it seemed to matter. He was lanky with almost white curly hair and big blue eyes with dark rings under them. He looked like an overgrown kid in need of a nap himself.
“I spoke to Laddy on the phone. I’m excited to meet her. She seems like such a great lady,” Nancy said, thin lips disappearing into a smile. She had dark hair, so straight it looked like she must’ve used a flat iron of the kind our Heather once favored. She was forever yelling at me not to unplug it. It seemed to always be heating up.
“Better set aside the afternoon once you get her talking,” I said. “Fair warning.”
I didn’t notice Laddy was late getting back until it was time to get dinner on. It was no big deal in the moment. She often got waylaid on those shopping excursions. Sometimes she’d let whatever the market had fresh inspire her and we’d add a course to the meal, if not change it entirely. Nowadays, I feel her presence most when I’m in the kitchen following her recipes, almost like she’s still there to boss me around. Sometimes, I’ll ask the air how I’m doing, but I’m not sentimental enough to expect an answer.
When the cops came and told me about the accident, whatever terrible cry I made got the kids out of their room. Seeing them coming down the stairs, one of the cops said it was good I had family around. No one corrected him. We just let him leave. Then, we all went to the kitchen table and sat down.
They hung their heads and didn’t say a word, only the clock had the nerve to be rude, reminding me with every tick about life going on, despite it having stopped dead calm inside of me. I don’t know why but this impressed me. Young people usually fall all over themselves to say the precisely the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time in my experience. Neither one tried to tell me about their mom or dad or baby cousin dying. It’s rare to have people in your life react to something with that level of sensitivity, let alone strangers.
A few months later, I was sitting in that same kitchen, listening to that same damn clock, when the bell rang. I was going to close the place once I got through the high season’s reservations, but let Mark and Nancy talk me into keeping it open a few more days, so they could be my final guests. Nancy rushed to me as soon as she stepped inside. There was nothing to do but to hug her. Mark lurked behind with as serious a look on his face as I could imagine being enfolded in those haunted, yet babyish features. Sometimes young people worry me with how hard they take things.
Heather had gone completely off the rails when I’d told her what happened. She screamed into the phone making sounds there were a good ways down the road from real words, then hung up before calling me back and doing the same thing again. Her voice kept breaking into something higher pitched and unintelligible. I figured she was high and my news had brought her crashing down hard. Sometime during that second go round, I said I couldn’t hear her, blamed the connection and hung up. There was a few anxious seconds before the relief came in the realization she wasn’t going to call back any time soon. I got better at cooking and cleaning over the years but never know what to say about my parenting.
“How are you?” Nancy asked, giving up the hug but still standing close. “How’s Heather? Is she here? Is she with you?”
“We hope you got the flowers,” Mark added, giving my shoulder a squeeze.
“Bearing up, bearing up,” I said, having never really known what that phrase meant until then. “Think I might have a buyer for the place.”
The Hyacinth House had been named for Laddy’s favorite flower. It proved to be much more work than she’d first made it out to be. We went through almost thirty years of marriage agreeing I was best at making plans, then at a crucial moment decided, apparently, to let her have a crack at it. It was madness, pure madness borne of being cut off by our only daughter and facing retirement with no purpose and other things I don’t have the self-awareness to name, I’m sure.
Around the time of the accident, I developed a tremor in my hands. It went away in time and my doctor could never explain it. I was put through a battery of tests, expecting to hear I was dying or maybe that was what I hoped to hear. As you get older, tragedy leaves its mark with blows of such concussive force they affect your nervous system, leaving you a shaken, shrunken husk. Youth provides some armor against such things. The kids must’ve noticed my unsteadiness, and I wondered what they made of it.
I keep calling Mark and Nancy kids, but they may’ve been pushing thirty. Anyone who looks younger than Heather’s a kid to me. There must be a cut off. She’s almost forty after all. I can’t go around calling people in their forties kids.
I made them steak and potatoes and a salad, once they got settled in. It was all pretty good or at least edible. We sat afterwards enjoying the single-malt I’d been keeping myself from opening. It turned out we didn’t have much to say to one another then either. Weeks before, as we sat in the same seats at the same table, I’d taken their ability to embrace the silence as a sign of them being far enough beyond their years to understand some things escape the realm of words, but maybe we just genuinely had nothing to say to each other. Whatever the case, I was relieved they were only spending the night.
The next day, I went upstairs to change out their room. It was my last bit of paid labor ever, so I wanted to get it out of the way. I dragged a big trashcan with me and to put their towels, bedsheets, trash and whatnot. I saw no use in doing laundry. On the dresser right next to the door was a gift wrapped in matte black paper with a white tag as big as thumb. For You, it read. I started to open it but my hand was shaking so badly I couldn’t get my fingers to work together. I dropped the still wrapped gift in the trash, then buried it beneath the sheets and blankets and pillowcases and towels.
