Phenology - A Love Story

by Colleen Sutherland

     When do we know we are in love? For some it is a smack in the center of their being, as instant and painful as a Neanderthal clubbing his true love and dragging her off to a cave. For some it is a growing thing, like the gradual greening of the earth. But for me, it was falling, falling, falling.....

     We met in a used bookstore on a half price day. He was roaming through non-fiction, I was in the romance aisle. The two intersected when we rounded the corners of our stacks heading for the check out with our piles of books. Our books crashed to the floor, meshing into a jumbled heap. We sat down on a nearby soft couch while we sorted through the mess. It was embarrassing how easy it was.

     His were scientific tomes about global warming. Mine were trashy novels. The covers with their half naked, long maned men and bosomy women gave them away.

     I babbled, “Research. I'm doing research for a book I'm writing.”

     “Same here,” he said.

     “Different topic.”

     “Not so different,” he said. I figured he was being polite.

     “No, really,” he said. “I'm a phenologist.”

     “Bumps on the head?”

     “No, that's phrenology. My specialty is phenology.”

     “What's the difference?”

     “I observe the changes in nature and journal them. That's science, not mumbo jumbo. Come out back and I'll show you.”

     Behind the book store was an abandoned railroad line. The grass had overgrown the old steel rails. It was slated to become a trail through the city, he said, but meanwhile it was a chance to observe nature taking over from humans.

     He was a slight fellow, with too long hair and the beginnings of a beard. Unkempt, I thought. Probably unmarried. No woman would let him leave home looking like that.

     It was a warm spring day in a June week that had suddenly showed up in March. The dry grasses tickled my toes through my sandals.

     He pointed down the sides of the embankment to a scummy looking pond.

     “Caltha palustris,” he said. His voice was soft, calm, soothing.

     “What?”

     “Caltha palustris. That's marsh marigold to the non-scientist.”

     Just a few of the gold flowers were open. They would probably be pretty in a few days. He took a notebook and pen from his pocket and jotted a few notes. Then he slid down the bank, picked a blossom and handed it to me. He pointed at a yellow flower.

     “What's that?”

     “Senecio vulgaris ”

     “Senecio vulgaris?”

     “Senecio vulgaris, also known as ragwort. I'm watching the progress of this rail bed. It's amazing how soon nature takes over. It doesn't really belong here, so it's all right to pick it. Oh look!” He pointed at another flower.

     “Taraxacum officinale.”

     “I bet you mean that dandelion.”

     “You're catching on.”

     In less than an hour, I had a bouquet of wildflowers as he added more notes to his journal, but then I looked at my watch. “Have to run,” I said.

     “Wait a minute,” he said. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a card. “You can always find me here,” he said.

    I still had the flowers when I met my friend Sue Marie at the diner.

     “How pretty,” she said. “From an admirer?”

     “I'm not sure. I may have had a romantic morning. Or not.” I looked at the card he had given me. He ran the arboretum at the university. “Oh,” I said. “Probably not.”

     Still, I was curious, so I soon was at the arboretum looking at the displays, and for him. I could see him at his desk at the back, examining something through a microscope.

     “I wondered if you would show up,” he said when he caught sight of me.

     “More flowers?” I asked, looking at his work.

     “Mold.”

     “Yuck.”

     “Not so much, it all serves a purpose: procreation. Say, are you busy tomorrow morning?”

     “A writer's time is her own, so I guess I'm free.”

     “I'm counting cranes for the crane foundation tomorrow and my volunteer backed out. Can you take notes?”

     “That I could handle if there's no Latin involved.”

     “Meet me here at 5:00 am.”

     I gulped. But he wasn't wearing a wedding ring and I hadn't met any interesting men lately.

     March had returned, cold and dreary. Following his instructions I was dressed in a padded winter jacket which covered jeans and pullover which covered long underwear. I only had some old sports shoes, but he found an extra pair of his boots for me, plus some wool socks to fill out the space in the overlarge footwear. I appreciated his thoughtfulness as we slogged through a swamp as the sun rose. We settled down to watch for sandhill cranes. We saw some, but mostly we were listening for their cries. He identified many territorial calls but he said we mostly wanted to listen for gurgling “unison calls”.

     “When we hear those, we know the cranes are mating,” he said. For two hours, I shivered and wrote down the notes as he called his observations. From time to time, we saw the long legged birds fly overhead and I wrote down those. “Look, that one has a band,” he said, and I marked that down as well.

