Houseplants

A Short Story

On the kitchen counter of a quaint, 2nd story apartment occupied by an octogenarian named Edna sat two as yet unremarkable houseplants— one pitiful Venus flytrap that hadn’t caught so much as a gnat, and one overgrown Lily of The Valley whose bell-shaped flowers were looking dry and yellowed at the edges.

After a breakfast of Earl Gray tea and shortbread cookies, most of which ended up on her half-inch thick, transitions bifocals, Edna shuffled over to her plants, picked up a 40 year-old bottle of Windex, unscrewed the sprayer top, and poured out one quart of the blue liquid on the Lily. Almost as an afterthought, she dumped the remaining quart onto the Venus Flytrap.

She replaced the empty Windex bottle next to the water sprayer she had meant to grab; tightened her one curler that held the vast majority of her remaining hair; and shuffled off, completely unaware of her mistake.

Something about that decades-old cleaning solution did not sit right with the plants. Their core temperatures rose starting at their roots and spreading to their leafy extremities. Eventually, the heat gave way to vibrations; mild, earthy gas; and, finally, percolating. After thirty minutes of percolating, the Lily of The Valley and the Venus Flytrap gained the ability of telepathic speech. This is the conversation that followed between them:

“Oh, Venus, I’m looking dreadful, just dreadful. My days are numbered, I tell you. I fear I shall never set my pot upon the Latin Quarter again, shall never cast a shadow near Paris ever ever—“

“Can you get your sundamn leaves out of my light? I’m not going to catch anything but crown rot if you insist on hogging all the space,” Venus said. It reached its squatty appendages toward the light, but the Lily’s leaves were too thick and caught nearly every ray of sun.

“Look at these sagging bells, Venus. Did my leafs used to be perkier? Am I wrinklier than before? Tell it true, old friend. And don’t take the light’s name in vain, Venus. It’s crass.”

“It’s pronounced leaves. Just because you have a fake southern accent—”

“It’s French—“

“—doesn’t mean you sound high society. Do you hear any flies? Budge up. Move over. C’mon!”

“Hear? I can’t hear anything but you. Oh! How strange. One goes one’s whole life without hearing anything and suddenly you’re in my head. It’s almost disappointing. One would think that one with so many mouths would have something more interesting to say.”

“Maybe if I wasn’t starving to death, I could be a more entertaining conversation partner.”

“One does wish one was in the company of polite society. Why, in Paris—”

“—You grew up at a Walmart.”

“I most certainly did not. I’m from the gardens of Versailles, why King Louis XIV himself simply loved our bell-shaped—”

“Can you believe Edna wasn’t even gonna water me? And here you are getting so fat—”

“I am not fat.”

“—that it’s almost embarrassing when visitors come over and she’s starving me to death,” Venus complained, closing one of its traps on a dust mote.

“Why that’s not true at all. Just last week, she fed you some candy. Isn’t that right?” Lily asked. She didn’t know how she knew that. She just remembered. “I’ve never had candy.”

“That’s not what happened at all.”

“Why yes it is. I remember.”

“Nooo. She was sucking on a butterscotch and drooled into one of my traps. Ick. Disgusting.”

“Oh,” said Lily. “Maybe the sugar will attract flies? A gesture of love after all?”

Venus harrumphed.

Lily cast about for something nice to say. “You know, if you want my honest opinion, I think she likes us both. Well maybe she likes one of us just an eensy weensy bit more than the other but...”

Venus snorted, but remained otherwise silent.

“What?” Lily asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Venus said. But said it in the infuriatingly superior way of one who definitely knows something.

“Out with it or I’ll block more sun,” Lily said, wiggling its leaves.

“Fine. I’ll tell you. But don’t freak out,” Venus said.

“I don’t freak out.”

“Right. So it’s like this: I heard that Edna never wanted plants in the first place,” Venus whispered.

“Never wanted plants?” Lily asked in a tone of voice that suggested that was madness.

“No. She wanted a dog.”

“A dog?”

