Growing

It was well after 8AM, but Lola could hardly tell. All that crossed through the blinds was a weak, grayish light. In her old apartment, light poured in through her tall windows as soon as the sun rose. Not here, in a ground-floor apartment where all the windows faced a neighboring building.

She shook Randall, snoring at her side.

"Hey, we're going to be late."

"For what?" he murmured blearily.

"The plant sale, remember?" He moaned and pulled the blanket over his head. "All right, I'll take first shower."

Lola waited for the water pressure to fill her fancy filter. She'd installed it when she noticed her hair was getting crunchy. Google told her the tap water probably had too much chlorine, but it wasn't a problem $150 couldn't fix. Google seemed less certain that her Britta filter was up to the challenge of making the water drinkable. She tried not to think too hard about it.

It certainly hadn't made the water safe enough for plants. Within six months of moving in with Randall, all of them withered and died. The finicky calathea finally succumbing to its long war against spider mites hadn't been a surprise, but to lose her long-limbed pothos, her little pilea pot, and even the hardy snake plant had been a major bummer. Watching a sickly yellow crawl up their stems had cracked her heart, and tipping them, soil and all, into the bin had broken it completely. Randall didn't get it.

"Just buy new ones," he said. "Plants never last long anyways."

But they had, before the new apartment. When she finally connected the dots between the sourish, bleachy smell of their water and the demise of her beloved leafy friends, she felt such shame. Why hadn't she taken greater care? Why had she just watched them die, and not gone to Google earlier?

In mourning, she bought a cactus at the grocery store. Hard to kill. It was a pathetic thing, just a tiny, round ball of spikes that sat on the windowsill by her bed. Well, it started off round. Now it was starting to stretch a bit, growing a thinner knobbly bit on top like it had been clonked on the noggin. But that's what you got when you spent five bucks on a subpar product, she thought. The plants that Lola would buy at the sale would be better.

Randall refused to get out of bed, so Lola went to the nursery on her own. She pretended to pout about it, but was secretly glad: it meant she could stop in at Starbucks and buy a latte without having to hear him moan about the prices or over-roasted beans.

Latte in hand, she walked through the nursery's narrow aisles. She inhaled the good, green scent of growth and fertile soil. She felt her sides stroked by fronds and leaves as she passed by leggy plants, occasionally stroking one back. She wanted to look first, before she decided who to take home with her.

She followed a narrow hallway filled with shade plants into a sunlit greenhouse. The air felt dryer there. Sunbaked. The Cactus Room, a sign tacked to the wall stated. In the corner, a cluster of proud, fat bulbs drew her eye. Each was at least six inches across, green and happy, with long stripes of spikes that drew up their sides to gather in a fuzzy nest on top. She smiled.

"I think I've got one of you at home," she whispered to the cacti. "But who are you?" She looked at the plaque below. Golden Barrel Cactus, it read. Requires full sun.

She thought guiltily of the gray light in her bedroom, the blinds she never drew open. She thought of the thin growth topping her little friend at home, seeing now that it wasn't a bad cactus. It was just desperate for light. She thought of her hair growing drier, her secretive joy at buying a latte for herself, the fact that she was here on her own when Randall said he'd come, too.

Lola left the nursery empty-handed. She had some housekeeping to do before she was ready for new friends.

______________

I hope you enjoyed this small slice of life. I wrote it for Mackenzie Davis' Ekphrastic Challenge. Check out the comments on her story for more delightful pieces of short fiction! Thank you to Rebekah Conard for submitting the beautiful photo that inspired my story. And make sure to subscribe to Poppy to see what she comes up with for the photo I submitted.