I came home from a horrid day at work to find my wife, Julia, at the kitchen counter stroking the broad leaves of a potted orchid.

“Oh, Harold. Isn’t it beautiful? It was the last one at the grocery store. All of its friends had gone, and it was all alone. I just had to bring it home.”

“Uh-huh,” I said while rummaging through the refrigerator.

“I know this orchid is going to change our lives,” she said. “I can feel a sense of vitality.” Then my wife did something I had never heard her do before. She made cooing sounds.

A week passed before beautiful white blossoms appeared. Julia was ecstatic as she leaned in close to the orchid. “I knew you could do it. Oh, you pretty baby.”

I smiled at her. “It does brighten the room up.”

She watered it every day with laboratory precision before talking to it about art and music, never the daily news. “Plants are sensitive, Harold. They’ve used lie detectors to prove it.”

The second plant arrived the next day. Julia swept into the apartment carrying a wrought iron stand into the living room. Then she wrestled a ceramic pot containing a huge plant with flurries of leaves.

She placed it on the metal stand and stepped back. “It’s a peace plant. It blooms with tall flowers that start out green and turn white. They were going to throw her out. Can you believe that? Murdered, just because she sat on the shelf too long. Inhuman. I had to rescue her.”

I looked at the plant. “Did you say ‘her’?”

“Yes. Her name is Elsie.”

I tried but failed to stifle a laugh. “Did she tell you that, Jules?”

Julia is easygoing. Nothing bothers her so I was surprised, and a little frightened, when her shoulders rose and her eyes narrowed like a mother bear protecting her cubs. Her words hit me with staccato precision. “Don’t mock me, Harold.” She turned and walked out of the room.

Every week, one or two new plants arrived. Some had flowers, others were just leaves, and one was a small ficus tree. I found it hard to navigate. The ficus obscured the television.

The only place the flora had not penetrated was the shower. I have a specific routine when I get up for work. I stand in a hot shower and let the water soak into my back.

When I reminded Julia about this, she laughed. “Don’t be silly. It’s too humid in there for plants. The ferns will do fine on the vanity.”

Julia came home one evening and walked into the living room with a wide grin on her face as she plunked herself on the couch next to me. “I have been invited to go to corporate headquarters for a week to meet with the regional manager. We’re going to work on some strategies together.”

“Is anyone else going?”

“Just me.”

I squeezed her hand. “That’s wonderful. This could lead to a promotion.”

“I’m sure of it. Of course, it means you’ll have to take care of the plants.”

“No problem. A little water. Run the lights. Piece of cake.”

“You can’t just water them, Harold. You have to interact with them.”

 “Don’t worry. I’ll talk to them and spend time with them. Everything will be fine.”

She left Sunday afternoon. That evening, I made the rounds with water and words of encouragement. The routine was relaxing. I moved the ficus away from the TV and went to bed with a satisfied feeling. The air even seemed fresher.

When I returned from work on Monday, I discovered blotchy brown spots on one of the ficus’s leaves. I plucked it off and took it to a dumpster two blocks away. Julia wasn’t going to find that in our garbage. 

By the time I got back, three more leaves were turning brown. That’s when Julia phoned. “Is everything all right?”

“Of course. Everyone’s happy.”

“And Simon?”

“Simon?”

“The ficus.”

I had always thought the expression “my heart jumped into my throat” was a cliché. Not so. My voice squeaked as I coughed out, “Simon? Never better.”

“Wonderful. I’ll be home Friday night. I’ll call again in a couple of days.”

I woke the next morning to find that every leaf on the ficus had dropped to the floor.

As I stared at the bare skeleton of limbs, a part of my mind wondered if they were still taking recruits for the Foreign Legion. I pictured a gruff sergeant asking if I had joined because of a woman, and me answering, “No. A tree.”

I looked around at the other plants. Every one of them was healthy. Only the little tree I had moved was dead. I considered tossing it in the aforementioned dumpster, smashing up a few things, and claiming a ficus burglar had broken in.

Then a solution came to me in a moment of inspiration. I took out my phone and started documenting the limbs and branches from every angle to scour the city for one that matched exactly. Julia need never know. I had until Friday. There was no need to panic.

Julia called that night. “Great news. We’ve made a major breakthrough, and the meeting will be over tomorrow. I’ve booked a flight home. It arrives at four thirty.”

“Oh, gee…That’s excellent.” I fought to collect my thoughts. “Are you certain you don’t want to stay a little longer and see some of the sights?”

“No. I miss you and I miss the plants. I’ll call from the airport and take a cab. Good night.”

That was when I panicked. 

I held my hand in front of my mouth on Wednesday morning and made sniffling noises as I called my boss. “I don’t know what I’ve got, but I’m too dizzy to get up.”

“Don’t even think about coming in. Should I send someone over to bring anything?”

“No. They’d get infected too. I’ll be all right.”

“Well, if you need anything, just let me know.”

After hanging up, I used my phone to search for florists and nurseries.

I took a cab to the first one. “Sorry. All our trees are rented out to offices.”

The second was no better. “Sold the last one a week ago.”

The third one had ficus trees, but none of them came close to matching Simon.

I was making my way to the fourth shop and checking other leads on my phone when the tip of my shoe caught on an upturned piece of sidewalk. I didn’t fall, but my phone flew onto the street. A taxi pulled up, and the rear wheel rolled directly on top of the phone.

