There are so many flower shops. This one was really no different. In the middle of a side street, away from most of the walk-in traffic, it was small and might even be missed. Still, the window displays were captivating and changed often. Nothing extravagant, just inviting and a little magical. The shop looked as if it had occupied that spot for many years. To Marta it seemed to occupy her dreams, her life of dreams, her dreamt life. Especially as it became harder to be sure of who she had become, hard to know if she was her mother or her grandmother, partly or in full. The shop anchored her. She found herself peering in the windows on rainy days on her way home when she managed to break away from the house and go out for a walk. She gazed through the vague reflections of her face and body into the depths of the place, its roses, gladiolus, zinnias. Sometimes there were dinner plate dahlias in the windows. Yellow ones. And lilies. She could almost smell them. There were orchids and clutches of parrot tulips, bowed over a little. Spectacular seasonal arrangements of forsythia. Marta stood there, between lives it seemed. Comforted, calmed… nonetheless, she would not go in. She never remembered going in. Though when others entered or exited while she stared into the windows the bells jangled. It didn’t matter about the season. She liked the feeling of losing herself there, of not knowing who she was or when it was. * Marta was married for a time. He was from Louisville. His name was Frank. He moved to Muskegon after they met through a mutual friend. The mutual friend was Frank's best friend from childhood. Frank was tall and seemed always to have a lively look of unintended mirth. But she noted something deeper. She thought he lived in a less complex world, and she could hang on to that when he was around. For a kind of balance. He was impressed with her paintings and after a time he started to come out to the shabby little out-building she used as her studio whenever he came into town to visit their mutual friend. She didn’t remember when they first slept together. It wasn’t the sex that cemented the relationship anyway. She wasn't impressed by sex. What was it then? She liked sex well enough, though it often left her troubled, feeling obligated and numb and not actually satisfied in the way she had read it might. Eventually Frank moved in with her. It was before her mother found a lump in her breast, before she became quite ill. Their mutual friend gradually had become a hoarder, there was really no room for visitors at his place, and things became untenable between all involved. It was a serious enough addiction, hoarding. So, Frank moved in with her. * Marta couldn’t ever manage to get a job. She didn’t look hard. Her mother was willing to support her and then she found the lump and was dying. Perhaps that was the first time she found the flower shop… but no, no… she had been down that street many times before. Yes. It was in her life even before she knew she was alive. Was that possible? Time seemed completely immaterial. She liked that word. Where had she heard it before?
* Marta’s mother, Joyce, was raised on the farm. It was a homestead of sorts, outside of the city, that went back several generations. Joyce never completed high school and never had a job. She lived on her husband’s earnings and when he died, she collected on his social security. She called herself a housewife and had few friends other than a few people in the city she was acquainted with just because they all had lived there for longer than anyone could really remember. She ran into them in stores and the post office. Time had a habit of moving in a kind loop it seemed. Her mother’s mother, Colleen, never finished school either. Three generations. When money was tight Colleen took in sewing and laundry and for a time sold eggs from the chickens she kept on the farm. She showed Joyce how to keep chickens. When she was 16. After she quit school. There was a sign out by the highway: “fresh eggs”. She had regulars for a few years. The same families that bought eggs from Colleen bought them from Joyce and they would talk some when they came in for their eggs. Then there was a fox. There’s always a fox. Or some other animal that got into the garden and killed the chickens. Joyce was proud that she never cried about the fox, even though she felt very strongly about those chickens. It was the way it was. That’s what Colleen would say. Colleen kept Joyce close. Very close. People often mentioned that they looked and acted like sisters. Colleen took in boarders in the old house. Usually, men that worked in the gas fields outside of town or on the big lake freighters. There were drugs and parties too. By then, by the time the parties started to happen regularly, Joyce got pregnant and had Marta. Her father, the man Marta was told was her father, was not her real father. Joyce made that confession a few weeks before she died. Marta’s real father was one of Colleen’s boarders. He used to bring Colleen and Joyce a lot of gifts but when Joyce got pregnant, he disappeared and Joyce married one of the other boarders, a gas field worker, and he moved in. It was all confusing and not confusing at the same time. It was just the way it was. No one asked questions. Joyce kept Marta close just like Colleen kept Joyce close. None of them graduated from high school. They talked about Marta getting a GED degree. Only Joyce was able to complete the tests. Besides, for a time, almost all the way up to when Joyce found the lump, there were always men around, boarders and their friends and they almost always brought gifts. There were always gifts. It was something to look forward to. From the time Marta was quite young. It took a while for Marta to understand what the gifts were all about. Her father, that is, the man she was told was her father, didn’t seem to mind those other men bringing her gifts and spending time with her. He was gone much of the time. * When Marta turned seventeen, she started painting in the outbuilding. The man from Louisville, Frank, never brought gifts even after he moved in with her, at least not like the other men. First, she thought there must be something wrong but then she liked it. She liked that he paid attention to her even though he didn’t