“Is it pot?” she says stupidly.
Oliver bursts out laughing. “No, it’s not pot. It’s a rose. I mean,” he says shyly, “my extremely amateurish attempt at a rose.”
Sophie looks down at the pale green plants. “I don’t understand. What do you mean, your attempt? Is it hard to grow roses?”
“I’m not growing them,” Oliver says. “I mean, of course I’m growing them, but what I’m trying to do is make a new rose.”
This makes no sense to her at all. “What do you mean ‘new’? Isn’t every rose a new rose?”
“Yes, of course,” he says, flustered. “But a new type. A new specimen. If you invent a new rose, you can name it.”
“Is that why you’re doing it? So you can name it?” Sophie asks, hearing—after the fact—how rude this sounds.
“No,” Oliver shakes his head. “I’d like to be responsible for bringing something new and lovely into the world.”
Sophie is just disciplined enough to prevent herself from saying what she nearly says next, which is that this is the sentiment most people attach to the prospect of having children. She herself would like to be responsible for bringing something new and lovely into the world, after all. She has just always thought in terms of people, not flowers.
“And what will you name it?” is what she says, instead.
“Lady Charlotte,” Oliver says, standing over the slender plants. “Well, that’s the working title, anyway.”
Sophie looks at him. The artificial light makes him appear ghostly blue, his dark hair gleaming onyx. “Lady Charlotte?” she asks. “You mean like Lady Charlotte Wilcox?”
He starts. “I forgot you’re a history student. You must have read that book.”
“The book by Marian Kahn? Of course I read it. She’s in my department!”
“Well,” he says quietly, “that’s a coincidence.”
“Not that I know her, really. Actually, we were just introduced this morning.”
Oliver says nothing.
“That book must have made a big impression on you if you want to name a rose after her.”
“Yes,” he says, nodding. “Let’s go, okay?”
“No, wait!” Sophie says. “Tell me why they look so much healthier in this tray.” She points to the central one of the three. “Why do they look so wimpy in the other two? Did you add something to the dirt in this one?”
“No,” says Oliver, explaining the three father roses he has used to fertilize his mother rose, and how the White Bath cross is looking haler all the time. “Which is only appropriate,” he says softly, “since it dates to the period when Lady Charlotte Wilcox was in England.”
“You think she’s watching over your efforts?” Sophie says with a smile.
“I hope so. I hope somebody is. I’d really like this to work.”
“What if it doesn’t?” she asks.
“If it doesn’t, I’ll try again next year. Maybe on a bigger scale. I’ll try two mothers and more fathers.”
“And you’re going to do this in a tiny little room? You don’t need a big greenhouse?”
Oliver shrugs. “A big greenhouse would be great, but what I’ve got is a tiny little room. If the rose is beautiful and it thrives and I can reproduce it, I’ll be thrilled, but I’m not expecting to get lucky this quickly. Some people spend years trying to get a rose accepted by the ARS.” He looks over at her, and saves her the effort. “ARS. The American Rose Society. They’re the ones who decide whether your rose gets into the canon, so to speak. They register your name and the rose’s name, if it does. They get bombarded by new roses every year, and they just pick a few, so it’s a big honor. Which is what I care about, really, though a lot of the people do it for the money.”
“There’s money in roses?” Sophie asks.
“Oh, yeah. If you create a beautiful robust rose that’s disease resistant and needs minimal care and grows in lots of different zones, and if you get a big commercial nursery to take it on, you can make a lot of money. But like I said, I’m not in it for the money.”
“You’re in it for the rose,” says Sophie.
“Yes.”
“A white rose,” she observes.
“I hope it will be, yes. The parents are all white, but you never know.”
“And you want it to be white because…?”
He looks at her. He will not repeat his mistake.
“I know,” Sophie says, “you’ll tell me when you know me better.”
Oliver steps back, nearly out of the small room.
“Can we go?” he says.
