The Art of Arranging Flowers (3 page)

I
HEAR
the sounding of the bell on the back door. Cooper has arrived.

“Ruby!” He sings out my name. “Ruby Jewell!”

And I smile. I love how Cooper thinks of me as a musical number. He walks through the rear of the shop and into the front part of the store. His face is hidden behind an armful of gladiolas. White ones and pink ones, they are beautiful even if they are out of season and grown down in California in a greenhouse.

“Gladiolus,” he says, his face still shrouded. “Diminutive of
gladius
, which of course means ‘sword.' Sometimes called the sword lily.” And he tilts his head around the blooms.
“En garde!”

“They are lovely, Cooper.” I reach out and take the handful of long stalks to smell. The fragrance is slight, easy. “Do you just have the pink and white?”

He shakes his head and walks over to the glass candy jar that is sitting by the cash register on the counter. He reaches in and takes out a cinnamon fireball. He unwraps it and tosses it in his mouth.

“We have lavender with the white markings, creamy orange, and red.”

“Perfect.” It is the week of the Ladies' Auxiliary Annual Luncheon and they always love the long, thin flowers, iris and glads. They say the tall ones improve their posture, make them sit up in their chairs.

I take the stalks he has given me and walk back to the cooler. I open the door and place them in the large black plastic bucket.

“O my darling, O my darling, O my darling Clementine.” He sings the lyrics while he bends down and scratches Clem's head. He stands up as I walk around the corner, and he takes a seat on the stool next to the arranging table.

“Will you marry me, Ruby Jewell?”

And I laugh. I pop him with the stem of myrtle I just picked off the floor. “You were married once before, Cooper,” I remind him. “It didn't go so well.”

“Yes, but that was because she didn't understand me. She knew nothing of beauty, nothing of queen cups and bluebells. You know my heart.”

I study him for a minute and I almost take him seriously, and then I remember that it's Cooper saying these things. I swat him again.

“You cheated on her with the florist from Spokane Valley,” I say. “And when you were engaged to her, you slept with the florist in Moscow. You're a rogue, Cooper Easterling, and I know better than to believe anything you have to say.”

He shrugs. “It's the flowers,” he says with a sigh. “They intoxicate me, make me do things I shouldn't do.”

I walk over and straighten the green tissue that is stacked on the edge of the table. “I somehow think you'd be the same guy even if you sold cuts of meat.”

He shakes his head. “Have you ever seen a butcher?” he asks. “I seriously doubt I'd have the same reputation if I were hauling slabs of elk and sides of pork across the state. I don't think that cargo lends itself to romance.”

“True.”

He holds his hands in front of him, interlocks his fingers, stretches out his arms, and raises them above his head. His shirt rises and I see the gray hairs covering his belly. I turn away. The sight of his exposed abdomen makes me nervous. It's too naked. He's too vulnerable.

“So, who are you working on this week?” he asks as he drops his hands on his knees. His lips are starting to turn red from the cinnamon candy.

“I've still got more to do on Conrad and Vivian,” I answer.

“I thought you finished with those two. I thought the winter arrangement of the thin green holly leaves and the roses, the large ones, all swirling with red and white, the tiny stems of anemones, I thought they did the job. I honestly thought you were done with those two.”

I shake my head. “She's not convinced.”

“Did you use the light red ribbon?”

“Twisted it with the gold,” I reply.

“Clear or painted vase?”

“White porcelain, one of those you brought from Oregon.”

He nods, remembering the shipment.

“Medium or tall?”

I sigh. I had thought of everything. “Tall.”

He makes a
tsk
ing noise with his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
“Tsk . . . tsk . . . tsk.”
He doesn't say anything for a couple of minutes and I tap at the edge of the stack of tissue.

“Maybe it's just not meant to be,” he finally says.

“No, I just have to try harder,” I answer him.

“I have belladonnas,” he informs me. “Fifty stems. I have three boxes of ginger and at least a hundred stalks of September flowers. Freesia, alstromeria, orange and yellow, purple iris, orchids.”

“Which ones?” I ask.

“Arandas and Mokaras. Purple and yellow. I sold all my pink in Spokane.”

I shake my head. “It's too early for orchids,” I say, mostly to myself, but Cooper is listening.

“A stem of cymbidium,” he suggests.

“White or pink?” I ask.

He smiles. “White with that little narrow lip of purple.”

“A stem of cymbidium.” I'm thinking. “Elegant,” I note.

“Slid into a nest of purple dendrobiums.”

“Thai,” I recall the orchid.

“Sexy,” he responds.

“I don't know, Cooper.” I hesitate. “Vivian scares easily. She hasn't gone out on a date since her brother took her to the spring fling.”

“I don't think that qualifies as a date,” Cooper notes. “Not even in this town.”

I'm still thinking. “Conrad is just as nervous. He lives with his mother on the other side of the mountain. He only comes to town to work and go to church and bowl on Thursday nights. He doesn't even grocery shop here. It might be too much, too fast.”

“How long have you been working on the two of them?” Cooper asks.

