Flowers for Meredith

Is it February Seventeenth?, Manu wonders, standing on the kerb of Church street. The flowers in his hand, where did he get them from? Not from the Pharmacy, he hasn’t crossed the street yet. Wild daisies with curly roots and soil stuck to them. From the riverbank then, he thinks, but has no recollection of being there or picking the flowers.

The barbershop pole spins above the open door. Mr Patel, scissors in hand, talks and wobbles his head, men read newspapers. A black dog taps its tail for no reason. An orange truck rattles through Manu’s vision and plucks on a string that could be a memory. Mulligan Constructions, the logo says, with a roof above the double LL like a little house. How does he know it? Rusty pipes jut out, a dirty rag flapping at the end of the longest one, and Manu imagines them spilling out, clatter and scatter like sticks of a Pick-up Sticks game, where Jon would pull out the master stick and hold it up high, like a conqueror’s sword. Always the winner, his bro.

A reflection flashes from the end of the street, where the truck has gone. Two workers carry a glass panel. They are headed for the picture frame shop that belonged to his father. One wears protective gloves, but the other doesn’t, and Manu thinks, O-oh, here comes trouble. He expects to see his dad rushing out, shouting, “You idiot, what if you drop it, huh? You want me to go to prison for you? Safety first, you hear?” 

But the glass door of the shop remains closed. It reflects a man holding flowers. Dark beard covers what’s visible under the hat, the suit is black and faded. The man’s trousers are folded-up, revealing skinny sockless feet in old, scuffed shoes. The hat looks familiar, the suit is like the only one Manu owns.

In a stir of a feeling, rather than a memory, Manu thinks of himself caged by the shiny pipes of a scaffolding. The air — peppered by freshly mixed cement, the passage of hours marked by rhythmic hammering. His brother—a silhouette imprisoned by crossed beams. They are building something. A house.

⁓

The blueprint lay spread on the grass between them. Neat lines and corners, Jon’s handwriting tall and bold. That plot would take him a lifetime to pay off, but he grinned, cocky and full of future. “To show Meredith who she’s married.”

“Who else would she marry? Me?” It was supposed to be a joke.

“We’ll build it, bro, just the two of us!” Jon punched Manu’s shoulder, a pretend-play cuff, but it hurt. “Get the consent, the materials, and we start.” 

“Whoa, hold up. It’s one thing to design a house, another to build it.”

“How hard could it be? You’re the master builder, right?”

The words stung. Mocking him again? Like that summer job when Manu painted the school and became the artist, or when he started at his dad’s shop and became the glassman. 

“Cut it out, will you? What do I know about building? Let’s hire a company—”

“A company, like your Mulligans? They’ll rip me off.”

“Mr. Mulligan will give you a fair price.”

“Are you trying to land a deal for your new boss now? You think I’m not good enough?”

“Bullshit.”

“Forget about it. I’ll build it myself.”

“A two-story house? You’re mad. I’ve got some money, let’s do this right.” 

“Don’t need your money, bro. I need you. C’mon.”

⁓

Hearts and plastic roses decorate the Pharmacy’s window. A white teddy holds a heart-shaped balloon that says, Share the Love. Manu smiles, It’s Valentine’s day, not the Seventeenth. Jon and Meredith’s anniversary party will be tonight. The flowers are for her, he thinks, relieved. Flowers, and that balloon too, instead of a case of Speight’s. If he doesn’t get drunk like the others, she might dance with him; a brotherly-in-law, innocent dance. She might even wear the green daisy dress, the one she had on that night, when Manu—reaching to touch her hair—had told her she was special. Jon had barged in, asking to be introduced. A mint engineering degree in one pocket and a job offer in the other, Jon wanted the world. He could’ve picked any girl that night. But everything was a competition with him. Everything—a game he had to win. 

⁓

It was near midnight when the song played. Killing Me Softly was her favourite, she said, she had to dance with someone. They almost didn’t move, just swayed like flames of two candles, one tall, the other yellow. Her fragrance was lemony. He’d never noticed the white eyelash on her left eyelid, so tender, so lovely. Her body was warm, only a silk sheen away from his hands. A bead of sweat rolled and glistened at the dip of her collarbone. If he lowered his head, his lips would soak it in.

⁓

The world was painfully bright the morning after the party. The sun nailed down hard rays. Sweat stung Manu’s eyes, salty and blinding. Someone called out his name.

