Dahlias

Short story written in Creative Writing: Fiction class; finished December 2016

It’s Monday morning, and the flower shop is closed.

It’s their anniversary, and Arthur wants to be at the cemetery in an hour with her favorite flowers in hand, but the flower shop is closed.

Arthur steps away from the door slowly, staring at the sign with its cursive “sorry” like it will change. He steps in a puddle, and isn’t even surprised. Sighing, he walks a few steps down the sidewalk, opening his umbrella back up when he moves out from under the store’s awning. The ring on his finger is a cold weight.

“Damn it,” he hisses when a cat bolts in front of him and knocks a trash can over, pieces of garbage falling into his path.

He should pick some of it up. Margery was interested in environmentalism. She was always telling him about how litter doesn’t decompose, and how much water his long showers wasted. She liked to ask, “Don’t you care about the planet, Art?”

He doesn’t pick up the trash from the sidewalk. He thinks the planet will be just fine.

In a daze, he moves along the sidewalk, thinking of Margery, of the ugly things that don’t go away and the beautiful things that do, and of the flowers he isn’t carrying.

Really, he should have expected something to go wrong today; he was off his routine before the day even started, and that never ends well. Usually he never tries to do day-of, walk-in purchases anywhere, except sometimes the grocery store. He always ordered from the florist in advance. But when he called on Thursday to order the bouquet for today, the girl on the other end had tiredly told him they weren’t doing orders over the phone anymore.

Today is a holiday, he realizes now, as he sinks onto a bench and rubs a hand across his face. Of course it is. He knows this. It’s why he’s never had to take the day of their anniversary off work.

Of course the store would be closed for the holiday. He just hadn’t thought about it. He plans everything he does; his life is outlined in notebooks and calendars in color coded pencil, with little gaps in the schedule to allow for his predictable bad luck, yet he hadn’t thought about this.

There aren’t any other stores in the town that sell flowers, except the grocery store and one of the drugstores. The flowers in the grocery store are houseplants in garishly colored plastic pots and the ones at the drugstore are always wilted. Margery once said that the least romantic thing anyone could do for her would be to give her drugstore flowers.

Arthur’s sock is getting wet. He still doesn’t know what to do. He wants to be at the cemetery in fifty minutes, and he wants to have flowers when he gets there, and the flower shop is closed.

He stands up from the bench and is about to start walking – even though he has no idea where to go – when suddenly a person in a screamingly bright red sweater turns a corner and runs straight into him. The hot coffee the man was carrying splashes over them both.

“Shit, shit, sorry, I’m so sorry,” he babbles. Arthur sighs. The stranger, a man around Arthur’s age, repeats, “Sorry,” bending over to pick up his empty coffee cup and Arthur’s umbrella, which both fell in the collision. “I didn’t see you.”

“I wasn’t looking either,” Arthur admits. He really has no interest in small talk with a stranger, but it seems like it would be rude to just walk away.

“Not your fault. Oh, while we’re talking, do you happen to know where I could find a florist?”

Arthur snorts. “A block the other direction, but they’re closed. I’ve just come from there too.”

“Oh.” The man seems to deflate. “There isn’t anywhere else? I’m supposed to meet my future brother-in-law for the first time and I wanted to get flowers for my sister since I haven’t seen her for a while.” He runs a hand through his graying curly hair.

Arthur is soaking wet from the rain, even with his umbrella. He is angry at the florist and himself. He’s cold, and hungry, and off schedule. Everywhere he turns he sees things that remind him of Margery – her favorite restaurant, the streetlight where they kissed for the first time, a crack in the sidewalk she tripped on every time they walked along this street.

This man he doesn’t know is oblivious to all of that. All this man wants is to do something nice for his sister and her fiancé.

Margery always said that one of the things she liked most about Arthur was his lack of spontaneity. She said that it was nice that he was reliable and thoughtful, and she liked his little color-coded schedules. She liked that he didn’t do reckless things like let strangers enter his life without warning or change his plans and routines.

Arthur wants to put flowers on Margery’s grave in forty-five minutes. He doesn’t have time for anything else, and on this day of all days he shouldn’t be thinking about anything or anyone other than her. But something about the combination of the weight of the stranger’s frown and the desperation that’s been piling in Arthur all morning makes something within him snap.

He finds himself saying, “If you follow me, I know a garden.”

