The Scent of Carnations

Each year on Valentine’s Day, I drive across the north bridge to Palm Beach and purchase dozens of carnations from a tiny floral shop on South County Road. The delicate, early spring buds fill my home with fragrance and remembrance. 

Surrounded by the scent of carnations and impressionistic childhood memories of the Royal Poinciana Playhouse, The Breakers and Whitehall, I sift through a lifetime of Florida seasons to that one particular sunlit winter when I was nine years old.

In January of 1960, the brilliantly sunlit Palm Beach winter season was fast-forwarding into the new decade. The glittering island’s sensuous allure always attracted suntanned, well-dressed gentlemen. They were often accompanied by tall, elegant women wearing thick, lustrous furs and restraining small, fluffy dogs tethered by jeweled collars.

Under clear, azure skies, they shopped Worth Avenue, gently buffeted by gulf stream breezes while their liveried chauffeurs jockeyed for coveted parking places on A1A, above the beach.

Along with the rest of the world, my mother and I lived in a small house on the opposite side of the Intracoastal Waterway, a thin ribbon of inland water that permanently separated the wishful window shoppers from the wealthy power buyers.

Devastated from the last sputtering embers of a failed marriage, my mother relocated to West Palm Beach from Detroit where, she told me, she intended to restart her life. With her lean, model’s figure, she quickly found seasonal work as a model for Saks Fifth Avenue, conveniently located next to the famous Everglades Club at the west end of Worth Avenue. Three days a week, she worked the lunch crowd as they sipped martinis and lounged the afternoons away on the patio overlooking the golf course.

My mother quickly became obsessed with everything about Palm Beach. On her days off, we frequented the premiere shopping district of the rich and famous, eagerly exploring the narrow “vias” and “avenidas” just north of the island’s main social and retail sales artery. Together, we discovered the sacred burial grounds of pet monkeys and beloved dogs and other hidden treasures.

After her divorce was final, my mother turned from winter modeling to a more boring but steady annual income. She unenthusiastically spent eight hours a day in a tiny office at one of West Palm Beach’s most prominent downtown legal firms, producing an almost adequate weekly paycheck. 

Believing she was destined for something greater, she blamed her failed marriage for her current state of despair. Dating only occasionally, she never brought anyone home. When Don appeared at the front door in January, I began paying attention. 

Over the next few days, through overheard phone conversations, I became aware that he was wealthy, married and separated by hundreds of miles from his wife’s hostile indifference.

My brief existence involved my mother and the exclusive world she created for us. Don’s sudden presence in our lives caused a strong sense of alarm, a feeling I had never experienced.

My mother had been introduced to Don at a New Year’s Eve celebration and they began seeing each other almost every night. For eight weeks, he swept my mother out of her middle class nonexistence and into crisp, velvet evenings filled with jazz, late dinners, expensive champagne and laughter.

Don was tall. At 5 foot, 8 inches, my mother was a statuesque, willowy woman but beside him she looked like a tiny porcelain doll. Atlanta was his home and the source of his soft, drawling accent. With a touch of distinguishing gray in his dark hair and a deep, tropic tan, he was almost handsome; a well-mannered, Southern gentleman.

Fighting a life-threatening disease, he had come south to convalesce in the cool, showy brilliance that was mid-season in Palm Beach. At the invitation of a long-time friend and French aristocrat, a suite of rooms had been reserved for him at the Brazilian Court. This quiet, elegant, off the main thoroughfare hotel was nestled in a residential neighborhood on the west side of the island, within walking distance of the Intracoastal and Worth Avenue. His friend, the Count, also provided him with transportation. A white Rolls Royce and driver were available to him on call.

Overnight, my mother became an elegant, voluptuous creature with an unique sense of self. Her modeling career had given her the tools she needed to transform herself into a vision of infinite possibilities. She was in love.

Each evening during that brief, bittersweet season, glowing with once set-aside aspirations, she kissed me goodbye over distractedly prepared dinners, gave misguided directions to the babysitter du jour and rushed out the front door.

Inexorably drawn to the parallel Palm Beach universe across the Intracoastal like an innocent moth to a sinister flame, she was unaware of and unprepared for the emotional abyss that loomed ahead of her.

That winter is still an incomplete canvas of an imagined, surreal event to me. It never was and always would be the consummate, fairy tale moment of my mother’s entire, otherwise ordinary life. 

