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Titanum (unpublished)                 Joachim Frank

 

There was this colossal thing in the paper, this blob – humongous, erectus, giganticus – beyond proportion, beyond all notions of decency. A fleshy monstrous cabbage that opened up to let out a tapered column resembling the Washington monument, a softer version perhaps, pointing to the ceiling of the greenhouse and threatening penetration of the very glass roof it took shelter from. A fearless adult bystander – a woman of average build who smiled into the camera – supplied the scale: the plant easily doubled her size.

Scott stared at the picture in the morning’s newspaper in awe. This flower shaft of Amorpho-phallicus titanum had started shooting up sometime in June, up to six inches per day, to assume its present gargantuan girth, height, and state of turgor by the end of July. As if to prove its fleshiness, its affinity to the animal world, to dogs lifting legs, to bitches in heat, it emitted the authentic smell of cadaver and managed to fool flies, guarantors of its procreation. Glancing through the article, his breakfast cup of coffee in his hand, Scott’s eyes settled on the word Atlanta — the miracle had happened in Atlanta’s Botanical Garden. He felt a pang of excitement.

He had not seen Jennifer for more than a year, since she’d quit her job, packed her things and escaped to a woman friend in Atlanta while Scott was away at a conference. Returning to the apartment they shared, he’d found her letter. “Dear Scott,” her crawly handwriting said, “there’s nothing else to say. Please understand.” Since then, she had signed the lease for a little apartment at the city’s outskirts and taken a job, as he found out from her friends.

 

Scott had been slow understanding but accepted her decision as something that couldn’t be easily changed. Her sudden move followed an acrimonious fight over nothing, at least nothing he could clearly remember. She’d called him macho at one time. Another time she’d called him overwhelming. A small pile of things reminding him of her became part of a shrine: a seashell Jennifer had once given to him, a framed picture showing her eating a cherry, and a picture of himself and Jennifer sailing with their friends, Rebecca and Alex. On the picture Jennifer wore the bikini he’d given her as a present – he was still proud of the fact that he’d been able to pick a piece that she actually liked and that fit her. He felt emptiness inside and spent a good part of his time trying to figure out what he might have done wrong; in what way he could have affected the outcome. He had a sense of having witnessed a cosmic bifurcation –the world in which they might have kids and grow old together was different in many aspects from the world she’d left him in now. That was why the idea of winning her back gained such existential urgency.

He took it as an omen that the plant had chosen her city for its extraordinary performance, which the paper said happened only once in six years, if it happened at all. It was as though his craving for Jennifer, disembodied, had followed her in a different guise. He wondered if she had taken note of the story, which surely had to be big in the city the plant called its home. He imagined parochial headlines such as Atlanta’s Pride, Green Stud Visits Botanic Park, or A Penetrating View. 

Sighing, he pushed the newspaper away and started a shopping list on a junk mail envelope. He had invited his friends over for tonight, keeping up the old habit from the time when he and Jennifer had been still together. But he dreaded the new constellation – two couples minus his own partner – which never failed to aggravate his aloneness. There was always the moment, at the end of such a night, when his friends exchanged glances – time to go now, honey, what do you think? – and left his place emptier than it was before.

 

*   *.  *

 

The doorbell rang. With swift steps Scott was at the door – a little too eager, he thought, as the pace could betray his desperate need for companionship.

“Hey Scott!” came Alex’s booming voice.  The first Scott saw of him was the plaid shirt he always wore. Alex slapped his arm, grinned and walked right past him, to the fridge. Trailing behind him was pretty, diminutive Rebecca, who had to stand on her toes and still could not get anywhere near Scott’ face to greet him.

“So nice to see you,” she said as she pulled him down to her level for a wet kiss. On the mouth. Her mouth tasted like earth; he wondered why he had never noticed it before.

