13,416 words

It was just Spring. The rains had dried the week before and grass glistened with fresh dew. The poppies and marigolds along the shops shone vibrant with the colors of the season. Yellows, blues, and pinks. It seemed the smell of flowers had overcome the whole town. The bakery always smelled of sunflowers, the docks of water lilies. Even the Town Hall was surrounded by a barricade of aster, rose, and magnolia. 

Along the boulevards the trees were full. Letting the sun down through the peek holes between their green leaves and light brown branches. In their lively roots ants and beetles moved about while above them little boys watched on. The boys were all crouched down, stopping to admire the colorful shells and lines of organized troops. A stop on their way home from school, taking joy in the new spring day that had welcomed them. 

The day usually began on the way home. It was like that for a lot of us kids. Most of the time we slumped down at our desks at eight and became zombies until the final bell. We had all our vacation time behind us, and with spring break some time away still, the future was bleak. So the day only began when our lives were finally let free onto the streets between school and home. Setting down to admire the flowers, the bugs, and to enjoy the brief freedom from needless adult woes. 

I had been walking next to my new boyfriend, Jakob, when a thought occurred to me.

“Isn’t this a good time to die?” It bubbled up from the deep sea of my happy spring thoughts. Releasing and filling the atmosphere of my mind with a sweet dandelion scent. 

“I guess so!” Jakob laughed, clearly thinking I was joking. So did I. Yet that incredulous agitation that followed was serious.

I was serious…

Would it not be better to step out into the street and die? What good would come of going about my daily life as I had been? What lay ahead for me? I was a teen girl with an extracurricular interest in flowers. Nothing else. You could not even call me Jakob’s Girlfriend, we had only started going out the week prior. Even so, not to demean the poor guy, but he was a total drag. It took an act of god to get him outside, which made me all the more strange for bothering with him. 

In addition; I had been terribly average in school, my grades hardly ever broke a B. I supposed if courting history could be noted, I was also fairly average in appearance. At least not model material. A good way of putting it would be to say I am not the type to be coveted. Nor, strangely, have I coveted. I could not, even standing next to my boyfriend, remember the last time I had a crush on somebody. Not even another girl. Jakob and I had known each other for the two years we had been in High School. It was more through a matter of course, of procedure, that we chose to go out. He was happy enough about it, to be sure, but refused to change his bad habits. That was the type of guy he was, and because of the type of girl I was, I would never leave him. 

So would it be good to just die? Figure this; What does the future of such a girl as myself look like? Boring, lifeless. My best hope would be to become a botanist and wife. Dreadful thought. Then, even, to have kids, a terrible thing. Finally, just die anyway, but slow and painful, letting myself be forgotten by my family in some prison for the old. Smelling ammonia and soiled linen in my final years instead of flora? I had my happiness done, so why not call it quits before things got worse? 

The thought surprised me, the reasoning stunned me. I was never a particularly depressed person, never an attention seeker. Suicide was alien to my entire existence, yet it seemed like such a good idea. It made me ask myself a few necessary questions, for example; When was the last time I devoted myself entirely to something? Not like going all in for a sports game, more like experiencing patriotism. The passion to root for something other than myself. I guess selfless support? I could not remember. I was sure that when I was a little girl I used to cheer for my sister when she played soccer, for my dad's football team when he shouted out his praise. However, that was different. Was it not that I wanted my sister to win because we were related? Then, did I know anything about football or just wanted to be like my Dad? Did I have the personal, that is, spiritual, desire to see such people succeed? No, I just shouted when prompted. When in my post-pubescent years had I wholeheartedly devoted my mind to some cause? Christ alive, had I ever even thought of politics? 

What were Jakob's politics? I felt, walking next to him, that no matter what he said it was likely that I would automatically agree. I, who had not bothered to think about it, was the kind of person who latched onto the first thing they heard. Taking for granted that it must be true or positive to the extent which I desire. Perhaps he had some extremely controversial opinions, what then? Surely I would be able to interpret the desirability of such a scenario and escape with some measure of dignity? No, I was sure I would just make a fool of myself by asking. By looking like some empty-headed, doll-faced harp. Better to leave it be and just kill myself, better to die than humiliate myself anymore than necessary. 

Death seemed like a very convenient method of escaping criticism. 

Why bother becoming famous? It would be easier if we could just have cut off at some point in our life and maintain those happy and wholesome memories held in the hearts of those around us. There were as many who hated them as loved them. It seemed like a tremendous waste of time to me.  Would it not be better to try and be loved by as many people as possible? Would it be better to just let that person who you become never exist? That person who seems to only cause others pain while torturing themself? I had never caused anyone pain, so would it be best to let the innocent me perish before she became a sinner? Jakob was glaring at me while I dissected this new thought.

“You good there Ida?” 

He put his arm around my shoulder. It was not uncomfortable, but it was enough to redirect my mind back to the present. The smell of fresh foxgloves somewhere nearby brought the spring mindset back to me, and I smiled reflexively, almost defensively, at him. 

“I’m fine. Just excited for this year’s bloom.” I said.

He seemed satisfied to not pry further, but why had he inquired? Was it because he had recognized, despite his thick headed disposition, that I was deep in thought? A sign that one's girlfriend is going through some turmoil which may need assessment else the man would be villainized. Once he assured himself that he was to be free from harm leaving the rest of the matter to me entirely. It was blatant posturing, and it sickened me. I shrugged his arm off.

 “I’ll go the rest of the way by myself, but I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” His confusion at my sudden departure was brief but loyal, he walked away without arguments, not even feigned ones. 

My heart began to shake. Not pound or quake, it was more like my whole body began to shiver from an immense chill. It was not a bad chill though, it was that kind of excited uneasiness one gets when they are about to do something enormous. Going to a concert for their favorite band, having their first child. Maybe, as I walked the sidewalk to my house, I felt the same gleeful sensation that a bride would while walking down the aisle, hand in hand with her father. 

Already the spring I had loved became superb. The air was crisp and tender, like drinking fresh water. The smells of the azalea and caladium filling my nose in their honeyed taste. Even the sparse sun, shyly let upon the pathway by the pregnant tree’s, shone brightly into my eyes. The world seemed that much more brilliant without the unconscious fear of tomorrow. I would die that day, this much I was sure of. 

The chrysanthemums my Mother adored were not yet blooming, but their green bushes covered the front of our house. Perhaps it would be accurate to say that I hated them with a certain vigor. Aster, I thought, was a touch more appealing. Nevertheless Mother had her name on the mortgage, so she got to call the shots when it came to landscaping decorations. 

As I crossed the threshold my grandmother called out and welcomed me home from the parlor, I leaned through the entryway and gave her my brief thanks. She was sitting on the couch, leg propped up onto a pillow for some medical reason, while my grandfather was leaning back in his armchair. The pair would have looked just as lovely and peaceful as any other married couple, no matter the age, if only I was not already determined to meet my end. As I rested my eyes on them I saw every wrinkle, every blackened bruise and swollen jowl. The way some skin was looser and some tighter, I suppressed the urge to vomit. It took an affirmation that I would never become like that to quell my quaking stomach. I cursed them for coming over and looking so disgusting, they almost ruined my delightful last day on earth. I said I had homework to do and rushed down the hallway towards my room, passing my parents open door where inside my mother was folding some clothes.

