by Jeanne Ray
“I never,” I said, fighting back a sob. “It’s just—”
She smiled at me, and in that smile it was easy to see that for all her success and sophistication she was still a young girl, a very sweet young girl. I tried to focus on the sweetness as a way of calming myself down.
“I cry in the cooler all the time,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned that’s why they installed them in flower shops in the first place. When I was growing up I always went into the cooler to cry, unless I was going into the cooler to make out with some guy. They’re good for that, too. When you’ve got five brothers and an overprotective father, you learn how to take your privacy where you can.”
“I can see that.”
“Wait right here.” She got up and pulled open the heavy metal door while I took a few deep breaths and tried to reassemble the woman I used to be. I was too tired and too upset even to think about being embarrassed. I’d been caught doing more serious things than crying in a cooler.
Plummy came back holding a tall glass in one hand. “Drink this anyway. You lose all that fluid when you cry.”
I sipped the water, and somehow it made me feel calmer. Maybe it was just the fact that someone had brought it to me, instead of me bringing it to someone.
“So I have to ask you, but you don’t have to tell me, does this have to do with my father?”
“Oh no,” I said, but then I remembered the floss picks. “Well, not in the way you would think. He’s getting better, and I love having him around.” I looked at her big dark eyes and was struck by how much they reminded me of Romeo’s.
“But it’s got to be hard.”
“It was maybe a little easier when he could stand up.”
“And Sandy told me about Nora and the triplets.”
I smiled and took another sip. “So you’re completely up to date. I don’t have to tell you anything at all.”
“Triplets.” Plummy shook her pretty head. “I still don’t think I’m up to taking care of a cat.”
“Good,” I said. “You stick with that feeling.”
The door opened up a little bit, and Sandy said, “Plummy, are you talking to somebody?” then she said, “Mom?”
“I was crying in the cooler,” I said.
Sandy sighed. “I’ve already cried all over Plummy this morning. At least I got her while she was still fresh.”
Plummy laughed and pulled another handkerchief out of another pocket to dab her own eyes. I guess she bought them in bulk. “I’m like a duck. It all rolls right off me.”
I wiped my face again and finished the water. “I think I really just want to come back to work. I miss this place. Sandy, maybe you should stay home for awhile and run the house and I’ll come in.”
“In your dreams,” Sandy said.
“It’s a beautiful store,” Plummy said. “Not to be disloyal, but I think it has much better light than Dad’s store.”
“That’s very sweet of you,” I said.
Sandy leaned against the door. She seemed like a different person now that she was out of the house. “I just got a call from the school, and they told me that Sarah threw up and wants to come home.”
“Too much Halloween candy?”
“It could be, or maybe she worked herself up into a state over this lottery business. Who knows, she might even have the flu, but I need to go get her.”
I stood up from my bucket, which was very low, and that, combined with the cold, had left me stiff. “I’ll go get her. If she feels like it, I’ll take her to the grocery store with me, and we can buy pesticide-free, antibiotic-free, hormone-free saltines for Nora.”
“I liked her better when she was just worrying about calories,” Sandy said. “Are you sure you don’t mind getting Sarah?”
“It will give me a chance to stall for a little while: Besides, I want to spend some time with her. I know she’s pretty depressed.”
“What’s Sarah depressed about?” Plummy asked.
“She didn’t win 234 million dollars in the lottery,” Sandy said.
Plummy nodded gravely. “I didn’t either. I was really down about that, too.”
“If I ever see another Mega Millions ticket in our house, you mark my words, there will be hell to pay,” Sandy said.
The three of us left the cooler rubbing our arms and stamping our feet. I was all ready to go, but when I was walking past the work bench, I saw the most amazing thing: a bunch of flowers nestled in a low box, ready to go out for delivery. Now, I see flowers all the time, I see them with a professional eye, and nothing knocks the breath out of me anymore—but this did. This was a swirl, a storm of yellow butterflies suspended over a mossy field, tiny yellow orchids on stripped stems, each suspended at a slightly different height, and yet all of them moving together. It was so elegant, so whimsical, so true, that I expected the whole thing to lift up and fly out of the store. I held up my hand to touch and then, instead, I leaned forward and blew.
