Everlasting (18 page)

The lawyer, Mr. Giles, did express a gentle skepticism at her abilities to run a business. He was an older man, portly, white-haired, restrained. It was with exquisite politeness that he pointed out to her that she had little experience in business and no education in accounting.

Catherine bristled. Seated before him in her green linen suit and high heels, her legs primly crossed at the ankles as she had been taught at school, she was aware of how young she appeared. She wanted to toss her head and stalk dramatically from the room, offended, but as Mr. Giles continued to speak, softly, logically, she realized he was trying to be helpful, not patronizing.

“Bookkeeping is an art in itself,” he said. “No matter how successful the rest of the enterprise is, the bookkeeping can make or break it.”

“Perhaps I should hire someone to do that,” Catherine said. “I admit it’s not my strong point. I intend to do the design work and the marketing, the selling.”

“Of course. And of course you should hire a bookkeeper. But may I suggest that you take a course in accounting yourself? As soon as possible. You must learn to read the books. You must be able to check the figures. You must be prepared to understand this part of your business. Unless you have a partner in mind whom you trust completely, not only with your finances, but also to live a long life and to work for you forever and to keep all information to himself.”

Catherine stared at Mr. Giles. “This is more complicated than I thought,” she said. “Very well. I’ll take a course in accounting. The fall semester hasn’t started yet. I’ll be able to get in somewhere.”

Mr. Giles smiled. “Good for you, young lady,” he said. “I know how hard it is to take advice. I was young once myself. I think you just might manage to be as successful as you’d like, since you can obviously summon up some coolheaded reason to balance out your passion for this business.”

“Your passion for this business.” An odd phrase from such a temperate man. Not until Catherine had met Mr. Giles would she have thought to put the words
passion
and
business
in the same sentence. She did not think she had a “passion” for this business. She had had a passion for Kit. She still did. What she had for this business was something less fiery. But perhaps better: what she felt for this business was certainty.

* * *

O
ne day in late September, Mr. Vanderveld fell on the wooden stairs to the basement and broke his ankle. Catherine and Piet, one on each side, carried him to the shop van. Piet drove him to the hospital. The old man had been white-faced with pain and embarrassment.

During the three years Catherine had worked in the shop, Mrs. V and Catherine had been friendly, but it was with Mr. Vanderveld that Catherine felt a real bond. He was her teacher, her mentor, her elder. He was also a man from the old world, and along with his charming Dutch accent, he retained a fierce old-world masculine pride. He was the owner. He was the artist. He was, above all, the man. He might have been proud when Catherine learned quickly and well, but he was also perversely vexed, perhaps threatened. Catherine would have preferred a closer relationship, one in which they could touch, or joke, or praise each other. If Jan Vanderveld ever wished the same, he never indicated it. Certainly he hated having Catherine and Piet see him in the humbling dependence forced by pain.

Catherine knew that it was Mrs. Vanderveld she had to approach about buying the store. Only Mrs. V could make her husband listen. And now was the time. The next day, when Mr. Vanderveld was home with his ankle in a cast, she told Mrs. Vanderveld she would like to buy the shop from them.

Mrs. Vanderveld stared at her, speechless with shock.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

Catherine could almost hear the other woman’s thoughts arranging themselves: “I forgot, this little errand girl and help is from a moneyed background. Well, well.”

“I think this could be a possibility, Catherine,” Mrs. Vanderveld responded at last, speaking as slowly as if learning a new language. “It would be lovely to have you instead of a stranger taking over our shop. I’ve always regretted that we have no children of our own to pass it on to. But you are almost like our child to us. Oh, this is interesting! Let me talk it over with Jan tonight. We’ll talk more in the morning.”

The next morning, eyes shining with happiness, Mrs. Vanderveld made her proposal: Catherine wouldn’t have to buy the shop. The Vandervelds would let her become a partner. That way Catherine would be assured of Mr. Vanderveld’s artistic abilities and Mrs. Vanderveld’s accounting skills. Catherine’s money could give the business the shot in the arm it needed while they continued to provide the skill.

