The White Rose (17 page)

“What do you mean?” Oliver says. He reacts to anything that smacks of criticism when it comes to his father.

“Oh, just that the friends I went to college with were a bit silly for him. You know, we'd spent four years at Goucher sitting around eating ice cream in our pajamas—we didn't have that much to say for ourselves. Marian was doing a PhD at Yale. She was in a different stratosphere, intellectually.”

Oliver carefully drinks his coffee, then carefully replaces the cup.

“Marshall was heading straight for New York, just as soon as he graduated from law school. He didn't mind that Marian was going to teach. He wasn't macho that way, which is actually saying something, or it was then. Mostly he was consumed by his own plans, I think. He couldn't wait to get established.”

“But you and Dad didn't really become friends with the two of them. I mean, as another couple.”

Caroline shakes her head. “No. It just never took. They went from New Haven to Manhattan, we already had you, and the next few years…well, I was pretty focused on what was happening at our end. She and I kept in touch, mostly by letter. I think they might have come out once or twice, for parties. I know they met Henry, after we were married. But it just settled into a fond-but-distant sort of thing. I was so thrilled for her when her book took off like it did!” She looks at Oliver. “You read her book, didn't you?”

“Yes. You gave it to me for Christmas last year.”

She nods, remembering. “Don't you think we should go?”

Oliver agrees. He knows they should. Now, in a belated moment of insight, it occurs to him that this conversation may one day return to haunt him, that his mother may recall it with anger and that it will signify to her a betrayal. He does not know how he can both avoid this and have Marian, and the realization fills him with gloom.

“Leave the dishes,” he tells her sadly.

“All right,” his mother says. She walks to his bed to get her coat.

“So what's on at the ballet?” Oliver asks, watching her put it on.

“Who Cares,”
Caroline announces.

He shrugs, then reaches for her hand. “I guess you're right,” he says.

T
he day it began Oliver remembers as especially gray. Marian remembers the rain and the mist after, off—and she knows this would be pretentious were it not absolutely accurate—the cobblestones of his street. But then, it seemed the whole world was steaming.

It happened by coincidence that Marian and Marshall were getting out of a Sunday matinee at the Cherry Lane Theatre on Commerce Street just at the instant Caroline Rosenthal (previously Caroline Stern and née Caroline Lehmann) was leaving a shop called the White Rose, only a few yards ahead of them. Caroline turned to shut the door behind her, twisting on one foot, which was clothed in a smart Italian boot the color of sand, and stepped onto the sidewalk into the path of her oldest friend.

The boot is worth mentioning because it was the boot Marian saw first. She has a thing for boots, for shoes in general, though you wouldn't know it from her actual shoe collection. While most footwear enthusiasts go broad in their prospecting, filling their closets with variant pumps, flats, and heels, Marian's focus has always been on what she thinks of as the Ur-shoe, the shoe so versatile and so dependable and so flattering that it will never seem wrong. To locate an example of this Ur-shoe (which, to be clear, breaks down into the aforementioned categories of pump, flat, and heel, as well as boot) is a rush she has experienced only a few times: the deep brown T-straps with their gentle lift in a dank little shop near the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, the surprisingly sedate black flats in the punk den on the King's Road, the wildly expensive Prada boots she visited and visited before buying. When she finds an Ur-shoe, however, she sensibly purchases multiple pairs. Hence her closet contains a limited repertoire of proven entities, with boxed reinforcements in an auxiliary location.

The boots Caroline Stern was wearing attracted so much of Marian's attention (they were comfortable-looking, with a luxurious, well-tended glow) that she did not note the wearer until the wearer spoke her name, and with such warmth that Marian looked up in surprise.

“Caroline!”

“Caroline!” Marshall echoed. He had always spoken kindly of Caroline. He stepped forward to kiss her. Marian followed with a hug, pressing her friend's bony shoulders.

“What are you doing here? You look wonderful.”

“Oh.” Caroline touched her short hair with self-denigration. “That horrible salon in Greenwich. I don't know what I was thinking. Tell me it will grow.”

“Of course it will grow,” Marshall said and laughed. “I think you look great with short hair.”

“You do,” Marian assured her. “You had it short like this when you were a teenager. You were the only girl I knew who could carry off an Edie Sedgwick look.”

Then Marian stopped. It had occurred to her that a woman in mid-life with a short, short haircut is quite possibly a woman emerging from chemotherapy. But Caroline was glowing, happy. When Marian's own hair was this short, she had been bloated and pasty and clearly ill. “Are you well?” Marian said then, soberly.

“Oh, sure. I just came in to see Oliver. It's his shop,” she said and nodded, over her shoulder. “You know? His shop?”

