SUSAN'S TULIPS
by
Daniel John
The strong close smell of the
bulbs was like the odor of the inner thigh of a tree. I was
standing in my poorly lit basement surrounded by thousands
of bulbs of tulip, narcissus, hyacinth, allium, crocus,
chionodoxa, star-of-Bethlehem, camassia, snowdrops,
fritillaria, and more. After a while of sorting bulbs in
the semi-dark I felt like a tulip myself, yearning for
packed earth all around me. I started mulling about Susan’s
cancer, its suddenness and inexorability.
A few months earlier, in September, she returned from her
morning jog to find me in her garden cleaning out overgrown
annuals. Sweat dripped down her face, her skin glowed, and
she smelled like earthy vitality. "I have pancreatic
cancer," she said. "They tell me I have six months to
live." Her doctor had picked something up on her annual
exam, ordered a test, and now her life was effectively
over.
I came out of my reverie to find I’d selected hundreds of
tulips for her, but with no memory of what I’d chosen. I
loaded up the little red truck and drove over to her house.
I walked around her yard, placing boxes and bags of bulbs
according to a sense of rightness. This is the normal way I
design gardens for a client. Instead of calculating color
combinations and factoring in bloom times, heights, and
shapes, I make intuitive decisions. But not this time. The
tulips didn’t like what I was doing. It made them angry. I
stood still for a minute, trying to sort this out. Luckily
I don’t have any trouble with the concept of sentient
plants, so I didn‘t have to waste any time arguing with the
reality of my experience. Experimentally, I placed a
handful of white tulips in a place where red ones were
demanding to go—I stopped, scalded by the rage of tulips,
yelling I was not only causing them pain, I was being an
asshole. I’ve been a professional gardener for ten years,
and this was a first. The bulbs glared at me even though
they didn’t have eyes. I was glad they had no teeth.
Okay, I decided, I’ll do it your way. I obediently laid out
a few hundred bulbs on top of the ground according to where
they wanted to go. Then I jumped on the footrests of the
planting tool, made an eight-inch-deep hole, placed a bulb
inside, and covered it with soil. Both tulip and I felt
better immediately. There's nothing like the safety of the
cold, dark embrace of the earth.
I moved faster, cheerfully popping little heads in holes.
As I did, I could see colors coming up in the spring . . .
I slowed down. I'd never made a design like this before.
What they wanted was worse than clashing colors. This was
tulips to tear open heaven. Ignoring a growing anxiety, I
finished the section then stood back to take a look at what
I'd done.
At the end of April, near the garden swing, Susan's
favorite spot to sit, large groups of short early tulips
will flare with red like a fist, ivory like a chalice, and
a white as bright as God. As they fade, tulips like
bleached bone flushed with soft rose like the robes of the
Virgin Mary will rise to glory. A few weeks later, as they
in turn crumple and die, a swath of double tulips called
Black Hero, each one a basket of night with no stars, will
rise to one side. In concert on the other side, a grand
sweep of elegant ladies will open sweet light yellow, ripen
to cream, then arch upward to heaven like St. Theresa dying
of tuberculosis, one slow, gorgeous ivory petal at a time.
Black Hero demanded the Mother of Jesus on one side and St.
Theresa on the other the same way uranium-234 demands a
lead casing. Grudgingly, I bowed to the wisdom of tulips. I
wouldn't have come up with that on my own.
I moved on to the main garden, the huge, roughly oval bed
extending from the garden swing to the front door, and
watched in dismay as I filled it in with alternating red
and white stripes. When I finished planting I stepped back
to see what would come. Next to a forgiveness so white it
could sink ships I had planted a red that couldn't stop
hemorrhaging; a double white as soft as a field of babies;
an assassin's dagger of a scarlet; an ivory like a dying
saint; and finally, a deep, clear, painful plum called
Negrita that could make a man weep even if he had no reason
to.
I was suddenly too angry to bury one more arrogant little
bulb. Stripes in a garden are just plain rude, I thought,
fuming — a deluge of sparrows chirped, fluttered, and
strutted all around me. The fat little beady-eyed revelers
peck-pecking at the ground looked like tulip bulbs with
beaks and feet—I needed a break.
I sat on the hood of my truck. I got chilly as soon as I
stopped moving. It was a gray and humid November day, close
with coolth. As I watched the sparrows I remembered a few
years ago Susan had hired a professional photographer to
come to the garden. She had the best shot blown up to
poster size and framed. She hung it in her kitchen so she
could look at the garden all winter long . . . and when she
first found out she had pancreatic cancer she was standing
in her garden surrounded by a riot of tulips. Her first
post-diagnosis thought was, I wonder if there are tulips in
heaven. The truth was obvious: the tulips knew something
about Susan I did not.
I worked hard at being obedient. But as the hours passed my
aesthetics suffered. I planted Weber's Parrot on the path
from the front door to the car. Parrot tulips have petals
that writhe as if trying to get free of the stem, an effort
that shreds their edges like a feather; and Weber's Parrot
is mental-hospital white ridiculed by one manic purple
streak running around the base. Next to that harebrained
clutch I found myself putting in Black Hero again. I was
sure I'd finished all the death tulips, but here I was
putting in a whole other bag of them. I planted as fast as
I could, afraid Susan would show up and ask me what I was
doing. Sweat dripped down my cheeks despite the chill in
the air. When I was done with the little death bombs I
reached for the next bag of bulbs—Negrita. That had to be a
mistake. I never repeat colors so closely. Nor ask this
much of a client. Next May, if Susan turns her head to
avoid insanity, death, and compulsive weeping on the way to
her car, she'll find herself looking at Orange Lion, an
outlaw bunch of flaming shrieks, directly in front of a
platoon of Mrs. J. T. Scheepers, a 3-foot-tall tulip so
dense with joy her yellow could kill.
I planted so close the petals will hold hands, making a
river of color so bright after the gray of winter innocent
passersby could lose their grip. My vow of obedience
weakened—the bulbs stepped in like warriors, so fiercely
protective of where they wanted to go that to argue with
them was tantamount to child abuse. I gave in. I planted
them exactly where they said until it was too dark to see
and I could go home to bed.
The next morning at dawn I watered and fertilized the beds.
As a final touch I scattered a few autumn leaves on top. I
felt like a minister strewing ashes — except the tulips
buried in the cold earth were full of sexual ecstasy, not
death. Next spring they will break out of the dark like a
thousand brand-new babies screaming in color life is
triumphant.
THE END
10/20/02 Author's note:
Everything in this story is true. I installed Susan's
small, urban garden seven years ago, and have put bulbs in
every fall since.
A couple called me recently and said they always agreed to
meet at the entrance to Susan's garden the day after they
had a fight, because it made them feel different. In that
different state, they could listen to each other better.
They said I should charge for marriage counseling.
Susan's garden yearns for you. Only when you're in it, is
the garden complete. Most planned landscapes or museum
gardens wouldn't notice if you were not there to see them.
Some even make a human feel irrelevant in their scheme of
things. Susan's garden, on the other hand, misses you when
you're not there. It needs you.
The last time I met her there I said, "Susan, look what
you've done. This place is like a temple."
"I didn't do anything. I thought it was you."
"Nope. The garden did it, because it loves you."
Susan has outlived her doctor's prognosis by two years now.