Greenhouse of Confusion

The spring lupine was blue.

Terri knew that much.

Or perhaps it was purple. The color seemed to change as she looked at it, deepening in the shadows, becoming almost silver where the sunlight touched its petals. She stood beside the flower bed, staring at the blossoms, trying to understand what she was seeing.

Something about them was familiar.

She had been admiring them.

She thought she had.

There had been a moment when the flowers made sense, when she knew their name and remembered planting them. She had been kneeling in the soil, pressing it gently around their roots. Her fingers had been working, moving, doing something important.

Then the moment broke.

Now she was standing with her hand held out in front of her face.

She stared at it.

The fingers were strange.

Five long, wrinkled things, ending in pale, curved nails. Dark soil was packed beneath them. A thin brown root lay across her palm.

She turned her hand over.

The lines in her skin looked like roads on an old map, crossing and disappearing into one another. She tried to follow them, but they led nowhere. She rubbed her thumb against her fingertips. The soil felt gritty, almost like sand. She could feel it, but she could not understand why it was there.

Was it dirt?

Was it something she had spilled?

Had she hurt herself?

She looked at the garden tool lying near her feet. It was a small metal trowel, its wooden handle worn smooth by years of use. She stared at it as though it had been left there by a stranger.

What was it for?

The wind moved through the garden.

The sound of the pine trees came first, a low rushing noise like distant water. Then came the sharp chatter of birds, though she could not locate them. Somewhere a branch scraped against the roof. A car passed on the road below the mountain, its engine swelling and fading, but Terri could not tell whether it was approaching or moving away.

Every sound seemed to belong to something happening somewhere else.

She looked toward the house.

The windows flashed white with sunlight. For a moment, they looked like openings into another place. She thought she saw someone standing behind the glass.

A woman.

Perhaps herself.

She blinked.

The figure disappeared, leaving only the reflection of the trees.

A smell reached her.

Damp earth. Leaves. Something sweet and floral, almost like perfume. Beneath it was another smell she could not identify, something faintly sour and metallic. She breathed in again, trying to separate them.

The scents seemed to carry memories, but the memories would not arrive.

A kitchen.

A childhood bedroom.

Someone calling her name.

The smell of wet coats hanging near a door.

Then nothing.

She felt a sudden urgency to leave.

But leave for where?

She turned around.

The garden path seemed longer than she remembered. The stones were uneven, half buried beneath the grass. At the far end stood the porch, but it looked oddly distant, as though the house had moved farther away while she was standing there.

She took a step.

The gravel shifted beneath her shoe.

She stopped.

The sensation was unpleasant. She looked down, uncertain whether the ground was moving or whether she was. Her body seemed to belong to her, yet she felt strangely separate from it, as though she were watching someone else standing in the garden.

She lifted her hand again.

The hand followed.

She moved her fingers.

They moved too.

A small, frightened sound escaped her throat.

“Who…”

The word dissolved.

She tried again.

“Who am…”

There was no ending.

She could not find the rest of the question.

The sun moved behind a cloud, and the garden changed. The colors dulled. The flowers seemed to retreat into the shadows. Terri looked at the lupine, but now she could not remember what she had been looking at in the first place.

Were those flowers?

Were they weeds?

Why was she standing outside?

The breeze touched her face, and she flinched. It felt cold, though the morning was warm. She reached toward her cheek, expecting to find something there. Her fingers touched skin, and she drew back in alarm.

For a moment, she did not recognize the face she felt beneath her hand.

She looked toward the darkened window of the house. In its reflection she could see a figure standing in the garden.

An old woman.

Gray hair. Stooped shoulders. A frightened expression.

Terri stared.

The woman stared back.

She raised her hand.

The woman raised hers.

Terri lowered it.

The woman lowered hers.

She wanted to call out, to ask who the stranger was and why she was standing in her garden.

But no words came.

Then the reflection shifted with the wind in the trees, and the stranger broke apart into branches and sky.

Terri stood very still.

The world was becoming a collection of disconnected sensations. The pressure of her shoes against the ground. The dampness of the soil on her fingers. The warmth of sunlight on one cheek and cold air against the other. The distant sound of water moving through a pipe.

Everything was present.

Nothing belonged together.

She could hear the birds but could not find them. She could smell the flowers but could not remember their names. She could see the house but could not understand why it was there.

And somewhere inside this confusion was a woman who had once lived a whole life.

A woman who had loved people.

A woman who had children.

The thought came suddenly, almost violently.

Children.

She knew she had children.

She felt the certainty of it, but it was like knowing there was a town on the other side of a mountain without knowing its name or how to get there.

She tried to picture a face.

A little girl.

A boy.

Someone laughing.

The images flickered and changed. One face became another. A child became an adult. A stranger became someone she might have known.

She reached toward the empty air.

“Come…”

But she could not finish.

The word seemed to frighten her. She looked around, expecting someone to answer.

No one did.

Only the wind.

Only the flowers.

Only the terrible silence between the sounds.

Then she began to cry.

Not loudly. There was no great outburst, no understanding of what had happened. Tears simply appeared and ran down her cheeks. She watched one fall from her chin onto the soil, where it disappeared into the dark earth.

She did not know why she was crying.

Perhaps she had lost someone.

Perhaps she was someone who had been lost.

Perhaps she was waiting for a person who had promised to return.

The possibilities drifted through her mind without settling.

A voice came from the porch.

“Terri?”

She turned sharply.

The voice sounded familiar, but familiarity itself had become confusing. It seemed to come from a great distance, as though someone were calling her from the other side of a valley.

“Terri, are you all right?”

She looked at the person approaching.

A face.

A body.

A voice.

She knew she should know this person.

She searched the face for a clue, studying the eyes, the mouth, the movement of the hands. Something stirred inside her, a small warmth buried beneath the confusion.

But the name would not come.

The person reached for her hand.

Terri looked down at their joined fingers.

For a moment, the warmth was enough.

She did not know who was holding her.

She did not know who she was.

But she did not pull away.

The person gently guided her toward the house, speaking softly, explaining that they would go inside and have some tea.

Tea.

The word floated through her mind.

She liked tea.

She thought she did.

As they walked, Terri looked back at the lupine. Its blue-violet flowers moved in the breeze, bending and rising again.

She wanted to say something about them.

She wanted to tell someone how beautiful they were.

But the thought slipped away before it could become language.

Inside, the house smelled of wood, dust, and something faintly sweet. The light through the windows made pale rectangles on the floor. Terri looked at them as they moved across the room, wondering whether they were windows or doors, whether the brightness belonged inside or outside.

She was led to a chair.

Someone placed a cup in her hands.

The warmth surprised her.

She looked down at the cup, then at the liquid inside. A faint curl of steam rose from its surface.

She watched it disappear.

Perhaps this was what life had become: sensations arriving without explanations, feelings without memories, faces without names.

The world kept offering itself to her.

But the connections were gone.

And somewhere in the dark forest of her mind, Terri stood beneath the trees, listening to the wind, waiting for someone to tell her which way was home.

Outside, the lupine continued blooming.

It did not know her name.

It did not need to.