The White Rose

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  In the Metro section there is an article about Bette Midler and her garden guerillas. The photograph shows the grinning diva wallowing in topsoil up in Harlem, surrounded by children and planting a dwarf apple tree. In the Arts section there is a review of a troupe of obese modern dancers, and Oliver gazes in wonder at the picture: bending bodies, their rolls of flesh defiantly bared, their faces grim. He looks at his watch, thinks of Marian asleep—sleeping it off, he hopes—and goes back to his paper. He is the only one in the restaurant just now, apart from Sam, the weekend waiter. Earlier, a groovy Village family had colonized the front table with their coloring books and newspapers and platters of food, and there was a tense young couple glumly eating their eggs before setting off on their unhappy day together. Oliver accepts a third cup of mediocre coffee and sits, turning the pages. He hopes Marian won’t wait too long to call. It’s a clear morning, blue and warm, and he would like to walk somewhere. South, Oliver decides. He never goes south. All the way to Bowling Green and—why not?—even beyond. He hasn’t been on the Staten Island Ferry in years. He reads the review of a nineteenth-century courtesan’s biography. This is one of several, hopeful, post–Lady Charlotte books he has noted. None have succeeded as Marian’s has. He smiles with pride, puts away his paper, and pays his check.

  Outside, he resists the urge to set out alone, to simply take off and begin the journey of his day. The point is to be with her, not merely to do what he wishes to do on his own, so Oliver dutifully retraces his steps to Commerce Street and enters his shop. Bell has arrived and is unloading from Twenty-eighth Street. There is a Jackson Pollock spatter of water across the dark wooden floorboards, from the doorway to the refrigerators. Oliver, pausing to survey the new blooms already arranged in their tin pails, notes to his satisfaction that Bell’s taste, already naturally good, is improving.

  “Howdy,” he calls to the back of the shop. “Nice hydrangeas.”

  “I thought so,” Bell’s voice returns. “Never saw a purple like that on a hydrangea.”

  “You ought to get out more,” says Oliver. Then he groans. “Jesus, Bell, who do you think’s going to buy a black calla? How much did they cost?”

  “You kidding?” He sticks his head out of the back room, his arms full of orange roses, and grins. “You ever heard of Halloween?”

  “They look funereal,” Oliver comments, eyeing them. The flowers are smooth, sinewy, downright scary. They give him the willies.

  “I want to put some in the window.” Bell sounds mischievous. He hauls the roses to the refrigerator and then sets a black urn on the worktable. The urn looks funereal, too. “You watch. It’ll be like Little Shop of Horrors in here: Say! What is that unusual plant!”

  Oliver sighs. “Fine. But let’s not go overboard. Don’t buy any more until we see how these do, okay?”

  Bell shakes his head. “Why not decide you’re gonna make black calla lilies the must-have flower for the nineties? Gotta think big, my friend.”

  “Why not gamble on your own time, my friend?”

  It’s a rusty routine, by now. They both put up their hands.

  “Didn’t expect to see you,” says Bell, tying back his dreadlocks and preparing the urn. “Weren’t you going to be away for the weekend?”

  “Yes,” Oliver agrees, trying for an offhand tone. “Small change in plans.”

  “She kick you out?” Bell asks. “I keep telling you, if you’re serious about this girl you need to say so. Women are very insecure. They’re not good at subtle—you have to spell it out.”

  Oliver marvels at how easily Bell can accomplish this authoritative posture. He feels as if he is a child on a stool in a kitchen, listening to Mommy. Actually, he is a year older than Bell.

  “She didn’t kick me out.” Oliver sounds petulant. He sounds like an idiot. “We just changed our plans.”

  “Yeah,” Bell says with a grin, plucking the first black calla from the tabletop, clipping its stem, feeding it through a skein of chicken wire inside the urn. “You think I haven’t been there? It’s like you got them coming at you from all sides when you just want to be having fun, but the minute you really fall for somebody, you’re at the start of an obstacle course in the dark.”

  “Which is why you stick to the just having fun part,” Oliver says dryly.

  “Exactly, my friend.”

