The Flowers of Langdale Lane

In a large yard at the end of Langdale Lane rested an old brick house. A woman wearing a lilac dress and no shoes was hammering a for-sale sign on a wooden post into the ground. Each thump of the hammer pushed it further and further into the ground, and after a while, when it seemed sturdy enough to withstand whatever might come its way, she stopped. She stood in front of it, facing the house with her hands on her hips. She nodded in satisfaction, and went back inside, bracing herself for the inevitable inquiries that she would be soon have to face.

This large, aging house was the gem of the neighborhood, and it knew it. It was decorated with garlands of ivy which had crawled up its bricks ever so slowly over the years, so decorated that it barely knew it was made of brick anymore. Cherry trees, which were about to bloom like pink popcorn, were dotted around the edges of its expansive yard. Flower beds surrounded the walls like a colorful necklace. It’s grand wooden doors that had once been full of pride had been humbled ever so slightly by the years.

The house had belonged to one family for many generations. It was almost a member of the family itself. As generations of children grew, the house matured beside them. It went through every phase from gaudy wallpaper, candles, and water collected from a well, to light switches, garbage disposals, and surround sound speakers. It had seen the best moments, and the worst. Babies had been born there, and grandparents had died there. Children with bare feet had pressed paths running through the grass in the summer, and had broken their own limbs and tree limbs climbing in the maple trees in the backyard. It had once been burned in a small kitchen fire, which thankfully hadn’t broken its sturdy bones.

But perhaps its most monumental day was that day in early March when the for-sale sign first blemished its yard. It was almost spring, but not quite. The trees were on the cusp of blooming. That day, neighbors talked in low whispers, as if the house swallowed by ivy could hear them. Most of them left it alone, they’d hear more soon enough. News traveled quickly through the neighborhood. But Mrs. McGillicuddy and her nose that was just slightly too large for her face had to know more. Disguising her motive as a brief stop on her daily walk, she stepped onto the path in the yard of the house at the end of the street, and walked to the front door with purpose. After three quick knocks and a few moments, footsteps from within got louder, and the house opened its doors.

“Mrs. McGillicuddy, what a pleasant surprise! How are you doing?” said the woman who had hammered the sign into the yard earlier that day. Mrs. McGillicuddy noticed that her rosy apron embroidered with flowers was sprinkled with flour.

“Oh, am I interrupting you? Are you baking?” asked Mrs. McGillicuddy.

“Oh, not at all,” the young woman said with a smile as she looked down and began dusting off her apron, “would you like to come in?” Mrs. McGillicuddy pretended to contemplate for a moment before deciding that yes, she would like to. She stepped over the threshold into the house that she had always envied and looked around the foyer. She had been to this house many times, but she hadn’t seen it since the latest renovation. She complimented the color of the walls; she liked how light it felt inside.

“Can I get you something to sip on? Tea? Water?” the woman asked. Mrs. McGillicuddy said she was okay, but the woman got her a glass of water anyway. The pair walked into the room that had once been known as the parlor. Now, it was just the front room. The women sat down in two matching plush chairs covered in some sort of soft blue fabric that matched the floral rug. They engaged in some small talk about the weather and family before Mrs. McGillicuddy decided to rip off the band aid and find out what she wanted to know.

“So I was talking to Linda Johnson earlier, you know Linda right? The one who lives in the house on the corner of Nottingham and Manor?” The woman nodded. “Well, I was talking to her, and she asked if I’d seen the Fitzgeralds’ for-sale sign yet, and then she said ‘you have got to go talk to Elizabeth and see what is going on!’ So of course, I came right over,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. Elizabeth chuckled quietly and looked down with a smile that disguised a hint of annoyance. She liked to share news, but not when it was grabbed from her with greedy hands.

“Well, Thomas and I have decided it’s time for a change. Besides, the two of us don’t need a house with 7 bedrooms,” said Elizabeth.

“But what about when you start a family? This has got to be the perfect house for a family,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, looking around with a slight air of envy. She didn’t notice when Elizabeth turned away with sad eyes and looked out the window into her vast, empty yard.

“I… I don’t know if that’s in the cards for us,” Elizabeth said. Mrs. McGillicuddy missed when her focus shifted to a place on the flowery rug.

