Chapter Twenty-Five
Chap-ter Twenty-Five
G et-ting over Adam was go-ing to be a lot harder than Dina ex-pected. The fol-low-ing morn-ing, Dina woke up to four text mes-sages from him.
Dina, it’s Adam. can we talk?
please, I re-ally need to talk to you
I know you’re an-gry and I’d like to make it right
Dina, I’m sorry
She turned off her phone and got ready for work.
Tracy took her out to lunch and while they waited in line at the bagel store for their sand-wiches, Dina turned her phone back on. An-other three mes-sages from him, which she deleted with-out read-ing.
“Do you want me to tell him to stop tex-ting you?” Tracy asked.
“I’m just go-ing to ig-nore them. He’ll get tired and stop even-tu-ally.”
“And you’re sure you don’t want to hear what he has to say?”
She lev-eled a glare at Tracy. “Do you have any rea-son why I should?”
“Nope, just check-ing.”
“Then no. And I still need you to tell me how you got him to leave my apart-ment.”
“I just told him that if he wanted his rep-u-ta-tion fixed, get-ting a com-plaint filed with the cops wasn’t the way to do it.”
Dina stared at Tracy for a few sec-onds. She sus-pected there was more to it than that, but she didn’t have the en-ergy to push. And this was Adam. He was al-ways con-cerned about his rep-u-ta-tion. Be-sides, she was tired of fo-cus-ing all her at-ten-tion on him. She wanted a dis-trac-tion.
“I want to go to the movies,” she said af-ter plac-ing her or-der. “Want to go with me?”
“Sure, what are we see-ing? And when? Be-cause I need to make sure Joe is around for the baby.”
“Some-thing funny. I need to be en-ter-tained.”
“Okay,” Tracy said. “I’ll have tuna on a blue-berry bagel,” she said to the guy be-hind the counter. “Look at what’s play-ing and let me know.”
“I can’t be-lieve you or-dered that,” Dina said. “Blue-berry with tuna?”
“Don’t knock it til you try it. It’s re-ally good.”
Dina shud-dered. “No thanks, I’ll leave it to you. And I’ll pick a movie tonight and let you know.”
As they sat down to eat, Dina’s phone buzzed again, and she shut it off.
“You’re sure?” Tracy said, eye-ing the phone.
“He’ll get bored. It’ll pass.”
“Okay. In the mean-time, I should prob-a-bly plan on only us-ing your home phone to reach you, huh?”
Dina laughed. “For the time be-ing.”
The next morn-ing, a pot of basil, tied with a yel-low rib-bon, ar-rived for Dina at the li-brary. She frowned as she pulled the card from the en-ve-lope.
“If it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most of-fend-ing soul.”—Adam
“Mmm, that smells so good,” Tracy said as she walked by. “Where’d you get it?”
“Adam.”
“He sent you basil?” She started to laugh. “So he went from stalk-ing your apart-ment, to tex-ting non-stop, to send-ing you an herb?”
Dina started to gig-gle. “It’s so strange.”
“There has to be a rea-son. Let me think about this one.”
“Trace, there’s a card, too.”
Tracy’s mouth dropped when she read the card. “Did you know he was this odd when you were dat-ing him?”
Dina blinked. “No.”
“Don’t cry, sweetie. Let’s en-joy the game.” Tracy picked up the pot and brought it to her desk.
With-out the over-pow-er-ing scent of basil, Dina was able to breathe again and af-ter a few at-tempts, she fo-cused her thoughts on or-ga-niz-ing the chil-dren’s pro-grams for May. Just when her stom-ach started to rum-ble, Tracy re-turned with the pot.
“I fig-ured it out. He’s ac-tu-ally pretty clever, you know.”
“Do I want to know?”
Tracy put her hand on her shoul-der. “It’s up to you.”
Dina sighed. “Fine, tell me. Why is he send-ing me herbs?”
“Not ‘herbs,’ a spe-cific herb. Flow-ers and herbs and trees all have spe-cific mean-ings. Basil means ‘good wishes.’ Col-ors do too, and yel-low is for apolo-gies. The Shake-speare quote is also an apol-ogy.”