It was only natural, as I had just got home, that she would want to greet me. Yet there was this vague look in her eyes as I passed the door, this knowledgeable stare. She knows, I thought, she knows she will never see me alive again. Perhaps that is the way parents look at their children, taking in the entire picture as fully as they can. Chiseling that bright and flawless picture of life into their mind so if the dreaded day came they would be ready. That flawed corpse on the bed could not have been their daughter. After all, the girl who passed by their bedroom that Spring afternoon was their daughter. I continued to my bedroom. 

I closed the door behind me and went to work concocting my plan. An appropriate method of doing the deed was very special. My Dad was a liberal, so we hated guns. There was also nothing around resembling rope, how many ways were there to actually commit suicide? I was stumped, those were the only two methods I had seen in movies. Those old spy films had them chomping down on a cyanide capsule embedded in their teeth, but I had nothing like cyanide either. Electricity was out of the question, forbid I should cause my Dad trouble by forcing him to pay an expensive fee to fix the place. What else? Cutting, I guess, but to do something so painful would be more trouble than it was worth. Complete confusion. While I was thinking though, a breeze floated from the garden and through my window. Bringing with it a lullaby of sugar to my nose. It would be better to consider my options outside, among my darling flowers. 

I changed into a more comfortable outfit, sweats and a tee, and exchanged my contacts for glasses. I looked at myself in the mirror and felt proud, this was how I would be remembered, a beaming ray of youth. Sure, the boys may not find me to be anything special, but I can turn a few heads when I want, if those heads liked glasses that is. I went back out into the hall, passing my mothers door again, this time she called for me. 

“Can you make sure your bush is doing well?” I agreed to her task. 

We had an Oleander bush since I was a little girl, but because I was so partial towards it we got another the year before. I tilled the soil and planted it myself. My mother had worried about how it would take the soil, as the older one died sometime prior. We, or at least I, had always been careful when planting and tilling. If the soil, which I had treated personally, had been anything but beneficial? I supposed I should have said shove it to my hobby. Still, she was concerned, so my goal became a brief afterthought. Getting outside would, of course, require passing my grandparents in the living room. It would be a slight hassle. I was still readying myself when I rounded the corner and entered the room. 

“Going to the garden?” My grandmother asked. Upon my confirmation she started to get up from her couch. “I’ll keep you company then sweetheart.” 

“No, it’s good Grandma. I’m doing something for Mom. We’re just fussing over the Oleander right now. Just sit down, you know Dad wouldn't like seeing you push yourself.” She bore a childish glare at me, but fell back into her position with a chuckle. 

“You really are becoming more like your mother every day.” 

Like my mother? Curse the thought. Middle aged mother of two daughters, wife of a workaholic and the type of old fashioned woman who was fine sitting around gardening and doing laundry her whole life. She even married young, foretelling my grim fate with Jakob should I rescind my new plans. Not in a million years. I was never the confrontational sort though, so I just blushed and went over to the backdoor. 

Opening it, I let in a gust of fresh, chilled, spring air, upon which sailed the scent of wondrous flowers. I drank in full what I could merely sip through my window. Even across the yard I could pick out my darling Oleander above the hedges, its sweet nectar shimmering like precious gems in the sunlight. With it my own, personal, selection of sugary spring flowers were already blooming, bringing the wintered garden back to its fullest life. I had been fond of the smaller flowers, the primrose, aforementioned aster, daffodils, crocus, and even the romantic myosotis, sparkling diamond of the beds. There was no pavement in our backyard, but a small five by five wooden deck by the door and a gravel trail that looped around the populated garden. We had essentially turned our entire backyard into something out of a french tea party. With a small table and chairs set in a little sequestered bit of shade not visible from the back door. The hedges of flowers blocked all sight. 

Really I thought it was too crowded. My mother had always been an overbearing and gaudy kind of woman. Opposed to me she liked the larger flowers, with great big petals, and almost all only blooming in the summer. Of course I have already mentioned the boring green bush outside the front of the house which was supposed to become Chrysanthemum’s. However, because I am younger and she had more time to debauch her garden before I ever got a say in anything, the large bushes and hedges were, of course, her idea. If the hydrangea were spirea then it would be fine, if the lilac and rhododendron were flowering quince, and so on. Then came the stupid obsession with roses. 

Try not to misunderstand, I have never had anything against roses. Just, well, they are way too common I guess? Whenever I see one for some reason I get very sleepy, if that is a good enough example. They have a very plain selection of colors as well, varying pinks, reds, and whites. The intention by the great florist in the sky is clearly to convey a warm feeling, the feeling of spring and summer leading into early autumn, but it falls flat for me. I have seen them everywhere, in fashion magazine’s, in billboard advertisements, littered about every romance movie since the thirties. It may be enough to say I am sick of them. Especially the corniest and most romantic, the red rose. My mother, the gaudy hag, had inundated our yard with red rose bushes. Even amidst the other, more subdued, flowers, she imprinted the scourge. Then, every summer, I was assaulted by the boulders of arrogant roses. 

Luckily my darling Oleander was alone in her far corner. A side path around the edge of the yard allowed casual strolls. Since I had loved that flower we put her by herself, with three feet of low peonies to cover the ground around her. Along the edges was more of the same as in the main garden, a mixture of tastes between my own and my mothers. It being spring of course I had no issue with perusing my pride. My only grim regret being that Oleander was still shy of us. It would not be until later spring when my darling grew into her true beauty. She was still a little child. As I approached, pushing down the still soggy gravel, her potential marvel shone bright. 

Oleander was a shy little girl, but she always knew what was expected of her. She knew she would one day grow into an angel, and on wings of fuschia she would bring happiness to anyone who saw her. I went around to the tea table and grabbed a chair, dragging it around the maze of hedges back to my little girl. I set it near her, placing my elbows on my knees and resting my head in my hands. 

She was so green. So full of that youthful vigor, that love of life. If I had to root through my dad's library I guess a good word would be; divine. Maybe I could come up with something better. What would it be? A word to describe how I felt about that Oleander? I tried to rummage about in my head but could find nothing, maybe it was indescribable. That budding flower of motherhood in my chest making a vain attempt at blooming early. 

“Nerium…” I whispered. How I wished she could speak to me, that she could soothe the unknowable urge, the mysterious uncertainty. 

I took off my glasses and set them on the ground, looking at the model of an angelic line. In my blindness I could see her for what she would become, every curve and color. I watched in my mind's eyes as her little bud became the pink signal house of my life. The one proof that I had ever loved anything before. How could I do it again? Become so attached to an idea or an object? How do people convince themselves they are right? I could not see the answer to such a selfish question, and found my comfort in the corona of her flowers, deep and dark. Little seedlings falling to the soil I worked with my own bare hands. Becoming so pregnant amidst those little peonies that the inferior mice moved aside to let another fantastic bush of darling Oleander rise. 

