Love in Bloom's (35 page)

“I’m sure the city is filled with people like that,” Julia murmured, since Grandmother Ida seemed to want her to say something.

“So, this agency comes to me and says, ‘These people could enjoy a brunch from Bloom’s once a week. You supply, we’ll deliver.’”

“Grandma, that’s lovely! Why on earth would you keep it a secret?”

“Why? You think I want every
schnorrer
in town looking to me for a handout? First it’s the old people, then it’s the new people. Then it’s this group, it’s that group, and the next thing, we’re giving the whole store away.”

“But why would you hide it from
us?
We’re your family. Why keep it a secret from us?”

“You think there aren’t any
schnorrers
in the family? Every time I see your cousin Ricky, he’s asking me to invest in his film. What film? When he starts making films like Alfred Hitchcock I’ll think about it. And your mother, wheedling her way into a job on your father’s coattails. And Adam, your brother—
he doesn’t dare to come right out and ask for money, but he writes me letters from college, telling me about the great concerts on campus, the Cornell jacket he wants to buy—too bad he hasn’t got any money for these things. They’re all
schnorrers
, Julia. The world is full of
schnorrers
, and the Bloom family is part of the world.”

“But these people you provide a weekly brunch for, they’re not
schnorrers?
”

“They’re old,” Grandma Ida said. “Not like me—they’re
old
.”

Maybe giving old people free brunches made Grandma Ida feel superior to them. Maybe it made her feel younger. Or maybe she just felt a kinship with them, as strong as any kinship she felt toward her own flesh and blood.

“Grandma, I think it’s beautiful that you’re doing this. I only wish you had told me, so I wouldn’t have spent the past few weeks having my family believe I’m insane because I kept insisting that bagels were disappearing from the store.” She reached across the table to cover her grandmother’s hand with her own. She couldn’t remember ever squeezing Grandma Ida’s hand that way before, but it was either squeeze her hand or burst into tears, and Grandma Ida had no patience for tears. “Tell me more. What’s the name of the organization you work with? Where do the people who get the brunches live?”

Grandma Ida told her. The people lived all over the city, many of them alone. Some of them were shut-ins, others had nurses and companions during the week but were on their own during the weekends—which meant they didn’t always eat right. The organization checked up on them, delivered Bloom’s brunches to them, helped them out. Grandma Ida had been donating bagels for four years. Julia’s father never knew about it. Neither did Deirdre. The only people who knew were the managers of the bagel and coffee departments. They were discreet. Nobody had caught on.

Until now. Until Julia had paid attention to the numbers, the inventory, the details. “Everyone thinks you fuss too much over
the little things,” Grandma Ida informed her. “Your mother, your uncle, Myron, everyone. What do you think?”

“I think the little things are important. What do
you
think? Do you regret having named me president?”

“Sometimes,” Grandma Ida admitted somberly. “There are always regrets. You live to my age, you learn to put them aside and move on.” She stared disapprovingly at Julia’s hand covering hers, and Julia pulled it back. Then Grandma Ida peered past her at Joffe. “So, you’re not going to get together with my granddaughter Susie, are you.”

“I’m afraid not,” he said, giving Julia’s shoulder a caress.

“She’s got a tattoo, that Susie. On her ankle.” Grandma Ida clicked her tongue in disgust.

“Then, I guess I’ll stick with the sister I have.”

“You don’t
have
me,” Julia remarked sharply. “What do you think, I’m something you can
have?
Like—like a bagel? Or indigestion?”

“More like indigestion,” he said. “Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to do some more revisions on that damn article. My editor expects it on her desk first thing Monday.”

“You’re not going to write about this, are you?” Julia whispered, indicating Grandma Ida with a roll of her eyes.

“I’m a reporter, Julia. Trust me—the article is going to be great.”

“She doesn’t want anyone to know.”

“She just told the whole story in front of a reporter. Isn’t that right, Ida?” He gave her a suspiciously charming smile.

“I haven’t decided if I like you yet,” Grandma Ida warned him.

“You haven’t decided if you like
me
yet,” Julia commented.

Grandma Ida dismissed Joffe with a flutter of her hand. “You want to write an article? Go. Write. No one’s going to read it, anyway.”

“That’s probably true,” Joffe said, pushing himself to his feet. “I really should leave. Julia?”

