teapot flowers

Part 9

James Williams, a broken pot.

I followed Olivia's lead and took off my shoes as we entered the front of the house. But suddenly she stopped and put a finger to her lips to silence anything I might have tried to say. Then turned "Hey, I am home!" she said, trying to sound normal. She popped her head into the next room and took a good look around, I assume to check for a family member. "Cricket?" she called out again. Cricket? I thought to myself. Is that her dog?

She tiptoed around another corner and let out a sigh of relief, then turned back to me. "He must be cooped up in his study room." She said matter of factly and walked in the kitchen quite confidently.

"Do you want anything to drink? Coffee, tea?" she asked going toward the kitchen counter. "Well if you are making it, some tea would be nice. By the way, who were you calling out to? I am not going to get you in trouble by being here, am I?" I replied a little unsure.

"Oh goodness no. my parents are never-" she paused for half a second as she put the kettle of water on the stove. "Well, my parents are out on work trips so often that my brother and I live alone most of the time" Then she looked back with a smile that said "it's really ok," and lit the burner. "My mother doesn't really care what I do; I could get away with pretty much anything. It's my kid brother I was worried about. I think he thinks he is my watchdog or something, he gets very worried and protective. He would've probably interrogated you, why that boy would eat you alive."

The pot hissed and she poured me a cup. "Sugar?" she asked. I answered in the affirmative and she started to open the sugar jar. "You have a nice house," I said, looking back and forth. "Yeah, we just moved in recently. It's a little too big and fancy for my taste but I didn't buy it," she said, sitting down to enjoy her tea.

I noticed there was a book open on the counter. It was in Portuguese so it took me a second to realize what it was about. "Oh, you interested in gardening?" I asked as I picked up the book and started to read. "The trick to healthy plants is-" she cut me off before I could finish "No." Olivia said as she grabbed the book from my hands and closed it quite forcefully. "that's not mine, it's just....for....my brother's school assignment," she said, clearly avoiding eye contact.

"You are no good at hiding things are you?" I asked with a playful grin on my face. She hunched her shoulders. "Normally, I am," she said with a pout. "I just, I'm just a little off my game today." She looked up at me and I just stared back. "Anyway," she went on, "the truth is I have never lived in one place very long, so I never did the whole typical home life thing but since we moved here I figured I could try to do that stuff. I thought about getting a pet but I was afraid I wasn't ready for that. And a good thing too considering how many died," she added with a wry smile.

"What are you talking about?" I asked Olivia, a bit alarmed. She took my arm and started to lead me to another room. "See?" She said as she put out an outstretched arm.

I looked around the room that I suppose was the living room. The TV and couch sat in places you would expect, as did the coffee table but the thing about the room that stood out was that anywhere and everywhere there was counter space was taken up by plant life, well they were plants I was sure but I wasn't so sure about the life part. Most were quite dead, others starting to wither and one little unruly ivy plant started working its way above the wall.

"So now you see my dilemma." She said and let her shoulders drop again. "I am doing my best and studying gardening in my spare time but," she said as she walked over to one of the withering plants and stroked its leaf, "nothing seems to work. Now you can see why I am glad I tried plants before pets. But as it turns out, I am just no good at planting." She said as a matter of fact.