Plummy clapped her hands. “That’s exactly right!” she said. “It should inspire you to move the air around it.”
“She’s a genius,” Sandy said, speaking of Plummy. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a genius florist until she showed up for work this morning.”
Plummy blushed and shook her head. “My dad’s pretty good, but he didn’t have a lot of room for self-expression. His parents were both squashers.”
“My parents weren’t squashers, and I never came up with anything close to that,” Sandy said. I leaned past her and blew again ever so lightly on the yellow blossoms and made them shiver.
I don’t know what exactly had made me feel better—the cry or the talk or the sight of those yellow butterflies. Maybe it was everything. “Good-bye, beautiful girls,” I said, and kissed them both. “Thank you.”
I left the store feeling thirty pounds and thirty years lighter. I had gone to the very bottom of my sadness and was filled up again with beauty and goodwill. It was a much-needed exchange.
The principal of the grade school herself led me back to the nurse’s office, where Sarah lay stretched out on a cot with a wet rag over her eyes. I had come to claim my own sickly children from this very office in the past and very likely from this same cot. Always, the sight of them lying there pale and supine broke my heart. That was back in the days when there was a genuine nurse sitting at the desk and not just the office secretary. She glanced up at me from her paperwork and smiled. “I’m Mrs. Oates,” she said. “Someone’s sick.” That was the full extent of her diagnostic capabilities.
“Hello, Button,” I said to Sarah.
Sarah lifted one edge of the washrag to look at me. Then she bent her fingers up and down in a weak attempt at a wave.
“Feeling crummy?”
Her head moved against its little paper-covered pillow in half a nod.
The faux nurse checked the paperwork to see that I was in fact registered to claim my granddaughter and not just someone who trolled nurses’ offices looking to collect sick children. I signed a release form and peeled Sarah off the tiny bed.
She was wilted. Everything about her seemed damp and limp as a jonquil beaten flat by a violent rain. I held her hand as she wobbled down the hallway and out the door without so much as a word; but as soon as we stepped outside, and that bright November wind smacked her in the face, she seemed to perk up immeasurably. She took a long, deep breath and then got into the car.
I noticed the sudden resurgence of color in her cheeks. “How are you now?” I asked.
She sniffed and touched her fingers to her forehead. “If I say I feel better, do I have to go back?”
“No.”
“I think I feel better.”
I leaned over and kissed the part of her hair. “Good.”
“Do you ever just feel like you need to get out of a place?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. Was something going on at school?”
She leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. “The other kids were teasing me abo
ut not winning the lottery.”
“Why? I’m assuming they didn’t win, either.”
“They never said they were going to win.”
“I see.” I backed out of the parking lot, crunching through the last of the fall leaves. “Do you feel well enough to go to the grocery store with me, or do I need to take you home?”
“Will you buy me a lottery ticket?”
I put the car in park and turned around to get a good look at her. “Listen, Sarah, this has got to end. Your mother says so, I say so. It isn’t good for you. Eight-year-olds aren’t supposed to gamble. We never should have started letting you play in the first place. Life doesn’t work like a movie. You’re not Charlie, and there is no golden ticket. It’s a wonderful thing to imagine, but it’s also a wonderful thing to live in the real world, okay? We all want you to live in the real world with us.”
Sarah looked down at her lap. She gave the shoulder strap on her seat belt a couple of distracted tugs. “I’m supposed to win,” she said quietly.
I folded my hands over the top of the steering wheel and tried to think of a way to explain this that wouldn’t crush every ounce of joy out of life. “No, you’re not, darling, no more or less than anybody else. When those numbers come up they don’t come up for you or against you, they just come up.”