give her gifts and didn’t expect anything in return. * One day when Marta found herself outside the flower shop, maybe it was April… a sunny chilly day in April… she was lost in a kind of reverie, not really there, looking in the windows, as if she could fade into the flowers and the changes in the displays since the last time she stood there. She hadn’t noticed a woman changing the display. She was bringing calla lilies to replace the daffodils that were almost gone. There were catkins too, and Dutch iris. Suddenly Marta heard someone speaking to her. She hardly knew where or who she was. “Would you like to come in?” the woman asked. It was the woman who was rearranging the window display. Marta was caught completely off guard and she hurried away. She wasn’t sure if she was in a dream or if, in fact, she had actually entered her mother’s life or her grandmother’s, so she rushed away. She could barely breathe. She always felt on the precipice of losing her own life and falling into her mother’s. Standing at the windows made that feeling go away in some way. She heard the woman call after her. Maybe she said something like “Come back when you can!” Marta could barely breathe and for a block or so she felt lost. She didn’t know where she was. There was a bench and she sat down. She thought she might weep, but she swallowed. She swallowed that down.
* Eventually Frank got a disease that took it’s time robbing him of life. His friend, his friend the hoarder as well as others became quite disturbed. They insisted he must make plans for the end of his life. Plans for when he needed more care than Marta could give him. They talked about denial, but Frank denied he was in denial. He just didn’t want to think about it. Maybe he did that for Marta’s sake. It was hard to tell. Some days he could barely walk or breathe. Marta didn’t know how that was possible. If he wasn’t sick, how was it that he couldn’t breathe? She thought she might get more chickens. Their money was almost gone and they were behind on the propane bills so she thought she could sell more eggs. But then they told her at the store it was too late to start chicks. That she had to wait until spring. Frank didn’t care about the chickens one way or another. Sometimes he’d just lie in bed half asleep and half awake. And so Marta would think about the flower shop. She thought she might even buy some flowers from the flower shop. If they had a little extra. She could buy some kind of flower that might last awhile. Time would go by while she thought and soon she wasn’t sure if she was her mother or her grandmother even though they had both been dead for a long time. At night she would hear noises, loud trucks and explosions that sounded like guns she was convinced were from the men who used to board at the house when she was a girl. She boarded up the upstairs rooms. Sometimes she was so sure they were coming back she was angry and afraid. She didn’t want their gifts. And she didn’t want Frank to know about them. * Colleen used to keep Joyce very close, especially when Colleen’s health began to fail and not as many men came to board at the house. She needed Joyce near to take care of her because she was scared, mostly because she was scared. Would she fall? Would Joyce be hurt on the way to school? Would someone at the school ask questions about the men who boarded at the house? She insisted she wanted Joyce to make up her own mind about school but felt everything would be better if Joyce stayed home. She never asked Joyce to quit school, though there were numerous times she asked her to stay home for the day. She even insisted that Joyce wasn’t well enough to go to school even though Joyce didn’t feel ill. She didn’t feel ill until Colleen insisted she was, in fact, ill. She had a temperature. That’s what Colleen said. And sometimes Joyce would feel fine when she woke but after breakfast she would throw up and Colleen would say “see, I told you you were sick. Stay home and we can take care of each other.” So, Colleen would stay home. Eventually she quit school. It got too hard to keep up. She was always nervous that her mother needed her while she was at school… or that one of the boarders were drunk and mad and Joyce wasn’t there to help her mother. It was better when she stayed home, she felt better, and so it was better after she quit school. * There were times when Joyce would tell Marta parts of those stories about how she quit school and how close she and Colleen were when she was growing up. How they were almost like twin sisters. Often Colleen seemed close to crying when she told Marta these stories even though she said how happy they all were before Colleen died. Sometimes a great fear rose up in Marta when her mother told her those stories. Joyce held Marta close, very close, Part of the great fear came from being held so tightly that he could not tell where she stopped and where her mother began. And breathing became difficult. That was when Marta began losing the ability to tell if she was her mother or if she was her grandmother. School became very difficult because she lost track of who she was unless she could see her mother or be near her and know she was safe and her mother was safe and then she would know she was not her mother, though they were almost like sisters too, just like Joyce and Colleen. * After her mother died it often became more difficult, nearly impossible, for Marta to know who she was and those feelings lasted longer. She became convinced that the boarders were behind this and were plotting to kill her and Frank. Because they no longer had a place to live or anyone to give gifts to and love. Was that it? Did they love her? Once? She was sure the boarders caused Frank’s illness. It was hard to live with those feelings, especially when she was alone. When Frank was around, even when he was sleeping or making those terrible noises as he got sicker and sicker, it was easier for her to ignore her fears and the sounds and signs around the yard she saw that convinced her that those boarders and maybe their wives, their jealous wives, were behind Frank’s illness and meant to harm both of them. She bought a gun even though they were behind on their water bill. She didn’t tell anyone. There wasn’t anyone to tell. She had to keep Frank safe.
