Growth by Anna Baum

She spun the thoughts around her fingers, twisting and contorting them until she could no longer see the ends. It was one of the days when she couldn’t escape them. She had woken up with a mind of dusty grey and known that she would spend the following daylight hours waiting for them to close, waiting for the chance to start again. These were the days which melted away with nothing to show but red, raw fingers.

The plant was dying outside. She could see it out the corner of her eye as she leant against the counter, hands wrapped around an empty mug as the kettle boiled. It was a cold out, but bright. The neighbour’s trees were casting brittle silhouettes against the sky. The garden was small and untidy, and apart from a tiny patch that had been cleared, the whole square of it was covered in a thick layer of last September’s leaves. In that patch sat a little bush, squat and unbeautiful. She tried not to look but it drew the eye. Even from a distance she could see the crisp edges of the leaves and the blackening stem. The lady in the shop with wrinkles around her eyes that scrunched together when she’d smiled had told her it would be flowering by now, and she remembered being shown the buds containing hints of buttery yellow. They had all shrivelled up, the yellow turned to brown.

Yesterday she had gone outside to have a look and despite the sodden light, had filled a cup with water and emptied it over its head. It was the only way she could think to look after a plant. The only thing she could remember mum doing out in the garden was watering in summer. She’d watched it anxiously until evening and when nothing happened, did the same again. Now it was drowning as well as wilting and her ideas had run out. That corner of garden was only granted a fleeting moment of sunshine in the early morning before the sun became blocked behind her neighbour’s wall, yet there was nowhere else she would plant it.

That was the spot Milly had liked to sit on some mornings when the weather was warm. She had imagined looking at the plant in the corner just as she had once glanced over to the sleeping body stretched out in bliss; she would see the flowers in spring and would think of her with nothing but buttery yellow joy. She had never tried to grow anything before, but buying a plant for the spot they’d buried their pets had been what mum had always done, and it had felt right. But now, looking at it was just feeding into the anxious thought that she had let her little cat down.

***

Her phone violently erupted as it vibrated against the hard wooden table. She picked it up and saw a message from AJ, and put it down again. Her eyes darted back to the book she had been reading, but she couldn’t remember what was happening. She looked out the window as a man walked past, listening intently to a child in a small pink helmet that bobbed up and down, barely cresting the garden wall. She smiled a little. Picked up her phone.

She read the message from AJ, as cheerful as ever, asking how her day was going, or if she’d like a chat. He felt very far away. The distance between them seemed oceanic as she turned onto her side and rested her head against one of the sofa cushions. Or perhaps, it wasn’t distance between them, but distance between who she really was and the girl he thought he knew.

Another message came in, this time from her boss. Also pretty clueless and cheerful, saying he hoped she was on the mend. When Milly died they had given her a week’s leave which had been kind of them, she knew. She knew a week off for your cat dying wasn’t exactly the done thing, and she had sensed in the side glances and strained smiles, the “exceptional circumstances”, that they were doing a favour. Then that week had turned into two, and at this point she didn’t know how she could go back next Monday like they were expecting, but she felt a long way away from the person with enough strength to weigh up her options, assess her finances, go to the doctor, have a serious conversation about this, and so on. She would get to all that, at some point. For now, she just wanted to sleep.

She put her phone down, picked it up again, and AJ called.

They talked for ten minutes.

How are you doing?

Yeah, I’m ok, she said. I’m fine.

But are you though? I’m worried about you.

She didn’t know.

What can I do?

I don’t know.

She was quiet after that and he tried to cheer her up, but his loudness and humour felt aggressive. He had already said he was sorry about the cat a few times, he’d told her it was healthy to let herself be sad and even taken her to pick out the plant, but that was all he had in him. All his empathy was now spent. The grief she felt for a non-speaking, non-laughing being was a sensation he couldn’t comprehend. AJ loved to laugh and there was no one better at drawing laughter out of others. He spent his life surfing from one funny moment to another. He hated, she had noticed, to be alone. All the points of connection between him and others were through conversation, and animals were just props in his world shaped by people.

The silent friendship she had treasured in Milly was invisible to him, and now he didn’t know what to do with their conversations except fill them with noise and laughter again. In turn, she didn’t know how to explain herself so she just said nothing. When they hung up with half-hearted goodbyes, she felt worse. It was only a matter of time.

Her back was sore against the softness of the settee and she groaned a little, turned over, and went back on Facebook.