Dragging the trash bin out of the room, I rammed my toe into the baseboard. Swearing, I tried to kick the bin over and when I failed, resorted to dancing painfully on one leg. My big toe was badly stubbed. Limping down the hall, I began to fear I’d broken the damn thing. I sat down on a naked mattress in another room and removed my loafers and socks to take a look. The toe was purple-red and had already begun to swell. I needed to get some ice on it but could hardly move. I got up to attempt a few steps only to have to park myself in a chair in the corner of the room, and so was trapped in my flower house for a while longer.
Patrick’s Problem
I moved into this apartment not long after. It seemed too big at first but then Amber, my granddaughter, came. When Heather moved in, it began to feel a cramped. I never pressed her for apologies or excuses. I’d heard enough by then and wanted a fresh start for her, even if it was the fourth or fifth time. She told stories I’d just as soon’ve never heard. She needed someone to unload on, I guess. And I knew her just well enough to suspect she’d rubbed raw every sympathetic ear she’d come across. So, it was back on me, the one person she talked to without seeming too concerned how closely the listening was being done. She’d make us a pot of this tea she’d come to favor since she quit drinking. It tasted of cut grass, but I pretended to like it. I tended to listen more closely when she told stories about people she’d met in different stints of rehab. I didn’t mind hearing about them for the same reason she liked telling them; they cast her in a better light.
The most frequent reoccurring character in her often pathetic rogue’s gallery was a guy she met at Seacrest on her first attempt to get clean. The poor guy had been torturing himself for years over the death of his father, who had a heart attack shoveling snow when he was a teenager. Patrick had been asked to do it but played sick to get out of it. He then watched the old man collapse, face first into a snowbank as he snickered over a cup of hot chocolate. Heather was close to real sober tears by the time she got to that part of the story.
I strongly suspected I’d played a featured role in my daughter’s inciting incident. For so much of her growing up, I’d been distant and drunk and probably depressed, always seeking time and space of my own when I was home. Laddy never minded, never said anything to me. She was cruelly loyal and often warned Heather against bothering me. Daddy’s had a long day, she’d tell her, he needs some rest.
Patrick’d stayed in the garage after getting back from the hospital that day. He’d considered turning on the car and just sitting there as the fumes overcame him, but he didn’t have the keys. Instead, he parked himself in a dusty corner of the garage, because it seemed like a good way to punish himself. A rag which had been soaked in some sort of chemicals hung nearby. Claiming it seemed like a way of punishing himself even further, Patrick put his face to it, inhaled. The fumes brought a lightness to his head which, I suppose, had been filled with dark thoughts. The huffing soon turned into drinking and hard drugging and trying whatever else he could do to draw a veil over his pain.
I wanted to ask Heather what she thought drugs did for her but worried a younger version of me half-drunk and dozing on the couch would appear from the mists of our shared past. I knew it made me just like any other male my age: a coward who’d rather live in his world of make believe where he could lay claim to having done his best, done all what he could; but it’s who I am, a yellow-belly just trying to make the most of his second chance.
Golf Buddies
I’ve been golfing with these guys for a couple of years now. I know their favorite clubs, what balls they play, who they vote for and what each one of them will tell his wife, if we go out after the round and drink a little too much, and then have to stay out longer to sober up enough to drive home. I never call. I don’t have anyone to report to. Heck, where these duffers are concerned, I don’t have anyone at all. I don’t talk much about Heather. And Amber, well, I wasn’t very well going to try and explain the whole mess to these clowns.
Markie with his sunburned face and foreign beer in a stout, sweaty can goes over the scorecard. Tim’s hypnotized by his phone, his greying ponytail dripping from the back of his skull with no idea of how stupid it makes him look. And Greg, the oldest, the sight of whom reminds us we’ll all soon nurse our light beers like we thought only preppy lacrosse players did; sits there, two hands around his glass, a great, goony smile on his face, like going to this grimy little bar after shooting a round of like 140 is the highlight of his week. Jesus, help us all, if that’s really our future.
“‘Nother rounds, boys?” asks Niki.
She has a beautiful face with a cleft on her chin like God wanted to make sure everyone knew this one was hand-crafted by the man himself and so pressed his thumb there. We tip big, so she likes us. Let’s us leer at her other assets. I try not to do more than is my duty as a man, albeit one who can’t remember what’s happened to his sex drive.
Tim thinks there’s more to it. He says she’s the type looking for an older man. He just knows. I tell him he wouldn’t know what to do with Niki even if he ever managed to get her in bed. He says he can tell she’d appreciate being with an experienced lover like him. I swear, his ponytail is really his brain dribbling out, one strand of good sense at a time.
