The White Rose (29 page)

“It's traditional” is what Sophie manages to say. “It's expected. But don't worry. I'll tell him soon.”

“And you're telling me now,” he observes.

“Yes. Right.” She puts down her hamburger and takes a gulp of the now chilly coffee.

“Two hundred guests,” he takes up his pad again.

“Sounds about right.”

“And you've thought about the flowers?”

“Well, no,” she says. “Just whatever you think. You decide.”

He stares at her across the table. “
I
decide? Are you kidding me?”

She can manage only a facsimile of a smile.

“Miss Klein—”

“Oh, Sophie,” says Sophie, wearily. “And it's Ms., anyway.”

“
Sophie
. I've had brides who brought me paint chips to show me the exact color for their wedding flowers. I've had brides who insisted on their flowers being organically produced, or from specific countries. I've had women tell me, to the
millimeter
, how long the petals were allowed to be.”

“Good for them,” she says angrily. “I really don't care that much.”

“But you should.” Oliver's voice is quiet. “I mean, maybe not to the millimeter, but you
should
care. The flowers you choose are a reflection of what's important in your life. This is your wedding. It should be beautiful and personal. It should be about the woman you are, and how you feel, and whom you love.”

Sophie's breath catches. Her wedding isn't at all about those things, she knows, and it is terrible to know it and still go forward into her own future. It is terrible to think of the years, coming so soon, without her father, who looks ahead to this wedding with every happy thought she herself does not have, and only a genial, respectful blank of a man to replace him.

Naturally Sophie cannot say this. Not to herself, certainly not to someone she barely knows, no matter how incisively he looks at her and how patiently he waits for her response. No matter—and Sophie understands this suddenly—that he
is
waiting for the response, that he is actually, personally
concerned
with her response. She does not want Oliver to be concerned for her. It is not his business to be concerned. Besides, what makes him think he can speak to her this way?

“Maybe we're not all obsessed with flowers,” Sophie says, with cruelty. “Maybe it just isn't that big a deal to some of us. Maybe a rose is just a rose, as far as normal people are concerned. Why don't you save your floral elitism for your own wedding, and just arrange some nice flowers for mine? I mean, isn't that your job?”

Of course, she instantly wants to take it back, but she can't, and in the brittle silence that follows, Sophie loses the thread of her own thoughts and simply stares at Oliver, at his stricken face and his gray eyes, which are staring back at her. The pain between them at this moment is more intimate than anything that has come before. It is also, incidentally, more intimate than anything she has shared with her fiancé. It is devastating.

“I'm sorry,” Sophie says, breaking eye contact with her remaining will. “I have to go.”

“Don't go,” says Oliver.

She unzips her bag and claws for money. She puts a twenty on the table.

“That's too much,” he says, getting to his feet. “Please don't go. I shouldn't have said anything personal to you. It's none of my business.”

“Just call me with an estimate,” Sophie tells him, hauling the bag onto her shoulder and moving. She will not look at the hand that reaches out to her. She will not let it touch her. She is already at the door, pushing off like a swimmer at the wall, wild to be far away.

M
arian gets lost, first in Harlem, searching for the Willis Avenue Bridge, then in the Bronx. Though it is morning, a lovely morning (brisk and cold and blue), she drives with moderate anxiety and with the nudging memory of certain scenes from
The Bonfire of the Vanities
, looking for signs of normalcy on the unfamiliar streets to reassure herself: bodega, mother with baby, pair of laughing men shaking hands as they meet. Even so, she is still lost.

By the time she pulls o
ver to ask directions it is past eleven, but the woman pushing a grocery cart who comes to Marian's window says that Hughes Avenue is nearby, only four streets away. The woman, stooped and solid with electric red hair, speaks in the postwar accent of another Bronx; it is all Marian can do to ask if she is in fact the last Jew in the borough, and if so, then what is she still doing here? But having passed along the pertinent information the woman takes up her cart and resumes her course, and Marian eases her car back into traffic.

On Hughes, Marian drives a block before she realizes that she is moving away from her destination, executes a furtive U-turn, and pulls up alongside number 2111 without further incident. The building is modest and tidy, with an old limestone stoop fully populated by mothers and children—hardly surprising on a fair Saturday morning. There is no sign of a parking space, of course, so Marian takes her chances double-parking directly in front of the stoop, far less worried about a ticket than a theft, and hoping at least to avert one with such a large audience. She locks the vehicle with a chirp from her keychain, and gives an overly friendly smile to the women watching from the steps. Then she picks her way through them and goes inside.

Soriah's grandmother has a different last name, but the button beside it on the keypad fails to produce any audible sound. Not wanting to press repeatedly, she walks back outside and tells the assembled women that she is here to see Mrs. Nelson. “I'm not sure the buzzer is working,” she adds, feebly.

“Sweetheart,” says the massive woman on the top step, “you jus' go on up. You wait for that buzzer to work, you be here till the next century.”

There is general amusement at this idea.

“Jus' push,” the woman adds. “Go on.”