I banged on the window. “Pull forward.”

The cabbie sneered. 

“My phone’s under your wheel. Just pull forward a little.”

He raised a newspaper and ignored me. Two men ran into the back seat of the cab. It peeled off.

The remains of my phone lay on the pavement. I picked them up and cradled them to my chest, then ran to the fourth nursery.

They had half a dozen ficus trees. I inspected them, trying to match their shape with Simon’s in my mind before I picked the one that looked the closest.

A stout balding man behind a counter took a cigar out of his mouth. “That’ll be two hundred and twenty dollars.”

“Two-twenty? The other place wanted one-ten.”

“Did they have what you want?”

“Well, no. Not exactly.”

“Two-twenty.”

I wrote out my address. “Can you deliver it by three thirty?”

“Add fifty.”

“Can you take another tree away?”

“Twenty more.”

“It’s dead.”

“Thirty.”

I got another phone and had my number transferred. After arriving home, I swept up the dead leaves, put them in a plastic bag, and took them to the same dumpster. At 4:57 p.m., there was no sign of a tree.

The phone rang. It was Julia. “I finally got a cab. It’s nuts out here. The driver told me a funny story about some fool who threw his phone under his taxi and wanted him to move while he was taking a fare. Can you imagine that?”

She hung up.

The intercom chimed. A voice said, “You order a tree?”

I buzzed them up, and within minutes, two men arrived at the door with the new ficus. The older man handed me a clipboard. “Sign here, buddy. Where’s the dead tree?”

“Over by the TV.”

I bent down to pick up the new delivery. It was too heavy. “Can one of you give me a hand?”

“We just deliver and pick up. We don’t decorate.”

“Come on. How much time will it take?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a little. Maybe a lot. You’d have to ask a decorator.”

The younger man said, “I know a thing or two about decoratin’, George.” He turned to me. “There’s a fee, of course.”

I closed my eyes. “How much.”

“Forty bucks. In cash.”

“What?”

George looked at his watch. “Well, we gotta get goin’.”

“Wait. Wait.” I got out my wallet. I only had a twenty. “Look. There’s a bank machine in the lobby. Move the trees and I’ll get the cash.”

The two men looked at each other. George said, “Sure.”

After giving instructions to place the new tree next to the TV exactly where the dead one was, I ran to the elevator. A sign on the door read Under Maintenance. There were whirling sounds from within.

Taking two steps at a time, I ran down the stairs to the lobby. A man stood in front of the cash machine. I swear, he was balancing the national debt on his bank card. He took one card out and put another in.

Five minutes passed. I said, “Excuse me. Can I just get some cash out?”

He didn’t even turn around. “When I’m done.”

I looked up at the clock on the lobby wall. It was 5:10 p.m. I prayed for heavy traffic from the airport. There was a ding, and I turned to see the two deliverymen walk out of the now-functioning elevator carrying Simon’s remains. George said, “You got the money?”

I pointed to the man who was switching cards in and out. “I’m waiting for him.”

“Is that so?” said the younger man. He walked up to the machine. “Say, buddy. Where’d you park your car?”

The man turned his head slowly and looked the delivery man up and down. “In the garage, of course.”

“What kind is it?”

“A black Lexus, if it’s any of your business.”

“Oh no. We just called the fire department. There’s a black Lexus down there with flames comin’ from its grill.”

The man pulled his card out and bolted for the stairs. 

I handed over the money with a twenty-dollar tip.

My head ached as I returned to the apartment. I walked into the living room and there he was: Simon the Second, looking exactly like Simon the First.

The door opened and Julia came in.

She gave me a peck on the cheek. “My hero.”

I stood and watched as she went to every plant and spoke to each of them, telling them about her trip and how much she missed them. 

When she reached the ficus, she stopped. I felt pounding in my temples. She took a leaf in her hand and stroked it. “I don’t believe it, Harold. I wouldn’t have thought you could do this.”

I’ll tell you the truth. I had been so busy running around that I had failed to come up with a good story about why the tree might look different. I tried to think, but nothing came. I finally stammered, “I really did my best. I talked to them and told them how beautiful they were and watered them…”

She cut me off. “I see that in the others, but…Simon. He’s so different.”

“I can explain that.”

“Look how healthy and green his leaves are. They’d been getting yellow with brown spots on them before I left. Some had fallen off. I thought it was a fungus and had been using neem oil, but it wasn’t helping, and I was afraid he was going to die. Now, it’s like he’s another tree.” 

There were tears in Julia’s eyes. “Oh, you are wonderful.” She turned, threw her arms around my neck, and gave me a long, passionate kiss.

She leaned back, her eyes glistening with moisture. “You really do understand them. We’ll fill the apartment with trees and bushes and flowers and make our own garden in the city.”

At first, I missed the part about a garden. I was still back at the word hero. I would never tell her the true story and break her heart. I smiled as I realized that I didn’t need to find a new tree after all to be her hero. She might have even stopped buying more plants when she learned that Simon was dead.

Then, “our own garden” sank in and I started to cry.

She patted my arm gently. “Yes. It will be everything we dreamed of.”

I had never known Julia to be happier over the intervening weeks. I’d catch flashes of movement through the rustle of leaves as her coos echoed in the apartment. There were still paths to the kitchen and the front door. I moved the TV to a forest clearing in the bedroom. Most importantly, the shower remained free.