I’ll stay for one more, then I got to get home. Heather’s been doing great since she came to live with us. But, and it pains me no end to say this, having her back in our lives, mine and Amber’s, is like being tied to a leash at the other end of which is some half-trained animal. You know that sucker wants to cry havoc and raise hell on you as soon as your guard’s down. Amber’s still a little closed off towards her mother, who hasn’t been much of one for most of the poor little girl’s life. She doesn’t appear to want to let her guard down ever, which keeps Heather on her best behavior – me too for that matter. Whatever the poor kid’s seen already has already poured too much wisdom into her eyes.
“So cute,” Tim says to me after Niki has brought out beers over. “So goddamn cute!” he repeats presumably because none of the rest of us look like we’re about to pull it out and start stroking it right there at the table.
“A nice piece of ass,” Greg says, still toweling the sweat from his rolls of neck fat.
“She’s my daughter’s age,” Markie says, handing me the scorecard like I give a shit.
“So what?” Tim asks. “Mine too. You’d let that stop you, if she was in the mood?”
“My sons each have girlfriends probably a little older than her, and I will say, it makes it hard to picture…to fantasize about,” Greg says, crumpling up another bar napkin and adding it to the pile he’s making. It’s disgusting. He should carry around a hanky or, really, a beach towel.
“You guys’re nuts. You telling me you wouldn’t try her on if she was game?” Tim asks, looking a little disgusted with us. “We’re getting up there, sure. I know. Jesus, we’re not dead.”
One of our first outings together got rained out after no more than 5 holes. It was a race against the clouds thickening to a dark purple on the horizon and booming with thunder. Just as the cart I was driving with Greg in it got near the clubhouse, it ran out of gas or power or needed to be wound up again or have its hamster fed or changed, whatever the hell those things run on. We ran to our cars. I just made it to mine before the rain started pelting down. Greg wasn’t so lucky. His teal shirt turned dark blue and clung to him within seconds.
Without really having agreed to anything, we all went to the bar. They just followed me there, I guess. There was no Heather then, hell even Amber hadn’t come to live with me yet, so I, being the man at leisure, decided to get things going with some shots. Us old guys got loose pretty quick. Greg was the effusive sort of drunk, who wants to tell you how good a friend you are, while leaning with all his weight on your shoulder. He was still wet too, which made it a delight all the way around. When I was younger, I always was suspicious of guys like him. It seemed they were hiding some secret hate for me and, finding themselves drunk, had to fight hard to keep it from spilling out. People who call booze truth serum are either ignorant to the fact or have forgotten most of us drink to make it easier to lie to ourselves.
In the bathroom, I ran into Tim. Tim’s not a gregarious drunk. He’s something much worse. He was thrusting his pelvis beneath the hand-dryer, crying, presumably about the fact his chinos seemed to have a quarter cup of liquid on them. I tried to get out, pretended I hadn’t seen him but it was too late.
“Do you think Kathy will forgive me?” he asked, his voice cracking and pathetic.
“Take it easy,” I told him and slipped back out the door. I most sincerely didn’t want to know.
A few minutes later, he came back to the table. His pants were mostly dry, his eyes less so. None of us were going to ask what was wrong, if we could help it. And I can say with confidence I wasn’t the only one relieved when he started grousing about the college football playoff format rather than his feelings.
Niki brought us some waters over. We were still the only ones in the bar. The loud talk and dick slapping which had occasioned our first couple rounds had been replaced by a lull of the kind only old men who’ve been drinking can experience – a sad, distant silence which could almost be called wistful, but really it’s our brains unscrambling from having all that poison poured into them. We all mumbled our thanks to her, then sipped from our glasses. Tim tightened his ponytail and exhaled.
“I caught Alexis taking money from where I keep my emergency cash,” he said, a blank look in his eyes like he was determined to deliver onto us what was on his mind, whether we liked it or not.
“Alexis? Your secretary?” Markie asked, then lowered his head and burped.
“My daughter! Jesus!” Tim said, his voice cracking, shrill and a little hurt. “I think she might be on drugs. Kathy went through her room and found empty baggies with like white residue…cocaine we think.”
“That’s tough,” Greg said.
“Kathy and I had agreed about how to approach her, but she had to go away for this work thing…and last night when I walked into our room and caught Allie with my money in her hand…I lost it. Kicked her out.”
“You what?” I asked.
“I called her terrible names, told her to pack her things and get the ‘ef out of the house.”
“And she left?” Markie asked.
“I don’t know where she went,” Tim said. “She won’t return my calls or texts. I don’t even know where my little girl is.”
I knew something about what he was going through. Heather had left on her own, but I knew the bottomless dread which came from not knowing where your kid is when they’re so obviously in trouble. I got half out of my chair, leaned over and laid a hand on Tim’s shoulder. There were no words I could offer, especially since my version of his tale hadn’t yet the happyish ending I would later just about manage to live through. The others shared some words with him, but I just kept my hand on his shoulder, squeezing it every now and again, while remaining quiet.