“Well, I’ll be… none of you young folks want children these days!” Mrs. McGillicuddy said, still not looking at Elizabeth. Having had four children herself, she couldn’t understand why someone wouldn’t want children. Hers were all grown now, and hopefully about to pop out grandbabies any day now, the sooner the better, she thought. “Of course, life has been a bit more relaxing since my babies left the nest, that’s for sure.” Elizabeth heard her words without truly listening. Listening would have hurt too much. Mrs. McGillicuddy was rambling on about her hoard of children, but Elizabeth wasn’t there. She was back with her mother in that very room, before it had been updated, the six-year-old version of herself playing with Barbies as she lay on the rug, her feet folded in the air.

“When can I be a big sister?” she had asked, looking up at her mother, who was reading in a chair, her legs crossed and hair tied neatly in a bun. She had looked up from her book and moved her focus to Elizabeth’s feet dancing above the floor.

“Well, sugarplum, I think your father and I decided that we love you so much that we only need you,” her mother had said. What Elizabeth hadn’t been aware of at the time was that her parents’ once healthy relationship was strained by financial troubles for most of her childhood. By the time they had started nurturing the trampled garden that was left, Elizabeth was practically an adult. She sometimes wondered how her life might have been different if she’d had sibling.

“Elizabeth I love this material,” Mrs. McGillicuddy said, feeling the blue chair, “what is it?” Hearing her name mentioned brought her back to the room transformed by renovation.

“Oh… microfiber,” Elizabeth said, barely present. Mrs. McGillicuddy continued talking to the room, complimenting the decor and sharing random tidbits about the neighborhood.

“Are you sure you will leave?” she asked.

“We’re pretty sure,” Elizabeth answered with a polite smile.

“Well, Langdale Lane will surely miss you. I can’t bear the thought of a rude family moving in, or someone who doesn’t know how to keep a yard,” Mrs. McGillicuddy said, shaking her head. Elizabeth imagined her shaking her head that same way at their yard if it weren’t so beautiful anymore. She didn’t love the thought of the yard changing for the worse, but knowing that Mrs. McGillicuddy would continue to grace the neighborhood with her gossip was strangely comforting.

“I’ll tell you what: Thomas and I will make sure to run a background check on gardening abilities before we sell,” Elizabeth said. Mrs. McGillicuddy chuckled.

As soon as the doors had closed, Elizabeth leaned back on them and slid down to the floor. Tears were reaching the brims of her cornflower blue eyes. She ran her fingers over the embroidered flowers on her apron. She loved flowers. She always had. But recently, they had been reminding her of everything she wasn’t. She pulled the floured apron off in defeat and tossed it aside. She watched the billowy folds slowly sink closer and closer to the floor, sort of like those big, rainbow, parachutes they used to play with in elementary school. She had loved watching the colors above her head, and feeling the strange breeze the movement created. There had been nothing quite like running under the parachute when it was your turn. Elizabeth had loved being a child. A sharp pain in her stomach, maybe hunger, maybe something else, reminded her that she needed to finish dinner. The kitchen was calling her with the scents of garlic and hints of rosemary.

Thomas turned on his blinker before swinging onto Langdale Lane in his red pickup truck. The day was giving one of the warm glimpses of spring that early March brings, so he had his windows rolled down. Deana Carter’s voice sang “Strawberry Wine” through the speakers and out the windows. He drove down the road and pulled into the driveway. He swung the truck door shut behind him and walked to the door with a little spring in his step, briefcase in hand. He was humming the tune of “Strawberry Wine” as he walked in. He loved it, mostly because he had been seventeen when he asked Elizabeth to be his girlfriend that day at the fair. Their love wasn’t perfect, but he did like to think that a lot of it was at least picture perfect, like their first kiss looking over the town from the top of the Ferris wheel on that same day. When he reached the kitchen, he found Elizabeth standing at the stove working on a delicious smelling dinner and tossed his briefcase aside so he could embrace her in a big hug from behind.

“Something smells good,” he said, as he was still humming the tune “Strawberry Wine” and grabbed her hand to twirl her into a dance.

“Thomas!” Elizabeth said with a girlish giggle as she gave in to his antics. Even after eight years of marriage, they grew more and more in love each day. Some people are described as being “madly” in love. But Thomas and Elizabeth weren’t “madly” in love. They were in a more constant sort of love. A rational, true love. They’d been through so much together.

