The Picker

By the thirteenth day of Ricky’s absence, our apartment looked like it had been ransacked by wild goats or some impossibly ravenous rabbits. 

His books were left untouched, in perfect rows on the shelves, collecting dust as usual. His bed was perfectly made, with the plaid hypo-allergenic down alternative comforter draped neatly and artfully over the mattress. His canned goods remained smoothly stacked and the plastic wrappers of his chips and dry goods were left sealed and uncrinkled. 

But, over the course of Ricky’s two-week ski trip with his improbably wealthy boyfriend, I singlehandedly destroyed every plant that he owned. And I’m not talking about destruction by neglect. I didn’t over- or under-water. I actively, physically demolished every sprout and bud in our shared apartment. 

I bashed his begonias. I dissected his succulents and eviscerated his vases of hanging vines.

I sat disgusted, surveying my kingdom of terra cotta shards, mounds of soil, and scattered petals. It was the afternoon, and I glanced at the calendar for the fifth time to be sure. It was Friday and Ricky was due home on Saturday evening. I knew I had to act fast and when the creeping panic in my chest lowered to my stomach, feeling something like excitement, I hated myself even more for being such a maniac.

When Ricky returns, with a sunburnt nose and puffer jacket tagged with lift tickets, would he cry? Would he be furious? Scared? He might have expected a wilted flower or two but this? Yes, I needed to act fast to control the damage.

A few options immediately sprung to mind. First, I thought I could invent some fanciful lie that would completely exempt me from any responsibility in the matter. 

I could say that it was an act of jealousy on the part of his ex-boyfriend, Gerard, who broke in using an unreturned duplicate key. Yes, Gerard was so upset to see Ricky move on with his life that he decided to plot revenge. Social media made it quite clear that Ricky was out of town, so Gerard would have deduced that now was the perfect time to sneak in to the apartment. Gerard knew how hard Ricky worked on crafting his urban garden, so he would have been hitting him right where it hurts.

While this lie had a satisfying narrative arc, it also contained a couple fatal flaws. First off, our building has a doorman who would never let Gerard in, under explicit instructions by Ricky. Also, it would be hard for me to convince Ricky not to immediately call Gerard to verify what in the fuck happened and who the fuck he thinks he is.

I’d have to abandon that one. I considered attempting to faithfully replace all of the plants, but I knew that would be a fool’s errand. I didn’t know forget-me-nots from freesias.

The truth, as a final option, was also beyond consideration.

I suppose I can no longer avoid telling what really happened. The unvarnished truth. I’ll start at the beginning, and try not to get lost along the way.

When I was a kid, I used to pick. And no, I’m not talking about picking one out of 31 delicious flavors. It would start at school, anytime I got a little nervous or upset or even just bored. My gaze would flicker down to my fingernails and travel up to my hands then my arms looking for something to pluck or scratch at. It would consume my entire focus until my digits followed suit. My index and thumb would zero in on a little piece of material on my cuticle and pluck. I scratched and squeezed at clogged pores on my arms. I peeled hangnails to the quick. 

The places I couldn’t see with my eyes were not off-limits: my hands learned to see just fine. I felt my neck, back and face for bumps and dry skin. I made a map of my body by touch, memorizing its variegated landscapes. On days when there was nothing satisfying to bother, my fingers travelled to my eyelashes. Consciously, I didn’t want to pull them out, but feeling those little hairs in my grip gave me such an irresistible urge that I couldn’t help but pull.

To have any compassion for my cause, you must understand the intensity of this feeling. After a certain point, the picking was not optional in my mind. On any given day, it started out as a mild urge, until my discomfort grew like a snowball gaining mass on its course downhill. It would grow bigger and bigger and worse and worse until I couldn’t focus on anything around me. I missed learning about the ancient Egyptians working on a clogged pore in my scalp. I missed mitosis and meiosis for an especially evocative scab on my left knee. The picking grew from something that I could do to something that I wanted to do to something that I needed to do.

My parents caught wind when they noticed my eyelashes getting patchy. They took me to the pediatrician who assigned some big names to my condition and recommended I go to a psychiatrist. 

The shrink was 15% man and 85% glasses. Every time I went in to his office, he offered me toy cars and coloring books. These failed to pique my thirteen-year-old interest, and he never seemed to remember that I always declined. His efforts to make me comfortable were mildly infuriating. But, over time, he gave me some strategies to stop the picking, and I stopped. And that was that.

For fifteen years, I truly and honestly never had the desire to pick. I’ve barely even thought about it. Sometimes, I would tell anecdotes about my precocious disdain for my childhood therapist, but now that I think about it, my stories included plenty about the eccentricities of my bespectacled therapist and nothing about my tendency to pick.

