The Dahlia
Fiction by Adam Elliot Segal
The year Howard was dying, my neighbour’s son started a band. They called themselves Foolscap, like the paper, and played Beatles songs all summer. My home office, in the basement of my semi-detached Victorian home, shared a wall with Foolscap. it became increasingly difficult to concentrate. I especially despised Foolscap’s cover of “Come Together.” hearing a twelve-year-old kid howl those asinine lyrics inevitably sent me into an internal rage around the house. My wife Jacqueline was growing tired of my mood swings and I secretly hoped that Foolscap would break up.
My Manchester-born father, who hated all things Liverpool and especially Paul Mccartney, used to mutter bollocks or bugger under his breath when irritated and I seemed to have picked up both habits as I approached old age, particularly when Jacqueline informed me of our neighbour Howard’s declining health or when Foolscap launched into a wretched version of “I am the walrus.” The humidity that summer was stifling and my petulance played in concert with the stink of compost on the sidewalks. My wife and I didn’t summer in the Muskokas like several of our neighbours from Manning avenue. we were suffering through the heat wave and getting on each other’s nerves. I couldn’t get “come together” out of my head the entirety of July. admittedly, I’d always hated the Beatles, but more importantly, who names a band after a notebook?
In early August I paid the boys next door a visit. I held several CDs in my hand — The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Bob Dylan. Jack opened the door.
“What are those?” Jack asked. Jack was a smart kid, precocious without seeming arrogant, the kind of kid who’s not yours that you actually like.
“Compact discs,” I said. “Look, Jack, before the iCloud started hovering over us like an overlord, we listened to music on these. You stick them in a CD player. Your dad have one?”
“I think so. In the garage maybe. Behind his stack of magazines.”
“Is he home?”
“He’s at work,” Jack’s little brother Joe said, peering around the door. “Don’t you work? I always see you in your underwear.” He had a point.
“How’s the band coming along, Jack?” I asked, ignoring Joe’s question.
“Our first gig’s at the JCC barbecue in a couple weeks,” he said proudly.
“Let me guess. Beatles covers.”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Never mind.”
Joe, who was eight, bounded out from behind the front door.
“How old are you, richard?”
“How old do you think I am, Joe?”
“Older than the internet.”
“That’s true.”
“You don’t look that old.”
“You don’t either.”
“Most of my dad’s friends are bald, or fatter than you.”
“Thank you, Joe. That means a lot coming from someone with so much life experience.”
“Are you coming for dinner again?” he asked.
“If your mother invites me, yes. Tell your Dad I say hello.”
“Richard. what’s a bugger?” Joe yelled, but I had already started to walk away. Neighbours are strange relationships. So much intimacy and mystery happen simultaneously. There is an honesty that doesn’t exist with family members — seeing fathers in their skivvies taking out the garbage alongside mothers in nightgowns chasing raccoons will do that. Conversations occur in the strangest of places — alleyways, nooks, backyards, over ledges and railings, under outdoor decks and inside garages. There is a rhythm to neighbours’ habits. On Manning, there existed a syncopation to the days: dogs barking in the daytime, children playing at dusk, the low hum of adult voices on the curb or the front porch when darkness captured the street.
That summer our neighbour Nancy invited me to her daughter’s poetry reading.
“You’ll enjoy yourself, Richard,” she said. “It’ll be nice for her to have a real writer in the room.”
All of Seaton Village was there and it was strange to see so many of us in one room. I’d grown accustomed to catching Florence through the window, knee-deep in dirt, or Nancy raking leaves in that silly puffy coat that went past her shins. Even old Frank, who’d lived on Manning for forty years and could tell you which homes still had the original brick, attended the reading. He was even wearing a collared shirt. I’d never seen frank in anything but a dirty beater.
“You hear about Howard?” Frank said, sidling up to me at the bar. That’s the other thing about neighbours — it hardly seems like you talk about yourself at all.
“What happened?”
“Ambulance came by yesterday,” he said above the din of normal conversation, and several heads turned. He paused, and sensing my concern, changed the topic. “You see the ‘for sale’ sign in front of the Mocklers?”
