“Piet,” Catherine said one afternoon in late September, “come have coffee with me.”
She studied Piet as they settled into a booth and ordered coffee. She had worked with this man for three years. She had committed a crime with him! But she knew nothing about him. What did he want in life? What did he care about?
He was invaluable to the shop, that much was certain. He was strong and energetic, and he dealt with the flower wholesalers down on Sixth Avenue and Twenty-eighth better than she ever could. All those delicate feminine blooms being handled by tough, gruff, callused bruisers always seemed ironic to her. It took brute strength to haul ice-weighted boxes of hundreds of fresh blooms shipped in from Long Island or New Jersey or Florida. These men who brought the cartons of flowers from truck to wholesale house had to be strong. Often they were men new to this country, working at manual jobs until they perfected their English. Catherine, who spoke only English and French, couldn’t understand most of them.
But Piet could talk to them, in Portuguese or Italian, complete with universal male gestures. If he tried to bargain with them for better prices, they laughed and joked and hit his arm. When Catherine tried to bargain for a lower price, they only chewed on their toothpicks or cigars and let their eyelids droop down over their eyes, their lips curling upward in that age-old superior smile of the stronger sex. Piet, on the other hand, was always polite to Catherine. Sometimes maddeningly polite.
Their coffee, in thick white mugs, was set before them. Piet looked at Catherine, waiting.
“Piet. I want to buy the shop.”
His expression did not change.
“I’ve been thinking about it constantly since we—got—the money. Your aunt and uncle are tired. They need to rest. They’re running the shop into the ground. But you and I could do wonders with it. Piet, do you want to buy the shop with me? Be my partner, at any percentage?”
“Thank you, Catherine, but no,” Piet said unhesitatingly, as if he were refusing a piece of pie. He met her eyes. “I have other plans for my money.”
“What?”
Piet shrugged.
“Jesus, Piet, we’ve known each other for three years now! Think what we’ve done together! Can’t we at least talk to each other?”
Piet remained silent, unruffled. She might as well talk to a tree.
“All right. At least tell me this much. If I do manage to buy the shop, would you stay on? You know I’d need you.”
“Yes. I’d stay on. For a while.”
“Oh, Piet, I have so many ideas! If this all works out … well, there’s so much I want to do, and—” She stopped. “I’m forgetting it is your aunt and uncle involved here. No matter what sorts of changes I make, they will be hurt. Offended.” She held her hands out, palms up. “Piet, I don’t know what to do.”
“Look, Catherine,” Piet said. “My aunt and uncle are decent, hardworking people. I love them. They have been wonderful to me. But I can still see their errors. They are running this shop into the ground. They’re afraid to try anything new. They’re old. Not in years, but in mind. You should buy the shop. It would be best for everyone.”
Catherine stared at Piet. His words were so sensible. That they had come from such a sensual mouth was amazing. She would have thrown her arms around him and kissed him in gratitude if he had been anyone else.
Instead, “Thanks, Piet,” she said quietly. “Well, we’ll see what I can do.”
* * *
Catherine had often overheard the Vandervelds discuss selling the shop with each other, and from time to time Mrs. Vanderveld confided her worries to Catherine. They were only barely making a profit. Now that they were older, the work was becoming more difficult and tiring. It took a good amount of physical energy and stamina to create even the most ethereal floral display. Piet and Catherine did all the heavy work, but even so the Vandervelds were exhausted at the end of the day.
Every night in September Catherine sat in her room making lists. Planning. On Wednesday, her day off, she called carpenters and painters, getting estimates. She kept an appointment she had made with a lawyer, a man who knew her father well enough to appreciate her background, but not so well that he was aware of the financial difficulties her father had gotten himself into. Not so well that he would ask her where on earth she had managed to find enough money to buy the flower shop.
The lawyer, Mr. Giles, did express a gentle skepticism at her abilities to run a business. He was an older man, portly, white-haired, restrained. It was with exquisite politeness that he pointed out to her that she had little experience in business and no education in accounting.
Catherine bristled. Seated before him in her green linen suit and high heels, her legs primly crossed at the ankles as she had been taught at school, she was aware of how young she appeared. She wanted to toss her head and stalk dramatically from the room, offended, but as Mr. Giles continued to speak, softly, logically, she realized he was trying to be helpful, not patronizing.
“Bookkeeping is an art in itself,” he said. “No matter how successful the rest of the enterprise is, the bookkeeping can make or break it.”
“Perhaps I should hire someone to do that,” Catherine said. “I admit it’s not my strong point. I intend to do the design work and the marketing, the selling.”
“Of course. And of course you should hire a bookkeeper. But may I suggest that you take a course in accounting yourself? As soon as possible. You must learn to read the books. You must be able to check the figures. You must be prepared to understand this part of your business. Unless you have a partner in mind whom you trust completely, not only with your finances, but also to live a long life and to work for you forever and to keep all information to himself.”
Catherine stared at Mr. Giles. “This is more complicated than I thought,” she said. “Very well. I’ll take a course in accounting. The fall semester hasn’t started yet. I’ll be able to get in somewhere.”
Mr. Giles smiled. “Good for you, young lady,” he said. “I know how hard it is to take advice. I was young once myself. I think you just might manage to be as successful as you’d like, since you can obviously summon up some coolheaded reason to balance out your passion for this business.”
“Your passion for this business.” An odd phrase from such a temperate man. Not until Catherine had met Mr. Giles would she have thought to put the words passion and business in the same sentence. She did not think she had a “passion” for this business. She had had a passion for Kit. She still did. What she had for this business was something less fiery. But perhaps better: what she felt for this business was certainty.
* * *
One day in late September, Mr. Vanderveld fell on the wooden stairs to the basement and broke his ankle. Catherine and Piet, one on each side, carried him to the shop van. Piet drove him to the hospital. The old man had been white-faced with pain and embarrassment.
