If Happiness Perry Oei

each blossom or leaf, Mother had written in fancy curlicue script the name of the plant: Meadowsweet and hawthorn, chestnut bloom and nettle

fower. — I can't go on like this, Holly said. Father is never home.

Te world in the window fexed like a sheet of ice as the wind slammed against the house. Te day before had been snow. Today was wind. Te next day would be frost, to be followed by days of snow and rain, then wind, rain, and frost again. — I have to talk with Father when he returns tonight, she said. He's been away for almost two months this time. I can't keep running the fower shop and taking care of the house alone.

Te kettle shot ghosts of steam out of its spout. A week ago, we received a letter in the post from Father saying that he would return tonight. Te letter did not say how long he would stay.

She took the kettle of the stove and unhooked two mugs from the side of the furnace. I placed a bag of black tea into her mug and cocoa powder into mine. She poured hot water over them. — I’ve done everything that has been asked of me, she said.

In the kitchen, sitting by the furnace for warmth, with the black kitten Blackie sleeping on my lap, we sipped from our mugs and ate our breakfast of oatmeal and apples. We then went to search for a tube of glue in the fower shop to repair the detached sole of my boot.

Te night before, Holly had brought in strawberry-scented candles and chrysanthemums from the shop. — I’m nineteen years old now, she said.

We lit a stubby red candle. — I need to leave and start living my own life, she said as we descended the steps to the shop in the front of the house.

Te bare splintery steps creaked under our feet. Te candle fared like a giant ruby in her hands.

Te Flower Shop

Holly held the candle over the tool box as I told her about the ghost in the black tree. Amid hammers, nails, hand rakes, and the pruning shears which Mother had ofen used, we found a tube of glue, bumpy from squeezing. — Father says that there is a ghost who lives in the black oak tree near our house, I told Holly. She haunts our town. People feel a chill whenever

she passes by.

I handed Holly my broken boot. — Father knows every ghost story in this town, she said.

We stood in a dark corner of the shop under the stairs where porcelain vases and ceramic pots lined the wooden shelves. Mother's big picture books on fower arrangement and her botany feld guides were wrapped in brown paper and string in the other back corner of the shop behind cylindrical containers of daisies and carnations. In the front of the shop, an arc of dull grey light slanted in from the overcast sky outside through the glass storefront windows. Specks of dust foated in the ray.

Holly squeezed out a clear string of glue and spread it on the black rubber sole of my boot with the tip of the tube. — Father has been going away for longer and longer periods of time, Holly said. It wasn't right that he missed your birthday.

Mother did not speak to me much. I ofen sat in this shop and watched her arrange bouquets just to be close to her, hoping she would talk to me. When she did speak, sometimes in another language, I did not understand what she was saying. — Please feed the cat this afernoon, Holly said. Ten come help out at the fower shop. I’ll help you with your studies then. With Father away again for so long, I can’t do everything by myself.

Blackie

Blackie the kitten had yellow eyes, and pointy triangular bat ears.

He climbed on my shoulders and perched like a parrot as I looked at Mother’s wildfowers journal. I tilted the book towards the light from the window facing the ocean and brushed my fngers across the face of a page: Crimson snapdragons, white peonies, mock oranges. — Maoh? Blackie asked.

He stalked in a crouch, on the hunt. He climbed the window screen and hung there like a fy. He stood on his hind legs and batted the air at unseen prey.

On my thirteenth birthday, Holly had brought Blackie home in a cardboard box with holes on top, for air. She had baked my favorite, oatmeal raisin cookies, and made apple cider as we celebrated my birthday, the three of us, Holly, Blackie, and me. We had gotten down on our hands and knees under the kitchen table and giggled, playing string and rubber mouse with our new kitten. Tat night, I went to bed holding Blackie in my arms like a stufed animal, but I was so happy with my birthday gif that I

could not sleep and instead lay awake listening to the rain and thunder until morning. — Tuna, fax, string, Blackie said, rubbing his neck and head on the hardwood foor and slithering like a snake.

We heard tapping against the windows. His ears pricked up. — Sparrow, he said as he bolted across the house.

Tis House

Our house, behind the fower shop, was built among the reeds near the black oak tree by an ocean clif. Te fog rolled in through the windows and hung thick in the air, trapping sounds. Sometimes, through the cracks in the walls or through the chimney, or when I opened the door or windows, the wind rushed through the house and shook the sounds free and I heard words and voices from another time.

