The Children of Zantedeschia

         The Children of Zantedeschia




         It was early on a clear Saturday morning when Steve stepped out the door of his house and began a short walk to the market to get fresh cut flowers for his wife, Kerie.He sauntered along and felt rather pleased with himself because he knew what joy a surprise bouquet of flowers was for her.
         The short, chopping blare of a car horn snapped his head to the left.  A light blue station wagon abruptly pulled to the curb and stopped just ahead of him.  He cautiously approached the car and bent down to see into the open passenger window.
         “Hey, Steve, how’s it goin’?” asked Roni from the driver’s seat.  Roni was a co-worker and friend.  A product of the sixties, she was still very much a hippie.
         “You scared the fire out of me with the horn,” Steve confessed with a wide grin.
         Roni ran her fingers through her long, graying blonde hair.  She looked at Steve with a mischievous grin.  “Sorry ‘bout that.  Where ya goin’?”
         “I’m headed up to the market to get Kerie some flowers.”
         Roni slowly waved her hand at Steve once.  She closed her eyes for a moment before her tongue peeked out between her lips.  Her frosty blue eyes then locked with his.  “No kidding?  So am I.”
         “Really, I didn’t think of you as the type to patronize markets and chains and things.”
         “Well, I’m not going to the market, I can’t go there.  They need to bring in more organic and fair trade products.  But I’m going to get some flowers.”
         “Oh yeah, where at?” Steve asked, not knowing of any place near by, other than the market, which sold flowers.
         “I know this place that has the most beautiful flowers this time of year.  Every year I go there to get them.”
         “What kind are they?”
         “I don’t know, really.  They look kind of like Calla Lilies, but they’re about six feet tall with purple blooms.  They’ve also got all sorts of Dahlias for cutting.”
         “Is it expensive?”
         “Not at all.  You wanna come along?  It’s not far from here.”
         Steve stood erect and thought for a moment.  He leaned back into the window.  “The thing is I wasn’t planning to be out very long.  I just wanted to get some flowers real quick and get home.”
         “No problem, I’m not planning to stay long.  We’ll park, walk over and get our flowers and split,” she smiled encouragement and patted the passenger seat.
         Steve smiled.  “Cool,” he stated with a single deliberate nod.  He pulled the door handle, but the door remained shut tight.
         “Oh, yeah, that door doesn’t work,” Roni remembered.  “Sorry ‘bout that.  Just climb through the window.”
         Steve practiced swinging his leg to the window level two times.  On the third swing he wrapped his leg inside, followed by his other leg and body.  He buckled his safety belt as Roni pulled away from the curb.
         They sat silently for a couple of minutes as Roni drove further from Steve’s neighborhood into a more suburban community.  Before long, she was driving along streets Steve was unfamiliar with. 
         “So, where is this place?” Steve asked as he shifted in his seat while a trickle of anxiety dribbled through his chest.
         “It’s not too far,” Roni replied as she pulled the station wagon to the curb in front of a large wooded lot.  “Just a block around that corner,” she said and pointed as she twisted around to face the back seat. 
         She pulled out a handful of plastic bags.  “We have to bring our own,” she said and handed a couple to Steve.  Then she reached back under the seat and produced two pruning shears.  She handed one to Steve.  “We get to cut them ourselves here.”
         Steve stuffed the bags into his pocket and climbed out the car window with the pruning shears in hand.  Roni waited for him at the back of the station wagon.  Side by side they strode in silence past the wooded lot to the next intersection.  Roni motioned for Steve to turn to the left.
         “So, where exactly is this place?” Steve asked again, now dreading he had gotten himself into some half-assed quest that would take far longer than he had planned. 
         “Its right there,” Roni pointed straight ahead to a driveway separating two thick patches of tall stalks topped with purple calla lily-like flowers.  Carol quickened her pace while Steve slowed to a near stop.  Roni crossed the drive and stood next to a mailbox as she looked up and inspected the stalks and flowers that towered over her.