During the three years Catherine had worked in the shop, Mrs. V and Catherine had been friendly, but it was with Mr. Vanderveld that Catherine felt a real bond. He was her teacher, her mentor, her elder. He was also a man from the old world, and along with his charming Dutch accent, he retained a fierce old-world masculine pride. He was the owner. He was the artist. He was, above all, the man. He might have been proud when Catherine learned quickly and well, but he was also perversely vexed, perhaps threatened. Catherine would have preferred a closer relationship, one in which they could touch, or joke, or praise each other. If Jan Vanderveld ever wished the same, he never indicated it. Certainly he hated having Catherine and Piet see him in the humbling dependence forced by pain.
Catherine knew that it was Mrs. Vanderveld she had to approach about buying the store. Only Mrs. V could make her husband listen. And now was the time. The next day, when Mr. Vanderveld was home with his ankle in a cast, she told Mrs. Vanderveld she would like to buy the shop from them.
Mrs. Vanderveld stared at her, speechless with shock.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
Catherine could almost hear the other woman’s thoughts arranging themselves: “I forgot, this little errand girl and help is from a moneyed background. Well, well.”
“I think this could be a possibility, Catherine,” Mrs. Vanderveld responded at last, speaking as slowly as if learning a new language. “It would be lovely to have you instead of a stranger taking over our shop. I’ve always regretted that we have no children of our own to pass it on to. But you are almost like our child to us. Oh, this is interesting! Let me talk it over with Jan tonight. We’ll talk more in the morning.”
The next morning, eyes shining with happiness, Mrs. Vanderveld made her proposal: Catherine wouldn’t have to buy the shop. The Vandervelds would let her become a partner. That way Catherine would be assured of Mr. Vanderveld’s artistic abilities and Mrs. Vanderveld’s accounting skills. Catherine’s money could give the business the shot in the arm it needed while they continued to provide the skill.
Catherine hurried back to Mr. Giles. But his blunt words echoed her own doubts: under Mrs. V’s proposal, Catherine would be contributing much needed capital to the Vandervelds without receiving any power or control in exchange. Did Catherine think the Vandervelds would accept her as an equal? That they would let her implement any changes or let her decide any policies? Could she make any of the improvements she’d been planning with Mr. and Mrs. Vanderveld scrutinizing and approving every move?
Catherine went back to the Vandervelds. Mr. V was seated on a stool, his bandaged ankle resting on a box, furiously arranging mums and carnations into a fall bouquet. Mrs. V was making bows from ribbons; she stopped working when Catherine entered.
“I’ve been thinking,” Catherine said without preamble, “I want to buy the shop. I don’t want a partnership—I want to be the sole owner.” She had trouble keeping her voice even as she spoke, knowing this would upset them.
Mr. V tried to act as if he hadn’t heard her, but his mouth compressed so completely that his chin and cheeks bulged out around it and his face went red.
Mrs. V twisted her hands in front of her. Her hair began to slip from its bun. “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” she blithered, turning toward the ribbons as if for help, then back toward Catherine. “This does present a problem. We don’t really want to sell the shop entirely. We just need a little financial boost—”
“Well, think about it,” Catherine said. “I’d better get back to work.”
It was a wonder that all the flowers in the shop didn’t die that week, wilt from the troubled air that hung in the shop like a plague. Mr. Vanderveld was insulted (as Mrs. Vanderveld told Catherine privately, when he was at home one afternoon resting his ankle) that Catherine did not jump at the opportunity to be partners with him. After all, he had the talent. She had only the money. Mrs. Vanderveld approached Catherine as a friend, almost a loving relative. Catherine should not forget that they had taken her in untrained and taught her everything.
“If Jan were freed up from financial worries, he could really let his creative energies flourish!” Mrs. Vanderveld said. “He would make arrangements that would be wonders! He would be famous. The shop would make more money!”
“Then let me buy the shop. You’ll have lots of money, and I’ll pay Mr. Vanderveld to work as my main floral designer,” Catherine said.
Mrs. Vanderveld shook her head. “No, you do not understand. Jan could not work for you. A young lady for his boss? No.”
Catherine held fast. On her lunch breaks she raced to the coffee shop to call Mr. Giles from a pay phone for moral support, like a boxer turning to the coach. With each hour that she steadfastly refused to become a partner, the atmosphere of the shop darkened proportionately.
“After all, Jan is sixty,” Mrs. Vanderveld said one morning. “A talented man, who should not be thrown on the dustbin. You must know, Catherine, that when older people retire, they lose their reason for living, and die, poof, for no reason at all. Statistics prove this. What would Jan do without his shop? He would have no reason to live.”
“The two of you have worked so hard all your lives,” Catherine countered sweetly. “Isn’t it time you enjoyed yourselves? Just think, with the money you’d get, you could take cruises together. You could visit your relatives in Amsterdam. Mr. Vanderveld shouldn’t have to work so hard. At your age, neither should you. Isn’t it time to be selfish and take some pleasure from life after all these years of working?”
“Humph!” Mrs. V replied, bustling off.
Now Catherine dreaded coming to work, because the Vandervelds no longer greeted her cheerfully but merely nodded tersely. There were no more gossip sessions about the latest celebrity scandal over coffee. There was no more joking around. Orders were barked, replies bitten off. It was dreary. If she had not wanted to buy the shop, she would have quit.
Catherine’s refuge and pleasure came when she sat over her desk at night, planning, sketching, figuring. She enrolled in the bookkeeping course at Hunter College. She studied hard. If she was tempted to think of Kit—or even of Ned—she pushed those thoughts of love away. She forced herself to concentrate on the business she wanted to have. Her mind clicked and spun like an efficient machine. Her heart dangled inside her like a crystal, transparent, empty, cold.
* * *
Catherine was cleaning fresh, bud-tight, long-stemmed roses and putting their stems into water tubes for a casket piece. Florists almost always filled out funeral wreaths and arrangements with their old dying flowers that couldn’t last another day. It was a waste to put fresh, tightly budded flowers on a grave. The Vandervelds spoke of florists they knew who, if forced to provide fresh flowers in top condition for a funeral, often went to the graveyard that night and stole the flowers back in order to sell them again. But this particular casket piece was for an important man whose casket would be on view in a funeral home for three days. The flowers had to last.
