2002-12-09

So, it is Sunday, about five o’clock, and my door buzzer buzzes. I don’t immediately answer it, because A) I didn’t order any food, B) I didn’t invite anyone over, and C) it’s probably someone looking for the Bible study group being held across the hall, and I really don’t want to talk to anyone who’s studying the bible right now. The buzzer buzzes again. I hate this. It is cold and I am tired and cranky and pretty much in a mood that would not incorrectly be described as piss-poor. But I figure, the buzzer isn’t going away, so I may as well get up and tell them to go to hell.

“Hello?” I say, audibly irritated.

“Is this Ms. Sussman?” says the voice four flights away from me. Great. It’s a fuckin’ telemarketer making house calls. Just bloody great. But I’m already up, already conversing, and my name has been referenced, so I may as well play along.

“Yes,” I say. “What is it?” Really, really audibly irritated.

“Oh.”

Of course, I totally feel like shit now, because I’m bein’ all bitchy, and this nice lady is just trying to deliver me flowers. Flowers that are obviously from Harris. Like, so obviously. Who else would be sending me flowers? Who else has done something that warrants such a pathetic expression of traditional remorse? Who ignores me until I’m about to give up, and then just as I’m throwing in the towel, tosses a few crumbs my way? Who else? Nobody else. Just Harris.

So Harris has sent me flowers. What an ass. I’m angry with him because he thinks this will help. He thinks that this will fix things. He thinks that he can leave me sitting at a bar for over an hour without calling just so he can schmooze with his co-workers a little longer, and he can show up and apologize and apologize and apologize, and then the next day, when I write to him to tell him that I give up and cannot be his “friend” anymore, he can just send me some flowers, and all will be right with the world. This is what he thinks. So I’m angry with him and his simplistic little worldview.

I’m also a little angry because, much as I hate to admit it, it’d probably work.

“I have my daughter with me. Can I send her up?”

So I buzz the flowers up, open my door, and wait. As I wait, I am cursing his name, but I have that dippy little girl feeling that one gets when one is sent flowers. Well, I get it, anyway. I want to be a person who says ‘no, don’t ever get me roses, they’re so cliché,' but y’know what? I still like ‘em. I’m just not transgressive enough to care about originality where flowers are concerned. I mean, c’mon, I grew up on “when a man you've never met before suddenly gives you flowers, that’s Impulse” commercials. That stuff sticks with you a long time.

After a few minutes, a little girl, about ten, shows up with a bouquet of pink roses and a big card. I thank her and she scurries away. My first thought is, “Pink? Pink roses? Friendship?! Fuck you.” My second thought is, “That’s a pretty big card. That’s not your usual 2x3 florist card that they stick in the flowers.”

I’m tentative about opening the card, because I don’t want to know what he has to say. I mean, of course I do, but either it’s going to be a “goodbye forever” sentiment, which will break my heart (again), or it will be some bullshit that lures me into seeing him again, and no good can ever, ever, ever come of that. I have learned this time and time again. Not that it does a damn bit of good for me to have learned it, apparently, but still.

I open the card. It is a Christmas card. A big tacky Christmas card. And I was wrong. The flowers are not from Harris. They are from a little girl, probably the one who just ran away, who wrote a letter to Santa last year, which I answered and sent her a toy kitchen set (I didn’t want to buy into the “chicks an’ kitchens” stereotype, but it’s what she asked for). The card thanks me for the present and wishes me a happy and healthy holiday season.

Sweet, right?

Really pretty heartwarming.

Yeah, well, I burst into motherfuckin’ tears because the flowers are not from Harris, of course they’re not from Harris, only an insane, delusional, love-starved halfwit from the planet Moron would assume they were from Harris. And I hate him all over again for not sending them. God forbid he send them. Forget, for the moment, that I told him I couldn’t see him, talk to him, email him ever again. Forget that I want him to leave me alone. I mean, of course I don’t really want him to leave me alone. Forget that I’m really much better off with him gone daddy gone, I mean, freakishly and uncompromisingly better off. The thing that really got me was thinking how, when this happened before, lo those many years ago, when he let me sit around my apartment for three hours waiting for him, he showed up with a $2.99 bunch of half-dead flowers. That’s exactly how much I was worth to him. And this poor family from East Harlem, who doesn’t know me at all, who could clearly use the money for something they need, like new socks, or a couple of pineapples, has sent me a really beautiful bouquet of roses. Just to say thank you.

I am so tired of crying over him, you have no idea.

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