Winter Flowers

The house at the end of the road had only one distinguishing feature from the other white clapboard houses that peppered the neighborhood. It was decrepit. It was run down in every way except for the bright flowers. It had been this way for as long as Will lived on Coronado Avenue.

Will had moved there as a teen and he’d heard stories about the young woman who was killed in the streetcar accident years ago. He’d heard neighbors describe in penetrating detail the blood on the body around her ears and her neck. Her limbs were bent in odd directions. The Baumgartner’s only daughter was home from college that weekend. Her folks still lived in the house two doors down, aging and doddering with their house falling down around them, except for the window boxes. They kept geraniums in their flower boxes in the spring and summer then switched them out for Mums in the fall. In the winter, Mrs. Baumgartner kept the boxes filled with plastic flowers. She could not stand to see them empty.

Will thought that maybe those winter flowers were Pansies. “Mother would know,” he’d think, “I ought to ask her.” But he forgot most days, getting distracted by the television or the food cooking or the sight of Betsy Parsons sunning herself in the yard next to theirs. She had the most beautiful skin Will had ever seen, taut and smooth. Even in the winter she would sit on the lawn chair in the backyard and unbutton her blouse to let the sun sink into her pores. Will thought that perhaps she knew he was there, watching. Her goosebumped chest exposed only enough to give a taste of what might lurk less than a centimeter beyond the cotton poplin. Will wanted to shout, “You’ll get frostbite!” to her, but he did not want to break their silent relationship, his voyeuristic hunger, her exhibitionistic bounty.

He would have to go back downtown before too long. The internship at his uncle’s law office required that he spend one late night a week working on the paperwork. He came home for an hour in between so that he could get a good meal and perhaps a peek at Betsy Parsons. One day he thought he might work up the nerve to call on her but not today

....

The light in the law office was terrible. The office sported windows all around which lent more light than necessary in the daytime and nothing but streetlamps and desk lamps at night. No one else worked this late. He sometimes brought a flashlight to keep up with the briefs. He worked slow, his uncle complained about it. Will did what he could, cursing the day he took that internship. He’d much preferred to stay in San Diego where the weather was perfect. but the finances weren’t there.

He thought about the sun and the light, the long limbs and tender flesh that Betsy Parsons hid under those button-down shirts. And then he thought about the plastic Pansies in Mrs. Baumgartner’s window boxes. After 10 years, they had faded from their once vibrant purple. At one time, his mother had said they even looked almost real but now the plastic of them was evident. He would ask his mother about those Pansies, he thought. He was so distracted by the idea that he finally packed up his paperwork, shut off his desk lamp and walked from the office building to the streetcar stop.

...

She was the only other person waiting. Her hair was red, glistening in the strange, harsh street lamp light. She turned her head to greet him, smiling, her red lipstick catching Will by surprise. She blushed and looked away. He’d never seen her before, but he felt he knew her somehow. Will gripped his briefcase and tried not to stare as they waited. He considered making conversation, “What’s a nice girl doing out here on a night like this...” or something very like, but he couldn’t. He just smiled to himself, stamping his feet in the cold.

The street car came and he allowed her to enter first, waving his hand toward the entry and smiling at her in a way he hoped was not creepy. She smiled in return, her blue eyes crinkling at the edges. “Thank you,” she said in a soft, sweet voice. Will thought that she was like an angel. He thought about Betsy and her unbuttoned shirt, how coarse he seemed to him now. This girl was refined, perfect like the weather he missed in San Diego. She was warm and pleasant.

He sat down across from her in the empty streetcar before he even realized it. She spoke first, telling him that she liked his eyes, that he seemed kind. She asked him his name, about his family, about his college, about his internship. He talked about himself all the way home until she reached up and pulled the line to signal her stop.

“Will you walk me home?” she asked and he nodded. She kept him entranced as he stood up to exit, not even paying attention to their surroundings. She asked questions about his ambitions, about his heartbreak, about his hopes for life and he talked as though he was a man just finding a voice for the first time. When they reached her porch he walked her up the steps. He stood next to her smiling and said, “This has been, well, amazing. Can I call on you again sometime?” She nodded, but her eyes were wandering to the door behind him. Will saw that she tried to smile and he thought that maybe he’d done something wrong.

He clapped his hand to his head, “I haven’t even asked your name!” he blurted out, sure that he’d found his error.“It’s Violet,” she said and gestured for his to knock, “I’ve forgotten my key. My parents will be so worried.” Will stepped to the door immediately. Gallant and energetic, he rapped on the door three times and turned to smile at her. Violet returned the smile and something nagged at the back of his head, he knew her somehow.

He tried to form a question for her, for Violet, but a fog hung around him so that he could not seem to think of anything but the window boxes in his neighbor’s windows and just as words began to take shape in his brain the front door was opened. Will turned to see Mr. Baumgartner there, weary eyed and overweight. Will barely registered him before he said, “I’ve walked your daughter, Violet, home, sir.”

The effect of the window box image and the aging neighbor, the soft-voiced woman, the red hair and lovely lips suddenly struck him as Mrs. Baumgartner peeked out from behind her husband. She gently moved him aside and looked at Will with those same blue eyes. She shook her head and Will looked behind him to see the woman had disappeared. “But she was here...” he stammered.Mrs. Baumgartner reached out and patted him on his arm. Her husband shuffled away from the door of the decrepit place and disappeared into the dark walls of the house. “You’re not the first to bring her home, son,” she said gently. “She’s been trying to come home for years.”