Julie and Romeo

by Jeanne Ray

  My problems were too big for Excedrin, and by five o’clock the next morning I was downstairs relining the kitchen cabinets. I’d had the new shelf paper for about a year and I knew it was the only thing standing between me and a total nervous breakdown. In the store I had thought it was incredibly cheerful, yellow with a pattern of tiny daisies, but now that the plates were on the countertops and I was setting it in, I thought the daisies looked like bugs, little scurrying bugs that would run beneath the dishes. What the hell did I care? Chances were good that tomorrow morning I would feel like doing the whole job over again.

  “This is bad,” Sandy said when she came downstairs at six. “I haven’t seen you paper the shelves since you and Dad were splitting up.”

  “Well then, it’s time. Does this look like bugs to you?”

  Sandy went up on her toes and peered down at a shelf. “Sort of.”

  I got my sponge and smoothed down the wrinkles.

  “So is this because you had a bad time with Mr. Cacciamani yesterday or because you know that Dad is in town?”

  “Dad and Lila,” I corrected. “And Nora bought the plane tickets.”

  “Not to be a turncoat or anything, but I do want to tell you that I didn’t have anything to do with this. I mean, I’m sure you know I didn’t have anything to do with it financially, but I didn’t know about it until they were on the plane coming out here.”

  “I appreciate that.” I got down and started to cut another piece of paper.

  “Are you sure you should be using a razor blade?”

  “I’m not going to kill anyone, if that’s what you mean.”

  Sandy sighed and nibbled thoughtfully on the top of her thumb. “So are you going to see Dad?”

  “I saw him last night.”

  “He came back?”

  “He was on the couch when I got home. There’s coffee there if you want some.”

  Sandy shuffled over and got herself a cup of coffee. “He shouldn’t have done that. He said good night, he left. I didn’t want you to get ambushed. Did it go very badly?”

  “Would you want to come home from a date in the middle of the night and find Sandy Anderson asleep on your couch?”

  “I’d be so grateful to have a date, I doubt I would have cared.” Sandy smiled at me. “I do get your point, though. How was your date, anyway?”

  At the very thought of it I slumped down and threw aside the paper roll. “The date was great. Not that I can remember it very well now.”

  “Where did he take you?”

  I eyed my younger daughter. “Honey, I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but this is just between you and me, right?”

  A cloud passed over Sandy’s face and a hurt look set in. “I was trying to show some interest. If you don’t want to tell me, don’t.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just that with everything that’s going on—”

  “I’m not Nora.”

  “Of course you’re not Nora.”

  “I don’t like this whole Cacciamani business. I think they’re a bunch of thugs, but I’m trying to respect your choices. I should just stay out of it.” Sandy put her coffee cup down on the table. “Forget I asked.” She walked out of the kitchen and when I called her name she did not come back.

  Canobie Lake Park, I wanted to say. We went to Canobie Lake Park.

  I cleaned up the paper scraps and put the plates back where they belonged. Then I got dressed and went to work. It was barely light outside and I had already blown it at home. I liked to go in early on Mondays anyway so I could get all the new flowers unloaded and in their buckets before the customers came in. By ten o’clock, when I flipped the sign on the door to OPEN, the kids would be in school, the store would be ready, and Sandy would have forgiven me, I was sure of it. It seemed like I had completely lost my ability to say the right thing anymore.

  I came in the back door and as soon as I was inside the shop, I felt better. I ran my hand over the wooden workbenches my father had built, looked at all my stripper and scissors and clippers hung neatly up on the Peg-Board on the wall. It was more my home than my house was. It was the place that always calmed me down. Inside of Roseman’s I was a little girl with a watering can. My mother was young and beautiful, my father was whistling. I was the envy of all of my friends. I lived in a world made completely of flowers. I brought flowers to my teachers. I wore flowers in my hair. Even when I was a teenager and worked in the store, it was a happy time, or at least that’s the way I remember it. The years I was married I hardly ever came here, so I didn’t associate the place so much with Mort. When I took it over again, it was like coming back to my family. I became a Roseman again. I understood, I guess, why my father thought I couldn’t take care of the business, and God knows I hadn’t done a brilliant job, but I wished he could have seen me trying. I wished he could have known that I loved the store like it was family.

  When I went to the front to wash the windows, I saw a box lying flat on the sidewalk, pressed against the door. It was a florist’s box—of which I had a thousand—with a huge yellow bow tied to the front. At first I wondered if it was some sort of weird return, though I didn’t recognize the ribbon. I unlocked the door and brought the box inside. The sticker on the front said Romeo’s. Written beneath it in handwriting I now recognized, it said Keep Flat. This Side Up. There was an arrow pointing up.

  Flowers? No one had ever sent me flowers in my life. “Like bringing coals to Newcastle,” my father liked to say whenever I asked him if he ever gave my mother flowers. But here was the box. My heart was beating like crazy. Romeo, Romeo. It felt too heavy to be flowers. I was careful to keep it flat. I took the box to the bench and slipped off the ribbon, thinking in a fit of sentimentality that I would keep it. Then I pulled off the lid.