I leaned out of the chair and let myself onto the ground beneath her. Resting my head upon the pillow of peonies and in the shade of Oleander’s leaves. The wind rustled the high bushes and the shuffling gravel beneath me sung out. Under the skirt of her foliage I looked up and saw the sticks and twigs, the trunk, her bones, her spine. Every part of her that the world never saw. All of it still wet from the rain, from the morning watering, and the dew of early Spring. I ran my fingers along her stems, feeling her flesh on my own. How I wished I could put my glasses back on and see those blossoms in reality, instead of in a haze dream. A faint wish. Yet there I lay, and I began to cry. I cried because she was so young and beautiful, that she would blossom and become bright without me around. I cried because I was no longer her sister. I was her mother. I had given my youth to her, as mothers do, and she became the after image of my own frivolous years. In her shadow I dreamt that I was a little girl again, running about my mother’s garden, looking at the Oleander of her own youth, the remnant of her own long-gone beauty. The scent of honey, sweet tea and cookies blanketed me. 

“Oh, Nerium…” I whispered. 

She reminded me of everything I was only a short time ago. A hopeless hopefulness about everything. Had I lived for those last two years? Or had I merely existed out of politeness? Who could say? Oleander, my little darling flower, could not give me an answer to so needless a question. Everything was so comically serious. In such a place had I believed that life was worth living? When we no longer believe in such a thing, what then?

 “Is it not better, my sweetheart, that I should die?” She did not respond, swaying about blissfully. I blushed earnestly as I plucked a leaf from one of her low stems, resting it upon my lips. I could smell the sugar scent and taste the bitter flavor. 

Just as I was dozing my mother called my name from the back door. She expected an answer to her inquiry concerning the soil. I wished I could not be bothered, but I was, and rose to approach her. I tucked the freshly picked leaf into the pocket of my sweats and picked up my glasses. As I came around the corner my mother made an exaggerated exclamation. 

“For the love of…why are you so filthy?” My eyes fell to my side and back, covered with wet gravel and mud. I shrugged and said I slipped, she seemed displeased. “Get changed right now, christ alive…you know I literally just finished the damn laundry right? No. No I’m not doing it, you have to learn to take care of yourself eventually. You do your own laundry from now on, got it?” Her eyes were uncharacteristically serious, the matter upset her something fierce.

“Sure thing mom.” I chuckled. 

She turned back inside with a serious face before remembering her mission for me and turning back. Making a total three-sixty. 

“What about the damn soil? Since you seem to have gotten such a good look.” 

“It’s fine, she’s doing good.” After this final note she went back inside where I could already hear my grandmother laughing at her daughter's frustration. I followed her and my grandfather got a royal amount of laughter from my disheveled appearance. 

“It’s spring, not fall, you know?” He joked, I tried to put on my blush but the blood in my cheeks made its way somewhere else.

 My head felt heavy, my mind focused suddenly on the leaf which I had taken so delicately from my darling sweetheart. Oleandrin, I remembered, that was how I would die. I would just make the tea of Oleander, and die that way. It was not going to be pretty, I knew, but how poetic was that? To fill my body with the bitter poison of my youth’s passion? I laughed outright, pleasing my misguided grandfather. 

I went into my room and changed into a pair of gym shorts and another tee, drying my hair and setting the leaf on my desk. I left the window open despite the oncoming chill in the air. It would be better to fill my room with the delectable scent for the rest of my time there. Sitting at my desk, I pulled a notebook out of my bag and started doing homework. Math, I decided, would be my first torment. Luckily I was somewhat better at math than English, so it came and went without much time passing. My history homework had troubled me, but Alexander the Great was enough of a poignant figure that I managed to remember all of his questions. My Art class homework was just a doodle, something or other in my room. I chose the leaf. English finally came, and with it a new struggle. 

My English teacher was always someone who, without even a sliver of a doubt, could be called pretentious. He was a century old skeleton who fancied he was once a great writer. He even used his under-sold books as teaching tools instead of the usual curriculum. He got in trouble for it, of course, but as I understood it from my sister, who had the misfortune of being his student once, he persisted. Being a failed writer, he took special note that my Dad was employed in that field. Dad made enough to keep food in the house by ghost writing for people but the actual house was owned by my Mother’s family. He spent most of his days working as an editor at the local newspaper, but that money went into my sister’s tuition payments. I, being the daughter of an author, was highly valued. Despite my lack of ability in his class the teacher would always target me for his most difficult questions and give me special homework. Such as the prompt I had to fill in an answer for. 

A simple question; “What is happiness?” 

What is happiness? How would I know? Seventeen year olds would not know the answer to such a serious question. Then I could answer it in a non-serious way? No, that would never work, I could imagine the man’s smug look as he derided my silly answer. He was always the serious type. I decided to seek my Dad’s aid when he came home and put the stupid thing away. 

Would he know? I never knew him to be grim or sour, to be un-happy. Yet…yet what? He just had that way of talking like he gave up on life a long time ago. It was not quite right to say he was the unhappy sort, rather that he had no clue what happiness even was. At least in the way that my pretentious English teacher intended it to be defined. How was that? Did he mean material happiness or spiritual? One could never tell with him. I supposed we had no material need, so we were happy in that respect. I supposed we had a sufficiently functional family, and I even had a boyfriend. We filled all of the boxes. So what was left? Why did everything feel so empty? 

The emptiness of this problem became filled with the green sea of the leaf that was enlarged on my assignment sheet. I was never a good artist, but the drawing made me wish to return to my place beneath Oleander. I grabbed the actual leaf off my desk and stood, falling over onto my back on the bed. I blocked the ceiling light with the little leaf, leaning it closer until finally setting it over my right eye. It sat on the glass, and I could see the little veins. The muscle of my darling Oleander. The bed beneath my back felt stiff and rigid compared to the ground under Oleander. The ceiling a cheap replacement for her leaves and the sky. My ceiling light, desperately trying to replicate the sun, was too bright. It started to hurt my eyes so I sat back up, letting the little leaf fall gingerly into my lap. It was so weightless, letting nature and other bodies move it about as it wished. Even then I felt like my little Oleander had unwittingly become more like her mother. It’s too soon sweetheart…

The garage door could be heard opening, the chain was rusted, old, and the wood creaked, so the whole house could hear it. Dad was home. No doubt dinner was also about to be ready, but instead of going out immediately I went into my bag. 

My phone was on silent, so I had missed a dozen messages from my friends. Francesca wanted to know if I needed my math textbook, Haley needed advice about her boyfriend, and several others just wanted to chat. Nothing from Jakob. I expected as much, but it still ticked me off. What kind of boyfriend was he supposed to be? Whatever, I figured it would not be a big deal in the end. I would not suffer his laziness much longer, and thinking that made my spite fade away into nostalgic thought. Of course, that was how things were with him, how foolish I was back when I was alive.  In heaven I would set to work finding someone of actual worth to make my partner. With that final thought I chucked the phone onto my desk and left the room. 

The noise from the kitchen told me what I already knew about dinner. I found Dad sitting at the dining room table across from Grandfather. They were talking about something political, but like I said before it was a bit over my head. 

“Hi Dad.”

I sat between them but closer to my Dad. He had been the one who introduced us all to the delight of flowers. He had one of those unfortunate habits of being very interested in something for short periods. I guess I should say he was a very indignant and temperamental person, inconstant. In this he restructured our whole backyard into what it was in the hope it would inspire him to create some great work. It never came to anything, just like many of his other ventures, but Mother loved the flowers. I grew up with that garden, so it was only natural that the fantasy mosaic brainwashed me. After the flowers he began his mechanic days, then carpentry, as could be seen with the well made wooden deck one stepped upon just out the back door. Recently he had been getting deeper into politics for the first time in his adult life. As far as I knew the man had not even bothered to vote out of sheer dis-interest. It was politics that he was discussing with my grandfather. 