         Steve saw the rest of the drive was lined with various dahlias and lilies.  The flowers were huge, the largest he had ever seen.  Steve also noted the white two-story house at the end of the drive.  It looked like a typical suburban residence. 
         “Are you sure this is the place?” he asked timidly.
         “Yeah, I come here every year.”  Roni pulled her pruning sheers from her hip pocket.  “Don’t worry,” she said to Steve.  “It’s alright.  No one has ever said anything.”
         Steve’s eyebrows narrowed and his face wrinkled with uncertainty as he shifted and looked around to see if anyone was watching.  Roni quickly cut toward the tops of the long stalks, careful to leave enough stalk for the flowers to drink from her vases at home.  She caught each purple lily as it dropped and she gingerly placed them in the plastic bag.
         “Why don’t you get some dahlias,” she suggested.  “We’ll divvy this stuff up when we get back to the car.”
         Steve stared silently at her back as she continued to cut away at the flowers.  After several long moments, Steve stealthily crept up the driveway and he began to carefully cut dahlias.  His nose wrinkled and he turned his head away as he tentatively clipped the stem of a large white and maroon colored flower.  He stood and looked around again.  No one was insight except for Roni who kept cutting at the purple capped forest of flowers.  Steve turned back to the long, thick patch of dahlias.  There were so many different colors, so many different varieties.  Steve moved about, careful not to cut too many flowers from one spot.
         His chest lightened and he breathed more easily as he continued to cut his way up the drive.  Once he cut the last flower to fill his second bag, he started back toward Roni.  She was waiting casually for him at the end of the drive, inspecting her bags of purple lilies.  As Steve approached, she turned and the two began back towards the station wagon. 
         “Lemme see,” Roni insisted and grabbed one of Steve’s bags.  She gasped aloud.  “They’re beautiful!”
         “So are the purple lilies,” Steve said.
         Roni slowed to a stop and faced Steve.  “Here,” she handed him a bag of purple flowers.  “We’ll each take a bag from one another, how’s that?”
         “Sounds fine to me,” Steve replied.
         Roni smiled wide with full teeth and her straw hair fluffing in the breeze.  Her head turned toward the sound of a car driving up behind them.  Steve turned to see a white sedan pull into the driveway and stop.  A sudden rush of adrenaline burst through Steve’s gut.  His pupils dilated.  His heart thumped once in his throat.  The wide smile on Roni’s face receded and she swallowed audibly.
         “Let’s go,” she said in a rather curt manner and began walking back toward the car at a quickened pace. 
         “They weren’t supposed to be there, were they?” Steve shouted as he bounded along side Roni.
         “Let’s split up at this intersection,” Roni pointed ahead.  “We’ll circle around to make certain they’re not following us and we’ll meet back at the car.”
         Panic began to squirm through Steve’s chest.  His initial instinct was to run home, however, he had no idea where he was or in which direction to go.  “Okay,” he reluctantly agreed.  “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
         Steve jogged across the street to his left, bags full of flowers swinging from his hands.  Roni continued straight through the intersection.  Steve saw the white sedan slowly backing out of the drive as he crossed.  Panic, guilt and anger surged through him.  He regretted ever having listened to Roni and wished he would have gone to the market as planned.  Now he was in a getaway.  He looked back over his shoulder to see the white sedan cruise through the intersection like a prowling shark, following in Roni’s direction.
         Steve’s heart pounded in his ears.  He tried to control his short, gasping breaths as he crossed the street to his right and began in a direction he thought would lead him toward home.  Steve looked at the flowers bouncing about with each hustling stride.  His brow wrinkled as he staved off the impulse to drop them and continue home empty handed.  He could not let go of them, not yet.  He had to press on with his stolen treasure at least a bit longer.
         Ahead he saw the white sedan cruise deliberately through an intersection perpendicular to him.  Steve saw that the driver never looked his way.  With an instinctive jolt, he bolted to the intersection.  There he paused and looked down the street, but there was no white sedan.  There was no traffic at all.  He stood for a moment, under the bright morning and chirping birds.  He then turned to his right, which was the direction from which he came.