The man, whose face had lit up when Arthur said he would help him, introduces himself as Percy. He doesn’t seem to stop talking. Arthur tries to listen, really, but mostly he’s just wondering what the hell he was thinking. The garden he’s thinking of is in the opposite direction from the cemetery, so with every step he gets further away from Margery.

It is also, technically speaking, not really a place to pick flowers. The garden is on the property of the big Episcopal church on Westbrook Ave. It’s supposed to be some kind of serene prayer garden. Visitors look at the flowers all they want, but aren’t really supposed to touch them. People like to go there to walk around the paths in circles and sit on the marble benches around the edges. Arthur doesn’t much see the point in it, but then, he has never been particularly spiritual. Margery liked it. She never went to church services, but she visited the garden every week or two. She liked to paint there. Watercolors. They were pretty, Arthur can admit – both the paintings and the garden itself.

It seems as good a place as any to find something to honor her with.

Percy stops talking and gently nudges his shoulder against Arthur’s to get his attention. The movement makes a curtain of rain splash off the umbrella.

“Oh, sorry,” Percy says. “I was just going to ask if you were all right. You’ve been pretty quiet, and I can understand not wanting to get all chatty with a stranger, but you seem a bit spaced out.”

Arthur shakes himself out of his daze and turns to look at his companion, who stares back with an earnest expression. He hesitates, then admits, “My day is not going the way I planned at all.”

“Oh, which part was a surprise? The florist being closed, or getting knocked over and kidnapped by a handsome but mysterious man?” He winks, the motion made even more ridiculous by his face already being twisted up by his laugh.

Arthur rolls his eyes. “I would hardly call this a kidnapping. I was the one who offered to take you. Speaking of which, what I was actually just thinking was that I should have asked you before: how do you feel about stealing from a church?”

He is visibly startled, but laughs. “You’re unpredictable.”

“Not usually, I assure you. Like I said, it’s been an odd morning. I’m only asking because this garden we’re going to is the prayer garden at one of the churches and I’m pretty sure picking the flowers isn’t really encouraged.”

“I don’t know, Arthur. Can you go to hell for that?”

“I have no idea. I won’t tell if you won’t?”

Percy grins. “What better way to start a Monday morning than a little rebellion?”

Arthur pushes open the little gate and holds it open for Percy, who walks in, glancing down with a huff of resigned laughter when his feet sink down into the muddy path.

“I’m going to have to go home to change my clothes and shoes before I meet my sister,” he says, moving forward so Arthur can enter the garden and close the gate behind himself.

“Wouldn’t want the in-laws to start off with a bad impression,” Arthur agrees. “When are you supposed to meet them?”

“Half past ten.” They both look down to check the time and wince when they realize it’s already almost 9:45.

“You might want to let them know you’ll be late.”

Arthur’s one experience with meeting in-laws for the first time was nothing but positive; he was on time, and completely dry, and he brought Margery’s mother a bouquet of flowers which was not picked from a random garden at the last minute in the rain. He has the sense not to say so.

The garden is empty, which is hardly a surprise, considering the rain. They wander into the center and stare aimlessly at the flowers in front of them.

“This is feeling a lot less rebellious now that we’re actually here,” Percy comments.

Arthur sighs. “I just wanted some dahlias.”

“I don’t even know what those look like, but I’m guessing they don’t have any here.”

He glances around. “I don’t think so. I didn’t expect them to, but I have no idea what to pick instead. I’ve been getting nothing but dahlias for eight years.”

In his peripheral vision he can see Percy glancing over at him curiously. “Eight years?”

For a long moment the only sounds are the pattering of the rain drops on the umbrella and the occasional splashing of cars driving through puddles.

Eventually Arthur says, “For my wife.”

They fall into another heavy silence.

Percy clears his throat. “Is that who you’re picking flowers for now?”

He nods.

“Does she have any other flowers she likes? Or just favorite colors?” He trips over the words a little, like he’s not sure if he’s using the right tense. Arthur must have taken too long to answer, if it’s that obvious. There’s a new hesitancy in his voice, the kind people use when they aren’t sure if they should be pitying. It’s a harsh shift from the cheerful, vaguely flirty exuberance he has been displaying, and Arthur doesn’t much like it.