Te voices were usually faint, but I could hear them if I listened carefully. I could hear her now. — Tere is not enough light, Mother pleaded with Father. I must have more light.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember the words and the night she said them.

Te winter had been coming. Te frst snow furries had whorled outside our house. Mother had begun wearing a heavy black coat in the store while she worked on her fower arrangements. At frst, there were only grey days in between, without rain or wind or snow. Ten it got worse: Blizzards and then the thunderstorms which groaned across the sky. — Frimaire, nivose, pluviose, ventose, pluviose et frimaire encore, she said. I cannot work in this weather.

Mother had eyes which changed colors: blue in grey weather, green in yellow lamplight, brown in white moonlight. Her hair was dark brown with a streak of white on the strands over the right side of her face. — Let's leave this house and this town, she said. It's too cold and dark.

My father’s eyes were brown and his hair was salt and pepper color then.

— You know we can’t, Father said. We have the fower shop. Te children . . . .

Afer Mother lef us, Father’s hair turned completely white and he was never home. I never knew what he did, so busy traveling all the time.

Father once told me that this town by the sea was built over a cemetery and that, when he was young, he had been one of the workers

who dug up the corpses. He told me how the priests came to deconsecrate the soil so that houses and roads could be built.

Souls of the recent dead foated among the living, seeking a glimpse of their loved ones. When they returned to their resting places, they found them to be empty and they were forever separated from their bodies, lef to wander eternity as lost ghosts, cold and alone, forever searching for a home.

Te Letter from Father

A week ago, we received a letter from Father saying that he would return tonight.

I had just helped Holly clean and put new wood into the furnace. She then made me a sandwich for my lunch.

With Blackie on my lap, I sat at the kitchen table working on my mathematics lessons and listening to the rain.

She smiled and fagged the sky-blue envelope in front of me. She took out a single white sheet of paper folded into thirds. She pointed an index fnger at the scribbling in the fnal paragraph. From where I sat I could not read what was written, but I had my own hopes for what it said: Te winter would end. Te clouds would dissolve and the sun and stars reappear.

Bat

Blackie looked like he might be turning into a bat. His eyes were yellow and his ears were hairy and pointy. He slept all day and went out all night.

He hid in squalid crevices among rocks, hollow trees, cracks behind loose bark. He entangled himself in Holly’s long black hair.

He had been sleeping at the door of the house under a grey overcast sky when I came home from my walk along the clifs by the black oak tree.

I was wearing my red parka, beaded by drops of rain, and carried my botany text books. I was happy that Father would be home that night, but the frosty air was difcult to breathe. It felt like there was ice in my lungs. — Blackie, I said, aren’t you cold?

He snapped awake, and nudged at the door with his head as I tried to fnd the right key. When I opened it, he dashed into the kitchen to his bowl by the furnace, hoping for tuna.

Seeing that his bowl was empty, he turned to me. — Old? he said. I’m not old.

Te Ghost

Te Ghost who lived in the black oak tree looked for her lover who took everything away from her: Her small fortune, her body, all the love inside her heart. He drained her of all self-worth and lef her empty and hungry for a soul.

Holly and I saw Father walking up to the door in the snow carrying only a single brown leather suitcase. I ran to the door frst, with Blackie racing alongside me wanting to see what my excitement was all about.

Te Ghost ate everything to regain form: triangles, cones, dodecahedrons, oblong cylinders and cubes. She drank raindrops and sipped at her own tears. But still there was nothing. You could still see through her and her hunger.

Father wore a brown wool coat with buttons missing. His hair was almost as white as the snow, as was the new beard that he had grown since the last time he had been home.

— It's wrong to leave me so cold and alone, the Ghost sang. Already the frost crusts my eyebrows, my bones crack like icicles.

Father patted me on the head, mussing my hair. Holly smiled, hugged him, and said that she had bottles of his favorite brown ale in the ice box.

She retained the shell of her immense beauty.

She had long fowing white hair and grey eyes. She was looking for young men to embrace and kiss her and breathe their essences into her. When they did, she would not let go until she had drained them of their souls and lef them empty ghosts to haunt this hillside like her for all eternity.