They go, leaving a smirking Bell behind, sorting blue dahlias. They turn left on Bedford and then right on Grove and walk in awkward silence to the pink storefront near the end of the block.
“You come here often?” Sophie says as they walk in.
“Only about once a day,” he says, walking purposefully to a table in the corner. His table, obviously. Sophie hauls her bag onto the banquette opposite him and takes a look around. Everything is pink, from the chairs and banquettes to the radiators to the menus. A montage of Martin Luther King Jr. photographs confronts her from the brick wall, opposite.
“Oliver.” The lone waiter nods.
“Pete,” says Oliver. “Can we get some coffee?” He turns to Sophie. “You want coffee?”
“Evidently,” she tells him. Then, regretting this, she softens. “I mean, yes. Thank you.” She takes up her pink menu. “I’m really hungry, too. I didn’t eat breakfast.”
“You’re not doing that have-to-lose-twenty-pounds-before-the-wedding thing, I hope.”
She looks up, distressed. “Do you think I need to lose twenty pounds?”
“No. Shit,” says Oliver. “Look, I’m really not this much of a creep. You seem to bring out the worst in me.”
“I never thought you were a creep,” Sophie tells him. “Though you could have mentioned last time that my shirt was half unbuttoned. That was really fun, finding out after you’d left.”
“I didn’t notice,” Oliver says, clearly lying. Sophie, annoyed, picks up her pink menu again. What is she doing here, halfway across the city, sitting down to lunch with a florist in a place where half the bill of fare appears to have once had cloven hooves?
“So what am I having for lunch?” she says.
Oliver smiles distractedly. “I tend to get the barbecued pork. I’m not a very good Jew.”
“Yes, I think we’ve established that.”
“But the hamburgers are fine. And you can always have breakfast. They serve it all day here.”
“I’ve been known to eat pork,” Sophie says, sitting back as her coffee arrives.
Oliver looks at her in surprise. “Really?”
“Really. Not everything in Jewish law is equally important, as far as I’m concerned. Identity is important, respecting the past is important, and not marrying someone named Muldoon is important. Observing the Sabbath is important. But I think some of the dietary laws had a lot to do with keeping healthy in the desert three thousand years ago. Besides, if God hadn’t wanted Jews to be happy in the New World, he wouldn’t have given us lobster Cantonese.”
“Well said,” Oliver laughs. “So will you be joining me in the pork barbecue?”
“I will not. A hamburger will be just fine.”
“Okay. And then you have to try the sweet potato pie.”
“Then I shall,” she announces.
Oliver calls their order across the room. He retrieves a spiral notebook from his jacket pocket.
“When’s the wedding?” he asks, flipping until he finds a blank page.
“December,” says Sophie. “The sixteenth.”
He looks up. “Cutting it a little close,” he observes.
“Yes. Well, don’t forget, I’ve wasted a couple of months on the poinsettia lady.”
Oliver nods.
“Evening ceremony? Afternoon?”
“Evening. Ceremony is six o’clock. Then there’s a dinner.”
/> “And what’s the venue?”
Her father’s house, she explains. Under a tent out back. The house is on a hill, with great views, though they won’t be able to see anything with the tent sides rolled down.
“Why not have it inside?” says Oliver. “How big is your party?”
Sophie sighs. “Either fifty or two hundred,” she says. “Depending on who wins the guest list wars.”
Oliver looks up.
“In other words, will we be inviting lots of people who have never laid eyes on me but are important to my dad? Or will we be limiting ourselves to people actually known to the bride and groom? Am I going to be married with friends and family members or is it going to be everyone my dad’s ever done a deal with?”
He nods, uncertain. “I see. And who’s going to win?”
“He is,” says Sophie.
Oliver smirks as he writes, but not unkindly. “And why’s that?”
“Because it would make him happier to win than it would make me unhappy to lose. Next question?”