“I’ve read quite a bit of risque stuff recently about this administration, what do you think John?” It appeared that, instead of finding his own opinion, he was fishing for my grandfathers. Another bad habit of his. I think he was just looking for confirmation of what he himself had believed, but lacked the spine to adhere to. 

“I wouldn’t know.” My grandfather had the urge to gently stroke his gray chin hairs when he was pretending to be in deep thought. It seemed funny to me because he did it no matter what the subject was. What do you think of this rug, where did we leave the car, and most funny to me; what would you like for dinner? That he applied the same level of intellectual strain he used for his meals to politics as well told me what his thoughts were already. My Dad, in his mood for the day, was too dense to see it. 

“I was happy enough with those folks before, but I must admit I don’t keep up quite like I used to, excuse me for a second” My grandfather stopped his chin rubbing and stood up, walking towards the kitchen. Leaving my Dad with an acutely confused expression. 

“Don’t ever get into politics.” He told me, sipping on a cup of coffee. “This stuff is going way over my head. How was your day though?” 

“Fine, the usual. Jakob walked me home.” His ears perked. 

“Jakob, the Tillings’ boy?” I nodded, he was the same. “Well that was nice of him, but why all of a sudden? I thought you two weren’t that close?”

“We aren’t, we just have a project in English class together. It’s a toughie, so we were talking about it. Figured I’d let you know so nobody went spreading rumors…” I trailed off, teasing his curiosity. 

He was not the most protective or overbearing type, but he had his worries like every Father should. Also to say that Jakob Tilling had been an undesired candidate for courtesy would be an understatement. The laziness that I had taken issue with was well known and frowned upon. Jakob had planned on going to college to become some tech-nerd, so his seclusion was just one symptom of that. Or, as most people assumed, he chose tech because it would allow him to become a hermit. I never argued against the common opinion, Jakob did nothing himself to exactly contradict it either. In fact I may have hated Jakob. I was unaware until that day, until that thought, that the prospect of staying with him my whole life was so dreadful. 

“...anyways that was about it. How was work?” 

“Work was the same, kid.” He smiled. “What’s the assignment?”

“We have to do a project that can answer a question Mr. Paul gave us.” My Dad slumped slightly at the name. Remembering, no doubt, the awkward PTA meetings where the two had met and the teacher quizzed the man like a hungry bee. 

“What did that busy body ask you poor kids?”

“What is happiness?” I recited.

“Well!” Dad exclaimed. “As if a bunch of sophomores could answer that, how are you doing so far?” I shook my head, clueless. It was not quite that I was using my Dad or lying to him. This was just the best way of going about asking him for help without him insisting I try harder. He outright refused to help me with homework out of the insistence that, if he did, I would learn nothing from it. Maybe he was just a bad teacher. “If you forced my hand for an answer I guess I would say; ‘Happiness is knowing you are more than what you once were.’ Basically that no matter how bad things are in the moment, as long as they’re better than when you started then you should be happy.” 

“Does that mean you should be happy that there is a tomorrow?” My grandfather had returned with a cup of coffee himself. 

“Well that’s what you call optimism isn’t it?” My Dad responded. Grandfather laughed while he sat down, rubbing his chin hairs. 

“Pretty much, the pessimist would say; ‘Happiness is knowing you are not what you are bound to become.’ I think it has to do with Catholics, I’m not so sure, it’s been awhile. We used to talk about this back in my school days, and let me tell you that was a long time ago, kids.”

“A damn long time!” My grandmother yelled from the living room. My mother came in with a plate of biscuits and butter, kissing her husband on the cheek as she did so. 

“Happiness is knowing you are living today, that you have a family and are living your best life.” I stifled a laugh. Mother’s platitude genuinely enthused me, and from the wry look Dad gave I imagine he felt the same embarrassment. 

“Anyways you kids probably should just write down whatever and don’t bother with it too much. Probably anything you write won’t please Paul anyway, knowing the way he’s been.” He went quiet while he grabbed a biscuit and started eating, Grandfather did the same thing. There was no more talk about school or work for the rest of that supper.

 Mother had made meatloaf and mash in honor of our dentally challenged elders, which several jokes were conducted towards. Grandmother had sat next to me, closer to her husband, while Mother sat across from me. Leaving, of course, the empty seat across from Grandmother. My sister was still in college, and the hole that it left in our family was supposed to be filled with pride. It was our sister, our daughter, who had managed to get into a good university, but she was still gone. Her absence never waned, not on holiday or celebration, she must maintain her studiousness. Had she ever been studious? Her grades were superb, but had she that much work to do to maintain them that she could never go home? I had my doubts, perhaps she hated the smell of flowers, or perhaps she was afraid of her future if she tarried too long. I may have hated my sister for her unfaithful greed, that intrinsic idea she had. That whatever she did must be in the goal of becoming different, even better, than us. Fear of the future, or the pursuit of happiness? As I ate my meal the riddle tried to sour my mood. Another surprising train of thought brought about by my sudden plans. It was only my Dad’s sudden question that saved me from it. 

“So, how’s the bush doing? You fixed the soil up, right?” His eyes made passes from his plate to me and back again several times while he waited for my answer. My Mother also looked over in the same way. 

“She’s doing good, the soil seems like it’s really working.” I said. 

My Mother scoffed, attracting Dad’s curiosity. 

“Well that doesn’t mean you have to go and take a swim in it.” My grandmother laughed. Dad, still confused, had the afternoon mishap recounted to him by my cross mother. Naturally he laughed. 

“Well I’m happy it turned out good, it seems the ladies in our family really have an affinity towards the thing. Shame it’s not good for pets.” 

“Oh? And what kind of pet would you want anyway? Mr. Too much trouble to care for, or I don’t want that damn hair all over everything.” My mother teased. 

“A short hair, or maybe hairless, like a sphinx, that Egyptian cat…you do have to moisturize them though, don’t you?” He mused, Mother nodded.

That dinner felt strange. It was normal in almost every way, even the vague emptiness of the sibling absence, but there was something different. Brighter, almost. I love my Dad, and though I have fair issues with Mom I do love her as well. As for my grandparents? 

Well, it would be hard for me to say I loved my grandparents. If anybody thought about it for a second would they say the same? Grandparents are strange creatures. Do they qualify for the sentiment? I suppose for people whose grandparents are their primary parental guidance, such as for single parents who need their own parents' help from time to time. However, that was not the case for me. I had a loving father, an overbearing mother. There was no more space in my mind for something like love for my grandparents. Would I be sad if they died? Absolutely, but I would feel the same if a friend or pet passed on. I definitely liked my grandparents, but even that felt oddly more developed of an emotion. Maybe I could call it appreciation? Passing jokes, witty retorts, boring updates, everything about this dinner had been the same as hundreds of dinners before. Yet it was so much nicer. 

As we were finishing up Mother started collecting the dirty plates, but like we were living in some family movie my Dad interrupted. He insisted that he would handle the dishes, and motioned for me to help. I grabbed my grandparents plates and got ready at the kitchen sink with the drying rag. After brief kisses between each other my parents separated and Dad started to rinse and clean the dishes. 

“That was a nice dinner.” I mumbled, making small talk. 

