The Art of Arranging Flowers Read Free Page A

Madeline takes one arrangement and places it on Lila’s grave and that the other one gets delivered to the nursing home where Lila died.
    It’s a lot of work for a church secretary who only makes eight dollars an hour and lives thirty miles out of town. I started delivering the flowers on Saturday evening and picking them up after church and fulfilling the requests of the bereaved daughter three years ago when Madeline had a breakdown placing the order. She cried and explained that if she had one more thing to do for that church, she was pretty sure that she would be putting the flowers on her own grave. That’s when I stepped in.
    â€œHas it already been a year?” I ask. I glance over at my calendar. My Sunday was empty but I knew I had been considering a drive to Waits Lake this weekend. I like to see it in the winter, the thin sheets of ice forming along the shore.
    â€œI hate to ask you to do this again.” Madeline apologizes when I don’t say anything else.
    â€œIt’s fine,” I reply. “I don’t mind.”
    â€œPut something tropical in the arrangement,” she says. “That costs more, doesn’t it? Birds of paradise, aren’t they expensive? Or better yet, Ruby, charge extra for your services since you have to make more than one delivery. She won’t miss the money. Lila left her a fortune.”
    I smile. “I need to go to the nursing home anyway,” I say. “They have a box of vases ready for me to pick up.”
    â€œThen charge her at least for the stop at the cemetery.”
    â€œI will, Madeline,” I reply, knowing I won’t. The cemetery is just behind the church. I can’t really justify adding charges even if it is another stop and even if it means I can’t get to the lake. “But just to ask, how come nobody in the church won’t just pick it up and take the arrangement to her grave after the service?”
    â€œPhhhhh . . .” She makes a noise as if she’s waving the thought away. “Everybody in this church is too old to walk out to the cemetery with a vase of flowers. There ain’t room on anybody’s walker for a floral arrangement. It would take the entire ladies’ Sunday school class to get out there and put it on the grave, and even then somebody would fall and twist an ankle or break a hip. I tell you, Ruby, this place is nothing but a funeral parlor just marking one death after another.”
    I shake my head. She’s been saying the same thing for ten years. Still, it’s true. Lila was eighty when she died and they all said she was the youngest soprano in the choir.
    â€œI’ll order the palms and I’ll make sure the flowers are on the altar table Saturday evening. And I’ll stop by before supper on Sunday and take them out.”
    â€œYou’re a good egg, Ruby Jewell, everybody says so.”
    â€œYou’re one of my best customers, Madeline. Got to keep those Lutherans happy even if everybody has to stick their noses in the arrangement to be able to tell what flowers I actually put in there.”
    I hear a laugh.
    â€œI’ll leave you a little something on your desk.”
    â€œOh, Ruby, I must say I do like that part of Lila’s birthday week.”
    I smile. She knows that I always take a small vase and make an arrangement for her before delivering the flowers to the cemetery and the nursing home. I figure that’s the least I can do for a woman who takes care of so many and who always makes sure the church treasurer pays my bill first. “Tell Reverend Frederic I said hello.”
    â€œIf I see him, I’ll tell him. He hasn’t been in all week. He was off Monday and Tuesday for his sister’s surgery in Colville, had a golf game on Wednesday, a pastor’s meeting in Spokane on Thursday. I had to do the bulletin without any help. I just hope he likes the hymns I picked and the opening prayer I wrote for him.