Poinsettias
A short story
I’d like to offer of you a short story I hope you may enjoy reading in a quiet moment. It’s a light, but I hope intriguing tale, and one I have wanted to write ever since hearing about the real life incident on which it is based.
Cases like the one in the story happen from time to time. They should challenge our general assumptions, but because they are the exception rather than the rule, they tend to be disregarded as nothing more than curiosities.
I know I may be sounding mysterious. So I’ll get out the way and let the story speak for itself. Suffice it to say that all the key facts in the following tale are based on something that really happened …
It was 9 am one Friday morning a few weeks before Christmas when Ed Weston stepped through the entrance of Elysian Fields Café. The garden centre was popular in the small, Vermont community, its indoor café a special hit with seniors like Ed who enjoyed the cosy atmosphere, the unfussy food, and the fact that you could settle with a newspaper for as long as you liked without being made to feel unwelcome. Bedecked with Christmas wreaths and twinkling trees, today it felt more vibrant and convivial than ever.
Across the café Sofia, who managed the place with her husband Pablo, waved at Ed with a smile. Before raising her hands in a querying expression.
He gave a thumbs up.
She reciprocated.
Breakfast order duly placed, he headed towards ‘his’ table and began unbuttoning his coat.
He had woken to a dazzling winter’s morning and on drawing back the bedroom curtains he’d been so startled by the cloudless blue sweep that it had been at least thirty seconds of unburdened consciousness before he remembered the diagnosis. The thought that had become such an unwanted fixation since his visit to the doctor two months ago. Pushing that dark cloud firmly out of his mind, he reminded himself that today was a Friday. Which meant breakfast at Elysian Fields. An indulgence he could still afford when there weren’t too many affordable indulgences left. And perhaps also a game of checkers with Lucia.
Shedding his coat, Ed settled on the cushioned bench-seat alongside the fireplace, where a log fire cast a welcoming glow. Through the many years they’d been coming here, this had always been his seat, with Alice opposite. He guessed they must have been among the café’s earliest customers. They had both still been working full time when the café had first opened its doors, nearly two decades earlier. He’d been a manager at the electric co-op, and Alice had worked for a financial planning group.
After he’d retired, ten years ago, Friday breakfasts had become their tradition. Alice, who was both devoted to her job and meticulous at it, had carried on working part time. But Fridays were one of her days off, and in those comfortable years they used to relish the fact that every weekend was a long weekend starting with a scrumptious breakfast at Elysian Fields.
At this table they had scheduled their busy social lives together, whether entertaining at home, weekend trips to the city or visits to the country club. If there was an expensive new item to be bought for the household, this was where they’d discuss their options. They had planned many an overseas adventure here, from the gothic alleyways of Barcelona to the cherry blossoms in Yoshino and Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls. Looking through brochures or listings on her phone, on such occasions his vivacious wife would sometimes tap with a red fingernail with a mischievous expression, “Oh look! A group tour. Imagine who you might meet, Teddy!”
She was the only one who ever called him Teddy. And she was gleefully referring to the fact that the two of them had first met on a day trip in Washington DC. On a group tour.
Money had never been a problem during those happy years. By then their boys, Luke and Travis, were grown men with their own families living in Boston. For Alice and him, having lived well within their means for most of their lives, travel was their only real indulgence. Alice always assured him that they’d never have to worry about money as they got older. Having become expert at investment matters through her work, he’d been happy to leave their financial planning to her.
Pablo was bringing over a tray with Ed’s standing order - two eggs, farm sausages, home-fries and mushroom, accompanied by a large Americano. In his early forties, the café manager and his wife had become popular figures in their small town.
Ed vividly remembered their arrival. The previous manager had run a tight ship, and the worry among some locals was that the inexperienced migrants would let standards slip, or take the menu in directions they didn’t wish it to go. Alice and Ed had felt for the young couple, who’d arrived knowing nobody. They had adopted the newcomers, supporting them through their very early days with guidance on how to deal with the quirks of particular customers and suggesting how to win the support of potentially troublesome ones.
It was Alice, more than anyone, who had brought Pablo out of his shell. A good-looking man with high cheekbones, glistening black hair and mercurial features that could be dramatic in their intensity, Pablo had a tendency to believe that he was being judged and found wanting, even when nothing of the kind was happening. Alice had always been drawn to brooding Latinos. That, combined with her spirited capacity to make a person feel valued and adored meant that Pablo was soon transformed into a suave and assured host, self-doubt banished - or at least, temporarily forgotten. In time they had watched him evolve into the most outrageous flatterer, which used to amuse Alice no end.