“Purple,” he says decisively. He moves over to the left of the garden to pick some light purple, bell-shaped flowers from the corner. They don’t strike him as good flowers for a bouquet, but they were the subject of one of Margery’s best paintings. He has no idea what they’re called, even though she told him a dozen times, but the picture is on the bedroom wall.

“Do you think this is good enough?” Percy asks, tucking some little white flowers between three pink peonies.

“Oh, I would think so,” Arthur says with false confidence. “If you can find a vase in your house you might want to put it in that, though, so it looks less obviously unprofessional.”

“Good idea.”

Arthur looks at his own handful of flowers. It looks pathetic, but it’s going to have to be good enough. And anyway, isn’t there an expression that it’s the thought that counts? He’s not sure how much Margery agreed with that, but she isn’t here to tell him.

They walk out of the garden and down the sidewalk together. Percy says goodbye when they reach the corner two blocks down, pointing in the direction of the town’s municipal parking lot, where he has apparently left his car.

“Good luck with your sister and her fiancé,” Arthur offers.

Percy shakes his hand, which is an interesting maneuver with the flowers and umbrella. “Thank you. Maybe I’ll see you around.” He nods when Arthur smiles weakly, and jogs off.

Arthur stands there watching after him for a moment, then turns and walks the other way. He walks towards the cemetery, already pushing the other man out of his mind. Margery is waiting for him.

He doesn’t expect to see Percy again, but two weeks later, they literally run into each other again in the grocery store.

“We really need to stop meeting like this,” Percy says calmly once they have collected themselves. His eye twitches a little, like he was going to wink but thought better of it.

Arthur sighs. “At least it’s not raining.” He doesn’t know if it came across as friendly. He had meant it to be a dry reference to their first meeting, just like Percy’s greeting was, but Percy’s statement had been flirtatious, and Arthur doesn’t know if his was. He doesn’t know if he meant it to be.

For better or for worse, Percy smiles. “And I’m not even running late.”

Arthur will be running late if they keep talking. Driving to the store, doing his shopping, and going home to put things in the fridge has been allotted one hour in his schedule, and then he has to go to his coworker Lisa’s husband’s art show. He has no interest in going, if he’s being honest, but Margery was always reminding him to be social. Anyway, supporting coworkers was how he had been so successful at networking, which had gotten him to his current job, so he sees no reason to stop now. It’s all about maintaining the image he has spent so many years building for himself, both in the public eye and in his own mind. He is successful, with a good job that has paid for a nice house, and he is married – to a woman who is dead, but if he thinks on that part too long, the whole dream starts falling apart. So he’ll do what Margery would tell him to do, and go to the exhibition –

And Percy is still there, waiting for him to respond.

He clears his throat and picks up an avocado.

He hates avocados, but in the moment it seems the thing to do. He hates doing things in the moment, and this is why; he gets all flustered and stupid. He puts the avocado back down.

“I’m afraid I don’t have much time to talk,” he says stiffly. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go get some milk.”

When he looks up, he sees that Percy is looking quizzically at the pile of avocados. “I’m getting milk, too, actually,” he says slowly. “I’ll walk with you.”

Arthur suppresses a sigh. He doesn’t have time for this. He nods anyway.

“I think my sister’s fiancé hates me,” Percy confides as they walk down the aisle, their shoulders brushing with every other step.

It’s a much more cheerful voice than the situation deserves. Also, Arthur did not ask. He smiles despite himself. “What makes you think that?”

“Well, I showed up to brunch half an hour late, and even though I changed out of the muddy clothes, my hair was soaked so I looked like a mess. And my sister said she liked the flowers, but he didn’t seem impressed.”

He pictures the soggy, unevenly cut peonies. He probably wouldn’t be impressed either, if he hadn’t witnessed first-hand the determined set of Percy’s jaw as he tried to pick them. “Did you tell them where you got them?”

“No, but I mentioned that they were part of why I was late, and I don’t think that made him like any part of the situation any better. And he kept glaring at me during the whole meal.”

“Never a good sign,” Arthur admits. They reach the dairy section. They both reach over to pick up the same carton of milk and their fingers brush against each other. They both pull away, and Percy waves at him to go ahead. His face seems a bit redder than before when he backs up. Arthur is probably red too; he feels the warmth of the brief touch spark up to his cheeks. It has been a long time since he has touched someone skin to skin like that. No, that’s not entirely true. He shakes hands with people several times a week. He will probably shake hands with dozens of people tonight alone. But this is different somehow.