“We could do a lot with that money,” she said.
“You’re absolutely right, and so could everybody else, too. You don’t want to spend your life with your head in the clouds, wanting things you don’t have. We’ve got a very nice life just the way we are.”
“I think I’m feeling sick again.”
I patted her knee. I felt for the kid, I really did. It was neither greed nor entitlement that she suffered from. She had simply believed in the fairy tale, just like any other kid who thought that little pigs built their houses in defense of huffing wolves. “Okay, I’ll take you home.”
She shook her head. “No, let’s go to the grocery store. I’m just tired, is all. I’m not going to throw up or anything.”
Even in the health food grocery store, there were still plenty of cookies and ginger ale and Gummy bears and magazines to be had, all the sorts of things that grandmothers were perfectly willing to buy sick granddaughters who had recently lost their betting privileges. And Sarah wasn’t pushing her luck. All she asked for was a demure box of whole-wheat animal crackers.
We had a long list, and neither of us was in such a hurry to get home again, so we coasted slowly through the wide aisles of Bread & Circus, where I thought I’d have better luck finding the eggs of chickens who had taken free range of the south of France. When we rounded the corner to contemplate a collection of organic soups, my cart was rammed head-on by my friend Gloria.
“You never shop here!” she said.
“It’s too expensive,” I said. “These eggs are five dollars a dozen.” I picked up the eggs and peered inside the carton to make sure that none of them had been broken on impact.
“And aren’t you supposed to be in school?” Gloria said to Sarah. “They still have school, don’t they?”
“I’m sick,” Sarah said. “I was sick.”
Gloria immediately put a hand on Sarah’s forehead as if to test the validity of her statement. “You’re not hot, but you’re pale. Will they let you out of school for being pale?”
“They will if you throw up on them,” Sarah said sensibly.
Gloria had abandoned her own cart and was now sorting through mine. “Japanese seaweed crackers, tofu, baby eggplants, raw goat cheese. No wonder this child is feeling punk.”
“It’s not for Sarah, it’s for Nora.”
“Since when do you do Nora’s grocery shopping?”
“She’s going to have three babies,” Sarah said.
It’s amazing how quickly we adapt to news. I had known about Nora’s pregnancy for such a short period of time, and already I could hear the words without my mouth going dry. But when I saw the news hitting Gloria like a fast right hook, I was reminded that this was indeed still a shocking thing.
She wrapped her fingers through the slender metal bars of my basket and blinked. “Nora doesn’t like children.”
“She likes me,” Sarah said.
“But what are the chances she’d get three like you?” Gloria stumbled on the word three. It was hard for her even to say it.
“I don’t know,” Sarah said, obviously pleased at the thought of three little versions of herself. “She’s my aunt. I guess it could happen.”
“Oh, Julie,” Gloria said. “How could you not have told me?” Her eyes were bright and glazed in tears. For Gloria, who told me everything and was used to hearing everything, this was a genuine betrayal.
“I’ve only known since last night, and in case you’ve forgotten, I’ve had my hands full over at my house. I was going to call you as soon as I had two minutes in a row.”
“You can call me at three o’clock in the morning.”
“But wait,” I said. “The story gets better.”
“Four babies?” Sarah said.
A skinny woman in a navy warm-up suit who was pushing her cart past us slowed down at that and turned to look at me. Massachusetts is not by its nature a particularly nosy place, but any thinking woman would have to stop at the mention of a quartet delivery. I shook my head no, and she sailed off down the aisle looking relieved.
“She has an incompetent cervix, and she’s on total bed rest.”
“That’s awful!” Gloria said. “So you have to do all her shopping?”
“She’s on total bed rest in a hospital bed that is in my living room.”
“Nora’s living in the living room?” Sarah asked excitedly. All of the real action had transpired during her brief appearance in school, probably furthering her belief that she was better off staying home.
