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Lilac Wood
Regrets lurk like spiders in everyday objects. Tonight I found one in some lilac wood.
After my marriage disintegrated a few years ago I rented an apartment that was originally the main floor of a Victorian house on a hill overlooking Manitou Springs. One of the selling points was the elegant little fireplace to ward off the chill of the Colorado winters, which seems to settle in my joints now after years of landscaping. I soon discovered, though, that the fireplace was actually an old coal grate from which some previous tenant had stolen the icing-glass front. It works well enough, but it is too narrow for regular firewood, so I’m always on the lookout for easily cut branches and small trees that I can store in boxes in my basement.
It was when I went for a full box a few minutes ago that I saw the lilac wood and in an instant the last year and a half faded away.
Amy and I watched a lunar eclipse on a warm May night a year and a half ago. Amy was too fine to be too good, a blue-eyed blonde, young, vivacious, passionate, as volatile and heady as ether.
After the eclipse, we made love in the growing moonlight, a cool, lilac-scented breeze riffling the gossamer sheers in the bedroom window. Our bodies glided together like dolphins, following the rolling swells effortlessly.
When the moon was full again, the crickets rejoined their tireless refrain, and I lay tucking Amy’s honey-blonde hair behind the shell of her ear, running my finger softly along the rim.
She took a deep breath and sighed contentedly. “The lilacs are heavenly,” she said.
“Heaven should be so lucky.” I closed my eyes and savored the sweet perfume. “I especially like these old-fashioned ones.”
“Old-fashioned?” she asked, turning her head to look at me. “I didn’t know there was a difference.”
“People usually plant hybrids now for their larger flowers, but the colors don’t seem as intense.”
“Do they have the same fragrance?”
“I don’t think so, but I’m not sure anyone else could tell the difference.” I stroked the fine hair on the nape of her neck. “Actually, the scent is probably just as sweet, but to me it doesn’t seem as subtle or sophisticated.”
She scratched the heel of her hand on the grizzled stubble on my chin. “You know, Mark, you’re as old-fashioned as those lilacs.”
“I’m as old as those lilacs,” I said jokingly.
She rolled onto her stomach and gazed out the window at the bushes in the skim-milk moonlight, the still flowers ghostly pale. “Those really are old, aren’t they?”
“Thanks a heap.”
“No, I’m serious. Look. They have regular trunks on them.”
What few stems remained were woody and thick, six or eight inches through at the base.
“It’s a wonder anything can live so long,” I said wryly, still stung by her earlier remark. “But aren’t they incredible? I’ve never seen lilac stems that big before either. It seems strange to see such delicate curved leaves and fragile flowers on those big old gnarled trunks.”
“How old do you think they are?”
“I’ll bet they were planted when the house was built at the turn of the century. Maybe the folks who had it built brought the lilacs with them as shoots when they moved out here from Chicago or St. Louis or wherever.”
“What do you think they were like?”
“The plants or the people?”
“The people, you ninny.”
“It’s a pretty good-sized house. Three full apartments now. They must have been doing all right. Maybe he was a banker, or a professor at the college.”
“I vote for the professor,” she said arbitrarily. “And his wife was a poet, and she cut big sprays of the lilacs and put them in a crystal vase, and the kids gave her a headache.”
“The little demons.”
“How long do you think they lived here?”
“I heard they lived here into their nineties. Maybe they died in this very room with the scent of the lilacs the last thing they knew.”
She mulled this over. “All those years, and these same flowers have been blooming like this every spring.”
“No, every spring the flowers have been different, probably with slightly different fragrances each time. It’s that tough old wood that’s been here the whole time.”
She looked into my eyes. “You think I’m as temporary as the fragrance, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. Are you more like the blossoms or the wood?”
Her eyes, the color of blue-white diamonds in the moonlight, suddenly shone more brightly. “The only reason the wood is still here is because people liked the flowers every spring. What good is lilac wood? You’d just cut it down if it weren’t for the flowers.”
“The only reason these lilacs bloom every spring is because the wood is strong enough to weather the toughest winters,” I countered.
Her eyes held mine. “How do you feel about me, really?”
Maybe that was the perfect moment for a well placed “I love you,” but I’ve never been one for the gallant gesture, or the stock response, even if it happens to be true.
“I want something that will last,” I said instead.
Her eyes held mine for a few more heartbeats, then she turned away and said, “Nothing lasts forever.”
She turned out to be more like the blossoms. By the time the lilacs set seed that fall, she had become someone else, as people often do, with different interests and different friends, and she left me behind. I’ll get over it. Nothing lasts forever.
One of the main trunks of the lilac broke and fell in a sudden wet snow last April, so I cut it up and boxed it and kept it in my basement through the summer to dry.
It burns well, clean and bright. Neither the wood nor the smoke has the fragrance of the blossoms, but still it fills the room with a fresh, good scent, old-fashioned and subtle.
The End