Marian gives a tentative push. The door emits a meager click and swings open. Feeling it give beneath such a pathetic effort irritates her, but the lack of security in the building is not today's problem, she tells herself. Today's problem is enough for today.

The smell of bacon pervades the third-floor hallway, although there is no telling which of the dozen doors it originates behind. Number 26, near the end of the corridor, is gunmetal gray like the rest but bears an index card with a florid purple
NELSON
, taped above the security peephole. Marian presses the bell. From inside, she hears the unmistakable sounds of
The Price Is Right
.

A woman, small with a great ring of flesh around her middle, opens the door. She grins. “Come on!” she says, gesturing. “I'm Marisol. Soriah's waiting.”

Soriah is indeed waiting, Marian sees, stepping inside. She is seated on the couch, half watching the television. Over her several meetings with the eleven-year-old, Marian has been struck by certain jarring dichotomies in the girl's character. Soriah possesses a truly nimble mind—capable of admirable concentration and elegant leaps of insight—but her deficiencies are significant. She has been completely untouched by music written before the year 1990, has never been to a museum, and does not understand why someone would want to sit in a dark theater watching other people move around and talk. She also suffers a lack of manners so appalling that only her innate sweetness redeems her.

“Soriah,” Marisol says eagerly. “Your friend is here.”

Soriah gets up and comes over to Marian. Awkwardly, they shake hands. She is, Marian notes, wearing one of her new bras.

“Is this your grandmother?” Marian says, indicating Marisol.

“Oh, no, no,” the little woman laughs. “I'm the home health.
Gloria
!”

“Granma?” Soriah says at the same time.

“She probably in the bathroom,” Marisol says, unconcerned. “She be out. This is nice, you know. Taking her.”

“Oh, it's no problem,” Marian says.

The apartment is small and clean, with a kitchen alcove off the room in which they stand and presumably a bedroom on the other side of the closed door. Oxygen tanks flank the couch like matching lamps, connected by plastic tubing, but there is otherwise little evidence of a chronically ill person living here. Neither has Soriah, who uses the couch as her bed, Marian knows, made much of an impact on the décor; the only things signifying her presence that Marian can see are the library copy of
Emma
on the armrest and the short stack of textbooks and notebooks on the floor beside the television. On top of the television, a photo in a plastic frame shows a grinning Soriah, but when Marian looks closer, the faded colors of the picture give its true subject away: Soriah's mother, seventies Afro and checked dress, à la Cindy Brady. The resemblance is strong, the grin identical. I don't suppose she's grinning now, Marian thinks.

The bedroom door opens, and Marisol ambles to the side of an elderly woman, who makes her way across the floor with a metal walker, her head down. Only when she has reached the couch and painfully descended does the woman look up and put out a hand.

“Hello,” Marian says. “You must be Soriah's grandmother. I'm Marian Kahn.”

“Thank you for taking her,” the woman says simply. “It's very nice.”

“Oh, I didn't have any plans,” Marian says. This is not strictly true. When Soriah phoned her to say that her caseworker had cancelled their appointment, Marian had cancelled her own appointment, with Oliver. Marshall is in England (sweetening his two-day string of meetings in Birmingham with a weekend of London theater), and Marian had meant to compensate Oliver, at last, for their lost weekend. Even so, she did not hesitate to tell Soriah she was available. Not, Marian tells herself, because she is looking for a way out of her entanglement with Oliver, and certainly not because she views the day's expedition with anything but dread, but perhaps simply because the service she is now being asked to perform seems so much more straightforward than any of the other tasks currently facing her. Pick up a kid, take her somewhere, take her home…Isn't that blissfully uncomplicated? she thinks, considering the complex nature of her other commitments. Still, she had caused Oliver pain, and lied to him about why she was doing it, which had caused herself pain. All for a girl who still has one eye on
The Price Is Right
.

“Marisol,” Mrs. Nelson says, pointing a bony finger. “You got the cookies? For Denise?”

“I got them,” Marisol says. She retrieves, from the kitchen, a packet of Pepperidge Farm Mint Milanos.

“For Denise,” says Soriah's grandmother. “It's her favorite cookies.”

“All right,” Marian says. “Soriah can take them in, right?”

“She's allowed. And Soriah, you mind your manners.”

“Okay,” says Soriah.

“You're very nice to do it,” says Marisol, settling herself beside her charge on the couch and picking up a remote control. Marian gets the feeling that she is observing these two in their natural habitat. Marisol lifts the plastic tubing from one of the oxygen tanks and adjusts it beneath Mrs. Nelson's nose.

“I'm not sure what time we'll be back,” says Marian.

“It's okay,” the home health comments. “It's fine. You take your time.”

“But—” They haven't asked her for her number, she thinks. They may not even know her name, really. Don't they want to take down her license plate, or her phone number? Aren't they concerned?

“It's okay,” says Soriah, putting on her coat. She is used to being removed by strangers, it occurs to Marian. And the two women on the couch are used to witnessing it.