“I think I’ll stay a while.” She glanced at Grandma Ida, half
expecting the woman to suggest that she depart with Joffe. But Grandma Ida said nothing.

Joffe seemed to understand. “Will I see you later?” he asked.

“Maybe. If you’re suitably contrite and you bring me stuffed cabbage.”

He planted a kiss on her lips, light but full of promise.

Julia heard his muffled exchange of farewells with Lyndon and then the front door closing after him. She turned back to her grandmother, wanting to laugh, wanting to weep, wanting to squeeze her hand again. “I don’t know why you think I’m anything like you,” she murmured.

“It’s the nose. Whatever you do, don’t ever change your nose the way your mother did.”

“Okay.”

“You love that boy?” She gestured at Joffe’s empty chair.

“I’m afraid so.”

Grandma Ida sniffed. “Well, he’s probably no worse than that lawyer you were seeing.”

“He’s better, Grandma. Much better.”

“Even if he puts all my secrets in his magazine for all the world to see?”

“I love you, Grandma.” It was the first time Julia had ever uttered those words. But this was the first time she’d ever glimpsed the kindness inside Grandma Ida, so carefully hidden beneath layers of brusqueness. “It wouldn’t be such a terrible thing if all the world found out that you were nice.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking.” Grandma Ida sniffed and settled back in her chair. “You hungry? Lyndon could fix you a little something. We’ve got maybe some stollen, you want a piece?”

“Stollen? From the store?”

“From where else? Lyndon,” Grandma Ida bellowed. “Bring Julia some stollen. She needs to eat.”

Julia smiled. There were so many things she used to need that she now had in ample supply: confidence, backbone, hot sex with a man she could count on, even if he exasperated the
hell out of her sometimes…and her grandmother. She had her grandmother now.

But she always needed to eat. And she certainly wasn’t about to say no to a piece of stollen from Bloom’s.

“C
ome here often?” a warm, male voice murmured behind Julia.

Smiling, she turned to find Joffe sidling up to her. He looked weary but triumphant, as well he should. Making his way from the cheese department to the olive oil department in this crowd must have been a challenge on the order of scaling Annapurna.

Julia had not anticipated that Bloom’s first singles’ night would be such a hit. True, Susie’s write-up in the
Bloom’s Bulletin
had been enticing. And the Upper West Side teemed with singles the way a landfill teemed with flies. The new look Susie had been gradually imposing on the store helped, too. After her success with the display windows, Julia had bestowed upon her sister the title of creative director and set her to work on the store’s interior. “Don’t make it hip,” Julia had instructed. “Just make it hipp
er
.”

“Gotcha,” Susie had said, and in the month since she’d begun simplifying the shelf displays and reducing the clutter,
the store did look hipper. Not hip. Never hip. Bloom’s needed an aura of nostalgia to work, an Old World, immigrant-grandparent feel. Immigrant grandparents might be cool, but they weren’t hip.

Susie deserved an enormous amount of credit for making Bloom’s first singles’ night a success. So did Joffe. His cover story in
Gotham Magazine
, which had appeared just a week ago, had attracted far more interest in the store than Julia would have expected. In fact, when she’d read it, her heart had twinged with dread. Joffe had put nearly everything into the damn piece.

Nearly
everything. He hadn’t mentioned her father’s adultery. He did mention, though, that the late Ben Bloom had a reputation as a cold, aloof man whose passion was channeled into his store. Not the nicest thing anyone had ever said about Julia’s father. But, as Susie had commented, “What did you expect Joffe to do, lie?”

He hadn’t lied. He’d described Julia as earnest and hardworking, which made her sound like a drone, but he’d also said she had beautiful eyes and a great sense of humor, and that she’d turned Bloom’s not upside down but sideways, which were her own words and pretty accurate. He’d treated her mother and Uncle Jay more gently than he’d had to, and he’d written so many nice things about Susie’s whimsical taste and forward-thinking ideas that Sondra commented that she thought he might just be a little sweet on her.

“Yeah,” Joffe had assured Julia when she’d questioned him about that. “I think she’d make a sweet sister-in-law.”

“Are you asking me to marry you?”

“I said,
I think
. I’m thinking about it.”

