The White Rose

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  Her Coach bag eats into her shoulder.

  She steps out of the path of entering students and watches them blankly for a moment, and then she leaves the building and sits, bewildered, on one of the steps, gazing out across College Walk to the old statue of Alma Mater. Sanguine knowledge, Sophie thinks, looking her over. The great bronze woman sits in a chair reading a book and holding a scepter. There’s supposed to be an owl hidden somewhere in the folds of her gown, and campus legend says that the first member of an incoming class to locate the thing is fated to become class valedictorian. It’s hard to find, however, at least for Columbia students; schoolchildren apparently locate it instantly. Sophie, for her own part, has never looked, and she has no idea who her class’s valedictorian was.

  The symbolism here is not exactly obscure. The owl, Athena’s familiar, represents wisdom. Sophie’s own name means wisdom, too, a notion that has always struck her as bizarre, given that she does not feel remotely wise. Her knowledge is so specific, so bordered, and she has—it is humiliating to admit—a profound lack of interest in most everything else, allowing whole sections of the New York Times to go unread on a daily basis. She has no business representing her university and her field at a place like the AHA, Sophie thinks suddenly. She has no business even being called Sophie. What were they thinking when they named her? Perhaps she should change her name after the wedding. To Mrs. Barton Ochstein? And what does Barton mean?

  It strikes Sophie then that she is under a kind of siege, that something is wending its way through her. And she does not know what to do about it, short of abstaining from human contact until it has safely passed. She does not want to discuss it, with anyone. Because she has been so fortunate, the notion of complaint offends her.

  Sophie gets to her feet and slings her burdensome bag over her shoulder. College Walk, and the open plazas on either side, are crowded with kids, chattering, laboring beneath their own heavy book bags—all of them going somewhere important, or at least important to them.

  Well, fine, she scolds herself. So you don’t want to go to the library, one day out of your life—so what? People do it all the time, play hooky, see a movie in the middle of the day. New York is full of people seeing movies in the middle of the day! Isn’t there a Woody Allen movie where people see a movie in the middle of the day?

  Sophie has no desire to go to a movie. She can’t bear not to accomplish something, not to salvage something.

  You’re a woman about to be married! Sophie thinks. There must be something.

  Sophie frowns. There is indeed something. There is the flower issue, which she has allowed to idle, unattended, after making very opinionated pronouncements to her family. The woman from Millbrook Floral had indeed been dispatched the next day—and how much fun was that? Sophie thinks, remembering the icy silence coming from the phone—but she has done nothing about it since, and the wedding is now six weeks away. What kind of self-respecting Jewish bride is she, anyway?

  She descends the steps, newly motivated. This is the problem for the day. This is the thing she will go to sleep tonight not having to do in the morning. Today. Right now. Taken care of. Done.

  Of course she remembers the name of the shop, but she has no idea where it’s located. Sophie walks west to Broadway, finds a phone booth near the 116th Street station, and thumbs the limp (and faintly malodorous) pages of the phone book to locate the listing: 22 Commerce Street, it says. But where is Commerce Street?

  She puts a quarter into the phone and punches in the numbers. It has barely rung once when a man’s voice says, “White Rose!”

  Not the same man, Sophie immediately thinks.

  “Where are you located?” says Sophie.

  “Twenty-two Commerce Street,” he says, hearty but distracted. Not the same man, she thinks again.

  “Yes…but where is Commerce Street, exactly?”

  “You know the Cherry Lane Theatre?” The man who isn’t the same man says. “Off Bleecker?”

  “Yeah,” she lies. She knows where Bleecker is, more or less.

  “We’re right next door,” he says, triumphant.

  “Okay,” says Sophie. “Thank you.”

  He hangs up. Sophie goes down into the subway and gets on the number 9, filled with purpose. She is hurtling down the island, her destination a street so obscure she has never even heard of it, despite the fact that she has lived her entire life within six miles of the place. Where else in the world can you say that? she thinks with a twisted kind of pride. And when she gets there she will make decisions and issue instructions and take care of things, or at least this one thing. Oh, I took care of that, she will say to Frieda or Barton or her father, whichever one of them asks first. What else?

