Love in Bloom's
Authors: Judith Arnold
“What’s it about?” Ron Joffe focused on the big article his editor was pitching him.
“Have you ever heard of a delicatessen called Bloom’s?” she asked.
What New Yorker hadn’t? He shopped at Bloom’s regularly. It was a terrific store. It sold more bagels than Broadway sold tickets to shows—and Bloom’s bagels probably got better reviews, too. He’d bought his own significant share of those bagels over the years.
But still…
Bloom’s?
What the hell would he write about a deli?
“Bloom’s isn’t just a deli,” she went on. “It’s a huge business. One year ago Ben Bloom, the president of the company, died. I want you to get past the food and write about the business. One year after Ben Bloom’s death, how is Bloom’s doing? Are their finances shaky now that Ben Bloom is gone? There’s your story, Joffe. A business story about food. You’re just the one to write it.”
He disagreed, but disagreeing with her wasn’t something a
Gotham
staffer—even an esteemed weekly columnist—did out loud.
“Okay,” he said. With a forced smile he backed out of her office. Backing out was a joke among his colleagues. Someone had once dubbed his editor the
Gotham
Goddess, and someone else had said it was bad luck to turn one’s back on a goddess, so they all remained facing her when they left her office. Ron wasn’t superstitious, but he knew better than to tempt fate.
Oddly enough, though, as he retraced his steps to his own office, contemplating his new assignment, he couldn’t shake the eerie notion that his editor had just given his fate a karmic realignment.
Bloom’s
. A fabulous deli, the death of the head honcho, family intrigue involving the granddaughter with the amazing eyes who’d replaced him. Food, money, heirs, power. Tradition. Schmaltz.
His nonexistent fancy was definitely turning.
HEART ON THE LINE
LOOKING FOR LAURA
LOVE IN BLOOM’S
To Carolyn, the best sister in the universe
Enormous thanks to my agent, Charles Schlessiger, for sharing his dreams with me, literally. Thanks also to my editor, Beverley Sotolov, and the entire MIRA staff for their support and encouragement. Finally, thanks to my parents, my husband, my sons, my aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, nieces and nephews and grandparents, for teaching me the meaning of family.
I
t wasn’t Ron Joffe’s kind of story. But he was a professional, and
Gotham Magazine
paid him a generous salary—a significant portion of which he’d spent in Bloom’s over the years. So what the hell. He’d poke around and see if he could stir something up. Maybe he’d buy a few snacks and include them in his expense account as research costs.
Bloom’s—the ultimate delicatessen, a hallowed New York institution, a tourist mecca, practically a landmark—in trouble? Yeah, there could be a story here. A New York story, just the sort of scoop
Gotham
’s readers would devour as greedily as they devoured their Bloom’s bagels smeared with Bloom’s cream cheese and crowned with Bloom’s smoked salmon.
Standing outside the store, which occupied half an Upper Broadway block, he shielded his eyes against the glare of April sunshine and scrutinized the clutter in the showcase windows: an abundance, a glut, a veritable cornucopia of kosher-style cuisine. Bloom’s marketed not just food but memories, nostalgia,
the myth of Eastern European Jewish immigrants back in the olden days, preparing similar food for their loved ones.
Of course, most of those immigrants couldn’t have afforded the kind of food sold at Bloom’s. But the people shopping in Bloom’s today believed they were buying what their grandmothers might have served their families fresh off the boat. And those people shopped and shopped and shopped. In the five minutes he’d been staring at the window, at least a dozen people had gone into the store, well-dressed, well-heeled Manhattanites with money to burn.
Three more customers entered in the time it took him to turn his back on the window and saunter down the sidewalk and around the corner to the entry of the Bloom Building, a large apartment tower built above the store. On its third floor were Bloom’s business offices.
His appointment was with Deirdre Morrissey, but he hoped to talk to some of the third-floor offices’ other occupants: Jay Bloom, Myron Finkel, and of course Julia Bloom, who was allegedly responsible for the store’s current state, whatever that might be. The person he’d
really
like to talk to was Ida Bloom, the Queen Mother of the company. Rumor had it that Ida Bloom was terrifying.
Ron loved scary people, especially scary women. They got his blood pumping and his brain firing. His own grandmother used to petrify him. She’d been short—under five feet tall—and she’d had a voice like a crow’s, dark and nasal, and fingers like claws. “Ronnie, get over here this minute!” she’d caw, and he’d want to crawl under her bed in her stuffy, tiny apartment in the Bronx. But he’d always come when she called him, and listen as she screeched about his transgressions: “You left these dirt smudges all over my clean towels. What’sa matter with you? Are you an idiot? You’re supposed to wash your hands thoroughly. You know what that means, Ronnie?
