SANDY WAS STILL SULLEN WHEN SHE CAME TO WORK AT ten, but being that it was Monday, there was a lot to do and she had to get over it quickly. Actually, there wasn’t as much to do as there should have been. Both of our flower shipments came up short, and since I had given everything left from the weekend to Father Al, there were no stragglers to back us up. There were no deliveries to go out on Monday mornings so we stayed in the shop together, unpacking the flowers we had and going over the plans for a big wedding the weekend after next. The bride wanted every flower in the synagogue to be a gardenia. It was not a small wedding.
“Does she have any idea how that place is going to smell?” Sandy said, crinkling up her nose. “I mean, I like gardenias, but people are going to be falling over in the aisles. Is she planning on providing oxygen tanks?”
“All I know is that I’ve ordered the flowers. Let’s hope she doesn’t change her mind. A thousand gardenias aren’t so easily moved.”
The phone rang and Sandy answered it and took the order. “What do you want on the card?” she asked, poising her pen over the tiny white card. “Okay, yes, ‘Darling Maria, without you my life would have no meaning. You are the sun and the moon, the stars in the night sky.’ Hang on, hang on, you’re getting ahead of me.” She flipped the card over. “ ‘In my life I have never known love like this before. I have waited for you since the beginning of time.’ Wait. The card is full. Let me get another one. These are really small cards.”
While Sandy continued to take dictation, Gloria swept into the store looking a little better than I thought was necessary. She was wearing a slim black skirt and low heels. Gloria was thinner than I was and she had great legs. I was wondering if I had made a mistake in sending her. Romeo didn’t have to make Father Al promise to dress down when he came to see me. “Oh my God,” she said. “I saw him. I was just there.”
Sandy capped her pen and hung up the phone. “Saw who?”
Gloria shot me a look, but I figured there was no sense in putting all of us in a tight spot. “Romeo Cacciamani,” I said. “I asked Gloria to go over and thank him for a present.”
“He sent you a present?” Sandy said suspiciously.
“Come on,” I said. I took them both into the cooler and pulled the lid off the vegetable box. I dazzled them with my dinner.
“Wow,” Sandy said, extending one tentative finger to an eggplant. “Are they real?”
“They are.”
“They’re stunning,” Gloria said. “You were absolutely right. For the rest of my life I’m going to feel disappointed when Buzz sends me flowers. Now can we get out of the freezer? I know you two are used to it, but I’m not.”
We came out with the vegetable box. I didn’t want to put the lid back on.
“And you had to send Gloria over to thank him?” Sandy said. “You can’t even go and see him?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “You know how his family feels about me, and he knows how you and Nora feel about him. We’re trying not to step on too many toes here.” Maybe I was spelling things out a little too much, but I wanted a few points for sensitivity.
Sandy picked up an asparagus stalk, twirled it gently in her fingers. “A guy who’d do something like this …”
“Is a wonderful guy,” Gloria said. “Julie, you were right not to go over there. Lord, the place is absolutely crawling with Cacciamanis. Frankly, I’m relieved that you’re getting together with him, shall we say, later in life, because I would not have wanted to see you spend your youth with someone who clearly has such a weak grasp on the whole birth-control issue.”
“What did he say?” Sandy asked.
“Well, the first trick was getting him alone. I told the thug at the cash register that I wanted to discuss the flower arrangements for my husband’s funeral and that I would rather speak to the owner in a private place. Did you know he has an office? Why don’t you have an office?”
I had a desk at the end of the workbench. It was fine. “You told him Buzz was dead?”
“I only told the first guy Buzz was dead. I told Romeo the truth when we were alone. That was the point, to see him alone.”
“So what did he say?” Sandy repeated.
Gloria looked at her. “He said he was crazy in love with your mother, okay?”
“That’s enough for me,” I said.
“He said he’s thinking maybe you could go to dinner in Newton tomorrow night. He says he doesn’t know anyone in Newton. I told him we know everyone in Newton.”
“Tomorrow night’s my night with the kids,” I said. “Maybe Wednesday.”
“I can get a baby-sitter,” Sandy said. “Nora could come over. Or Gloria. It’s not the end of the world.”
“Are you saying you’re going to help me go on a date?” Gloria and I were both staring at her. If the answer was yes, I wanted a witness.
“I’m saying those are very nice vegetables,” Sandy said wistfully. “You don’t see something like that every day. That’s all I’m saying. I’m going to go watch the store. You two talk.” Sandy replaced the asparagus stalk carefully and left us alone.
“That’s a girl you can trust,” Gloria said. “She’s warming to this.”
“It comes and goes. Tell me, what did Romeo say?”
“Everything right. He was so glad I had come. He said he couldn’t stop thinking about you. He had a wonderful time at Canobie Lake, though to hear him tell it, you drove up there, played a couple rounds of Fascination, and came home.”
“It was something like that. Did you tell him about Mort?”
Gloria shook her head. “I figured what’s the point in making the poor guy crazy? He’s going to be worried, he’s going to be jealous. I liked him too much for that.”
I heard the bell on the front door and then Sandy’s voice. “Hi, Dad.”