 

“It’s been a while,” Scott said, looking down at her little stature, her small well-sculpted nose, and the projections of her nipples on the contours of her blouse.  Cold out there.  Princess on a pea.  Silly me – equating bra plus blouse with mattress.  Rest of image OK.  No, strike it.  Strike it all.  Rebecca is a friend in the accidental shape of a woman.  Better keep things straight.  Alex was back, beer can in his large hand, as though Scott needed a reminder that his friend was nobody to mess with.  Better forget the taste he’d found on her mouth.

“Been all by yourself?” Alex asked, looking deep into his eyes.  “Go out, for Christ’s sake.  See some people.”

Right.  That’s what friends are for.  Sticking it to you when you’re down already.  He’s right, of course.  But it’s easy for him to talk like that, with a nice diminutive ass as a fall-back position.  Fall-back, my God!  Another contaminating thought.  Cut it out!  These were phrases he’d never used before.  He thought of himself as someone who missed Jennifer’s personality, her wit, but now he had gotten in such a state that she’d become nothing more than a piece of meat!  How low could he sink?

“Easier said than done,” Scott replied, almost mechanically.  “The bar scene?  I hate the bar scene!  With people slumped on stools talking about their miseries.  Or bragging.  Which is worse?  And think about the smoke!”

“I don’t know.  Dancing.  Bowling.  Do something.”  Alex waved his big expansive hands through the air, suggesting some kind of unspecified action, some kind of something.

“She talked about you.  The other day.” Those few words slipped from Rebecca’s innocent lips and touched him like thunder.

“Who?  Jennifer?  Talked about me?” Scott walked up to Rebecca, placed his hands on her shoulders, as if to make sure she wouldn’t change her mind and take off with the rest of the news.  “What exactly did she say?” Jennifer kept an unlisted number, but Rebecca was still one of her confidents.  Knowing how close the two were, Scott had not dared to ask Rebecca for the number, feeling foolish about such a request.

“Nothing much.  She said she was thinking about you, sometimes.”

 

Scott felt a rush of triumph, of wild hope. He thought about the independent life he had in Jennifer’s head, hundreds of miles from here. If she felt different about him now, she was still too proud to call. But she knew he couldn’t reach her either. Or was it that she’d said something to Rebecca to make sure it would reach him? Something appeared in his vision, as though written with golden letters on a wall: if she was sure the message would reach him, the only purpose would be to signal him it was OK to pry the number loose from Rebecca. The more he thought it, the more certainty he felt about this interpretation.

“Rebecca, pretty please,” he said.

“What is it?” She took a step back, wiggling her shoulders out of his grip.

“Rebecca, you know what I want from you. I never told you, but you know it damn well. Her number. Give me her number.”

“Scott, you know that’s impossible. I promised her not to.”

“That was quite a while ago. But now, you see, it’s different. Now she thinks about me.”

Alex came back from somewhere – perhaps he’d been fiddling with the CD player, Scott now remembered, since some tunes had been fading in and out. Alex planted his big frame between his friend and his wife.

“Sorry for interrupting, Scott, but I can’t find my favorite beer in the fridge; can you help?”

He took Scott to the kitchen, leaving Rebecca to nibble on cheese and crackers. He opened the fridge haphazardly. Bending down to Scott, he whispered in his ear:

“I have a practical suggestion,” he said. “Rebecca left her purse in the bathroom. I saw it. I was in there before.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Scott asked.

“Simple. I’ve overheard what you want. You go into the bathroom. Right now. Make use of your resources. Carpe diem – good God, don’t be so dense!”

 

Scott had the impulse to run to the bathroom but caught himself in time to make it a dignified stride. Sure enough, there was a round green leather bag with zipper, right on the counter next to the mirror. He locked the door, then, feeling the beat of his heart, opened the bag, immediately confronted with a nest of chewing gum wrappers, Kleenex, keys, and Tampax – extra slim.  There was a silvery egg of L’egg hose in the color taupe, a telephone card from France, two crumpled dollar bills, and the business card of a lawyer specializing in divorce. It occurred to him that she might remember the precise constellation of these things, which could never be reproduced to the very end of the world: with one of the keys stuck in the Kleenex, the business card trapped between Tampax cardboard tube and the telephone card, suggesting some kind of connection.  But there was no way back, and the complicity of his friend took some of the edge away from his feeling of guilt.  He dug deeper still, now getting to the bottom of the matter, surfing through waves of coins, until he came upon something in the shape of a tiny book.  Feverishly, he angled it out of the coinage, shook out some stray dimes and pennies, then opened it to the letter L, for Lowell.  Jennifer Lowell – there she was, with ten magic numbers scribbled next to her name, and her address.  He looked for a pen – anything to write, goddamn it!  There was nothing in sight.  Finally, he broke a Q-tip in half and traced the number on a piece of toilet paper.  Under an angle – a precise angle he might be able to reproduce – the digits came out faintly.