While Sarah’s joy at having another captive audience member was evident, Gloria said nothing. She only blinked. Since the death of my parents, Gloria was the person who had known me better and longer than anyone else in the world. She was the maid of honor at my wedding and came with me to the lawyer for my divorce. We have taken care of each other’s kids and borrowed each other’s clothes and attended each other’s hysterectomies. We have, for richer and for poorer, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, stuck by each other. So I cannot say it surprised me when Gloria just sat down on the floor of the very clean Bread & Circus, rested her back gently against a display of soup cans, put her face in her hands, and started to cry.
“Hey,” Sarah said, touching Gloria’s shoulder. “It’s okay. Nora’s going to be okay. She might even want to name one of the babies after you.”
“Baby Gloria,” I said, and took my place beside her on the floor and held her knee. Sarah sat down as well, impressed to see adults behaving so far outside the range of normal behavior.
Gloria laughed a little bit into her hands. “You’re completely doomed,” she said. “You know that, right?”
“I do.”
“Romeo upstairs, Nora downstairs, everybody else running around.”
“Don’t forget about the visitors,” I said.
“They come every two minutes,” Sarah said. “Especially the priest and his brother.”
Gloria shook her head. “What are you going to do with three babies?”
“Ah!” I held up my hand. “Correction: What is Nora going to do with three babies?”
“Forgive me. You know what I mean.”
“We just haven’t gotten that far. For now, we only have to concern ourselves with hatching them.” I looked at my watch, suddenly remembering that I’d left a houseful of defenseless invalids alone too long. A pretty young girl rolled past us with a baby propped up in the front of her cart. She pointed us out to the baby and told her to wave, but the baby only blinked and blew a little bubble of spit.
“This is where you get them,” Gloria whispered to Sarah. “Over on aisle five. Why does anyone go through all the trouble of making
them at home when you can just throw one in the cart?”
Sarah giggled at such talk.
“Okay, girls, enough of this foolishness. I have an infirmary to run.”
We hoisted each other up off the floor and resumed our shopping. Gloria, who was a much more enlightened eater than I have ever been, gave me some guidance as to what Nora would find acceptable. Then we steered our carts into the checkout line, me behind Gloria.
“Have you won the lottery yet?” Gloria asked Sarah, as the last of her groceries were tucked into their bags.
Far above Sarah’s head I mouthed the word, “No.”
“Not yet,” Sarah said sadly.
“Well, don’t give up. You just have to keep trying. It’s all about beating the odds, you know. You can’t win if you don’t play.”
“I know,” Sarah said.
Gloria kissed us both and promised to come over soon to visit everyone. She said she was anxious to see if Nora looked fat. “Courage!” she said as she wheeled away. I thought she was saying it to me and Sarah thought she was saying it to her and we both gave weak, sad smiles in return.
I pushed the cart up to the checkout and made myself busy unloading the pricey whole-grain items onto the black conveyer belt. I didn’t want to look at Sarah, and I didn’t want to look at the bright Massachusetts State Lottery sign that told us that playing would be fun. Sarah always wanted to ride along to the grocery store with me, and for the first time, I realized it wasn’t because the grocery store was such a great time for her. It was because I always bought her a ticket. If there was a problem, it was as much my responsibility as anyone else’s. Sarah stood on her toes to reach down into the basket and hand me the lemon hummus and the plain fat-free yogurt and the very first clementines of the season.
“Do you think Gloria doesn’t want Aunt Nora to have babies?” she asked me.
I shook my head with as much reassurance as I could muster. “It’s nothing like that. It’s just that she’s worried. She knows it’s going to be a lot of work.”
“But we can do it,” Sarah said. “If we all work at it together. Mom and I can watch one of the babies and you and Romeo can watch one and Aunt Nora and Uncle Alex can watch one. It’s not too many when you think about it that way.” She handed me a bag of limes and some all-natural Parmesan bread sticks that actually looked pretty good.