So, that more or less brings my story to two weeks ago, when the drama really started.

I had been under a lot of stress trying to find a new job, after getting laid off three months ago when my company got swallowed up by a new one, and enacted some budgetary cuts. They decided to simplify our three-person marketing team into a one-person Marketing Director. That one person was not me. 

On the Monday morning after Ricky left, I was offered my first job interview in a quarter year’s search. And, it went terribly, terribly wrong. The tense smile on my interviewer’s face as he shook my hand goodbye told me that I would never see him again. That afternoon, I sat at my dining room table, feeling like a miserable wreck.

In the center of the table sat a pot of orange poppies that was inappropriately large for the surface below it. “It’s the only place they’ll get enough sunlight,” Ricky had said, “I’m sorry they’re a little extra, but you’re gonna have to deal with it because they remind me of home.” 

I peered into an untouched glass of water perched in five-inch-radius between the pot and the edge of the table, while my mind reeled. I thought about every awkward pause in that interview and everything I said wrong and everything I didn’t say until my regret and shame felt like a dagger in my guts. I wanted to feel some sort of relief and for the first time in over a decade, it occurred to me to pick. There was a little tag of skin next to my pinky’s fingernail that my eyes zeroed in on. But, my head was screaming, don’t do it, don’t go down that rabbit hole, don’t open that can of worms, and I felt so disgusted and shameful and small that I thought I would choke. 

I looked up, gasping for air and saw the explosion of orange flowers sitting in front of me. Without hesitating, I plucked one sunset petal from the nearest bloom. It was larger than I thought it would be and felt soft and downy in my fingertips. I rubbed back and forth until it rolled into a gnome-sized cigarette. As I let it fall to the floor, I felt a whisper of relief, like the cold grip on my larynx was softening.

I stood up and nearly knocked over my water glass to get a closer look at the flowers. Each petal fit perfectly, overlapping in a snug circle. The pollen bursted out of the center dangling from angel-hair-delicate strands. The stems were sturdy, like green unshaven legs.

In that moment, my appetite for destruction overcame me. I plucked every petal. I picked at the pollen. I peeled and tore and scraped until the pot was barren, the perturbed soil looking like a recently-robbed grave. 

The carnage littered the table and spilled to the floor, all orange and green. And I felt refreshed and relieved. The tension in my neck and chest had lifted. I no longer needed to dwell on the past or future. I was perfectly centered in the present. Flower picking felt like a miracle cure.

Unfortunately, my tranquility didn’t last long. A few hours after the poppy affair, a new sensation began to bloom—guilt. I knew how much Ricky liked those poppies and I anticipated the shame I would feel when he found out what I had done to them. But, instead of stopping there and getting ahead of the problem, I began to relieve my anxiety by ruining other plants. The disease became the cure, and the cure, the disease.

I spent the next two weeks in a self-inflicted house arrest, convincing myself that a job-search bootcamp was just what I needed. I spent the days sleeping, waking, eating, sending out job applications, and picking Ricky’s plants. As the green garbage piled up, I convinced myself that as soon as I got hired, all of my problems would be solved. If I got a job, then I’d have the money to buy Ricky all sorts of new plants. Better plants. Rare and expensive ones. I could even purchase some foliage for my own purposes.

A vibration from my phone buzzed louder than the buzz of my busy mind. It was a phone call from Ricky. 

“Hi, hi, howsitgoing?” I said.

“Hello, darling!” Ricky enthusiastically replied. “It’s been amazing. How are you, what have you been up to?”

“Oh nothing,” I coughed, “I’ve just been trying to enjoy the sunshine. You know, picnics, long walks. Um, picking flowers.”

“You’re adorable. Picking flowers? You liar. I’m so glad you’ve been able to relax. Honestly, it’s probably a blessing that you boofed that job interview, because that employer sounded like a corporate nightmare. Anywho, I have to go in a minute, but I just wanted to let you know that we’re coming home early! We’re actually about to hop on a flight right now. Apparently there’s this snow storm coming in tomorrow, but we got so lucky and bought the last two tickets on the last plane out of here today! Can you believe that?”

“No! Wow, yes. Okay. Well, in that case, I’ll see you soon.”

“Great! Yay. I’m sorry for interrupting your solitude. Don’t worry about cleaning up or anything, I realize I totally sprung this on you.”

“Okay, great. See you soon, Ricky. Safe flight!” 

There was a bead of sweat on my phone in the spot where my finger hung up the call. “Picking flowers.” Jesus Christ, that had been the only thing I didn’t lie about.