How the Carnation Bleeds

 She already knows what flowers she’s going to buy. She already has the cash for it down to the penny in her right pocket. She’s anticipated dirt and snow and already has her worst sweatpants on.

              A small bouquet is arranged by the door. Hundreds of other priced blossoms are arranged throughout the store. With the pink carnations she’s picked, countless others fly off the shelves in an instant. There’s exactly twelve in her bouquet. An older gentleman sees the bouquet in her hand and smiles for her, but she doesn’t acknowledge him. She purchases the flowers without a word to the cashier and leaves the store. Without looking up, she finds her car, places the bouquet in the passenger seat, and drives out of the parking lot and through the main drag.

              There is no radio, no music, no sound in the car besides the engine and the rustle of the plastic holding the flowers together. Underneath the bouquet is a pair of kitchen scissors that she had grabbed from the house earlier.

              Every restaurant she passed by was packed, flooded in a scene of red, white, pink, and pairs holding hands. She doesn’t clutch the steering wheel any harder or take a second glance. She passes through the intersection and stops for the next one.

              It’s maybe two miles out of town she had to drive to get to the cemetery. She doesn’t know what to make of it being so empty.

              The grave is easy to find; it’s the center of a trio. The left plot was the first one there, occupied by a person she had never met. The middle was marked by a marble bench with a shared last name, the engravings still as crisp as she remembered them at the burial. The right plot was undisturbed and empty; however, she knew that it was bought and reserved.

              She gently tore the plastic wrapping off the bouquet and cut the rubber bands binding the carnations tightly together. She put each scrap of waste in her car, she wasn’t mindful of where they ended up otherwise.

              With each flower in her hand, she placed the bouquet upon the middle grave. Even amid the recent blizzards, she had kept this grave very clear in the last few weeks. Made it easy to find, and even with snow covering the roads throughout the cemetery, she knew how to get there.

              She read the gravestone in an irregular, dazed fashion. She read the date of birth, then the dead’s labels, then back to the date of death, then the labels again, she glazed over the ornamental engravings around the border, then back to the date of death before she could settle her eyes on the name.

              The last name she still bore, however it looked different on the stone. It looked old and conclusive. A gravestone made it seem like the name’s last mention was supposed to be here.

              She anticipated her knees buckling on this specific day, but she was oddly still.

              She looked back at the empty plot, feeling her hands shake at her sides before returning to the car and closing the door. Snow had drifted inside on the flooring and driver’s seat, wetting her clothes as she started the engine again.

              She drove out of the cemetery and onto the highway, making her way back into town. Instead of following the main drag all the way through, she turned onto a division by the river.

              Each house she passed was larger and larger until she found a manor with scarlet shingles and a harp in the window. She parked her car on the driveway, locked it, and walked beside the dead, snow-covered carnations to the front door. The house was silent, and she realized that it was still visitation hours. They would be back within thirty minutes.

              She walked through the house and checked on the utilities. The furnace was still operating as it should. The fridge was still cold, and the food was fresh. Looked like enough ingredients for biscuits and gravy in the morning, perhaps a soup tonight. Her mouth was dry, so she took a quick swallow of tap water from the sink before walking through the rest of the house.

              The dinning room was still clean. The tabletop was void of dust, and everything had been reorganized to look like it anticipated a sort of formal dinner. The second dining room was the same way, with the rug vacuumed.

              She looked up at the winding staircase. Every framed picture was clean. She couldn’t scrub the coffee stains out of the carpet.

              The cellar was meticulous. She had cleaned every pillow, wiped every window, checked every book in the bookshelves for folds in the pages. She removed the bookmarks because they meant that someone would be returning to them.

              The grand piano was the only object in the house that could not be an eyesore to her. The stain was old and the tuning was horrendous, but she didn’t mind it. Not even the bench with the broken hinges and chipped corners.

              The metronome was silent. She kept it that way.

              The keys were real ivory. They had this particular texture to them, these vague color imperfections. The silence made way for the untuned middle C she played, and swallowed it when her finger was lifted.