* Marta didn’t really miss school after she quit. She was much calmer when she was with her mother and her mother was much more at ease with her at home, despite the mysterious feelings that came and went that she and her mother and her grandmother were the same person. Joyce was inconsolable when Colleen died. That was when she demanded that Marta stay even closer and that they sit together while Joyce told her stories about the men who brought gifts to her when she was quite young in the same way that the last of the boarders used to bring Marta gifts. This was when Joyce told Marta about how she felt she had to let those men do things to her, or that she had to do things to them, because they brought her gifts. Sexual things sometimes, other times it was just kissing orr tickling. The gifts were quite nice. Joyce was afraid they would stop bringing gifts if she stopped doing what they wanted her to do. This was exactly like the kind of things that happened to Marta, or maybe Marta was just mixing up who she was with who her mother was. When she tried to pull away from her mother her mother got angry and said Marta didn’t really love her. Not really. Not when she needed her most. Since her mother died. So Marta just gave in to those feelings. Those feelings that she was the same person as her mother and even her grandmother. Her body went limp and she complied. * One winter day before she knew Frank (or maybe it was soon after he first came into her life… if it was her life. If she was indeed herself and not her mother) she found herself walking by the flower shop. That’s the way it happened most of the time. She would just find herself there, as if she was in a fairy tale or science fiction story. The holiday decorations were still in the window. They were more lovely than usual, She stood there for what felt like a long time. Christmas didn’t amount to much then. Her mother had died, or at least that’s what she was told happened. She was never sure. How could she be dead when Mara still felt so much like her. Felt that they shared the same mind, even the same body. It was during that time Marta began to doubt that death was real. She was nearly convinced that her mother was still alive. She spoke with her at night, before sleep. She could feel her embrace. Sometimes tight, as uncomfortable as it had been before, right after Colleen died. Suddenly the shop owner was standing next to her, and she took Marta’s arm, lightly. Marta started to pull away, but the shop owner… a pleasant looking woman with glasses on a jeweled chain and a grey sweater over a lemon-colored blouse… pleaded with her to stay. “Please.” she said. “For a little while?” She had seen Marta looking into the window a number of times. Quite a few times, actually. Marta swallowed hard (she wasn;t sure she would be able to speak) and then complimented the window displays. She said they always made her feel comfortable. At home. The woman smiled then and squeezed her arm. She invited Marta “Do you drink tea? I have some special tea. Look…” she said “it’s starting to snow. Won’t you come in?” Marta apologized but said she must get home. She had to take care of her mother who didn’t like being alone, even though her mother had been dead for weeks. Or at least that’s what she was told. Then Marta mumbled rather involuntarily “It still seems like she’s here” The shop keeper looked puzzled at this, but let her arm go and made Marta promise she would come into the shop the next time she was in the neighborhood. Before she knew what she was saying Marta said she always thought she might like to work in a flower shop, since she was a girl. The shop keeper insisted then that Marta should come into the shop and be shown around. Maybe she would like a job. “In the summer, it gets very busy by Mother’s Day.” Marta agreed nervously and hurried away. The snow was coming down hard now. * When Frank died it seemed very sudden even though everyone knew it was coming very soon and in the last weeks he could barely sit up in bed. Marta was inconsolable when they came for his body. They had failed to make final plans for his burial. He insisted on a natural burial even though they had never found a place where that could be done. he wanted to be wrapped in a burlap shroud. Marta insisted she would find a place but it seemed she completely lost track of time and of her own life and who she was after he died and soon a friend was forced to have the police take her to the emergency room because she was not taking care of herself at all. She was found walking by the highway in a terrible storm in her nightgown. * For the first years of her life the parents of the man who Marta was told was her father were quite kind to her, taking her on trips to the beach and even on a train journey to New York City and to the zoo in the biggest city near where they lived. She went camping with them and stayed in the little town where they lived in the summer. She made some friends and was able to wander the little town with her new friends. Her father’s parents, she considered them her grandparents, were very kind and easy to talk to so she told them about the things that were happening at home. In spite of the fact that she really liked camping, some of it scared her a little and she told her mother about those things. Her mother insisted she was just like her and she didn’t like camping at all. She decided Marta should not spend so much time with her grandparents and Marta immediately