“It was about the same as usual, maybe it’s just your perspective?” Dad thought too much about what other people were thinking. He spent a good portion of his time prying into other people’s business unconsciously, which some took as kindness. Really, he was just a curious person who hated being left out of conversations. Even if he had little to add to them. 

His comment, though, came as wonderfully as had the bush sway of the wind earlier that day. To use a metaphor; the sunlight pierced the tree’s. My perspective had changed. Why should I only appreciate the beauty of my little darling and her many great cousins? Would I not naturally come to desire the closeness of my family as dearly? I had already been more emotionally introspective, wondering straightly about my teacher, about my mother, and even about that funny expression of my grandfather. How many times before that day had I wondered about my youth fleeting away from me? Had I ever really used my brain before that day? Or was I just floating on the human wave? I could not say, it sat just beyond my ability. I worried about things, I wished for things, and I certainly loved things. Yet standing there, drying dishes, I could not remember what I was so worried about, why I had wished for anything, and what that love really meant. Who I truly loved.

Jakob? No, certainly not. As mentioned, not my grandparents. I did love my parents. What else? Oleander. My daughter Oleander whose flesh was grown from the blisters and blood I shed digging her hole and tilling her soil. I dug, I tilled, barehanded. Why? We had gardening gloves, and yet I still did it barehanded. Another point of scorn from Mother, another part of me given over to this darling girl. Another mention of my own inheritance, my sameness to Mother. Did I love Mother? Or was it just that I had to love her? Dad had always been the ray of benevolence, and though he had his flaws, they were minor compared to his perks. As for Mother, I had a hard time weighing how desirable she was as a mother. What I felt for Dad, what I felt for Oleander, the emotions were much more severe, more real, than what I felt towards Mother. 

Dad finished the last dish and started scrubbing the food waste into the drain. As he finished cleaning the sink like that I dried my final plate easily. We traded a victorious look and he went into the fridge for soda. I took one he gave me and we sat back down at the dinner table, which had been vacated by our other family members. 

“If I remember…” Dad began. “Oh, I’m still thinking about your assignment. I remember reading something about that from this author I got really into a few years ago, before your sister was born. ‘Happiness always arrives a day too late,’ I think the main character said. A bit of a sad statement, don’t you think? It does have a romantic flavor to it though, because the protagonist chooses to go to bed each day and wake up the next fully expecting that, eventually, happiness will come to her. She has this hopefulness to her story, despite the relatively poor state of mind she was in. Maybe I should root around for it, the book may come in handy for your project.” 

“No it’s fine, we should be able to handle it with what we talked about earlier. Like you said, no point making it too complicated.” He seemed a bit sad that I turned him down, but I was hardly going to read an entire book for a homework assignment. A misstep in my deceptive habits, I decided I would be nicer to him for a while as an apology. 

“Well, I guess that’s alright. Any chance of me catching a look at it when you're done?” I shrugged, but I knew that, in the wake of what was to come, they would search my belongings for a reason. It was sort of inevitable that they would look over my homework. 

“I’ve got to go and finish up my part then, see you later.” I stood to go to my room, Dad returning the farewell. It was strange, in that fleeting moment that he and I parted he did not bear the same memorialized stare that Mother did earlier. It was almost like he was not looking at me at all. What was he seeing? His eyes were clear and bright, full of life. They were so unlike the death-seeing eyes of mother that it surprised me. I even stopped for a second. 

“You good Dad?” He laughed at the question.

“Oh, I’m doing quite alright. Just looking at how much you’ve grown.” I had already fallen into his eyes. Taken upon the sea of his pride. “It’s a little embarrassing, but you look kind of happy today. Are you sure nothing special happened?”

Never in my life had something he said had such an effect. I knew he was like that, that he said things so decisively. I always knew he was smarter than he let on, or than he knew. Yet I was always, even unconsciously, aware of it. Prepared for it. At that moment I just wanted to break down and cry. I wanted to tell him, if anyone at least him. How could I do what I had planned on doing without letting him know? It felt dirty, lying to him. Misleading him so viciously. Even his addendum to the conversation from before. Had he been asking me to wait for tomorrow? Did he know that I was trying to never see the sunrise again? Then, so knowing, he had tried to convince me in a roundabout way to give it up? Maybe give it up was wrong, maybe he wanted me to not give up? Was I giving up? What? A life so dreadfully dull? Oleander would tell me the correct path to take, if only she could. Yet that leaf waited for me on the desk. Happiness is knowing you are not what you will become, it comes with the present, with affirmation of present happiness. I was happy that day, and not even my coming death would stop it. 

“Nope.” I smiled and went to my room. 

Mother’s door was closed, she was in the living room with my grandparents no doubt. On the other side was a strange chamber I had no more care for than anything else. I felt oddly spiteful towards it, happy I would not cross its view alive again. I used the restroom and finally ended by shutting my bedroom door. 

I felt a great pressure in the room. That giddy, uncertain, feeling from earlier. The same pins and goosebumps from before. It was so close, that final barrier. I looked across the room at the small leaf and wondered if I would need more, then I became sure that I would need more. The poison of Oleandrin is harmful, but hardly potent. I pressed my back against the bedroom door and slid down until my legs gave way. Sitting there against the door, I started crying. 

“Goddammit.” 

I could barely keep my laughter quiet. Restraint was never one of the things I was good at. I could spot the genus of a flower from just a single petal, but keeping my joy under wraps? That was something they specifically taught kids to express. My hands were wet with tears and my lips hurt from smiling, my throat from releasing unintended laugher. It really became too much so I crawled and climbed onto my bed. 

Am I happy? The thought had been moving about my mind for the last several hours, but it was opaque. Was I? What did it mean to be happy then? I decided that I was not happy, I had never been. It was just that, at some point, I began to tell myself I was happy. Were my friends happy? Would they ever be? Already fading into obscurity. What did it mean to be happy in the first place, to be happy in oneself? 

I got up and started pulling off the screen of my window. Two little tabs on the top and bottom of the frame let me fight it open. The sun had gone down and created a void in my window. The empty space was strangely foreboding, but beyond my sight I could sense Oleander waiting for me. My bare feet felt the icy petals and leaves of the crocus beneath my window. The night air bit at my exposed shins and forearms, pleading for me to return to my room. Yet the mirage of her scent flittered over my nose, and the cold night became a far off memory. 

I heard inside as my parents bid farewell to my grandparents, it must have already been around eight. Mother would retire to her room, while Dad would sit in his office for the next few hours. As I made my appearance before the darkness of the back sliding door I realized I would have to enter in order to get water for my tea. It seemed silly to think I would have forgotten about such a simple detail, but it only crossed my mind at that moment. After I got the leaves I would repair that mistake. 

I rounded the edge of the garden, and as the pathway came into view the darkness seemed to have lightened immeasurably. I could see her as clear as that afternoon, as she whistled upon the shore of light before me. I swam towards my verdant valkyrie, resting my head down on the peony sand beneath her yet again. 

I plucked again from a low branch some of her many delightful accessories. They were wet and fresh, full still of that warm life I had lacked. I began to tear up. Was that to be the last time I would see her? In all of her glory and form? If I was to die, as I had planned, then it could not be put off until late Spring. Like all things done in haste, it had to bear the emotion, the resilient clarity of primary thought. I could not let myself sleep that night and awaken into the same droll sensations as every morning before. Would I be able to arrive at my suicidal plans again? How long would it take for me to attain my senses? Years? Would I wake up beside Jakob one morning and look at my wrinkled and dry face and have no course but to cry? 