There was a pause, some footsteps, and then Mort. “Would you look at this place? It’s a dump. She’s turned it into a dump.”
“Speak of the devil,” Gloria said. “Do you want me to stay?”
“Something tells me this one isn’t going to be quick. I think you’ve done enough for one day.”
“It’s not that I want any harm to come to Mort, or even to my own ex-husband exactly, but I don’t think they should be allowed to walk around, popping up anytime they feel like it. What I envision is something called Planet of the Ex-Husbands. Let all that money the government spent on NASA be put to good use. We just shoot them off into space.”
“I don’t think that’s a bad idea.”
“Mom?” Sandy called. “Could you come out here, please?”
Gloria went first, smiling and holding her arms out to Mort. “Mort!” she said. “Imagine us both showing up at Roseman’s.”
Mort kissed her on the cheek and gave her a squeeze on the shoulder. “You look good, Gloria.” He said it in the exact same tone of voice he had used to tell me that I looked good, like he was both surprised and humbled by our beauty. I wanted to kick him. “How’s Buzz?”
“Just great. The reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, I’m off to see him right this minute. The next time you’re coming to town, let me know first.” Gloria gave Sandy a kiss and waved good-bye.
“So I guess she’s in on this whole thing,” Mort said, watching her walk away. “Your great conspirator. She must be loving this.”
“Nobody is loving this,” I said. With Gloria gone I felt less confident. It seemed like she had taken all of the air in the room with her when she left.
Mort started pacing the shop from corner to corner. “I see you’re killing the shop. Is that part of the romance? He talks you into tanking the business so he can be the only game in town?”
“Mort.”
“Where are all the flowers? Can you tell me that? This is a flower shop, you’re supposed to have flowers.”
“There was some kind of trouble with the shipment, all right? It’s just today. You want to tell me in all the years you worked here you never had a problem with delivery?”
“I had my problems, but I was always on the phone yelling at somebody. Who have you called this morning?”
I hadn’t called anyone. The vegetables came and then Sandy and then Gloria. I didn’t even think about it. “I’ll run my store my way.”
“Your store. That just galls me. Your father promised me this store. He said it was my store.”
“On the one unspoken condition that you not run off with a bridesmaid, Mort. For God’s sake, how much can you expect?”
“I expected fair treatment. I gave this place my life.”
“Well, at least you know how it feels,” I said.
Sandy cleared her throat. “Mom, Dad, you know this is fascinating for me, but if you don’t mind, I think I’m going to go now.” Somehow she had made it all the way over to the door without our noticing.
“Ah, honey,” Mort said, “you shouldn’t get so touchy. Your mom and I are just talking.”
“Talk all you want,” Sandy said, “I just don’t want to hear it.”
She went through the door like a bullet, setting the bell off into a veritable symphony of jangles. I stood and watched her pack of curls bounce away in the sunlight. Sandy’s hair went a long way toward giving her levity. No matter how hard she tried to storm away, she always bounced.
“Sandy’s right,” I said, “we shouldn’t be talking like this, especially not in front of her.”
But Mort just waved his hand. “Both of those girls need to toughen up. They’re too sensitive.”
“Nora needs to toughen up?”
“You don’t understand Nora. She’s all jelly on the inside.”
I had certainly never considered that possibility before, and I wasn’t sure I liked the picture. “Maybe I don’t understand.” I went over and moved two pots of hydrangeas out of the late-morning sun. “But you’re not the one to explain it to me.” I stopped and looked at Mort, my husband for more than half my lifetime. Mort, whom I had known at twenty. Mort, who to this day believed I had lost my virginity to him. “Mort, just go, okay? We’re only going to get into a horrible fight. We’ve about gotten to the point where there’s some serious water under the bridge between us. We’ve both gotten on with our lives. What’s the good of opening things up again, fighting over the flower shop or the girls? We’ve already had all those fights. If you go now, you and Lila can have a nice vacation in Boston. See the kids, don’t see me, tell Nora whatever you want to tell her. That isn’t such a bad deal, is it?”
“So you’ll stay away from the Cacciamani, is that what you’re telling me?”
I sank down into the little wicker chair. “How in the world could that be what I’m telling you?”
“Because that’s what this whole thing is about. Not the store and not the girls. Your father didn’t keep his promise to me, but I’m keeping my promise to him. He told me that Rosemans and Cacciamanis had to keep away from each other. It was my job to make sure they did. You know that whole business with Sandy nearly broke your parents’ hearts. I know it took five years off your father’s life.”
“I told you not to tell them.”
“You don’t understand the way the world works, Jules. This Cacciamani bastard isn’t just some guy I don’t get along with. I’ve seen him operate for years, first with his old man and then with his rotten pack of boys behind him. These aren’t your average bad people. They’re despicable. I think they’re probably mafia.”
“The Flower Mafia, Mort? Give me a break. What did the Cacciamanis ever do to you? Do you even have any idea what this whole feud is about?”