The front door bell tinkled. Mrs. Vanderveld came through the curtain with two sinister-looking smarmy little men.
The taller man, chewing on a toothpick, slouched down the aisle between the tables, eyeing the shop, eyeing Catherine. He grinned.
“She come with the shop, too?” he said nastily, jerking his head toward Catherine as if she were a thing that could not see or hear.
His cohort laughed vulgarly.
“Miss Eliot works for us, yes,” Mrs. Vanderveld said. “Whether she stayed on to work for you would depend on whatever agreement you worked out with her, I suppose. She does have three years of training with us.”
Catherine dropped the flowers on the table. She looked at the two men—slimy hoods, they wouldn’t know a pansy from a peony! She looked at Mrs. Vanderveld. Mrs. Vanderveld raised her trembling chin in defiance and stared back.
Catherine walked to the back of the shop. She washed her hands, took off her smock, and hung it on a hook. She took her purse in her hand, and without a word she walked past Mrs. Vanderveld and the two oily men to the front of the shop.
“Catherine!” Mrs. Vanderveld said sharply. “Where are you going?”
“To find another job,” Catherine said. “I quit.”
She walked through the curtain one last time, out the door with the tinkling bell, and onto the street, which was brilliant with early fall sunlight.
* * *
Catherine walked. Stopping only to buy a hot dog and soda from a street stand, she walked for hours around the Upper East Side. There were other flower shops dotted throughout the neighborhood. She knew some of the florists. Maybe one of them would want a partner. Or she could find a vacant storefront in the area and start completely new. In many ways it would be easier than trying to rehabilitate the Vandervelds’ aging shop. She stopped to write down phone numbers when she saw “For Rent” signs.
When she entered Leslie’s apartment that evening, with blisters on her feet and a bag of groceries in her arms, the phone was ringing. As she put away the milk, the apples, the wedge of cheese, she listened to Mrs. Vanderveld’s newest proposal: They would sell the shop to Catherine if she would agree not to change the name from Vanderveld Flowers and to keep Mr. Vanderveld on as head florist.
Catherine said, “No. I want my shop to be my own. I will change the name.”
“If you change the name, it’s as if you erase our lives!”
“I’m sorry.”
Mrs. Vanderveld was crying into the telephone. “We loved you, we helped you, we taught you, you were like a daughter to us, and now you want to change everything, to take everything from us.”
“No,” Catherine said. “I want to buy everything from you.”
“Jan will die,” Mrs. Vanderveld sobbed.
“No, he won’t,” Catherine said. Her bright crystal heart glittered inside her, throwing off inspiration. “He’ll be happy. You’ll both be well off and free from financial worries. I’ll name him as head floral designer on all our ads.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Mrs. Vanderveld cried.
On October 21, 1964, Catherine Eliot sat in Mr. Giles’s office with Mr. and Mrs. Vanderveld and their lawyer. They signed the papers, and the flower shop became hers.
On October 22 the carpenters arrived.
By then, Catherine had already been at work.
Her first act as the new owner was to return to the shop that evening after dark. With her own hands she pulled down the hideous dusty curtain that had hung between the front and back of the shop. The material was so old, it shredded in her hands.
“Ha!” she laughed when the curtain was down.
Then she walked up and down the length of the shop, rethinking all her plans. Had she calculated every inch of space correctly? Was this right? And this? In her mind the new shop took shape. The city grew dark around her while she remained in her cube of light, walking up and down, planning. She didn’t go home that night, but toward morning she turned off the lights and lay down on a work table at the back of the store. She slept a few hours until Piet, coming in the back door with the day’s flowers from the wholesale market, woke her.
“Good morning, boss lady,” he said, bending over her.
He was close enough to kiss. Catherine felt the strangest impulse to do just that but held back, feeling rumpled and sour-mouthed and off-guard, caught asleep on the table. She sat up and pulled her skirt back down over her knees.
“Piet,” she said cautiously, “would you go down to Nini’s and buy me a cup of coffee? Buy yourself one, too.”
“Sure thing, boss lady,” Piet said.
For the first morning in three years, Catherine didn’t make the coffee on the little hot plate at the back of the store. She wondered when she’d get the courage to tell someone else to make it.
* * *
She told the Vandervelds to take two weeks’ vacation. They argued: it wouldn’t be right, they didn’t want to desert her on her first few days as owner. Catherine insisted. The Vandervelds hadn’t had a vacation together for years. They needed it. They deserved it.
Besides, not much work could be done during the renovations.
“Renovations!” Mrs. Vanderveld gasped. She placed her hand over her startled heart. She stared at Catherine as if Catherine had turned into a monster.
“Renovations!” Mr. Vanderveld roared. “How long do you plan for these ‘renovations’ to take?”
“Two weeks,” Catherine said.
“Ha!” Mr. Vanderveld replied triumphantly. “Two weeks, it will be at least a month. You’ll see. It always takes longer. You’ll be into Thanksgiving and we won’t be able to fill our Thanksgiving orders, all those centerpieces, one of the busiest times of the year. You’ve made a terrible mistake, young lady!”
* * *
When the Vandervelds returned in early November, they were stunned.
“Oh, God, what have you done!” Mrs. Vanderveld cried when she entered the shop. She burst into tears.
Before, on entering Vanderveld Flowers, one had immediately encountered the high scarred wooden counter with beady-eyed Mrs. Vanderveld perched on a stool behind it. The walls and floor had been dark with old paint, old dirt. The “reception” area had been cramped.
Now one entered a long bright space with tiered display brackets on the walls, freshly painted in milky white. Tiered tables for potted plants were set around the room. The old wooden floor had been covered with a washable vinyl in a marbleized pattern of greenish white with pale green veins.
In front of one of the refrigerators, in the middle of the room, was Catherine’s grandfather’s magnificent desk, which Kathryn had sent from Everly. The burled mahogany and shining brass drawer handles gleamed. Also from Everly had come the two Queen Anne chairs, upholstered in pink-and-white-striped silk, which sat on each side of the desk, one for Mrs. Vanderveld, one for the customer.
