There are a lot of wishes in our yard, he whispers, tilting his head toward the ragged field behind our house. As always, his thumb and forefinger tug at the seam of his navy shorts—the ones I found at Goodwill when I first conceived of him. When I brought them home, I scrubbed the waistband with Shout to erase the “used.”
All I can think is how perfect he is—the unbroken skin on the back of his neck, tickled by wild, loose curls I never need to cut because they’re so recklessly perfect. Too perfect to be real.
Yes, baby, I say, quietly counting the aging dandelions swarming around the stoop. Their silver globes shimmer in the early afternoon sun. Our world is a mirage.
I never want to blow them away, he says. I want to keep them forever. Don’t take them, ok, mommy?
I agree. Tending the yard was something I did before, but not now. It used to matter that the grass was trimmed, all the blades uniformly cropped and the flowers tucked neatly in their carefully laid beds of mulch. It once made me feel real and necessary, having it like that.
I love that he likes it wild this way. He bends the rules for me. He is a wild, untamed flower I cannot pluck. He is mine.
I’ve even grown to like it this way. Not the ticks—those I could do without. But I won’t sacrifice his wishes just to banish the blood-suckers. Isn’t that always the way? Wishes or blood-suckers. Beauty or ugliness. Life or death: you have to pick one. Not me.
I lean down, stooping to where I could rest in the space between his shoulder and jaw. We’re so close I could drown in the warmth of his breath.
Can I go play, Mommy? he asks, already tugging at the locked slider door.
I almost say no—the long grass, the heat, the ticks. I worry.
The second hand on the hand-me-down cuckoo clock clicks, clicks, clicks. Everything is still. The phone rings, muffled, probably shoved under a throw pillow or between the couch cushions. It doesn’t matter. The only people who call are telemarketers, bill collectors, and my sister. They all want something from me. They think I have something left to give.
Closing my eyes, I feel my feet warm in the sunlight glazing the spot where the shadows of his feet stand parallel to mine in front of the glass. Looking down at him, I remember: I don’t have to worry. He’s a wildflower. He’s safe. He’s mine.
My hand, forgetting it has no place to land, reaches out to cradle his cheek. And then…he’s gone.
Of course, baby.
I used to have this dream: once nausea rocked me to sleep, my swollen belly protruding beyond my toes, my reflection in a tiny baby’s face tucked inside a snug nest of blankets picked out just for him. It was a whole lifetime at once. Having that dream was like coming home after years away, like slipping into a hot bath after standing in freezing rain. Those nights, I let myself wander into a field of silver dandelions grown just for me.
The first time it came to me, Graham and I had just eloped. “Why wait, Linny?” he said. I wasn’t one to leap, but I did for him. Kids weren’t in my plan, but neither was marrying Graham. So, I shrugged and agreed. I gave things up for him, scraped away almost imperceptibly thin layers of my skin to cover the emptiness he didn’t want anyone else to see.
I met him months after I landed in California with a half-empty Hefty bag of my stuff, dead-set on building a new life far away from my insane mother. Leaving my little sister behind felt selfish, but I thought I’d come back for her. Eventually.
The night I met Graham, my roommates dragged me to a party that, any other day, I would’ve slept through. But, I was running out of time. Soon, I’d have to go back to my mother’s house. Back to dark rooms with the curtains drawn, to month-old crumbs and dust piling up in the corners of counters, to wiping my mother’s clinically sad tears from her scratchy dry cheeks, to inventing ways to get my sister out of the storm before it swallowed her too. So, I agreed to go with them, hoping it would slow the clock a little.
My roommates stumbled off with guys in jerseys and backwards hats the second we arrived. I sat by the bonfire, letting the cold air keep me tethered to the sand.
“You want to?”
The voice startled me. Low and smooth like melted ice cream.
“What?” I asked, looking up. He was tall, a loose tuft of his blonde hair swung down into his face, and he had his khaki pants rolled up at the ankles.
He nodded toward the ocean. “Swim. You want to?”
I stood, daring him. “Sure.”
“I’m Graham,” he said. The way his “r” stuck to the roof of his mouth made me lose all sense.
I stripped and ran in after him.
Once we were married, all the recklessness—the late-night swims, skipping town—felt like things kids did. We became adults fast. We bought a fixer-upper, spent weekends patching the roof and pulling weeds. At night, we washed fixer-upper dirt off each other’s backs in our stall shower, not caring that puddles of sudsy water lined the grout in the tile. For a while, I loved it. I loved standing at the kitchen window, imagining a future I never thought I wanted: kids cannonballing into a pool we’d build one day, their laughter rising over the scent of freshly turned earth.
But the dream of that life started to wilt after the fourth round of needles and bruises and emptiness. Each failed attempt carved something out of me until my center was hollow. By then, I stopped caring about the weeds that were suffocating my daffodils. I started showering alone, white-knuckle grabbing the built-in shelf as I rinsed away puddles of blood instead of backyard dirt.
“Maybe it just isn’t meant to be,” Graham said one night, his voice heavy with something I couldn’t name. He reached for me. I pulled away.
“Can we be happy—just us?” he asked.
No, I should’ve said. You made me want this. You don’t get to change the rules now.
But I nodded. “I love you, Linny,” he whispered in the dark.
I turned away, pretending not to hear him.
After the last call from the doctor, I stopped leaving the bed at all. My life became a loop: vomiting, sobbing, moving through a fog of terror that I was failing a child I couldn’t make. Graham’s voice drifted from another room, fractured pieces of a conversation I refused to join. Sometimes I heard others – my sister, mainly. All of that was part of a life that didn’t belong to me anymore.
“Linny?” Sadie whispered. She crawled into bed beside me, her lemon-and-baby-wipes scent a reminder of what I couldn’t have. “There are other ways,” she said. “It isn’t over.” I knew she saw it in me then, that permanent sadness our mother lived inside of our whole lives. There I was, drifting deeper and deeper below the surface.
“It is,” I whispered. It had to be.
Then Graham was gone. All that remained was an oil stain on the driveway. After that, I covered the mirrors, afraid to see my mother staring back at me: I told you, Caroline. You are just like me. I knew you’d be back. I’m home.
So, I imagine him —my baby— running through the backyard weeds, all skinned knees and grass stains. I imagine him shouting, You’re it! as his tricycle lies on the path. I imagine him asking for another story: Just one more, Mommy.
He keeps me here, down below the surface where I belong. I stay here because if I don’t, I’ll blow away gently in the wind, scattered in a dozen untraceable pieces – and he’ll be gone. I promised him I would keep the wildflowers.
There is a hand on my shoulder.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I snarl through gritted teeth, shrugging off my sister’s hand and pulling the sliding door that squeals along the track.
“Obviously I do, Caroline,” she insists, her voice sharp with guilt disguised as duty. I know how this goes. One day, when my sister is tired of cleaning the crumbs and the dust, she’ll be gone too. But, I won’t be alone like my mother. I won’t. I’ll have him, my boy.
I step out, barefoot, onto the porch. I go to the weeds, crouching lower than the tallest stalks, wishing for his laugh. From the kitchen window, I must look like nothing more than a shadow, and on my last day, the weeds will have outgrown me. They’ll replace me. I’ll disappear, but the wildflowers will stay.
–
J.S. Anderson is a writer from western Massachusetts. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College in New York where she studied fiction writing and literature. Now, she teaches high school English in small-town Connecticut. She wrangles her toddlers and menagerie of domesticated animals in her spare time.
© 2025, J.S. Anderson
Halfway Down the Stairs 