***

Once, long ago, it had been her shyness that trapped her. Contained within a shell of anxiety, she had pushed against its edges as it muffled her voice and trapped her expressions in a perpetual, desperate smile. She had always known loneliness, and AJ had punctured it, flooded in. She had become full of his confidence and easy way with people, and for a while it felt like her quietness had been pushed out. As his girlfriend she was given some free social credit, and no longer were her weekends spent watching other lives from behind a screen. He made her laugh like no one ever had before. He made her feel like a real person. But if she was honest, if at any point she’d had to choose, she would have chosen her shy, silent cat in a heartbeat.

***

A day passed, and then another. The pale grey crowds stayed rooted in place, until the third day when faint drizzle evolved into rain. She was glad of it. The movement of the light and water outside the window brought some motion into the day, quickened her breathing and her heart. She watched puddles form, then ripples on those puddles. Her eyes could glaze peacefully against a landscape that now lived and breathed with her.

As dusk began to creep in the late afternoon she absentmindedly wandered towards the kitchen and started to look in cupboards. She took out an old can of Heinz tomato soup and emptied it into a pan. As it was heating she took a couple of slices of bread from the freezer and put them in the toaster. Stirring her soup, she checked her emails and saw one from AJ. It was titled, simply, Hey.

Only a matter of time.

There were just two short paragraphs and she read it all before the toast popped back up. She dropped the spoon, turned off the hob and read it two more times as the toast turned cold and dry.

She thought about all the things she had imagined that this would feel like, and none of them had been right. She didn’t feel sad, or angry, or disappointed, or even numb. All her body could register was an immense feeling of relief that she wouldn’t have to call him later like she’d said she would. Perhaps she would watch a movie instead, or order a takeaway. She might run a bath, and enjoy the peace and quiet.

***

She tried a few times that evening to look up what to do about her plant, but she found so much advice that it all started to contradict itself. Some places told her to move it into a better position, others said to leave it be. She wondered about calling her friends or her sister and asking what they would do, but it seemed silly. In normal circumstances she would never call up her friends with a question about plants so she left it. The one website that was fairly helpful said that if in doubt, there was no harm in cutting it back. It said to trim the dead leaves and cut the stems back to a point from which new shoots might grow.

***

Peering out the curtains with eyes thick with sleep, she saw peachy clouds rolling across a blue sky. The rain had cleared away the heavy clouds and it was bright outside. She sat up and watched for a moment. The clock ticked. 6:24am. Her alarm was set for two and a half hours’ time but as her head hit the pillow, she knew she wasn’t going back to sleep.

The early morning stiffened her body, but as she padded across the carpet and slumped against the kitchen counter to wait for the kettle, there was a crispness to her breathing that made her feel peaceful.

I should wake up at this time every morning, she thought to herself. The day seemed a much easier, gentler, thing to contemplate with a head-start. She knew she couldn’t engineer this kind of mood. But for now, here it was. And for now, that was enough.

She drank a cup of coffee without moving from the counter then dazedly opened the fridge door. Moving slowly, she pulled out some fruit and picked at a blueberry. She thought of the blueberry pancakes she had made for her mum years ago – getting up early and moving as quietly as she could round the kitchen so that she could bring them to her in bed as a surprise. A smile pulled at her lips as she remembered the small jar of pink flowers she had put on the tray, picked in the gloom of dawn.

Before she could stop herself the stove was on and she was pouring flour, sugar and baking powder into a bowl. She cracked in an egg, a big glug of milk and stirred in the rest of the blueberries. Butter into the pan, let it melt and bubble, then a spoonful of thick batter. She scooped up a bit with her finger, relishing the soft sweetness. She clicked on the radio as she worked and the kitchen was filled with the kind of background noise she had grown up with. Sizzling, crackling, clattering spoons, murmuring voices and seven beeps before the headlines. She flipped the first pancake before it was ready, breaking it into pieces. She made four more after that and ate them standing up, listening to the news.

Once she had finished she brushed her teeth and put on a warm sweatshirt. Outside there was sun yet the air was still bitingly cold. She took a pair of scissors with her, and without hesitation walked over to Milly’s plant. The leaves were brown and curling. Some of the stem looked shrivelled, yet towards the base of the plant it was still plump and green. Without hesitating, she started to lop chunks of dead leaf and branch off, more brutally than felt comfortable. She sought out the junction where healthy shoots went brown, and cut with a decisive, clean snip.

When she was finished, the plant looked forlorn. It was woody and lumpy, yet it now looked more green than brown. The sun was making its journey towards that little corner of garden, and as she crouched beside the stumps of wood that should have born flowers of bright gold, the first warmth of the day settled on them both.

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