I have a lot of plants. I
collect a lot of plants. I am a plant person. Dog and cat people I find
droll.
You know what they say, that people who are mad into pets have no
respect for
their fellow humans.
One of my favourites is a Dracaena reflexa. It's also
called Song of India, and it's actually a tree. I call him Norah, and
he likes
to listen to Ravi Shankar. I don't care much for Norah's music though.
Neither
does Norah. I can tell because once a song from her came on the radio
and Norah
started to droop right before my eyes.
The last few days I've come to notice that I seem to have
some new houseguests. Normally cockroaches don't live in this part of
the
country and I suspect one of my plants must have brought them with
them. I'm
not sure though. This morning I saw a cockroach walking through the
soil of my Dracaena marginata – I really like the
Dracaena family, only one I can really recognize. I wasn't sure if he
was just
passing through, that cockroach, on his way to somewhere else or not,
and he
was going so fast that I didn't have the chance to ask him.
I decided to go ask my plant dealer
instead.
I rode over to Stan's. He's the plant
dealer from Iran.
Stan from Iran has been in this
country a long time and I'm not sure if he really is from Iran or not.
He
doesn't have any accent. I imagined people from Iran having accents.
Maybe he
came over as a small child. He looks like he could be from Iran though,
and I
suppose I have no reason not to believe him. He's got a full head of
white hair
and white eyebrows and white hair that comes out of his nose and white
hair
that comes out of his ears, and little white whiskers that grow on his
face. I
often find myself wondering if everyone in Iran looks like him when
they get
old. I secretly suspect that there are only old people in Iran because
it's a
very old country and close to Babylon. I have made many mental notes to
ask
Stan, but I keep forgetting.
I grew up in this neighbourhood but I
never knew about Stan's until I retired. It was the first week of
summer
vacation for the kids, but I knew I would never be going back. I hadn't
thought
before I retired what I would do after. I was at a bit of a loose end,
with the
rest of my life laid out before me on a blank page and no crayons. I
just got
on my bike one morning and went exploring and there was Stan's. I'd
never been
into plants before but the moment I saw the shop I knew, and the moment
I met
Stan it was all confirmed. I have been going to his shop every morning
for the
past couple of years.
Plants are kind of like 3rd
graders, you know. With kids you sprinkle some knowledge on them and
hope they
grow in all the right directions, like plants need water. It seemed
like a good
replacement.
When I rounded the corner past the gas
station on Firth Avenue Stan's plant shop is already in view. There's
not much
more around it to distract the eye; empty lots, an appliance shop, a
shut down
bar. Stan's has got a big green and yellow sign above the door that
says
“Plants.” I like the simplicity of it.
Stan's shop isn't very big and so a
lot of times Stan orders me the plants I want from his plant dealer.
Stan has a
nice catalogue and we look at the pictures together and the little
descriptions, which just say where they're from and what they need.
Right to
the point. Sometimes he pre-orders me a plant that he's come across or
heard
of, because he knows what I like.
We go for lunch sometimes, Stan and I,
to Fanny's Fish and Chips. I don't really like fish nor chips, but Stan
seems
to. It's just a short ride from Stan's Plant shop. Stan doesn't have a
bike.
I'm not really sure how he gets around, or if he even goes anywhere
apart from
Fanny's so he doubles me when we go there. I was afraid at first
because I'd
never doubled before, but he said it's okay, so I believed him.
Sometimes he
tries to scare me when he's doing it. Wobbling the bike, but when he
can tell
that I am indeed terrified, he stops.
He's always been curious about where I
keep all my plants, and I've been very coy about answering him, out of
embarrassment. The truth be told is that though I love plants, I don't
really
have a green thumb, and I'm very forgetful. I take the time to make
lists of
what plants are what, what they're called, the info about them and what
they
need to persevere, and I try very hard to be organized. Like I was when
I was
teaching. I don't know how I did it for all those years with the
students, but
nowadays, I usually end up misplacing the piece of paper that I've
written all
the information about the plant on. Then I draw a crude picture of it
and go to
Stan and ask him what kind of plant it is. Sometimes he doesn't know
either and
that's usually when I end up killing the plant because I panic and
either drown
it or starve it. Sometimes I do both.
That day when I went into Stan's, he
seemed a little distracted. He said hi, but far too rushed. Normally he
says hi
and comes up to me grabbing both my hands and shaking them up and down.
It's no
secret that we fancy each other in that special way, but we both know
that
we're too old to start any funny business, nor want to really share our
lives
with another person. We're set in our ways, but we're fond, and our
morning
meetings seem to be enough for us both. But because we have this
healthy
distance I don't feel like it's my business to ask what's going on, or
if
something is wrong, so I don't. Instead I just ask him if I should come
back
another time.
He didn't hear me the first time since
he's in the back room. I think he lives back there but I can't be too
sure. I ask
him a bit louder this time, and he tells me to hold on. He seems to
have some
new plants in, so I take a look at them. Putting the leaves between my
fingers.
