When Winter Blooms

He gave me a laminated card.

Which told me everything I needed to know about the kind of man I was now working for.

It was the morning after I moved in. I'd spent my first night in a bedroom that was nicer than any place I'd ever lived, staring at the ceiling and listening to the sound of a city I still wasn't used to. 

I'd woken up early, gotten dressed, and come to the kitchen to figure out the coffee situation. 

I was mid-search through the third cabinet when I heard him behind me.

"Good morning."

I spun around. He was already in a suit. It was 6:47  in the morning and the man was in a full suit, jacket and everything, holding a laminated card in one hand and a travel mug in the other.

"Good morning," I said. 

"Do you, where do you keep the coffee?"

He opened the cabinet directly to my left. 

"Thank you." I reached past him. He stepped back immediately, like he'd calculated the exact amount of space required between us and wasn't willing to negotiate it. 

He set the laminated card on the counter between us and slid it toward me.

I picked it up.

There were twelve points numbered. 

The font was small but very clear, I read the whole thing while the coffee machine did its thing, and I will say, some of them were normal.

 No outside guests without prior notice. Keep Lily's schedule consistent. Notify him immediately if she's unwell. 

But then there was: No personal questions about the household or its members.

And: My study is off-limits at all times.

And, my personal favourite: All communication regarding non-Lily matters should be directed to my assistant, Ms. Park, during business hours.

I read that one twice.

"Ms. Park," I said.

"My assistant, her number is at the bottom."

"Right." I looked up at him. 

"So if I have a question about the house, or schedules, or anything like that?"

"Ms. Park."

"And if it's outside business hours?"

"Email."

I looked at him. 

He was completely serious.

"Okay," I said.

He nodded, picked up his travel mug, and made to leave. Then he stopped.

"Rule six," he said, without turning around.

I looked down at the card. 

Rule six: Lily is not to be taken outside the building without prior notification.

"Even to the park?"

"Notification first, then the park."

"Notification to Ms. Park?" I asked, and I kept my voice completely neutral when I said it, I really did.

He turned then. Looked at me. 

I thought maybe I'd pushed it, but then something happened at the corner of his mouth, barely anything, the smallest possible movement and then it was gone so fast I almost thought I'd imagined it.

"To me," he said. 

"For Lily."

"Got it."

He left. I heard the elevator a moment later.

I stood in the kitchen with the laminated card and my coffee and I thought: twelve rules, laminated, slid across a counter at six forty-seven in the morning. 

This man had not had a normal year. Or possibly several years.

I folded the card carefully, because it was laminated and folding it felt mildly aggressive, and put it in the pocket of my cardigan. 

Then I found a sunflower magnet in my moving box that I'd been carrying around since my mother gave it to me when I was nineteen, and I stuck it on the fridge just to have something of mine in this kitchen that looked like it belonged in an architecture magazine.

Then I went to wake up Lily.

She was already awake. 

She was sitting up in bed surrounded by approximately forty stuffed animals, very seriously explaining something to a bear that was nearly her size.

"Good morning," I said from the doorway.

She looked up. "Maya! I was telling Gerald about you."

"Gerald," I said. 

"Which one is Gerald?"

She held up the enormous bear.

"Hi Gerald," I said. 

"Nice to meet you."

Lily seemed very pleased with this response. She climbed out of bed in the same pink jumper from yesterday, which told me she'd slept in it, and dragged Gerald by one arm toward the bathroom. 

"I told him you smell like cookies and that you're going to be here every day now."

"That's right."

"He's happy about it." She glanced back at me with enormous, totally straight-faced sincerity. 

"He wasn't happy about the last one."

"No?"

"She didn't like Gerald."

I made a mental note to love Gerald unconditionally for as long as I worked here.

We did the whole morning: teeth, face, hair, which took a while because Lily had opinions about her hair that were strong and specific and occasionally contradictory. 

I made her oatmeal with honey because she told me that's what she liked, and she sat at the kitchen island and ate it with the careful concentration of someone doing something important.

She was halfway through when she looked up and said: "Is my daddy coming back for dinner?"

"I'm not sure, baby. Do you know what time he usually gets home?"

She thought about it. 

"Late." Then, quieter: "He's always late."

She went back to her oatmeal and I went back to the coffee I was nursing and I didn't say anything, because there was nothing to say. 

She wasn't upset exactly. 

She said it the way kids say things that have just become fact, already absorbed. Which somehow made it worse.

He got home at half past nine.

Lily had been asleep for two hours. I was on the couch with a book when I heard the elevator, and then his footsteps, and then the pause.

"She's asleep," I said, without looking up. 

"She had oatmeal for breakfast, pasta for dinner, and she only cried for about four minutes at bath time because I wouldn't let her bring Gerald in the water."

Silence.

"Gerald is the bear," I added.

"I know who Gerald is." He set his bag down. Loosened his tie.

"She ask about me?"

I looked up then. He was standing by the kitchen island, jacket still on, looking somewhere between tired and something harder to name.

"She asked if you'd be home for dinner," I said.

He nodded. Didn't say anything.

"She wasn't upset," I said, which wasn't entirely true, but I chose the kindest version. 

"She just asked."

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said: "I'll try to be back by seven tomorrow."

"I'll let her know."

He picked up his bag, Stopped. 

And then, like he'd been debating it the whole elevator ride up, he said: "The sunflower magnet."

I waited.

"On the fridge, Is that yours?"

"Yes. Is that a problem?"

He looked at me for a moment. 

"No," he said. "It's fine."

He went to his room. I listened to his door close, then his footsteps moved across the ceiling, his room was above the living room. 

I picked up my book, Put it down again.

I pulled the laminated card out of my cardigan pocket, smoothed it flat, and went to the fridge. I stuck it up with the sunflower magnet right in the center, where neither of us could miss it.

Not to be petty. 

I just wanted it where I could see it. 

All twelve rules, eye level, every morning. Not because I planned to follow all of them. But because I wanted to remember who I was dealing with. 

A man so afraid of something getting in, he laminated a list to keep it out.

I thought about the way he'd said: she just asked.

I thought about the pause before he said he'd try to be home by seven.

Yeah. I'd have the rules where I could see them.

I had a feeling I was going to need the reminder.