“I’m loving that new feature in our yard,” Thomas said, “really goes well with the dead grass color.” Elizabeth looked into his green eyes, which were sparkling with mischief. She loved his eyes. On one of their earlier dates, when they were still in high school, they’d been sitting in her back yard at a table on the patio. After noticing the way the sun caught her eyes like stained glass, he had compared her eyes to blueberries, so she compared his green marbles to peas. They’d never forgotten that conversation. Sixteen years later, they were now in their thirties, and she was his blueberry, and he was her sweet pea.

“I’m glad you like it, it might be there for a while,” Elizabeth said, as they danced slowly in a silent rhythm. “Guess who came by earlier?”

“Do I want to know?” asked Thomas.

“It was Sue McGillicuddy,” Elizabeth replied. “I’m thinking your comment about her nose might’ve been fair.” Over the years, Thomas had made remarks about how her nose matched her nosiness. He chuckled.

“What did she have to say? I suppose she wanted to know exactly why we’re selling the house and exactly what we plan to do when we do,” Thomas said.

“That about sums it up.”

Elizabeth reluctantly pulled away from their slow dance and got to the oven just in time to pull out a loaf of bread she had been working on when Mrs. McGillicuddy had come calling. She could tell by the color that it was baked perfectly. Baking wasn’t a regular thing for her, but when she did it, she did it well. She had learned from her mother, in that same kitchen, but back when the floors had been covered in linoleum and the counter tops were a matching shade of blue. And staying at the house most all day left her lots of time for practice. She hadn’t always stayed at home, up until a few years before she had taught at the local elementary school. Being around children had once given her so much joy. She loved watching their eyes light up when they figured out new things, and she loved the funny things they would say without meaning it. One of her students had once referred to the capital of the US as “Washington CD.” That one had made her laugh. But now, she couldn’t even think about her students without becoming sad.

Then she received another blast of the same sharp pain in her abdomen. It forced her to bend, just slightly, like a wilted flower. She put a hand on the counter to balance herself and grasped her stomach with the other. Thomas noticed her reaction.

“You okay, blueberry?” Thomas asked. Elizabeth nodded and dismissed his worries. She didn’t want him to know that she was worried herself. The truth was, she had been worried for quite a while.

About two weeks later, Elizabeth gave in to her body’s alarm she had been trying to snooze over and over, and went to the doctor. She gave Thomas just enough information. She had always been able to be open with him, but her fear about what could be kept her from sharing more than was needed. And she hated the doctor’s office. Being in sterile, white, places with experts in scrubs busying around always reminded her of her inability to do the one thing that she thought made her a woman. After almost nine years of trying, she had accepted that she would never be a mother. She had never minded the idea of adoption when biological children still seemed like an option, but now she feared that she would always resent a child who hadn’t come from inside her. A child who would remind her of her lack of womanhood. She hated that she thought that. But she did.

Langdale could never truly feel like a home for only her and Thomas, so she wanted to make a home with him somewhere where extra bedrooms didn’t yearn to be slept in more than once a year when guests came. Somewhere where the vast yard wasn’t calling out to be trampled by small feet. Somewhere where blank walls didn’t desire to be filled with pictures of babies growing into children. While still waiting in one of the chairs that she could never get fully comfortable in, she convinced herself she was glad to leave Langdale Lane, even if it meant signing over their house to be paved into a road.

*

That same day, while he was at work, Thomas got a call from a developer. They were offering more than the list price for the house. On his lunch break, he called Elizabeth.

“More than our list price?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yes, but-”

“But what? We could go anywhere with money like that,” Elizabeth said.

“But they want to knock down the house,” said Thomas. Elizabeth had lived there since she was a child. She had been her parents' only child, so after they had passed away, it was hers. She knew that leaving what had almost always been her home would be difficult, but she knew she needed to leave if she could ever feel as though she was not broken. However, the thought of someone just tearing down the place she had grown up was almost unthinkable. The house held so many memories.

“How much time do we have to decide?” Elizabeth asked.

“Three days.”

Over the next three days, Elizabeth and Thomas spent a lot of time at the house, reminiscing on their time there together.

“Do you remember the time I climbed up to your window on that rusty old ladder your dad used to trim the trees?” Thomas asked, as they sat on the bed in the room that had been Elizabeth’s bedroom as a child. The room was still painted the shade of lilac she had chosen as a girl, but Elizabeth had repurposed it as a guest room after packing away the childish furniture and decorations.