I had never seen the Ghost

Te Flower

— Tere, I remembered Mother saying. Do you see it? Just under the moon.

I was six years old then. I had been sitting in the store as she worked on a fower arrangement at night. She was cutting the ends and tearing the leaves of hyacinth stems which had blue, pink, and purple bulbs. Her eyes were unblinking, an intense green. She wore a thick black coat and had four lamps shining on the work table. — Quick, she said suddenly, look outside and you can see the star where the prince and the fower live.

I curled my fngers and joined them at the nails to form a makebelieve set of binoculars which I held up to my eyes, looking out through the glass storefront windows at the thin crescent moon glowing faintly behind a layer of clouds. — I don't see it, Mother, I said.

She said: N'ecoute jamais les feurs.

She never taught us her language of fowers, but I wanted to understand. — I still don't see it, I said. I don't even see any stars. — Mais j'etais trop jeune pour savoir comment l'aimer, she said.

I did not understand what she was saying.

She unlocked and opened the front door, letting a cold wind blow hard through the shop.

I wrapped my arms around myself to keep warm. I snifed from a runny nose because of the chill, but I stayed there in the store with my mother.

She was inserting the hyacinth stems and sprigs of ferns into a wicker basket. Her eyes were hazel now. She unwrapped bunches of trumpetshaped red petunias. She gathered green fronds. She worked furiously, cutting and trimming, tearing and assembling the fowers in her hands like I had never been there at all.

Before the Storm

Outside, sharp icicles hung from the eaves of the house. Te long tubular wind chimes bonged madly in the gusts. Dried leaves cracked against the windows.

Holly lit a candle and we ate our supper with Father: A bitter salad - purple, green, and yellow, looking like a feld - then poached salmon with fennel, with beans and wild rice in earthenware bowls.

— How long can you stay with us? I asked.

Simple words, expressing simple desires, were all he could ache through his chest and throat since he came home. Cold, hunger, fatigue. His lips looked heavy and tight. —Father, there's something I need to discuss with you, Holly said.

In this time of frost and wind, it became increasingly difcult to talk with each passing day. Our teeth clattered. Our skin was dry as tree bark. We were all very cold. — I am nineteen years old, Holly said. I have more responsibilities than I can handle.

I felt a chill ice down the back of my neck. I looked behind me to see from where the wind was blowing in. I heard Mother's voice. — We have to leave this place, Mother said. I can't continue to live here.

Father's brown eyes looked moist and tired. His gaze wandered amongst the lares and penates in the kitchen, at the book shelves, like he was looking for words with which to respond to Holly. — It's too cold and dark, Mother said.

He drank from his pint glass of brown ale. I wanted, when I grew up, to be like Father and drink my stout thick and dark as crude oil with a thin creamy line of foam at the top. — I want to go back to school, Holly said.

He looked down at his bowl of beans and rice, while we waited for him to speak.

Argle-bargle, hubble-bubble, skimble-skamble. — I need some freedom to live my own life, Holly said.

Tere was a time when the skies were royal blue and I looked out over the ocean and saw humpbacks and grey whales foating in the green sea like dark lumber. On clear mornings, I sometimes could see across the ocean to the coast on the other side of the world: pagodas and jade trees, sampans with rice paper sails docked in a bay guarded by sea dragons. On such mornings, the east wind blew the fragrance of ginger gardens to our shores.

From the reeds and jagged clifs outside our house, I once could see purple twilights and heard seals barking at night.

Now it rained through the summer months and, further east, thunder showers fooded the desert acacias and flled the dormant volcano tops with lakes.

Holly pursed her lips and looked at Father with a glaze in her brown eyes.

Outside, the wind chimes had slowed its wild song into a sof melody, but we continued to sit in the kitchen by the furnace and waited, waited for Father to say something, waited for this winter to end and for the sun and stars to reappear.

Tell Me

— Tell me, I said. I want to know what happened.

Blackie yawned as he stretched out long against his front paws on the window sill in the kitchen.

Afer dinner, Holly and Father had gone into the fower shop where Blackie followed. I had stayed upstairs because Holly asked me to. I sat on the top step and watched them as they looked at Mother’s wildfowers journal together and unwrapped some of her picture books of meadows and fowers. — What did they say? I asked.

Blackie looked at me, his eyes yellow. — Maoh? he asked. — Tell me what they talked about, I said.