  Oliver has to admit, the lilies look good. Macabre, but sexy in their Edward Gorey container, ready to make mischief and exude superiority. He should listen to Bell more, it occurs to him. But not about Marian. Oliver has shared none of the salient details with his employee, who probably supposes that Oliver is in love with some gallery girl or waitress-slash-something. Bell has never—Oliver is quite sure—felt about any of his many girlfriends what Oliver feels for Marian.

  “White Rose!” Bell says, answering the phone as the door opens to a trio of beautiful blond men. “That’s not ringing a bell,” Oliver hears him say. “It’s possible someone else took the order. Can you let me have your name?”

  One of the men is opening the cooler doors. Oliver, frowning, is about to step across the room when he hears Bell say, “I’m sorry, it was going to Klein or we’re billing to Klein?”

  Both, thinks Oliver, abandoning the three men, who are now pawing the hydrangeas, and rushing to Bell. “I’ll take that,” he says, reaching for the phone. “I know about that order. Go help those guys, okay?”

  Bell hands over the phone, looking relieved.

  “Hi, can I help you?” Oliver says, speaking, perhaps, a mite deeply. “Is this Mr. Ochstein?”

  “This is Barton Ochstein,” says Barton Ochstein. “Who am I speaking to?”

  “I’m the owner,” says Oliver, truthfully enough. “I got the order for roses. Deliver to…ah,” he says, trying to remember the name of the fiancée, “Miss Klein?”

  “On Friday,” Barton says and harrumphs. “And they must arrive before dinner. White roses, yes? The card should say, For dear Sophie, from Bart. Should I spell that?”

  “No need,” Oliver says, writing it down. He is wondering why Barton, having gone to the effort of assigning this chore, is bothering to phone, himself. “I’ve already been given the address,” he says. “And how would you like to handle payment?”

  “Just send me the bill,” he says shortly. “But there is another matter.”

  Oliver frowns.

  “The young lady who phoned you to place the order? Her name is Olivia.”

  Unsure of how to respond, Oliver merely nods. Then he says, “Okay.”

  “I would also like to have flowers sent to Olivia.”

  “Oh.” Oliver actually blushes. “And what sort of flowers?”

  “Whatever you’re sending to Miss Klein, send the same. That should keep it simple.”

  “Olivia,” he says, testing the name out loud. “Olivia what?”

  “I don’t know,” Barton says dismissively, as if this particular bit of information is beneath his interest. “She works for Marian Kahn. I believe Marian Kahn is a client of yours.”

  “We know Dr. Kahn,” Oliver says in some disbelief.

  “Well then, you can find out. Only the flowers must be sent to Olivia at home, not at work. You will have to find out her home address. I don’t have that.”

  Oliver takes a deep breath. “So—let me just make sure I understand, Mr. Ochstein—one arrangement of white roses, this Friday, to Miss Klein, and an identical arrangement to…Olivia. On the same date?”

  “No need to wait till Friday on that one,” he says. “You may proceed with that order immediately.”

  “All right,” Oliver says meekly, his head spinning.

  “And I want the card to say…are you ready?”

  “Ready?” Oliver asks.

  “Are you writing this down?”

  “Oh,” he says and nods, “yes, I’m ready.”

  “Darling Olivia, you are enchanting. I would love to see you again. Please phone me at…”

  Oliver, breathless, sc
ribbles down the numbers.

  “With kindest regards, Barton Warburg Ochstein. That’s W-A-R-B-U-R-G, not B-E-R-G.”

  “Warburg,” Oliver confirms.

  “That’s all then,” Barton says. “I’ve just given you my number, so phone me if you have any questions.”

  “I will,” Oliver says, shaking his head in wonder, and Barton hangs up the phone without further comment.

  Across the room, Bell is holding individual stems of hydrangea while the three men argue their relative merits. The two scenarios—simultaneous white rose arrangements to prospective wife and prospective conquest and hydrangea by committee—seem, for a moment, equally absurd. Oliver, abandoning the latter, takes the new order to his office in back and writes it down again, on an official order form, marking the Olivia request with an “O.” He pins this to the bulletin board above his worktable. How he will handle the Olivia end of things he is not equipped to decide just now, but as the intended recipient of the illicit white roses, Oliver understands that he can do it privately, whatever it is, and that is no small relief.