Once Pablo and his warm-hearted wife had settled into the community, Ed and Alice used to speculate on when they might have kids. They had never made a secret of their wish to start a family. But this was a happy development that Alice never got to see. One Monday morning she’d no sooner arrived at work than she had a massive heart attack and died. She had been 64 years old. For Ed, in a single morning their golden era together had been replaced by a bleak void.
Things were to get much worse, although he hadn’t known it at the time.
“Signor!” Pablo greeted him with warm affection, putting his plate and mug on the table and resting his hand on Ed’s shoulder.
“My friend.” Ed reached up to place his hand on Pablo’s for a moment.
They made small talk about the seasonal festivities and the bright weather, before discussing their plans for Christmas day. Ed would be travelling to his elder son’s home in Boston, to be joined by his other son and both families. Pablo and Sofia were heading to El Barrio in New York where their extended clan lived. “Lucia is the youngest of all the kids,” Pablo told Ed.
“So she’ll be thoroughly spoiled?”
“Pretty much.”
Ed glanced hopefully to the back of the café. “Is she in today?”
“In the garden section,” Pablo nodded. “I will give you a chance to enjoy your breakfast, then I’ll tell her you’re here.”
“That would be nice,” Ed beamed. “Thanks.”
Ed attacked his food with relish. It was his one, cooked breakfast of the week. He also took in the Christmas décor. Poinsettias, in full flower, bedecked the whole café. He’d always loved the brash, festive cheer of the plants, the brightly splashed red and green. Not that Alice had ever been a big fan of them. When it came to flowers, her tastes ran more to the exotic.
Inevitably, it wasn’t long into the meal before his thoughts returned to the diagnosis. The annual blood checks he had done every summer had shown elevated PSA levels, which his doctor had wanted to investigate. After further tests a urologist had confirmed, eight weeks ago, that he had prostate cancer. The bad news was that he had an aggressive form of the disease. The much better news was that it was still contained.
When it came to treatment options, hormone therapy would dramatically slow tumour growth, but had all kinds of side-effects, including weight gain and mental fuzziness. Alternatively, a form of radiotherapy had proved remarkably effective at removing tumours. Only six, pain-free, twenty-minute sessions over three months could render him cancer-free. No surgery. No other chemotherapy. Nothing invasive whatsoever.
Back in the days when Alice had still been alive, deciding between the two treatment options would have been a no-brainer. The fact that radiotherapy cost $60,000 while hormone treatment was only a few thousand would scarcely have mattered. But things were very different now. Since Alice’s death he’d had to live on his own, modest 401 (k) income from work, and the much smaller proceeds from Alice’s startlingly modest retirement account. Even without the cost of hormone treatment he was going to find it tough making ends meet.
Lucia arrived with the box of checkers under her arm. Not bothering to greet him, she simply ran towards where he was sitting, launched herself at him and snuggled into his chest.
“My darling,” he gave her a hug, relishing her instinctive tenderness. “Are you getting excited about Christmas?”
He felt her nod her head.
“I hear you’ll be visiting with your uncles and aunts and cousins?”
Tugging away from him, she began setting up the checkerboard on the table.
Ed dabbed his mouth clean and pushed his empty plate out of the way. Then he was helping her set out the black and red counters. From Alice’s chair, she delivered an impish grin.
The checkers had been entirely her idea. As soon as she started taking an interest in board games, she had asked, one Friday morning, to play with Ed. It was a nice thing for the two of them – she developing her skills and logic, Ed enjoying play time with his surrogate grand-child.
He’d been impressed by the speed of her development. In their earliest sessions he’d had to massively oblige her to give her any chance of winning. Now, as each week went by, he increasingly had to keep his wits about him, not only because she was getting better at the game, but because if he let his concentration lapse for even a moment she’d rig the system, moving or removing a counter to her advantage without him even noticing. And playing the innocent all along.
Today’s session was brisk and shenanigans-free. They were at one game each when Kelly the waitress came to clear away Ed’s dish. He was surprised, even a bit hurt when Lucia began packing away the counters and folding the board.
“You don’t want another game? A decider?”
“No, no,” she was shaking her head, before lifting her hand to wave, “You go.”