They continue walking. He clears his throat. He needs to change the subject, or maybe not change it but get it back on track. Percy was talking about meeting in-laws, wasn’t he? Arthur says, “If it makes you feel better, my wife almost ran my brother over with her car once. Do you need bread?” It’s true, but he doesn’t know why he brings it up. There was no ill will between Margery and David, even with the car incident, which was one of the family’s favorite party stories.

“What?”

“Bread? Over in aisle four?”

Percy stares at him. “No, I don’t need bread. I kind of feel like I need that story, though.”

“Well, I have to go, so it’s going to have to wait until the next time you knock me over.” He has no idea what he is saying. He just wants to finish his shopping and go to the boring art show in peace, not agree to talk to this stranger for a third time. And he doesn’t know why he’s letting himself slip into that almost maybe flirtatious tone again. He hasn’t flirted with anyone in years. Something about Percy brings it out in Arthur. He has no idea what that means. He thinks he doesn’t really want to know.

“I’ll hold you to that,” Percy responds with a grin, and he walks away, leaving Arthur ten minutes behind schedule and wondering what the hell he’s gotten himself into.

Arthur lies in bed, wide awake. The clock’s harsh red light sears numbers into his eyes – 12:15, 1:00, 2:30. The conversations he’d had with the people at the art show keep echoing in his mind. They were all very friendly, but none of them had gone very far, because he didn’t know how to talk to anyone. Not that he was ever good at small talk, of course, but at least he used to have Margery. She liked those kinds of parties, so she was a good date to rescue him. She liked all parties, to some extent, but art shows, theater events, and receptions at music rehearsals were really her favorite. She was always very cultured, and she liked showing off. If tonight’s event had been a few years ago, he would have taken her. She would have linked one arm through his and held a glass of champagne in the other hand, and dragged him around the gallery to look at every single picture. She would have chatted animatedly to everyone. He still would have been out of his element, but he wouldn’t have had to talk, because she would know exactly what to say. He would have been bored out of his mind, but it would have been worth it to watch his wife brush her hair out of her face as she laughed.

Even if she hadn’t been with him, he could have talked about her. She was the most interesting thing about him, really. He always liked telling stories about her, and people always liked hearing them. But no one ever mentions her to him, now, not when she has been gone for so long, and he never brings her up.

Lately the house always seems loudest at night. Margery’s soft snoring used to mask everything else – the wind brushing branches against the windows, the rustling of sheets whenever either of them moved, the creaking of the old building – but now all the sounds of the world push in on him every time he closes his eyes. He used to tease her about the snoring, complaining that he couldn’t sleep through it, but now he wishes he had never lied like that. He would take back every mocking comment, joke or not, if it meant he could hear that snore again.

There’s a spider on Margery’s painting on the wall, because she was always the one to get rid of spiders. She never killed them; she just scooped them up in cups or tissues and brought them outside. Arthur used to kill them, before meeting her, but he can’t remember the last time he bothered. He always means to, but then he thinks, “Margery will take care of it,” and then when he remembers, the realization slams into him and he doesn’t feel like doing much of anything.

It’s raining. The pattering on the roof reminds him of the rain when they kissed for the first time, and the rain on the day of her funeral, and – and he really needs to stop thinking about Margery so damn much.

He lets his mind wander instead to the most recent time it rained. That was when he met Percy. He’s an odd kind of person, Arthur thinks. It’s been annoying running into him everywhere, and confusing that talking to Arthur seems to be so desirable to him, but maybe it’s been kind of nice, too, having someone notice him. And he’s always smiling. It’s hard to imagine being so happy all the time, so cheerful, looking at this big dark world and finding hope. He’s nothing like Arthur. He’s loud and runs late and talks to strangers without prompting. He would get along with Margery, probably. And there Arthur goes again, comparing everything to her, not allowing the gap she left to heal but also always holding everything up to the hole to see if it would fit.

He sees Percy three more times in the next month, but only in passing. Percy always smiles and nods or waves at him, but they don’t speak. It’s enough to tell him that he must be living in town now, and must not have been living here long since they surely would have seen each other before now.

