Forty Days and Nights: Love Stories. 15. Flower Bed

She stood at the back door looking into the early morning light, waiting for the sunrise. As soon as the first stream of true sunlight slipped into the garden she took her old jacket from the hook and pulled a hat out of the pocket. No gloves. She would need to be able to feel. She picked up the paper bag with its soft, heavy burden from the basket where it had been waiting and went softly and heavily out the back door.

She stood in the cold sunshine, straightening her shoulders a little painfully as she looked all around their garden. Holding the bag on her open left hand, reaching in with her right to begin this work, she was distracted for a moment by the wonder, the heft and smooth consistency of all the seeds. Millions of seeds, she thought. She filled her hand and grasped a fistfull of them, held them hard, opened her hand and let them fall, pour through her fingers. Millions of lives sitting on her hand, in a bag in the cold backyard.

She began planting.

She threw seeds all along the fence and down both the edges of the sidewalk. She sowed them thickly in the front parts of the beds and under the trees, where he had dug out the grass to make mowing easier. So many of their gardening decisions had come to be based on ease. Ease in maintenance had become their inspiration, their guiding principle. She planted in the corners of the yard, even throwing seeds in the only corner where poppies already grew. He had planted them that first spring, first summer, really, they had lived in this house. She had laughed at him. It's too late for planting those, she had reminded him, you know that very well. That should have been done in the fall. He smiled at her, squinting against the sunshine, scattering seeds as if she hadn't spoken. I know, he said, I know. It's late, but I think these will come up fine. Not this year, she said, still laughing. No, he said, not this year. Maybe not this year. But next year. Some year. I want them to get started even if they show up late, he told her simply. Poppies are my favorite.

She had been right about the poppies, and wrong. Like she always was. It was too late for them that year, and they didn't show up the next year either. She was sad, she bought more seeds for him to use in the fall, but that fall he had gotten so sick, she remembered, so sick. No one planted anything that fall. And the next year that corner of the backyard was filled with poppies. Just like that. Filled. He would sit and watch them when they were in bloom, take his work and go sit close to his flowers, smiling at her from the backyard. Not triumphant, not I-told-you-so. He was never like that. She didn't believe he had it in him. Just confident in his late planted flowers, just reveling in their success, their abundant beauty and abandoned giving. Like he always was.

She worked carefully on around the yard, scattered the seeds under the windows and on both sides of the back door. She had not considered, not even considered, planting them in the front yard. The front yard was trim, tidy, interesting but not beguiling. Not enticing. Not messy. The front yard was their necessary sacrifice to the world and all its harms. The front yard belonged to the neighbors, to the town, to the people out there, outside. The back yard was home. They strung lights and built seats and made fires and dug and harvested and talked and built high fences on all its sides. She planted seeds for him in the back yard.

She worked methodically, taking time, plenty of time, making her way along the edges of the house til she stood again where she had begun this planting, and there she looked about her, a bit defeated. Ridiculous. She still had half the seeds left. Soft and yielding in the bag in her hand, all those lives. She hefted the bag, looking for more places she could reasonably put poppies. His corner was full, jammed. Every year she had pulled out poppies, pushed them back, tamed them. Piles of poppy bodies. He would stand by her, his hand on her hair. You could let them go, he would say, you could just let them go and see what would happen. She had laughed at that, too. Let them go? See what would happen? You know what would happen. Poppies everywhere. They'd take over the world. We'd be buried in a sea of poppies. Would that be so bad? he would ask, looking around the garden as if he could see them, all those poppies, scarlet and lacy and festive. Would that be so bad?

She stood, half the seeds she had gathered so carefully nestled in the creased and felted paper bag, resting. Waiting. She saw herself not here in this cold sunshine but in the hot and endless summer, all summer long, every day it seemed, shaking poppy heads into this bag, every single head on every single plant in his corner. Saving every seed. And going through the neighborhood, asking if she could have seeds, saving and hoarding and amassing this treasure, this gift. Working her way up and down the streets, knocking on friends' doors and strangers' doors and bending over the poppy heads working and working and waiting to go home and sleep and not remember and never think. Just gather these seeds into this bag. Waiting for the time, the right time, because she was like that. Now she stood in the sun and it was the right time and she had filled every space, every nook and crack and recess she could think of but half of her gathering was still poised in her hand. She shook her head. Poppies were planted thickly in every conceivable, every possible, every practical place.

Would it be so bad? he asked inside her head, would that be so bad?
She turned away from the sunshine, turned back again, bent and carefully set the bag on the ground and put her hands over her eyes. She stood still a long time and remembered. She remembered everything. All, all all of it. There was no way not to remember. There was no way out.
Would it be so bad? he asked, would that be so bad?

She reached her hand into the bag, felt the seeds left there, took out a handful and threw them into the grass. Threw seeds over the garden plot and all the beds. Tossed and scattered his poppy seeds to the four winds. Take over the world, she thought, take over the world. Her tears were cold on her cheeks in the cold morning sun. Bury me, she thought, bury me in a sea of poppies. Would that be so bad?