  “I’m going,” Oliver says when the three men, their superior stems selected, depart.

  Bell nods without looking up. “All under control.”

  Oliver fumbles with the key in his apartment door and goes upstairs. His heart quickens at the green light on his answering machine, blinking its own cardiac rhythm. Marian, he thinks, phoning about their date. He lunges for the button.

  “Oh…you’ve gone out,” her recorded voice says sadly. “Well, listen, sweetheart, here’s the thing. I know you’re going to be upset, but I actually had a pretty bad night and I think the best thing would be for me to just spare you my company right now. You won’t believe me, but it’s in your best interests, because I wouldn’t spend the day with me either if I didn’t have to. So what I’m going to do is head out to the beach and just be a misanthrope and try to at least get some work done.”

  Oliver, deflated with disappointment, shakes his head. He wants to alternately hug her and hit her.

  “Oliver, please don’t be mad. I feel terrible about this, but I’m absolutely convinced that if we spent the day together you’d hate me by the end of it, so I’m being selfish because I don’t want that to happen. Look, I’m going to call you tonight, okay? I love you. Bye.”

  You love me, Oliver thinks. You just can’t stand to be with me.

  The phone rings, jarring him, and he snatches it up, though he knows it isn’t her. How could it be her? She’s already on the LIE, in flight from him.

  “Hello?”

  “Sweetheart?”

  He inhales, then summons a buoyant “Hi!” It’s his mother, the only other woman who calls him sweetheart.

  “Is it a bad time? Are you doing something?”

  Are you with someone? in other words.

  “No, of course not. Just sitting around. What’s up?”

  “Oh, it’s a pain, but Henry can’t come to the ballet tonight, after all. He has to meet that woman he’s representing, to do something about the trial.”

  “On Saturday night?” He regrets saying this instantly.

  “The court date’s in two weeks,” she says, her voice careful and calm. “I guess they need the extra time.”

  “Of course,” Oliver says, a little too heartily. “That makes sense.”

  “So he can’t come with me. I’ve had the tickets for ages, and I thought I’d see if you were free. Are you? I know it’s not much of a Saturday night. Your old mom…”

  “That’s right,” Oliver laughs. “Twist the knife. Of course I’d love to. Why don’t you come here first, for dinner?”

  “No! Let me take you out.”

  He declines. “I’ve got something I was going to cook tonight, anyway. And I don’t like those restaurants up around Lincoln Center.”

  “Well, if that’s what you want. I’ll come around six?”

  They hang up. Oliver has not seen Caroline for nearly a month. This absence—as he knows perfectly well—is a hardship for her, and one for which their frequent phone conversations do not entirely compensate, but it hasn’t been easy to be with his mother since meeting Marian. He thinks sadly now of the short ribs in their hopeful marinade, the frisée and box of orzo with which he had hoped to feed a lover, and an evening lost on the ballet (those tall, skinny girls with their washboard chests and impossible legs), and allows himself a moment of genuine self-pity.

  Then, feeling chastened, he walks to his kitchen and opens the fridge.

  The beef is soupy, gone gray in its wine bath, and smells of garlic. Oliver stands, drinking cranberry juice from the bottle, and considers. The day is his to be salvaged, and though his plans have been upended (and with them, he notes, his ambition to walk downtown), another use for the hours ahead now occurs to him. Oliver bends down and pulls out the fruit drawer: inside is a pile of little tin-foil sacks, each twisted at the end around a swelling the size of a walnut, each labeled with a tag.

  He has never done this before.

  He knows that he is supposed to be daunted, that roses resist the fumbling attentions of amateurs like himself, but the sight of his rose hips, chilled and—according to his notes—ready to germinate, elates him. The fact that failure is probable has not dampened his spirits, either last spring when he began his project or indeed today, when it strikes him as a good time to go forward.

