LEONORA

.1.

The Lazy Asshole of an Apprentice

“Oy! Mazza! Take these across the street for me, would you?”

My teacher and surrogate father, Levginy “Lenny” Kaprelian, regarded himself as the best florist in the country. What did this mean? A punishment that included not only being smacked upside the head with the handiest bouquet but a rant on how lucky I was in the first place to have been beaten by, quote, “The Best Goddamn Florist in the Country”, unquote. The man was so old that nobody bothered to prove his claims and tied his delusions to senility...but I loved him and feared him so dearly that I tolerated his abuse since the day I was raised to be a florist.

In contrast, Kaprelian could also be very distant. Often found in fits of anger, regret or sadness in any combination, people would often leave him alone, afraid that they’d trigger a tantrum. Looking back, one could say that he was just a lonely soul. When he felt so lonely that he couldn’t even joke around or swear at me, Kaprelian would wander up to his apartment above the floral shop – “Fiamma’s Garden”, named after his late wife, I’ll elaborate on that later – and gaze hazily out the window over the city, reminiscing his past, his family. I pitied and loved him, but he also annoyed the hell out of me.

“Mazza, are you listening to me goddamnit? Mazza!” he demanded and slapped me with some homegrown garden onions, tearing me out of a state of half-sleep. The setting sun kissed the red streaks made by the onions, and I huffed out of the hammock.

“I was practically asleep you crazy old fool, what, what the hell do you want from me...”

“Take these onions across the street,” he repeated.

“To Giacomo?” I asked stupidly.

“No, not Giacomo,” Kaprelian began sarcastically, “to my grandmother’s grave so that she can make some nice soup for Jesu and Maria and Paulo or whatever the hell their names are...of course to fucking Giacomo, where is your brain?” Kaprelian yelled and gave me a few more whacks with the onions until I wrenched them from his palm.

“Alright, alright, I’m going,” I muttered submissively, and then glanced down at the onion ruins that once looked edible. “Look at this, all torn to hell,” I commented. “What’s Giacomo going to think when he sees these?”

Kaprelian pulled down some hanging lavender and examined the bundle. “Tell him I tried all I could, but I just couldn’t beat the stupid out of you,” Kaprelian said soberly, re-hanging the lavender. He held my gaze and suddenly laughed, a good hearty “Ha!” and slapped his knee. I started chuckling and figured I’d sort of set myself up for that one.

“Yeah, he’ll appreciate your humor,” I commented, earning a chummy pound on my back from Kaprelian. “That’s the spirit Mazza, you lazy shit,” he laughed affectionately, and I stood patiently by the door, waiting till the old man had wandered all the way up the stairs to his room before I left Fiamma’s Garden.

Anyway, if anything was important to Kaprelian, it was family. Kin was of top priority to him and always had been...it was apparent just by looking around the shop: he kept pictures of his wife, his mother, his grandmother (who loved to make soup), his aunts and portraits of all five of his daughters all around Fiamma’s Garden, and was often surprised to discover a group photo or portrait hidden within the plants that he hadn’t remembered was there. The customers were often surprised, too.

Kaprelian had a photo of his wife, Fiamma, who had started the garden that began the flora shop, outside in the vegetable and spice garden hanging from a huge old tree that miraculously managed to protect it from the natural elements. Even in the harshest weather, Kaprelian would leave his Fiamma’s portrait outside on the tree – “Oh, she loved thunderstorms,” – and it would still be there the next day, unmoved and without a single rip or water stain. It was his strong belief that the picture was under divine protection, and I agreed...though I didn’t say so.

Kaprelian’s parents both died early, a month or two after he made a shop out of Fiamma’s Garden. Their deaths shook him up bad, according to neighboring shop owners and Giacomo, but where any other man would have given up hope Kaprelian plugged on, determined to be successful in honor of his parents...which he was.

Fiamma, who had lived in C all her life and had planted the gardens herself, died young during childbirth to his sixth child and first son. The newborn baby’s heart failed several minutes after Fiamma bled to death. A very small funeral was held for the two of them together, and the doctors and nurses of the tiny hospital attended as well. They had delivered Kaprelian’s five other daughters, after all, it was practically an obligation, though no one thought of the funeral that way.

Needing time and privacy to grieve and slip into fits of sadness, Kaprelian closed up Fiamma’s Garden and sent away his daughters to live with Giacomo’s brother Bernardo. The brothers were close family friends of the Kaprelians. He only needed a year to grieve, then decided that Fiamma would have wanted him to continue cultivating green life and bringing beauty to C. The vegetable and spice garden was rejuvenated, and once Fiamma’s Garden officially re-opened, Kaprelian sent for his daughters.

Since Bernardo had a tiny, rickety old car, it was decided that he would take the daughters by ship instead. Bernardo chose the ship ‘Maria’s Grace’ because it was the name of the racehorse he was betting on and decided that it was lucky. The ship ‘Maria’s Grace’ was lit on fire by a convicted arsonist while still at sea. Bernardo and Kaprelian’s three middle daughters died of asphyxiation while sleeping in their rooms, oblivious to screams and the roar of fire. The oldest Kaprelian daughter was never found, and the youngest was reported swimming away toward the nearest coastal town. Neither were found. Kaprelian searched sea for them, and searched the towns through and through, but never found either of his girls.

After the death of his parents, the death of his wife, and the death of three of his five daughters with two whom he’d never see again (but whom I would), this was certainly the breaking point. Anybody, anybody else would have collapsed and gone insane with grief. Luckily, the late Bernardo’s brother Giacomo moved in and started a restaurant across the street. Giacomo and Kaprelian comforted each other in their sadness, and Kaprelian decided that God had a very good reason to take away his family. Like ivy, Kaprelian’s soul became intertwined with Fiamma’s Garden. The flora shop became his holy mission. With this belief, Kaprelian once again got back on his feet and Fiamma’s Garden became more successful than ever.

Then, he found me.

Giacomo was my source of information on Kaprelian’s past; he thought that I ought to know about my teacher who, over the span of fourteen years, had become my father as well. “Old Lenny, you see,” Giacomo explained, “found you after all of this. He precociously took you in as a sort of...replacement, even though he won’t admit it.” Thus he would end his tale of Leonardo Kaprelian, who would never share much of his personal history to me. In fact he rarely ever spared words on his past personally.

...No, I take that back: when I was much younger, maybe six to nine or ten, he’d tell me his own childhood stories of the “when I was your age” sort. For example, when I was about seven years old and I woke up covered in my own piss because I was too tired the night before to use the bathroom, Kaprelian shared a bed-wetting story of his own. I don’t remember his tale exactly, but I do remember that when he was done there was an awkward silence between the old man and the young me. Then he demanded that I clean each and every picture in the shop.

It was a cruel punishment because I was so short and even Kaprelian didn’t know where all his pictures were, so I spent the entire day indoors dusting the cheeks and noses of dead women whom I never knew, all hidden behind plants and trinkets, each one crucially needing cleaning. It took forever, needless to say..

“What the hell kind of man punishes a kid for such an innocent mistake?” I mumbled a few years later, and got beat with expensive tulips for bringing it up again. Afterward, Kaprelian, always willing to take a stab at my self-esteem, informed me that I was a stupid little shit since the day I was born and only punishment could kill the idiot disease festering inside of me. Oh, sweet memories. If I hadn’t realized that the man was never really insulting me personally, but taking out a then unknown frustration, I’m not sure if I would have been able to make it to a mentally sound seventeen years of age.

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AN: Found this in my computer, thought I'd upload for old times' sake and since I'm not exactly writing anything new figured I'd keep my account just a little alive :P