              Nothing could come to mind of what to play. Her arms were heavy and she couldn’t bring herself the energy to play anything, not even tritone nonsense.

              She rose from the piano and walked upstairs. She could hear a new car engine in the driveway shut off, followed by the doors slamming shut.

              The granddaughter’s room was the first room on the right. If she had followed the railing and through the hallway, it would’ve led to the master bedroom, sewing room, and laundry room. She couldn’t ever bring herself to clean the master bedroom.

              She didn’t bother to close the door to the granddaughter’s bedroom. From upstairs, she could make out the sounds of five pairs of feet. One was heavy and distinguished with an equally heavy emotion she found painful to admit. Another was heavy, but with a certain burden. The three others were light and quick. The smallest one was out of the main entryway, but she couldn’t figure out where it went to hide. The other two were growing louder.

              Her two sisters walked into the bedroom. One threw herself on the other bed, sobbing loudly. The other walked into the adjoined bathroom. She hoped that this sister liked the yellow carnations she placed in a vase on the counter. She hoped that it brightened the already dim room. And she couldn’t bring herself to clean it anyway.

              She stared at the white crib and treehouse doll set in the corner of the room. She could remember laying in that crib, but she also couldn’t distinguish it as a raw memory or a hopeful figment. She remembered the soft sheets and the bumpy texture of lace beneath her hands. Above her was soft lights, and a music box playing a lullaby with no name, but she knew it by heart.

              A woman with the softest hands reached to pick her up. Her clothes were always silk elegance, and her body was always adorned with gold and jewels and precious things. A beautiful diamond ring was always on her right hand. It’s cold, smooth touch was always a reassurance to her, even as an infant with no understanding of its importance or even what it meant.

              Accompanying this soft elegance was the smooth tang of cigars. In the corner of her eye was the glisten of a metal watch encircling a scarred, aged wrist. On the right hand was always a thick gold band, something so concrete in placement that it seemed stitched into his very skin.

              This second part brought her a tearing pain in her ribs, and she could then hear the sound of her sister weeping on the bed behind her again.

              The bathroom door opened, slammed shut, and the pair of footsteps stomped out of the room. She didn’t track where they went.

              Downstairs, the smell of stew wafted through the house. Nothing in her body reacted to it.

              The sound of her sister sobbing was beginning to irritate her. She could feel the texture of clothes on her skin, the taste of saliva and nothing in her mouth. The settling and disturbance in the house. The footsteps downstairs that signaled the news that she was dreading and tried her best to ignore. She hoped that they saw the fresh yellow carnations on the counter and knew where she was so they would leave her alone and never tell her.

              She rose from the bed, no audible break in her sister’s crying, and walked back to the railing by the staircase and followed it to the hall and ultimately the master bedroom.

              This very room had remained empty for over one year and seven months. She had difficulty remembering the very day that he had left, and she didn’t realize he may never return.

              She remembered the nights she watched movies in their company. She was too young to understand the television but felt the perfect harmony between the two. She missed it, even twelve years after the first passing.

              The room was suffocatingly empty. The space was eating at everything and holding her neck, pushing her to leave the room. She didn’t dare disturb anything and touch the sofa she remembered laying in as a small child, or the jewelry her small fingers grazed but didn’t understand the value of, or the carefully selected, purchased, and placed décor that nobody dared to change. Nobody wanted to bring in anything new to this room. They wanted to preserve it the way it was as a pocket dragged in the line of time.

              Even the dried carnations left on the nightstand.

              She brought herself out of the room, feeling like a perverted thing in a holy space.

              Out of the room, still hearing the sound of her sister’s – both – weeping, the sound of her mother cooking, her brother’s silence, and the father’s anticipated distress, she stood in the hallway and stared at the family photo she didn’t dust on the wall.

              A photo she was in. She remembered the day.

              She was dressed in white, seated closely with her siblings. Her mother sat beside her; her father stood behind her. Among her other relatives and the white carnations was her grandfather.

              A solemn, loving, grieving soul.

              A dedication.

              And an honor.

              I love you.