Pushing Up Roses

PUSHING UP ROSES

by Kelsey Hutton

Phyllis couldn’t hide from it any longer. 

It was already late spring, which meant the first anniversary of Arthur’s death was only a few weeks away. “You know I love you, dear, but I hate big parties,” she explained to her dead husband, who she knew was still around her somewhere. But her kids would expect her to play hostess. Single-handedly bake enough to feed an army, sardine all the whiny relatives into her house, say something poignant in Arthur’s name. Reluctantly, she began composing fragments of a speech in her mind as she finally washed up several days’ worth of dishes.

“He’s watching us in heaven…”

“He was the sweetest man alive!”

“If only he hadn’t eaten so much steak.”

Their oldest daughter would point out, as she always did, what a hopeless romantic he was. Every spring he brought her mom roses. What woman could resist?

Phyllis stayed up late that evening watching a Star Trek marathon on TV. It took her until mid-morning the next day to notice that the green shrubs were finally overtaking the grey slush in the garden, and the wisteria vines were beginning to shine. Arthur had tended their garden so lovingly after they bought this small house in the country. She hoped his pretty flowers would still come up without his green thumb to guide them.

A couple of weeks later, Phyllis spent the day sorting through old photographs. She got the slightest bit teary-eyed at the pictures of their honeymoon to the Cascades. Arthur had loved camping and being outdoors—though Phyllis remembered there’d been a special New York City newlyweds’ deal she would’ve liked to snap up. That’s when she noticed that the vines were growing unusually fast up the sides of the house. She didn’t think they’d grown that quickly last year. Arthur was always the one who paid attention to that sort of thing. 

A few days after that, Phyllis had to turn the lights on in the middle of the day because the vines so thickly covered the windows. They were overrunning the house. The garden was a violent explosion of orange lilies and hot pink rhododendrons. The perfume from the lilac bushes was so strong it gave Phyllis headaches. The daisies were so healthy they pulsed. The day that she caught tendrils of wisteria curling in under the front door was the day she muttered a quick apology to her dead husband, and pulled out the garden shears. 

Monday morning she woke up, not to the sound of the alarm clock, but to the heady scent of honeysuckle. She sneezed, then shuddered. Through a crack in the window, the vines had forced their way through and there was a bushy plug of fragile white buds. 

“This isn’t funny anymore,” Phyllis said out loud.

Phyllis tried cutting the vines back again, wincing at the ache in her shoulders and the blisters that burst over her palms. But the thinner vines grew back within the hour, and she couldn’t span the thickest ones with her hands, let alone saw through them. She gave up when the vines coated the inside of her house walls as densely as they once had the outside. 

In the living room, floppy ivy sprouts carpeted the floor. Moss grew on the moist bathroom toilet tank. White daisies pushed out of the kitchen drain like a ghostly bouquet out of a magician’s sleeve. 

She knew she was trapped. Neither she nor Arthur had ever bothered with cellphones, because Arthur had hated “being chained to a screen,” as he put it. Her landline was dead, and the Internet on her ten-year-old desktop upstairs refused to connect—probably because of the weight of the vines on the wires outside. She couldn’t even get out of the house because the hydrangea bushes were too dense. All she could do was try to keep the water running through the taps, which were choked with honeysuckle, and wander the forest taking over room by room. 

She ate her way through the fridge out of nerves during the day. At night, she listened to the plants grow, a steady rustle and hum. The dishes stacked ever higher.

A week later, Phyllis jerked awake, wondering if she would be interred alive in a vegetable tomb on the anniversary of her husband’s death. She clenched her fists and finally broke the silence. “OK, Arthur!” she yelled. “Is this some sort of revenge? I’m sorry I complained about the party! I’ll have all the relatives over and I’ll make a good speech!” She held her breath a minute, then she crept out of bed to eat the last of the peanut butter.

In the kitchen, thousands of roses filled the room. Antique roses, modern roses, even hybrid miniature ones. They covered the floor, blanketed the kitchen counters, curled around dirty spoons she hadn’t bothered to wash. The only clear space was on the wall to her right. It was blank except for a single, heart-shaped wreath of roses in every shade of Hallmark pink and Valentine’s red.

Phyllis blinked, stared, and asked, very quietly, “That’s what you meant?”

Then she marched into the middle of the kitchen, stomping on as many of those damned roses as she could. “Arthur!” she yelled into the heavy-scented air. “You listen to me, and listen up!”

Even the petals on the floor quivered to attention.

“We were married for thirty-eight years and that was a good, long time,” said Phyllis. “You were affectionate. You brought me flowers. You always brought me goddamn flowers. Get over it! God, Arthur, it wasn’t romantic! With all the cooking and cleaning and chasing after the kids, I didn’t have time to be romantic! Why couldn’t you just pick up the vacuum? Roses, roses, roses—every spring for thirty-eight years. Then you sat down for your steak. You never even offered to help with the dishes. You really care, Arthur? You really love me? Then instead of these mouldy flowers, get me a goddamn dishwasher!”

Phyllis spun on her heel and marched to her front door. Suddenly, the trailing vines blocking her exit couldn’t move out of the way fast enough, until her well-worn doorknob reappeared and only a few last, pathetic wisps of wisteria clung to the doorframe. “And this all better be gone by the time I get back!”

Phyllis returned later that evening, and there wasn’t so much as a daisy in sight. On the kitchen counter, all the dishes were stacked neatly, washed and dried and sparkling clean. Phyllis smiled and put on the kettle for tea.