Something She's Not Telling Us

by Darcey Bell

  That story, which was true, got her a write-up and a photo in O, The Oprah Magazine.

  Charlotte has gotten some lucky press, a helpful interview in W in which she said that her influences were the Victorian language of flowers, punk rock, and 1960s science fiction. The people who run charity benefits like her brand, a little edgy and modern instead of old and stodgy, and she charges less than people who have been in the business longer, though her fees are increasing.

  When the commissions began coming in, Charlotte opened a studio in Bushwick and hired more help: smart kids who know and care about flowers. She pays decent wages with benefits, and she arranges cars when her workers need to go home late.

  She keeps the Gansevoort Street shop open, though the rent has skyrocketed and it barely breaks even, because that’s where she started. That’s where she still likes to be. She loves opening boxes of perfect pink roses, each wrapped in white tissue paper and cellophane. She loves the birds-of-paradise, cleomes, zinnias, cosmos, and bachelor buttons, which are basically weeds but look stunning in masses. She loves the smell of flowers, living, dying, on the edge, even the chemical spice of the fungicide she sometimes has to use, though she tries to stay green.

  Today Alma’s opened up the store and taken care of the deliveries and tended the flowers in the chilled space behind the wall of glass. Alma could run the business—maybe she will someday. She took over when Charlotte was in Mexico, and as far as Charlotte can tell, everything’s shipshape.

  Everything, that is, but Alma, who’s been in tears—or on the edge of tears—for weeks, ever since her boyfriend left her for a twenty-one-year-old: a woman precisely half Alma’s age.

  Charlotte’s feet hurt. She’d taken her shoes off in the cab going downtown to the shop from Hudson Yards. She might have liked to walk if she’d been smarter about footwear. They’re still a little puffy from the airplane ride from Mexico, and they swelled even more in the taxi. Just to get from the cab to the store, she had to stuff her feet back into the high heels.

  Charlotte and Alma hug. She’s family. They’re always happy to see each other, even now, when so little makes Alma happy.

  Alma says, “We’ve been selling tons of daffodils.” That happens every spring, and now the thought of the bright clumps of white and yellow remind Charlotte of how many springs she and Alma have spent in this shop. “I forwarded you that email about the benefit. How was the meeting?” She looks at her watch. “It couldn’t have taken very long. That’s not a good sign.”

  “It’s postponed till this afternoon. Listen, if I get stuck, can you pick up Daisy . . .”

  Several times, in semi-emergencies, when Charlotte has been held up, Alma has picked up Daisy. She’s on the pickup list at Daisy’s school.

  Daisy loves it when Alma comes for her because Alma always takes her out for ice cream, which Charlotte only rarely does. No one can eat ice cream every day!

  Alma mumbles so softly that Charlotte can hardly hear: “Therapy appointment.” She pulls away from Charlotte’s hug, and Charlotte sees tears on her face. Sometimes Alma sighs so loudly that their customers look alarmed, and often Charlotte catches her staring blankly into space.

  “Never mind,” says Charlotte. “I’ll figure it out. I think Eli has a rehearsal, but maybe he can get out. Maybe I’ll be done in time. I’ll just have to play it by ear.”

  Charlotte tries to sound relaxed, but she hates being late to pick up her daughter.

  She hates the thought of Daisy nervously watching the doorway to the gym where they have the after-school program. More than anything, she hates the idea that Daisy might feel anxious. In fact Charlotte has never once got there to find Daisy watching the door. She’s always been busy doing the fun projects that the after-school teachers dream up.

  Alma goes back to making a floral arrangement for a customer to send his wife for their fiftieth anniversary. Charlotte goes back to trying to call and text and email Eli, who keeps not answering. Maddening! She knows that Eli is having a hard time, but still . . . He is Daisy’s father.

  A decade ago, Eli did so well—first in real estate for foreign investment firms, then buying and selling domain names—that he was able to retire from finance and do what he loves, which is working in the theater. Right now he’s the set designer/stage manager on a production of Macbeth, in a theater on the Lower East Side. Charlotte has to remind herself that he’s earned the right—that is, the money—to do what he loves.