         Steve stormed to the end of the block and turned left at the next intersection and right on the following.  At this point it made no difference to him that he was lost, he just could not get caught.
         He continued along and felt as though he were getting closer to home as apartments were now intermingling with single family homes.  Then he saw the stealthy white sedan turn at the end of the block ahead of him.  There was no mistaking what was in his bags.  Steve hesitated for a moment before scrambling to the foyer of a small apartment building.
         He chased his panting breath as his heart continued to hammer dull gushes through his ears.  His stomach knotted as he looked through the glass door to see the white sedan slow to a stop along the curb on the opposite side of the street.  He pulled on the door blocking the entrance of the building, but it was secured.  Steve thought quickly, but he could not see anyway out unless he simply ran for it.
         A tall thin man with a bald top and gray on the sides got out of the driver’s seat.  With a blank expression he waited by the fender as a short, plump woman with brown and silver curls walked around the front of the car to meet him.  Side-by-side they crossed toward the apartment building.
         Steve’s parched tongue tugged across his lips as he waited, unable to move, with a bag of pirated flowers in each hand.  There was no excuse for what he had done, and he knew it.  He could feel the flutter in his chest as a warm, dry heat poured over his ears and face.
         The glass door swung open and Steve stood face-to-face with the older couple.
         “I believe you have something of ours,” the man said in a deliberate and calm voice.
         “I…I...,” Steve stuttered on his dry tongue as his voice cracked and he cleared his throat.  “I’m really sorry.  I was on my way to the market to get flowers for my wife.  I met a friend along the way who said no one would mind if we took these.  She said she’s been doing it for years and nobody cares.”
         The old man’s eyes narrowed and his brow wrinkled.  A bitter, sour expression commanded his face.  He stared at Steve for long seconds.  Then he turned to the short, plump woman who looked up at him and then she glared at Steve.
         “She may have been taking our flowers for the past five years, but don’t think we didn’t mind,” the plump woman retorted with wounded, angry eyes.
         The old man placed his hand on the plump woman’s shoulder and together they turned and walked out of the foyer, leaving Steve standing there, nearly breathless, holding the bags of flowers straight out.  His arms slowly lowered as he watched them cross the street, get in the white sedan, and drive off.
         Steve stood at the glass door shuddering.  His arms were limp and stretched down as if the weight of the bagged flowers were too much for him to bear.  His breathes took shallow chops at the air.  A jolt charged through Steve’s body as he heard the door open behind him.  Steve turned around to see a young Asian man enter the foyer from the building.  He stopped when he saw Steve.
         “Are you alright, man?” the Asian man asked.
         Steve took a deep breath and nodded.  “Yeah, I think so.”
         “Are you sure?” the young man asked, having assessed Steve’s pallor.  “No offense, but you look really bad, like you’re sick or something.”
         Steve chuckled as he imagined how ghastly pale he was.  “No, I’m fine, really.  I’m just a little freaked out and a little lost.”
         “Do you need to call someone or something?” the Asian man offered.
         “I suppose I should call my wife so she doesn’t worry,” Steve concurred.
         The young man pulled his keys from his front pocket and opened the door to the building.  “I’m in unit seven,” he said as he held the door open for Steve.
         Steve smiled weakly at him.  “Thank you,” he offered with a dry, husky voice.  “I could really use a kind break like this.”
         “No problem, man,”
         Steve entered the dim artificial light of the hallway.  He stood by and waited for the young man to lead the way.
         “Where am I at?” Steve asked as he followed.
         “Eleven Tetnanger,” the young man replied simply.
         They remained silent until they arrived at the door to apartment seven.  The young man unlocked the door and opened it for Steve.  The untidy apartment reeked of stale beer and cigarette smoke.