As my thoughts came into reality yet again the light faded, leaving me in the night cold. Had I always been so fanciful? So poetic in my musing, meandering, thoughts? Maybe not poetic, more like fantastic. A question from earlier came to mind, had I thought before? I supposed not, as I could not recall a coherent and assembled idea as had taken me that whole afternoon. I had interests, so I thought positively of things. Yet, was that out of cohesion or instinct? Social awareness? What I did know could be derived from my position, which made me realize that I had not thought anything of myself before that day. Rather, what I truly wanted in life. I lived for the sake of appeasing the middle road, the understandable. The expected status quo of what must be done. Go to school, go to college, all of that. Get married? Maybe the step was not so necessary, but it would be in line with the life path I had chosen. Unconsciously or otherwise, who knew? 

“Who knows anything?” I muttered, half crying.

The comment bade me look into her darkness. That impenetrable barrier which kept me from her soul. Within her very being, just upon the waters of life in her veins, I saw a reflection. 

I recognized her immediately. The young girl whose smile stared back at me in the haze. She leapt from twig to twig in ballet, frolicking amidst her years of carefree fun. Her dress was covered in stars, and her hair as red as the autumn leaf. So vibrant before age made it brown and dead. She stopped, looked at me, and I could not offer her an answer. She moved her lips, but no words came. I did not need them, they were not for me. They were for whatever came after. A soul apart from me, my remnant shadow. Yet as I loved her, she ran upward into the infinity of Oleander, and vanished. 

I choked up, tears drenching the sides of my face in steady, yet unsure, streams.

How long had I lived without happiness? When did it stop, and the lie begin? Was it like that for everybody, living in a state of contented stupidity? How many questions would I have to ask until at least one was answered? Yet there was nobody nearby to entertain them, and so I shivered, alone. 

All was quiet as I stood. My legs were wet with the still soaked earth, my hair a renewed mess. It would not matter for much longer, if it ever had. I stepped towards the back door, the pins returning. The anxious excitement. It felt good, getting that far with my ramshackle plan. The entire matter was so simple, so easy to conduct. Why had I not thought of it sooner? Why would I have suffered that year of her growth? Only, perhaps, to watch the miracle play out. To watch the shrub grow and become more fanciful, more playfully resounding. I listened briefly for the sound of her little glee, her cheerful merriment. Yet I heard only the whistle of the wind, the low drone of far off traffic, and somewhere farther still, a heartbeat in my own chest. 

“My daughter, how long will you last upon this world that whisks away the delightful and the brave? That says we are so ancient as to be old and gray? I wish for you to be happy, my little Oleander, and that if you dream of another star, of one far in the sky or beneath the skirt of flowers and leaves. Your star, my little Oleander, and I wish for it to breathe life for your dreams and romance for your heart.”

I stepped onto the little wooden deck my Dad had built and opened the door. My life, for what it was, bore no further resemblance to something I could have called my own. For I lived not in my own mind but in the mind of others. I had surely, as I was not myself, been someone entirely separate. How else could I have moved so delicately, so tactfully, throughout the entire charade of my existence to that point? The day before, the week prior, the last sixteen years, what were they but a tremendous waste? I would not discover some cure for a terrible disease, I would not solve world hunger, nor would I do anything to anyone that may, perhaps, lead to a betterment for the world in its future. How could I, a pessimistic and aloof little girl, do something of note? Of worth? Then, as my life would not bear fruit, as it had yet to tell of, would my absence declare some great difference? Would my life, snuffed too soon, not just spell a brief but dark sadness for those near me? A darkness lost to time, years passing and true turmoil forgotten. It would be a regret that I had done such a thing, yet it would fade into fact. Yesterday the mail was late, today my daughter killed herself. I went into the living room thinking that, and it comforted me to think such negative things. 

“Welcome home sweetheart.” 

In the living room, sitting in my grandfather's recliner, was my Dad. He sat with a book in his lap, reading by the ever so dim light of his cell phone. He had a glass of soda on the table next to him. The trickster, so comfortable, looked at me with his concealed expression in the darkness of night. Welcome home sweetheart? Then, I supposed he had caught me in the act of disrespecting their borders, he had me. I was entirely at the will of his menacing glare and as his gaze cut into me in the darkness I wondered if he would call upon Mother. I could never tell if his lectures would welcome her or otherwise. 

“Get yourself cleaned up and come back here, I want to have a little chat with you.” He spoke resolutely, assuredly, yet in some way kindly. I had never heard him speak in scorn to me, but his kind, disappointed, tone was another beast altogether. I obeyed. 

I went briefly to my room to dry myself off and get new clothes. A fresh pair of sweats and a new tee. The towel I used was still damp from my previous use, but I had not considered a shower necessary yet. What use would it be? We are the dead, after all. I giggled to myself for my own little intellectual joke, school had some use to it after all. 

“Hadn’t it?” I mused. I returned to Dad who had turned on the lamp next to him. It was still not bright enough to alert Mother, so I thanked what stars there were that I would be spared that trial at the least. 

“Hi Dad.” Laugh at me, but it was all I could manage given the circumstances. 

“Hi to yourself young lady,” he had been smiling, and his tone had changed to that sarcastic way with which he usually attacked situations wherein he saw himself in the right. It was a scenario I could succeed in. “You were certainly in a state.” 

“I slipped again.”

“I see…and how exactly did you get out to a place  where you could slip?” He smiled. 

“I climbed out my window.” Leaking some truth would do me good, though in fairness I felt stupid saying it. Of course I climbed out my window, that much was clear as day, but he accepted this piece of information and picked his little book up from the table. He opened it, looked inside, and for the next ten or so minutes we sat in total silence. He laughed a bit at what he read, made a serious face, and finally took a deep sigh as he began to nod, agreeing with the book in some way. He set it down and looked at me. 

“You know sweetheart, I can tell you’ve been crying.” I said nothing. “I don’t expect you to tell me why, you’re at that age where you can keep your own little secrets from your parents now. Lord knows, when I first met your mother she was a schemer like nobody else. So I won’t bug you about it, I trust you to make good choices, and to just ask for help if you ever need it.” As he said this I had the inclination to stand, but he waved me back down. 

“Anything else?” The words blurted from my mouth. 

“Yes, actually. I found that book I was talking about earlier, remember? Well the girl in that book, our main character, happens to be very unique for the type of people who were usually protagonists at the time. I mean, it was written in the thirties, so the stereotypes and whatnot had so much sway in fiction back then, it’s really…refreshing to read her story. It’s not like she’s some flawless pinnacle of humanity. No, that wouldn’t be great at all. I hate reading stories where the main character doesn’t find themselves filled with self-doubt, because those people aren’t real. Sure, you get the escapism part of it, but how can I escape into a character that is so unlike me as to be some Greek hero? It’s not just her either, the author was quite famous for writing depressing characters of both genders. At the end of the day he wrote what he knew, and most of his stuff has the same outright negative tone. This book though, this character, she isn’t just somebody who is filled with self-doubt and cries about it endlessly. What do you think so far?” 

