Young Jane Young

by Gabrielle Zevin

  “But I stand by my original point,” I said. “My phalaenopsis, whatever her sexual presentation or preference, is a girl. For you to insist otherwise is to confuse gender and sex.”

  “Maybe we could have coffee sometime to settle this matter? I’ll examine your orchid for you.”

  “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”

  “The orchid won’t feel a thing.”

  “No, I meant the coffee. I don’t drink coffee,” I said.

  “Tea then,” he said.

  “Schiele,” I said. “Just to be clear, this isn’t a date.”

  “No,” he said. “Of course not. But it’s good for us wedding business folks to stick together, don’t you think? Anyway, I’d like us to be friends. I know you use Maine Event Blooms more often than me, and I’d like to be your number-one flower guy.”

  “It’s not personal. Maine Event Blooms is cheaper,” I said.

  “And they do have that pun,” he said. “Who can compete with that?”

  “SO I HOPE this won’t be presumptuous,” Schiele said at the restaurant, “but having worked with a fair number of wedding planners, you don’t exactly strike me as the wedding planner type.”

  I asked him what he meant.

  “The kind of woman who has been planning her wedding since she was a little girl, and then when she actually had her wedding couldn’t get enough of weddings, so she decided to go into the business,” he said.

  “I feel like you’re being quite sexist, or quite something,” I said.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I mean, you seem very solid,” he said. “As a person, not like your body, though that seems admirably solid as well. I’m sticking my foot in it.”

  “You are,” I said.

  “To be clear, I think you’re gorgeous. You remind me of a Cleopatra-era Elizabeth Taylor. And by ‘solid,’ I meant intellectual and thoughtful—not what I associate with people in your line of work.”

  “And you’d been doing so well,” I said.

  “Crap. What I’m trying to say is what led you to wedding planning? What did you study in school? Did you go to school? What did you want to do when you were young? Who are you, basically? Who is Jane Young?”

  “You could google it,” I said.

  “What fun would that be?” he said. “Also, I tried. You’ve got a very common name. There are about a thousand Jane Youngs.”

  “You ask a lot of questions,” I said.

  “I used to be a teacher and I believe in the Socratic method.”

  “I feel like I’m on a job interview,” I said. “Why did you stop teaching?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to have more time to spend with my plants.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Plants respond more readily to care and attention than people do. As a teacher, I felt like I was boring the kids. Why do questions make you anxious?” he said.

  “They don’t,” I said.

  “They seem like they do,” he said.

  “I’m an open book,” I said. “Go ahead. Ask me anything.”

  “What did you study in college?” he said.

  “Political science and Spanish literature,” I said.

  He looked at me and he gave a small nod. “Now that makes sense.”

  “I’m glad you approve. To be clear, even if it’s not what I thought I’d do, I like planning weddings,” I said. “I like the ceremony. And people invite you into their lives on what they believe to be the most important day. It’s a privilege.” This was my spiel.

  “You know everyone’s secrets,” he said.

  “I know a few,” I said.

  “You might be the most powerful person in town.”

  “That’s Mrs. Morgan,” I said.

  “What did you think you’d do?” Schiele asked.

  “I thought I’d go into public service, government, politics,” I said. “I briefly did.”

  “You didn’t have the stomach for it?”

  “I loved it,” I said. “But then I had Ruby, and I needed to reinvent myself. What did you study?”

  “Botany,” he said. “You probably guessed that. Why Spanish literature?”

  “Because where I grew up, it was useful to be fluent in Spanish if you wanted to work in politics,” I said. “I had high school Spanish already, so I thought I could get more out of studying literature. But honestly, I made the decision pretty impulsively, in about two minutes. It was my junior year. The clock was ticking, and I had to choose something.”

  “Tell me something from Spanish literature,” Schiele said.