  The subway screeches and stops. She gets to her feet and leaves, blinking toward daylight. It is nearly noon.

  Above ground, the streets fan out in a disjointed fashion. Twice she backtracks, unsure of which direction she is headed, then of which direction she is supposed to be headed. Bleecker, easily found, proves baffling after the first several blocks when it bends unexpectedly to the left, and after a few minutes Sophie steps into an art gallery to ask where the theater is, but unfortunately the woman sends her to the Minetta Lane Theatre, and when she arrives there she is forced to ask again for the Cherry Lane Theatre and then retrace her steps nearly all the way back, which leaves her overheated and annoyed. She is also hungry, but she is ignoring that fact for the present, stomping past restaurants and cafés in her pursuit of Commerce Street, the Cherry Lane Theatre (and why is the Cherry Lane Theatre on Commerce Street? Why is it not, then, the Commerce Street Theatre?) and the one particular flower shop, out of all the hundreds of flower shops in the city, that she has whimsically decided is the only one capable of providing flowers for her wedding.

  By the time she finds the street, and the shop, her mood is so foul that she nearly refuses to enter, but there are white roses in the window, masses of them in a great black urn, more lovely even than the roses that arrived for her three weeks earlier, and have arrived every week since, and she takes a moment to simply look at them, and to think—for the first time in many months—of the mystery of her own White Rose and how it was named. Was it purity? The Virgin Mary? The armies of York in their battle with Somerset? Or did one of those people, those heroes, those kids, simply think—in the midst of so much ugliness—of this lovely flower, and clutch at its beauty?

  Sophie is so consumed by these thoughts that she nearly forgets her banal errand, and it is only the opening door of the shop that breaks her reverie. A man leans out—indeed, a different man—with very black skin and long Rasta dreadlocks. He is grinning so broadly she thinks for an instant that he must know her.

  “Aw, come on,” he laughs. “I won’t bite you.”

  Sophie, somewhat abashed, climbs the steps and takes the door from his hand.

  “I saw you skulking out there!” the man says. “Now don’t be shy. Are you looking for something special?”

  “Oh…no,” she says, following him inside. “Well, not something. I’m looking for…” And she hesitates, because now she can’t remember his name, though he said it in her kitchen, and more than once.

  “Oliver?” the man suggests, and Sophie smiles in relief. Of course! Oliver!

  “Is he here?” she says, looking around.

  “No. But he should be, any minute. He had to go back to Fischer & Page. He needed more dahlias.”

  “Oh,” Sophie says. “Well, I guess I can wait.”

  “I insist upon it!” the man says delightedly. “I’m Bell.”

  Sophie holds out her hand. “Sophie Klein.”

  He grins, holding it a little longer than necessary. “Sophie,” Bell says, with feeling. “Well. I’m extremely glad to meet you. Does Oliver know you’re coming?”

  “Oh no,” she says and shakes her head. “I guess I should have warned him.”

  “Don’t be silly!” he says. “You don’t need an appointment.”

/>   Instinctively, she takes offense at this. Certainly there are other children of other extremely rich parents who go about requesting special privileges, but she has never been one, and she does not like that Bell, whom she has only just met after all, would make such an assumption. She considers that Oliver must have bragged to his employee about his standing order of flowers for Mort Klein’s daughter. This is unsettling.

  “Have a seat,” says Bell. “Stay a while. You want some coffee?”

  She wants lunch, Sophie thinks. And a bathroom. “No,” she tells him. “Thanks.”

  “And tell me everything,” he says, nudging aside some exotic-looking pink blooms and leaning forward across the table. “Because our friend Oliver hasn’t said a word about you. Soul of discretion!”

  Evidently untrue, thinks Sophie, letting her bag crash to the wooden floor. Not if his employee already knows who she is. She looks around. The refrigerator is filled with puffy blue hydrangeas. At least she thinks they are hydrangeas. “Are those hydrangeas?” Sophie asks.

  “Spider chrysanthemum,” Bell says, turning to look. “I take it you’re not a flower person?”

