Optimism

My new lover bought himself an enormous potted plant. A spiky purple prehistoric thing with flowers that don’t bloom often. Very expensive. I never buy plants like that, even when I can afford them, because I’m sure I’ll kill the thing and feel terrible for killing it, not just because it was expensive but because it was so beautiful.

My new lover was not afraid. He was willing to spend the money and willing to take care. A good sign, I thought.

He put it just outside his door, where it sat exotic, and resplendent. Certainly a lot more impressive the neighbors’ plants. The cheap impatiens or conformist geraniums. The unkillable mint.

The next week when I came back the flowers had faded. Which was, of course, to be expected. But also the very tips of the leaves were brown, as if barbed. Not so serious but still those brown tips are there forever, the badge of the slightly depressed houseplant.

Pretty good, thanks, says the houseplant. Getting by. Could be worse. How happy can a houseplant expect to be? Even if the door opens occasionally and someone waters it-- it goes on sitting all day long in this city where the houses crowd together like tombstones.

A houseplant can’t throw a tantrum, can’t shout to be heard over the TV, “My ancestors bloomed in the Amazon!”

Sure enough, in another week that plant was dead.

I’m sure I would have killed that gorgeous expensive prehistoric plant. I just don’t think I’d have killed it so fast.

When I offered my lover sympathy, he looked surprised. “Is it so bad?” he said. He looked down at it. “It’s just a little peaked.”

That plant was stone dead. No easy thing to say to a fairly new lover. A little purple remained around the stems, like an old dried flower.

Was it possible he hadn’t watered it at all?

Standing beside his dead exotica, he looked sorry, but in another second his face cheered up. “It’ll come back!” he said.

This bordered on theology, I thought, and it wasn’t my place to correct him. Anyway, my lover was an optimist and wasn’t that a good thing? A positive thinker. It’s a good sign.

For months that plant sat just outside the door and I hurried past it on the weekends.

My lover caught me looking at it, one brilliant Sunday morning as the sun flooded its disintegrating black stems.

“This is just its dormant period,” my lover said. He sounded a little defensive. “Looks good for awhile, then not so good, and then it just comes roaring back. You know, like pansies.”

What could I say? The blight of love begins with tentative suggestions. Not so serious but there’s no getting rid of them. Those little barbs, always on the tip of your tongue.

Meanwhile the plant went on being dead.
As for our romance, well, it was pretty good. We were very, very lucky. In a city like this one? I can’t complain.

Sometimes when I closed my eyes I saw the gleaming green backwaters down near the southern tip of India. The flooded jungle. But everyone must see such things sometimes.

The next time I went to see my lover the plant was gone. I stared at the dusty space where it had been.

“I got tired of waiting,” he said. And then he smiled and took my hand again and said, “It’s for the best.”