Thoroughly
. Now I’m going to have to do another load of laundry.”
For years, the word
thoroughly
had caused a chill to ripple down his spine. He was older now, though. He could handle
the word
thoroughly
—and he could handle terrifying women. He was ready for Ida Bloom.
He didn’t think he’d get a crack at her. His research informed him she’d recently kissed her eighty-eighth birthday goodbye. If her relatives were smart, they probably kept her as far from the business as possible.
He entered the building, pressed the button for the elevator and got in. For some reason, he had hoped it would smell the way Bloom’s smelled: crusty, oniony, like some fantasy grandmother’s kitchen. It smelled of lemon air freshener. He tried not to wrinkle his nose.
Out at the third floor. He found himself in a wide hallway with a few chairs and couches, lamps, Marc Chagall prints in cheap frames on the walls—a reception area, except it was a little too long and narrow. He patted his jacket to make sure his notepad and pen were tucked into the inner pocket, patted another pocket to make sure he had his tape recorder, then strode down the hall in search of Deirdre Morrissey’s office. According to his research, Deirdre had been Ben Bloom’s assistant when he was alive and running the place. Assistants like her often knew more than anyone else about what was going on.
He located her office door and rapped on it. The door swung inward, and he found himself standing eye-to-eye with a red-haired amazon. She was nearly six feet tall and had a bony face, her freckled skin stretched taut over acute cheekbones. Her teeth reminded him of Bugs Bunny’s.
“Hi, I’m Ron Joffe from
Gotham Magazine
,” he introduced himself, producing a business card and handing it to her.
“Oh…” She glanced at her watch. He glanced at his. He was three minutes early. “Let me just run some papers next door, and then we’ll talk,” she promised him.
He stepped out of her way, and she left her office. He realized she wasn’t quite an amazon after all; her feet were crammed into shoes with three-inch heels. She seemed too old to be wearing such uncomfortable-looking shoes. Not that she was
old
—he’d place her in her mid-forties at most. But women that
age, at least the sensible, competent ones, tended to be smart enough to recognize the relationship between pain-free shoes and a mellow temperament.
He watched her half swagger, half stagger toward the door at the end of the hallway. She opened it and said, “Julia, you’re going to need these forms.”
Peeking past Deirdre, Ron caught a glimpse of a woman seated at a large desk in the center of the office. A pale complexion, straight black hair that fell an inch or two past her shoulders, coral-tinged lips and large, dark eyes. Soulful eyes. Eyes glinting with resentment and impatience and maybe a bit of fear. Eyes that could wreak havoc with a man’s psyche—to say nothing of his libido.
Ron Joffe prided himself on being intelligent, deliberative, not the sort of guy who got sidetracked by a pair of beautiful eyes. But suddenly he found he didn’t want to talk to Deirdre Morrissey.
He didn’t want to talk to anyone but Julia Bloom.
One month earlier
F
or the chance to eat brunch at Grandma Ida’s home, Julia would put up with just about anything—including Grandma Ida.
She stepped out of the elevator on the top floor of the Bloom Building. The family owned the Upper West Side building and earned a tidy fortune off the rentals, but Grandma Ida had a schizophrenic way of dealing with her success. She loved money, loved power, loved being whatever the Jewish female equivalent of
capo di tutti capi
was, but when asked she would say, with tremulous humility, that she simply “lived above the store.” Which she did—twenty-five stories above the store. Julia’s mother and Aunt Martha both resided in the Bloom Building, too, but on the twenty-fourth floor. Julia’s mother considered it proof of her independence that she wasn’t on the same floor as Grandma Ida, but Grandma Ida seldom passed up
the opportunity to remind her: “Don’t forget, Sondra—you’re living under my roof.”
“Under your floor,” Julia’s mother would mutter. Fortunately, Grandma Ida’s hearing was beginning to go, and muttered comments generally didn’t register on her.
If necessary, Julia would mutter during her brunch with Grandma Ida. If necessary, she would shout. She’d been lured here with a promise of food—real food, rich, flavorful, fresh-from-Bloom’s food—and while she didn’t know the reason for the invitation, she didn’t care. She was going to
eat.
She’d even worn slacks with an elastic waistband, just in case.
It wasn’t that she never ate. She did, when she had time. But she hardly ever ate Bloom’s food. Bloom’s food was merchandise. It was something you sold, not something you enjoyed—at least, not if you were a Bloom. For as long as Julia could remember, breakfast in her family had consisted of Cheerios or doughnuts. Warm, chewy bagels, Nova smoked salmon sliced tissue-thin, herrings in artery-clogging cream sauce—these were profit centers, not comestibles.