The next time they end up talking, Arthur is in a much better mood than either of the other two times. It’s a Saturday morning, and he doesn’t have any plans, so for once he didn’t bother with a schedule. He’s sitting in a corner at Hallow’s, the coffee shop on South Street. Margery had gotten him to stop drinking coffee, but he’s gotten back into the habit since she has been gone, and the stuff at Hallow’s really is better than what he can make at home, so he likes to go there when he has extra time.

He has a good view of the glass door, which is why he immediately sees Percy walk up, push the pull door a few times, figure it out, and enter. He doesn’t see Arthur until he’s already placed his order and is just standing around waiting. When he glances over to the corner, they make eye contact, and he grins and waves. Arthur nods back.

When he gets his coffee, Percy comes over to his table.

“Mind if I join you?” he asks, and Arthur shakes his head and pushes the other chair out from the table with his foot. He sits down, shaking the table a little. “How have you been?”

Arthur shrugs. “About the same as always.”

“Oh, so stealing flowers from churches, watching family members run each over, and colliding with strangers?”

He laughs. “You keep catching me at strange moments. My life is normally not nearly as exciting as you seem to think.”

“No? What is a day in the life of Arthur like, then?” He leans in with a crooked smile, resting his elbows on the table.

Arthur shakes his head. “Nothing special,” he says. “I work. I do errands. I have a schedule. I don’t do much, really.”

Percy sits back in his chair and takes a long sip of coffee. “I don’t believe you,” he says eventually. “Everyone has something interesting.”

“What about you, then? What is a day in the life of Percy like?”

He has a ring on his left middle finger. He runs his thumb over it. “Oh, well, I just moved in, so I’m kind of all over the place right now. I start my new job on Wednesday, and in the mean time I’ve been trying to unpack and get to know the town.”

So he is new to town. Arthur had suspected as much. He takes a sip of his coffee before asking, “Where did you move from?”

“I was travelling for a long time, so all over, in a way. I was in a small town in France most recently, but I think San Francisco last year was probably the last place I would say I really lived.”

“Why were you travelling?”

His face seems to shutter closed. It’s a stark contrast to the wide smiles Arthur has come to expect from him. He shrugs, looks into his coffee cup, stirs the coffee around a bit.

“I don’t know exactly.”

“How can you not know?”

Another shrug.

Arthur is speechless. He plans his trips to the grocery store by the minute, and used to have paragraph-long reasons for every bullet point on his five-year plan, but Percy can get on a plane to go to another country without even knowing why.

“Actually, that’s not true,” Percy blurts after a pause. “It’s not that I don’t know, I do, I just –” He breaks off. “I just don’t usually talk about it. It was because of my family. My father was a bad parent and we never had a good relationship, and two years ago, everything really just exploded. We got in the worst fight we ever had and I left.”

He stops. Clears his throat. Shifts, making his chair squeak against the floor. “I already travelled a lot,” he continues softly, “and I hadn’t been living near my family for years anyway, but I always visited a lot, and after the fight I stopped coming back. I stopped spending more than a month in one place, and I started spending a lot of time in other countries.”

It's hard to tell what is heavier in the moment after he stops talking – the weight of what he’s just revealed, or the weight of what he still isn’t saying. It seems for a moment like he’s going to say something else, something to explain what kind of argument he and his father could have had to lead him to get on a plane, but he visibly swallows the words.

“You don’t need to tell me,” Arthur offers.

Percy looks down. “I think I want to,” he says. He’s rubbing at the ring again. “Maybe not yet, though. It’s too much for a Saturday morning coffee. And it’s not like it was all complicated motivations, anyway. I really do like travelling without knowing where I’m going or why sometimes.”

They sit in silence for several minutes, legs occasionally jostling each other under the small table. They sip their coffee until the silence shifts almost imperceptibly from tense to peaceful, and it is then that Arthur comments, “See, this is why you’re the interesting one.”

That brings the smile back. “What, you’ve never made a split second decision to go somewhere?”

“Not really.” It’s not exactly true. He once ran away from his group on a field trip and ended up crying in a patch of what later turned out to be poison ivy. He once stepped into a bookstore on a whim, and found Margery looking at records. And he once looked at a rain-soaked man in a red sweater and led him to a garden.

“Let’s do it, then.”

“What?”

“Let’s go somewhere. Right now.” He stands up abruptly, shaking the table again, and holds a hand out.

