Wallflowers by Eliza Robertson Read Free Book Online Page B

buttermilk pancakes. She climbed out of bed and swallowed a fourth painkiller. Then she tiptoed or floated to the garden shed.
    Now the artichokes loomed above Bea on the ends of their sceptres, two flies humming and bumming around the highest globe. She stood half-hunched beside the plant, its jagged silver-green leaves clawing at her sleeve, at the aquamarine garden loppers in her hand. She angled the loppers at a low-flying artichoke, about level with her nose, and squeezed the handles, but when the blades nipped together, they only pushed the stem away. She grasped the stalk with a fist and pressed the handles together with her hip and other hand. The globe plunked to the grass between her pigeon-toed feet and she nudged it with her heel. It rolled into the dirt bed and stopped short of a mound. Ants streamed back and forth between the mound’s peak and the edge of the grass, and when they reached the choke, they forked into two threads. Anthill removal was another project she and Parker never got around to.
    On the taller stalks the artichokes were just beyond arm’s reach. These were the globes nearest the sun, their scales glutted with yellow light and beginning to yawn. She stabbed the loppers into the lawn, leaned on the handles, and stared at the house. Huck stared back from her bedroom window. She drew her shoulder blades together and raised her chin—embarrassed that she felt embarrassed for getting caught outside. The sky was overcast now. Clouds trapped the heat and the warmth hung boggy and thick around her limbs. She needed a footstool. She leaned more weight into the handles and the point sank deeper in the grass. Huck continued to watch her like he didn’t realize she was staring right back. The shadow from the eaves darkened half his face as his hat might have done, but she fancied she could still make out the green of his eyes. She stepped onto the path, leaving the loppers vertical in the lawn, and padded her feet along the gravel.
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    In an ant colony, sterile wingless females form the proletariat—hired as soldiers or workers depending on the size of their heads. You know you’ve found an anthill if the ground is alive, the dirt sifting beneath your feet. You lie beside them. The ants with oversized heads explore your hips. More follow. They swarm your legs, your feet black with their exoskeletons. You wear ants for pants, thousands of hooks stamping your skin.
    Expect to itch, the nurse said. Before this, you had not shaved since your first year of marriage. Must pick up moisturizer. Must reread chapter three of the Worried Woman’s Guide to a Happy Hysterectomy , “On Shaving.”
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    She couldn’t scratch her crotch because now Huck was below her, spotting. One of his palms shined out, fingers stretched and ready should she tumble from her two-foot footstool. His other hand held his hat, flipped upside down to collect the artichokes. Bea clutched a lopper handle in each of her hands. She arched back and looked sideways at the remaining fruits, sun piercing through the clouds now and blotting out the stems so the globes looked suspended from fishing line like a mobile of the solar system. Around the stool the grass was studded by the chokes decapitated before Huck volunteered his hat. She pressed the fulcrum of the blades against the stalk and clipped. The artichoke plopped to the grass. Bea stepped down and Huck, who thought she was falling, palmed her butt. Her feet stayed pegged to the stool—she wondered if he could feel the extra padding.
    He whipped his hand into his jeans pocket. With eyes pinned to the grass he bobbed his chin to the empty nectar feeder that hung from the eaves.
    â€œThat won’t attract hummers without red,” he said.
    The feeder was a wedding gift, another unused relic. She looked away from it and told him she’d like to go to town.
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    Her cottage dwelt in a pocket of wood between Keremeos and