“Well, let me know when you’re done thinking.”

Susie did not think Joffe would make a sweet brother-in-law. “He’s a lot of things, Julia, but I wouldn’t put
sweet
on the list of adjectives. He’s brainy, he’s pushy, he’s kind of arrogant—”

“He’s gorgeous,” Julia had supplied.

“Nice body,” Susie had agreed. “Awfully verbal.”

“He’s a writer. Verbs are his business.”

“He invests his money wisely.”

“It’s that MBA,” Julia had explained. “He’s very sharp about finances.”

“And according to you, he’s good in bed,” Susie had summed up. “Go for it, Julia. He’s great. But he’s not sweet. Not the way Casey is.”

She was behind the bagel counter with Casey right now. Morty had opted to leave at his usual time—five o’clock—claiming he was too old for singles’ night, as well as too married. Casey had insisted he could handle the bagel counter solo, but Susie had decided to don an apron and help him anyway. She just wanted to be with him, she told Julia. “Isn’t it weird? It’s like, I want to be with him even when he’s dressed.”

From where Julia stood, near platters of babka and carrot cake and chocolate halvah cut into bite-size chunks, she could see Susie and Casey. He towered over her sister, his hair was longer than hers, he was pale and Waspy—“He’s a lapsed Catholic, not a WASP,” Susie had told her—and she was petite and dark and had the pronounced Bloom nose. But they looked good together. Very good.

Music hummed through the air, a tape Susie had put together with input from cousin Rick and Deirdre, of all people, in a meeting outside Julia’s office. She’d taken to leaving the door open on occasion, because there were advantages to knowing what everyone was talking about. With the music, Susie had originally recommended that they play only klezmer music. Deirdre had worried that it would be too ethnic. “We don’t want people thinking they’re at a bar mitzvah,” she’d said.

“Klezmer is so cheerful, though,” Susie had argued. “You’ll get people dancing in the aisles.”

“Klezmer is fun, but it’s not romantic,” Deirdre had maintained. “A little goes a long way.”

“If you want people dancing,” Rick had suggested, “I could make a tape of some good dance cuts. I know this guy who’s a deejay downtown. He could help me put something together.”

“Go with Harry Connick Jr.,” Deirdre had declared.

“Harry Connick Jr.? Are you kidding?”

Rick had cast his vote with Deirdre. “I think she’s right. He’s got lively numbers and moody numbers. I once seduced this seriously cute chick with a little help from Harry.”

So tonight Harry Connick Jr. was crooning in the background, audible but not loud enough to compete with the din of conversation in the crowded store, and Rick cruised the crowds, presumably hoping Harry would bring him more luck with a seriously cute chick. Julia had heard him ask Susie several times if either of her roommates was planning to show up at Bloom’s tonight, and she’d insisted neither was coming. “You’ll have to set your sights on someone new,” she’d told him.

Rick wasn’t the only one cruising, of course. Hundreds of people wandered up and down the aisles, nibbling on cheese, crackers, bagels and pastries, sipping nonalcoholic wine from tiny plastic cups, chatting and flirting and eyeing one another with expressions ranging from icy disdain to fiery lust. Julia would estimate the average age of the evening’s participants to be early thirties, but she also noticed people younger and older. The elderly man who always got into arguments with his wife about whether to buy the economy-size breadstick package was there—without his wife. He was chatting up the kvetchy woman who liked her bagels superfresh.

Julia grinned, even though the lawyer inside her wondered whether Bloom’s would be named as a co-respondent in any divorces that might result from singles’ night.

She spotted a couple of new arrivals, one older and one younger than the median age. They were both single, and she was delighted to see them. “Look, there’re my mother and brother,” she said, nudging Joffe and pointing to Sondra and Adam as they meandered through the milling crowd. “You should meet Adam. He’d make a very sweet brother-in-law.”

Joffe laughed and dropped a light kiss on her lips. “Okay, let’s go meet Adam.”

They eased their way among the pastry-devouring hordes,
and they got briefly tangled up with a group of three men playing a social version of musical chairs with two women, the men all competing to avoid being the odd one out. But eventually Julia and Joffe made it past that little interaction, past the pickle display and over to the coffee department, where Sondra was explaining to Adam the different beans, as if she were an expert. “Arabica,” she said to him. “Great stuff. Have you ever had Arabica?”