Marian says good-bye and goes downstairs with Soriah, emerging from the building's front door into the bright midday light. Two men are leaning against the front fender of the Volvo, but they shift without complaint when Marian unlocks her door. Soriah gets in the passenger seat.

“It's a nice car,” she says.

“It's fine,” Marian says. “I'm not that interested in cars, really. Fasten your seatbelt, Soriah.”

“But you could have a really cool car if you want, right?”

“I don't know,” Marian says, making her way down Hughes Avenue toward, she hopes, Route 87. “I guess so. What's a cool car?”

“Lexus,” says Soriah. “Mercedes. Jaguar.”

“Oh, I don't need a Jaguar. And I don't like Mercedeses. They used slave labor in the concentration camps. You know, during World War Two?”

Soriah frowns. “Yeah, but, that was like fifty years ago.”

“Sure,” says Marian, spotting a sign for the highway and merging left, “but if you have a choice of lots of different companies to buy a car from, why would you pick the one that participated in the enslavement of your own ethnic group?”

Marian can see Soriah turn to look at her. “Are you Jewish?” she says.

“Yes, I'm Jewish. My family was already here when the Nazis came to power.”

“Do you, like, wear that little hat?” says Soriah.

It takes Marian a minute to decipher the meaning of this. “A yarmulke? No. Only men wear those. And besides, I'm not religious at all. I don't even really believe in God, but that doesn't make me any less Jewish.”

Soriah shakes her head. “I don't get that.”

“Well, look at it this way. I'm Jewish the same way you're black. Sorry, would you rather I said African-American?”

“I don't know,” she says. “Whatever.”

“Anything anyone's done to the Jews over the years, I kind of take personally. Like they did it to my great-great-great-great-grandmother. Which they probably did. Maybe it's the same way you feel about slavery. I mean, there may not be anyone alive in America today who owned a slave, but I can assure you, there are people walking around this country spending money that was earned by enslaving people. I think if I were an African-American, there might be a couple of products I wouldn't buy, on principle.”

Soriah sighs. “That was so long ago.”

“Not to a historian,” Marian says. “To people like me, everything just happened, and we're all living in the aftermath.” She accelerates onto 87, and moves into the center lane. “Besides, look at the two of us. We wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation if not for a slave trader.”

Soriah turns in her seat to look at her.

“Well, think about it. You wrote to me because of a book I'd written. I wrote the book because of a person who lived a long time ago who had an interesting life. She had an interesting life because a very rich man in England paid for her to sail from America to Britain. And how do you think that rich man got to be so rich? Because he kidnapped Africans, transported them to America, and sold them into slavery.”

“Okay,” Soriah says with the beginning of a smile. “I get that. Well, that's something good that came from slavery, then.”

Marian, touched, keeps her eyes on the road.

“Does your mom know you're coming?” Marian says.

“I guess so. The caseworker fixes it. She usually brings me, but she said one of her kids was sick or something.” Soriah is quiet for a minute. “I probably shouldn't have called you. It's just…I didn't see my mom since August, and I thought, maybe, if you weren't busy, it would be okay.”

“It
is
okay, Soriah. I told you last time, if you need something, ask me. I might not always be able to help out, but you never have to worry about calling.”

“All right,” the girl says with palpable embarrassment.

Marian drives. The route is happily clear and the river glints on her left. At Yonkers, she exits onto the Hutchinson Parkway and continues north on 684. She is surprised to realize how close it is, how many times she must have driven within a few miles of the prison, en route to Tanglewood or Canyon Ranch or—in the years before their rift—to visit Marshall's business partner, Robert Markowitz, in North Salem. The incongruity of Bedford Hills the correctional facility and Bedford Hills the sylvan, moneyed enclave is not lost on Marian as she exits the highway, passing first through the trim, prosperous town of Katonah and then skirting a synthetically bucolic golf course flanked by gargantuan new homes. Beside her, Soriah silently points out the prison entrance on Harris Road.

Marian parks in the visitors' area and locks her car, then she follows Soriah to a small, cement-block hut at the front gate. Inside, Marian produces a driver's license and Soriah, to Marian's surprise, withdraws a laminated card from her jeans pocket and hands it over.

“What's that?” Marian asks.

“My caseworker gave it to me. For when I come here.”

The guard tells them both to remove their coats. He takes from Marian her heavy leather bag and meticulously unloads it onto his desk: wallet, reading glasses, bottle of Evian, and a great wad of files. As he moves through these objects, touching everything, he recites a prison catechism:

Who are you here to see?

We are here to see Denise Neal.

What is your relationship to Denise Neal?

This is her daughter. I'm not visiting. I've just brought her.

Are you carrying any of the following materials. Alcohol, prescription drugs, cell phones, beepers, weapons, or anything that might possibly be used as a weapon?

“Well, I have a cell phone,” says Marian, pointing to the smart red leather case on the table, a gift from Marshall. The phone is taken and put on a shelf, as are the Pepperidge Farm cookies, which are not, after all, allowed.