Eli has to leave the theater. It’s as simple as that. Or she can ask Alma.
PERFECT, she texts, though it isn’t perfect at all.
It could hardly be less perfect. SEE YOU AT 4.
CHARLOTTE HAS LOVED flowers ever since she was little. Not a day goes by when she isn’t grateful for having flowers in her life. They are her life. Though she’s worked at the business six days a week for over a decade, she still loves opening the shop.
Alma would be happy to do it. But Charlotte loves waking up early, leaving Eli and Daisy asleep, and walking—even in winter—all the way from the East Village to the Meatpacking District.
Some blocks are darker, emptier, windier, but she never feels cold or lonely or scared. The word she thinks is: private. As if the city were made for her. Every morning, she buys coffee from Ali or Felipe at the all-night bodega and brings it to the store. The warmth and smell of the coffee is happiness in a cup printed with Christmas holly all year.
She loves turning on the lights, seeing the flowers, and thinking (though she knows it’s ridiculous) that the flowers are happy to see her. She loves the everyday details: signing for the deliveries, talking to the drivers who take such pride in their fragile cargo. She knows the names of their wives and kids. She gives them huge tips at Christmas.
She even loves reading her email. More job offers are coming in, charity dinners and weddings. When she clicks on her business account, she feels as if a stranger is going to give her a present: money—and something to think about, a fun problem to solve.
Charlotte was high on weed—that was pre-Daisy—when she came up with the name for her shop: Buddenbrooks and Gladiola. It seems a little twee to her now, but there’s a story that a certain kind of reporter likes to tell. She leaves out the weed when she explains that she named her shop after a novel she’d never understood and a flower she’d never liked—until one day she realized how amazing they both are. It’s the perfect early-midlife lesson: a second shot at wisdom.
That story, which was true, got her a write-up and a photo in O, The Oprah Magazine.
Charlotte has gotten some lucky press, a helpful interview in W in which she said that her influences were the Victorian language of flowers, punk rock, and 1960s science fiction. The people who run charity benefits like her brand, a little edgy and modern instead of old and stodgy, and she charges less than people who have been in the business longer, though her fees are increasing.
When the commissions began coming in, Charlotte opened a studio in Bushwick and hired more help: smart kids who know and care about flowers. She pays decent wages with benefits, and she arranges cars when her workers need to go home late.
She keeps the Gansevoort Street shop open, though the rent has skyrocketed and it barely breaks even, because that’s where she started. That’s where she still likes to be. She loves opening boxes of perfect pink roses, each wrapped in white tissue paper and cellophane. She loves the birds-of-paradise, cleomes, zinnias, cosmos, and bachelor buttons, which are basically weeds but look stunning in masses. She loves the smell of flowers, living, dying, on the edge, even the chemical spice of the fungicide she sometimes has to use, though she tries to stay green.
Today Alma’s opened up the store and taken care of the deliveries and tended the flowers in the chilled space behind the wall of glass. Alma could run the business—maybe she will someday. She took over when Charlotte was in Mexico, and as far as Charlotte can tell, everything’s shipshape.
Everything, that is, but Alma, who’s been in tears—or on the edge of tears—for weeks, ever since her boyfriend left her for a twenty-one-year-old: a woman precisely half Alma’s age.
Charlotte’s feet hurt. She’d taken her shoes off in the cab going downtown to the shop from Hudson Yards. She might have liked to walk if she’d been smarter about footwear. They’re still a little puffy from the airplane ride from Mexico, and they swelled even more in the taxi. Just to get from the cab to the store, she had to stuff her feet back into the high heels.
Charlotte and Alma hug. She’s family. They’re always happy to see each other, even now, when so little makes Alma happy.
Alma says, “We’ve been selling tons of daffodils.” That happens every spring, and now the thought of the bright clumps of white and yellow remind Charlotte of how many springs she and Alma have spent in this shop. “I forwarded you that email about the benefit. How was the meeting?” She looks at her watch. “It couldn’t have taken very long. That’s not a good sign.”
“It’s postponed till this afternoon. Listen, if I get stuck, can you pick up Daisy . . .”
Several times, in semi-emergencies, when Charlotte has been held up, Alma has picked up Daisy. She’s on the pickup list at Daisy’s school.
Daisy loves it when Alma comes for her because Alma always takes her out for ice cream, which Charlotte only rarely does. No one can eat ice cream every day!
Alma mumbles so softly that Charlotte can hardly hear: “Therapy appointment.” She pulls away from Charlotte’s hug, and Charlotte sees tears on her face. Sometimes Alma sighs so loudly that their customers look alarmed, and often Charlotte catches her staring blankly into space.
“Never mind,” says Charlotte. “I’ll figure it out. I think Eli has a rehearsal, but maybe he can get out. Maybe I’ll be done in time. I’ll just have to play it by ear.”
Charlotte tries to sound relaxed, but she hates being late to pick up her daughter.
She hates the thought of Daisy nervously watching the doorway to the gym where they have the after-school program. More than anything, she hates the idea that Daisy might feel anxious. In fact Charlotte has never once got there to find Daisy watching the door. She’s always been busy doing the fun projects that the after-school teachers dream up.
Alma goes back to making a floral arrangement for a customer to send his wife for their fiftieth anniversary. Charlotte goes back to trying to call and text and email Eli, who keeps not answering. Maddening! She knows that Eli is having a hard time, but still . . . He is Daisy’s father.
A decade ago, Eli did so well—first in real estate for foreign investment firms, then buying and selling domain names—that he was able to retire from finance and do what he loves, which is working in the theater. Right now he’s the set designer/stage manager on a production of Macbeth, in a theater on the Lower East Side. Charlotte has to remind herself that he’s earned the right—that is, the money—to do what he loves.
There’s a crisis every day, and Eli’s usually right in the middle. Several times, he hasn’t taken her calls, and he and Charlotte argued about it. They have a child! Charlotte needs to reach him! He promised to do better, but he sometimes forgets his promises.
She texts Eli one more time, punching question marks into the phone. Again he doesn’t answer. Is something wrong? How many bad things can happen at once?
She sends another message: NEED YOU TO PICK UP DAISY.
Let Eli be okay. Let Eli be okay and she’ll never again pressure him into doing something he doesn’t want to (or can’t) do. He already does so much.
Charlotte closes her eyes and seems to hear her therapist’s calming voice:
Don’t worry till something happens. Don’t imagine the worst. Don’t obsess about the past—and about things you can’t change.