“What it’s about?” Mort said. “What it’s about? Julie, what rock have you been living under all these years? It’s about business. It’s about them smearing our name all over town, saying we used old flowers for weddings. Saying we went to the cemetery and picked up our bouquets after funerals, for Christ’s sake. They kept me out of Rotary. They used some pull to keep us out of the phone book one year. The phone book! Do you even know what that means? And like I said, it didn’t start with Romeo. Not hardly. It goes back to his old man and that evil, evil bag he was married to, may they rot in hell.”
“Not so fast. She isn’t dead yet.”
“Is that possible?” Mort shrugged. “Then they’re waiting for her. They’re sharpening up the pitchforks. Those people undermined us in every way that was possible. They’d call our big accounts and say we had canceled, that they were going to be doing the flowers. And God forbid a Monday morning ever rolled by when I wasn’t here to meet the shipment. Every rose in the bunch would have its head twisted off.”
Okay, that one I believed. I had seen a Cacciamani behead a plant before. “So if this is true, some of it, any of it, how many of those exact same things did my dad do right back to them? And what did you do? Do you expect me to believe the Cacciamanis threw all the punches and the Rosemans stood there and took it?”
Mort looked like he couldn’t possibly be hearing me right. Normally I’d be upset if I didn’t have any customers on a Monday morning, but today I was relieved. “Is that what you want to believe? Is that what you’d want your family to do, never hurt your precious Romeo? Of course I went after them. So did your folks. When we got hit, we hit back. That’s called life, Julie.”
“Life, fine, but then after a couple of generations who throws the first punch? Are you reacting or are you going out there to nail them?”
“What in the hell difference does it make? These are Cacciamanis we’re talking about. All that matters is that we get them before they get us.”
“But don’t you see, Mort? It’s a game. They played dirty, we played dirty. Everybody hates everybody. But if we decide to stop it, if both sides choose not to fight anymore, then the game is over. It’s that simple.”
“That simple if you were playing with fair-minded people, which you’re not. Consider a hypothetical here. Say Sandy started writing letters to a murderer in prison. Say after some time she came to us and said, ‘Mom, Dad, Spike has changed and he’s a wonderful guy now and I’m going to marry him in prison.’ Wouldn’t you jump in front of a train to try and stop that one?”
I wanted to say that I would trust my daughter’s good judgment, but the scenario didn’t seem completely implausible to me. “Yes, but if what you’re saying—”
“What I’m saying is that love blinds us.” For a second his voice was soft. He came over and leaned against the counter. Mort looked like he was as tired out by this whole thing as I was. “We don’t always see the whole picture. That’s why the people who love us, the people who are responsible for us, have to step in and save us sometimes.”
“Oh, Mort, I don’t expect you to understand this, but I don’t need saving. When you ran off with Lila, I thought the same thing. I didn’t believe she wanted what was best for you. But it was your life and you were entitled to your own mistakes.”
“I’m not going to let this drop, Julie.”
“You’re going to have to. You live in Seattle, and sooner or later you have to go home. I really don’t want to fight with you. I just want you to go.”
Mort sighed and looked around the shop. Without a moment’s hesitation he picked up the best pot of purple cyclamen from a bunch of pots on a low platform and put it next to the cash register. “Got to get them up to eye level. You know that Lila and I have a shop now. At first I didn’t think it was right, I thought I needed to move on to something else, but I’ll tell you, you can’t walk away from flowers, not after you’ve been doing it your whole life. It gets in your blood.”
I asked him how business was doing.
“It’s a trade-off. A lot more money out there, but it’s all a lot more expensive, too. One fancy party for Microsoft and we make more money than this store brought in in a month. Lila picked up on the business fast. She has a real good head for flowers.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
Mort went back to the cooler and pulled out the bucket of Siberian irises. “You should be moving these.”
“I just got them today.”
“Irises just don’t last. You have to turn them over.”
I wanted to stop him, but he was right. Besides, it was a relief not to be fighting for a minute.
Mort put his hands on his hips and surveyed the store, the lord of all he saw. “This is a great place, do you know that? The space, the light. You couldn’t find a place like this in Seattle. It could use some updating, but the whole feel of it … I always had a real connection here. From the first time you brought me in, I really believed that one day this was all going to be mine. I loved this shop.”
“I know you did.”
“Let me see the books, Julie. I know you’re running the whole thing into the ground.”
“It’s my store now. Forget about it.”
“I know it’s your store, but I still have feelings for the place. I’m not asking for so much. Just give me a couple of hours.”
“Look, Mort, I’m trying to get you out of my business, not deeper into it.”
Mort rubbed his eyes. “If the place was on fire, would you turn away my bucket of water?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“No, you don’t be stupid. I might be able to help you put out the fire. Why don’t you try loving Roseman’s more than you hate me.”
It was only my vanity that stopped me. I wanted Mort to think I was shooting out the lights. But the truth was that he was great with the books and I was turning them into soup. He knew things about working out orders that I had never come close to mastering. He was right, we were going down. I did need help. “Okay,” I said finally, waving him back toward the desk. “You know where everything is, anyway. Nothing has changed.”
“Oh, Julie,” he said, with what I thought was some sadness in his voice. “Everything’s changed.”