Simple Tips to Help Your Indoor Plants Thrive

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1

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George’s wife of thirty years, Monica, moved the house plants, one-by-one, arranging them in the eastern-facing living room window, passing in front of the TV while George sat on the recliner, as if a plant himself, motionless, taking in the morning light.

 

After relocating the varied philodendrons, and the other, more obscure specimens, Monica returned with a spray bottle and began misting their leaves.

 

“You didn’t come to bed, again, last night,” Monica said, turning towards George, her eyes sincere, her tone concerned. She wore a pink terry cloth bathrobe and custom-fit orthopedic tennis shoes due to her plantar fasciitis. 

 

“Monica, there’s something, there is, but I just don’t know what. But, honey, I promise it’s not you.”

 

Tennis was on. And though he had no interest in the sport whatsoever, George kept his eyes on the neon yellow ball as it pinged back and forth, the players grunting as they slammed at the thing with their rackets.  The crowd, the spectators, strangely quiet. Subdued. 

 

Monica took a few steps towards the kitchen, but stopped just in the threshold. “We don’t talk like we used to.”

 

“I’m just out of words,” George said. “But honey, I promise it’s not you.”

 

“And to think we once had a language all of our own.”

 

The downspout on the west side of their home had become detached from the gutter, and with each and every gust of wind, it scraped across the exterior sandstone wall, a sound like grinding teeth - a manifestation of anxiety in one’s sleep.

 

“There are things you can take, George,” she said softly. “There’s nothing wrong with it at all. Lot's of people take things now.”

 

2

 

“Hello, George. My name is Dr. Jacobs,” said the fresh-faced young man - years younger than George, dressed in striped slacks , European shoes and a white lab coat. 

 

The doctor logged onto the computer and began reviewing George’s medical records.

 

“What kinds of things have they written about me?” George asked, seated on the examination table.

 

“Well, George, I’m more interested in hearing from you. Can you tell me a little bit about why you’ve come in  today?”

 

“My wife thinks there’s something wrong with me,” George said.

 

“I see,” Jacobs said. “And what do you think?”

 

“I’m sixty years old and have worked at the same company for over 40 years. I’ve provided for my wife and two boys. And, I feel like that should count for something,” George said. 

 

“I hear what you’re saying, George,” Jacobs said, readying his stethoscope. “Okay, let's listen to those lungs.”

 

“Take a deep breath for me,” Doctor Jacobs said.

 

On the counter, beside the glass jars of cotton balls and tongue depressors, George noticed an anatomical model of a man, its insides open – a plastic man full of plastic organs.

 

As an anxious and often-panicked child, George had spent many school nights wide-eyed and sleepless; hyper-vigilant, noting every heartbeat, monitoring the rise and fall of his chest.

 

And sometimes, as he became more and more fixated on his air-intake, it would suddenly feel like he had to consciously initiate each breath, as if his body had forgotten how.

 

And how could he go to sleep, unable to trust his own body to breathe?

 

"How’re things looking, doctor?" George asked after Jacobs had pushed on his stomach in different spots, palpated his lymph nodes and looked in his ear, nose and throat.

 

Jacobs looked up from the computer where he’d been typing and clicking.

 

“George, after reviewing your vitals, blood work and given the findings of this routine examination, I want to reassure you that everything looks great. And, while I’m not one to predict the future-- barring anything catastrophic, of course- I’d say you’ve got  a good chance of living to be 100.”

 

George was sixty.

 

George was sixty and tired of himself. 

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How could he possibly go around the sun forty more times? And why should he want to?

 

3

 

When George returned home, he found that his TV was still tuned to ESPN Classic, where another prerecorded tennis match was unfolding on the flat-screen.

 

He stood there, in the living room for a moment:

 

The neon yellow ball going back and forth, like the arm of a metronome, the pendulum of a clock.

 

A single moment, George realized, could be infinitely divided into smaller moments, fractions of fractions, spiraling forever, going deeper as if into an alien fractal. 

 

But if one were to cut and cut, smaller and smaller, her reasoned, you'd be left with little more than a bloody mess. Raw, without shape or form.

 

Looking into the TV, he saw the tennis ball hit the net. And, while the players readied themself for the next serve, there was some sort of delay during which both players suddenly seemed awkward. That ball going back and forth, that was their purpose. And without it, they were just two people standing there, ill-defined, without a narrative, without structure.

 

And, if Jacobs was right, there would be another forty years of this.

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How could such a thing be asked of him?

 

4

 

After calling out for his wife and getting no response, George walked toward the stairs, noticing that all of the plants had been moved to the west end of the house, positioned around the sliding glass door so as to benefit from the evening light.

 

He took one step at a time, floating into the his-and-hers bathroom, an alien consciousness, all of this unfamiliar, flickering and distorted, head full of static.