     We met more volunteers, mostly graduate students, back at the arboretum for coffee and sweet rolls. He collected everyone's notes.

     “Well done,” he said. “I'll make a naturalist out of you yet.”

     And that was how our spring went. I would meet him some place where nature was erupting. We filmed frogs copulating, piling on each other, peeping in ecstasy. We guarded six foot long sturgeon thrashing on rocks as they laid their eggs.

     We went to ponds to see the spring migrations, counting the waterfowl. He gave me my own copy of Birds of the Northeast. I started a birding life list and started another list of my own expectations. It was him and me and every fornicating creature. Spring was cropping out all over, life was happening, and he hadn't so much as kissed me.

     I woke one morning to rain and snuggled back under my comforter. I would get up in an hour or two an attack my overdue writing projects, I thought, but the phone rang.

     “Hurry,” he said. “We have to get moving.”

     Yet another adventure. This was getting wearing and going nowhere.

     “I think I'll stay in bed,”

     “No morels for you if you do.”

     Now that was a threat. Morels? The best mushroom in the world! We were soon in another swamp, wading through a stream to get to the exact spot he wanted. Sure enough, morels, and we soon filled two bags, one for him and one for me.

     Morels or no morels, I decided that it was time to pin this man down.

     “Where are we going?”

     “To that spot over there.”

     “No, I mean us. I don't know what my role is here. Am I a student, a volunteer, or are we a couple?”

     “You don't know?”

     “No.”

     “I thought I made my intentions clear.”

    “Then you don't want...I mean, when you first gave me those flowers, I thought it might mean something. Was I wrong?”

     “When a man gives a woman flowers, it means something.”

     “But you've never even approached me. I mean...” Then I got to the point. “What about sex?”

     “I've shown you nothing but sex, but you never seemed interested.”

     “Shown me?”

     “I've shown you flowers, frogs, birds, sturgeon. It was all about sex!”

     I had missed what he meant as cues. “You dolt! How would I know that! I'm not a scientist.”

     “Come here,” he said, and led me over to a tree that had fallen over, with one end resting on another log. He gallantly spread his jacket over the tree.

     “That doesn't look safe.”

     “It'll be fine. It's only been here for a year.”

     I sat beside him. He put his arms around me and kissed me. Then I knew it was going to be sexifying lustful love. It was spring. Time to mate.

     With a crack, the tree collapsed and we ended on our backs in a mucky mix of swamp water, deer excrement and mold.

     I lay there stunned, then he pointed up a nearby tree. “Hey, there's a pileated woodpecker. And look at those clouds. Cumulus.”

     Years later, he insisted to our children that he had planned the whole thing. “It's how I got her to fall for me.”

     He was right.

Cigarette Man Saves the Day

I often wonder how Superman would have made his way in the world if he wasn't bulletproof. What if he didn't have super strength, x-ray vision, or couldn't fly? What if all he could do is turn socks purple? Would he still fight Lex Luthor's world domination schemes, or would he seek out a smaller cause?

“Hey Vic, can I bum a cigarette?” Larry asks.

“It's my last one,” I say. “Besides, aren't you trying to quit?”

“Aw, come on man. This damn patch just ain't cutting it.”

I shrug and open my empty cigarette case, hammered bronze and worn shiny at the edges, like Humphrey Bogart's dad would carry. With a split-second's concentration, I make a cigarette appear in the case, just under the retaining clip. I could have just as easily made the cigarette appear in my hand, between my fingers, or if I were closer, Larry's shirt pocket. I sometimes pass off my pathetic super power as slight-of-hand, but there are fewer questions when I use the case.

Larry's face relaxes as he takes the first drag. “That's the stuff.”

“Is it safe to smoke here?” a voice says.

I turn and see the new graphic artist digging through a purse. Larry introduced her last week, some flower name. Daisy? No, that wasn't it. Rose? We pass every day in the hall, why can't I remember?

“Can you see the building from where you are?” I say.

“Just a bit,” she says.

She seems nice enough, though I wouldn't have pegged her as a smoker. There's something funny about her stomach, like she's pregnant but hiding it. Heather, that's the name.

“Take a couple steps further until you're out of sight. The building manager watches this corner like a buzzard,” I say.

“Like a below-quota cop on the last day of the month,” Larry adds. “Lorena's busted me twice since the new rules came down.”

“The ones from the building owners?” Heather says.