Frank shifted ideas midway conversation like a person with a bad back shifts positions at the theatre. In the span of five minutes he expressed his dislike for the current city councillor who had screwed over Frank’s father years ago on a real estate deal, how the Blue Jays needed a starting pitcher, and a particularly loquacious rant on how he didn’t understand his grandkids’ technology.
“I’m retired. What the heck do I need to Fitbit or Snapchat for,” he said, slugging back the remainder of his beer and putting his hand on my shoulder in an unexpected moment of concern. “Real shame about Howard, isn’t it?”
Howard and I were the same age, approaching fifty, and in one calendar year I’d seen him morph from a strong, robust figure who jogged five miles a day into a shadow of the same man. His face appeared gaunt, yet his body appeared heavy with the weight of disease. Underneath his eyes, dark patches had taken root. His limbs looked like thin winter branches. the hair on his head had returned in tufts, which meant it had been weeks since the last chemo treatment. Everyone talked about Howard in whispers, like he was half-there.
“I don’t know why they’re selling,” Frank continued, sipping a bottle of what he called “fancy” beer. “Wait a year and the property value will go up. Market’s kookoo, Richard. Ten percent at least. Geez, this beer is fancy,” he said, turning the bottle of Amsterdam blonde towards him. “What was I saying?”
“I heard Carol wants to be closer to her parents up north,” I said. “They call it craft beer now, Frank. Brewed right down on Queens Quay.”
He shrugged. “50’s better.”
Florence suddenly grabbed my arm. “Wasn’t she good?”
“Who?” I said.
“Nancy’s daughter! Wasn’t she just soooo good?” I could tell Florence had just finished a glass of wine by the reddish hue in her cheeks. “Very good. wonderful diction. how’s the garden, Flo?”
“Oh, you should come by. It. Is. Divine. Really.”
“I’m happy for you, Flo.”
“How’s Jacqueline?”
“She never stops talking about how lovely your garden looks.”
“And how’s the writing coming along, Richard?” Florence said, leaning in a little like we shared a secret. The novel. I didn’t want to talk about the novel. I wanted everything to go away — the cacophony of Beatles songs, discussions of real estate, the stupid book, Howard’s declining health — I wanted it all to disappear into the darkness. I was tired of summer and bad news.
“Good days, bad days,” I said to Florence. She was one of those people where nothing seems to faze her. Everything stuck to me like flypaper — the beep-beep-beep from “Drive My Car,” the obnoxious repetition of “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, Life goes on.” When I’m in a particularly cantankerous mood, that last one’s a serrated knife blade in the chest, believe me.
“Just like gardening, don’t you think?” Flo said, not missing a beat. “Some plants take no effort at all, you just plunk ’em down and they grow and grow, no big whoop. Other times it’s like trying to catch a marlin, don’t you think, Richard? No matter how hard you try, it’s always a struggle. But then there’s the dahlia.”
“The dahlia?”
“It doesn’t care what the rest of the garden’s doing. Every year she returns, proud and regal, even when spring arrives late and the ground’s colder than a witch’s patoot.” She looked around. “Enjoy your evening, Richard. Don’t drink too much,” Florence said, patting my shoulder like my auntie used to when we visited Manchester as a boy and she’d insist I sit with her while sipping her afternoon glass of sherry. I took Flo’s advice and left the reading shortly thereafter.
The next day I stared out the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the flower across the street. All I could see was Flo’s stocky ankles and her purple gardening muumuu.
I couldn’t wait for the kids to start school again so Foolscap would practice less and I’d have some peace of mind. Summer in the city was like a piece of gum that’s lost its chew — goopy, tasteless, a day-old Portuguese custard sitting alone in the glass case. I heard the first few notes of “Paper-Back Writer” on the other side of the wall. Before my blood could boil, I caught Howard’s side profile across the street. He was sitting in his study chair. I walked across the street and rang his bell. It took some time for him to answer.
“Howie.”