 

He looked at the mirror.  He looked at himself looking at himself, but as if from a distance, a haze, a pall over everything. 

 

George turned on the hair clippers, and without using a guard, he sheared his hair off, feeling it fall like snow, feeling it like fingertips tracing his shoulders, belly and back. 

 

He worked the clippers back and forth until there was nothing left but stubble.

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And as George looked into the mirror, he felt a bit more organized, as if all of the abstractions and distractions might congeal into something stable, something coherent, if only he'd follow this impulse, this imperative.

 

And so, he took a safety razor and covered his scalp with shaving cream and began to shave away the remaining stubble,  nicking himself here and there, watery-blood spilling down his face and into his mouth, into his eyes.

 

He shaved until he was bald, until there was only skin. He wished he could go even deeper, somehow into the skull.

 

And there, again, consulting the mirror, there was something nagging, something still left to be done.

 

It was a song without harmonic resolution, a feeling of being led to the edge, only to be abandoned. It was the feeling of renouncing everything one believes in, of forsaking a thousand years of tradition. It was close but not enough. It was yearning, a pleading, something he couldn't abandon now.

 

And so, he took the razor to his eye brows, shaving them clean off before sliding the blade down his chest and stomach, hoping to rid himself of it all.

He tried to reach his back, certain that once entirely clean-shaven, once entirely hairless, he might then be able to return to an earlier form.

 

5

 

“Oh my god, George,” Monica said, finding him in the bathroom, the floor littered with clumps of his once full shiny hair.

 

Drops of blood on the counter, on his shoulders, on his face.

 

“What happened?” Monica asked. “Dear God, what happened? What did the doctor tell you?” she asked.

 

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” George said. “He said I’d live to be 100.”

 

“Come here” Monica said, pulling him toward her breast. She held him for a minute, his blood wetting her shirt.

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She didn't know what to say. What could she say?

 

 “Let’s get you cleaned up,” she said softly, turning on the faucet, checking its temperature with her wrist before plugging the tub. 

 

“It’s going to be okay, George,” she said. "I'm here with you."

 

Monica guided him into the tub. The water was embryonic, almost the exact temperature of his skin.

 

If he could only age 40 years in reverse, no - sixty years in reverse.

 

He longed to recede, to shrink in size, to become fetal, then cellular, before becoming nothing at all; he longed to return to the place he’d been before he was born.

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Monica dipped a washcloth in the water, and kneeling at the edge of the tub, she softly dabbed the blood on his face and upper body, wiping it away.

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"What happened George?" she asked softly, her words delicate and inviting; a sincere offering presented, if only to signal her good intentions.

 

“On the way home,” George said, with his eyes closed, “I found myself  behind a municipal garbage truck. And while others passed it, I stayed right behind it for a few stops, watching the men, who cursed and insulted one another in good fun, as they threw bag after bag of trash into the back.”

 

“George, you should’ve called me.”

 

“All throughout Indianapolis, I realized,  everyday, all-day, there are trucks, maybe hundreds of them, just picking up trash, almost like some worker bee, going from flower to flower, going from trash can to trash can. All day long. Can you imagine?”

 

Monica began to dab at the nicks on his scalp.

 

“I should have gone with you today,” Monica said. "I knew I should have. I'm so sorry."

 

“And though we come home to empty cans along the curb," George said, as if speaking from far away, voice prophetic as if this insight had been gleaned in the wake of  some great tragedy, "we forget that our waste, the ugly parts of our life, have to go somewhere.”

 

“Just take a deep breath, for me, George,” Monica said, her voice at once trembling but strong, something robust in the way she spoke to him, a familiar resonance, a comforting tenor, her vocalizations filling his skull like elegant music playing in a messy room.

 

“Why does this bother you, love? Tell me about the trash.”

 

“It’s just that nothing disappears. It can't. No matter what you do, the shit can't disappear. It can only be moved, hidden or buried deep deep down.There’s things we can’t take back, Monica. Things that can’t be undone.”

 

“Look at me,” she said tenderly, putting her fingertips to his cheek, turning his face towards her.

 

“You know, all my plants, George? When I first started with plants, I was terrible. I treated each plant as if they were the same. As if all required similar conditions to grow, to live. But, as the years passed, I've learned to listen to the plants, to give them what they need and not what I think they need."

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George's features were open, shiny and receptive, something timeless and easily understood, like the enteral face of the moon, circling, orbiting, always there.

 

And you know what?" Monica said, "I've found that some plants just need more sunlight than others to thrive.”

 

George nodded, looking into her eyes - they were brighter than he remembered.

 

“Lets get your dried off and get you downstairs. We can take in the evening light together.”

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