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“What have you gotten for me here, darling girl?” Alex asks her.
Alex –or Mr. Hamilton, as his father presented to her the first time they met, the same day she met her father–is her father’s friend, the dearest and most intimate one as her own dad calls him. Now Alex is also her friend, that's why she calls him Alex and not Mr. Hamilton or Mr. Alex or any other rigid name lacking emotion that could be created. She wishes she had a best friend like Alex, unfortunately Alex cannot be her best friend because it's already her dad’s best friend. Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop her young heart to crave a friend, every time she plays with her doll she can’t ignore the sadness behind the painted eyes of her lonely toy, her father has offered to buy another one to make her company. Frances refuses, she wants the doll to come from another house and to play from the hand of a girl like her.
That's another reason why Alex cannot be her best friend, they have nothing in common. Alex is old and cares about politics, philosophy, and even medicine –just as her father– and while Frances doesn’t dislike medicine, she prefers to gravitate towards poetry and art. She’s a girl, but her father and Alex were both soldiers, they met at the war, Frances doesn’t wish to live a war to meet her friend. Once the physical differences are ignored it’s evident Alex is a man like her father, dreaming the same dreams, suffering from the same pains, cut by the same edge. They share an amount of similarities Frances is continuously discovering, she can see a solemn expression on Alex but her father somehow sees something different, there’s invisible clues only he can detect, almost like a secret language only they are natives. That’s another reason why Alex cannot be her best friend, only her father knows how to comfort him when he’s taken by pains and aches Frances cannot comprehend –pains she isn’t sure she wishes to comprehend, if it means to share the heavy weights Alex carries on his shoulders–.
“Une fleur,” Frances murmurs, practicing her French. Both her father and he know French, but her father insisted Alex is better at it –Alex said his father is as good though– and she wishes to impress him. Alex both eyes and mouth open in a surprised but delighted gesture.
“Une fleur?” He repeats, Frances smiles bigly when realizing his pronunciation sounds the same as hers. His low voice clearly says, “pour moi?”
“Pour toi,” she confirms, rolling the words on her tongue just like he taught her, tipping on her toes to raise the little present to him, like presenting a well-thought offering to a benevolent god. He’s taller than her, not as tall as her father, still they look like raising deities above her, crowned by the sun and framed by clouds. Alex kneels, no longer a god but looking like a friendly beloved.
Alex, as the benevolent friend he’s, accepts the little gift. His happy eyes inspect the petals with adoring irises, spinning the stem between the fingers, the flowers moving as a happy ballerina.
“Merci,” He happily says, leaning to kiss her hair. He hugs her tightly for a second, snatching her breath, she returns the hug. Her smile hides on his green coat, enjoying the warmness of the embrace and the softness of his clothing. She once selfishly wished Alex were her father, she enjoyed too much of his gentle attention and generous affection, a kind of care that her father was once too scared or nervous to provide. When accidentally she revealed that secret fantasy to her father, she feared she’d suffer his anger, instead, he simply said: if you called him dad, you’d make him really happy.
“De rien,” her voice comes out clear and confident, she knows pretty well the pronunciation of that one. However, her mind whispers père, she is not brave enough to pronounce that word.
Pére continues hugging her, Frances rejoices in the tender affection. Slowly, his arms change position and her feet abandon the solid ground, her arms quickly find a firm grip around his neck.
“How did you know this is my favorite type?” Père sweetly says once he’s no longer kneeled, once he stands up, he starts wandering through the garden. At his height Frances can see clearly every flower, when she’s on the ground she cannot gaze at nothing but the green stems. It isn’t enough for her right now, she prefers to dedicate her attention to the cravat in front of her face, father taught her how to tie it, and she uses that knowledge to untie the one between her hands. She does it slowly in case père refuses, he says nothing, he’s perfectly comfortable with holding her close and wandering through the halls made of thorns and green leafs.
“I liked it too,” she admits, ashamed, hiding her hands with the cravat. The little flower was chosen by intuition rather than by logic reasons. She still makes an effort to recall the details of the gift, she plans to search for it to give père frequent gifts.
