The plants are the first thing she thinks of when she gets up in the morning – the coleus especially, with its leafy purple and green. The plants are everywhere: ferns in the bedroom on windowsills and bookshelves, tulips on the mantle in the living room and petunias hanging in baskets from the ceiling, herbs in the kitchen in their several mini pots – thyme, rosemary, parsley, basil, sage, oregano – clustering on top of the refrigerator, even in the bathroom on the back of the toilet, one small burst of violets.
She forgets to put on her slippers. She grabs the blue plastic watering can from beside the bed and begins to feed the plants. Today, she does not water the coleus on the nightstand by her bed, just strokes its leaves a little, says softly, “Good morning. You look lovely today.” She knows the plant cannot hear her, but she knows the carbon dioxide she exhales is good for it. She imagines a cloud of it coming from her mouth each time she exhales, wafting over to the plant, the coleus breathing in deep, joyously.
She begins to sing show tunes as she walks around the house, refilling her small watering can when it runs low. In the living room, she pulls open the blinds in front of the petunias, let's the warm sun fall on them. The plant is a dome of dark pink flowers, with more on vines dangling over the sides of the basket. She imagines she can see the petunias thanking her for the sunlight, moving a little closer to the window. Gently, she examines the plant, moving aside one flower to look at another, hidden from view. When she finds one wilting, starting to dry out, she gently plucks it from the plant, tucks it underneath the pink bush on the soil below.
“I'm sorry,” she says, pausing in the middle of “Don't Cry for Me Argentina.” “I know it hurts, but there's no sense in letting that dying thing use up all you nutrients.”
The herbs in the kitchen need watering every day, but only a little. She does not need to prune them; she'll pick the leaves fresh off the branches when she's making lunch and dinner. She thanks them when she does it – just in case.
Beneath the herbs, on the side of the refrigerator, hangs her Better Homes and Gardens calender, and her heart leaps when she sees what day it is. It is time to water Stenocereus thurberi, her organ pipe cactus. She refills her watering can at the kitchen sink in preparation.
She keeps the organ pipe cactus by the door. She has been raising it since it fit in a miniature pot, like those with the herbs, when it needed the shade of the bonsai tree that resides on the porch. She watched over it closely. She checked the temperatures multiple times a day to be sure it would not frost. As it grew, she repotted it, repotted again and again, to bigger and bigger pots. When it was strong enough, she took it inside by itself, placing it in the narrow hallway by the door and its floor to ceiling window, where it would get the most light. It has ten stems now and (she thinks) is trying to grow another, but it needs a larger pot. It is nearly as tall she is.
She empties the watering can into the pot, goes to the kitchen to refill, comes back and empties again. Then she sets the can down on the floor and pulls out the measuring tape she keeps between the plant and the wall, carefully matching the tape from top to bottom of the tallest, straightest stem. Four foot, ten inches now. Not much progress from last week. She tells people it is five foot already, if they aren't standing beside it to compare, and usually they are on the phone anyway. But she knows it is really four foot, ten inches, and she tells the cactus she is proud of it, that it is getting big and strong.
It is only when she steps out on to the porch and feels the astroturf under her feet, the cool breeze blowing her nightgown against her legs, that she realizes she has not gotten dressed. A car door slams shut, and she looks up to where her son has parked his black Mercedes. He is wearing a black pinstripe suit, and she doesn't know why.
“Mom, why are you outside in that?” he asks, running up to the door and nearly pushing her back inside. The water left inside her watering can sloshes against its sides.
“I just forgot,” she says. “Besides, the only people around here I've known for thirty years or more.”
“Go get dressed,” he says as he walks in behind her, a little too close to the cactus. His suit jacket scratches against the spines. He looks down sharply at where the cactus has offended the arm of his jacket, brushes his hand across the fabric. “Why do you even have this thing?” he asks his mother.
“It's not just a thing,” she says.
“Why don't you put it somewhere else?”
“It needs the sunlight.” She sets her watering can on the floor beside the cactus plant.
“Then put it on the porch, where people won't walk into it.”
“It can't be on the porch. It can't frost.”
“Well, whatever. You need to find a better place for it.”
“Are you here to ridicule my domestic life?” She waves her arms around for emphasis.
He sighs. “No, mother.”
“Then why are you here?”
He looks into her eyes then, quiet for a moment before: “Have you forgotten? It's Aunt Tessie's funeral today.”
Her sister. She had forgotten.
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