The bud, pristine, sat there unopened.
If you talk to plants, they’re supposed to hear you. That’s what Helen had always said. She’d talked to all of them, inside and out, and her garden had flourished. A neighborhood showpiece. People would walk by and comment about how beautiful her garden was. Dogs seemed even to refuse to pee or poop on the perimeter of their yard running along the sidewalk for fear of desecrating the magic garden.
Herbert looked out at the mess of weeds and vines Helen’s garden had become. Everything that wasn’t dead already was terminally ill.
If I ask this bud to open, will it? He wondered.
So many days now he’d waited for the flower to appear. It was Helen’s last house plant. The only one he hadn’t killed from poor care. Mostly overwatering, he guessed. If only he’d been more observant when she’d puttered around her plants. If only he knew all the secrets his wife had held to charm them, her floral family.
Sometimes, probably a little too much fertilizer, he thought. Those little clay-like balls, so tiny. How could a few more do so much damage?
He sat there in his Lay-Z-Boy watching the bud sitting atop the bookcase against the opposite wall. It seemed ridiculous, but what if he did ask it to open up?
If I do this, I have to be polite, he thought. Gotta speak in Helen’s kindly way. Ay. So stupid, but, okay, okay, already.
Herbert sat up straight, feet flat on the floor and stared at the plant. Closing his eyes, he focused on the image of it. In his mind’s eye, he was locked in and fully connecting to the bud. He summoned every ounce of energy in his body and mentally pushed it toward the bud, a laser-like link with his wife’s last living plant. The dwindled-down-to-final survivor of his lack of care.
Always, he thought, always too late to do anything. Always one step behind responsibility. Not caring enough about anything.
“Please open up, little bud,” he said. “Helen is watching from heaven, and she would want to see you flower. Please, please open up, little bud, please.”
He opened his eyes. The bud sat unchanged. Red and rosy as if it were ready at any moment to unfold in all its glory. The realization of its whole purpose on earth. Its reason for being come to pass.
Of course, he knew it was ridiculous to expect the bud to have opened immediately. This wasn’t some kind of magic show after all.
He closed his eyes again and summoned all his energy again. “Please, please little bud, please open for me. For Helen. If she were still here, she’d want to see you. And,” he added, “you’d want to see her again, wouldn’t you? Think of her as being here with us. Do this for Helen. You know how much she loved you.”
He fell back in his chair. This was exhausting. Maybe all this talking to the plants had contributed to Helen’s passing?
The bud still sat there, unbloomed.
Tomorrow morning, he thought. Tomorrow I’ll wake up and it will be open.
The sun was going down. It was nearly 6:00. At his age, Herbert thought of that as get-ready-for-bed time. He brushed his teeth, then urinated – for what he always hoped would be the last time until the morning, but which usually wasn’t.
Heading into the bedroom he’d shared with Helen for 60 years, he knelt beside the bed and said a prayer.
“And especially,” he concluded aloud, “please help the little bud to bloom for me.” He added a burst of concentrated energy to this request, shooting it silently toward the image of the bud he still pictured in his mind’s eye.
When he woke up the next morning, Herbert was surprised at how excited he was. He jumped out of bed as if it were Christmas morning and he was 8 years old again.
Hurrying down the stairs, he shuffled quickly into the living room. His spirits fell. The bud sat there unchanged. All the talk and all the prayer had done nothing.
“Why won’t you bloom?” Herbert muttered, taking a seat on his Lay-Z-Boy and resuming his intense observation of the bud.
And then something dawned on him. He stood up and walked over to the pot. With his index finger, he touched the bud gently. Had he taken so little interest in Helen’s plants? Was this . . . ?
Herbert got down on his knees and took a closer look at the bud. At the leaves. He touched the rosy red bud again.
Marvelous, he thought angrily, how good they’d become at making these artificial flowers. He flicked the silk leaves and then the plastic bud.
Herbert sat back on the floor and laughed. He laughed so hard he began to cough. When the fit subsided, he turned on his stomach and slowly brought himself to a standing position. Walking back, he sat down in his Lay-Z-Boy, dropped his head in his hands, and began to sob.
He thought he’d kept one alive, but he hadn’t. They were all dead. The yard, the house plants.
And in that moment of realization about what he’d done and how uncaring he’d been, Herbert hated himself. And then, before he could stop himself, an intense hatred for Helen erupted in him. He loathed her so much that he wanted to curse her for leaving him and her beautiful garden plants and flowers behind, abandoned and alone, to die off, one by one.
He was the last one living, and the clock was ticking.
“Helen!” he shouted through his tears. “How could you do this to me, you –”
Herbert stopped. Realizing he was about to curse Helen, he silenced himself. He pictured her smiling, always smiling, and then focusing on the bud, he wiped away his tears.
Lanning Lee 