The glass-doored refrigerator that had been at the back of the shop in the work area had been brought forward to the middle of the room. The other wide refrigerator was moved back so that both refrigerators acted as dividers between front and back as well as displays. Between the two refrigerators there was no door. No hanging curtain. Only open space.
“People will be able to look back here and see me working!” Mr. Vanderveld exclaimed.
“Yes, absolutely. That’s the point. You’re an artist. It will intrigue them.”
“Humph,” he replied, slightly conciliated by this new vision of himself. “Well, look, now I will have to walk all the way to the front to get flowers from the cooler.”
“Before, you had to walk to the back. It’s the same number of steps. Just a different direction. This way the flowers are all on display. People can see what we have, and they might want to buy what they see.”
“You’ve spent a lot of money,” Mrs. Vanderveld said wistfully.
“Yes, and I’m not done yet, but I think it will pay off,” Catherine replied.
With Piet and the Vandervelds managing the regular business, Catherine continued at her frantic pace to get ready for the opening of her new shop. She rose every day at five-thirty to get down to the flower district to consult with container wholesalers, flower wholesalers, ribbon and cardboard box suppliers. She spent a few hours helping clean and arrange the flowers. At night she went to her bookkeeping class. After class she sat in her apartment, copying selected names and addresses from her Miss Brill’s alumnae book, from her mother’s address books, which she’d secretly borrowed from her parents’ apartment, from the directories of yacht clubs and garden clubs and charitable organizations to which her parents and her grandmother belonged.
In early December the sign painter arrived to paint in gold, high on the plate-glass window, the name of Catherine’s store:
BLOOMS
“ ‘Blooms’!” Mr. Vanderveld said. “What kind of foolish name is that!”
Blooms’ colors were foam white with a hint of green, like the underside of certain leaves in a storm, and gold. The new cardboard boxes were white, the ribbon gold, the stationery, billing materials, and gift cards all read in discreet gold letters: BLOOMS.
Catherine told Mrs. Vanderveld she should answer the telephone by saying, “Blooms.” Mrs. Vanderveld walked off, muttering in a low voice.
Catherine set wicker baskets of everlasting arrangements, buckets of fresh flowers, and porcelain or terra-cotta containers of houseplants and trailing ivy on the tiered tables and wall display shelves. Now people who entered stopped several times before they got to the counter, and inevitably they were delighted by something that had caught their eye and that they realized they had to have.
But Catherine was not counting much on walk-in trade. She had spent the money renovating the front of the shop because she wanted it to look elegant. All her training at school and her parents’ homes had taught her that it was elegance people paid money for.
In early December a truck pulled up in the alley and two men delivered the five hundred custom-made containers Catherine had ordered.
“What’s happening!” the Vandervelds exclaimed in horror. “What’s all this?”
“Wait a minute,” Catherine said, too excited now to be calm herself. “Let me show you.”
She raced down the stairs and tore open the boxes. She took out one of the containers, which she had designed herself and had specially made. It was a small, open treasure chest, made of copper-alloyed tin that looked gold. She grabbed up a handful of sphagnum moss and molded it into a rectangle, then stuffed it inside the treasure chest. She filled the container with water. She anchored a large, luminous, amethyst orchid in the moss. She opened the small box of cards she’d had printed up. The cards all read, in gold letters on pale white:
For the pleasure of treasures,
Order flowers from Blooms.
Catherine Eliot, Owner
Jan Vanderveld, Floral Designer
Telephone 555–5343
73rd Street at Park
She raced back upstairs to show the Vandervelds.
“Humph,” Mr. Vanderveld said.
“What will you do with this?” Mrs. Vanderveld asked.
“Announce the opening of my shop,” Catherine said. “I’m sending out five hundred of these to people I know who can afford flowers and who don’t know this shop exists.”
“You’re mad! That will cost you a fortune!” Mr. Vanderveld said. “The orchids alone—”
“I know. It’s expensive. But to make a lot of money, you have to spend a lot of money.”
“Where did you hear that?” Mrs. Vanderveld said. “Some ivory-towered philosophical economics course, I suppose.”
“Actually, I thought of it myself,” Catherine said. “But I’m sure someone said it before I did. Now, let’s get to work.”
She had asked Piet if he could find some inexpensive temporary help, with the understanding that they were on trial and that if things went well, they would be hired full-time. Later that day Piet showed up with two men named Jesus and Manuel, who worked along happily in the basement, singing songs in Spanish while shaping the moss into bricks, which they put into the containers.
Mrs. Vanderveld addressed the envelopes while Catherine wrote personal messages on the backs of all the cards:
“Dear Robin [or Anne or Melonie and every other girl she had known at Miss Brill’s], When you get married, let me do your flowers! Love, Catherine.”
“Dear Mrs. Evans, I know Grandmother would want you to know that I’ve carried on her love of flowers. Respectfully, Catherine Eliot.”
“Dear Mr. and Mrs. Collier, I hope I’ll see you and George at Everly this Christmas. Shelly loves school. I love my shop! Come visit me. Affectionately, Catherine.”
“Dear Mrs. Stone, When Debbie has her coming-out party this spring, I’d love to be of some help. Best wishes, Catherine Eliot (Miss Brill’s ’61, with your daughter Mary).”
“Dear Mr. and Mrs. Jones [or Hyde-White, or Slate, and so on for two hundred names], I know Mother and Father would want you to know I’ve started my own business. Best, Catherine Eliot.”
“Dear Mother and Father, See? I’ve started my own business. Maybe I’m not a total loss after all. See you at Everly at Christmas? Love, Catherine.”
* * *
Finally all the cards were handwritten and all the envelopes addressed.
Piet had to make two trips to the wholesalers to pick up the orchids Catherine had special-ordered. With the help of Jesus and Manuel, they slipped an orchid into the moss and a white card into five hundred treasure chests. Catherine had spent hours the night before making a chart of addresses and blocks so the deliveries would be organized to take the least amount of time. Almost all the addresses were on the Upper East Side.
Mr. Vanderveld grumbled about all the fuss as he continued to make his standard Christmas wreaths and decorations.