He looked at me with a sad sort of expression. I knew my Dad pretty well, at least I would have liked to think so after several years of trying my best to understand him and what makes him tick. Yet in that lamplight he seemed different, like he was reliving a very unpleasant memory, or some bittersweet moment from his past. His sarcasm was gone, his general demeanor, that of the unaffected and verbose, yet lighthearted, Dad, had totally fallen away. He may have been more the man he was before he met Mother in that moment. My absent minded queries, my day of depression and instigation, had reminded him of what he was more than twenty-five years ago. 

“What’s the book about?” Was all I could muster. I never knew how to talk to Dad in any kind of serious way, it just never happened. So how was I supposed to attack, or navigate, this strange rant he had gone into? 

“Well, I already told you it’s about a girl, and by my nonsense you know it’s about a particularly depressed kind of girl. It wasn’t all bad, but she was growing up. She hated the people who grossed her out on the train to school, she disliked her teachers who made strange glances. She took small victories by sewing secret designs on her underclothes. She hated that her mother stopped treating her like a child, but she liked feeling mature. To put it simply; she has a poor attitude. She isn’t arrogant though, at least she makes attempts not to be, but she does want to stand up for herself more. She cooks, cleans, gardens, and is a very studious girl. So tell me sweetheart, is this girl happy?” He drank a bit of his soda while he waited for my response. 

“I…don’t know?” 

“I don’t know either, she finds joy in things, sure, she hopes for happiness. She even tolerates friends she likes but does not really know. Yet she keeps coming back to her dead father. On the way home from school she can’t help but stop and think about her father holding her hand along the walkways and singing songs with her. She remembers a time when her mother had not been so distant. She doesn’t want to be disrespected, she wants to be loved selfishly, but she wants something to be proud of. Finally, before going to bed, she wishes that tomorrow, if possible, she will be happy. Not that her situation will change, or for the past to return. She wishes that she will be able to learn how to be happy in the life she has, because she knows that somewhere just beside her is a version of herself that is happy. 

“This is a flawed interpretation, amateur even, but that’s what I thought about her the first time I read her story. That’s what came back to mind though when you asked me about your assignment. What is happiness?” He asked

“I don’t really know Dad.” 

“Correct. Nobody really does sweetheart. At least that’s what I, a middle aged idiot, thinks. Happiness is often mistaken for its cousin contentment. To be content, to be fine or okay with your situation is not happiness. If you asked me, she would be happy. I’ve lived quite awhile now, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that there is more bad than good in life. Take them both, and never give up on the idea of good coming eventually. She’s tired, because goodness, happiness, is always a day late. That, right there, is what Jefferson would come to call the Pursuit of Happiness. Nothing is guaranteed, but when you’re at your lowest, and the deck looks stacked, just wait another day before you quit. Things change, the bar gets moved, and even if you lose all hope in the light of benevolence, just go to sleep, and wait one more day. Happiness is not a very punctual creature, so we must, despite how sad it makes us in the moment, wait for it. Patience, I think, is the best of virtues in this regard. So if you know happiness will one day arrive, would that idea, that very small hope, not make you happy by its mere existence? What is happiness? Happiness is just a state of mind. You may be happy in a moment of extreme sadness, it may not be for the moment itself, but the future in which you are no longer sad. As long as you are alive, you will find a moment of respite.” He finished his glass and handed me the small book. It was thin, maybe only a hundred or so pages long, and the name on the front was a mystery to me.

“I hope that little diatribe helped sweetheart, now get to bed. It’s late.” I stood with the book in hand and turned away without another word. Somewhere behind me the light shut off and he mumbled something. I went to the kitchen and heated up a cup of water in the microwave, my Dad passed me and walked down the hall. Vanishing into his office, he stood strangely.

When I finally made it back to my room I realized I had gone back on my promise twice. Two times that evening I passed by Mother’s door, two times while still breathing. What were my words then? My empty promises began to line up before my eyes and I wondered if I had not taken some grave misstep. That I should die did not change, however if I was to die, and my life would ebb onwards into the afterworld, it should be the right way. The right reason. 

Taken simply, what is happiness? I supposed happiness was knowing I would remain the me that was young, that I had, at some time in my life, been happy. Therefore I would never be happy again, yet that was just arrogance. How could I say whether or not I would be happy? I used the evidence provided to me, sure, but how certain was I of that fact? Certainty had been the only thing I lacked the whole day. If there would be one damnable curse upon my death it would be that I had done it out of un-certainty. How vulgar was that? How inane and childish it would be. Yes, to not know, to rely merely on some faint wish, that much was cruel and untenable, but how long could I go on saying I would be unable to live like that? After all, if I had not unconsciously bore some odd inclination that such was the case, that I had the capacity to be happy. That happiness was, in fact, knowing I would become the future me that possessed such a thing, then how had I lived at all? 

Answers and questions I asked myself. Fading into the night hours and living on the whim of half-imagined inclinations. I wished for some-thing to come out from the darkness between the cracks of my door, the repaired window. I wanted to believe in something. At least, I thought I did. I wanted to believe in an idea, a goal, outside myself. I desperately wanted to be able to place my whole trust, my whole will, towards the benefit of another. Or, maybe, I just wanted security, coddling, and happiness would come after. I would just fall back into absent minded contentment about the whole matter. In the absence of security, even, I just wanted peace. I fell onto my bed and held my knees in tears. 

Shortly all my sides would be challenged. Exams, college, career searching, settling, getting a home. Everything that came after true happiness, the absence of worry. Why worry? Why waste time, that valuable resource that we lack, on torturous lives? Indebting ourselves to others, to a world so soulless, why? 

Who had I even been asking? Dad? Yet his answer had been the voice of the optimist, just another point of view, not concrete fact. Not destiny. We cannot predict the future, and so retreat to this grandiose idea, this idea of hope in the vain attempt to pry joy from the acrid lives we force upon ourselves. Then, having ripped apart any shot at reality for ourselves, we force our own suffering onto others.

“That person is lesser.” Said the political human. 

“Yet are you not the same as I? Do you not suffer this loneliness as I do?” 

“Arrogance and insipid melodrama. It’s just a phase, you’ll learn one day.” 

“Why not tell me now? Why wait until I am already beyond hope to tell me what the right path was? Where is the sense in that? One person to look up to, one hope to dream for. Should I grasp the mere concept of the concept of happiness? When will the parade of fools catch up to the facts? Or are they running from it? How can a person be happy when more than half their life is spent suffering? Should we be happy that we are eventually spared suffering? Then it is contentment, surely? Even so, would it not simply be better to not suffer? What’s the point of it all?”

“Projection, bias, repugnance. Happiness is…and so forth…” Said the artistic human. 

“Happiness is knowing you are not what you once were? Then was I so terrible? What was that happiness I had as a child? The joy of the ignorant, a pure ignorance which gave way to a putrid arrogance. How? Had the child ever left, or was she simply lying beneath the veneer I grew around myself as I got older? Building up this persona, this floral coffin in which I could bury the me that was once happy.”

“Masochism, and lest we forget her derivative tale. Opaque phrases, dreamlike quotations. Is not her true form that of so many other, clearly established, people?” 

