The other day a man came over to my house and the first thing he said when he walked in the door was, “You know what you need is plants.” Let’s ingore the fact that “You know what you need,” is one of my least favorite ways to hear someone start a sentence (unless that someone is a medical professional or my accountant or something like that because then by all means, tell me what I need; that is your job), and get straight into the plant discussion, which unfolded like this:
Me: I guesssss.
Him: You need some green in here.
Me: The thing is when I have plants, I kill them.
Him: There are so many plants you can get that you only have to water every few days or even once a week.
Me: I’m not sure if I can commit to that.
Him: You can’t commit to watering a plant every three days?
Me: I forget to do it.
Him: What about a nice jade plant?
Me: Jade is pretty. But…
Him: You should get a jade plant.
Me: I’ll definitely kill it.
Him: What is wrong with you?
Isn’t it enough that I like to take pictures of pretty plants, and that I might write a story that contains a description of a pretty plant, and that I might even buy a pretty plant for someone else as a present? It’s not like I’m not a fan of nature. It’s not like late at night I run around town and secretly stomp on flowers. I’ll go sit in a goddamn park. I’ll shove my head in a vase full of roses. And sniff.
On Sunday, at our family dinner, my brother-in-law and I talked while he held his newborn son. He asked me why I was still single. As if that were a question I could answer. Because I forget to water the plants?
I inherited one plant from the couple who lived in my apartment before me. They moved out when they split up and I suppose the plant became just another thing they would have to carry from one place to the next. For some reason, it is still – though barely – standing. I’ll forget about it for months but it is apparently one of those plants you can forget about for months. I suppose I could get ten of those plants and line them up in a row along the front of my apartment and when people came into my house they would see them and say to me, “You know what you need is to water those plants.”
Yesterday I went to dinner with an old, dear friend who was visiting town from one of those pesky fly-over states. She is in the process of getting divorced from the man she married in her 20s. She still believes in love, but she also said that she didn’t know anyone who was in a good relationship, married or otherwise. She didn’t know anyone who was in a good relationship.
Once I had a boyfriend and I watered him every day and it didn’t matter because he was hell-bent on withering. So I stopped watering him because I do not believe in being long-suffering. I put us both out of our misery.
The other night, I knew that man was judging me about the plants. And all I wanted to say to him was, “I wouldn’t worry about that. That’s not the thing you have to worry about.”