“It reminds me of a kind I used to eat when I was a child,” père confesses, she raises her gaze from the vaporous cravats, it lays on her lap forgotten, looking like sea foam under the sun.
“How?” She carefully asks, suddenly the whole garden disappears and for her there’s nothing else but père and his voice and his arms holding her. She knows Alex is from some distant place outside America, she imagines it like a tropical paradise, kissed by sunlight where père acquired his freckles, surrounded by vivid nature and colorful vegetation. In spite of her positive image of his motherland father scolded her for inquiring too much about his childhood, he gave her the advice to petition tales about the war or a joyful adventure from his adulthood. The small opportunity to obtain information without his father around is such a rare event she cannot help but to hold her breath in anticipation, praying for père to speak and reveal all his secrets fastly.
Pére holds her firmly with one arm, she rests the head on her chest, where the cravat was before, his other hand appears in her gaze holding the flower.
“You have to get rid from the petals first, then squeeze out the stem and you lick the nectar that remains,” père explains while spinning it between the fingers. Her little hands extend to take the flower, “don’t tear it, I want to preserve it,” père warns and Frances obeys, conscious of her strength to not break the delicate structure. Delicately, she passes the fingertip through the edge of the flower, dissecting its small anatomy on his palm.
“How did it taste?” Frances is surprised, imagining how the smell of flowers translates to a flavor on her tongue.
Père reflects about it, humming before choosing a response: “Like honey,” he finally decides, closing his eyes, as if he could savour it again if he concentrates enough.
Her eyes are open by the amusement, staring at the flower while spinning it between her fingertips, just as pére previously did. It’d be a shame to break a beauty like this, a fruit of nature’s effort and grace. Instead, she prefers to put it on his hair, where the white pearl petals make a lovely contrast with his unpowdered hair. Despite a man, he almost looks like an illustration of nymphs from the book her father got her. Père giggles as she puts it on his hair, over his ear.
“Let me down,” she murmurs before they get out of the garden, lazily tying the cravat around his neck before her feet touch solid ground again. Instantly she approaches the flowers, trying to assemble a bouquet as fast as possible. She doesn’t wish to delay, not when père waits for her to return home.
Once she’s satisfied with the bouquet –despite it’s still covered with dirt– she holds with one hand père's hand and with the other the flowers. The first thing she does once they arrive home is to give him more flowers, he patiently accepts them in his hair.
The second thing she does is to start eating them.
She applies the method père mentioned, petals first, stem them and to suck whatever that remains. She’s seated in the privacy of her room, grinning when finding bitterness instead of honey.
Suddenly she has the sensation she’s being observed, before she can hide the flowers at a safe place the indistinguishable voice of her father arrives to her ears, clear and scandalized.
“Frances!” Fast steps reach her before she can throw her flowers under her bed, “what are you doing?” Distance grows between her and her flowers, two hands raise her while the messy bouquet lies on the floor. Soon the view of broken petals and ripped stems is replaced by familiar blue astonished eyes.
“Nothing,” the guilt in her voice incriminates her.
“Do not eat flowers!” Her father mutters, or that’s why she –rightfully– assumes he says, the words crash with the other possessed by disbelief.
Frances murmurs something under her teeth, more to make her father believe she says something rather than to actually say something. He starts rambling about multiple topics at once: Health, toxins, vegetation, bugs, thorns, how did that occur to you? Generally Frances would be more attentive, but her father talks about so many different areas she cannot understand his message.
In consequence, she’s not allowed into the garden if it isn’t under the attentive gaze of her father. He simply exclaims a threatening Fan! every time her hands attempt to take a flower. It doesn’t stop her from trying to keep a flower in her mouth every time his eyes seem distracted from gazing at pére. Eventually her father gets immersed in some good joke with pére, closing his eyes while laughing, that’s the opportunity Frances was praying for to introduce the pink remains of a flower into her mouth.
“Frances!” She hears père exclaiming. She instantly feels embarrassed, more than when father scolded her. After all, it was père she was trying to imitate. And it was unsuccessful, her bitter grin reveals it.
Father sighs, “Fan, I pray you cease eating those flowers.”
She will, she does not wish both of them scolding her.
And the flowers are too bitter.