  Vegetables.

  Vegetables like flowers.

  The tiniest leaves of spinach I had ever seen lined the whole bottom of the box like a light cloud of florist’s tissue. At the top there were two purple cabbages trimmed in white. They were blooming, that was the only word for it. Around them in a halo of red were twelve small tomatoes, each one perfect and round, then stalks of tender green asparagus sprouting leaves of six miniature Japanese eggplants. At the bottom of the box there was a row of zucchini, then red new potatoes, then baby carrots, their fernlike tops still intact. The note was on a white florist’s card that had Happy Birthday printed at the top with a line drawn through it.

  Carissima Julie,

  Did you know you were a very hard person to buy a present for at six a.m. on a Monday?

  I love you,

  Romeo

  There was an arrow and I turned the card to the back. When is your birthday, anyway?

  I will admit it, I held the card to my heart. I dipped my face down to smell the asparagus. Could he have been at the front door as I was coming in the back? Had I missed him? Beautiful, beautiful vegetables. All was redeemed.

  “Vegetables?” Gloria said.

  “I know it sounds funny, but you should see them. It’s art, I swear to God.”

  “Okay,” she said, and I heard her take a sip of coffee over the phone. Gloria was nothing without coffee. “So was the underwear a hit?”

  “Don’t you want to hear about the day first?”

  “I want to hear about the day second. I want to hear about the underwear first.”

  So I told her. I wanted to tell.

  “Good for you, sweetheart. You waited a long time.”

  I told her about the park, the rides. I told her about Ellen and the Sylvan Park motel. I told her about Mort on my couch.

  “Mort? Excuse me?”

  “I’m not kidding. He was there when I got home. Nora sent for him and Lila so that he could talk some sense into me.”

  “I take it all back, you should be scared of Nora.”

  “Right now I’m just angry. Mort’s bound to show up today. God, Gloria, it’s like life is so good and so bad. How can it be that way all at the same time?”<
br />
  “I think that is life by definition.”

  “Would you do me another favor?”

  “To aid the course of true love or thwart your ex-husband, anything.”

  “I’m going to owe you big after this. If you decide to start running arms to South America or open a day-care center, you know I will do anything you ask me to.”

  “Name it.”

  “Go to Romeo’s and tell him I got the vegetables. Tell him I’m crazy about the vegetables.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to call and just hang up if you get the wrong Cacciamani?”

  “I don’t want to get him in any trouble.”

  “I think you sent me out on a very similar mission in tenth grade, but I’m willing to do it.”

  “You’re an angel.”

  “What do you want me to say, exactly?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, knowing that Gloria and I were of the same mind on these matters. “Just go and talk about love.”

  chapter fourteen

  SANDY WAS STILL SULLEN WHEN SHE CAME TO WORK AT ten, but being that it was Monday, there was a lot to do and she had to get over it quickly. Actually, there wasn’t as much to do as there should have been. Both of our flower shipments came up short, and since I had given everything left from the weekend to Father Al, there were no stragglers to back us up. There were no deliveries to go out on Monday mornings so we stayed in the shop together, unpacking the flowers we had and going over the plans for a big wedding the weekend after next. The bride wanted every flower in the synagogue to be a gardenia. It was not a small wedding.

  “Does she have any idea how that place is going to smell?” Sandy said, crinkling up her nose. “I mean, I like gardenias, but people are going to be falling over in the aisles. Is she planning on providing oxygen tanks?”

  “All I know is that I’ve ordered the flowers. Let’s hope she doesn’t change her mind. A thousand gardenias aren’t so easily moved.”

  The phone rang and Sandy answered it and took the order. “What do you want on the card?” she asked, poising her pen over the tiny white card. “Okay, yes, ‘Darling Maria, without you my life would have no meaning. You are the sun and the moon, the stars in the night sky.’ Hang on, hang on, you’re getting ahead of me.” She flipped the card over. “ ‘In my life I have never known love like this before. I have waited for you since the beginning of time.’ Wait. The card is full. Let me get another one. These are really small cards.”

  While Sandy continued to take dictation, Gloria swept into the store looking a little better than I thought was necessary. She was wearing a slim black skirt and low heels. Gloria was thinner than I was and she had great legs. I was wondering if I had made a mistake in sending her. Romeo didn’t have to make Father Al promise to dress down when he came to see me. “Oh my God,” she said. “I saw him. I was just there.”

  Sandy capped her pen and hung up the phone. “Saw who?”

  Gloria shot me a look, but I figured there was no sense in putting all of us in a tight spot. “Romeo Cacciamani,” I said. “I asked Gloria to go over and thank him for a present.”

  “He sent you a present?” Sandy said suspiciously.

  “Come on,” I said. I took them both into the cooler and pulled the lid off the vegetable box. I dazzled them with my dinner.

  “Wow,” Sandy said, extending one tentative finger to an eggplant. “Are they real?”

  “They are.”

  “They’re stunning,” Gloria said. “You were absolutely right. For the rest of my life I’m going to feel disappointed when Buzz sends me flowers. Now can we get out of the freezer? I know you two are used to it, but I’m not.”