  There’s a crisis every day, and Eli’s usually right in the middle. Several times, he hasn’t taken her calls, and he and Charlotte argued about it. They have a child! Charlotte needs to reach him! He promised to do better, but he sometimes forgets his promises.

  She texts Eli one more time, punching question marks into the phone. Again he doesn’t answer. Is something wrong? How many bad things can happen at once?

  She sends another message: NEED YOU TO PICK UP DAISY.

  Let Eli be okay. Let Eli be okay and she’ll never again pressure him into doing something he doesn’t want to (or can’t) do. He already does so much.

  Charlotte closes her eyes and seems to hear her therapist’s calming voice:

  Don’t worry till something happens. Don’t imagine the worst. Don’t obsess about the past—and about things you can’t change.

  Who else can she call? Rocco has been on Daisy’s pickup list ever since—against her better judgment—she let Rocco and Ruth take Daisy to the circus. She’d felt sure she’d made a terrible mistake, but they’d all had a good time. Charlotte has admitted to Ted—and no one else—that one of the things she distrusts about Ruth is the fact that she and Daisy seem to like each other.

  She texts Rocco: CAN U GET DAISY IF I NEED U?

  Rocco’s the only person she lets herself text in that dopey millennial shorthand.

  Rocco doesn’t answer. The last she heard he was on his way back from Mexico.

  Let Rocco be all right too. I’ll give up drinking. Rocco has! And I’ll never get impatient with Daisy, no matter how crazy she drives me. I’ll never yell at her, never—

  She considers asking Alma if she could please cancel her shrink appointment, but she’s afraid that Alma will dissolve in a puddle. Alma takes a long look at Charlotte and reaches into her multipocketed, multizippered purse and extracts a bottle of pills. Alma’s discovered muscle relaxants since her breakup.

  The Xanax might not be the best idea after last night’s wine and sleeping pills. But Charlotte takes it anyway, except that it doesn’t relax her. It just makes her sleepy and anxious at the same time, an uncomfortable combination. Still . . .

  The pill helps Charlotte get through the next few hours, helps her decide to wing it. And . . . oh, yes, it lulls her into what’s probably a false sense of security. Everything will be all right. At worst, she’ll be half an hour late. The school will just charge her extra. One of the teachers will stay with Daisy. They’re definitely not going to throw her out on the street. At least she hopes not. Why is it so hard for her to trust people to take good care of Daisy?

  By the time Charlotte needs to leave for the meeting, the pill has worn off, in a particularly unhelpful way. She feels awful. Anxious. On edge.

  She looks out the window. Her Uber’s arrived, as if by magic. For the first time in history, the driver has arrived sooner than the app predicted. She can tell by the way the driver is looking at his phone that he’s not a patient guy.

  Okay. Showtime.

  She runs into the back room and looks in the mirror. Not bad. Only a little worse for wear. In her mind, she goes over—one more time—what she has to say. And she practices her most confident, competent professional smile.

  Then she rushes out of the shop, forgetting to say goodbye to Alma, hearing Alma’s wan “good luck” trailing her out the door.

  CHARLOTTE PASSES THROUGH two sets of metal detectors and takes two elevators to the conference room. The space might seem less intimidating were the leather swivel chairs occupied by
more than the three people who look like little dolls at the gargantuan table that dwarfs them.

  They rise to shake hands—a man in a Hollywood-blue suit and two women, both blond, both in their early thirties, both wearing little black dresses. The women could almost pass for mirror images—or fraternal twins except that one is wearing lush false eyelashes and twice as much makeup as her coworker.

  They say their names, but Charlotte is too distracted to catch them. Now she may never learn them. What if she has to call the office and ask for one of them by name? She should never have taken Alma’s pill. Or drunk so much wine last night, or those margaritas in the airport.

  She sneaks a look at her watch.

  Four ten.

  A minute later, she looks again.

  Four fifteen.

  How is that even possible?

  The man motions for her to sit down and clears his throat in a way that says, We’re too busy for small talk. “Okay, Charlene, show us what you’ve got.”

