Marguerite

Tall red and pink-tipped spears reach for the nothing-at-all blue sky, all washed out with sunshine. The tight wrapped buds of the hollyhocks are too high for us to reach, but Imogen can. You and I wait for her to bring them down. Here behind the flowers, no one can see us. It’s hot. Your mother calls us in to dinner but beckons us first inside, past the bright kitchen doorway on into the dark dining room. We form a small circle behind her as she points to the thermometer on the wall- 112 degrees it says! I stay there trying to see if it will spurt out the top like it does in Popeye, but it won't do it and I've gotta go eat. Well then, goodbye! Us kids didn’t notice the heat. Every day is warm in summer and we were busy in our shady corner. The best thing was the hollyhocks themselves. One of you, maybe you, maybe Imogen, showed me a big red blossom with a dark pink bud threaded at an angle onto its stem. A fairy tale princess! She was beautiful. I was aghast. Picking flowers! I looked around to see where your mother was. But you went right on, picking more flowers, more buds. I finally picked some, too, being careful not to take too many and to stagger the harvest so the gaps wouldn’t show. We admired one another’s flower ladies and when there were three or four for each of us, we had a party and the princesses swirled around in their reddish dresses, riding away to adventures and back again, adjusting headdresses, perhaps even exchanging heads for the occasion. We talked quietly but incessantly among ourselves, making conversation for our charges, inventing plots and actions. There was a stillness and an ongoingness about it like a French film, you know, the ones that have a single cello note played continuously. So began the letter to my dear cousin, Marguerite. She had been recounting stories about our ideal upbringing! As I recalled the scenes of childhood, I was not so sure.