“I made lemonade,” Meredith said, her blond hair frizzy like a dandelion flower in a green meadow full of daisies. He didn’t know how she’d climbed this high. The underside of her wrist shone as she held the glass. She took a step; her weight made the loose plank tremble.

“Meredith, stop. It’s not safe. Go back.”

“I made it for you and… Not that he deserves anything.” She darted a glance through the crossed beams of the roof where his brother was. 

“What do you mean?”

“Just give him the lemonade. Tell him I’m not mad anymore.” She lifted the other glass, ice cubes clinking. The breeze fanned her hair, and he saw the bruise on her temple—an angry cloud of a violet sunset. 

“Meredith…”

“It’s nothing serious.” She pulled her hair towards her face.

A split lip, sunglasses indoors. Time after time she’d say, “It’s nothing serious,” and would cover her neck, her bruised wrists, while Manu bunched his fists in his pockets, his mouth cemented as he walked away. Not this time. A ball of steel heaved at his core ready to get rolling.

“You wait here, I’ll get him. The bastard… Jon!” He turned abruptly, sending a tremor through the scaffolding.

“Manu, please. Just give him the lemonade.”

Her voice quivered. She hurried over the few steps that separated them and stumbled. The hem of her dress caught on a fitting and she bent to the side trying to free herself with her leg, kicking at the fitting, again and again.

The glasses smashed first. Manu leaped toward her, and suddenly the plank he was supposed to land on wasn’t there. He grappled for the pipes, grabbing at the fittings as the scaffolding collapsed. Shattering noise, metal on metal and bricks on wood; dust in his mouth, his nostrils, his eyes, and still he hung there, looking at Meredith motionless underneath the giant sticks of a lost pick-up game.

⁓

“Meredith!” Manu shouts, “Meredith, no!”

He rushes forward, arms stretched to grab her, but there’s no plank, no scaffolding—he is in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day, clutching a bunch of crushed flowers. His heart hammers somewhere inside his ribcage. Manu opens his fingers and lets go of the daisies. They are wilted now, petals missing like leftovers of she-loves-me, she-loves-me-not game.

Someone is laughing. The workers with the glass panel are watching him, the men from the barbershop are staring too. The black dog yawns and Manu thinks of the little plastic dog fixed on the dashboard of his mother’s Ford and how it bobbed its head, approving of the words said and unsaid on the way to the funeral. Why is he thinking of his mother now? She’s gone too.  

⁓

“It’s no one’s fault, you hear? Meredith had no business being there,” his mother was saying, gripping the wheel. “But Jon’s ruined… he’ll never get over it. What were you two thinking, building a house like it’s a game? You’re the older one, why didn’t you talk some sense into him?”

The car picked up speed with every question.

“Ma, please…” Manu swallowed hard.

“Always showing off, proving he’s the best. To you, to your father, to his wife—”

“He was hitting her! Jon was hitting Meredith!”

“What?” Her glance sharp as a glass shard. “No, he’d never do that. Jon loved that girl more than anything.”

“Yeah. We both did…”

His words spilled out, his secret was out, into the stuffy air of his mother’s car and onto the streets whizzing past the windshield. Wide-eyed, she stared at him, and he held her gaze, wishing to stay reflected in his mother’s eyes until she forgave him, while he told her how he lost Meredith, twice, how his brother vanished without a trace, how his life collapsed, and he didn’t know how to rebuild it anymore.

⁓

A horrible noise startles him. Tires screeching, horn croaking, the orange truck skids and turns to the side. Pipes roll out, hitting the ground in a rusty tornado, the scraping sound almost visible. Manu’s feet are leaden, cemented to the ground. Time stops. The world reaches him in glugging groans as though he’s underwater, and he no longer wonders why the truck is back, or where he’s seen it before.

The Seventeenth of February! Cemetery day!

But there is something else, a sensation that is rolling through the hazy folds of his mind, trying to tell him, no, to warn him about this very moment—the truck looming, the sound of the glass panel exploding as the guy with no gloves rushes, pushing Manu out of the truck’s way.

Hitting the kerb returns the normal speed of time and a single lucid thought grounds the deafening world around him, assuring him he is no longer in his mother’s Ford smashed to pieces all those years ago by the Mulligan Constructions’ truck, leaving Manu confused for the rest of his life, never quite fitting in, never quite in the middle.