“Yeah, I got that part.”
“He put a lot of ef-fort into this one.”
“Still doesn’t change my mind.” Dina rubbed the yel-low rib-bon be-tween her fin-gers.
“I never said it should. Do you want this or do you want me to keep it?”
“You keep it.” Mem-ory of all the gold flow-ers he’d sent her for her re-union flashed through her mind and she shiv-ered. It had been thought-ful, but over the top. And think-ing of them made her re-mem-ber the dis-as-ter of the re-union.
“Want to grab lunch?” Tracy asked.
“No thanks, I brought my own to-day. Be-sides, I haven’t been fo-cus-ing on work very well and I need to get stuff done. These piles aren’t go-ing away nearly as fast as I’d like.”
“Okay, see you later.”
When she fi-nally left work and re-turned home, there was an-other plant out-side her apart-ment door. This time it was a bou-quet of car-na-tions. Pink ones, tied with a blue bow. She picked them up and di-aled Tracy as she un-locked her door.
“He did it again,” she said with-out even say-ing hello.
“What did he do?”
“Left me a bou-quet of flow-ers out-side my door.”
“Re-ally? What kind? Color? Tell me!”
“You don’t need to sound so ex-cited about it.”
“I’m sorry, Din. I’m putting aside my feel-ings about him and sep-a-rat-ing them from my fas-ci-na-tion with this game he’s play-ing.”
“That’s just it, it’s all a game to him.”
“So have fun with it.”
Dina sighed as she un-wrapped the bou-quet, filled a vase and put the flow-ers in the wa-ter. “They’re pink car-na-tions tied with a blue bow.”
“Is there a card?”
“Oh, I for-got to look. Hold on.” She sifted through the wrap-ping un-til the hard edges of a card dug into the pads of her fin-gers. “Yeah, found it.”
She pulled it out of the en-ve-lope. “This one says, ‘A fool thinks him-self to be wise, but a wise man knows him-self to be a fool.’”
“Oh, As You Like It !” Tracy said. “I love that play! Okay, I’ll re-search the flow-ers and get back to you. Un-less you want to…”
“Nope, all yours.”
“Okay, gotta run, baby’s cry-ing. I’ll call you later.”
Maybe it was the basil, but she had a sud-den de-sire for Ital-ian, so she made her-self pasta with a red sauce for din-ner, along with a salad. She was just fin-ish-ing up when Tracy called her back.
“Car-na-tions mean ‘alas for my poor heart’—kinda dra-matic, don’t you think? Pink means love, ob-vi-ously and blue is the color of trust and peace.”
“Ha! And I don’t mean that in a funny way. He wants me to be-lieve he loves me and that I should trust him? He’s in-sane.”
“But cre-ative, Dina. You have to give him that.”
“Some-how I think you’re silently root-ing for him.”
“No, but I’m mak-ing notes for Joe. He could learn a thing or two from Adam.”
“Care-ful what you wish for, Tracy.”
“I know. And I’m look-ing for-ward to to-mor-row.”
“Oh my god, you think this is go-ing to con-tinue?”
“Of course I do!”
“How long?”
“De-pends on how long it takes for you to talk to him.”
“Oh brother.”
Tracy was cor-rect. For the rest of the week, twice a day, Adam sent Dina bou-quets. On Tues-day, he sent her chamomile with “No legacy is so rich as hon-esty” and white clover with “The course of true love never did run smooth.” Tracy re-searched the mean-ings—chamomile for ‘pa-tience’ and white clover for ‘think of me’—while Dina re-searched how to make chamomile into tea.
On Wednes-day, she re-ceived daf-fodils with a pink bow and “I hold the world but as the world, Gra-tiano; A stage where ev-ery man must play a part, and mine is a sad one.” That night, there was a de-liv-ery of daisies in pink tis-sue pa-per and “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to no one.”
