How many petals do roses have? The wild sort is supposed to have five, and I read that the cultivated kind has double of that. I shouldn’t be thinking about it. Not here, with Lina before my eyes, but amidst all those roses, what else would be on my mind if not the last time I saw her? That was ages ago. Five years or maybe more and I’ve always known that it would be that day I’d remember her for.
“56 petals. I was hoping it wouldn’t be even.”
Why did I start smiling when she said it? Maybe I assumed she wasn’t serious. She would always make you feel like she was, but truly she has never been about anyone or anything.
What flower was it again? 56 petals – maybe a daisy, but I don’t know anything about flowers. I never bought her any and even the cactus I owned died a gruesome death. How inappropriate to even call it that.
What if it had been 55? 53 petals, 41 or 29? I bet she knew what number it would be, and if she hadn’t had a clue she would hopefully not have asked the same question.
Should I kill myself? Should I not? Who would let the petals of a daisy decide about that? Damn you, Lina! You couldn’t have been more inappropriate! And now you’re there in front of me, looking no bit older than that day, and I am still wondering if maybe you were serious then.
Your parents are gathered around you. They used to keep urging me to marry you, which – thankfully – I never did, and one reason for it is standing there with them: your brother, who hated me, because I’d never been good for you, he said.
How many of them were my fault? How many of the 56 petals you tore out? Going by your brother’s eyes, his opinion hasn’t changed. He still blames me: for the torn out petals and the morbid questions that you wouldn’t ask in quiet rooms, but at four o’clock in the afternoon on a sunny summer day, about which you’d constantly complain with this laughter on your lips as if you didn’t mean it, although I’ve always known you must have meant some bit of it.
Why did you leave me, again? Your mother used to say I was the most normal thing in your life. She was right, you knew it. You craved the extraordinary, though, and just look at you now: finally, you have it! Did you imagine it this way?
Your father hasn’t changed. If his expectations hadn’t been, would you have settled for normal things? For what I used to picture: a child and a house behind a picket fence, somewhere on the outskirts, where we would never have had to worry about the rent, and every morning we could have had pancakes. It could have ended like this, Lina, but for you it wasn’t enough. If you knocked on my door today, would I still open up?
My wife’s hand on my shoulder. She looks at me as if she can hear my thoughts. Go away, Lina! I wouldn’t go with you a second time, not even if you looked at me with sea-glow in your glitter-eyes. I still wonder, though. I wonder if it could have ended differently. If you could have been different from who you became, and most of all, I wonder if you were serious back then: about your question to a daisy and your disappointment with its answer.
© Sima B. Moussavian 2022-07-15