  We came out with the vegetable box. I didn’t want to put the lid back on.

  “And you had to send Gloria over to thank him?” Sandy said. “You can’t even go and see him?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “You know how his family feels about me, and he knows how you and Nora feel about him. We’re trying not to step on too many toes here.” Maybe I was spelling things out a little too much, but I wanted a few points for sensitivity.

  Sandy picked up an asparagus stalk, twirled it gently in her fingers. “A guy who’d do something like this …”

  “Is a wonderful guy,” Gloria said. “Julie, you were right not to go over there. Lord, the place is absolutely crawling with Cacciamanis. Frankly, I’m relieved that you’re getting together with him, shall we say, later in life, because I would not have wanted to see you spend your youth with someone who clearly has such a weak grasp on the whole birth-control issue.”

  “What did he say?” Sandy asked.

  “Well, the first trick was getting him alone. I told the thug at the cash register that I wanted to discuss the flower arrangements for my husband’s funeral and that I would rather speak to the owner in a private place. Did you know he has an office? Why don’t you have an office?”

  I had a desk at the end of the workbench. It was fine. “You told him Buzz was dead?”

  “I only told the first guy Buzz was dead. I told Romeo the truth when we were alone. That was the point, to see him alone.”

  “So what did he say?” Sandy repeated.

  Gloria looked at her. “He said he was crazy in love with your mother, okay?”

  “That’s enough for me,” I said.

  “He said he’s thinking maybe you could go to dinner in Newton tomorrow night. He says he doesn’t know anyone in Newton. I told him we know everyone in Newton.”

  “Tomorrow night’s my night with the kids,” I said. “Maybe Wednesday.”

  “I can get a baby-sitter,” Sandy said. “Nora could come over. Or Gloria. It’s not the end of the world.”

  “Are you saying you’re going to help me go on a date?” Gloria and I were both staring at her. If the answer was yes, I wanted a witness.

  “I’m saying those are very nice vegetables,” Sandy said wistfully. “You don’t see something like that every day. That’s all I’m saying. I’m going to go watch the store. You two talk.” Sandy replaced the asparagus stalk carefully and left us alone.

  “That’s a girl you can trust,” Gloria said. “She’s warming to this.”

  “It comes and goes. Tell me, what did Romeo say?”

  “Everything right. He was so glad I had come. He said he couldn’t stop thinking about you. He had a wonderful time at Canobie Lake, though to hear him tell it, you drove up there, played a couple rounds of Fascination, and came home.”

  “It was something like that. Did you tell him about Mort?”

  Gloria shook her head. “I figured what’s the point in making the poor guy crazy? He’s going to be worried, he’s going to be jealous. I liked him too much for that.”

  I heard the bell on the front door and then Sandy’s voice. “Hi, Dad.”

  There was a pause, some footsteps, and then Mort. “Would you look at this place? It’s a dump. She’s turned it into a dump.”

  “Speak of the devil,” Gloria said. “Do you want me to stay?”

  “Something tells me this one isn’t going to be quick. I think you’ve done enough for one day.”

  “It’s not that I want any harm to come to Mort, or even to my own ex-husband exactly, but I don’t think they should be allowed to walk around, popping up anytime they feel like it. What I envision is something called Planet of the Ex-Husbands. Let all that money the government spent on NASA be put to good use. We just shoot them off into space.”

  “I don’t think that’s a bad idea.”

  “Mom?” Sandy called. “Could you come out here, please?”

  Gloria went first, smiling and holding her arms out to Mort. “Mort!” she said. “Imagine us both showing up at Roseman’s.”

  Mort kissed her on the cheek and gave her a squeeze on the shoulder. “You look good, Gloria.” He said it in the exact same tone of voice he had used to tell me that I looked good, like he was both surprised and humbled by our beauty. I wanted to kick him. “How’s
Buzz?”

  “Just great. The reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, I’m off to see him right this minute. The next time you’re coming to town, let me know first.” Gloria gave Sandy a kiss and waved good-bye.

  “So I guess she’s in on this whole thing,” Mort said, watching her walk away. “Your great conspirator. She must be loving this.”

  “Nobody is loving this,” I said. With Gloria gone I felt less confident. It seemed like she had taken all of the air in the room with her when she left.

  Mort started pacing the shop from corner to corner. “I see you’re killing the shop. Is that part of the romance? He talks you into tanking the business so he can be the only game in town?”

  “Mort.”

  “Where are all the flowers? Can you tell me that? This is a flower shop, you’re supposed to have flowers.”

  “There was some kind of trouble with the shipment, all right? It’s just today. You want to tell me in all the years you worked here you never had a problem with delivery?”

  “I had my problems, but I was always on the phone yelling at somebody. Who have you called this morning?”

  I hadn’t called anyone. The vegetables came and then Sandy and then Gloria. I didn’t even think about it. “I’ll run my store my way.”

  “Your store. That just galls me. Your father promised me this store. He said it was my store.”

  “On the one unspoken condition that you not run off with a bridesmaid, Mort. For God’s sake, how much can you expect?”

  “I expected fair treatment. I gave this place my life.”