“What a waste of money,” he said to himself sotto voce, but loud enough so that Catherine could hear.
* * *
The next morning the phone began to ring.
“Catherine! How did you know? I am getting married! In January! To Linden Douglas! I’d love to have you do my flowers!”
“Robin, I’m thrilled for you. He’s a dream. Congratulations! Let me come see you on the twenty-sixth, when all the Christmas fuss has died down.”
“Catherine? This is Mrs. Evans, dear. I love the little treasure chest. I’m giving a formal dinner party for eighteen on New Year’s Day. Do you think you could help me come up with something original? Refreshing? I do get tired of the same old thing, don’t you?”
“I know just what you mean, and I’d love to try, Mrs. Evans. Perhaps I could stop by on the twenty-seventh to see your dining room colors and the table service you plan to use, and so on. Then I’d have a better idea of what would coordinate with your decor.”
“What a lovely idea, dear. I’ll see you then. I hope you’ll stay for tea.”
The phone kept ringing. No sooner did Catherine put it down than it rang again. By noon she was getting complaints from people that they were having trouble getting through. After she finished a call, Catherine kept the receiver off for a moment so the phone wouldn’t ring.
“Mrs. Vanderveld,” she said, “would you please run down to the coffee shop and phone the telephone company? Tell them we need another line put in right away.”
“Oh, no, my dear, that’s not necessary!” Mrs. Vanderveld said. “I’m sure all this will die down. You don’t want to go to the expense of another line just because of one day’s excitement.”
“Mrs. Vanderveld—”
“Really, Catherine, you mustn’t—”
“Henny. Do what I asked, now, please!”
It was a toss-up as to who was more startled at her sharp words, Mrs. Vanderveld or Catherine. But Catherine put the receiver back on the hook, and the phone rang again, and Catherine began to write down another order. Henny Vanderveld, head high, sniffing, gathered up her purse and went off to do as she was told.
* * *
Catherine didn’t go to Everly that Christmas. She intended to, to make more contacts. But she was so exhausted that she spent the day in bed, sleeping. Christmas night she sat looking out the window of the apartment just as she had only a few weeks before. Tonight she was sitting in her robe, drinking champagne and eating stuffed olives straight out of the jar with a fork. She had opened the window in spite of the cold to hear the street sounds of people calling out, “Merry Christmas,” and singing carols as they hurried through the dark to dressy parties. Occasionally a new idea popped into her head, and she wrote it down on one of her notepads. She was glad she wasn’t stuffed into a proper dress, sitting at a proper dinner, eating turkey. She decided this was the happiest Christmas she had ever had in her life.
Catherine sat in the shining expanse of the Terrys’ living room sipping tea with Robin Terry and her mother. Catherine was wearing a killingly expensive, terribly plain black wool dress, which she had stolen from her mother’s back closet, and her pearls. She didn’t think Mrs. Terry would remember her from Miss Brill’s—there had been so many girls there—and Catherine had a black mark against her for not attending any college. But Mrs. Terry took one look at Catherine’s dress and was reassured. Catherine was one of them.
“… so good of you to come to us,” Mrs. Terry was saying. “We’re in such a rush, with the wedding happening so soon.”
“Oh, it’s just not fair!” Robin wailed. “I’ve dreamed all my life of having a spring wedding out at our place in Southampton. We have a rose trellis there. I wanted to wear a summer gown and take my vows under the rose trellis. Apple blossoms in bloom, you know, a romantic wedding. January is such a boring, ugly time to get married!”
“Well, why don’t you wait?” Catherine asked. “April’s only a few more months away.”
Mrs. Terry cleared her throat.
“Oh, Mother, really, everyone is doing it these days!” Robin said. She shot Catherine a look of exasperation.
Mrs. Terry rose. “I’ll just tell Cook we’d like some biscuits with our tea,” she said, and click-clacked out the room on her high heels.
Catherine leaned forward. “Robin, you’re pregnant!”
“Of course. How do you think I got the fool to marry me?” Robin laughed. “Oh, he would have eventually, this just helps speed things along. We’re both delighted about the baby, really. Of course Mother’s acting like I’ve escaped from a reform school, but Daddy’s amazing, he’s great about it. The only thing I really hate about it all is that I had my heart set on a spring wedding. Apple blossoms and a tent and all that. And I have a great collarbone. I wanted to show it off in a summery gown. God knows I can’t show off anything else for a while.”
Catherine looked at the Corot above the marble fireplace, the Fabergé egg in its stand on the mantel, the Staffordshire hounds by the hearth, the heavy silk drapes at the French doors.
“You could have a spring wedding if you really wanted it,” she said. “Indoors, with a rose trellis and trees in blossom and all that.”
“You’re kidding!” Robin said. “How?”
“It would take some work. It would be like setting a stage. Illusion. Of course it would cost the earth—”
“Oh, who cares what it costs, I’m their only daughter—Mum! Come here! Catherine’s had the best idea!”
* * *
It was spitting sleet the late January afternoon when Catherine and Piet drove out to East Hampton in the florist van with a U-Haul trailer weaving drunkenly behind. At Everly, they discovered, the wind was even wilder, sweeping across the water and land in a frenzy.
Catherine was fairly frenzied herself. She had a clear idea in her head of what she wanted to do. She had made sketches and discussed it with Piet and Mr. Vanderveld, but the wedding was tomorrow evening. With these wedding flowers it was a do-or-die situation. There was no dress rehearsal for the flowers. She felt like a diver about to attempt her first triple somersault from a ten-meter board. If she did it perfectly, she’d be famous. If she made a mistake … the results could be disastrous, and there was no second chance.
Earlier she had called her grandmother and received permission and directions to the part of her land where Catherine could cut some saplings. Piet parked the van on the edge of the forest. In boots and heavy jackets and gloves, they tromped around searching, yelling at each other over the wind. They found eight bare deciduous trees with trunks about three inches thick, about ten feet tall. Piet used a hatchet to cut them close to the ground.
Catherine helped Piet get them out of the forest and into the van and trailer. The wind tore the trees from their grips and flipped the small branches into their eyes. It was like wrestling witches.