Thurs-day brought ferns and for-get-me-nots—ob-vi-ously he was go-ing through the al-pha-bet, she thought to her-self. The cards were get-ting more dra-matic, too. “Love to faults is al-ways blind, al-ways is to joy in-clined.” She was tempted to send him a text with the rest of the quote: “Law-less, winged, and un-con-fined, and breaks all chains from ev-ery mind” but she didn’t want to en-cour-age him. She al-most choked when she read the sec-ond card, “No legacy is so rich as hon-esty.”
By Fri-day, when he’d sent her holly for hope and white jas-mine for sweet love, she’d had enough. Es-pe-cially when she read the cards, “ Now, God be praised, that to be-liev-ing souls gives light in dark-ness, com-fort in de-spair” and “O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and un-prof-itable seem to me all the uses of this world!” Cre-ativ-ity was one thing, but she was start-ing to think he was mock-ing her.
Later that night, she was sure of it.
“Jake, it’s not work-ing.” Adam paced his apart-ment and ran his hand over the crown of his head. When Dina had re-fused to an-swer his calls or his texts, he’d called Ja-cob in des-per-a-tion and told him ev-ery-thing. His ad-vice had been to woo her. So he’d spent the past week woo-ing her and still she hadn’t called.
“What have you tried?”
Adam filled him in.
“You need to apol-o-gize to her, Adam.”
“I would if she’d talk to me.”
“Then you need to force the is-sue. Un-for-tu-nately, you’ve given her the mes-sage you don’t trust her. That’s hard to over-come. You’ve shown her you want her back, but you need to show her why.”
Adam swal-lowed. “She knows I want her back. What more do I need to do?”
“You need to open your-self to her.” Si-lence stretched across the line. “She’s not your mom, Adam.”
His breath hitched and his stom-ach dropped to his knees. “I know that.”
“Do you? Be-cause it sounds like you pushed her away be-fore she could leave you. And you haven’t done any-thing to con-vince her that was a mis-take.”
“I sent her flow-ers. And herbs. With mean-ings.”
“Which she prob-a-bly un-der-stood be-cause she’s bril-liant. So you’ve ap-pealed to her mind. But you need to ap-peal to her heart, Adam.”
“Her heart? I don’t even know how she feels about me.” He’d told her he loved her, but she’d never re-sponded.
“Then ask her.”
“And what if I don’t like the an-swer?”
“At least you’ll know. Knowl-edge is much bet-ter than fear, Adam. Trust me. And her.”
Adam hung up the phone and con-tin-ued to pace. He didn’t know if he could do that. Trust her? He’d trusted his mother and she’d left him. Ja-cob might say Dina wasn’t like his mother, but how could he be sure? He passed his book-shelf, where a photo sat of his mother, hold-ing his four-year-old self on her lap. They both smiled for the cam-era. He picked it up and ex-am-ined it. The gold frame had in-tri-cate de-signs on it and the swirls some-how re-minded him of Dina’s apart-ment, which was weird, be-cause noth-ing about the apart-ment was sim-i-lar to his mother’s dec-o-rat-ing style. She had loved per-fectly matched an-tiques, or-der-li-ness and calm. Dina’s apart-ment was boho chic, with mis-matched ev-ery-thing that some-how co-or-di-nated and con-veyed warmth.
His mother’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. When Dina smiled, you knew she was happy. Her nose crin-kled, her frizzy hair vi-brated and her eyes shone. Her en-tire body soft-ened.
Had he ever made his mother happy? He as-sumed so. She hadn’t been a bad mother. She just turned into an ab-sen-tee one. But he re-mem-bered them play-ing on the swings, mak-ing bub-ble peo-ple dur-ing his bath time, snug-gling to-gether when she read him a story. He also re-mem-bered try-ing to im-press her so she’d stay longer—she was al-ways hav-ing to go some-where or do some-thing and he would beg for one more story, show her one more amaz-ing rock he’d found or ask for one more hug. But she’d al-ways left soon af-ter.
With Dina, he never had that un-der-ly-ing fear. When he was with her, she showed how much she liked be-ing with him. He never wor-ried about hav-ing to im-press her or beg-ging her to stay. He never won-dered if she’d let him see her again.
Dina and his mother were com-pletely dif-fer-ent peo-ple. And it was time he gave her what she de-served. His trust.