  Oliver takes his foil sacks to the kitchen table and retrieves from his desk a large black notebook, unopened since June. He is reassured to see that his notes are legible, their content clear, and is grateful that in this, at least, he has heeded not only the advice of his high school biology teacher (the disagreeable Boris Benedict, of prehistoric tenure) but also of Joe Murray, resident deity of Kent Roses in Connecticut, where much of Oliver’s shop inventory is produced. Last spring, Joe responded to Oliver’s wish to create a new rose with a kind of sarcastic grunt, but followed it with an offer of genuine advice. He listened, first, to Oliver’s overblown description of the hoped-for rose (not knowing, but perhaps suspecting, that his young customer was newly in love), nodded with forbearance at the proposed “mother” (a pretty hybrid tea rose with five petals, called White Wings, already in bloom back on Commerce Street), and then took Oliver deep into the greenhouse to point out a trio of good paternal candidates. He showed Oliver how to collect the pollen sacs and stow them in baby food jars, then he dictated a road map for what came next. Scrawling frantically on a blank page in his Filofax, Oliver transcribed the rapid-fire, often anecdotal instructions about clipping off the stamens and pistils, applying the pollen, and harvesting the hips. It all smacked of the breeding barn and sounded inescapably obscene. The next day, when he phoned Marian, still in high excitement, she told him that he sounded like a master of ceremonies at an orgy.

  All right—it was a rush, Oliver thinks now, recalling the morning not long after his visit to Kent that he decided the mother roses were ready. “Do early,” his scrawled note read, and so he had risen at six and bounded upstairs to the roof without pausing to make coffee. The White Wings, six of them, procured from a rose nursery in Oregon, were nodding happily in the June sunshine. He had removed the petals from each bloom, then gingerly extracted the stamens, taking care not to injure the pistils they had surrounded. When, that afternoon, he had returned to the roof garden with great anticipation and peered through a magnifying glass at the pistils (and the dozen or so stigmas that constituted them), he could barely contain his elation.

  On each stigma a sticky nectar had materialized.

  “This is getting worse and worse,” Marian teased, when he called her at her office.

  “It’s for you,” he had said, a little wounded. “Remember, this rose is for you.”

  “Of course it is,” Marian said, more kindly. “It’s just that I can’t really process words like ‘sticky nectar’ and ‘stamen’ and ‘stigma’ when I’m supposed to be thinking about Georgian economic trends in the port cities.”

>   To this, Oliver made a suggestive suggestion and let her return to work. Then he got down to business.

  Having retrieved the baby food jars from his refrigerator, Oliver brought them back to the roof and slowly began to apply the first of his three pollens to the stigmas of some of the prepared White Wings. He used a pipe cleaner for this operation—Joe Murray’s favored implement—then immediately covered each inseminated bloom with a white paper bag, to prevent any bees or other insects from getting near them. When he was finished with the first of his baby food jars, he carefully labeled the completed plants with the name of the father, then repeated the process with the rest of the White Wings and the remaining two jars of pollen. It was painstaking work and took most of the afternoon. When it was completed, the rooftop garden bore strange fruit indeed: thorny green stalks capped with fluttering white bags.

  Afterward, it was a matter of soil fertilization and patience, but Oliver was rewarded in late summer with the appearance of many rose hips, particularly on the White Wings he had crossed with White Bath, an old English rose that—and this, he knows, would please Marian no end—dated to the very period when Lady Charlotte was herself stooping to conquer England. To protect these precious hips from the birds and the tenacious Village squirrels, Oliver had again taken Joe Murray’s advice and wrapped a small piece of tin foil around each, pinching it just beneath the neck. As they fell to the ground he collected them, labeled each with its parents’ names, and placed them—still in their foil sacks—inside the refrigerator to stratify.

  Now, taking a bowl of water to the kitchen table, Oliver attempts the fairly medieval-sounding method Joe has suggested to sort the most viable seeds. Using a razor blade, he carefully slits each hip, removes the seed, and drops it in the bowl.

  The sterile ones float, and he throws them away.

  The sinkers are fished out and sorted into their three paternal piles. Once again, Oliver notes, the White Bath crosses have trumped the competition, and he finds that fact strangely satisfying, as if he had long ago decided to root for this particular “bonk” (rose slang for cross, Joe had informed him, and wouldn’t Marian love that?). Then he takes the good seeds downstairs to the shop and back into his office.