felt sorry and confused… because she adored the time she spent with them but even thinking that seemed to make her mother unhappy. It was like the times she insisted Marta was too sick to go to school even though she was not sick at all. Marta told her grandparents about those things, as well as the kinds of things her mother thought she had to do with the boarders because of the gifts they gave her. Even then she was not always sure whether the boarders expected her to do the same things that her mother did with them. A couple of them brought her gifts all the time too and got too close to her and touched her in ways that made her feel a little sick inside, but like her mother she thought she should let them touch her if she wanted to keep getting those gifts. This was happening at the same time she started to be confused about whether or not she was a part of her mother or not… really inseparable, as if what happened to her mother was also happening to her. She told her grandparents about this on one of their trips. * When Joyce was a girl some nights the boarders her mother had at the house would pass her around and kiss her and laugh. They were drunk and high. They were partying. Colleen waved her away when she said anything about it, when she wondered if it was right. It was all in good fun, Colleen said. “And think of all the gifts they bring you!” This was when Joyce’s father was gone, maybe dead or away on business. Joyce told Marta this after Colleen died. They sat very close on the couch while Joyce told her these things.
* Marta went to the flower shop on a May afternoon, the May after the winter day the proprietor first invited her in. Marta didn’t go into the shop at first (it was like she suddenly just found herself there) but waited out on the sidewalk looking through the display window until the proprietor opened the door and insisted she come in and look around. The proprietor was very chatty and pleasant. She laughed often and took Marta from flower-filled basket to bucket to refrigerator case and all the flowers filled the room with the miracle of their scents. Marta was nearly overcome. The woman insisted she put her face down into the blossoms of a very full bucket of peach-colored roses. Marta thought she may have never felt more like herself than she did that day, but it was a strange and surreal feeling. Alien. She usually felt as if she was walking around in a bubble of wool and she was never sure who she was unless she was near her mother and now that they took her mother’s body away she rarely felt centered in herself at all. The flowers, and the shop itself, as well as the open and kind proprietor, seemed to blow that wool away. Everything even seemed a little too clear. She had to sit down. * Luckily there were people who had known Marta and her family for many years and who took care of the house and Marta’s little ramshackle studio while Marta was in the hospital that time after they found her walking down the highway in the storm. They made sure the animals were fed and the pipes didn’t freeze. They found numerous unfinished paintings in the studio. Some were paintings on panels of plywood, others were on butcher paper or brown grocery bags that Marta had taped together. Many of the paintings were wild and a little terrifying. Some filled with many figures that somehow became the same figure. Marta’s art seemed preoccupied with depictions of conjoined bodies, but also spectacular and visionary landscapes with eyes like Buddha eyes integrated into a dune landscape, or a series of cliffs and rivers. When she returned home some of those friends encouraged her to sell her paintings, they even offered to buy them, but he was unconvinced of their worth or the sincerity of the offers. And put off that they had seen the paintings. A little embarrassed. She avoided these people afterwards. She felt better alone or in the world she occupied in which Frank was still alive and she and her mother and grandmother were the same person. It was easier that way. For her. She covered all the windows in the studio with newspaper and painted scenes and landscapes she imagined on each of them. * One of the things Marta told her grandparents, her father’s parents, when she was still in school and was still visiting with them was how she refused to initiate conversation with anyone she did not know. She approached it as if it was some absolute rule of civil behavior that she was observing, though she was curious about how they seemed to be able to speak to almost anyone, even any stranger, with ease and often enjoyment. Her grandparents were concerned about this and spoke to her mother and father who also voiced that they found this refusal to approach anyone puzzling though Joyce admitted she was very much like that too. When she was a girl and even now. This happened about the same time Joyce told them how much she disliked camping and especially bugs. She’d rather stay inside. She said she knew Marta agreed with her about bugs in spite of the fact that Marta had occupied a large part of her time while camping with her grandparents capturing bugs and beetles and playing with them. Of course, this conversation took place some time before the trip when Marta told her grandparents about all the things her mother told her she did with the boarders in exchange for gifts. * One of the other things she told her grandparents on that trip was that she hoped someday to be able to own and operate a flower shop.
