From an Admirer

One week ago last Thursday, Mehboob knocked on my door. “You have a package, Sara. Is it your birthday?” It was not.

Mehboob is a guard in my building. He has the kind of vacant eyes that obscure any attempt to see what goes on behind them, and which he fixes on you for far longer than is comfortable. So as he stared and eagerly tried to look behind me into my apartment, I stepped into the hallway and closed my door. “From your boyfriend, then?” he grinned. Mehboob’s perma-smile is less like a smile and more like the look of someone half-heartedly bearing his teeth to a dentist. “Well, we’ll have to see!” I replied politely, at which he started his body in movement toward the elevator. He looks just exactly like a large, droopy raindrop with legs, and therefore does not move quickly. I decided to take the stairs without telling him that I have no boyfriend. In addition to the Obama magnet that’s been on my door since November, Mehboob is always trying to get personal information from me.

Flowers were waiting for me—fragrant, white lilies, to be exact. Six stems, twelve blossoms. The card read, “From an Admirer.”

…..

In movies, this sort of thing almost always seems exciting and romantic. ‘What wonderful person could have sent these?’ breathlessly wonders the surprised heroine. In fact, I think I recall a movie from the mid-nineties in which Christian Slater plays a quiet, poetic florist whose great pleasure is to stroll about New York in the evening to glance into illuminated homes. When inside one of the windows he would see a woman crying or else one who appeared very sad, he would create an exquisite bouquet of flowers for her. He would then watch its delivery from the street. Slater’s character in the film cites the expression on the face of a woman receiving flowers, especially of the “surprise” variety, as being the reason he became a florist; he found the joyful, thankful facial expressions to be that inspirational.

Had this very same character seen MY facial expression upon receipt of the aforementioned lily blossoms, I’m going to guess that he would have chosen another field. Pharmacy, perhaps…. Yes, I was out of words, and out of breath, but not in the least bit charmed or flattered. And I was only breathless because I felt nauseated. I did not have a single fluttering thought of, “what unknown romantic excitement lies in store for me?” Instead, I felt spied upon by a stranger, and the uneasy sensation that comes with the reminder that we can exist without being aware of it in the thoughts of someone possibly entirely unknown to us.

But then again, maybe I did know the sender. As I stood blinking at the bouquet in the lobby, my thoughts flipped rolodex-like through a list of largely unstable, unpleasant men I know who could have done something like this. The complication was that all of the men I could think of were altogether too egotistical not to claim credit for such a gesture, and had taste altogether too poor to choose such simple, lovely flowers. I contemplated throwing the lilies away immediately—my instinct was that they must be fitted with some kind of “bug” or tracking device. I’ve known people after all who would do, and have done, things to me not far from that. But because throwing away flowers is to me like throwing away a baby, I reluctantly kept them. As I arranged the lilies in a vase, still looking at them with dread and a tightness in my stomach, scenes from the first Batman in which poison gas is pumped out from lily bouquets, flashed across my mind’s eye.

Though these flowers were simple, elegant, yet a little bit extravagant, they necessarily came from someone whose attention I find unpleasant. Otherwise, the sender would claim credit for his gift. That in and of itself isn’t overwhelmingly depressing, but the realization that I know many sad men who can fit into that category IS depressing. It occurred to me suddenly and with a sigh of relief that I do however have one lovely friend who sends me things, who isn’t depressing or scary, and who quite possibly could have sent me such flowers, in all good will and in all good taste. I then felt happy about my flowers for all of an hour, until I asked him. “No Sara, I did not send them, but you can pretend I did if you want to.” No comfort in that.

…..

Days passed, feelings changed.

The broad, white petals of the lilies bent back and back each day, and the stellar blossoms are each larger now than my long hands. Their heady perfume fills my small room and spills into the hallway—I live in this fragrance, my lungs are filled to capacity with it. I come and I go in a cloud of white lily. I see the snowy blooms when I go to sleep at night, I open my eyes to them in the morning and ask them, “WHO sent you here?”

Now I have lived with my lilies for seven days and seven nights, and have thought a lot about them. I think about how lilies traditionally symbolize purity, chastity, and innocence. Apparently a Greek belief is that the white lily is the symbol of the innocent, of he who does not know danger. There is a variety of white lily, though not the variety I have here, with which the Angel Gabriel is often depicted as giving to Mary at the time of the Annunciation. By extension, some western traditions hold the white lily to be a symbol of fertility. Others say that white lilies will grow from the tomb of a person executed for a crime he or she did not commit. Still on the theme of death, white is the color of mourning in the far East, where white lilies in some countries may adorn the dead for safe passage into the afterlife.

Lastly, and my favorite, the white lily apparently represented hope and sweetness to ancient Romans. I prefer this belief over all others because it seems to encapsulate the rest quite nicely: I see innocence as being hopeful and forward-looking, and naturally fertility is also hopeful and forward-looking. So, too, is hope for the after-life.

When I am nervous or stressed, I play music in a loop so that my room sounds always of Brahms, and now for a week it smells always of lilies.

As much as I enjoy the atmosphere of lilies, Brahms

and the musings they cause,

I wonder: did the sender know

the meaning of the flowers he chose?

Does he mean to say I am innocent of something?

Or do they represent his hope of something?

Did he think lilies suitable because I am full of hope for my own future?

Perhaps he knows nothing of the meaning of flowers, and sent them only because he thought them pretty, thought that I might like them, and did not want to leave a name so that I might enjoy flowers without having to think they were meant to be romantic?

I don’t quite know.

But I do know that I enjoy the flowers now, now that I feel they are part of me, instead of seeing them as the wide open eyes of a stranger peering into my room.

…..

“Happy Friday,” Mehboob called after me yesterday as I was leaving the building. I turned back just before the front door to say, “thanks.” He was looking at me with his head tilted downward, peering over his wire-framed glasses. “That’s a nice dress,” he muttered. “Who sent the flowers, anyway?”

“No one did,” I said cheerfully. “They came on their own.” He looked puzzled, his bottom lip drooped further down.

“Oh, happy Friday to you, too!” I called, and pranced out the door and down the sidewalk, past the piano shops of 58^th street on my way to work, feeling perfectly happy and perfectly anonymous.