“Your boy there’s a spitting image of my first husband. When I first met him, I mean. In those days, you got married young. You didn’t wait until you had a million dollars and all your towels matched. And of course people dressed different. He was always wearing a pressed white shirt and a vest and good shoes.”
The old woman cautiously pulled a stick out of her bun and let the hair fall in sections down her back. She set the stick on the table beside her. It was a regular stick from outside; it looked like a twig from the oak tree that was shading this portion of the yard. Kim had no idea if the woman thought Franklin was her son or her brother or what.
“He died young, in his forties. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t give for one more day with that man. I knew the first time he held my hand there’d never be anything else like him, and I was right.”
Franklin walked up close then, carrying the bin and eating a strawberry. He gave the woman a twenty and thanked her, and she tucked the money into the pages of her book.
As they were walking back around to the car, Kim noticed there were flowers in the bin. Daffodils, the same color as Franklin’s shirt. As soon as Franklin found a place for the bin in the back seat, he emerged and presented the bouquet to Kim. He wore a daffy, bright-eyed expression, bowing slightly. Kim looked at him and at the flowers, and took them.
“I thought you might like these because you’re a woman and women enjoy when men buy them flowers. That’s one of those things you can depend on. It’ll never change. It crosses cultures.”
The stems of the daffodils were warm in Kim’s hand, still alive and doing the work they’d been doing before they’d been cut. “What if the man’s mother bought the flowers? Does the woman still enjoy it then?”
Franklin wanted to grin. “I don’t think when a woman gets flowers, she’s supposed to worry about exactly who financed them. Seems like a vulgar thing to worry about. It’s just something simple that both parties can feel good about.”
Kim could remember when Franklin was a toddler, could recall Rita forcing him to be normal, forcing him to eat what the other kids ate and play with balls and stare at cartoons. She couldn’t believe that that little kid was the guy standing in front of her. She couldn’t believe that so much time had passed. He was taking her out for the day, buying her lunch, giving her flowers. His expression was open and artless, without agenda, and maybe that’s what was making Kim feel disarmed. Kim was the adult and should’ve been the one steering the direction of the day. She found herself thanking Franklin for the daffodils, putting her face near them to breathe them in. She found herself trying to remember the last time she’d received flowers. Valentine’s Day a couple years ago — the obligatory roses, probably from the supermarket, picked up at the last minute.
Franklin was driving again. Kim felt dazed, adrift, and she wondered if that was willful. Of course, she’d barely eaten all day. She’d had a few strawberries in the car as they tacked along on nondescript roads that seemed to take them back toward town, but the berries had only made her hungrier.
When Franklin shut the car off, the world seemed inordinately peaceful. They were parked next to someone’s patchy front lawn in a lower-class development. A dog was barking, but not nearby. It was baffling that all the years of her life had led to this spot. This is where she’d arrived. This sensation — of being the prisoner of a strange, serene afternoon — was something she remembered from childhood. It had been a pleasant feeling then. But now she was too free for someone her age. The people who lived in this subdued ward Franklin had driven her to were at work right now, or washing dishes or clipping coupons or reading the Bible. They were married, some of them divorced already. They had families, and the intrigues that came along with families. They had illnesses. They could barely make ends meet. Their kids were hanging out with the wrong crowd or putting on airs.
Franklin was gathering himself to rise from the car when his phone started ringing. It played a muffled snatch of some old Motown song Kim couldn’t place. The phone was in his pants pocket, and Franklin looked down toward his hip with mild interest. Then he went ahead and stood up and closed his door behind him. Kim could still hear the music, repeating itself and then repeating once more. Franklin leaned against the closed window, his posture content, as if they’d pulled off on a scenic overlook in the mountains.
After another moment, as Kim half expected, her phone made its own buzzing signal. A text message. From Rita. She was asking how the museum was. Kim wished she could just not answer, like Franklin. Ignore whatever didn’t suit her at any given moment. But no, she had to say something. She wrote, super crowded — fun though, and hit SEND. And in an instant her phone buzzed again. Rita asking where they were now. Kim looked over toward Franklin, the back of his shirt pressed against the window. His arms were folded on his chest, she could tell. He was gazing at something in the distance, or just staring into space. She typed in, grabbing a bite. battery dying — sorry! She sent the text and then held down the power button on the phone until it shut down. Guilt was present in her, but at this point it was something she understood more than she felt. And part of her resented it, to be honest. Resented Rita and maybe resented the whole idea that someone with as little as Kim had was supposed to feel guilty at all. She slid the phone into her purse and stuffed the purse under her seat. When she opened the car door, fresh air rushed in.
Just like at the old lady’s farm, they walked around the outside of the house instead of knocking on the front door. The house was a pale blue split-level with peeling paint, and there was a low chain-link fence enclosing the backyard. Franklin pulled the gate open and stood aside, beckoning Kim to enter. He said the guy who lived here was on the road, but he didn’t mind people stopping by to look. Kim went into the yard and Franklin followed, reclosing the gate.
This man’s art, Kim saw, was a dozen or so enormous padlocks spread over his property. The bodies of the locks were tin sheds, and the steel loops on top were some kind of light, flexible pipe. Kim and Franklin strolled toward the center of the yard, but the effect was mostly lost once they were in the middle of the locks; you had to see them all at once. The sheds had no doors on them. Franklin said the next step was the guy putting big combination wheels on the front of each one. They walked all the way to the rear of the lot. Kim could still hear that same dog barking in the distance.
Franklin was facing away from the locks, out past the fence, where the land fell into a hollow and grew marshy. “It’s not a museum, but it’s better,” he said. “We’re seeing this before it’s institutionalized.”
Kim could feel the sun on her face, the mild warmth of spring. She closed her eyes for a moment. “It’s pretty great,” she admitted.
“You really think so?” Franklin said. He turned to face her, taking a step closer. “I thought you would like it. It’s one of the coolest things I know of, so I thought you should see it.” He was close enough to Kim that he seemed taller than before, almost towering over her, wielding his enthusiasm.
“You’ll dream about these things,” he said. “Once you get them in your mind, they never leave. I find myself drawing them in school, doodling them, like a compulsion.”
The sun was focusing on them now, coming into its full strength, bringing a rich odor forth from the ground they were standing on.
“This is the reason to envy artists,” Kim said. “Because they get to have these nutty consuming projects going, instead of being consumed with, you know… whatever.”
“When I saw these the first time I thought how I’d like to be locked away for a while. Not like in prison, but totally alone. Not in trouble, just away from everything for a long time. I don’t know how long, but it would be a long time. Have nothing to look at and nothing to listen to. I think that would be really good for me. I could figure out what my business is and mind it.”