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Charles brought me some flowers.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said to him.
“Yes, I do,” he said.
“Charles, you’ve brought me a lot of flowers. The entire table over there is covered.”
“And I’m not going to stop.” He handed me the flowers and kissed my cheek. “Want me to explain why?”
“Yes,” I said.
I watched Charles pull up a chair.
The man should have been a stranger to me, yet he felt like family.
Never without a smile on his face.
Anytime things got tense he would hum.
Those soothing notes that got me through labor.
Or at least those soothing notes that got me to the hospital.
“I can’t give these flowers to the person I really want to give them to,” he said.
“Oh,” I said. “Wow.”
“I never went a moment without giving her flowers. Mostly because she hated flowers.”
I laughed. “That’s true. I’m surprised she took flowers from you.”
“She hated them, Hazel,” Charles said. “She would get mad at me. Playfully mad. But she took them. Then came a time I couldn’t do it. She wasn’t there. So if I can give her granddaughter flowers, I’m going to do that. Maybe she’s watching down on us, Hazel. And maybe this eases something. I don’t know. Either way, I get to buy someone flowers now. When I pick out flowers I think of her. I think of her face. How she tried to get so mad at me but she would always smile.”
“You really loved her.”
“With all my heart and soul.”
“I can’t believe you two never…”
Charles touched my left hand. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Sure.”
“Love. It’s all bullshit.”
I laughed. “What?”
“That’s right. Love is all bullshit. What do we know about love? Books. Movies. Commercials. We see other people in love. Some happy. Some sad. People get married. They get divorced. People cheat on each other. That’s love. It’s all bullshit. The real stuff.” Charles pointed to his chest. To his heart. “The real stuff? It’s what you do for you. For the person you feel for. Yeah, maybe your grandmother and I should have done something more. Told everyone we were together? Took vacations together? Lived together? Maybe. Maybe we would have been closer. Maybe if I was there when she was sick… things would have been different? What I know is that what we had, it worked for us. You know, when she got sick, she didn’t tell me. She tried to hide it. I think that was our only real argument ever.”
“She lied to you?”
“She didn’t want to tell me. She didn’t want me to worry. She didn’t want things to change between us.”
“You were mad at her?”
“No. I was sad over everything. Hazel, love is bullshit. Why get mad? Why argue? We were on borrowed time. We all are. We don’t know what’s going to happen to us tomorrow. Or even today.”
I sighed.