Come Sunrise
Recently, it was brought to my attention that I did meet Amber’s father once, not long after he and Heather met, though I didn’t find this out until my daughter had gotten out of rehab and been living with us for a couple of months. She told me about him over some of that barely drinkable tea. At first, I thought it was going to be another long story about how someone she came across got started down the wrong road. Then she reminded me I’d met him years back.
I have to admit, I liked Steve at first, at least enough to spend a long night drinking with him. It happened not long after I closed the B&B and would’ve liked drinking with just about anyone. I, at least, switched to coffee at some point in the early morning, coffee with a taste of whiskey but still, at least my eyes began to focus again. Going for a walk as the sun was coming up had been Steve’s idea. Heather was asleep. She was still deep in the grip of her problems and with Laddy gone, I was lost in exploring the terrain of my own weaknesses.
Along the boardwalk, the lampposts flickered off just as the sky blushed where horizon met the sea. I went to the rail and listened to the surf. Steve was right behind, staggering and yammering. Out in the fresh air, I began to realize how much he annoyed me.
“My parents took me to the beach once, ONCE,” he said, almost laughing and pitching his body forward a bit. The boardwalk was deserted, except for food wrappers and other debris being driven by the breeze. “With my cousins and aunt. Somewhere on the shore. Not here, further south. My cousins were both older than me only by a couple of years, but seemed so much older back then. We played around in the water, built sandcastles, roughhoused trying to pull down each other’s trunks, the usual boys’ stuff.
“The whole time there was this little kid, and I mean younger than me by a couple of years, who kept hanging around us. So finally, my older cousin Eric, who’d spent the whole time trying to run the kid off, acted like he wanted him to join up with us. We convinced him to let us bury him in the sand. He was excited. Wanted it. Wanted to get buried.
“So, we dug a hole for him to lay down in and piled on bucketful after bucketful of heavy wet sand. Kept telling him, try to move, try to move and he couldn’t. It made him laugh. Then suddenly without so much as a warning my cousins start kicking sand in his face. Like, literally kicking sand into his face. It must’ve stung. It got in his mouth and eyes and soon he was crying. A sickening sound I still hear from time to time in the back of my head. I hadn’t really done anything, I swear, just stood and watched.
“Out of nowhere this big dude comes up to us. It must’ve been the kid’s father or uncle or something. I remember him being this huge, muscled beach guy, all southern Jersey. ‘You little fucks got two choices,’ he says, we’re frozen there. ‘Either I can give you all a little beatin’ or one of ya a severe beatin’.’ As I’m, I don’t know, mulling over my options my cousins take off. They like disappear. And so now, it’s just me and this grown angry-ass man. He gets real close. I’m too scared to move and he says to me: ‘Never forget they left you.’ Then he reached down, hugged the kid to him and pulled him free from the sand. Me and my cousins never talked about it. I don’t think I ever really trusted them anyways…”
I tried to sound interested in the latest drunk my daughter had taken up with but had sobered up just enough to be sickened by the futility of such an idea. How many sob stories had I heard from her paramours over the years; all trying to explain why bad shit followed them around like they were cursed in a woe-born-from-childhood way? It sounds like 20/20 hindsight, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t like him from the moment he finished his story. I’d been drinking with him, kind of liking him, trying to form this new bond with Heather but in the end, I realized her mother dying hadn’t changed much about her or between us really, not as much as it seemed like it should have. I slapped the rail with my hands and enjoyed the sound, then turned to walk back to the beach house I’d rented for all of us. Following sluggishly, Steve said he wanted to get into bed in a tone which, to me, didn’t suggest enough respect for whose daughter he’d be stretching out next to.
We were both struck by the state of the kitchen and had to laugh a little at the mess. Two half full vodka bottles sat open in a bowl of tepid water which had been an improvised ice bucket. Another bottle rose upside down from the drain. Shards of lemons and limes dotted the counter and floor. The air conditioner sprang to life as though to announce our arrival. The louvered blinds allowed for slats of the fresh spreading sunlight to begin to cast its shame on me still doing stuff like that at my age. If Steve hadn’t been there, I might’ve gone to give my little a girl a peck on cheek and whisper ‘good night’ to her like I should’ve done more often when I had the chance. Instead, I grunted in response to his overly cheery suggestion I get some rest and set about cleaning the kitchen. My hands shook pretty bad as I did so and I wondered if they’d been like that all night, and I hadn’t noticed. Then, I wondered if Heather had.
Jason Graff’s debut novel Stray Our Pieces concerns a woman extricating herself from motherhood. heckler, about lives colliding at a struggling hotel, followed. His short stories have appeared recently in places such as Louisiana Literature, Bull, TroublemakerFirestarter, Umbrella Factory, Slab and The Razor. You can follow him on X @JasonGraff1.