“From Redwood Wellness, 'the provider that's a breath of fresh air.' ”

“That's their slogan?” Heather says.

I shrug.

“We offered our services, but they haven't taken us up on it.”

Larry blows out a smoke cloud and laughs. “How about 'Redwood Wellness, picking up where the gestapo left off.'”

“That bad?”

Heather fishes out a cigarette from the purse and puts it in her mouth, then starts digging back in. I hold out my lighter.

"Thanks," she says.

It's a little thing, but I like to do it. We lost these little gestures with the smoking culture. We used to be civil with each other. You lit a woman's cigarette and discussed the day's issues while she leaned back and enjoyed a smoke. If you liked each other, she would let you invade her personal space again to light a second. Today instead of sophisticated banter we bitch about being outside, huddled in a circle against the wind, sucking on the cancer sticks as fast as we can to get a fix before running back inside.

"Damn, I wish it were summer," Heather says. "The least they could do is let us smoke in our cars."

Larry blows out a cloud and puts on a nasally voice. "The car's on the parking lot and the parking lot is part of the property."

“I'm surprised they allow red meat in the building,” she says.

“Just you wait, that's next,” Larry says.

“Larry here got caught twice smoking in his car. One more strike, and he gets to have a conference with Lorena and Mister Reed himself,”

“Yeah,” Larry says, “in her office. The Old Man hates being summoned.” Larry looks down at Heather's  waist, and he chucks his head. “What's up with the shirt?”

Heather holds her cigarette out with one hand, reminding me of a forties movie star. She glances down at shirt tails peeking out from under her jacket.

“Camouflage. I spilled some coffee this morning and stained my slacks.”

“Oh good,” Larry says. “I thought it was a maternity top or something.”

“It what?”

“It makes you look pregnant,” Larry says.

“Well I'm not, jackass.” Her arm drops, and I figure she's ready to flick the cigarette to the pavement a split second before she clocks Larry.

“Good to know. If anyone tries spreading a rumor, I'll tell them you're clumsy, not knocked up."

He's not the sharpest man I know, but he must sense how close he is to having to go to HR for more sensitivity training because he turns to me.

"Hey Vic, show her the trick.”

“It ain't nothing,” I say. I doubt the world's worst super power can blunt a false pregnancy accusation.

“What's the trick?” Heather says.

“Vic can make a cigarette appear anywhere. He's like Houdini crossed with the Marlboro Man.”

“Houdini?” she says.

“Just go with it,” I say, “Last time he said I was Siegfried and Roy.”

To my amazement, she laughs. In that case, why the hell not show her? I hold my arms toward her palms out.

“Now hold your hands out like this.”

Heather hitches the purse over her shoulder and copies me.

“Okay. Nothing in your hands right? Now clasp them together like you're holding a baby bird.”

When she closes her hands together, I put mine a few inches above and below hers. I don't need to, but there's a certain expectation about how magic tricks are done. If you don't do it with a bit of showmanship, you disappoint people. I realize I don't want to disappoint Heather. So I squint a little, as if concentrating, then relax. I snap my fingers.

“Open them."

Heather peels back her top hand and her eyebrows shoot up.

“No fucking way,” she says.

She holds out her hand to Larry, cupping a cigarette.

“I told you,” Larry says. His face clouds for a moment, and he looks at me. “Hey, I thought you said you were out.”

“I did, I was, I am.” I take out my cigarette case and show them it's empty. “Magic.”

Heather holds the cigarette out to me. “That's damned amazing. You should be in Vegas.”

“I'm still trying to saw a lady in half without getting blood all over the floor. You keep it.”

She stares at it, and I can tell she doesn't want it. My cigarettes make the cheap ones look glamorous. I bet she'll say she only smokes name-brands, slims, or menthols.

“Is it organic?” she says.

That was a new one. “Hell if I know.”

“Then you keep it,” she says, “I only smoke organic.”

Damn, and I was beginning to like her too.

“Hey, why aren't you smoking?” Heather says to me.

“Don't feel like it right now.” It's easier to say that than admit I don't smoke.

“Then why are you out here?”

“It beats sitting at a desk, doesn't it?”

"For a little while." She smiles, and I decide not to write her off just yet.

"I gotta get back," she says.

"Yeah, I suppose." I say. "Come on, Larry."

We walk across the parking lot. Larry takes a last drag and hustles after us, tossing the butt next to his car.