         “My roommate’s name is Chuck.  I’m not sure if he’s here.  Hey Chuck!” the young man yelled.  He waited for a moment with his ear cocked, listening for a response.  After a long moment of silence he yelled again, “There’s a dude here who needs to use the phone.”  He then motioned for Steve to step over to the phone. 
         Steve crossed through a living room where empty beer bottles were piled on end tables and coffee tables.  He found the phone resting at the center of a forest of beer bottles on the table next to the couch.  He set his bags of flowers on the couch, picked up the receiver and dialed.
         The phone line was busy.  Steve hung up and dialed his wife’s cell phone.  The phone rang four times before kicking into voicemail.
         “Hey baby,” Steve began softly with the warm flooding of embarrassment washing over his ears and neck.  “I’m at eleven Tetnanger Street.  It’s a long story, but I need for you to come pick me up.  I don’t have my cell with me.  I’m calling from some guy’s apartment.  Like I said, it’s a long story.  I wasn’t planning to be out this long.  Anyway, see you soon.  Love you.  Bye.”
         Steve hung up the phone and turned to the young man.  Steve was embarrassed and felt like a burden.  “Thank you,” he said politely.
         “Is that all you need?” the young man asked.
         “Yeah,” Steve sighed.  “That should do it.  It was all my fault anyway.  Besides, she’ll get my message and come get me.  She knows the city a lot better than I do.”
         “Well, I don’t mean to be rude,” the young man said and hoisted his backpack over his shoulder, “but, I have to get to work.”
         “Not at all,” Steve replied with a smile and followed the young man out of the apartment, back down the gloomy hallway to the entrance choked with blinding sunlight.
         “Thanks again,” Steve offered. 
         The young man waved and walked to the end of the block where he turned out of sight.
         The minutes slowly strolled by as Steve sat on the edge of a concrete flower box along the sidewalk.  Every time a car passed through one of the intersections at the ends of the street he would lean forward and prepare to get up until he realized the was not his wife’s.  Finally, however, he saw a familiar car swing around the corner and slowly approach.
         Through the windshield he could see his wife’s tense face behind her sunglasses.  He swallowed aloud and tried to quickly think of some pliable excuse as to how he got lost. 
          He opened the car door and sat in the passenger seat.  “Hey baby,” he greeted cheerily and leaned over to kiss her.  She did not reciprocate. 
         “So, do you want to talk about this now or later?” she offered matter-of-factly.
         Adrenaline shot through Steve’s gut and he stared out the windshield.  “What do you mean?” he struggled out.
         “I know about the flowers,” she replied with stern features.
         Upon hearing those words, Steve’s stomach jerked up to his chin and he felt as if he were falling.  “The flowers!” he gasped.
         “Where are they?” she asked with a strict tone. 
Steve could feel his chest collapse as a brief jolt of panic followed by a deep sense of failure tumbled down on him.  “They’re in the apartment,” he said and looked at the door of the building.  “I set them down when I called you.”  Steve closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat.  “How did you know about this?”
         “The man you stole the flowers from,” she paused and waited for Steve to look at her.  He opened his pleading eyes and faced her wrinkled brow above the slate of dark glasses.  “He’s my supervisor at work.”
         Steve closed his eyes again as heavy waves of shame washed over him.
         “You don’t remember meeting him, do you?” his wife pushed further. 
         Steve shook his head.  “No,” he whispered.
         “I’m not surprised,” she retorted.  “You got drunk and embarrassed me at that party too.”
         Steve sat silently and stared out the window wishing he had never gotten out of bed.  “I just wanted to surprise you with flowers,” Steve mumbled.
         His wife did not respond as she pulled the car on to the street.  She turned right at the intersection, then took the nest left.  Ahead of them Steve could see the white sedan pulled off to the side of the road in front of a large wooded lot.  He slouched in his seat, hoping not to be seen.  As they passed the white sedan, they saw the old man and lady confronting Roni.  Roni was weeping and pleading.  The flowers were still bagged and sitting atop her station wagon.
         “I’m so sorry, hon,” Steve spoke softly.  “I was only trying to surprise you with flowers.”