By the time he was back in his coat, she’d scampered away. Looking across the café he saw Pablo re-arranging tables and chairs for a large incoming group. Sofia was busy in the kitchen. Leaving some bills under the table marker, he made his way outside.
There was more traffic than when he’d first arrived. But the pedestrian crossing directly beyond the café made leaving here easy. He was soon back in his thoughts.
If he had $60,000 he could make the horror go away. As so often, he wondered what had happened to their investments, the money Alice had been so clear they never needed to worry about.
A couple of months after the funeral, he had gone into see Alice’s boss, Donny Legard, who they both also thought of as a friend. He didn’t need to explain that Alice had taken care of their joint investments – they’d openly discussed this in the past, Donny even joshing that, under Alice’s management, the Weston’s finances must be among the best-managed in the state.
“You know that Alice was independently-minded,” Donny had said, after Ed explained his predicament.
“I do.”
“She always sought to diversify risk.”
“Not all your eggs in one basket,” Ed recalled his late-wife’s investment mantra.
“After the GFC and the pandemic and all the political turmoil, she wanted most assets, from what I recall outside her 401 (k).”
“Uh-huh.”
“It was her decision to make,” Donny held up his hands. “We respect that. I’m sure she was prudent in her asset allocation.”
Ed’s brow was furrowing.
The firm had already returned all their investments files to him. Documents revealing precious little. He’d searched Alice’s home office from top to bottom, then the storage shed and even looked behind books on various shelves around the house trying to find something - anything - that might indicate where their wealth might be.
Meeting Donny in the eye, he asked, “Knowing her thoughts on these things, what do you think her …. asset allocation would have been?”
“Oh,” Donny answered immediately. “She’d have said, why expose yourself to needless risk?”
Yes, thought Ed, that sounded right.
“She’d have chosen zero to no-risk assets like cash. Bonds. Perhaps even a little gold?”
Ed was a short distance from home when he felt a tug on his arm.
“Lucia!” He instantly glancing behind, searching for Pablo or Sofia. Neither was there.
“What’s happening?” he asked, voice rising in concern.
She’d gripped two of his fingers in her hand. “Come!” she said, continuing in the direction he’d been walking.
He resisted. “We must get you back to the café. Your parents will be worried.”
“They’re busy,” she said, yanking him. “Come! Please! I want to show you.”
There was a purpose about her. An imperative look in her expression he’d never seen. And even though she’d muddled the words, it seemed she wanted him to show her where he lived.
“Please!” she cried out loudly, and Ed was looking round to see if anyone was witnessing the unexpected turn of events. There was no one nearby.
In the café, Ed had often told her that he lived nearby. That it was only a short walk. Perhaps it was the unusually bright weather that had made her come outside. Already resuming his way, he scanned the road and pavements once again. All was calm.
“Okay, but only very quickly,” he said. They weren’t far from the gate. “You can have a short look, then I’m taking you back.”
She nodded.
When they got home, he lifted the latch and she rushed up the path with a joyous energy. It was as if she was celebrating a homecoming after a long time away. Collecting a fob from his coat pocket, as he found the front door key and turned it in the lock, she was standing next to him, back to the wall, left foot raised and pressed against it. Just as Alice used to do.
Once inside, she walked through the hall into the lounge and directly across it. She halted, pointing at the door of the games cupboard.
“Look in here,” she commanded when he met her eyes.
Unsettled, bewildered, trying to process what he was witnessing, Ed joined her, bending to open the door.
“Board games,” he gestured. “Jigsaws. Monopoly.”
“Monopoly!” she jumped with excitement, raising both arms and pulling them down simultaneously, elbows bent. Another Alicism.
A lover of board games all her life, Alice was also a shameless cheat, stealing hundred dollar bills from her fellow players if she ever had the chance.
“Under, under!” she pointed at the bottom of the cupboard.
Something began to shift in Ed’s mind. A memory, a kind of recognition from long ago and they’d first moved here. Something that had remained buried in his subconsciousness, the importance of which was only just beginning to dawn. But, given what was happening here and now with Lucia, that was something he’d have to come back to. He was feeling utterly giddy.
“Okay,” he assured Lucia. “I’ll look. But first, I must take you back to your parents.”
She didn’t protest. She was gazing curiously around the room on the way out, checking on things. In the hall, she paused by the table where Ed kept a photograph of Alice in an elegant, gold frame, and beside it, a pot of white orchids. Her favourite.
As she took in the photo and orchids, he said, “Orchids. Do you like them?”