  “I’ll give you a line from my favorite novel. ‘Los seres humanos no nacen para siempre el día en que sus madres los alumbran, sino que la vida los obliga a parirse a sí mismos una y otra vez.’ ”

  “I like that,” he said. “What does it mean?”

  The door chimed, and Mrs. Morgan walked into the restaurant like she owned the place, which, in point of fact, she did. Mrs. Morgan had just turned seventy. She was outspoken in the way of the very rich. In addition to the restaurant, she owned half the town and the newspaper. Mrs. Morgan and I were in the middle of planning a benefit to restore the statue of Captain Allison in Market Square.

  “Jane,” she said, stopping at our table, “I was planning to call you, but as long as I have you here, any word on the yacht club? And Mr. Schiele, how is your lovely wife, Mia?”

  Mrs. Morgan sat down at the table. She signaled the waiter and ordered a glass of red.

  “Very well,” Schiele said.

  “Do you know Schiele’s wife?” Mrs. Morgan asked me.

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “She’s a ballet dancer,” Mrs. Morgan said.

  “She’s retired now,” Schiele said.

  “Well, still. What a thing to have a talent like that,” Mrs. Morgan said. “Excuse me, Mr. Schiele. How rude of me. Were you two about done? I have a few things to discuss with Jane about our little benefit.”

  Schiele stood. “It’s fine,” he said. “Jane, I’ll give you a call.”

  THAT NIGHT, SCHIELE did indeed call me. “We got cut off there,” he said.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “Mrs. Morgan doesn’t understand that the universe won’t always bend to her will. Was there something else you needed?”

  “The thing is, I like you,” he said.

  “And I, you,” I said. “You’re the most exacting florist I know.”

  “Come on, Jane. What I’m saying is I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said. “You must have noticed.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to stop thinking of me,” I said. “I don’t date much, and I definitely don’t date married men.”

  “I feel like you think I’m a scumbag,” he said. “You should know that the marriage has been over for some time. It’s been bad for some time.”

  “It’s good that you know that. It takes real courage to recognize when you’re unhappy,” I said. “I’m glad you called, though. Franny wants to know if we can get a discount on the pots if we order them separately from the orchids.”

  “I’ll price it out,” he said. “Can I give you a call back in a couple of days?”

  “Why don’t you e-mail me?” I said. “Good-bye, Schiele.”

  I really had liked him. Something I have learned, though, is that even a bad marriage isn’t to be trifled with.

  My grandmother was married for fifty-two years, until my grandfather died. She used to say that a bad marriage was one that hadn’t had enough time to get good again. And not to put too fine a point on it, but since Schiele was a florist, I will tell you that there have been times when I thought my “pedestrian” orchid would never bloom again, when it looked dead as dead can be. I think of a time when Ruby and I went to San Francisco on vacation, and I left it on the radiator, and every last leaf fell off. I watered it for a year, and first a root, and then a leaf, and maybe two years later, voila! Flowers again. And that’s what I know about marriages and orchids. They�
��re both harder to kill than you think. And that’s why I love my grocery store orchid and I don’t do married men.

  SIX

  Franny and I were touring yet another hotel ballroom when she said, “They’re starting to blend together. I think I like this one better than the last one, but I’m not sure.”

  “It’s more a feeling. What does it make you feel?” I was saying words, but I was barely paying attention. I was thinking of Ruby. I had gotten a call from Ruby’s school. She had locked herself in a girl’s bathroom stall and was refusing to come out. As soon as we were done here and I had dropped Franny off at her house, I was going down to the school to see who I needed to kill.

  Franny’s gaze moved from the slightly dingy floral carpet to the mirrored walls. “I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing? Sad? What should it make me feel?”

  “Well, you have to imagine it filled up,” I said. “Imagine it with the orchids and the Christmas lights and the tulle. Imagine your friends and family and . . .” What was the instinct in kids that when they encountered another kid who was different or weaker, they pounced on it? Was it some vestigial survival instinct from a time when resources were scarce?