He emerged from the bathroom with a strained expression on his face, feigning distress from a type of indisposition that forces people to spend long periods of time there, and found himself running straight into Rebecca.

“So?” she said.  “Something is up, looking at you.”

“Nothing,” he said, biting his lips. “I’m fine.” She would look for her purse, find it in the bathroom after looking at all the other obvious places, open it, find its disorder disturbed, then remember him coming out of the bathroom, remember this very moment of shifty-eye contact, and put two’s and two’s together. Jennifer used to be like that. She had this sixth sense, smelled a rat when it was a mile away. Jennifer had a nose for these things.

 

*   *.  *

 

Scott spent two days and two nights in turmoil, resisting the temptation to call her. He had transcribed the number from the ethereal tissue to his address book and, as a backup, left a copy in the drawer of his desk. It was also on a piece of paper on the nightstand next to his phone. The number stared at him day and night. He’d wake up thinking up a conversation, in which he would feign casual interest and a friend’s concern about her life in that alien tropical wilderness, down South. Didn’t we have fun sailing, this kind of thing, staying away from the whiny I miss you sort of lines that came natural in his present state of mind. Thinking about the conversation and the capricious turns it might take made his heart pound and his throat narrow. What was holding him back was the fact that he couldn’t come up with a believable story about how he got her unlisted number. When he finally called, on the evening of the second day, he decided to risk it. She would simply be too surprised to raise the question.

“Hi Jennifer, this is Scott.” He stretched out on his bed, to keep himself relaxed, looking at the ceiling.

“Scott?” There was an uncomfortable silence, perhaps the time to take a deep breath.  “How are you?”

“I’m fine.  I just …  I wanted to hear your voice.” He imagined seeing her face up there, her faint smile, signature of a witty, fast-moving mind that is in the habit of keeping most of her thoughts private.

“My God, I was wondering these days how you are doing.”

“Same here. How are you? Jennifer, it’s been so long.” No, don’t come so close to a whine!

“It’s been good, living like this,” she said. “What’s up?” The phrase caught him off-guard.  It had not been part of any of the conversations he’d rehearsed.

“There’s this conference down there. I’m invited.” Out was the cat.

“You mean here in Atlanta? Oh, Scott, we must get together!” she said in the innocent, matter-of-fact tone of the socialite.

“That’s what I thought, too,” he said, his voice trembling. He told her about the idea to pay a visit to the giant flower, the once-in-a-lifetime chance. Lucky bastard he was: she agreed.

 

*   *.  *

 

The walk through the Botanical Garden was like a rehash of their relationship, back then. She wore the long purple dress he’d seen on her before.  One moment he followed her eagerly to look at a flower, as though intent to prove to her again the presence and intensity of a common interest.  The next moment he strayed away, anxious to grant her the independence she had sought when she’d moved away.  It occurred to him that here was a simile for how they could live together: attached by long, soft rubber strings.

 

“Look over here,” she exclaimed. “These look like actual wheels.”

Gratified, he walked the short distance to join her and follow with his eyes the direction in which she was pointing. Crimson-red pinions, fleshy yellow crankshafts engaging one another, but unmoving on their lush-green pedestals.  Ten of those flowers were sprouting from a purple stem, a cosmic joke jumbling up the God-given order of mineral, plant, animal for cheap effect.  Jennifer looked intently at the little make-belief machines.