Marian looked. She saw the sign, a white slab of wood with the slender black writing of a Currier & Ives hostelry, and the window displaying a great black urn filled with peach, white, and the palest pink roses. The roses were wrapped in great swaths of elderberry branches, which trailed their droplets of black fruit down the sides of the urn. It was a still life, she thought. English, not Flemish, ripe enough to jump out of the window. But…Oliver? Wasn't Oliver still in college?

“Isn't Oliver in college?” Marian said.

“Oh,” Caroline said, “I know, we've been bad. It's terrible we haven't seen each other in so long.”

“Yes,” Marian agreed. “Terrible. How long has it been?”

“Well, if you're thinking my son is still in college it must be a while.”

“We went to Le Cirque for lunch. It was the old Le Cirque.”

“At least a year,” Marshall said authoritatively. He knew these things; they were important to him. “Old Le Cirque closed last year.”

Caroline shook her head, but smiled so broadly her teeth seemed to gleam through the drizzle. “Terrible. Oliver graduated five years ago. This is his shop, the White Rose. Don't ask me about the name, I have no idea. But he's doing wonderfully here. Well, he was always so gifted with flowers. Did you see that little piece about him in
Elle Decor
last fall?”

“El what?” Marshall said.

“No!” Marian said. “How great.”

“Yes. And he lives upstairs.”

Marian looked up, instinctively. The house was two stories but squat, with a face of pink brick, easily nineteenth century. At the roofline a fringe of vegetation suggested a garden. As she looked, a light went off on the top floor.

“We're just going to dinner,” Caroline said. “Will you come with us? Do you have plans?”

They didn't have plans, but years as Marshall's wife had trained Marian to leave the response to him. Caroline might have escaped the censure he had directed at some of her other friends over the years, but Marshall was a man of unchallenged needs—the need, for example, to pursue that mythic Manhattan experience of the “quiet Sunday night at home.” Dinner with her childhood friend and the friend's son, who owned a flower shop in Greenwich Village, might not conjure his best side, Marian was thinking, but Marshall had already taken Caroline's arm, and the two began walking, with Caroline's smart boots treading carefully on the uneven pavement. After an instant, Marian followed, grateful and excited in equal measures, though wondering if she and Caroline would be able to catch up properly with their audience of husband and son.

“We're going to Le Rouge,” Caroline was saying. “Do you know it? No reason you should, but Oliver likes it. He sent me on ahead to get a table.”

“Not very gentlemanly,” Marshall commented, but with indulgence. He was talking to a mother, after all.

“A client called as we were leaving. He was unhappy about something. Oliver had to take the call.”

“Roses not white enough?” Marshall said.

“I don't know,” she said and laughed. “I guess we'll find out when we see him.”

But they didn't see him, not for a while yet, and Marian nearly forgot him as they turned north up Bedford Street. Or was it west? Though she had lived in the city all her life the neighborhood was confusing to her, with streets taking off at odd angles, variously paved or cobblestoned, and while she thought them beautiful she also found herself unsettled at being off the grid of predictable Manhattan blocks. The sidewalk traffic was young and predominantly scruffy, and even the dogs were notably different from their uptown counterparts—larger, for one thing, and less readily distinguishable by breed. It struck her as remarkable that she could travel only a few miles from her ancestral home and feel such a foreigner, while Caroline, who had lived in the suburbs for years, seemed so acclimated. But Caroline was beautiful, Marian thought, had never not been beautiful, and beauty had a way of creating its own comfort zone. Strangely enough, Marian had never resented this about her.

Le Rouge was unremarkable in appearance, a narrow storefront with a nod toward bistro décor and aggressively red walls. They took a table for four against a banquette and Marian slid onto the seat, with Caroline beside her and the empty chair across the narrow table. Marshall took their coats to hang up in the back.

“You're looking great,” said Caroline. “I've really missed you.”

“Me too,” Marian said. “I got your letter. I have it on my bulletin board in my office.”

“Oh, I'm glad. I just loved the book. Actually, everyone I know loved the book. I've acquired real cachet in Greenwich from knowing you. I'm actually supposed to invite you to come speak at the library.”

“Done,” Marian said. “Just call me with a few dates. I'd love to come out and see your house. And Henry, of course. Maybe we'll both come.”

“Both come where?” Marshall said, returning and taking up the wine list, which he immediately frowned at disapprovingly.

“To Greenwich. You remember Caroline's husband. Henry?”

“Of course,” he said, though Marian knew he didn't.

“I've been reading about his case,” Marian went on. “That woman he's representing sounds impossible.”