She paused, staring for a while before wrinkling her nose. Pointing to the photograph she told him, matter-of-factly, “She did.”
Lucia hadn’t been missed back at Elysian Fields. Both parents had evidently assumed she was with the other or with the garden team. In a place like the garden centre there were so many nooks and crannies that a kid could disappear for quite a while without the alarm being raised. Ed saw her through the entrance and made her promise she wouldn’t follow him again. Not that he needed to. On his way home for the second time he was remembering how earlier he’d felt a little sad that she’d dismissed him after two games of checkers - which was unlike her. But what if that had been deliberate?
He was recalling the very determined way she had gone directly to the lounge cupboard and told him look under it. And as he focused on the cupboard, he was piecing together memories of their first days in the house.
Alice had wanted to improve their security the week they moved in. Prudent about safety, she had immediately identified the wood rack as a weak spot. Wood was loaded into the rack through an external metal hatch and collected from the inside by opening a cupboard door. Sure, the outside hatch could be padlocked, but such a lock could easily be removed.
Having emptied the rack, they’d had workers come in to place two, steel joists across the substantial empty cavity, supporting a trunk-sized cupboard that could be accessed from the lounge. Then after installing a large quantity of insulation around the cupboard, they’d had the outside hatch welded shut.
That was the last that Ed had thought of it.
Arriving home, he went to the cover, knelt beside the open door and carefully removed all the jigsaws and board games. He’d done this several times in recent years, turning the house upside down to search for clues about their investments. This time, however, he went a step further, not merely removing the strip of carpet that lined the bottom of the cupboard, but switching on the torch function of his phone and leaning deep inside. There, at the very back, he found a small, brass latch which he flicked. Immediately, the base of the cupboard shuddered loose. Putting his hand on it, he applied pressure this way and that. As soon as he pushed the base away from where he was kneeling, it rolled open.
Just beneath where the steel joists supported the cupboard were revealed rows and rows of shiny, black, fire-resistant carry chests.
Within half an hour he’d established that Donny Legard’s prediction about Alice’s investment asset allocation had been spot on: she had created a portfolio of cash, bonds and even a little gold. One that ensured he’d never have to worry about money again.
The last Friday before Christmas, when Ed arrived at Elysian Fields Café for breakfast, he had a small, gift-wrapped package in his pocket. He enjoyed breakfast, as usual, before Lucia joined him for checkers. She didn’t mention anything about her recent visit home, and nor did he. But when the time came to say their goodbyes, he took out the small box and handed it to her, delighting in the enthusiasm with which she tugged away the ribbon and ripped off the paper, to uncover the box from Crask, the jewellers.
Over the years he had had several modest gifts made by them for Alice, and his commission this time had, once again, been small if somewhat unusual. Choosing one of Alice’s short, silver necklaces, from her jewellery box, he had asked them to affix an item he hoped would bring joy. An idea sparked by Lucia’s enthusiastic and very distinctive reaction when he’d pointed to Monopoly in the games cupboard.
“My lucky hat!” she cried gleefully, opening the box and discovering it inside. She was putting the necklace over her head immediately, looking down to admire her once-cherished talisman. It was the lucky top hat, Alice used to say, that empowered her Monopoly mojo. It was a non-negotiable requirement that whenever they played, she would use the lucky hat.
Pretty soon she’d shown the gift off to her parents. If they thought there was anything odd about the unusual choice, they didn’t say so. Besides in the last-minute festive whirl, they hardly had time to wish each other their ‘Happy Christmases’ and ‘Goodbyes’ before other customers were demanding their attention.
Ed was on his way out the door soon after when he heard Lucia calling. He turned. She was carrying a small pot of poinsettias, wrapped with a gold ribbon and Christmas bow. When he stopped, she held it out to him.
“That’s very sweet of you, my dear!” he said, emotion suddenly surging within him.
“Alice didn’t like poinsettias,” he told her, accepting her gift.
She nodded solemnly before saying, “But you do.”
Most Christmases he used to visit Alice’s grave at the cemetery. On a curved wall in the carefully-tended garden of remembrance were mounted rows and rows of name plates – a small casket of ashes behind each. Not being a religious man, Ed sometimes wondered why he did this. Was it to keep alive a feeling of connection to Alice? In some mysterious way to communicate that he hadn’t forgotten her?