Catherine hurried back to Mr. Giles. But his blunt words echoed her own doubts: under Mrs. V’s proposal, Catherine would be contributing much needed capital to the Vandervelds without receiving any power or control in exchange. Did Catherine think the Vandervelds would accept her as an equal? That they would let her implement any changes or let her decide any policies? Could she make any of the improvements she’d been planning with Mr. and Mrs. Vanderveld scrutinizing and approving every move?

Catherine went back to the Vandervelds. Mr. V was seated on a stool, his bandaged ankle resting on a box, furiously arranging mums and carnations into a fall bouquet. Mrs. V was making bows from ribbons; she stopped working when Catherine entered.

“I’ve been thinking,” Catherine said without preamble, “I want to buy the shop. I don’t want a partnership—I want to be the sole owner.” She had trouble keeping her voice even as she spoke, knowing this would upset them.

Mr. V tried to act as if he hadn’t heard her, but his mouth compressed so completely that his chin and cheeks bulged out around it and his face went red.

Mrs. V twisted her hands in front of her. Her hair began to slip from its bun. “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” she blithered, turning toward the ribbons as if for help, then back toward Catherine. “This does present a problem. We don’t really want to sell the shop entirely. We just need a little financial boost—”

“Well, think about it,” Catherine said. “I’d better get back to work.”

It was a wonder that all the flowers in the shop didn’t die that week, wilt from the troubled air that hung in the shop like a plague. Mr. Vanderveld was insulted (as Mrs. Vanderveld told Catherine privately, when he was at home one afternoon resting his ankle) that Catherine did not jump at the opportunity to be partners with him. After all, he had the talent. She had only the money. Mrs. Vanderveld approached Catherine as a friend, almost a loving relative. Catherine should not forget that they had taken her in untrained and taught her everything.

“If Jan were freed up from financial worries, he could really let his creative energies flourish!” Mrs. Vanderveld said. “He would make arrangements that would be wonders! He would be famous. The shop would make more money!”

“Then let me buy the shop. You’ll have lots of money, and I’ll pay Mr. Vanderveld to work as my main floral designer,” Catherine said.

Mrs. Vanderveld shook her head. “No, you do not understand. Jan could not work for you. A young lady for his boss? No.”

Catherine held fast. On her lunch breaks she raced to the coffee shop to call Mr. Giles from a pay phone for moral support, like a boxer turning to the coach. With each hour that she steadfastly refused to become a partner, the atmosphere of the shop darkened proportionately.

“After all, Jan is sixty,” Mrs. Vanderveld said one morning. “A talented man, who should not be thrown on the dustbin. You must know, Catherine, that when older people retire, they lose their reason for living, and die, poof, for no reason at all. Statistics prove this. What would Jan do without his shop? He would have no reason to live.”

“The two of you have worked so hard all your lives,” Catherine countered sweetly. “Isn’t it time you enjoyed yourselves? Just think, with the money you’d get, you could take cruises together. You could visit your relatives in Amsterdam. Mr. Vanderveld shouldn’t have to work so hard. At your age, neither should you. Isn’t it time to be selfish and take some pleasure from life after all these years of working?”

“Humph!” Mrs. V replied, bustling off.

Now Catherine dreaded coming to work, because the Vandervelds no longer greeted her cheerfully but merely nodded tersely. There were no more gossip sessions about the latest celebrity scandal over coffee. There was no more joking around. Orders were barked, replies bitten off. It was dreary. If she had not wanted to buy the shop, she would have quit.

Catherine’s refuge and pleasure came when she sat over her desk at night, planning, sketching, figuring. She enrolled in the bookkeeping course at Hunter College. She studied hard. If she was tempted to think of Kit—or even of Ned—she pushed those thoughts of love away. She forced herself to concentrate on the business she wanted to have. Her mind clicked and spun like an efficient machine. Her heart dangled inside her like a crystal, transparent, empty, cold.

* * *

C
atherine was cleaning fresh, bud-tight, long-stemmed roses and putting their stems into water tubes for a casket piece. Florists almost always filled out funeral wreaths and arrangements with their old dying flowers that couldn’t last another day. It was a waste to put fresh, tightly budded flowers on a grave. The Vandervelds spoke of florists they knew who, if forced to provide fresh flowers in top condition for a funeral, often went to the graveyard that night and stole the flowers back in order to sell them again. But this particular casket piece was for an important man whose casket would be on view in a funeral home for three days. The flowers had to last.