  “It’s Charlotte.”

  Less Makeup seems embarrassed by her boss’s rudeness, or just his businesslike-ness. “So how did you first get interested in flowers?”

  Charlotte wishes she’d let her boss be as rude or brusque as he wanted. She’s all for any approach that will speed this up.

  “I meant Charlotte. Humble apologies. I haven’t had my fifth cup of coffee. Or my first cocktail. And the crazy thing is, I can’t ask one of you to get it. Not unless I feel like having a long heart-to-heart with human resources about mistreating my female employees. Oops. I mean . . . coworkers.” He waits for the laughs that don’t come.

  “No worries,” Charlotte says. A phrase she despises. To be alive at this moment and not to be worried would be clinically insane. And she’s always worried, no matter what her therapist says.

  She produces her portfolio, and they riffle through the sketches that look like what they are: drawings she made in a taxi. Charlotte sees the sketches through their eyes: palm trees drawn by insomniac toddlers.

  The man and More Makeup nod. Their faces are masks of pure nothing. Less Makeup (Charlotte wishes she’d registered their names—how will they stay in contact if she gets this job, which she probably won’t) says, “Well . . . I guess we can work with these.”

  Charlotte says, “I was thinking about long black and red stems, vaguely . . . ikebana. Though no one will think ikebana unless they’re thinking harder than anyone’s ever thinking when they walk into a party space.”

  “Not me,” says the man. “Me, I’m thinking like crazy. I’m thinking, How soon can I blow this clam shack and get home in time to watch the game?”

  “Now that’s inappropriate,” says More Makeup. “And not funny.”

  Less Makeup mimes being deep in thought. “You know, the ikebana meme might not be so bad. Let’s not forget the tsunami. Not a major tsunami this time, not a headline grabber. But a wall of water, nonetheless.”

  The man says, “I’m going to guess that no one has forgotten the tsunami.”

  The women turn back to Charlotte. It’s the women against the man now, three against one, though it’s just a game. At the end of the day—this is the end of the day, Charlotte thinks, fighting down a mini-surge of panic—he’s the boss.

  Charlotte says, “We’ll keep with just a few red leaves and blackened palm trees, a combination of real and artificial, ghostly and vital. I know a guy who can do wonders with bare branches. I’m thinking something . . .” (Charlotte also hates that phrase, I’m thinking something, so much that she says it twice.) “I’m thinking something . . . a little Halloweenish, post-apocalyptic, not ugly or depressing but still perfect for this time of catastrophic weather events.”

  “Now we’re heating up,” says the man. “I’m beginning to get excited. Am I even allowed to say that these days? That I’m getting . . . excited?”

  “You can’t be too careful,” Less Makeup says mirthlessly.

  Eager, helpless Charlotte smiles. She steals another glance at her watch.

  Four thirty.

  This is taking forever. She’d assumed they were busy people. But they (the guy, anyway) are enjoying this. As if they have all the time in the world.

  Just then she gets two texts in a row. Bing bing.

  “I need to check this.” Her voice is almost a moan.

  “Kids?” says Less Makeup, with a patient little frown.

  “One child,” Charlotte corrects her, sounding like the grade school teacher she has no desire to sound like.

  First text from Eli: Stuck in theater.

  Second, from Eli again: Can’t get Daisy. Sorry.

  So at least Eli’s alive. That’s good news. The bad news: He can’t pick up Daisy.

  Now he decides to tell her.

  Pick up. Charlotte thinks of a news clip she saw last night in which a pickup truck was being swept by water down a California street. Wall of water. This is not that! She’s just worried and feeling sorry for herself because there’s no one to help her. Everyone’s told her to hire a nanny. This is the price she pays for her ridiculous pride in being a hands-on mom. But why must the buck always stop with her? She could write a book entitled Mommy Buckstop. Who would read it? Lots of women. Mothers. They’d understand right away.

  She texts Eli back: I CAN’T! HELP!

  He doesn’t answer. Infuriating. It’s up to Mommy Buckstop to figure out what to do next.