Ah, but today…Today they were her dream come true. Today, as Grandma Ida’s guest for brunch, Julia was going to indulge, gorge, test the limits of her elastic waistband.
She pressed the doorbell beside her grandmother’s door. Within seconds, Lyndon swung it open, blasting the hallway with the aromas of hot coffee and warm bread. Julia’s mouth went damp.
God, she loved good food.
“Hello, sweetheart.” Lyndon greeted her, ritualistically kissing the air next to her cheeks. Tall and slender, with walnut-hued skin and elegant braids framing his smile-wide face, Lyndon had more flair than anyone in the Bloom family. He dressed with a stylishness that bordered on affectation, and he tolerated Grandma Ida with a patience that bordered on saintliness. Julia didn’t know how much Grandma Ida paid him, but it had to be a lot.
“Come on in,” he said, waving her inside. “Your grandmother’s waiting for you.”
“I’m not late, am I?” Julia joined him in the foyer and unwound the red cashmere scarf she’d wrapped around her neck and shoulders in a feeble attempt at panache.
Lyndon took the scarf from her, shook it smooth and grinned. “You’re not late. She’s just waiting.”
Julia lowered her voice to a whisper. “Do you know why she asked me to come?”
“She’s your grandmother. Does she have to have a reason?”
“She always has a reason. What kind of mood is she in?”
“Barometric pressure’s holding steady. Go on in and say hello to her. She’s already in the dining room, having coffee. Shall I get you a cup?”
“Get me a two-gallon jug,” Julia requested, then gave Lyndon a brave smile and marched down the hall to the formal dining room.
Grandma Ida’s apartment screamed prewar. The rooms were majestic in proportion, with high, molded ceilings and tall windows that welcomed in a flood of brilliant morning sunshine. The nine-foot ceilings always made Julia feel even shorter than she was. Barefoot, she stood five foot five using her best balance-a-book-on-her-head posture—and she was the tallest female in her family.
She’d augmented her stature today by wearing ankle-high leather boots with two-inch heels. She liked to have added height when she was summoned to Grandma Ida’s. It made her feel a little less intimidated.
She found the Bloom family matriarch seated at the head of the formal dining table. The furniture, like the architecture, was prewar: heavy, dark pieces, a hutch sparkling with a display of pink Depression glass, dour curtains of burgundy velvet framing parchment-yellow shades on the windows. The rug beneath the mahogany table featured a busy, multicolored pattern. As a child Julia had loved that rug, because it camouflaged all the crumbs she inevitably dropped during the course of a meal.
Grandma Ida seemed prewar to Julia, too—as well she was. Her short, wavy hair was an unnatural black, as solid as an ink
spill. Surely she could afford the services of a more skilled hair colorist, but she insisted on patronizing the same salon she’d been going to since Bloom’s first introduced nonkosher products back in the sixties. “Bella knows what to do with hair,” Grandma Ida insisted. As far as Julia could see, Bella knew what to do with hair the way Itzhak Perlman knew what to do with an electric guitar. He might have a general idea, might be able to get a few interesting sounds out of it, but you wouldn’t want to pay money to hear him play.
Beneath her strange black hair, Grandma Ida was blessed with an unusually wrinkle-free face—and unlike her hair, her complexion had not been artificially tampered with. She had a smattering of creases, and a deep line rose from the bridge of her narrow nose like an exclamation point, but her skin lacked the crepey texture one would expect of an eighty-eight-year-old woman who had worked hard, endured much and consumed more than her share of stale doughnuts over the years. She was petite and her fingers had developed a few arthritic knobs at the joints, but her brown eyes remained clear and her jaw was steady. And her tongue was sharp.
“Julia. It’s about time,” she barked, as Julia circled the table. She tilted her head at a regal angle to accept Julia’s kiss. “Lyndon had to put the microwave on time-cook.”
“I did not,” Lyndon called in from the kitchen. “I’ll start the eggs as soon as I get some coffee for Julia.”
“She can get her own coffee,” Grandma Ida retorted. “Start the eggs.” She leveled her gaze at Julia and pointed to the chair at her right. “Sit.”
Julia sighed and forced a smile. “Let me pour myself a cup of coffee, and then I’ll sit.”
“Sit now. Lyndon can get you your coffee later,” Grandma Ida said, contradicting herself.
She sipped her coffee, which smelled to Julia like a narcoleptic’s idea of nirvana. Julia filled her lungs with the fragrance and tried to imagine the taste on her tongue.
Her grandmother glowered. Julia sank into the high-backed
chair, resentful and anxious. Had she done something wrong? Breached some invisible line? Or was Grandma Ida going to spend the morning castigating her for someone else’s sins, or perhaps just firing salvos at the world at large?