Arthur feels lost again. His mind races, supplying all the ways this – whatever “this” even is – can go horribly wrong. But he isn’t doing anything today, and he doesn’t want to go back to his empty house, and Percy’s smile is bright. He hesitates, but he takes his hand and lets him pull him out of his chair, and off they go.

There aren’t many exciting places in town to go on impromptu visits to, of course, but Percy is exuberant enough to make everything seem like an adventure. They walk around for a while without a destination, which is nice, actually. Percy chatters away, telling Arthur about the process of fixing the floors in his new house, and he makes an effort to listen for once.

Now that he isn’t making Arthur late, he isn’t nearly as annoying. He’s funny, actually, and Arthur finds that he likes his smile.

The weather is pleasant, and they aren’t the only ones out and about. People keep saying hello to them, doing a terrible job of pretending they aren’t surprised to see Arthur with another person. He can’t find it in himself to be offended.

They end up by the big fountain in the public park. Percy insists on taking a picture with the two of them in front of the fountain – “To prove to my sister that I’m settling in to the town, meeting people, doing things, you know,” he explains. Arthur doesn’t know, really. He has been in the same place since he was twenty-five, and anyone who would care is gone now anyway. He doesn’t say that, of course. That would probably make the easy smile fall. It would probably bring back that pitying expression, and he doesn’t want that. Instead he just laughs as Percy pulls him over and lifts the phone. This is what people call a selfie, he thinks. It’s a juvenile term, and it tends to come along with those smug articles about millennial narcissism. He’s certainly never taken a selfie in his life. Margery liked reading those articles, and would never approve. If she were here, he would be ashamed to even consider doing something so silly. But Percy just grins at him. He doesn’t look the least bit ashamed. Arthur lets himself relax. He smiles, and Percy takes the picture.

The cemetery is cold in the morning. The rising sun shimmers off the dew on the grass. Arthur stands in silence, looking down at Margery’s grave.

It’s her birthday. She used to make her own cake, chocolate with almond frosting, because she didn’t trust Arthur with the oven and hated store-bought. He gave her books of poetry, tickets to theater he didn’t understand, paintbrushes, a watch, earrings, scarves. And flowers. Always flowers. She would fill a light blue vase with water and stick the flowers on the table, then curl up next to him on the couch and carefully unwrap her gift.

He hasn’t bought a gift in a long time. He writes little cards for everyone in the office in December, but that hardly counts. His brother and his family live in Ohio, too far to ship presents. He never really exchanged gifts with his in-laws. His parents have been dead for years. It was really only Margery he ever bought for, and now the flowers are all he can give her.

He is alerted to someone walking up behind him by the crunching of the gravel path. He glances around and can’t find it in himself to be surprised to see Percy. They smile awkwardly at each other.

Percy stands in the path for a moment, looking hesitant, but Arthur nods at him, and he seems to take that as permission to step over to stand beside him. “Hello,” he says quietly.

“I’m beginning to think you’re stalking me,” Arthur says. It’s supposed to be a joke, maybe infused with that borderline flirtatiousness they’ve been dealing in, but it falls flat even to his own ears. He has been resting his hand on the top of Margery’s headstone, and the cool granite is a pressing reminder of where he is. God, what is he thinking, trying to joke around with Percy here, and now, when his dead wife is right there? Inappropriate. Wrong. He looks down.

Percy follows his gaze. He clears his throat. “You got your dahlias.”

The comment wrenches a strangled laugh from him. “I did.”

“They’re beautiful.” His voice is gentle. He puts his hand on Arthur’s shoulder, touch light at first, then squeezing more firmly when Arthur doesn’t pull away.

“Yes.” They stand in silence for a moment, then Arthur asks, “Am I keeping you from something?”

“No. I was visiting a different grave, but I was just leaving when I saw you and I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

“Early in the morning to already be done here.”

“I’m delaying my sister finding out I’ve been coming.”

Arthur looks over at him sharply, but he offers no further explanation. They fall into another silence. Percy looks like he’s going to say something a few times, but he never does, and Arthur doesn’t press him. Eventually Arthur steps away from the stone and returns to the path, and Percy follows after him.

They walk down to the center of the cemetery, where there is a large pond, surrounded by benches and weeping willow trees. People come for picnics here sometimes. It’s always seemed more than a little morbid to Arthur, but he can understand the draw of the place. It’s beautiful, and tranquil. No one is here this early, though. Just the two of them. They sit down on one of the benches. Their shoulders touch.

