The Houseplant

He first saw her on the clearance rack. Four ninety-nine; a golden pothos in a ceramic pot. His eyes held a recognition of beauty. The cashier scanned her between a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and a large Red Baron. He carefully loaded her into his car, then left the other groceries in the back seat as he brought her into the apartment. He stood between the kitchen and living room areas of his studio apartment for a few seconds before putting her over the sink on the windowsill.

The afternoon sun glowed on her leaves and glimmered past her off the dust of the grey room. He watched her in her spot with the same eyes he had in the store. When he left for the rest of the groceries, he slammed the door, leaving her the moan of the air conditioning kicking in and the electric drumfire of a flat-screen television. The apartment was decorated as a skyline, with short towers of boxes and dishes sitting on tables and coming out of the sink below her.

He stepped into the apartment with an armful of light brown plastic bags stretched by cereal boxes and weighed down by soup cans. The plant could not imagine him bringing these towers of garbage into the house and looking at them the way he looked at her. He set the bags on the island and stood behind the dishes taking in how she changed the color of the window. He pulled the faucet over and sprayed the soil with a blanket of water, and her deepest roots were quenched.

Before the sun came up the next morning, he came out of his room pulling up a pre-tied necktie. He glanced at her as he piled one more plate on the dishes in the sink, checked the time above the oven, and skipped toward the door carrying a briefcase. The light flipped off, and she faded into the grey with the rest of the dusty apartment. The sun had just begun to stripe the dark kitchen when the door opened again, and his footsteps slowly padded toward the sofa.

He stood in the darkness between the living room and the kitchen like the day before, looking at the dirty dishes, then back toward the mountains of clutter he had constructed. Then, with no emotion on his face, he threw his briefcase onto the floor of the kitchen, spilling sheets of resume paper onto the tile, and wilted onto the sofa. The sun climbed the sky, but he had drawn the thick curtains in the living room: he hid there the rest of the day, never leaving his spot.

The sun took the rest of the moisture in her soil, then fell away. The next morning, he shambled toward the pantry across from the sink, rummaged through the bottom shelf and resurfaced with a packet of Pop-Tarts. He never looked her way, but she could see his eyes; lids low and crusted despite the sun having been long up. He visited the kitchen a few times the rest of the day, but each time he would turn his head down, away from the window. She started feeling thirsty.

He didn’t leave the house for days. The briefcase with its papers became part of the kitchen tile. Her soil was dry and thin, so when the air conditioning turned on, shaking her leaves, her roots shifted in the dusty soil. The dirt became a grey color, and after a few days went by, the grey started to seep up her stem. All she heard was the phone ringing unanswered; the air conditioning; and the orange-red sound of the television, with its acidic, chemical light rubbing against her leaves.

A week later, the sun never rose. It was replaced by flashes of light blinking over the sky in an uneven tour of the darkest thunder clouds. The apartment was only lit by the electric blue anger of lightning. Soon after, the rain roared over the apartment roof, and the window beside her shined with singing water droplets. Her highest leaf, dry and woody, curled against the window. She was shriveling inside and out. The water was less than an inch away: she wished she was out there, instead.

He took mail from the slot in the door, grabbed takeout from right outside, and juggled sitting on the sofa and in the bedroom, but the lights were never on, and the television was. But he never came to look at her again, never watered her. The towers he was surrounded by never got bigger, but he was already buried beneath them. She never saw him leave the apartment again. Either he gave up that she would ever grow, or he did not want her to. She slowly died.

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The sun had gone down, weeks later, when he finally saw her. His face was blank, and this time when he looked at her his eyes were gone. “Something else I’ve ruined.” He picked her up, moved aside his thick curtains, and opened the door to the balcony. He held her in his hands, which were warm, hiding his blurry eyes from the sun with his elbow, then threw her toward the corner of the apartment building behind a garbage can. The pot broke and she landed in dirt.

She was glad not to be in the dark kitchen anymore, but she wished he was with her, lying behind the towering garbage can. She fell out of the pot and her roots were exposed. Her crumpled leaves break down on the hot earth until the next morning’s shower. The water hit against her stem, and the dirt frothed up over her roots. Her leaves took deep breaths in and she felt the quiet sun watching her through speckled tree branches. It was bright and wet, and she grows.