  More Makeup says, “We’ll send you a slide show of images of the hurricane. We just want you to see what we’re thinking. Just for inspiration.”

  “Not just ‘thinking’ but ‘doing,’” the man corrects her, hanging air quotes around her mistake. “This is what we’re doing here. What gets us out of bed in the morning.”

  “That’s what I mean,” says the woman. “What we are thinking and doing.”

  The man presses a button, then a switch. The lights dim, a screen descends behind him, and Charlotte sees destroyed homes, floating vehicles, anguished children, people waiting on food lines, Red Cross workers distributing water. It’s obscene to use these people’s suffering for inspiration, but she’s not going to say that. And they’re raising money for them. Good cause, good cause, good cause. She thinks those two words, like a mantra, until she can look at them without fearing that her face has turned into a Medusa mask of don’t-speak-to-me, don’t-come-near-me, I’m-late-to-pick-up-my-daughter.

  The slide show is taking a thousand years. She’s trapped here by good manners and by her desire to work for them. The minutes are flying by. What now? What now? What now?

  They could stop at any point. She needs to pick up Daisy!

  “Right,” she says. “I’ve got this.”

  It takes all of Charlotte’s self-control not to look at her watch and look again ten seconds later.

  “Yes, well,” says the man, “one more detail before we break up the party. It’s a bit of a delicate question, but . . . can we assume your business includes employees of color? It’s not a question I’d ask, but there are other voices in the mix, voices I have to listen to.”

  “You can,” Charlotte says. “It does. I do.” Though she’ll be damned if she’ll pimp out—by name—the Mexican, black, and Asian kids at her Bushwick studio. Plus she needs to leave. Now.

  “Then let’s go forward,” Boss Man says. All three shake Charlotte’s hand. By the time she leaves—thank you, got to run!—she has twenty minutes to get Daisy before the end of after-school.

  It’s seems she’s got the job. But she’s too nervous to process that, too anxious to feel happy.

  The assistant who shows Charlotte to the elevator is wobbling so perilously on painful-looking Louboutin heels that Charlotte lurches forward to catch her. The young woman shoots her a filthy look.

  “Thanks.” What is she thanking her for?

  “No problem. Have a good one.” The young woman says it like a curse. That’s probably just Charlotte’s own anxiety and paranoia.

  Have a good what? A go
od what?

  IT’S JUST MONEY. Charlotte will just have to pay extra—the late fine—and the fine is not all that much. But Daisy will be alarmed. That’s what Charlotte wants to avoid.

  The minute she leaves the building, she gets a text from Rocco: Home.

  Great. Too late now.

  Another text from Rocco. Going to sleep. Don’t call.

  Great again. Why would she call at this point? Charlotte’s probably being unreasonable . . . but she can’t shake the certainty that Ruth has sent the text. Rocco would never say, Don’t call, not even if he was exhausted.

  Well, they’re safely home from Mexico. One less thing to worry about.

  Then she begins to run.

  At least she had the wherewithal to bring along her sneakers.

  When you race down the street without being chased, it’s as if you’re surrounded by a cocoon of stress and pain. People move out of your way, like drivers moving over for an ambulance with its siren wailing. Beneath everything, humans are animals. They recognize animal fear.

  Don’t worry until something actually happens. She tries to hear Ted’s sensible voice.

  There’s nothing to be afraid of. Five dollars for every ten minutes you’re late. So that’s . . . she’s too freaked to do the math.

  She runs down the block, crossing diagonally against the light, weaving between cars. How awful if she were killed on her way to pick up her daughter. Daisy would never get over it. No matter how much of a hurry Charlotte’s in, she has to wait for the light, look both ways.

  She tries hailing a cab, but there are no cabs. There never are when you need them. Finally, a rogue limo slows down.

  The driver leans out his window.

  “Where you going?”

  “First Avenue and Twelfth Street.”

  “Thirty dollars.” He must see the panic on her face.

  It’s an outrageous price, but she’ll pay. If he’d said a hundred dollars, a million dollars, she would have paid that too. Well, maybe not a million. She can hardly breathe.