“My father,” Percy says softly after a few minutes. “That’s who I was visiting.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t like him.”

“Still.” Percy acknowledges the sentiment with a terse nod, but stays quiet.

The silence between them is heavy. Arthur is used to silence. The peaceful silence when he and Margery sat next to each other reading, the angry silence after an argument, the silence of the office when everyone is working on individual projects, the silence of his empty house – those kinds of silences he knows. This is different. Percy has rarely been quiet around him before, and never looked quite so somber.

“Sometimes grief doesn’t make sense,” Arthur offers after what seems like a long time. Percy looks at him, but says nothing, so he continues, “I liked Margery, of course. She was my wife. I loved her. So it’s different for me. But you seem like you don’t know why you’re here or how to feel, and I can understand that. She’s been gone for years and sometimes it feels like I should just be over it, but she’s still all I can think about most of the time. There isn’t a pattern to it.”

Percy smiles a little. “You seem like the kind of person who would be especially frustrated by something not following a pattern.”

“I am.”

“You said you’d been getting flowers for eight years.”

It’s not a question, but Arthur finds he doesn’t mind answering anyway. Most people skirt around the topic of Margery. Now that it’s out in the open, it’s like something within him has opened up too, and it is raw and painful but he feels like he can breathe again. Maybe he’s missed getting to talk about her.

“She’s been gone for three and a half years. We were dating for two years and married for two and a half. I gave her flowers when we were together, of course, for birthdays and holidays and anniversaries, and now I bring them here.” He tells him about the first time he brought her a bouquet of dahlias. She had smiled so brightly, and she threw her arms around his neck and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek before skipping over to the kitchen to fill a vase, and in that moment Arthur decided he wanted to replicate that little moment of joy again and again for the rest of their lives. They had only been dating for a few months at that point, but he went looking at rings the next day.

“You must have loved her a lot.”

He nods.

Percy sighs. “I think I did love my father, deep down, most of the time. But I hated him, too.” He pauses, reaching for words, and Arthur waits quietly, watching his face change. “He was never quite abusive, but the little things added up,” he continues haltingly. “Leaving us alone a little too long, speaking a little too loud, punishing us a little too harshly, looking at me with my boyfriends with a little too much judgment. We fought a lot, and it just got worse as I got older.”

“You mentioned leaving after a big fight a few years ago,” Arthur says.

“Yes. That was the worst. I don’t remember how it started, but a lot of things we’d been mostly ignoring ended up coming to the surface.”

He clears his throat. “I was living with a boyfriend at the time, and I was helping his family with their Christmas tree farm instead of working a traditional job.” He has been looking straight forward, mostly, but now his eyes flicker over to Arthur, then quickly away. “I don’t know whether it was the homosexuality or the unemployment he objected to more, but he told me that I was a disappointment to him, and that if my mother was alive she would have been disappointed in me too.”

Arthur winces. “I wouldn’t respond well to that either.”

Percy shakes his head. “I just couldn’t do it anymore after that. Like I told you before, I started running around the world and not looking back, and I refused to speak to my father again. It meant that things were tense with my sister. She understood why I left but I don’t think she really forgave me for it, and I couldn’t really forgive her for staying with him. We used to be so close when we were younger, but after the argument we could barely talk to each other.”

It’s hard to reconcile the bitterness in his voice with the man Arthur watched picking flowers. “You’re here now, though,” Arthur says, “and you were meeting her the day we met, so what happened?”

“He died. Two months ago. We had to deal with the loss. We may have had very different feelings about him, but he was our father. All of a sudden we were each other’s only family and we realized we needed each other. I’d been thinking about settling down anyway, so it made sense for that to be close to her. We’re figuring it out.”

Arthur nods. They fall into silence again, but it’s less awkward now. Opening up to each other has made the heaviness go away, and now it just feels companionable.

They sit there for another half an hour, exchanging stories about their families, their relationships, and themselves. Arthur has never had such a personal conversation with anyone other than his own family or Margery. It should feel uncomfortable, but with Percy, he just feels connected, and by the time he gets home, he is already thinking about their inevitable next meeting.

