Everyday Canvas

No More Roses

"I keep on fallin', In and out of love, With you, Sometimes I love ya, Sometimes you make me blue, Sometimes I feel good , At times I feel used, Lovin you darlin', Makes me so confused..... spin me a tale as in any direction you want."

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“Welcome to Ruby Tuesday’s! My name’s Giselle, and I’ll be your server today!”

Her voice is clear, but the vibrancy in it feels forced. She is barely twenty-two or so, and really cute, slender yet with athletic grace, large gray eyes flecked with gold.

“Hi, Giselle,” I say.

“What would you like to drink?”

We tell her what we want. Then, noting the flower attached over her ear, I add, ”That flower looks good on you. Aster, is it?” She has lovely light brown wavy hair cascading down to her neck.

“Thank you,” she says, blushing. The color of her cheeks matches the flower. “It is because… it is…”

“Something happy, I hope,” my husband says.

“Not really!” She casts furtive glances around, then kneels beside the table. “My boyfriend got engaged today. To someone else. Just to show him I didn’t care, I have this flower in my hair.”

“Oh!” My husband doesn’t know where to look or where to put his hands. He keeps putting his hands on the table, then alternately on his lap. He is like that…uneasy with the intimate details of people. And he is a psychiatrist. Go figure!

“Men!” I remark, stifling a giggle at my husband’s disquiet. “Wouldn’t a rose work better? To make him think like…”

“No,” she cuts me. “Not a rose. Never roses.” She pauses and stares at the notepad in her hand for second or two, then says, “He brought me roses. Once he brought this one purple rose called Illusion, and stuck it into my hair… Illusion…” Her eyes get misty. “I should have known then, shouldn’t I! I mean from the name…”

“So sorry,” I say. “I don’t think you’d have known. No one would. You’re a lovely girl. I am sure someone who will treat you better will show up very soon.”

“Oh, I am planning on finding that someone myself, and immediately.” Her words drift off for a moment, but she regains control. “On purpose. To show him I don’t care.”

Someday my prince will come! The words rise inside my mind from a fairy tale. The boyfriend who double-crossed her wasn’t from a fairy tale, for sure.

“Good,” I say, not knowing what else to say. She isn’t my daughter, after all, though I wish she were. I wish I could tell her that this boyfriend will cease to exist for her soon, but before then, she shouldn’t let herself get messed up while searching for the lover yet to appear. People make grave mistakes that way.

She rises. “I’ll be back with your drinks.”


“You made her talk. You always do that to these girls,” my husband accuses me, after she’s disappeared into the bar area.

He’s right. I do. I don’t know why. Servers always talk to me. Not only them but other people I have never met earlier, even people I meet at the supermarket or the mall. Most of the time, though, it is they who start the conversation.

I shrug. “How could I have known?”

“I guess not,” he smirks. “It’s in you, though...It must be female bonding or something…But you take the cake, you know!”

I guess I take the cake…and everything that goes with it. the roses, and the thorns…the heartaches, the laughter, the joys, the tears…

And I’ll take him, my husband, the one I took, the one who showed up fifty-one years ago with his air of timelessness so I would never be alone, and he let me find out that love doesn’t have anything to do with searching, purpose, or time. It can happen in an instant when it is ready to happen.

And I was strong, too, to hold on long enough for him to find me. I wish I could tell that to Giselle, but probably she wouldn’t listen. Young people have to learn these things on their own. Trial and error!

Giselle brings our drinks. “I’ll be back to take your order in a minute,” she says as she leaves.

“Cheers!” I raise my glass to my husband.