But finally the trees were in the van, clattering against the metal walls. Catherine and Piet returned to a more protected part of the forest where the ivy had not been discolored by winter and carefully tore the vines away from the trees. Catherine had bought some from the wholesaler—but had she bought enough? She ripped at the vines, the wind shrieking, carrying the vines away from her like a kite’s tail, until Piet gently led her away.
“Enough!” he said. “We have enough.”
The drive back to the city was terrifying. The roads were covered with ice, and visibility was limited to a curtain of blowing sleet.
“It was a mistake to rent the U-Haul,” Catherine said after they had skidded several times. “It’s so high and light, it catches the wind.”
“We’ll make it,” Piet said.
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Catherine said. “I wish we had done this yesterday. I was a fool to wait until now.”
“We’ll only lose about an hour’s time,” Piet said.
“We don’t have an hour to lose,” Catherine said grimly. “Oh, God! Watch out!”
Piet steadied the van, which seemed more to be floating above the road than actually touching it. With the trailer teetering behind, the van rocked back and forth like a sinking ship on a tossing sea.
“Oh, God,” Catherine moaned.
“Close your eyes, Catherine,” Piet said. “You have a busy day ahead. Save your energies. Rest.”
“Oh, sure,” Catherine snapped. “The one event that could make my fame and fortune, and I’m supposed to sleep.”
Piet reached across the cab and put his hand on Catherine’s neck. She jumped.
“Lie down,” he said. “Use my leg as a pillow. Don’t watch the road, it will only make you anxious. Rest.”
She didn’t resist the gentle force of his hand as he pulled her so that she lay on the seat, her head on his thigh. His leg was as hard as iron. How could he possibly think she could use it as a pillow? The heater was blowing, the air of the cab was warm, and Piet had unbuttoned his navy pea coat, which was bunched up behind her head. She could feel the muscles of his body as he downshifted or turned. She could smell him—clove gum, fresh air, the hot denim smell of his jeans. She could not help but think of what her face would be nestling against if she were turned in the other direction, facing against the seat, and his body, and the fork of his legs.
Before she knew it, they were pulling up in front of the Waldorf-Astoria. She hadn’t slept, but she certainly had stopped worrying.
The Vandervelds were already there, along with Jesus and Manuel. Thousands of flowers had been brought in and were standing in buckets. Robin’s wedding would take place in a small formal room used for cocktails and meetings, then the wall, which was really two accordion partitions, would be pushed back to open onto the main ballroom for the reception and dinner dance. Earlier Catherine had overseen the setting up of the trellised arbor where the vows would take place and the draping of the pink-and-white-striped tent top across the ceiling of the ballroom.
Now her workers anchored the eight trees in buckets of sand, which had been placed around the ballroom. Standing on light metal ladders, they began to fasten pink-rimmed white carnations to the bare limbs of the trees with precut snippets of florist wire. At Catherine’s request, Jesus and Manuel had brought their girlfriends to help. The girls cut the carnation stems short and handed them up to the men, who tied them. There were buckets and buckets of carnations—over a thousand, a little over one hundred for each tree.
Catherine and Piet drove the van back to the flower shop to get the pedestal stands she had sprayed white, the pots of azaleas and gardenias, the small wicker picnic baskets, the bows, the roses, the tuberoses, the stephanotis, and the forced white lilacs.
“My Gott!” Henny Vanderveld had shrieked on seeing the white lilacs. “What have you done! How much did these cost? Too much!”
“Henny, the Terrys will pay for them,” Catherine had said, controlling her temper.
“Foolish girl, spendthrift, you’ll be the ruin of yourself and the shop, you’ll see,” Henny had muttered under her breath.
“Oh, disappear, you old witch,” Catherine had muttered under hers.
Now the Vandervelds had gone home to sleep, thank God. Piet, Jesus, Manuel, and their girlfriends worked tirelessly. Catherine played the radio full volume on a rock and roll station. At three in the morning she sent out for hot pastrami sandwiches, coffee, and sweet rolls.
The tables had already been set up in the ballroom by the hotel. Catherine covered them in the pink-and-white-striped cotton that matched the tented ceiling. She placed a wicker basket with a pale green bow on the handle as the centerpiece on each table. Later, just before the wedding, she would bring around the lush pink roses and white daisy mums to place in the baskets.
The trees were finished earlier than Catherine had thought, about nine o’clock the morning of the wedding. Never having done such a thing before, she had thought it wiser to allow more than enough time to wire a thousand carnations to eight trees. Everyone went home for a quick nap, promising to return at four that afternoon for the final touches. The wedding was called for seven-thirty.
Catherine didn’t nap. She showered and fixed her hair and packed a dress bag and suitcase. As Robin’s friend, she was invited to the wedding, but she could hardly wear her evening dress to finish the flowers in. She forced herself to lie down on her bed, but her mind would not turn off in spite of the night without sleep. She kept going over details. Had they remembered … had they done …
She was back at the Waldorf-Astoria before anyone else. Good thing, for the Neanderthals bringing in the two fountains she had rented were there early. She had to tell them where to put them, at one end of the ballroom on each side of the bandstand. She draped the fountains and the area around them with ivy, then set buckets of azaleas here and there, so people would not trip on the electric cord that made the water cascade with a lovely summer splashing sound from tier to tier. Once the fountains were running, she took the water lilies that had been waiting in buckets and floated them in the lowest pool.
Then she started on the trellised arbor in the smaller room where the actual ceremony would take place. First she draped it all with variegated ivy. Then Mr. Vanderveld arrived to help her wire white and pink roses, gardenias, daisy mums, carnations, and the sinfully expensive lilacs to the trellis. Catherine rested for a few moments, sitting on a folding chair, sipping coffee, admiring Mr. Vanderveld. He was so assured of his skill that his movements with the flowers looked abrupt, even brutal. He didn’t waste a twist of the wrist. His hands flew. Secretly Catherine despaired of ever learning his secrets—one swift motion, and a rose or a heavy spray of lilacs was anchored in the trellis, curving and pointing as naturally as if it had grown there, instead of hanging down stupidly the way it often did for Catherine.