* She stopped seeing her grandparents not long after she told them about the goings-on regarding the gifts her mother and she were being given and the things her mother felt compelled to do in exchange for the gifts. Her mother was suddenly very angry at her grandparents, especially after a state social worker had come to the house to interview her. Joyce was frightened by state workers and Marta had been home one day when police came and took Joyce away because she stole something from the local grocery store. Marta had a terrible time when she and her father had to bail Joyce out of jail. They were forced to pawn some of their stuff for the bail. After the social worker visit Marta could tell her mother was mad at her for talking to her grandparents and so Marta decided she would not talk to them anymore. This was a couple of years before she quit school. * The proprietor of the flower shop offered her a job that day she went into the shop. Even after Marta told her she quit school and never completed her GED, she still offered her a job. The woman was sure she could train her. She could tell Marta was smart. She needed an assistant for some of the work of bringing in the stock, wrapping orders, and making simple arrangements in the various buckets and answering the phone. Did she think she could do that? Marta was hesitant, especially about the phone. It was against her ways to speak to strangers. She told the proprietor that, but the woman just laughed and waved her off saying “How do you meet any boys that way”. That scared Marta a little, but she said maybe she could start in the back room first. The woman said that was a good idea and they agreed on a day and time when she would start. * One night after Marta returned to the house some time after Frank died, a neighbor who was a longtime acquaintance of Marta’s family was driving by the house on the way home from grocery shopping and noticed Marta standing by a large burn pile in the yard. It was dry in the yard and something about the scene did not seem right so he stopped in her driveway and approached her and the fire through the dark. She did not notice him for some time. She was focused on dragging her paintings out of the studio and putting them in the fire. The neighbor approached her, greeted her and stood by the fire while she continued to feed it with her paintings and other art work, as well as what appeared to be a man’s clothing and some furniture. She said nothing when he greeted her. He asked her if she was sure she wanted to be burning all of her stuff. He offered to bring a hose close by in case the fire got out of hand. There was quite a wind. Marta apparently failed to recognize him and insisted that he needed to bring Frank’s body back from wherever they took it. When he said he didn’t know what she was talking about and he only wanted to help her if she needed help, she took out her gun and shot him. He was not dead, but the shot knocked him down and he fell and knocked himself out. By the time the fire department intervened (someone else saw the fire and was alarmed and called 911) and the ambulance took the neighbor to the emergency room, her entire studio was in flames. They took Marta to the emergency room as well. Her hands were covered in third degree burns and she was mumbling unintelligibly about her flower shop. * For a time, the job at the flower shop worked out quite well. Marta tended to be late, but the proprietor was patient and appreciated Marta’s effort. Marta was a good worker and seemed quite happy to be able to come to the shop three or four days every week for a few hours. She was a fast learner, though she found the cash register very difficult and never mastered it. She was quiet and rarely initiated conversation unless she had a question about something she needed to do. Still, the work in the back room kept her busy, it was helpful to the proprietor, and she loved working with and around the flowers. After a few weeks, however, Marta became less reliable and even missed a few days without calling in or offering an excuse the next time she came in to work. The proprietor was saddened by this but needed to have someone who she could rely on. At first she gave Marta fewer hours and spoke with her about the importance of reliability and told her how much she enjoyed having her around the shop, but then one day Marta came in and reported that her mother needed her at home and she could no longer stay away from the house. Marta left the shop that day and though the proprietor saw her numerous times afterwards, even up to the week she set her studio and her art ablaze, it was always through the window. Marta gazing into the shop through the displays of flowers. As soon as she noticed the proprietor saw her there, she quickly walked away.