Forgotten Flowers

Matilda was quieter than usual on the way to the hospital. Normally, she loved long car rides with her husband, as it meant a chance to catch up with her better half without the interruption of one of her toddlers demanding every quarter-ounce of her focus. Even now, seven years after their wedding, she still craved that unstructured time with Will, that time when they had nothing but time, before the twins changed everything. There was no question of the depths of her love for her beautiful family, of course. Those two little girls. Their enormous brown eyes, their squeals of unadulterated joy, their suffocating hugs and sticky kisses as addictive as she imagined pure heroin must be, they became her universe, and she grew both grateful and and resentful for it. Will was an incredible father, as she had known he would be. And, he was everything she needed in a spouse. He was patient, he was communicative, he was romantic. She loved traveling with him in her late 20s as much as she loved buying a brownstone with him in her early 30s as much as she loved doing absolutely nothing at all with him in those infinite in-between moments. He was a true partner in life. He was her best friend. 

Except for Tamara. And Tamara was dying. 

“Hon? For you?”

Matilda hadn’t even realized Will had pulled into a drive-through. Clearly, she needed the caffeine boost. 

“Oh. Um. Just a black coffee. Thanks.”

Will’s eyes lingered on his wife’s blank expression a second longer, knowing without ever having said to her face that Matilda’s coffee order was a barometer of her mood. Usually, she defaulted around a double shot oat milk latte. When she was way up there, in that silly, giddy way she got when she was on a hot sales streak at her work as a drug representative, a drive-through wouldn’t do. She wanted something more luxurious, something classier. She wanted the social experience of waiting for a single origin pour-over, so she could chat with the barista about whatever mindless nicety came up, to feel connected to something outside her little life. He remembered that one day while walking to the girls’ daycare at pick-up time, those college freshmen, practically children themselves, walking to the nearby university sports complex and catcalling her. She said, almost in the same breath, that it was “so gross that boys were still doing that to women” and that she’d “still got it, babe!” She had suggested they stop at a new Italian espresso bar for a pick-me-up on the way home, wiggly two-year-olds on their parents' hips be damned. 

He handed her a scorching cup of pure black. He switched on the turn signal to bring them back onto the freeway that would take Matilda to her lifelong friend, where she was wasting away in some shitty podunk hospital in a shitty podunk town that she moved to after she married a shitty podunk guy. Matilda brought the cup to her lips, barely tasting the burnt bitterness as the view from the passenger window grew more and more bleak. She remembered her privilege, that she was driving in a nice car with her wonderful husband who had just spent $14 for mediocre coffees without batting one of his painfully long eyelashes while he drove her to a hospital in bumblefuck, four hours outside the city. She looked down at her wedding ring - the diamond infinity band supporting the weight of an imposing round-cut solitaire. Back then, when they were all much younger, Will had asked Tamara to find out Matilda’s ring size, whether she thought Tilly would prefer a solitaire or three-stone setting, if he should get the wedding band engraved, and Tammy had obliged with her opinions dutifully. That was so Will. Thoughtful to the point of thoughtless. Tamara had married the year before, and her husband hadn’t even bothered to ask what kind of ring she would want to wear every day for the rest of their marriage. When Will told his new fiancee that he had enlisted Tammy, of Tilly and Tammy, for help choosing the ring, Matilda was both touched and devastated. These two women, girls then, had lived nearly parallel lives, until they didn’t anymore. Matilda’s life was a flawless two carat diamond. Colorless. Tamara’s was a divorce, and a death sentence. There was nothing fair about any of it. 

The coffee was cold dregs by the time Will switched off the ignition in the small parking lot at Saint Monica General. One of those awful, dark windows. One of them had to be Tamara’s. Matilda could feel how close she was to heartbreak; she knew, the moment she laid eyes on her Tammy, this pillar of her past, this permanent fixture in her existence, that she would disintegrate. Though life had gotten in the way of certain technicalities over the years, like finding the time to see or smell or feel each other, she knew their bond was as permanent as the very solar system, and nothing either of them could do or not do would make that any less true. Matilda felt the squeeze of Will’s hand on hers, and she remembered herself. 

“We forgot flowers,” Matilda said flatly.

“That’s OK, hon, we’ll pick some up from the hospital gift shop,” Will replied sweetly.

“Do you really think this shithole will have anything but half-dead carnations,” she snapped. "Tammy’s all alone in there, Will. The least I could have done was brought her a decent bouquet. Sunflowers were always her favorite. Remember that picture from third grade that I showed you at my mom’s house? Tammy and I are wearing these stupid matching dresses that made us look like we belonged in the cast of ‘Blossom’?” Will looked at Matilda, then over to the hospital entrance, then back to his wife. “Go in, see your friend. I’ll drive around and find some decent flowers. You can blame me and say I forgot them or something.” In that moment, she detested his unfailing kindness. She wanted to claw at his throat to exorcise his good nature, to shake him and hit him and wake him up, make him see what she was about to lose, make him understand that a part of her was about to die, too. Instead, she offered a small, grateful smile and a nod. 