“Richie. Good to see you,” he wheezed. “How you doing? Can I come in?” Howard hesitated slightly, and I could feel his brain summoning the energy in his body. He was so incredibly thin.
“Sure.” He closed the door and so went the muffled sounds of teenage rock from across the street.
“Little shits, huh?” I said.
“Go easy on them. I had a group when I was their age. There’s nothing quite like your first band, is there? Called ourselves the Weavils.”
“That’s a terrible name,” I said, and he laughed, followed by a cough.
“Yeah, I suppose it was.”
“Heard you were in the hospital.”
“Nothing serious.”
“You bullshitting me?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am.” He grimaced while I wiped the sweat from my forehead and looked around. Howard had a charming home, with expensive art and tasteful furniture and a loving family and he didn’t deserve any of this, the ravages of a disease eating away at his body. “Last summer in the city, I’m afraid. That would make a good line in a song, wouldn’t it?”
“I’m supposed to say it won’t be, but I’m wrong, aren’t I?”
“It’s only a matter of time.”
“You want to take a walk over to Flo’s? Says she’s got this real nice flower that grows without provocation.”
Howard and I shuffled our way outside, his hand gripping my bicep. We took stock of all the things Florence had cultivated from nothing: rows of summer vegetables, green peas and cherry red tomatoes, stocky orange carrots that grew by the bushel and three types of jalapeño peppers. It smelled green and soily and warm, the way summer should. The ground below felt soft on our feet. I plucked a peapod off the vine and popped it in my mouth without Flo seeing. Howard smiled. I won’t soon forget that smile. We got closer to the reason we were there and Florence was right: the dahlia had carved out its own space in the garden, like a portrait in the back of a museum. Standing five feet tall and surrounded by stakes to hold its weight, the flower, fuchsia and shaped like a dinner plate, stood guard over the entire yard like a queen.
“You have a real talent, Flo,” I said.
“Thank you, Richard. Did you know the Aztecs first introduced these flowers to the Spanish?” Howard stretched his frail hand out toward the blooming dahlia, cradling the petals in his palm. “Howard, it’s so nice to see you,” Flo said. “We never visit anymore, do we? Remember we used to visit all the time?”
I watched Howard gingerly sink his way back into the leather chair in his study, the one with the window facing Manning avenue, the street we’d lived on for over a decade. A week later he was dead. Everyone from the neighbourhood attended the funeral. Some people can remember every detail from a service — the faces, the weather, the time of year, that awkward moment when a relative says something inappropriate — but Howard’s death felt like a storm cloud racing across the sky and I was hunkered inside waiting it out, an aching, empty feeling closing in. The street felt different after that, hollowed out in the middle like a half-eaten grapefruit, a gaping, irreversible hole that no one knew how to fill.
Foolscap broke up in the waning hours of August, one live concert to their credit. I lost ten pounds eating Flo’s vegetables and finished my book as the harvest ripened. I was restless, however, and Jacqueline and I began plotting our escape. Before we put the house on the market, I visited the boys that winter. Their bedrooms were plastered with posters of Jagger and Morrison, a wall of vinyl growing steadily along one wall. McCartney and Lennon were noticeably absent and I tried not to gloat to their father. Little Joe told me I looked older than his hockey coach but skinnier in the face. I pointed at the picture of Keith Richards above his bed. “Don’t do drugs,” I said.
We sold our house the following spring and bought a condo downtown. I don’t miss property taxes or trick-or-treating or a schoolboy’s band practice, but I do miss peering out from the living room window and seeing Flo pruning or Nancy raking, Howard reading, or a shirtless Frank surreptitiously inspecting his neighbour’s property line. I miss the smell of logs burning in the fireplace on a cold November night, real brick walls, archways and turrets modeled after old British homes. I learned to love the ending of things the summer Howard died, the knowing they would, like the last chapter in a good book, and every June since, when I put my tomato plants and potted geraniums out on the small deck of our house in the sky, I yell at Jacqueline over the din of construction, “Last summer in the city, Jacks. Let’s make it a good one.” And she slides the glass doors open and wraps her arms around me and we stand there, watching the cranes swing back and forth. »