Over all of it, like the arms of God, arched the flowers. I have never seen flowers like that, before or since. I had told the florist that I wanted lilies and roses, and he had thrown in delphiniums and a few other flowers I knew less well. I had told him twice that peonies were my mother’s favorite flowers, and he had promised to have some selected especially for the party. I had not told my mother about the peonies; they were to be like a private letter. When she saw pink peonies, she would know that the party was not only her party for me, but also my party for her. These peonies were like great pink cabbages; they were like upholstery; they were like feathers. They had in them pinks that faded and grew into each other, a pale pink like laughter and a medium pink like sunrise and a deep pink that could have been the color of truth. Roses, of course, possess a multitude of petals, but a rose opens itself up and in the end leaves you with a fine core of pistils and a stamen, its petals strewn around it. You can get to the center of a rose; the petals run out, like anything else you can count. But peonies—there is no end to the petals once a peony finally gets going. That tight bud of a peony is like the clown car at heaven’s circus, the petals, then, the smiling faces that pour like infinity into the ring. A peony begins to open and then the petals keep piling from the center, and there is no end. Also, peonies have, still, their season. In this era of forced and artificial growing of things, so many flowers are with you in spring and autumn and winter and summer, but peonies have their month and then are heard from no more. How right my mother was, to say that the tablecloths should be dark red and the rooms lit with candles—because these winter assumptions seemed like only a becoming modesty before the June splendor of the peonies. I had promised my mother that the party would not be flashy or ostentatious, and everything about it was restrained except these flowers, which were as unabashed as the Ritz Hotel.