Oliver is quiet for a minute, holding her gaze. Sophie is about to ask him if he is all right when he puts down his pad and sits back against his pink chair.
“Tell me about him,” says Oliver.
“About Bart?” Sophie asks.
“No. Your dad. Tell me about your dad.”
Sophie is instantly on guard. This is obviously not the first time she has been asked for personal information about her extremely wealthy father. In high school, the divorced moms of her classmates routinely cajoled her for insights, and in the years since then she has grown practiced at deflecting this kind of interest. For some reason, however, deflection eludes her now, and Sophie finds herself on the point of speech, of revelation. The words back up in her throat, heavy with love and impending, looming loss, roiling and roiling, trying to get voiced. In fact, the only thing holding her back is the uncomfortable prospect of tears.
“Why?” she says, buying time.
Oliver shakes his head. Sophie sees, for the first time, the little brown mole near his left ear. What a curious place for a mole, she thinks.
“It’s just that you seem to really love him,” Oliver finally offers.
“I do. I do really love him. Is that very unusual?”
“I don’t know. I guess not. It’s just that I don’t remember my own dad very well, and all the time I was growing up I used to listen to my friends whining about their fathers. I really resented it. Of course, I never said anything. You know, it’s not very cool to tell your adolescent friend that he ought to cherish his dad. I tell myself that if I still had my father I’d appreciate him the way you seem to appreciate yours. But who knows? Maybe I wouldn’t.”
Their food arrives. Sophie looks hungrily at the heap of steaming pork on Oliver’s plate, then contemplates her own hamburger.
“What happened to your dad?” Sophie asks softly. She is thinking abandonment? divorce? though the indications are clearly otherwise.
“Car crash,” Oliver says, setting down his coffee cup. “Drunk driver on the Merritt Parkway. Who walked away, I might add.”
“I’m very sorry,” she says, as if it has just happened.
“Yeah.”
He starts to pick at his food.
“I don’t remember my mother at all,” she hears herself say.
Oliver puts down his fork and sighs.
“Was she sick?”
Sophie takes a bite of her hamburger and nods.
“Cancer?”
Another nod.
“Well, we’re quite the pair,” he observes, looking—really looking—at her, which Sophie can feel without glancing up. She concentrates very hard on her hamburger and focuses on the far wall, where Martin Luther King Jr. regards her with a purposeful expression.
“So can I ask you something?” Oliver says at last.
Still avoiding his gaze, Sophie shrugs.
“If you’ve already decided to give in to your dad about the wedding list, why are you bothering to fight about it?”
She chews on, tasting nothing, her appetite all but gone. She is perfectly capable of answering this question, but she does not want to hear herself say the reason, which is that if she were to give up concentrating on the details of the wedding, she would have to contemplate the marriage, and that prospect fills her with dismay.
“It’s traditional” is what Sophie manages to say. “It’s expected. But don’t worry. I’ll tell him soon.”
“And you’re telling me now,” he observes.
“Yes. Right.” She puts down her hamburger and takes a gulp of the now chilly coffee.
“Two hundred guests,” he takes up his pad again.
“Sounds about right.”
“And you’ve thought about the flowers?”
“Well, no,” she says. “Just whatever you think. You decide.”
He stares at her across the table. “I decide? Are you kidding me?”
She can manage only a facsimile of a smile.
“Miss Klein—”
“Oh, Sophie,” says Sophie, wearily. “And it’s Ms., anyway.”
“Sophie. I’ve had brides who brought me paint chips to show me the exact color for their wedding flowers. I’ve had brides who insisted on their flowers being organically produced, or from specific countries. I’ve had women tell me, to the millimeter, how long the petals were allowed to be.”
“Good for them,” she says angrily. “I really don’t care that much.”
“But you should.” Oliver’s voice is quiet. “I mean, maybe not to the millimeter, but you should care. The flowers you choose are a reflection of what’s important in your life. This is your wedding. It should be beautiful and personal. It should be about the woman you are, and how you feel, and whom you love.”