“I have always wished to be good. I only ever wanted to please those around me. To finish my test scores in such a way that nobody would be angry with me. I got a boyfriend because he confessed. What was I to do then? Reject him? How does one break another person's heart? Could I enact such an act of terror? Of suffering? In absence of guilt…yet even with guilt, in innocence, we inflict suffering on them. That is, the other.”

“Place your hope on tomorrow, for it bears more goodness than today, child.” Said the religious human. 

“Yet what shall I be in that tomorrow, will it be better than what I am? Yet it will still, no matter how we face it, be different. That is, tomorrow I will no longer exist. The person thinking my thoughts, breathing my air, planning my plan, will be a memory. Yesterday’s news.” 

“Vile, arrogant. Are we, the three, not worthy of a child's awe? For we give you the past, the present, the future, and still you are unhappy?” 

“How can I find happiness when all around me there is not a soul alive who will dare into the depths? We do not wish for the other to understand us, only for them to accept us. We have secrets, we partake in songs, but are we not also still sad? I have erected a clothing for myself. An image of a being who loves flowers, who walks down the boulevard during early Spring on her boyfriend's arm. A creature so at odds with the reality inside her that one day it simply cannot maintain the cloak? It fights, draws itself beneath the cover, yet with each step I take towards Oleander that terrible, emaciated, figure is illuminated. 

“She is me. Dancing amidst the stars of the mind with a dress of cosmic brilliance. Laying pink dust over the rivers of dreams, laying blue water on the ferns of memories. We, each and every one, must have something the same to our souls. Some form of sameness, some idea of happiness that is simple and quaint. Yet we starve them. Drain from them the essence they wish for, the smiles they wear.”

“Were you happy?” Asked the Politician

“No, I was merely content and ignorant. Which is not true Happiness.” 

“Are you happy?” Asked the Artist. 

“No, I am simply succeeding in fooling those around me into believing that I am.” 

“Will you be happy?” Asked the Priest. 

“No, because I have assembled the armor too well. Forged my shield too deftly.”

“Then, tell us,” asked the Three, “what is happiness?”

Is it the pursuit? The goal? Then, is it something else entirely? 

I picked up my pen and wrote; “It was just Spring.” The words came as the day fell upon the sheet of paper in a desperate plea for answers. 

When I was finished I sat down and looked at the hastily scribbled pages and wondered where such passion, such whim, had come from. That said, with the matter at hand laid out in plainly flamboyant terms, I could consider my options. The Three parts of man were right, yet they were also wrong. My eyes hurt, and my nose was sore. Crying had never suited me, but I had no way of smiling now that I knew I was unhappy. Had the shield fallen? Or when I went out into the world tomorrow would I be the same as I was yesterday? Ignorant, content. 

Then, is happiness knowing you are yourself? Not what you once were, or what you will become, but the truest form, not affirmation. To affirm it is vulgar, and betrays the very sentiment. If so, then how are we to know we are happy? Again, we approach the question of what. 

“I’ve no clue.” I submitted my answer to the paper and listened. 

Who did I expect to grade my work? Who was I even asking? I had been absurd. Oleander, warm in my hands, laid not a whisper of consolement. The question remained, the choice plain. Is it that I wanted to die? Or, simply put, that I lacked the meaning with which to live? Maybe, when everything was said and done, there would be an article about it. The next week, in eight years, who could say? A bouquet would one day be arranged for me, but of gardenia or orchid? Oleander, waiting for my answer, sat blissfully outside. 

“I don’t want to be different.” I wrote. “I want to be better. Somewhere, along the way, I conflated the two. To be better is the pursuit, as such we must become better. We must become happy. Therefore, as such is the case, we must be happy in order to live and pursue happiness. Happiness is tomorrow, but we remain, always, in today.”

“I am the flower girl of my own strange dreams. Casting gifts onto the souls that I pass, hoping for them to bear me with benevolence. Begging for the violence, the suffering, to finally stop. I am praying for someone, something, to allow me to be happy. An idea, a cause. Perhaps people will read about me in the news, another fated of my generation, but will they believe it? Will they bear pity, remorse? Will they wish it had not needed to be so? Then, looking at the image they provide, that of a bright and happy young girl, will they not also wonder why? Perhaps, but I will leave that to them, for their strife, their suffering, is beyond my help.”

I held the cup of tea in my hands, goosebumps all over. Thinking thoughts about the life I had lived until then. I lived in a town overlaid with the scent of flowers. Beds of hydrangea and spirea blanketed the schools. Lily and tulip on the window of each tenement, and in the town square there was magnolia, rose, lilac, and lavender. Dragon’s tongue grew in front of shops and along walkways, bells at the street corners, and even more of the flavors of my youth. By the water the fish smell overpowered them, but even that stench reminded me of growing up there, in that place. Every street had the usual names, Sixth, Main, and Oak. Our obsession, our mutual pleasure, lay in our gardens. 

Yet over that whole array, and in all of the town, there is only one of my darling Oleander. Later this Spring she will blossom bright pink petals, and her leaves will drip so with the dew. With the warm air of the coming summer, the coming freedom for kids our age to fritter our time. I remembered the lines of ants crawling beneath the giant boys who knelt down here and there to admire the organized ranks. I remembered the sunspots swaying as the breeze flushed through the leaves of each and every tree along the boulevard. My Mother’s chrysanthemums portraying her maturity for the whole of the world. A flower of the future, drawing upon experience from the past. A flower of presence. In the future it would wilt, but now, in the present, she will raise her daughter. Then, one day, her daughter will plant her own chrysanthemum, just as she had planted that Oleander. 

Such was her simple, quaint, hope. Such was my Mother’s happiness. And finally I understood her, and finally I saw Dad’s eyes from that afternoon, and I saw Oleander. The little girl in her robe of stars put her arms around me. Her hands were warm, and the weightless feeling it gave made me blush. She whispered into my ear and I realized how foolish I had been, how silly my struggle was. I was aware of the mistake. 

I set the glass on the desk and picked my pencil up. There would need to be further explanation. I would need to be clear, yet concise. The assignment, my homework, demanded my full attention. I looked over the page and found the question again. 

“What is happiness?” My teacher had asked. I did not know, yet I had to arrogate some form of answer. I had to tell him what the girl had told me. What my father alluded to. I ran through all that I had already written, about the leaf, about dinner, about the little book. Finally, I landed on Oleander, the silvery gleam of her soul on the edge of my vision, and I began to write. 

“Happiness is…misunderstood.” 

I knew there could be an answer. That some small bud lay within my heart. I need only water it, tend it, and hope that it will blossom. That I will know. What then? I suppose that choice will have to wait, life is long, there is still some time left. Thinking about the solemn, yet serene, idea of tomorrow had become less troublesome. I had considered that, yes, I would break up with Jakob. I would stand up to my overbearing teacher, I would learn to love my mother more than I had. I would apologize to my father. I would do all of these things once I had the answer, the bloom. 

The tea sat nearby, superfluous.

Oleander’s scent carried me into the skies above, dark and foreboding, but her light hands and delicate arms carried me freely. She leapt between the constellations, making merry games of the delicate loneliness that had overtaken me that whole day. We played tag amidst the radiant cosmos and drifted upon the pollen of comets. We flew over the street, over my house, and what I had feared seemed quaint, decadent, compared.  We flew like that in the sky, while at my desk I slowly drifted away into a tranquil slumber. Resting my head with a smile upon the blank page.