  “Not really,” Sophie says.

  “So where’d you meet up with Oliver, then?”

  “Oh,” she says brightly, “he brought me some roses. White roses. I don’t know what kind. They were really beautiful.”

  Bell nods. His dreadlocks bounce against his shoulders. “Don’t doubt it. Florally speaking he’s a total fascist.” He looks down at the flowers on the table and sighs. “Hey, I like flowers! I work in a flower shop, I look at them all day, I talk about them all day. But Oliver, he’s hardwired for flowers. And what a snob! The guy won’t even allow a carnation in the shop.”

  “What, not even on Saint Patrick’s Day?” Sophie laughs, despite herself.

  “Especially not on Saint Patrick’s Day!” Bell says. “You should hear him. ‘People get the flowers they deserve!’ If somebody wants to go around wearing a spray-painted carnation, what more is there to say?” He shakes his head. “You sure you don’t want that coffee?”

  “Okay,” she says. “Thanks. Milk and sugar, please.”

  He goes into a back room and returns with a mug for her. It steams invitingly and says ELLE DECOR in fat red letters.

  “Thanks,” says Sophie, taking it. “Elle Decor?”

  “Yeah. They did a piece on the shop. Didn’t he tell you?”

  She shakes her head and sips. She is not a coffee aficionado, but this is heavenly.

  “Really? I’m surprised. Oliver’s not that modest, you know. Not about the shop, anyway.” He peers at her. “Hey,” he frowns suddenly. “Look, I’m not being a total asshole here, am I? I mean, it’s you, right? The mystery woman?”

  Sophie considers this question. Her first response is baffling disappointment. Then she is at least relieved that Oliver has not bragged about providing flowers to Mort Klein’s daughter. Then, to her increasing distress, she feels deflated again. She sets her mug on the table between them. “Sorry,” she says, “but I just came to talk about flowers. For my wedding.”

  Bell goes stiff. “Your wedding? As in…your wedding to somebody who is not the person we’ve just been talking about?”

  Sophie nods. “I’ve only ever met the guy once. Oliver, I mean.”

  Bell is covering his face with his hands. “Oh man,” he says. “I’m…look, I saw you outside and you said you were here to see Oliver…I don’t know, I was sure it was you. He’s so damn mysterious! I mean, this guy’s been off his head for months about some woman, but he never brings her when we go out, and he won’t tell me a thing! She’s got to be either married or a movie star.”

  “Maybe married and a movie star,” Sophie says, still vaguely depressed. “Are you sure she even exists?”

  “Oh yeah,” he sighs. “Even if he didn’t walk around with his head on another planet or race upstairs whenever his phone rings, you know when Oliver Stern walks out of here with the best flowers, it’s got to be serious.”

  “I would say so,” agrees Sophie, “but it’s got nothing to do with me, I can promise you.”

  Bell shakes his head. “Look, let me make it up to you. Can I take you to dinner? I’ve got a friend who’s sous-chef at Alison on Dominick. He can always get me in.”

  Sophie looks at him and bursts into laughter. “I’m engaged. Remember?”

  “What’s a little engagement between friends?” He raises an eyebrow. “You gotta eat, right?”

  “Right. And thanks,” says Sophie. “But—and I mean this sincerely—no thanks.”

  Behind her, the door opens and a waft of cold November air enters the room. Sophie turns to find Oliver stuck in the doorway, as if the new chill had iced him to the floorboards, and looking at the two of them with a kind of pained stupefaction.

  “Asshole,” Bell says, breaking this impasse. “I thought she was your girlfriend.”

  Oliver’s eyes widen. “She’s engaged,” he says, baffled. “I mean, you’re engaged, right?”

  Sophie nods.

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “She’s here about flowers. Asshole!” Bell grins. “Why else would she be here?”

  “Stop calling me asshole,” Oliver says tersely.

  “For the wedding,” Bell adds. And then, for emphasis, “Asshole.”

  “Gee,” Sophie says, “it must be a load of fun to work here. You guys clearly get along great.”

  Oliver closes the door behind him. “I apologize. For him, too. I’m just surprised to see you here.”

