Read More: A brief Q&A with Cedric Synnestvedt
My dead husband sends me flowers every Friday. He subscribed one year into the pandemic, right before he died, and I can’t make it stop. The flowers are of good quality: peonies, blue bonnets, sometimes red or yellow roses, sunflowers. Marcus did not die of the disease. He was hit by a driverless car while jogging.
“Do you like the flowers?” says Sal, my Zoom therapist, his voice crackling and unsynchronized with the usual desktop sounds of shuffled paper, squeaky water bottle tops, tapping fingernails.
“I toss them each week,” I say. “It’s like trashing a part of Marcus.”
“You transfer them, help them along to the next phase of absorption,” Sal says and freezes. The audio goes out. Sal’s office looks like it was a teenage boy’s bedroom: Coldplay poster, thick garish blue spines of fantasy novels, a few baseball trophies.
“Memories are merely shadows,” says Sal, deglitching. “But I’m talking too much. How does this make you feel?”
“Worried?” I say.
“About Marcus? Do you want to describe that?”
“I don’t,” I say.
I’m should challenge myself in small ways, says Sal. Marcus used to say that, but I was busy, busy making real estate money. I’ve stopped working, for now. And so up the block from my house is one of those open-air gyms called Nomad Fitness. The building was sold, and above the gym’s entrance is a plastic banner: Coming Soon! Chicken and Biscuits! But the gym persists somehow. A shirtless man leads people in a squat-jump-squat routine. His long hair is short on the sides, long and slicked back on top. His torso is the ur-form all torsos aspire to, his beard thick and oiled.
He shouts: “You are! You are! You are!”
The group undulates more quickly and responds: “We are! We are! We are!”
A boy does pushups in a corner, a medicine ball below his face. Each time he pushes up he punches the medicine ball one-two-three-four, shouting: “I—am—not—you!”
I am terrified to approach the man and the members, but there is a young woman named Aspen with a tablet balanced on stacked milk crates doubling as cubbies.
“Get the nomadic package,” Aspen says, after I’ve signed up for a two-week trial. “Nomadic is the real deal. Orion, our guy over there, improvises an outdoor setting each week. You never know when or where until the night before.”
“That sounds stressful,” I say.
Aspen nods, “It is stressful.”
The flowers come every Friday around noon, delivered by a young man wearing sunglasses and a white N95 mask. He never knocks, rings, or texts. His car has no branding. He wears no uniform, no pins, no company t-shirt.
The flowers include cheesey notes like: “Don’t forget to breathe!” Or most recently: “The glory in these flowers pales compared to your smile, Love, Marcus.” I never asked Marcus about the notes. I at first assumed he’d written some of them. Later I figured they came bundled with the subscription. Maybe he’d prepared so many in advance, but Marcus would never have had the motivation. It’s hard to explain, but some notes sound like him and some don’t. They vacillate between corporate mundane and weirdly specific, the latter being more Marcus’ style. This week’s read: “Did you know: the sight of flowers makes us relax and boosts productivity!” Which couldn’t be Marcus, who didn’t hate productivity per se, but he hated all the manufactured pressure of this sort of thing.
Throwing the flowers away became too much, so I tried composting. My neighbor Mitch helps. He lost his wife a year in and turned to gardening. We made a wire enclosure and piled leaves and food scraps and put the flowers in there, but they don’t break down quickly enough. The now Mitch-high pile gives off a concentrated sweet smell of rot.
Mitch thinks he’s my protector, and he also adopted a German Shepherd, Felix, shortly after his wife passed. Felix’s right eye is cloudy and scarred around the socket. He is missing some front teeth. Any time Mitch leaves the premises, Felix silently patrols the perimeter of the yard, tongue lolling.
I can’t bear to throw away the notes, even though I know that most of them are artificial. I have close to fifty on my desk. Sometimes I read them with wine. Sometimes I stare at the pile. The air vents in my ceiling blow the notes onto the floor. I find them in the morning, in the afternoon, under my office chair, the bed, mixed in with the laundry. My friends Sasha and Kerry have seen the pile. They think I should burn it, the whole collection.
“We’ll have a big fire and grill dinner,” said Sasha.
“We can burn them with our brush pile,” said Kerry. “The trees drop their leaves and shed twigs and things, and the mass is only growing larger, denser, fortified. A home for rodents of unimaginable threat.”
A year this, a year that—what’s it matter? Now was as good a time as any for a ritual burning, they said. I said I would think about it after I had sorted out some other things. They nodded in that compulsory way friends do when they can see you are falling apart.
But am I really falling apart? My body isn’t great anymore. That’s certain. The gym people are flipping large truck tires along an Astroturf run. Orion has shaved his head so that his skull shines in the flood lights. He is shirtless and gleaming.