“Amazing,” he said, moving his hand to put it on her shoulder. The moment was ill-chosen, as she presently stepped closer to the flowers, a move that made his hand slip down her shoulder blade.  Startled, she turned around and stared reproachfully at his arm. Scott swallowed hard, feeling humiliated by that impersonal glance.

Before, when he’d met her at her apartment, it had been hard to find the right tone, the right balance.  Thinking back to that encounter, the first after a year, he’d mistaken her genuine friendliness for signs of rekindled feelings for him.  Her swift movement, her presence of mind, they had both conspired to make the kiss he’d aimed at her lips land on her cheek.  Now he thought of that first minute as his first defeat.

Presently she called him back again, her voice muffled by the heavy moist air of the greenhouse, by the large leaves of the elephant plant that was between them.

“When I was little,” she said, “I used to make flowers out of red paper and yarn and stick them into my hair. These are the kinds of flowers I had in mind.” She pointed at a branch above her from which a cascade of orange calyces burst forth. “What I’d do is I would wrap my mom’s towel around me for an evening dress and walk around clickety-clonk in her high-heel shoes, with a paper cup for a cocktail glass and my nose high up in the air.”

 

“Don’t move!” he said. Eying her, he gauged to find a vantage point from where one of the orange flowers appeared to sprout directly out of her black hair. She froze into a mocking pose, one of her hands holding a non-existing glass, the other placed on her hip, throwing a fiery flamenco glance at him.  Playing along, he answered her gesture with an exaggerated sigh, the sigh of a suitor whose love is unrequited. She was acting out pictures of his fantasy – what had he done to her to deserve this kind of cruelty?

“Time out!” he said, to release her – and to put an end to it.

Unacknowledged between them was the coming specter of the giant plant. He was worried that its actual presence, once she’d lay eyes on it, might set off in her a defense reaction that would affect her attitude toward him. They had planned the afternoon in the spirit of a good joke, expecting something interesting and bizarre, something whose adolescent innuendo they would be able absorb quite easily. Yet now, coming on the heels of his failed approaches (the one with the shoulder blade, and the one with the kiss before, at her apartment), he feared the sight of the giant thing might make her recoil for good. It might make her feel like the only woman in a bar. He zigzagged along the tropical path, glancing ahead, trying hard not to show any signs of his apprehension.

They wandered through the tropical area twice, seeing no trace of the mother of all plants.  The only area left was a room designated as a display of desert habitat, filled with cacti and other succulent plants.

“Anybody here?” Jennifer shouted, mockingly.  But here, in the dehumidified room, there wasn’t even the sound of water, just hot silent air.

“Forget it, we’re at the wrong place,” Scott said. “They must have built a separate pavilion. Let’s find out.”

“Let’s go back to admission,” she said, cheerfully. A good sport.

Now it felt again like old times: a sense of adventure, a feeling of giddiness. The idea of solving a problem together. Jennifer next to him, in her confident stride.  The sense of getting from here to there. A slice of time spent together, a token toward an entire life.

“Can I help you?” asked the woman cashier, clearly not recognizing them from before.

“The humongous plant? Where is the Pride of Atlanta? We’ve been everywhere.”

Wordlessly, the woman pointed at the announcement right next to the window.  The sign was difficult to overlook: AMORPHO-PHALLICUS TITANUM HAS COLLAPSED.  IT HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE EXHIBIT.

 

Jennifer was the first to crack up. “Has collapsed!” she snorted, pointing at the poster, then doubling up with laughter.

Scott was apologetic: “I dragged you all the way here!”

“Never mind! This is fucking hilarious!”

Scott got into the spirit, chiming in, “The Titanic – sunk! Now Titanum – collapsed!”  The lesson was clear; the lesson was hubris of any kind and shape will not pay.

He felt Jennifer’s hand grabbing his. Hand in hand, like school children, they ran back toward her car. As though celebrating a new form of conjugation, they chanted,

“Titanic? — sunk! Titanum? — collapsed!”

It felt good; it felt like a new clean way to start all over again.

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