The Yellow Daffodil

As an eager young man tells his sister the story of the tragic day he asked for his past-lover's hand in marriage, he leads her across a courtyard to show her his horrific secret.

The Yellow Daffodil

Anthony Gonzalez

 

At that point, the sun was beginning to set. We were walking in the sand along the edge of a long cold river and my heart was racing. It was a very special day; a day I wanted to remember for the rest of my life"but, sister, haven’t I told you this story before?

Tell me again, Jake.

Okay, well, Cam had always wanted to visit the Northwest so I thought that the Cascades would be the perfect place to spend our summer vacation together"and that’s where I wanted to ask her to marry me. That’s exactly what I wanted.

The sun, which was at our backs, was setting just above the horizon so that in the sky were fading layers of red and pink and yellow and, finally, light blue. I was holding her hand as she intently watched the ground on which she walked. She was beautiful, let me tell you. Her chestnut shoulder-length hair was flowing in the calm breeze and her skin"Lord, her skin! If only you could see how her skin glowed in the orange light of the setting sun. She had on her new favorite canary-colored sundress (which was peculiar since I actually thought she hated the color yellow) and the way it rippled as the air caught it reminded me of the little spring in Kauai we went to years ago. The water would lap against our bodies as we would float in each others’ arms until sunset, letting the soft mist falling from the mossy rocks above the spring surround us.

I remember wondering if Cam still thought about those days because, well, I thought about them every day of my life.

I sighed.

It was a sunny morning at the Center, and my sister and I were walking in the grass of the large fenced-in courtyard.  We were watching the others being taught how to ‘safely’ construct a bird feeder and ‘properly’ fill it with bird feed, which was indeed rather tricky and usually ended with a pile of seeds and millet spray scattered at one’s feet. But we passed them because we had somewhere to be; I wanted to show her my secret flower garden which lay hidden behind the large juniper bush at the very far end of the courtyard. In the meantime, my sister urged me to continue, so I did:

Watching Cam that evening and knowing that I would die for her, and that she would do the same for me, gave me some sort of confidence, I suppose, and calmed my nervous heart a little. I remember smiling when she pushed back a lock of her hair from her mouth and tucked it behind her ear. She looked up and threw me a sort of

puzzled look.

I paused for a few seconds, reflecting on the sweet memory.

What did you tell her?

I said, ‘Cam, you are beautiful. You always make me so happy; I never imagined I’d feel so complete. When you came into my life, I was shattered. Nothing felt real and, honestly, nothing mattered to me. And then you changed everything.’

And what did she say to that?

‘I know, you tell me all the time.’

That’s all?

That’s all.

Then what?

I remember us walking for a few more minutes when suddenly we came across hundreds and hundreds of little pink heart-shaped shells strewn throughout a long length of sand ahead of us. As we continued, I remember Cam seeing a few broken, jagged shells protruding from the ground and kicking them aside. She never stopped treading carefully.

At that point, my sister decided to take a short break. She sat down on a bench and seemed to admire a tiered fountain depicting a beautiful woman with long flowing hair beating a rather beastly woman with a hammer. I cringed upon approaching the concrete sculpture and quickly turned my head; I always had a particular distaste for the fountain so I instead watched a small group of finches as they flew by overhead. I looked over at my sister. She was once a very beautiful girl: her blue eyes were always alit and she was always smiling. These days, however, her eyes, the bright color having long faded, lay blank and gray and tired and her thin face seemed to give permanent residence to an unwelcoming scowl.

After a few short moments my sister stood up and wrapped her right arm around my left, and we kept walking.

Continue.

Okay, at that point I started reminding Cam about the day I first talked to her.

‘I think about the first time we met all the time. It was at that little costume party during our senior year, remember?’ I was looking up at the slowly darkening sky ahead of us as I recollected the old memory. I reminded her that she dressed up as an Indian queen, but she was quick to correct me:

‘Mohini, and she was a Hindu Goddess.’

I laughed. I told her that, nevertheless, from the very moment I fell in love with her she had been so good to me. I was about to tell her that I couldn’t really ask much more of her, which was obviously untrue since I was about to ask much, much more of her. So instead I just said, ‘I love you.’

I paused again.

What did she say?

She grimaced. She lifted up her foot and underneath was a crushed shell with a few drops of blood on it. I began to take a knee to examine her foot but she recoiled.

‘No. I told you I was fine, Jake,’ she said.

So, I stood back up, brushed the sand off of my knee, and we continued to walk along the edge of the river. She fiddled with her favorite little pearl bracelets as I dug my hands deep into the pockets of my shorts, as if by grasping the small ring box hard enough, I might find some  hidden reserve of confidence that I couldn’t seem to find anywhere within me. My heart continued to pound and pound, but I kept talking to her:

‘I just feel that we have something a lot of couples can only dream about. While everybody else argues and tears each other down, we sort of, well I don’t know, elevate each other.’

Was that when you asked her to marry you?

No, it wasn’t.

Then what happened?

‘Your logic is remarkable,’ she quipped.

I let out a nervous laugh and freed my right hand from my pocket to give her a playful shove.

‘When is the last time we really argued, Cam?’ I asked her, and she couldn’t remember.

‘I don’t know, I don’t really argue with you, Jake,’ she said.

The agreement helped pump a little confidence though my body. I remember thinking that all I had to do was simply tell her exactly how I felt.

So, did you?

Of course I did. I stepped in front of her and spun around to face her. I placed both of my hands on her shoulders, and looked directly into her eyes.