I add up the months in my head. “Six years,” I answer.

“And Conrad and Vivian are at what age?”

I shrug. “Forties,” I say, sounding a bit unsure.

“It's time, Ruby. They've had long enough to try this thing on their own. Give her the orchids.”

I pause. It is a big decision.

“You're right,” I agree. “I've been cautious long enough.” I take in a breath. “What is life if not rising to a challenge?”

He claps his hands together.

“Bring me the dendrobiums,” I say with confidence.

Cooper jumps off the stool, landing on both feet. He puts his hands on his hips. “It's for the best, Ruby,” he says, and bends down once more, giving Clementine a good rub. He rises up, gives me a big nod, and heads out the back door. “You'll see.”

I roll my eyes and shake my head. Cooper Easterling will be the death of me.

C
LEMENTINE
and I have a brief walk around the block and it is after lunch before I have a chance to check the e-mails and see if I have any online orders. There are six. Valentine's Day is just a few weeks away and the new website that Frank Goodrich designed for the shop has been featuring holiday specials. I've already gotten ten requests for the Chocolate, Bear, and Roses Arrangement. That was Frank's idea; he claims he's a marketing genius.

There's actually really very little floral work involved in this seasonal gift. He found out that I could order a box of stuffed bears from a toy warehouse wholesale and that I could get a supply of chocolates at very little cost from Denny at the drugstore. Denny's employee, a high school student with math deficiencies, ordered twelve dozen mini boxes of Valentine candy instead of just one dozen and when the mistake was realized, the supplier wouldn't take them back and Denny was desperate for a buyer. I'm not sure how Frank found out.

Denny promised to sell the candy to me at a really great discount, which Frank said I could use as a promotion with a stuffed animal and one long-stemmed rose. I thought it was not a bad idea, ordered the bears, bought the chocolates, but then felt bad later when I had to decline Denny after he begged me to hire the employee who had made the mistake. I told him I already had Jimmy to deliver and Nora to help at the counter and clean up. I didn't need a high school student who couldn't do basic addition and subtraction. “Besides,” I told him when he phoned, “she's your daughter. I suggest you get her a math tutor. She's going to be with you a long time.”

People assume that florists love Valentine's Day, that it's our bread and butter, our greatest money-making holiday on the calendar. And they'd be right that it's busy; and they'd be right that we make a fair amount of our income on that one day of celebration. But I don't know a florist who loves Valentine's Day. It's hard work and most of the orders are too constrictive. Most everyone only wants the red roses. Traditional. Long-stemmed. A dozen. A little baby's breath or bear grass. A tall clear vase, thick red ribbon. No imagination. No room for personal preference or creative imagination. A dozen long-stemmed red roses in a tall vase with a red ribbon. No deviation.

I used to try to make people see, try to show them what they really needed, what their loved one really wanted, tried to explain that violets were actually the true Valentine flower, but I got tired of the hassle and the disappointment and the long stares that came from minds already made up. So I just tell Cooper how many buckets of red roses I want, and I collect the tall clear vases from everyone throughout the year and I make thirty-five or forty traditional arrangements.

Over the years I have, of course, proven myself with the regulars. And they rarely disappoint. “You know best, Ruby,” my old-timers will say. “Just put a little of your magic in it and I don't care what flowers you stick in that vase.” I do get a fair number of those requests on Valentine's, and that's what keeps me from closing down the shop during the second week in February. That and the fact that Jimmy and Nora need the work.

“You still open?”

I glance up. Jenny Seal is standing at the door.

“Yes, yes,” I say, waving her in.

“How are you, Jenny?” I ask. I remember that Justin, her fiancé, had ordered a small bouquet for her, to be delivered last month. She was in the hospital, on the sixth floor. Oncology.

She turns slowly, closes the door, and walks over to the counter. She keeps her head down. “I got home from the hospital a couple of weeks ago,” she says.

I nod. “I'm so glad.”

“I have cancer,” she announces, and her candor surprises me.

I nod again.

“I had my breast removed,” and she reaches up and touches the left side of her chest. She keeps her hand there and she looks like somebody getting ready to say the Pledge of Allegiance. After a bit, she lowers it.

“How are you feeling?”

“A little sick, like when I had my tonsils out,” she answers. “Weak, you know, like I haven't eaten.”

“Have you eaten?” I'm not sure why I asked, but it seemed like the right question at the time.

She nods. “Soup, mostly,” she replies. “I threw up a lot after the operation.”

“Is your mom staying with you?”

Jenny's mother, Jean or Jennifer, I'm not sure of her name, lives on the West Coast of Washington State. She got a job over there a couple of years ago and Jenny stayed in town with a friend to finish high school. I'm not sure of the relationship between the mother and daughter, only that she did make it back for graduation last year and that she called when she found out her daughter was engaged.

I'm doing the flowers for the wedding. Gerberas. Standards and minis. Loveliness, Bella Vistas, whispers, a few flamingoes. Jenny likes pink. I got Cooper to order me a bunch of the Bella Vistas to put in the arrangement I made for her a couple of weeks ago. I wanted it to look like the wedding bouquet we discussed with just a few stems of orange fabios.