After the conversation in the cemetery, running into Percy is more welcome than annoying, whether they say hello in passing or stop to have a real conversation over lunch or coffee.

They see each other everywhere – on the sidewalk outside Arthur’s office, at the bank, in stores. Sitting on a park bench overlooking the river in September, Percy tells him about his sister, and all the reasons they resent each other, and why he doesn’t get along with her fiancé. They get ice cream on Halloween even though it’s too cold and bicker over the best flavors, and Arthur tells Percy he is starting to hate his job. They talk about house repairs, and travel, and why the post office isn’t open on Thursday. A few days before Thanksgiving, they laugh when they find each other in the florist’s shop, and Arthur talks more about Margery, and Percy tells him about his mother. Sometimes they talk for a few minutes, sometimes for an hour. Sometimes they just sit in peaceful silence.

By the end of the year, it feels like they truly know each other. Arthur hasn’t felt that way since Margery. He’s used to being recognized only on the surface level; it’s a small enough town that everyone knows his name and face, but it has been years since he has been close enough to anyone to feel that they knew each other as real people. Percy, a stranger less than a year ago, has already achieved that kind of closeness, and it’s nice. It’s confusing and a little frightening, but it’s comforting and affirming too, and for once, Arthur stops questioning it.

The house feels warmer than usual. Maybe it’s because he opened the curtains when he woke up, to let the sun in, instead of waiting for Margery to do it and then sighing and leaving the room when he remembered she never would. He’s been waiting for Margery a lot less, recently. Yesterday he brushed the cobwebs away from the painting in the bedroom. He dusted around the rest of the house, too. When he was done, he felt oddly proud of himself, and for some reason his first thought was that he wanted to tell Percy about it.

Finding himself wanting to tell Percy things – that’s another new thing he’s been doing lately.

The house still feels wrong, even with the sunlight and the dusting. Empty. It’s too big for one person. It was too big for two people, really, but Margery liked it. Maybe that’s the problem – it was always Margery’s house more than his.

They both had their names on the paperwork, he paid for most of it, and the basics of it – a house in this area of town with a driveway and a yard and three bedrooms – had been in his ten-year plan, right under his job and marriage.

But she was the one who liked the oak tree in the back and the granite steps and chose most of the decorations. He was happy to indulge her. He liked seeing her smile when they cashed out at antique shops and sprawl out on the light blue loveseat by the window and fall asleep while watching TV. The house was nice, and it was a good home for him for years, but Margery was the one who made it come to life, and she was the one whose life left it.

The house needs a new person, a new life.

Or maybe he’s thinking of himself.

Then again, a new person has already entered his life. They just had lunch, even; that’s where Arthur just came from. They exchanged phone numbers and Percy grinned that crooked smile as he handed his phone back, their fingers brushing, and when Arthur got back home he started thinking about how much warmer he felt. Arthur hasn’t made that connection yet, but he will.

One day not too far in the future he will wake up in a different house, on the other side of town, over by the elementary school. The sun will shine in on his face through ugly green curtains he will have given up on arguing against. The other side of the bed will be empty, but it will be warm. He will lie in bed for a few minutes, mentally reviewing his schedule, because he will never stop keeping a schedule even as he starts caring less about sticking to it.

Someone will be singing in the kitchen. The singing will be offkey, but Arthur will never have the heart to say so. The singing will pause when the creaky step signifies that he’s up, and then start right back up. As Arthur enters the kitchen he will smell eggs cooking and smile.

Percy will look up from the stove. He will keep singing through his grin, and Arthur will be filled with a fondness he never expected to feel again. He will feel that fondness every day, and he will never get used to it.

They will go about their days. After dinner, they will listen to music in the living room while sitting next to each other on the red velvety couch and reading. Percy has an old-fashioned record player, and they will play one of Margery’s old records. Arthur will never stop thinking about her, and the memories will always be accompanied by an ache he feels deep in his heart. There is a hole there that will never be filled. But he will realize soon that just because she still has a space in his life it doesn’t mean no one else can have a space too.

But that’s getting ahead of things. Arthur doesn’t know any of this yet. He won’t even think to consider it as a possibility for a while now. But in a few minutes, he will get up to make some tea, and he will pull out his phone while he waits for the water to boil. He will look at Percy’s name in his contact list, and he won’t press “call” yet, but one day, maybe tomorrow, he will.