“Oh how could I forget that? You waited until well after midnight and about scared the living daylights out of me,” Elizabeth said, shaking her head with a chuckle.

“Yeah, and then you scared the living daylights out of me when you said your dad might shoot me if he found us!” Thomas said. They laughed like they had never aged, like nothing had changed since that moment.

*

They were still waiting to hear about the tests that had been run on Elizabeth. Thomas could tell that she was worried about what they might hear, and that worried him. His wife was strong, probably a lot stronger than him, and to see her worry was not a good sign.

They were also hoping for another offer to come in that would make taking the developer’s offer seem insignificant. The “Sale Pending” sticker that had been added to the for-sale sign was the house’s last desperate cry for help, like a dog alone in a shelter, yearning to be taken home by a family. But the economy wasn’t great, and people with families just weren’t looking for houses like theirs.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” said Elizabeth. Thomas nodded slowly.

“I know you are ready to move on, ready for change, and I want to move on beside you, but what if… what if someday, we do have a family?”

“I can’t, Thomas, I can’t. We’ve tried, you know we’ve tried everything. I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said, bowing her head to hide eyes damp with tears. Thomas wrapped her in a hug and rested his chin on her head. She knew he didn’t mean for her to feel like she’d let him down, but she sometimes convinced herself that she had. He would have been such a good dad.

After she’d been made aware of the new sticker on the for-sale sign, Mrs. McGillicuddy’s desire to know everything led her back to the house on the end of Langdale Lane once more. This time, Thomas answered the door, and Elizabeth came up behind him. They invited Mrs. McGillicuddy in, and this time they sat in the living room, since the sectional couch was more accommodating for three people than the microfiber chairs. The colorful, happy living room, which you could tell had been decorated by an elementary teacher, was excited and ready to welcome a guest for what it realized might be one of the final times.

“So I guess you want to know what sale is pending,” Thomas said, not wasting any of the precious time they had left in their home.

“I probably wouldn’t have started with that, but I guess I was rather curious about that! Might I ask who my new neighbors will be?” asked Mrs. McGillicuddy. Thomas and Elizabeth made eye contact, and Thomas could tell she didn’t want to be the one to tell her.

“Uhm, you are actually not getting new neighbors here, but you will have many new neighbors in the future,” Thomas said slowly, thinking carefully through every word. “We are selling to a development company, because they want to access the land behind the neighborhood.” Mrs. McGillicuddy squinted her eyes, trying to understand what this would mean for the house. She made some inferences that she didn’t like.

“What do you mean?” she asked, hoping her assumptions were incorrect.

“Well, they are going to have to expand the road through the yard, and they need the land where the house currently is,” Thomas said. He couldn’t bring himself to use the words “demolition” or “knocking down.” It would have made it too real. The biggest moments of his life had happened at their home. He could remember the sweat on his forehead as he had walked through the pair of intimidating doors to pick Elizabeth up for their first date, and he could remember the stress disappearing when her mother had embraced him in the first moment. He had never felt so at home in his life. The home had welcomed him into Elizabeth’s family, and he knew even from that first moment, that he wanted to feel that way forever. Elizabeth was his family, and she would be with or without the house, but he found it difficult to convince himself that it was “just a house.”

Elizabeth watched Mrs. McGillicuddy’s face changing as she finally comprehended the information. She was silenced by the realization that the beautiful house on the end of Langdale Lane would not exist forever. Elizabeth could relate to the sensation of making an unexpected realization about one’s world.

“You’re going to let them demolish a home like this? What a shame. I could never leave a place like this, not when my family left it for me,” Mrs. McGillicuddy said. She looked around as if to capture images so that she could remember the grand house of her dreams. Elizabeth knew she would have bought the house in an instant if she could have. Her camera eyes blasted envy into the room.