“Usurp!” he says, and the tire-flippers flip more quickly. “Usurp, usurp!” The boy brings Orion a bottle of water. The boy doesn’t join the group, perhaps because of his age, which can’t be more than ten. He instead exercises awkwardly in the periphery, punching the medicine ball with his tiny hands. Or he sits on an unused tire and views a tablet.
This is my first session. Orion will interview me. There are the familiar racks of barbells, stationary bikes, but there are other metal structures with ropes and chains hanging from them that I find unsettling.
We sit at a picnic table. The air is hot and humid.
“Do you know your BMI?” he says.
“No,” I say.
“That’s ok. Do you know your desired BMI?”
“I’m not sure what a BMI is.”
“No one really is. Our bodies are thieves, especially in our forties. No offense. What even is this bag of skin and blood? I was once lost in the jungles of the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica, on ayahuasca, and my body disappeared completely for forty-eight hours. I became both agent and customer of the molecular trade winds between all organisms. Ever take ayahuasca?”
“LSD in college. A few times. I threw up. I prefer feeling grounded, I guess.”
“Have you ever felt expendable? Temporary?”
“Who hasn’t.”
“We need to set goals. This can’t work without commitments.”
“I just want to feel better.”
Orion nods vigorously, claps his hands. We will start small, gradually build strength. Results in ten days. Some say two weeks, but Orion says ten days. Inside the covered area he watches me do squats, pushups, the ever-hellish burpee. I am sweating and gasping, but the exertion feels good. Orion suggests I jog around the block with the boy, Pierce. He is fast. I am ready to collapse before we get back. Marcus jogged almost every day, his slow lope carrying his big body two or three miles along the river walk. He let his hair get shaggy and long toward the end, and I never told him I liked how it looked, especially when he jogged.
“Ok,” says Pierce, who’s barely broken a sweat. “Now you need a warm-down.”
“I’m going to hurt in the morning,” I say.
“Mornings are the worst,” Pierce says.
“I must deliver,” says the flower delivery man, who looks early-twenties. I’m blocking his way to my porch.
“What’s your name?” I say.
“Tom,” he says.
“You don’t need to wear that mask, Tom,” I say. “I’m not afraid anymore.” Which is a lie, of course. I’m afraid constantly. Especially of the flowers. There are pink marigolds and some lovely sunflowers. There is a note: “All the world’s a stage, and you’re the lead! Love, Marcus. P.s.—Did you know? Certain pollens are high in cancer-fighting polyphenols!”
Tom adjusts his mask. “I do have to wear it.”
“I don’t want the flowers, Tom. You can stop bringing them. I appreciate your time.”
“This is beyond me,” says Tom. “I mean above me. You should go online.”
“I did go online,” I say. “The website has no cancelation option. I’m not even being charged, as far as I can tell. The company comes up as permanently closed.”
But Tom steps forward with his bundle, as if he plans to walk through me.
Then Mitch is standing next to me with a leashed Felix.
“It’s ok,” I tell Mitch. Felix starts barking. Tom shoves the flowers at me and walks quickly to his car. Mitch walks Felix down the block, and the thing is over.
You’d think it easy to give away nice flowers, but offer people free flowers and they suspect a con. The coffeeshop up the road begrudgingly placed them atop the pastry case, but I saw them in their dumpster at lunch time. The librarians quietly applauded. Restaurant staff generally decline. Bartenders tend to be indifferent. The graveyard always takes them.
Marcus had been adamant about not wanting a headstone, I tell Kerry and Sasha, who nod carefully. They are careful not to laugh inappropriately when I mention it. The “it” being Marcus’ bad death. I mean, I tell them, isn’t—wasn’t—wasn’t it so like Marcus to die badly? They reassure me that Marcus’ death was tragic and dignified, that every death is tragic and dignified.
“There are so many flowerless headstones, you have no idea,” I say, as if I agree that Marcus’ death can be subsumed into Death’s general cart. And does categorizing his death “vehicular” make it better or worse? Do I ascribe an historical context? How far back must I tunnel—well past the Mechanical Age, industrialization—to some more pure or scarce time when the driverless car was a mere opium fantasy? “I know people see me place the flowers. I know it’s probably illegal or taboo. I did get careless once and put flowers by a stone whose visitor was not far behind me. She threw them in the trash on her way out.”
Kerry and Sasha chuckle politely. We drink mimosas at a picnic table overlooking a city-built pond. Chimney swifts and bats dart above us. People jog by, walk dogs. Sasha brought the mimosas in a thermos.
“Usually a brunch thing,” Sasha says. “Who cares. Yesterday, I was on hold for two hours to dispute a hospital bill. I guess I have time? Kerry had the kids on a bike ride, and I’m sitting there with that treacly hold music all tinny through my phone, typing a cover letter for a job I don’t want, and I’m thinking someone got paid to make this. I could make this. I taught guitar and piano before the layoffs. And then I swear, beneath the fake flute riff and the flat percussion I’m hearing demonic grunts and shrieks, which are probably just distortions or me hallucinating but, I think, wouldn’t that be fun, to make seditious, subliminal hold music.”