He always came away from such visits with bittersweet emotions, whatever joy he found in his memories more than balanced out by the insoluble riddle of what had become of Alice, with all her vivacity and purpose. The deep underscoring of his own loss of love, and the unavoidable conviction that her death meant that whatever time remained for him would mean a life only half lived.
That Christmas, Ed didn’t visit the remembrance garden. Since the recent, extraordinary revelations he had no doubt about what had become of Alice’s soul, or consciousness, or whatever the accurate term was for it. He certainly felt no need to try to communicate that he hadn’t forgotten her when they played checkers together almost every week. Just as he knew very well that at this moment she was the pampered youngest child of a rambunctious, extended family gathered in El Barrio.
In a curious way, he also found it harder to feel sorry for himself - not that he had ever been a man who had descended too deeply into self-pity. But with his late wife so evidently enjoying her new life, he felt strongly obligated to make the absolute most of whatever time was left to him too.
He had many questions. Things he’d like to have asked Lucia about, but she was only a five-year-old child and it somehow felt improper to burden her with questions she may not be capable of answering. Even if she was capable, could it be right for him to keep returning her to her previous incarnation - if only in her mind - for reasons that were entirely self-serving?
So he sought out his own answers online, quickly finding his way to the work of Dr. Jim Tucker and Dr. Ian Stevenson, both of whom had studied children’s memories of past lives, a phenomenon that turned out to be more commonplace than he had imagined. He learned that there was a window of memory that closed for many such children after about the age of seven years, when they’d mostly forgot whatever had happened to them before.
He also chanced upon Buddhist teachings about beings in the bardo, between one lifetime and the next. In this state of transition, such beings were unencumbered by gross physical bodies and moved wherever their minds took them. Already propelled into whatever realm was to be the framework for their future life – human, animal or other – if they were male, they would be attracted to the female of the species with whom they had a karmic connection, while females were attracted to their fathers-to-be. Ed through of Alice’s friendship with Pablo. The connection could hardly be more obvious.
But there was one particular thing he needed to ask Lucia. It came up so often when he contemplated that most remarkable visit. And there was no other way he could think of having it answered except by asking her. He would have to bide his time until an appropriate moment.
His chance came the following Spring. He had completed his radiotherapy course and been given the all clear, not that the medical profession used such definitive terminology. The oppressive gloom of his diagnosis had been removed. He felt relieved, fortunate, determined to strike out in a fresh direction. But first he must attend to the house and garden, which he’d let go since Alice’s death.
Visiting the nursery section of Elysian Fields, he had loaded up a cart with seedlings, potting mix, new gloves, fertilizer and whatever else he may need in the months ahead. He visited on a Tuesday morning, a quiet time of the week, when he knew he’d have the benefit of being able to quiz Georgina, the garden section manager, who was an expert on all matters horticultural.
Checking out, he was pushing his cart towards the exit when Georgina offered to accompany him home to ensure the plants he’d just bought were placed where they’d thrive. No sooner had he gladly accepted than Lucia showed up and announced that she was tagging along.
Which was how it happened that, half an hour later he left Georgina not merely suggesting placement but digging in a couple of the plants, while he went inside to the kitchen to get coffees for Georgina and him and cordial for Lucia. He’d hoped the little girl might join him, and sure enough she did, studying the room with detailed attention.
He marvelled at the extraordinary closeness he felt to her, based on an unspoken understanding of a kind he had never before experienced. They had never discussed her previous visit, but their exceptional connection made him relish every instant they were together.
Squatting down to her eye level, he finally had the chance to ask the question which had been on his mind for the past several months.
“Why do you think Alice never told me about the cupboard?” he asked.
A dark intensity came into her eyes, so strong it was as if she wasn’t so much looking at him as through him in search of an answer. After a few moments, she shrugged. “Maybe she thought she still had lots of time.”
He nodded, rising to full height and turning to collect the tray of drinks and cookies. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s take these outside.”
On their way to the garden, Lucia noticed travel brochures lying on the veranda table. One of the covers featured a group of cheerful-looking tourists next to a gleaming riverboat with a magnificent castle high in the background.
“Oh look!” she looked up directly at him with a twinkle. “Imagine who you might meet, Teddy!”
Please feel free to share this story with anyone you feel may enjoy it!
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That last line was perfect. Thanks!
What a delightful tale David, thank you so much for sharing it with us. Sometimes I look at the people and animals in my life and wonder who we were to each other in previous lifetimes, an enjoyable pastime! Wishing you the happiest Christmas and a successful, joyous 2023 🎄