This was a discreet intramarital cue:
We are talking about Henry Rosenthal, Marshall. Pay attention.
And he did. He looked up from the wine list and kept silent, waiting for more information.

“Oh, she is,” Caroline said. “And he's something like her twelfth divorce attorney. She has a little problem accepting the reality of her situation.”

“You mean that her husband wants a divorce?” said Marian.

“No, not that part. She's been divorced before, and she's very strong. It's about what she's entitled to. They had a watertight prenup, for one thing, but she's asking for twenty thousand a week to raise their daughter. And that's joint custody.”

“How old's the daughter?” Marshall said, leaning back while a waiter poured water.

“Three,” the women said, both at once.

“Three! What does she need, facials?”

Caroline laughed. “I believe shiatsu massage was mentioned in the petition.”

“No!” Marian said.

“No what?” said the man who now stood behind the empty chair, and Marian first thought that he must be that overly familiar type of New York waiter, who insists on entering the conversation every time he approaches the table and then expects to be tipped like the old friend he is. But this man was wearing a jacket and jangling keys in his hand. He stood beside the chair opposite her, and looked expectantly at Caroline. Marian, to her own surprise, found herself averting her eyes.

“Sweetheart, look!” Caroline said. “I found Marian and Marshall on the street.”

And Marian, even as she smiled, was frantically trying to affix the label “Oliver” to the man in front of her, who was not and yet was the gangly eleven-year-old she had last seen in a Greenwich backyard, huddling with a friend to avoid the adult company. In fact, there was nothing to link that child and this person—this man, she forced herself to think, because he was that—but the prima facie evidence that his mother was vouching for him.

“Hello there,” said Marshall, rising. He and Oliver exchanged a robust handshake. “That's a very nice shop you have.”

“Thank you,” he said, turning to Marian, who began to get up.

“No,” he said, “please. It's so nice to meet you.”

Marian sat back down and watched, rather than felt, him take her hand. When he had released it, she immediately regretted not paying closer attention.

Oliver sat. He turned to his mother with a half smile. If he was disappointed with the turn his evening had taken, Marian thought, he was doing an excellent job of hiding it.

“So what did he want?” said Marshall. “The guy who called.” This was precisely the sort of thing Marshall loved: conflict between people he didn't know.

Oliver looked quizzically at his mother.

“I was saying that the phone rang as we were leaving. You had an aggravated customer.”

“Oh,” said Oliver, nodding. “Yes. Though I don't think he's my customer anymore.”

“Hard to please?” Marshall asked eagerly.

“Not so much that. Misinformed, I would say. Confused about the reality of flowers. The place of flowers in the world.”

Whoa,
Marian thought, fighting an urge to roll her eyes. A flower-philosopher! As if she didn't get enough academic pretension during the week. And then, quite suddenly, it occurred to her that she was trying not to like him.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Marshall said.

Oliver watched a waiter pour water into his glass, then he picked it up. “Mr. Mortensen was upset because his roses were dying. They were very beautiful roses.
Alba Maximas.
Sort of our shop's signature rose. I have them grown for us in Connecticut. And they were expensive.” Oliver shrugged. “And they were dying.”

“But you get that all the time, don't you?”

“Yes,” Oliver said. “It's the most frequent complaint, despite the fact that we go out of our way to remind people to recut the stems and change the water every day. It's a big return on very little effort, which I'm sure this guy didn't make.”

“Well, when did he buy the roses?” Caroline asked.

“Tuesday. They were cut Monday morning.”

“But it's Sunday!” said Marian. “I mean, surely that's a reasonable time for a rose to last.”

“It is,” Oliver said and sipped his water. “But he doesn't see it that way. He sees it in terms of what he spent on a rose that looked perfect when he bought it, and how long it stayed that way. So we have a philosophical disagreement. From now on, he'll be investing in silk roses, or buying cheap flowers and expecting less of them.” He sighed, but not unhappily. “He was a walk-in. Not to knock walk-ins. Sometimes it's kind of serendipitous, who happens to come down that street and happens to look in our window—that can be really nice. But for the most part, our customers are people who already know what we do.”

“And what's that?” asked Marshall.

“Well, we're taking a position that celebrates the transience of the flower. Not that we don't prolong the bloom as long as we can, but we recognize that a flower's impermanence is part of its beauty.”

Barely perceptibly, Marshall shook his head. He was thinking, Marian knew, that this was not a sound business plan.

“Was the man unpleasant?” Caroline asked with maternal concern.

“Yes,” Oliver said. To signal the subject's closure, he opened his menu, but instead of looking at it, he looked at Marian with a directness that startled her. It was a look at once contemplative and blatantly hungry. It made Marian want to swallow. Then slap him.