Sophie’s breath catches. Her wedding isn’t at all about those things, she knows, and it is terrible to know it and still go forward into her own future. It is terrible to think of the years, coming so soon, without her father, who looks ahead to this wedding with every happy thought she herself does not have, and only a genial, respectful blank of a man to replace him.
Naturally Sophie cannot say this. Not to herself, certainly not to someone she barely knows, no matter how incisively he looks at her and how patiently he waits for her response. No matter—and Sophie understands this suddenly—that he is waiting for the response, that he is actually, personally concerned with her response. She does not want Oliver to be concerned for her. It is not his business to be concerned. Besides, what makes him think he can speak to her this way?
“Maybe we’re not all obsessed with flowers,” Sophie says, with cruelty. “Maybe it just isn’t that big a deal to some of us. Maybe a rose is just a rose, as far as normal people are concerned. Why don’t you save your floral elitism for your own wedding, and just arrange some nice flowers for mine? I mean, isn’t that your job?”
Of course, she instantly wants to take it back, but she can’t, and in the brittle silence that follows, Sophie loses the thread of her own thoughts and simply stares at Oliver, at his stricken face and his gray eyes, which are staring back at her. The pain between them at this moment is more intimate than anything that has come before. It is also, incidentally, more intimate than anything she has shared with her fiancé. It is devastating.
“I’m sorry,” Sophie says, breaking eye contact with her remaining will. “I have to go.”
“Don’t go,” says Oliver.
She unzips her bag and claws for money. She puts a twenty on the table.
“That’s too much,” he says, getting to his feet. “Please don’t go. I shouldn’t have said anything personal to you. It’s none of my business.”
“Just call me with an estimate,” Sophie tells him, hauling the bag onto her shoulder and moving. She will not look at the hand that reaches out to her. She will not let it touch her. She is already at the door, pushing off like a swimmer at the wall, wild to be far away.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
A Prison Catechism
Marian gets lost, first in Harlem, searching for the Willis Avenue Bridge, then in the Bronx. Though it is morning, a lovely morning (brisk and cold and blue), she drives with moderate anxiety and with the nudging memory of certain scenes from The Bonfire of the Vanities, looking for signs of normalcy on the unfamiliar streets to reassure herself: bodega, mother with baby, pair of laughing men shaking hands as they meet. Even so, she is still lost.
By the time she pulls over to ask directions it is past eleven, but the woman pushing a grocery cart who comes to Marian’s window says that Hughes Avenue is nearby, only four streets away. The woman, stooped and solid with electric red hair, speaks in the postwar accent of another Bronx; it is all Marian can do to ask if she is in fact the last Jew in the borough, and if so, then what is she still doing here? But having passed along the pertinent information the woman takes up her cart and resumes her course, and Marian eases her car back into traffic.
On Hughes, Marian drives a block before she realizes that she is moving away from her destination, executes a furtive U-turn, and pulls up alongside number 2111 without further incident. The building is modest and tidy, with an old limestone stoop fully populated by mothers and children—hardly surprising on a fair Saturday morning. There is no sign of a parking space, of course, so Marian takes her chances double-parking directly in front of the stoop, far less worried about a ticket than a theft, and hoping at least to avert one with such a large audience. She locks the vehicle with a chirp from her keychain, and gives an overly friendly smile to the women watching from the steps. Then she picks her way through them and goes inside.
Soriah’s grandmother has a different last name, but the button beside it on the keypad fails to produce any audible sound. Not wanting to press repeatedly, she walks back outside and tells the assembled women that she is here to see Mrs. Nelson. “I’m not sure the buzzer is working,” she adds, feebly.
“Sweetheart,” says the massive woman on the top step, “you jus’ go on up. You wait for that buzzer to work, you be here till the next century.”
The White Rose Page 26