  “What?” she said.

  “No, that was all,” I said.

  Franny nodded. “I think I’d like to maybe see some other options, if that’s all right.”

  “Honestly, we can keep looking, but unless you want to go in another direction entirely, like not a hotel ballroom at all, you’ve pretty much seen what this area has to offer in terms of ballrooms. They’re empty rooms, Franny.” I snuck a glance at the clock on my phone. I wanted to get to Ruby’s school before lunch started.

  “Which one would you choose?”

  “The first one we saw. The Lodge at Allison Springs.” I resisted saying, That’s why I showed it to you first. “If it’s still available.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “Maybe this is silly but I thought when I walked into the reception room, I would feel like, ‘This is where the most romantic night of your life happens, Franny,’ and I didn’t feel that. The room gave me no feels. All that dark wood.”

  “You wanted rustic,” I said.

  “But it felt sort of, I don’t know, masculine.”

  “It won’t once there are orchids and—”

  She interrupted me. “Tulle, I know. Maybe we could drive down there right now so I could have one more look at it? I think I could commit to it today if I could just see it one more time.”

  I took a deep breath. “I can’t,” I said. “Trust me. I want nothing more than to put this to bed, but I’ve got to get to Ruby’s school. She locked herself in the bathroom and she won’t come out. And if I don’t get her out before lunch starts, all the kids at her school will know about it, and maybe a small thing becomes a big thing, you know how kids are.” I laughed. “I’m sorry to burden you.”

  “It’s no burden,” she said. “We can look at ballrooms some other day.”

  “WHY DO YOU think she locked herself in the bathroom?” Franny asked when we were in the car.

  “Probably to escape the bullshit kids at her bullshit school.”

  “That’s awful,” Franny said.

  I hated Ruby’s school, which seemed to be populated by a particularly high percentage of assholes. I loathed the vice principal, who referred to himself as the “bullying czar.” Czar, can you imagine? He had the mean good looks of a porn actor. You knew the only reason he had been named the “bullying czar” was because he probably had done a lot of bullying himself. This man had the rhetoric of anti-bullying down (inclusiveness, safe environment, no tolerance), but on some level, I could tell that he actually thought everything was Ruby’s fault. It would be easier for everyone if Ruby could kindly stop being so darned bullyable.

  “I was bullied, too,” Franny said. “But when I went to high school, it stopped.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Oh, well”—she laughed—“I got hot. I don’t want to sound conceited.”

  “Lucky you,” I said.

  “I mean, I was glad it happened, don’t get me wrong. I was glad not to have to throw up every morning before school. But I knew it was wrong and also, it was not to my credit. I knew those people were still the same terrible people and that I was still the same person they had hated,” Franny said. “Were you bullied?”

  I slammed on my brakes. I had almost run a stop sign. I waved at the jogger who’d been crossing and mouthed the word “sorry.” The woman gave me the finger. “I was,” I said.

  “It’s hard to believe. You seem so strong,” Franny said. “You seem like a wall, not in a bad way.”

  “The good kind of wall. Everyone loves a wall.”

  “Untouchable,” she said. “Unflappable.”

  I laughed. “Once upon a time, I was easily touched and easily flapped.”

  “What happened?” she said.

  “I grew up,” I said.

  I KNOCKED ON the bathroom door. “Ruby, it’s Mom.”

  The door unlatched. I asked her what had happened, and the situation was so stupid I couldn’t believe it. In her gym class, a male classmate of Ruby’s had “hilariously” taken to running his hand up and down the girls’ legs to determine who had shaved and who had not. Ruby had not shaved her legs. Indeed, she had not shaved her legs ever. She said she was the only one, which I found hard to believe. They were eight years old and it was the middle of the winter in Maine. I had not personally shaved my legs for three weeks. Since when were eight-year-olds shaving their legs?

  “Why didn’t you tell me I was supposed to shave my legs?” she asked.

