The Bouquet That Came After the Funeral
I knelt down and put my head on her knee, the way I did when I was a little girl and a storm came over the elevator, and she put her hand on my hair.
The footsteps on the stair were slow and uneven. I got up, wiping my eyes, and the door opened without a knock.
A wide old man stood there in a canvas apron, thick white eyebrows, a pencil behind his ear. Behind him, a little out of breath from the climb, was a woman with short silver hair and a canvas tote bag with paintbrush handles sticking out of the top.
“Ruby,” the man said. “I’m sorry. I heard the key. I should’ve given you more time.”
“Bill Hanson,” my grandmother said, and she almost smiled. “I’ve been buying nails from you since 1971.”
“You have.” He took off his cap. “Ruby, I’m sorry for your loss. Clarence came to me three years ago in March. He said he needed a quiet room, cheap, with good light and no questions. I had this one over the shop, empty since my insurance man retired. A hundred and twenty-five a month, cash on the first, in an envelope. I stopped caring about the rent the first time I climbed up here and saw what he was doing.”
“What did you see?”
“A man laughing at himself.” Bill Hanson’s voice cracked. “I haven’t heard that sound out of a grown man in years. He had paint on his nose. He said, ‘Bill, don’t you tell Ruby, I’m going to surprise her on the anniversary.’ Your anniversary is next month, isn’t it? The twenty-second.”
“The twenty-second,” said my grandmother.
“He had it all planned. He was going to walk you up here himself.” The old man blinked rapidly. “I’d have given a lot to see your face.”
The woman in the doorway cleared her throat. “I’m Lois Kimball. I taught art at the junior high for thirty years, and I teach a class at the senior center now, and Clarence was my worst student.”
“He told me about you,” Grandma said. “He called you Mrs. Kimball.”
“Everybody does. He said it every week as though he were afraid I’d give him detention.” Lois crossed the room and stopped in front of the first painting, the bowling pin, and put her hand to her chest. “Oh, I remember this one. He walked in on a Thursday in March with a bag of supplies, nervous as a boy at a dance. He said, ‘Mrs. Kimball, I want to paint my wife’s Saturday flowers, and I’m eighty-one years old and I can’t draw a straight line.'”
“What did you tell him?”
“I gave him twelve weeks to see if he had any gift.” She smiled. “And on the twelfth week I told him, ‘Clarence, you have no gift whatsoever.'”
“Lois,” said Bill Hanson.
“He laughed so hard he had to sit down on the floor.” She was crying now too, with a handkerchief from her sleeve. “He said, ‘Well, Mrs. Kimball, I didn’t ask for a gift. I asked for a Thursday.’ I came every Tuesday and Thursday for three years, and I never took a dime. He was the most joyful pupil I ever had, and I’ve had a thousand.”
“You were at the funeral,” I said. I remembered her now. The woman in the last pew, not coming through the line.
“He asked me not to say anything.” Lois lifted one shoulder. “He asked me not to be seen, in case somebody got ideas. I thought, I’ll sit in the back and sing the hymns and let him have his secret.”