The front door bell tinkled. Mrs. Vanderveld came through the curtain with two sinister-looking smarmy little men.

The taller man, chewing on a toothpick, slouched down the aisle between the tables, eyeing the shop, eyeing Catherine. He grinned.

“She come with the shop, too?” he said nastily, jerking his head toward Catherine as if she were a thing that could not see or hear.

His cohort laughed vulgarly.

“Miss Eliot works for us, yes,” Mrs. Vanderveld said. “Whether she stayed on to work for you would depend on whatever agreement you worked out with her, I suppose. She does have three years of training with us.”

Catherine dropped the flowers on the table. She looked at the two men—slimy hoods, they wouldn’t know a pansy from a peony! She looked at Mrs. Vanderveld. Mrs. Vanderveld raised her trembling chin in defiance and stared back.

Catherine walked to the back of the shop. She washed her hands, took off her smock, and hung it on a hook. She took her purse in her hand, and without a word she walked past Mrs. Vanderveld and the two oily men to the front of the shop.

“Catherine!” Mrs. Vanderveld said sharply. “Where are you going?”

“To find another job,” Catherine said. “I quit.”

She walked through the curtain one last time, out the door with the tinkling bell, and onto the street, which was brilliant with early fall sunlight.

* * *

C
atherine walked. Stopping only to buy a hot dog and soda from a street stand, she walked for hours around the Upper East Side. There were other flower shops dotted throughout the neighborhood. She knew some of the florists. Maybe one of them would want a partner. Or she could find a vacant storefront in the area and start completely new. In many ways it would be easier than trying to rehabilitate the Vandervelds’ aging shop. She stopped to write down phone numbers when she saw “For Rent” signs.

When she entered Leslie’s apartment that evening, with blisters on her feet and a bag of groceries in her arms, the phone was ringing. As she put away the milk, the apples, the wedge of cheese, she listened to Mrs. Vanderveld’s newest proposal: They would sell the shop to Catherine if she would agree not to change the name from Vanderveld Flowers and to keep Mr. Vanderveld on as head florist.

Catherine said, “No. I want my shop to be my own. I
will
change the name.”

“If you change the name, it’s as if you erase our lives!”

“I’m sorry.”

Mrs. Vanderveld was crying into the telephone. “We loved you, we helped you, we taught you, you were like a daughter to us, and now you want to change everything, to take everything from us.”

“No,” Catherine said. “I want to
buy
everything from you.”

“Jan will die,” Mrs. Vanderveld sobbed.

“No, he won’t,” Catherine said. Her bright crystal heart glittered inside her, throwing off inspiration. “He’ll be happy. You’ll both be well off and free from financial worries. I’ll name him as head floral designer on all our ads.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Mrs. Vanderveld cried.

On October 21, 1964, Catherine Eliot sat in Mr. Giles’s office with Mr. and Mrs. Vanderveld and their lawyer. They signed the papers, and the flower shop became hers.

On October 22 the carpenters arrived.

By then, Catherine had already been at work.

Her first act as the new owner was to return to the shop that evening after dark. With her own hands she pulled down the hideous dusty curtain that had hung between the front and back of the shop. The material was so old, it shredded in her hands.

“Ha!” she laughed when the curtain was down.

Then she walked up and down the length of the shop, rethinking all her plans. Had she calculated every inch of space correctly? Was this right? And this? In her mind the new shop took shape. The city grew dark around her while she remained in her cube of light, walking up and down, planning. She didn’t go home that night, but toward morning she turned off the lights and lay down on a work table at the back of the store. She slept a few hours until Piet, coming in the back door with the day’s flowers from the wholesale market, woke her.

“Good morning, boss lady,” he said, bending over her.

He was close enough to kiss. Catherine felt the strangest impulse to do just that but held back, feeling rumpled and sour-mouthed and off-guard, caught asleep on the table. She sat up and pulled her skirt back down over her knees.