Other workers from the hotel were in the room now, setting up the chairs for the guests at the ceremony and around the tables in the ballroom. The band members arrived and tuned up. Piet, Jesus, Manuel, and the two girls arrived. They put the pink roses and white daisy mums in the picnic baskets on the tables. Catherine had placed long, tapered pink candles on each side of the wicker baskets. Tiny, twining vinca minor vines were tied around the candlesticks and trailed down and over the sides of the table. The air was spicy with the clove fragrance of the thousand carnations, the white lilacs, and the old-fashioned grandmotherly scent of the tuberoses.
At six Robin’s mother and father arrived, chattering nervously. By then Catherine had shut all the accordion partitions to the ballroom. The Terrys were pleased with the flowered arbor and the potted azaleas set around the room, but when Catherine had the partitions opened, revealing a ballroom with trees in full blossom, Robin’s mother burst into tears.
“It’s beautiful!” she cried. “It’s magic!”
“It should be,” Mr. Terry said gruffly. “I could have bought a house with the money I spent on the flowers.”
“It’s worth it!” Mrs. Terry said. “For Robin.”
Mr. Vanderveld brought in Robin’s bouquet, the bouquets for her matron and maids of honor, and the wicker basket full of rose petals for the flower girl. These were delivered to the rooms the Terrys had rented at the hotel for Robin and her party to dress in. Everyone took one last look to see that each flower was in place, each detail perfect. Then Mr. and Mrs. Vanderveld and the others went home.
“It’s brilliant, Catherine,” Piet said just before leaving.
“Thanks. Oh, Piet, I hope everyone else thinks so!”
“They will.”
“Oh, Piet!” she said again, and impulsively hugged him to her. He responded by kissing her full on her mouth.
“That was for luck,” he said, grinning, then grabbed up his coat and left.
Catherine went into the ladies’ lounge off the ballroom and changed into the evening dress she would wear for the wedding and dance afterward. She was so tired by then, her vision was blurring, but she was still so anxious that her palms were sweating. The Terrys had been pleased with the way the ballroom looked, but she had drawn up sketches for them, so they were not surprised. What would the two hundred guests think? She would be able to mingle with them to overhear their reactions. They wouldn’t know she was the one who had created it all.
The flowers had cost the Terrys a fortune. And Catherine had made a lot of money from this one affair. But it was the reaction from all the guests that really mattered. She was counting on the Terry wedding to make her name.
The flowered chamber where the ceremony took place filled with guests. Catherine, gloved, hatted, and shod in high heels, sat among them. The groom and his best man stood framed by the lilac-and-ivy arbor. Robin came down the aisle on her father’s arm in a flowing off-the-shoulder ruffled dimity summer gown, fresh flowers anchoring a pearled and trailing veil in her upswept golden hair, a bouquet of cascading roses, gardenias, ivy, and lace in her hands. Robin’s mother cried when her daughter stood under the flowered trellis and said, “I do.” The married coupled kissed beneath the fragrant blossoms.
At last the ceremony was over. All the guests rose. The waiters pushed back the partition, and a spring flower garden in full bloom burst into view.
The room resounded with a collective gasp of surprise and delight.
The party drifted past Catherine into the ballroom, like children at a fairyland. They paused at the fountains, exclaimed over the apple blossoms, the roses, the lilies. “How clever!” “How charming! Delightful!” “It smells like springtime!” “It’s a fantasyland!” everyone said.
Catherine began to cry.
At first tears ran down her face. Then she had to press her fist against her mouth to keep from sobbing. When she realized she was about to fall on the floor howling like a maniac, she hurried from the room.
She grabbed up her coat, raced down the hall to the elevator, and sped across the huge lobby and out to the street. The doorman got her a taxi. She cried all the way to Leslie’s apartment.
Inside, she fell onto her bed, still wearing her evening dress and hose and high heels, and collapsed into sleep.
The phone woke her. It was Piet, saying he would pick her up and take her to the hotel to dismantle the decorations. It was six o’clock, the morning after the wedding, and they had to clear out the ballroom. The Waldorf-Astoria had another event scheduled for that evening. Last night might have been the climax of Catherine Eliot’s twenty-one years, but this was New York City, and a new day.
* * *
Robin Terry’s wedding made Catherine moderately famous and her shop more successful than her wildest dreams. There were photographs and write-ups about it in The New York Times, Daily News, and Women’s Wear Daily and, later, in Vogue and Glamour. The New York Metropolitan Bank hired Catherine to provide their lobbies and executive offices with weekly fresh flowers using terra-cotta molds of the treasure chest flower container she had designed. Dozens of engaged women who lived in New York or Connecticut wanted her to do their wedding flowers. Restaurants called her, corporations called her, wealthy fans infatuated with actresses pleaded with her for something original and magnificent to send their adored ones on opening nights. She was called months ahead of time so that the chairwomen of charity galas would be certain of her services.
Jesus and Manuel and their girlfriends, Lina and Maria, came to work full-time for Catherine. She rented the second floor for office space for Mrs. Vanderveld, a consulting room for clients that doubled as a lounge for employees, and a private office for herself. She had her grandfather’s mahogany desk moved up into her office.
Along the walls of her private office, filing cabinets grew as if self-propagating because every night Catherine sat making meticulous notes about her clients. She wrote down everything: their address, the period of their decor, the subject and colors of the art on the walls, the amount of money they had been willing to spend in the past, any private observations she had about what they might want in the future. Later, when she was finished with her notes, she turned on the lights in Mrs. Vanderveld’s office and checked over the daily accounts.
Catherine was obsessed with Blooms. She lived for it. She thought of nothing else. Kit was a star twinkling at the back of her mind, but Blooms was sunlight, fresh air, real life. She never cooked for herself but grabbed sandwiches from the deli or pints of ice cream or Sara Lee cheesecakes. Occasionally she had dinner with her family at her parents’ Park Avenue apartment, if Shelly or Ann were home from school.