  “Why? Those roses were beautiful. And the woman I was talking to in Millbrook wanted to charge me a fortune for poinsettias.”

  Oliver raises his eyebrows. “You want poinsettias? For your wedding?”

  “No,” Sophie says. “That’s the point. She just assumed. You know, Christmas wedding equals poinsettias? Like I’m going to be dressed up in green fur with a sprig of holly in my hair? You know, not everyone in Millbrook’s a WASP!”

  “That’s not what I heard,” says Bell, laughing. “Tallyho central, am I right?”

  “No!” Sophie says, peeved. “I mean, yeah, but not us. I just want a quiet wedding in the country, and the country happens to be Millbrook. And I don’t want poinsettias!”

  For the first time since entering the shop, Oliver smiles. “No, I see your point. We can’t have that.”

  “So you’ll do it?” she asks in thorough frustration.

  “Well, we can talk about it,” he says. “The thing is, I was just going to unload the van and then have lunch. I’d wait, but to tell you the truth, I’m really hungry. Would you mind coming with me? I’m only going around the corner to the Pink Teacup. We can talk there.”

  Sophie gets to her feet.

  “Hey,” says Bell, “just wait a minute. You won’t go to Alison with me, but you’ll go to the Pink Teacup with him?”

  “Jesus,” says Oliver. “You asked her out?”

  “It’s a business lunch!” says Sophie, who is nonetheless blushing.

  “You thought she was my girlfriend so you asked her out?” Oliver demands.

  “Only after she set me straight,” Bell says merrily.

  “Excuse me,” interrupts Sophie, “do you mind if I use your bathroom?”

  Still glaring at each other, both men raise their hands in unison and point.

  Sophie leaves the room gratefully, certainly embarrassed but oddly excited, too, as if the two were truly at the point of blows on her behalf. She might as easily have taken offense, she thinks, shutting the door behind her. Given her day so far—the malaise, the awkward encounter with her thesis advisor and almost-relation, the inconvenience and exertion of her trawl through the West Village—a little offense might have been a logical progression, but Sophie is not offended. She feels…It takes her a moment to identify what she feels, and she settles finally on lighthearted. No, giddy. No no, she thinks, washing her hands in the tiny bathroom, just sidetracked. She
had better pull herself together. Sophie eyes herself in the mirror, determined to be all chilly practicality when she emerges: Bride on a mission! Upper East Side Jewish woman who wants it yesterday!

  The two of them have the front door open when she emerges. They are carrying in large plastic buckets of flowers: blue and white, red and orange. Bell lifts his bucket of dahlias onto the table. A blue light catches Sophie’s eye as she passes back through the office, and she stops.

  On a low table sit three long trays of dirt, each with an attached index card containing cryptic abbreviations. Two of the three trays look fairly dormant, with only an occasional flaccid seedling emerging from the dirt, but the third boasts several robust young plants. Sophie steps closer, peering at the card. “WB” it says. As in Warner Brothers? Or Yeats?

  Above the trays, on a corkboard wall, her gaze finds something familiar, and this turns out to be her own name, and her own address, written up on a shop invoice. She spends a moment of guilty curiosity wondering how much Barton might have spent on her white roses, but as it turns out, the figures in the right hand column are too confusing for her to understand. There is a $75 charge, marked with the date of the Friday when the first roses arrived, and there are other notations—$75, $105, $85—marked with other, more recent dates. Too many dates, and too many notations of price. It doesn’t make sense. She hasn’t received that many deliveries, has she? Sophie frowns, counting back the weeks. Some of the charges are marked with an O in parentheses. Which means what? thinks Sophie. O for Ochstein? O for Oliver to deliver himself? Has Oliver been cheating Barton? Charging him for flowers that were never delivered?

  When Sophie hears a noise nearby, she looks up to find Oliver looking on, somewhat nervously. “I’m sorry,” Sophie says quickly. “I was just curious. I mean, about what you’re planting.”

  “It’s okay,” says Oliver, though it doesn’t look like it’s at all okay with him. She sees him look past her—to the bulletin board, to the invoice—then force his own gaze away.