Constantly left at home on the other side of the Intracoastal, I felt lonely and abandoned. Don’s presence sliced through our now tenuous bond. She was bewitched; I was bereft.

One evening, while Don waited in our living room for my mother to finish putting on her makeup, I was angry and rude to him, indifferent and hostile. When that did not achieve my intended effect, I surprised myself by running out the front door and down the street. Running away was something I had only seen children do in movies, usually with much higher motives. I didn’t go far and hid openly where I knew I would be found. I was a rehearsed prodigal, hoping my behavior would make my mother come to her senses, realize the error of her desertion and restore our world to the way it was before him.

When she finally found me, I was walking home defeated. I told her I didn’t want to be forgotten because of him. She suddenly understood my rebellion, showing surprise and remorse at my tears. My punishment was to apologize for being rude.

I remember standing very still after saying I was sorry. From his considerable height, he looked down at me seriously for a long time. Then he put his arms out and pulled me close to him. I saw there were tears in his eyes. In a quiet voice, he whispered in my ear,

“I understand. I’m so sorry we’ve neglected you.”

I hugged him back, drinking in the scent of his exotic cologne. When I stepped back and looked up at him I knew we were reconciled; we were friends. 

From that day until the end of their relationship, I was included as much as possible in their evenings and their lives. If I close my eyes, I can still feel his big bear hugs and the tone of his deep voice during our many conversations.

He was an educated man. We spoke about his travels and the places he had seen. He brought me books and patiently answered all my childish questions. Even after all these years, I still wish I could sit and talk with him one more time. So many things were left unsaid.

Palm Beach's winter social season rushed head on through January and suddenly it was Valentine’s Day. The Rolls delivered Don to our front doorstep, his arms filled with dozens of multi-colored carnations. Our home overflowed with the heavy scent of blossoming flowers. I wandered from room to room, burying my nose in each bouquet, entranced by the fragrance of each colorful, opening bud.

The scent of carnations lasted for almost two weeks. My mother lovingly arranged and rearranged them until only a few spent blooms were left. For me, the scent and remembrance of those Valentine’s Day carnations was my single, lifelong reminder of their impossible, romantic interlude. Like those colorful spring buds, their affair lasted only a few days after the last carnation had faded and died. As adults, they must have instinctively known their idyll would be brief. Toward the end, I sensed a deep sadness in the two of them. 

Although his convalescence was incomplete, his angry wife had phoned and insisted he return to Atlanta. In the space of an evening, my mother devolved into her former self. As suddenly as it had begun, their time was over. Don was gone.

In the desolate March evenings immediately following his departure, from my bedroom window, I watched as my mother sat alone on our front porch. She faced east, gazing across the Intracoastal at the illusive, emerald isle beyond it; the source of her greatest joy and her current, desolate sorrow. Her desperate attempt at a happily-ever-after ending had eluded her grasp.

One still night in late April, the phone rang. It was Don’s mother. She was a kind woman who knew her son’s heart. She told my mother Don had gone back into the hospital after his return to Atlanta. His unrelenting wife denied him any solace prior to his death. Aware he would never again see the woman he had loved and left in Florida, he asked his mother to let her know when he died.

After her tears stopped, my mother sat alone in the darkness holding the only photograph she had of him. The next morning, I watched as she tore the picture into tiny pieces and threw them away.

For the remainder of her life, he was rarely mentioned. To an indifferent world, it seemed as if her haunting memories of Don had been relegated to a seldom visited corner of her fractured heart. I was the only one who knew this wasn’t true.

Each year, on Valentine’s Day, my mother would drive across the north bridge to Palm Beach and buy dozens of multi-colored carnations from the tiny floral shop on South County Road. For as long as they lasted, the fragrant scent from those spring flowers seemed to briefly lift the silent stillness of her heart.

Her brief love affair has remained the most extraordinarily tragic yet beautiful fairy tale in my otherwise ordinary life. Until now, my years of constant editing have kept her story from being told.

After my mother’s death, I continued her unique Valentine’s Day tradition, filling my home with early spring multi-colored buds every year. In my wishful hope that heaven is a particular place we create from the most memorable moments of our lives, dozens of her favorite flowers are also placed upon her grave.

I want to be sure the scent of carnations reaches them wherever they are.

[Author's note: For those of you who knew my mother, understand this is a work of fiction. There is some truth and a lot of story. It all comes together and turns out to be, as Jimmy Buffett would say, "a semi-true story". Enjoy! 1/19/11]