Her parents couldn’t seem to decide how to react to Blooms. Marjorie seemed more irritated than pleased by Catherine’s success. It was as if Catherine had become successful only to spite Marjorie. Marjorie was wary around her daughter, as if all her life Catherine had been hiding secrets. But her father treated Catherine with a new respect. Certainly he should. Both parents knew Catherine was giving them the money for Shelly and Ann’s schooling, but Drew was the one who actually took the checks from her. In the privacy of his den, he told Catherine how grateful he was. This year Shelly was applying to colleges. All his test scores and even his teachers indicated that Shelly was bright but undisciplined. “The boy needs a firm hand,” Drew Eliot said, clutching his whiskey glass in his own trembling hand.
In her own way, Marjorie at last became helpful to her daughter when she agreed to let Catherine pick and choose what she liked from her back closets. Marjorie changed weight so often that she had suits and gowns and dresses in all sizes, and one entire bedroom had been changed into a dressing room/storage room for anything from the previous seasons. Marjorie had beautiful taste, and every year there were times when she dieted so strenuously, she was able to buy small sizes. Of course in each year she also gained back huge amounts of weight, leaving the smaller sizes almost unworn.
“Would you mind if I borrowed something from the back closet, Mother?” Catherine asked one day.
“Oh, go ahead,” her mother replied.
“Actually, I have borrowed some of your things before,” Catherine confessed. “I didn’t know if you’d noticed. You weren’t home when I needed to ask you about them.”
“If it’s from the back closet, you can borrow it any time. I’ve got more to do than keep track of old clothes,” Marjorie said.
So Catherine left her parents’ apartment each time with a dress bag full of clothes. For consultations with her wealthy clients, the right clothes were essential, and all the clothes Catherine wore were simple, expensive material cut and sewn well. There was a navy Chanel suit with gold chains that was especially successful. A deep green wool dress with a high neck and long sleeves. A clean white-and-brown wool checked dress that fell straight to the knees, then flounced out in pleats when she walked, and a matching coat that fell to the flounce. A pale blue knit with a matching coat. Catherine spent her clothing money on expensive shoes and handbags and gloves.
Most of the time she was in work clothes, covered with a smock, up to her arms in leaves or paperwork. But as the year progressed, she decided she needed to attend more of the parties she was invited to. She had achieved a minor celebrity in the city. The more people she met personally, the more orders Blooms received. She didn’t enjoy the parties, because by the evening she was dreadfully exhausted, and there was always something else in the shop that needed to be done. Besides, most of her male escorts, men her own age or even slightly older, seemed frivolous to her. Puppies. And too often they were pleasant but patronizing. “You work with flowers? That’s nice. My grandmother likes flowers.” Or, “A florist, hm? Do you think you’d like to be an interior decorator someday?”
* * *
One night she went to a charity ball at the Plaza with the brother of a classmate at Miss Brill’s. It was March. She had been so busy, she hadn’t had time to buy a serious evening gown, and as healed as she had thought her heart was, she still could not bear to put on the turquoise gown she had worn when she met Kit. Just looking at it made a sob rise in her throat. Just touching it made her want to sink to her knees, bury her head in the foamy hem, and weep like an abandoned child.
The only other real evening gown she had in her closet was the low-cut green work of art Helen Norton had given her not even a year ago. Catherine slipped into it. She had lost weight the past few months, worrying and working, but the gown fit all right, even if it did reveal more than she would have chosen. To cover the plunge between her breasts, she fastened in an orchid, then pinned a matching one in her hair. She looked fine, she didn’t care, she really only wanted to sleep.
It was amazing to her how little she had to say or do at a dance in order to seem even conscious. For many of the guests, these events were the high point of the week. Many of the women had stayed in bed all afternoon, resting for the party that night, or had spent the day having their hair and nails and faces done.
So that night at the dance, while the flower-decked, bejeweled, beribboned, adorned and spangled, frosted and iced, painted and garnished women whirled and laughed and called, “Darling, divine!” Catherine just drifted, nodding, smiling in reply to the compliments. She was bone-tired from hard work and deeply contented. She was really half-asleep even as she walked and talked and danced.
But she found herself jerked out of her lazy daze, like a fish caught on a hook and pulled to the surface of a frightening reality, when she found herself face-to-face with P. J. Willington. Her date was introducing them.
The old man stood before her, tall and respectable, his white starched tuxedo shirt as stiff and pure as truth itself.
“Mr. Willington, sir, I’d like you to meet Catherine Eliot. She’s the owner of Blooms, the flower shop on—”
“The shop that provided the flowers for this evening,” Catherine interrupted breathlessly. Mr. Willington would make no associations with the name Blooms, but the address of the shop where he’d gone so often to send flowers and baubles to the woman who eventually blackmailed him might ring an unwelcome bell.
“Oh, yes. I believe I recognize you from somewhere,” the old man said, scrutinizing Catherine.
Recognize the dress? Catherine wanted to say hysterically. I got it from an old friend of yours.
But she didn’t speak. She couldn’t. Her breath was stuck, frozen inside her throat. How could he fail to connect her, a woman whose face he had seen dozens of times before when she wrote down his order for flowers for Helen Norton, with this gown, the very gown that Helen Norton had worn with him? Christ, P. J. Willington had paid for this gown!
“Yes,” P. J. Willington was saying. “Of course. I know your grandmother, Kathryn Eliot. She owns Everly. My wife and I spent a very pleasant Christmas night there a few years ago. Charming woman, charming. No wonder you’re a florist. She’s a real gardener, the real thing. Knew your grandfather, too. He was quite the rakehell in his day, you know. Would you care to dance?”
Catherine swallowed. What she really wanted to do was toss her champagne and canapes on P. J. Willington’s snowy shirtfront. What she did was to nod, smile, and slide into the old goat’s arms.
He whirled her onto the dance floor. The emerald gown swirled around her. Blooms’ flowers glittered from every table and pedestal stand and niche like jewels. It had been six months since P. J. Willington had been blackmailed, and here he was, hale and happy. The old pirate liked her looks, she could tell. Catherine relaxed. She waltzed in P. J. Willington’s arms.