I scratched his head and he started purring like a motor. — Tell me, I said. Tell me what Father and Holly talked about in the fower shop.

He snapped alert, and glared out the window at a sparrow shooting by through the air. — Tell me, I said.

He closed his eyes and rested his head on his front paws. — Tell me, I said.

He opened his eyes again and looked at me. — Maoh?

Splinter

She stuck the pin into the heel of my hand. — Did I hurt you? Holly asked.

I shook my head no. She picked at the skin with the pin. I gritted my teeth. Te wound had become red and tender around the place where the splinter was lodged. — Please try to understand, Holly said.

Orange clay pots and lacquer and porcelain pastel vases lined the shelves on the walls in the fower shop.

Roses, chrysanthemums, baby's breath. Scent of jasmine and the perfume of magnolias. Under a bare light bulb, Holly held my hand steady with one hand and the pin's direction with the other. — I can't continue to handle all this responsibility, she said. I have a right to live my own life.

She tried to look into my eyes but I looked away. — I'm going to try to talk with Father about it again tomorrow before he leaves, she said.

Te sky was grey outside and the store was silent except for a cold wind that hummed through the chimney in the house and fowed into the store. I shuddered when the wind passed through, and I could hear a conversation between Mother and Father from years ago. — Do you remember that day when we decided to get married? Mother asked. We bought cheese and a sourdough loaf at the market and sat on rocks among the reeds by the oak tree just outside of this house.

I closed my eyes and saw Mother and Father sitting at the side of the clif looking over the grey mists above the jagged rocks where the ocean frothed at the shore. Sand blew into their bottle of red wine.

Holly clamped the tweezers around the arrowhead-shaped splinter in my hand.

From where Mother and Father sat in the reeds, they could see our house with its many bay windows, and its storefront, and decided then that this house was where they wanted to live.

Tey sat together under a blue sky washed with varying thin and thick brush strokes of white clouds. Gannets and storm petrels glided motionless in cross-winds. Seals barked from their rocks ofshore. — We can set up a fower shop in front and live in the back of the house, Mother said.

Holly dipped a cotton ball into alcohol and rubbed it against the dirt in the open wound of my hand. — We will have a wind chime and listen to its music as we drif of into sleep, Mother said as she and Father looked outward over the blue ocean.

At dusk, the bubbles of light formed by the returning fshing trawlers foated on the horizon like frefies.

On the Night She Went Away

On the night she went away, our Mother made us a dinner of roast chicken and carrots, but set the table only for three. She said she was not

hungry and that she was going to the store to work.

We sat at the table by the furnace and ate our dinner in silence. Holly and I looked at each other. She was sixteen years old and I was nine. Her eyes were moist and looked even bigger then. Her hair was tied back in a pony tail.

Outside, the rain smashed in sheets against the house.

When Mother returned, she carried a hard suitcase and a bouquet of dried roses. I remembered that she wore her heavy black coat and black pointy ankle high shoes and a red hat adorned with tares of the feld and a pale primrose. Her eyes that night were azure and her hair was slate. — I am leaving, she said.

Holly and I looked at Father, who looked like words were choking his throat.

His eyes were brown and round. — What are you doing? he said. Please. Te children . . . . — I don't know how long it has been since I have seen sunlight, she said. Tis town has become a tundra. — We're all cold too, Father said. Please. — Tis winter will never end, Mother said walking towards the door.

My father shot up, knocking his chair down behind him and tipping over his plate, food and fork fying to the foor. — Holly, take care of your little brother, Mother said as she walked out and slammed the door shut behind her.

My father ran out afer her into the rain. I looked at Holly. She sat still with her eyes closed.

Argument

From outside, as I stood knee deep in snow, all sound seemed mufed. Te snow made the sky so bright I had to squint to look through the window into the kitchen. Holly was yelling at Father. A moment before, I saw Holly hand over money to him which he put into his brown wool coat pocket without counting.

In tears, she picked up Mother's wildfowers journal, and lifed it up like she was about to throw it at Father, but then it slipped out of her hand on to the foor. He knelt on his hands and knees to unbend the spine, and fatten the splayed pages.

Te snow came down like rocks, hitting me hard.

I could see Blackie, scared, crouched tight under the furnace, his yellow eyes shining in the shadow. Te snow few ferce into my face,