“Anyone notice there’ve been more birds than usual or am just noticing the birds more?” says Kerry. They hired a babysitter just to visit me. When Marcus comes up anymore it’s as the “it” or the “what happened to,” or the “what’s been going on with,” though they were very supportive until Kerry suggested ritualistically burning the notes in a mild joking way she has, like pointing out her own lack of noticing birds, and now they don’t ask about him unless I bring it up. I am glad. Down by the pond a fox trots through prairie grass, a rat tail dangling from its mouth. My friends don’t see it, but we all agree that the animals are encroaching, as if they sense that our grip has slipped.
“There’s this owl I read about,” says Kerry. “Nightly attacking the same woman from its tree, and experts say this is new behavior.”
The next Friday, Felix starts barking madly. I see Mitch talking to Tom, holding Felix by the collar. Tom’s arms are full of sunflowers.
Tom drops the flowers on the porch and runs to his car.
We drink beer in Mitch’s backyard until it gets dark, Felix sitting at his feet, staring at me with his one eye, looking for answers, cracks, sudden moves. Mitch’s yard has of late become strewn with chewed things, some of them recognizably food, some former clothing items. When not staring at me, Felix chews on an indescribably filthy rag that may have been a doll’s dress. Mitch is a little much with his unwarranted protection. He talks to me about decency. The way things were. The yard is full of insects—big erratic June bugs that smack into our heads, moths eager around the flood lights. Invisible mosquitos sting my legs. Mitch talks in looping anecdotes about the way we were all so busy, that maybe the pandemic was a weird blessing. All this junk we took for granted wasn’t ever junk, etc. I tell him I can’t stop inspecting every car on the road to see if it’s driverless, even though I know that’s obsessive.
“But when I do see a driverless car,” I say. “I feel this deep emotion that I can’t name.”
“A kind of nameless rage,” Mitch says.
“More like orange,” I say. “I just feel orange.”
There is no moon. We look at what stars hang visible over us, and we see a satellite glide past, and I feel Mitch’s hand sit heavily on top of mine, and I let it stay for a few seconds before excusing myself and going to bed.
I decide to curate the notes, to separate the obvious frauds from the ones that could be Marcus originals. The fraudulent notes say stupid, nonsensical stuff like, “Just thought I’d brighten your day, as you always do mine.” Marcus wouldn’t have said that. I wouldn’t have said that to him, either. I put the larger pile in a Ziploc bag and leave in a free library box down the block.
Sal’s screen is blank. He says his camera isn’t working. My screen is on, and so I stare at myself as I talk. It’s freeing in a way, but also grotesque. I always wondered about people who seem used to the sound of their own voice. I always had a buffer. Marcus sang backup in a few bands. I would say his singing voice was consistent, I tell Sal, who may or may not be there consistently. What is consistency? I ask Sal. What is our obsession with normal, mainstream, consistent feelings? Like life is a flat, polished surface, or it should be? Sal is silent. Marcus died up the road from our house. They say a high percentage of accidents occur near the home—how many is that? I wasn’t there, I tell Sal, again. A dog-walker called the paramedics. This person I have never met said goodbye to Marcus, yet there was no goodbye, really, for Marcus. Did the dog-walker sit with him as he died, I wonder at Sal’s blank screen. This is a consistency? The police called, then the morgue called. I was closing a deal on a house that sold for twenty-five percent above asking price. The people buying the house told me that masks were an infringement on their rights, but they would wear them if I insisted. The morgue had the sheet over Marcus’ face, but they pulled it down for me. I pulled my mask down. I wanted to kiss him, I tell Sal, and laugh. But I didn’t kiss him, his body, because in the moment I felt ashamed and wondered if it was possibly illegal to kiss a body in the morgue, so I didn’t. I drove home feeling even more ashamed as I imagined all the possible ways people probably show grief in a morgue. I could have thrown myself on him, his body. I could have done the kiss. Later I kissed the urn that held his ashes before scattering them in the lake like he’d wanted.
I log off then. Sal calls my phone once, as is appropriate, and leaves a message, but I’ve said what I needed to say.
The notes make no sense. Marcus hated that kind of thing. The sentimental grift—he would have called it something literary like that. And they started to vary wildly in tone. […]
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Cedric Synnestvedt earned his MFA from Texas State University, San Marcos, in 2013. He teaches English there, and he lives in Austin. His fiction has appeared in PANK, Sonora Review, Jabberwock Review, BULL, and Gulf Stream Literary Magazine. His story collection, What the Birds Do, was a finalist for the 2021 Raz-Shumaker and 2023 Hudson Prizes. He is currently working on his first novel.
Read More: A brief Q&A with Cedric Synnestvedt