Stan always keeps his plants nice and clean. They're like silk, or at
least
what I imagine silk would feel like. I'd like to be able to tell just
from
looking what kind of plant it is, but I'm too old to start trying to
learn new
things.
Stan came out from the back looking
flushed and sweatier than normal. I knew something must have been very
wrong.
Usually he's very composed. He told me that he didn't have much time
for me
today but said he wanted to give me something. He handed me a large
duffle-bag
and my first thought was how
am I going to
get this home? Then he came up to me grabbed me
by both arms and put
his lips onto mine.
My first reaction was to push him
away. We'd never kissed before. I did think about this with Stan though
sometimes. Late at night, when I couldn't sleep the blanket pulled up
to my
chin. He parted his lips and I felt like there was no option but to do
the
same. I'd seen this on TV so many times so I knew that it involved
moving my
head side to side. I felt a cool, warm current shoot through me, and in
spite
of myself I let out a little moan, and I didn't want it to ever end.
And then
it did. He pulled away, handed me the bag and told me he had to go and
started
to head to the back. I just stood there a bit dazed and couldn't even
remember
why I was there anymore. As though he remembered for me he turned
around and
walked back to be me quickly. As quickly as a man with a limp can. He
stopped
just short of me and said, “I love you Irene,” then he turned around
and headed
to the back again. And I thought, well isn't
that something, maybe this is what love is. Because
truth be told,
I'd never been in love before.
I didn't want to be rude and overstay
my welcome, so I turned around and got on my bike with the heavy bag
and headed
home. I wondered if Stan liked Ravi Shankar. I never asked him.
I dropped the bag beside my shoes when
I came in and had to lay down. It seemed like more of a morning than I
had
anticipated and as I saw a cockroach scuttle across the corner of my
ceiling I
realized that that was what I was going to ask him. Then I remembered
the bag.
I set it on my coffee table and
unzipped it. It was full of watches. Rolexes, like the one Stan always
wears.
I rode by the shop every day, rain or
shine since that day. It at least kept some sort of semblance of
routine going
on in my life. Every day it was still closed. I'd look in the window
and see
the plants dying, and the cockroaches, so many of them. At least I got
my
question answered. I'd marked the days on my calendar, since he'd been
gone.
After a couple of months the shop was emptied and the sign was gone. I
still
kept riding by every day and watched as new young people painted and
renovated
and put up a new sign, in an array of pastel letters saying “Clara's
Cupcakes.”
That's when I knew that Stan wasn't ever coming back.
Eventually I killed off all of my
plants without Stan's help except for a cactus and Norah, and the
roaches seem
to have gone to the curb with the other plants.
I renamed the cactus Stan. The one I
used to call Clementine. But Stan suits it better. It's a big cactus,
one of
those one's like you see in cartoons that looks like it has two arms
held out,
bent at the elbows with hands pointing upwards to the sky. I put some
white
cotton balls all around the top to make it look likes Stan's hair, and
I'm
amazed at the resemblance. Then I go into the bag of watches that I've
thrown
in the back of my closet since the day I last saw him because I don't
know what
else to do with it. I try to find one that looked exactly like the one
Stan
wore, and instead I find a folded piece of paper. I open it and written
in big
block letters like one of my grade 3ers would have written is:
IRENE, I'M NOT FROM I RAN. I THOUGHT I
SHOULD TELL YOU. I THOUGHT YOU WOULD FIND ME MORE EXOTIC IF I TOLD YOU
THAT
SINCE YOU LIKE YOUR PLANTS EXOTIC. LOVE ALWAYS, STAN
I take a watch that looks the closest
to Stan's, fold the note from him into a smaller square than he did and
put it
in the left cup of my bra. I go back to the living room and wrap his
watch as
far around one of the arms of cactus Stan as I can. Then I put some
Ravi
Shankar on my cassette player and got on my knees to be the same height
as
cactus Stan, and just stared at him waiting. When my favourite song
'Morning
Love' on the cassette comes on I move in closer to cactus Stan and say,
“I love
you too Stan.”
I push the weight of my body forward
and lean into Stan's face and put my lips onto his. I feel his white
whiskers
piercing my lips. I can taste the salt on his, and our lips burn and
sting
together, and I know that this is really how I always imagined love
would be.
AMBIKA
THOMPSON lived her past life in an
alternative universe that had everything sorted out. In this universe
she can't
really recall what happened in her past-life so she's resorted to
living in
Berlin where she is a mother, writer, and musician. She's written for
Sugarhigh
and the Lifted Brow Digital as a cultural correspondent; NOW Magazine,
and
Ex-Berliner as a music journalist; and has contributed short stories to
NPR
Berlin, Fanzine, and the anthology “Tales from Another Country” as part
of the
Reader Short Story contest in 2012 that she was shortlisted for. She is
also
one half of the cello riot grrl band Razor Cunts. ambikathompson.com