Room 141 was every bit as depressing as Matilda had imagined. Somehow, the lights, no matter how buzzy and florescent they were, never seemed to light the room. Instead of her sweet babydoll smell that wafted around Tammy when she entered a room, the stale stench of neglect hovered in the air. Matilda couldn’t even hear Tamara’s breath over the sound of the machines. She stood for a moment, twenty moments, two thousand moments, keeping watch over the figure that vaguely resembled her best friend. It had been over a year since she had seen Tammy, at the girls’ first birthday party, and they had barely gotten a moment alone together between all the chaos of pictures and grandparents and cakes for little hands to smash. Matilda had silently begged the universe for just a few quiet moments alone, to be close to Tammy, her Tamara, the one who both grounded her and uplifted her in a way a man never could. That moment never came, and Matilda had been overcome by sadness late that evening while opening the gifts and finding two delicate sunflower charms. Will thought she was simply moved by the gesture. But then, he never did quite worship sunflowers the way Tilly and Tammy did. 

Tamara stirred. Matilda’s heart fluttered and she moved to the bedside in an instant. The eyes, sunken and still mostly sleeping, were still Tamara’s eyes, and in the moment they locked with Matilda’s, a glimmer of their light returned. The women didn’t need to say anything before both of them succumbed to tears. Now sobbing, as silently as she could, Matilda held her friend’s hand and pressed it to her cheek. She couldn’t make sense of it. Dying was something that happened to ephemeral things. Or ancient things. Things ruined beyond repair. Tamara was none of those. She was a fortress, a living testament to Matilda’s life story. And her undoing would be fucking ovarian cancer. Suddenly, Matilda despised everyone who would never know what it meant to be someone with ovaries. 

“Remember…” Tamara wheezed. She clearly had not spoken much in the past few weeks. Matilda drew nearer. “Remember that day? Summer, before college. Your porch swing, the sun was setting. We were…we were drinking tequila, talking…” Matilda put a finger to Tamara’s lips. She remembered that night. She didn’t need to be reminded. But, they had both pretended it never happened. They pretended they never left the porch, barefoot, sundresses rippling in the breeze. They pretended they hadn’t sneaked into Blick’s Farm across the road, or that they touched the soft petals of the sunflowers. They pretended they hadn’t laid down in the grass, gazing at the stars, then gazing at each other. And they pretended to be oblivious to their bodies’ and souls’ rejoicing. It was so long ago that Matilda began to wonder, years later, if it that night had been a dream. 

“I’ll always…I mean, I never…” Matilda began, but couldn’t finish. Then, Tamara beckoned her even closer, and she whispered, “that’s where I’ll be. That’s where you’ll find me.” 

Will entered with sunflowers moments after Tamara spoke her last words. 

In the weeks that passed, Matilda held onto her babies a little tighter, . She let her husband be the nurturer he was born to be, even when she wanted to scream at him to let her just feel the hurt for one fucking minute. The hurt was all she had left, and she wanted to hurt for Tamara more than she wanted to heal without her. 

The quiet nights numbered into the tens, then hundreds. Sometimes when insomnia took hold of her, she would go back to their text threads, their emails, their pictures. She would cry, wishing she could revise the written testimony, to go back and eviscerate the filters of propriety and decency. Everything she never said was written in the blank spaces, larger, bolder than the rest.

A year after Tamara’s death, she and Will celebrated their eighth year married and the twins turned three. Every day, she could see where their personalities diverged, where their faces were shedding their sweet baby fat, where their games became more sophisticated and pragmatic. After a particularly complicated visit to the pretend veterinarian, she readied the girls for bed, read them four books, sang them three songs, and gave them five kisses each, punctuated between the same five phrases she said to them every night:

“Goodnight, my love.”

“Sweet dreams."

“Mommy loves you so much.”

“Have a wonderful sleep.”

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

As one child drifted off and the other pulled her close into one more tight hug, Matilda felt something under the little girl’s pillow. They were always hiding toys under their pillows in case, as they put it, they “got bored in the middle of the night.” A bad habit if anyone wanted to get any sleep around here. She pulled the tiny item out from under the yellow pillowcase. A sunflower charm. Where did she find this? Where was the other one? How long had she been hiding this? Matilda wanted to wake her now dozing daughter to ask, but instead, she knew there was something else she needed to do.

After her husband had gone to bed, Matilda snuck out of the house for the first time since she was eighteen. 

Two hours later, Matilda pulled over on the property where she used to live, where no one lived now, and stared across the road at Blick’s Farm. It was strangely comforting to her that despite the impermanence of her own childhood, the things that grew from the earth were steadfast. She exited the car, locked it, and walked to that spot that had once been theirs. Matilda touched the imposing rows of sunflowers, taller than she remembered. In the grass, she laid down, enjoying the warmth from the earth and the heavenly view, the infinite black. She closed her eyes and inhaled. 

“I knew you’d find me.”

Matilda feared that if she opened her eyes, it wouldn’t be true. So instead, she reached out her hand and waited for Tamara’s fingers to intertwine with hers. She felt the warmth of flesh, the breathed in the sweet babydoll smell. 

“I miss you, Tammy.”

“I know.”

“I love you. I’ve always…”

“I know.”

“Are you really here?”

“Open your eyes.”

When she opened her eyes, Matilda was alone, except for a single sunflower.