As we approach, a thin woman with hair piled on her head in what I think they call a French twist stands in the glass-walled entryway. Lorena Stevens stands with a poise that comes from perfect balance. She's like a yoga instructor in a business suit.

“She's waiting for us. Damn it all.” Larry says.

“Take it easy. No one has tobacco on them right?” I say.

“I thought it just had to be out of sight,” Heather says. She clutches at her purse.

“Technically, you can't bring it on premises, but it's not like they can search you,” Larry says. "I looked it up."

“Just make sure your purse is closed, and you'll be fine.”

As we enter, I see a door open across the entryway, the door leading to Reed and Associates. The Old Man himself barrels through with face like stone, and ears flushed bright red.

“Defcon One,” Larry says, “It's been nice working with you all.”

“Steady, big guy.  She can't have anything on you.”

I hold the door open and let Heather and Larry through. Lorena has already turned toward Mister Reed.

“Charles, how accommodating to come down on such short notice.”

“What's all this about, Lorena?” Mister Reed says.

“I believe one of your employees is in violation of this building's tobacco policy.” She turns. “Isn't that right, Larry?”

Larry looks uncertainly from Lorena to the Old Man. “I -uh- only have two strikes – warnings, that is.”

“Why Larry, I'm confused. Didn't I just see you toss a used cigarette in the parking lot?”

“What? No. I was smoking, sure, but off property.”

“True, but then you brought it on the property as you and your merry band finished up your little smoking break.”

“He ground it out on the pavement, that can't count.” Heather says.

“I'm sorry, but this property's boundaries are quite clearly defined.”

“But the grass on the median strip is all dry.” Heather says. “Would you rather he grind it out there and start a fire?”

“I would rather people not smoke at all." She looks pointedly at Heather's abdomen. “Especially women in your condition. Do you have any idea what that does to a fetus?”

Heather's fists ball up. “I'm not pregnant.”

"Really?" She stares at Heather's waistline, then runs a hand over her own tailored jacket, smoothing a front pocket. "If you say so, dear."

Heather's eyes narrow in a way that would make Clint Eastwood flinch. But before she can lay into Lorena, the Old Man pipes up.

"Is this true, Larry?" he says. "Did I get called out of my office because you can't follow the rules?"

Larry's head swivels between the Old Man's and Lorena. "Well maybe, Mister Reed, but come on, this is over the top, even for a crazy policy like this. Isn't it? For some reason, she has it in for me."

“I don't find the policies so onerous, Larry. I had some hand in their drafting, and I assure you they apply equally to everyone.”

I get an idea.

"Really?" I say.

"Most assuredly."

"Then you don't have any tobacco on you."

"What?" She looks at me like I just accused her of leprosy. "Why of course not."

"It's funny, because I usually recognize the closet smokers." I can't. My super power would never give me anything remotely that useful. Instead, I just have to act like I know what I'm doing. Fortunately, I'm in advertising.

I'm not a superhero, but I play one on TV.

"You strike all the bells, Lorena. Why, I bet you have one on you right now," I say.

"I have never smoked, not once in my life, and I most certainly do not have a cigarette on my person."

"Prove it. Show us what's in your jacket pocket."

"Victor, don't antagonize the lady," Mister Reed says.

"You're confusing the issue," says Lorena.

"You're avoiding it." I say. I take a step toward her, almost within arm's reach, but I keep my hands at my sides. "I'm sure if you have nothing to hide, you won't mind?"

I know, it's the police state's favorite line. I feel a little guilty, but I'm no Superman.

"If it will get us past your nonsense," Lorena says.

She reaches toward the jacket pocket, and I hope I'm close enough. Super powers, don't fail me now. As she places one hand in the pocket, her body goes rigid.

"Yes, Lorena?" The Old Man says.

To her credit, she squares her shoulders and pulls out the cigarette. Heather sucks in air through her teeth. Larry mumbles something like 'holy crap,' and looks at me. It takes all my willpower to keep my face relaxed and not spoil the magic.

"I do not know how this got here, it is not mine." Lorena says.

The Old Man chuckles.

"I tried that line once when a cop found a reefer on me in '72. Said it didn't impress him much. Now I know how he feels."

He turns and heads for the office door. "If we're all done here, Lorena, I need my employees back. I'm sure they have better things to do."

Lorena stands there, tight-lipped as the Old Man holds the door open for us.  Maybe I don't have the most glamorous super power, but I begin to wonder what I would look like in a cape.