“You know, I am just so comfortable,” Mrs. McGillicuddy said after a long while. “I need to get back to my walk, but my old joints are enjoying this couch just a little bit too much.” She began to slowly rise off of the cushion, and Elizabeth tried to match her pace to be polite, though it was difficult because she was rising like dough: slowly and not always surely. When she was finally vertical again, they walked towards the front doors. “I just hope you two will consider staying, just think of how much all of your adorable babies would love a house like this and a yard like that! And don’t tell me you won’t have them, I know you will want them someday.” Elizabeth wished she could admonish Mrs. McGillicuddy for assuming that they would have children, for assuming they didn’t want them right now, more than anything else, and for assuming that they even could have them. But she didn’t want to. To say anything would reveal her own incompetence, that unlike the generations of women before her, she couldn’t fill the house with the firsts that children bring. Watching them eat their cake on their first birthday, seeing the wonder in their twinkling eyes decorating the Christmas tree. First bike rides down the lane, awkward first dance pictures on the porch, first snow days cuddling by the fire after building a snowman in the yard. She’d miss all the firsts. She smiled to mask the sticky clumps of frustration that were crowding her mind. When she turned to Thomas, she realized she needed to usher Mrs. McGillicuddy out the door quickly, before the steam poured out of his ears and dangerous words escaped his lips. Once she and Thomas were safely alone in the warm embrace of their home, Thomas wrapped Elizabeth into a hug.

“I am so sorry you had to listen to her say those things,” he said.

*

On Monday, Thomas pulled into the lot of the office where the developers worked. He wanted to support Elizabeth as best as he could, but it would be hard to leave the place where they had started their marriage nine years ago. He stepped out of his red truck when he saw her silver car pull in the lot. They were meeting over his lunch break. He walked over and opened the door for her, and she stepped out in a dress that was the color of the daffodils that had just began blooming in their yard. It was one of the dresses she had often worn to teach. He took her hand and they walked in the office together.

“Well, the paperwork is drawn up, I will let you guys review it before you sign. I’ll be in the next room,” said a man who worked for the development company. He left them alone at a large table in a conference room with walls of glass. It was the kind of room that might have been intimidating to be alone in, so Thomas was glad to have Elizabeth by his side. They read over the contract carefully. Just as they were about to sign, Elizabeth’s phone rang.

“It’s the doctor’s office,” she said to Thomas, and went into an adjoining room to answer the call. Thomas knew she had been there to have some tests run, but she hadn’t given him any more details, so he was worried. He watched her through the glass that separated the rooms as she paced and listened to her phone. He couldn’t tell what her face meant. He fiddled with his fingers, and wished he had something to distract him. He knew he worried too much, but he couldn’t stand the thought that the phone call could be bad news.

When the phone call ended after what felt like forever to Thomas, Elizabeth hung up and stood with a contemplative look on her face for a moment before she walked back into the room slowly. She was looking at the phone with a look of disbelief. Thomas found his mind slipping into all the worst case scenarios and he stood up as Elizabeth walked around the table towards him. When she was finally standing beside him, a tear slipped out of her eye and she looked up at him.

“What is it?” Thomas asked, his worries getting the best of his patience.

“Thomas, I’m pregnant,” she said.

Thomas sat down to register what his wife had said, and Elizabeth watched him considering what this meant for them. Would it mean that they could stay on Langdale Lane? Were they too far into the deal with developers to back out? The unsigned papers on the table became the least of his worries as he finally realized that Elizabeth was going to be a mom. He popped up out of his seat and swung Elizabeth into a twirling hug.

“You’re going to be a mom!” Thomas said.

“And you get to be a dad,” Elizabeth said.

After they had processed what was the best news of their lives, Thomas and Elizabeth practically skipped out of the office, her daffodil dress swinging around her. They left the unsigned paperwork where it had been, and were too distracted by elation to notice the confused look on the face of the man who had left them alone before. In their bliss, they both hopped into Thomas’s red pickup truck and drove to their home. The cherry trees and daffodils had bloomed, and the grass was starting to look more green. Thomas ran to the front and ripped the for sale sign out of the ground. Elizabeth ran over and hopped into his arms and kissed him the way the girls on The Bachelor always do. Elizabeth hoped Mrs. McGillicuddy was watching out her window right about now.

*

Over the course of her pregnancy, Elizabeth had realized that her own womanhood wasn’t dependent on her ability to have children, but it was certainly enhanced by it. When she found out she was having a girl, she realized that she never wanted her daughter to feel the weight of being a mother the way she had. It was a joyful thing that she was excited to do, but she hoped to teach her daughter that, as she had only recently learned, there is not one way to be a woman. Sure, she planned to teach her to bake, as her own mother had, but she also planned to teach her to be her own person.

In November, Elizabeth and Thomas brought home their new baby girl, Rose. It was a sunny day, and the old brick home and its ivy garlands beamed with pride. And of course, Mrs. McGillicuddy was one of the first to visit.