  I sat down on the bathroom floor. “Once you start shaving, you can’t stop,” I said. “As long as you don’t shave, your hair is silky and downy, but once you start, it gets all spiky and itchy. I thought it would be good to put it off as long as possible. And honestly, what is so bad about leg hair? It grows there. Who cares?”

  She looked at me as if she were very old and I were very young. “Mom,” she said in a serious voice, “if I am going to get through this year, you need to keep me informed about the right things to do. I don’t want to call any attention to myself.”

  “You’re breaking my heart,” I said.

  “I don’t want to do that. But as a strategy . . .” She looked at me to see if I was following.

  “Strategy,” I repeated.

  “This is how it has to be. I’m a good person, I think. I’m smart. But these girls—they pounce on any little thing about me. There’s no negotiating with them.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  On the drive home, we stopped at the drugstore to shop for razors.

  SEVEN

  I called Franny on the phone to apologize if I had come off brusquely.

  “Oh, no. It’s not a problem. I don’t know why I was being so irritating about the ballroom,” she said.

  “Franny, you’re not irritating. And even if you were, you’re a bride, which means you’re allowed to be irritating.”

  “You’ll be glad to know I drove down to the lodge this afternoon, and I walked around. The sun was going down, and you can see the lake through the windows, and by December, it will be frozen over so the view will be even more beautiful! And everything smelled like cedar, and I imagined the lace and the orchids and Wes in his plaid bow tie, if we can convince him to wear plaid, and I thought to myself, ‘Franny, you dope, of course Jane is right.’ I’m so grateful for you, Jane,” Franny said.

  “That’s a nice thing to hear,” I said. I felt like all I’d done was screw up that day.

  “Actually, I’m glad you called, because I had a thought. Have you ever heard of Steineman’s?”

  “Of course,” I said. It was a large bridal dress shop in Manhattan. It was overpriced and a bit hokey. A wedding amusement park for tourists. You could get the equivalent dresses at any local store with a decent bridal department.

  “I know it’s probably corny, but I
have always wanted to go there,” Franny said, “and I was wondering if you could come with me. You could take Ruby. You should, obviously. She’s your assistant. I’ll pay for everything. I have some money from my mom’s estate.”

  This was not normally something I would agree to, but the fact was, Ruby and I were both in need of a change of scenery. “It’s a nice offer,” I said to Franny, “but wouldn’t it make more sense to take your best friend?”

  “I don’t have one,” she said, with an apologetic laugh. “Not one I’d want to take. I think I have trouble making close female friendships.”

  “Probably because you were bullied,” I said.

  “Probably so.” She laughed again.

  “Or your bridesmaids?” She had four. “You could take them.”

  “Three of them are Wes’s sisters, and the last one is Wes’s best friend, who is not my favorite person. I could take my aunt, but she’d cry the whole time. And I’d rather have a professional opinion.”

  BUT SHE BARELY needed one. When it came to wedding dresses, Franny was admirably decisive. She chose the first dress she put on, which left the three of us the rest of the day to sightsee. I had the sense that she had chosen the dress before she even got to the store.

  We decided to walk from the dress emporium to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was a long walk, but the day was balmy, especially compared to the weather in Maine. Ruby linked arms with Franny and me, but we kept having to switch to single file so that people could move past us.

  Ruby said, “Did you know that ninety percent of men or people—I don’t remember which—don’t move out of the way when you are walking toward them on the street?”

  “Where’d you learn that?” Franny said.

  “My friend, Mrs. Morgan,” Ruby said. “Anyway, I always move out of the way for people, and I notice that you and Mom do it, too. But I was wondering, what would happen if I didn’t? What if I kept walking right toward them, would they eventually move?”

  “I’m going to try it,” Franny said. “I’m not gonna move!” She stood very tall, and in less than a minute, a man in a business suit was walking toward her. He was about a foot away from her face when Franny darted out of the way.