I added the orange to her hospital arrangement because I know that the color is a gentle energizer, boosting a weak pulse rate and lifting exhaustion. It helps to strengthen the immune system.

She shakes her head. “She came to the hospital. I told her to go home. I didn't want her to come back here with me.”

I don't respond.

“She's very anxious,” Jenny adds.

And I recall the phone conversation I had with her last month. She asked me what Jenny had wanted and spent a lot of time sighing as I explained the kind of flower arrangements Jenny preferred. She wanted pictures and a detailed price list and asked if I planned to be in attendance at the wedding in case the flowers needing tending. She wanted to know how long the blooms would last and if the mother of the bride had any say about the wedding décor. I expect “anxious” is a polite way to describe Jenny's mother. I smile sympathetically.

“I came because I thought maybe you might help me.”

I wait.

Jenny drops her head. “Justin's been so good to me,” she announces.

“Yes,” I agree.

“He buys me flowers every birthday and every year on the anniversary of our first date.”

I nod.

“It's been five years,” she adds.

I smile. I know because it's in the customer notebook I made for Justin.

“And that was a lovely bouquet he gave me at the hospital. I wanted to tell you thank you for that.”

I wait for her request.

“He hasn't seen me since the surgery,” she says haltingly. “He hasn't seen what I look like.” She lowers her gaze.

And suddenly, I start to understand why she's here.

“I'm crooked and scarred. I look like a boy.” She won't face me.

I walk around the counter to her. “Jenny, Justin loves you.”

She doesn't respond.

“I will never forget the first time he came in here wanting to get you flowers. He paid me all in single dollar bills he saved from mowing lawns. He wanted to propose to you on your first date.”

Jenny smiles. “He did.”

I laugh.

“Come sit behind the counter.” I motion her to the stool that I keep in the back of the shop. Clementine gets up and walks over to her, dropping her big head on Jenny's knee. Jenny smiles, gives her a rub, and I lean against the table in front of her.

“He doesn't care about what you look like. He just wants you to be okay,” I tell her. “He has never cared about what you looked like. He fell in love with your heart. He would think you are the most beautiful woman in the world no matter what body part is missing from you. He's in this for the real reasons. He loves you.”

“I don't want him to feel sorry for me.” She shakes her head. “I don't want him to stay with me, to go through with the wedding because he feels sorry for me.”

Clementine returns to her spot beneath the table.

“Jenny, it doesn't matter if you have breasts or not. Justin Dexter loves you and I know these things. His affection for you is real.”

She nods but doesn't appear convinced.

“Okay.” I sigh.

She raises her face. “Do you have anything?”

I don't reply. I know why she's here. She was in the shop when I was making the arrangement for Tonya Lipton when her sister called and claimed Tonya was depressed. She watched me put in several stems of white flowers, lilies, orientals and long narrow callas. She asked me a lot of questions about the choices I made, and I had explained that the color white promotes healing of spirit, that white light is a natural pain reliever, increasing and maintaining energy levels and relieving depression and inertia. White dispels negativity from the body's energy field. Ever since Jenny watched me that afternoon, talking with Tonya's sister and arranging white flowers, she's asked me about the healing and stimulating properties of flowers. She is learning my work.

“You don't need anything,” I explain, studying her.

She is so frail, so thin, and she doesn't believe me.

I sigh. “Okay, jasmine will help. It's good for bringing love, increasing sexual desire, and promoting optimism; it alleviates doubts. Justin does not need it, but you do.”

I head over to the storage room and take out a few stems of jasmine. I walk back, wrap them in tissue, and hand them to her. “Just put them in a tall, narrow vase near your bed.”

She takes them from me and smells. “It's nice,” she says.

“Don't worry about Justin,” I tell her. “There is not a thing wrong with his mind or heart. I saw him when he came in and placed the order. He's only concerned about you. He's not having second thoughts about your wedding. You just concentrate on getting better. You just get better.”

She nods. “How much do I owe you?” she asks.

I shake my head. “Just bring me some mint from your garden when you feel better.”

She nods. “Okay.”

And she slides off the stool gingerly, walks around the counter, and stops at the door. She turns to me. “We haven't changed the date,” she announces. “Not yet anyway. I may have to have treatments. That means I may lose my hair too. But for now, we've kept everything like we planned.”

“September twenty-third,” I say, recalling the wedding day and not saying anything about the consequences of chemotherapy. “It's the anniversary of your first date,” I add. “You'll have your gerberas. I have already talked to the supplier. The church will be filled with pink daisies. It will be beautiful, just like you.”

She nods slowly, puts the jasmine under her nose, and heads out the door.

I watch her walk to the corner, turn right, and move in the direction of the small duplex she shares with her best friend, Louise Tate. It's not more than half a mile away, but I worry she shouldn't have walked so far so soon after her surgery, and I decide I should telephone her just to make sure she made it okay.