“I really don’t know,” he confessed, looking sheepish. He always looked sheepish, a little bewildered, a little panicked. His boyish face seemed chronically frozen in an expression that said,
How did I get here? Can I leave now?

He didn’t seem to want to bolt, though. He nodded obediently as Sondra moved from Arabica to Sumatra. He’d just finished taking his finals at Cornell. Maybe he was still in study mode, boning up in case his mother decided to surprise him tomorrow with a pop quiz on roasts and blends.

“Hey, stranger,” Julia greeted him. She hadn’t seen him since Passover. He’d only arrived home from Ithaca yesterday evening, and according to her mother, he’d intended to sleep all day today, so Julia thought it best not to ride the elevator upstairs during her lunch break to say hello to him.

He spun around and grinned. “Hey! What’s up?”

“Welcome to singles’ night. You want to pick someone up?”

“Yeah, sure.” He laughed. “Mom dragged me here.”

“I didn’t drag you,” Sondra protested. “I simply said you ought to come and have a look.”

“I’m looking. This is great, Julia.”

“I want you to meet Ron Joffe. He’s thinking about marrying me, but he’s afraid of having a bunch of Blooms as his in-laws.”

“I don’t blame you,” Adam murmured, shaking Joffe’s hand.

“So where’s your grandmother?” Sondra asked. “Is she coming tonight?”

“Lyndon said he’d try to bring her,” Julia said. “You know she’s not crazy about crowds, though.”

“Let me go call upstairs,” Sondra said, weaving a narrow path through the crowd to the head cashier’s counter, which boasted a phone.

Adam leaned in toward Julia. “You and Susie have really done some cool things with this place.”

“Cool but not hip. That’s our motto,” Julia joked.

“Well, I’m thinking…like, maybe you’re hiring for summer jobs?”

“Do you want to work here?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Ithaca’s kind of dead in the summer, and that girl I was seeing is spending the summer in Seattle, so I was thinking maybe I could hang out here, stock shelves or something.”

Julia impulsively flung her arms around him. “Welcome to the business, brother. Of course you can stock shelves.”

“Hey, if you’re gonna be that way…” He backed off and blushed. “I mean, I’m not joining the business, okay? All I said was, just for the summer.”

“Of course.” Given that he’d spent most of his life swearing he never wanted to get absorbed by Bloom’s, the prospect of his joining the payroll, even if only for a summer job stocking shelves, represented a significant change of heart. Julia savored the moment but refrained from hugging him again. She didn’t want to scare him away.

“I guess I should go say hi to Susie,” he said.

Glancing toward the bagel counter, Julia noticed a cute young woman with a prominent chest purchasing a pumpernickel bagel. She grinned and gave him a nudge. “Definitely. Go say hi to Susie.”

Alone with Joffe at the coffee counter, she let out a breath. “Do you think my grandmother will come?”

“Why not? She’s single.”

“She’s pissed at you.”

Joffe looked affronted. “Why?”

“Because of what you wrote about her in your article.” He’d written that Ida Bloom was crusty and bossy and mule-headed,
and that she didn’t want anyone to know about her donation of a hundred brunches of Bloom’s food each week to needy elders around the city because it would ruin her reputation. “She said you misrepresented her. The only reason she didn’t want anyone to know about her generosity was that she didn’t want to get taken advantage of.”

“Bullshit,” Joffe retorted, although he was still smiling. “No one has ever taken advantage of her, and no one ever will. She just doesn’t want anyone to realize she has a soft side.”

“She doesn’t,” Julia insisted. “She’s very tough.”

Joffe’s smile evolved into a laugh. “Oh, yeah, she’s tough. Just like you.”

“I’m very tough,” Julia insisted. “I’m exactly like her. She tells me that all the time.”

He shut her up with a kiss deep enough to remind her that she did indeed have a soft side. She’d always worried that she was too soft, actually, too eager to fix everything and make everyone happy. Not anymore. She’d gotten tougher. More like Grandma Ida, tough and soft combined.

“Looks like at least one happy couple is going to come out of this singles’ night,” someone in the crowd that swarmed around the coffee department remarked.

Yes, thought Julia as she returned Joffe’s kiss, it certainly looked that way.