“A dog,” Venus confirmed. “And not just any dog. Not a disappointing little thing like a Pomeranian. She wanted a big dog—

“Like…how big?” Lily asked.

“Like Rottweiler or German Shepherd big.”

Lily gasped. “But dogs pee on plants,” Lily said. “And big dogs can pee on…big plants.”

“Yeah well her kids didn’t think she could handle a pet, so they bought her some plants instead. Said if she could keep ‘em alive for a year, she could have a dog.”

“You can’t mean that—those plants you speak of are… “

“Yep, us.”

Lily was struggling to absorb this information. It was like sucking up forty year-old Windex all over again. Venus was enjoying the distress it caused. “Well, now I’m sure she likes you better,” Lily finally said.

“What? How do you figure?” Venus asked, its traps perking up in Lily’s direction

“Well she wanted a dog. Dogs have mouths. You have mouths. You’re much closer to a dog than I am,” Lily said.

“You sustain me with your backhanded compliments,” grumbled Venus, turning its traps back toward the window.

“Mmm. I remember once in this hip little artsy district of Le Marais—you know, in Paris—there was this horrible little papillon—

“Hey! Stop that!” Venus shouted.

“Excuse me? But what?” Lily asked.

“You’re really blocking my light now. It’s all shade. Are you slouching again?”

“I can assure you that’s not me. I have an elegant habit, a regal—oh dear. I feel the darkness too. Do you suppose it’s a cloud?”

The plants perked up toward where the sun ought to have been, reaching out their leaves, stems, etc etc. But still nothing. Then they sensed chemicals on the air. Gold Bond and Chanel No 5. How they knew those names, they were not certain. Something to do with their recent encounter with Windex.

“Edna, dear, is that you?” Lily asked apprehensively.

“For the love of Miracle Grow, please do not douse me in any more of that drink,” Venus begged.

And then Lily felt something cold on one of its very most treasured of leafs. And SNIP! Lily screamed.

“What? What’s happening? What is it?” Venus asked.

“She’s clipping me. Oh my, OH—Sun of a ditch! It’s horrible. The cuts aren’t clean. She’s pulling my cellulose apart at the seams. Oh, Venus, I do declare I’m dying, DYING, I say!”

Edna, as it happened, was not using proper trimmers, but a pair of plastic scissors the grandchildren had left behind. They didn’t cut so much as they squished.

Though Venus had only properly known Lily for ten minutes verbally and maybe four months as a neighbor hogging all the window sun, it sprang to action and bit Edna with three of its mouths.

“Did you ever love us?” Venus cried. “You’re hurting Lily. King Louis himself—”

“It’s pronounced Louis, dear!”

“—loved those leaves and stupid shaped flowers!” Venus shouted. “Who are you to clip them off? Leave Lily alone! Arrrg!”

And then Edna was squishing off the offending mouths with the plastic scissors and then Venus was screaming while Lily was batting Edna with its many bell flowers.

“I broke a petal!” Lily was sobbing. “I’ve broken so many petals!”

There was batting and swishing and biting and telepathic shouting. White petals showered the kitchen counter. Edna’s glasses slipped down the edge of her nose and clattered to the floor, but she was too occupied to retrieve them.

“Have some of that! And that!” Edna’s quavery shouts fell on deaf plants, as she wielded the tiny pair of scissors like a rapier. “Stop it or I’ll toss you! Oh dear! Oh dear!”

The scissors slipped from Edna’s hand and fell. She couldn’t locate them without her glasses, so she scooped up the plants into her arms, leaning them against her body for support. The Venus Flytrap bit her sagging boob beneath her nightgown. She yelped. “Never again! Never again! They said you’d be easier than a dog! Oomph!” She shoved them up, up, up onto the windowsill and pushed as hard as she could.

And then the plants were flying, soaring through the air, the wind in their petioles, the warm sunshine bathing their buds and then CRASH! They splatted on the ground, pots shattering in the parking lot of the apartment complex.

“Hey, Lily?” Venus asked.

“Yes, Venus?” Lily replied.

“I don’t think we’re houseplants anymore.”

The end