‘Cameron, you are absolutely gorgeous: you always have the biggest and brightest smile on your face, you have the most beautiful pair of eyes I think God Himself has ever crafted, and not to mention you make the most adorable little face when you yawn!’  I said laughing a little. The newfound confidence was beginning to grow. ‘But the extent of your beauty goes so much further than that, Cam: you have the most welcoming personality and the word ‘no’ is almost completely nonexistent in your vocabulary; you’re always the life of the party and when you want something you go out and get it and you don’t let anything"or anyone"get in your way.’

I was staring intently into her eyes, trying my best to gauge her reaction while I spoke; my attempts, however, were futile.

‘Cam, I love you… with all of my heart. The same heart that you mended just when I thought it was beyond any hope for repair. I just want you to be happy.’

As I spoke the final words, there was a splash on the far side of the river. Cameron and I quickly turned our heads toward the sound: there was a man lowering a canoe into the water with one arm while his other gripped an old brass lantern. He had on a black Greek fisherman’s cap, which, against the setting sun, casted a dark shadow over his face. The canoe was painted black and, although this man was fishing alone, could seat two people.

You never told me about that.

I know. I just remembered.

Okay, keep going.

‘We can keep walking if you’d like,’ I suggested looking back at Cameron.

She was still looking at the other side of the river: it seemed that there was a recent wildfire there. Everything on the other side was dead (the trees practically ash) and there was still gray smoke rising from the ground. Eventually, however, she turned and began walking; I strolled quietly next to her for another few minutes.

My heart was beating loudly in my chest and with each passing minute I was growing more and more nervous. She was looking out toward the river while the sun set almost completely below the horizon and most of the bright array of colors were slowly being replaced with darker shades of blue and indigo. We walked slowly in silence until we reached a section of large brown igneous rock jutting upwards out of the ground; the rocks seemed to continue upwards at a slight angle for a couple hundred feet before dropping off, making a low cliff overlooking the remaining length of the river. And that’s when I stopped: something about the rocks and the little cliff looked oddly familiar, as if I had perhaps seen them in a faraway dream. My heart felt as if it were doing somersaults but she began to climb, so I followed reluctantly after.

‘Kind of hurts your feet, right? Maybe we shouldn’t climb on these.’ I said as I avoided stepping on a rather sharp edge of the rock.

‘There’s no way around them,’ she responded.

I told her that we could turn back as I glanced behind me to catch a glimpse of the last fading rays of the setting sun. It was beautiful.

‘No. I don’t want to go back.’

So, I turned around and again proceeded to climb the soft slope of the rocks toward the low cliff. My breathing grew as my heart began to thump in my chest again and the weight of the box burned in my pocket. We kept climbing until we reached the edge of the cliff and, when we got there, I stood and stared at her as she admired the dark skies blanketing the cold river.

I sighed.

Look, we’re here now.

My sister stopped and grabbed my arm; I turned to look at her hard gaze.

That’s when you asked her to marry you.

Yes, it was.

What did she say to you, Jake?

I unclenched my sister’s white knuckles from my elbow, and spoke softly:

Sister, there comes a point where words become unnecessary. I saw her eyes and knew exactly what she was thinking; she needn’t say a word.

A lonely tear crawled down my sister’s pale cheek.

But she did learn something that night, sister, something she hadn’t begun that evening knowing.

What was she thinking, Jake? And"what did she learn?

I wiped the wetness from her face with my thumb and looked into her puzzled eyes.

Eternity is a long damn time, my sister. And it is indeed.

My sister seemed to be only more puzzled. Her eyes seemed to dart around in mine; she was searching for something.

But we were here now, and I wanted to show her my flowers. I slowly backed away from my sister and ushered her around the large bush.

By the time she had wiped her face once more and followed me around the bush, I was already kneeling over my newest flower; it was a yellow daffodil that I had found near the entrance of the courtyard, hiding in the shadow of a large tree.

My sister gasped and brought her hands to her mouth as she saw it.

I had not expected anything else: it was beautiful. Although most of the flowers I had planted before were dying, indeed passing through nature to eternity, my yellow daffodil was going to stand tall and promising. I placed the roots of the flower into a hole I had dug earlier and scooped fresh soil onto them until they were completely covered and the daffodil could stand on its own. I smiled and, still kneeling, I looked up at my sister. She was crying. Tears were rolling down her face and her body was trembling.

Sister, I don’t get it, you don’t like it?

She forced her eyes away from my flower and stared at me.

What did you do, Jake?

I planted a flower, it’s a yellow daffodil. I’ve planted a lot of other flowers actually, but they’re dead now, as you can see.

I glanced at my flower and then back at her. She stared blankly at me while her sobbing slowly subsided. Her face was a clammy mess. Finally, she spoke:

Dear God, brother, is that what you see?

She took a few steps back and, without taking her eyes off of mine, whispered to me. I watched as the whisper got caught in the wind and flew away. She turned around and walked back across the courtyard. She passed the fountain, and the bird feeders, and a group of restless finches who, as she passed, also flew into the sky, chasing the bright sun. I watched, completely still, as she walked slowly away, growing smaller and smaller as if she were merely a fading memory already. Nothing in this world ever remained, I figured; the life of everything around me seemed compelled to flicker away like a candle in the night. I watched her disappear and I looked back at my yellow daffodil and smiled:

Its beauty was everlasting.

Author's Note

I hope readers enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it. I wrote this after being inspired by the short stories of Hemingway, so it requires digging a little deeper in order to discover everything this story has to offer. Enjoy! Note: the lack of quotation marks was intentional.