Mr. Grindy's peonies

I wanted them--and, briefly, they were mine. But how could I hide them?

Just starting to droop

The peonies in our back yard are at peak, or maybe slightly past peak, just starting to droop and shed their petals. The bouquet I picked a few days ago in advance of the hailstorm that never happened is spent, the fallen petals scattered across the tabletop. Even collapsed, the flowers smell sweet.

I planted the peonies years ago, but they never had enough sun; every year their red tips would emerge from the soil, grow tall and green, put out buds—and then stop. They never bloomed.

Year after year I threatened to dig them out and give them away, and one year I went so far as to offer them on the neighborhood “buy nothing” Facebook page, but when the time came to give them away, I couldn’t do it. “I’ll give them one more chance,” I said to Doug.

Two or three years ago, we decided that the huge Norway maple in our front yard had to come down. Despite regular trimming, it had been shedding heavy branches and since it leaned toward our neighbors’ house I feared that one day it would fall and crush them while they slept. The neighbors loved the shade that the tree gave them, but they were not willing to die for it. So we hired a guy, and down it came. And suddenly our yard was suffused with sun.

I had had no idea how far that tree cast its shade—the peonies are in the back yard, the maple was on the edge of the front yard, but that spring, the peonies finally bloomed.

The roses are very happy in the side yard, over by the hose.

The sun made a huge difference all over the yard. The roses thrived like never before. The snowberry bushes put out lovely pink and white berries and no longer grew weird and leggy. The lungwort melted in the heat and had to be transplanted to a shadier spot. And the peonies bloomed and bloomed.

For two weeks in the spring, I had all the peonies I wanted. But yesterday, looking at the fallen petals from the bouquet suddenly brought me back with a jolt to one summer of my youth.

Those petals on the tabletop brought me back to my childhood

The father of the family who lived next door to us grew peonies in his front yard; the plants started by his porch and marched in a row down the edge of the yard almost to the street. The flowers were huge, pink and magenta and white, and for those two weeks when they were blossoming they smelled exquisite.

Mr. Grindy’s prize-winning peonies.

I coveted them. It wasn’t enough to admire the flowers from afar; I needed them for myself in a way I couldn’t explain. To possess such beauty!

The peonies bordered the yard on the Grindys’ other side—the yard of the Lemon family. The oldest daughter was my friend, and she, too, coveted the peonies. She persuaded me that the blossoms that hung on her family’s side of the row actually belonged to her family. Those peonies, she said, were theirs and they could do with them what they wanted.

This sounded right to me, in a way, but it also sounded somehow wrong. But we were both overcome with avarice; the peonies were so big and so glowing and so fragrant. So one June afternoon we sneaked into the yard and picked every bloom off the Lemon side of the plants.

Our arms were filled with blossoms, heavy, intoxicatingly sweet blossoms that, once we were done, we immediately realized we had had no business separating from the plant. I will never forget that moment, holding more peonies than I could manage, thinking, now what? We needed to hide what we had done. But how? Where? We could not fill vases and set the flowers around our houses; we would be found out and by then we both were uncomfortably aware that those peonies did not belong to the Lemons.

They belonged to Mr. Grindy.

I had a box--a huge cardboard carton with a fitted lid that contained one of my mother’s fancy dresses from long ago; I used it for playing dress-up. I ran into the house, pelted up the stairs, pulled the dress out of the box, shoved it into the back of the closet, and dragged the box back down the stairs. Mary and I went around the back of the garage and tried to stuff the peonies into the box.

They would not fit. Glowing and huge and rebellious, the flowers pushed the lid right back up again. They refused to hide.

I don’t know which of us came up with the brilliant and terrible idea of shredding the flowers, but it was clear it was the only way we were going to get them in the box. We sat in the gravel of the driveway, shredding those giant vivid blossoms until they were nothing more than sad soggy pink and magenta strips. We crammed the box with petals. And then we put the lid on tight.

“You can keep it,” Mary said, and I knew she was not being generous.

I still remember how logical our solution felt like at the time; we both knew it was terrible to destroy the flowers, but destroying them was the only way to possess them.

We did not think about what that meant.

Of course we were found out, and of course we got into trouble, and of course the minute my mother told me that the peonies were Mr. Grindy’s, and not the Lemons’, I knew she was right. And when I opened the formal box to show her the flowers, I could not explain those withered, dying petals to her. It looked like wanton destruction, hooliganism, rather than what it was: an act of love.

Nor could I explain any of this to Mr. Grindy, to whom I was made to apologize; his face was confused and baffled, and I knew that this year his flowers would win no prizes, and that it would be my fault.

Last night, in the ferocious storm that brought down a branch of our ash tree, our peonies were pounded nearly into the ground. Shredded, almost. I look at them with sorrow, and I think of Mr. Grindy.