“How are you?” Julia asked, disguising her uneasiness behind an ingratiating tone. She tried not to let Grandma Ida cow her. She was an adult, after all, mature, responsible, as on top of her life as any twenty-eight-year-old who worked sixty-hour weeks doing all the stuff her boss didn’t want to do, while he claimed the glory and the big bucks, and spent her spare hours alternately worrying about her family and trying not to get sucked into their nonsense. She’d earned the right not to be rattled by her grandmother.
But Grandma Ida always managed to rattle her anyway. For all her grandmother’s scowling, her scolding, her testiness and her chronic dyspepsia, Julia still loved her, and because she did, she couldn’t develop an immunity to the old woman.
“How am I?” Grandma Ida echoed. “How should I be? One whole year since I buried my son. That’s how I am.”
Well, yes. It had been one whole year since Julia had buried her father, and Julia’s mother had buried her husband. Grandma Ida didn’t get to claim first prize in the grief competition. They’d all been devastated by Ben Bloom’s untimely death. They’d all spent a year mourning, coping, healing. If Grandma Ida had demanded Julia’s presence in order to wallow in sadness…well, the food had better be extremely good, that was all.
“What’s that on your mouth?” Grandma Ida asked, apparently willing to abandon her bereavement for the time being.
“My mouth?” Julia frowned. She hadn’t eaten anything yet, hadn’t even had a sip of that freshly brewed and tantalizingly fragrant coffee, so she couldn’t have food residue on her lips. “A tinted lip gloss?” she guessed. She’d slicked some on before leaving her apartment.
“Tinted lip gloss.” Grandma Ida’s frown deepened.
“Mom says it protects the lips from getting sunburned.”
“Sunburned lips. I never heard from such a thing.”
Several retorts filled Julia’s mouth, but she exercised restraint and only said, “I’m going to get my coffee, Grandma. I’ll be right back.” She shoved away from the table and stalked into the kitchen before her grandmother could order her back to her chair.
The kitchen was big enough to accommodate a small breakfast table, which meant it was enormous by Manhattan standards. The appliances were full-size and the counters were lined with kitchen gadgets too old to have come from Bloom’s, which hadn’t added a kitchenware department until the early eighties. An antiquated popcorn maker, a hand-held mixer and one of those little scales that dieters were supposed to use to measure their portions cluttered the available space. Why her grandmother needed that scale was beyond Julia. The woman was definitely not fat.
The kitchen smelled so good Julia didn’t want to leave. Her gaze fell on a wicker basket filled with poppy-seed bagels, and it took all her willpower not to grab one and slather it with scal-lion-flavored cream cheese from the tub beside the basket—or better yet, to grab a few bagels, escape from the apartment, and devour them in the elevator on her way downstairs to freedom.
But more than granddaughterly respect kept her from fleeing. Lyndon stood at the stove, stirring a pan full of scrambled eggs and lox. Merely looking at that glorious mass of pink-flecked yellow curds made Julia’s knees go soft.
“Lyndon,” she murmured, then emitted a sigh of longing. “Lox and eggs.”
“Your grandmother specifically requested them. She knows how much you love them. You ought to treat her nicely.”
“I do treat her nicely. But lox and eggs…” She leaned over the pan and let the rising scent fill her nostrils. “Nobody makes them as good as you. Marry me, Lyndon.”
He grinned. “I would, honey, except you’re the wrong color and the wrong sex, and if you were the right sex we’d have to elope to Vermont. Coffee’s in that cranky old percolator. Why don’t you buy your grandma a Mr. Coffee?”
“My mother did. Grandma Ida made her return it. She said she knew the markup on that item and would rather sell it to a stranger than have it sitting idle in her kitchen. You know her. She
likes
the cranky old percolator.”
“
She
doesn’t have to clean it,” he grumbled. “I do, and I hate it. Buy
me
a Mr. Coffee.”
“Only if you marry me,” Julia bargained, grabbing a teaspoon and dipping it into the scrambled eggs.
Lyndon slapped her hand away before she could pry loose a piece of lox. “Wait till it’s cooked. I got the coffee from downstairs, and the hell with the markup. It’s that Kenyan roast. I like it—good ol’ African coffee. Maybe it’ll put a curl in your grandma’s hair.”
“Her hair is hopeless,” Julia whispered, finding the mug Lyndon had set out for her and filling it with coffee. “Thanks. Really—I’m serious about that marriage proposal. I’d even let you mess around behind my back if you’d only keep me in lox and eggs.”
“You’re too easy, Julia. Gotta raise your standards.” He spooned the pan’s contents onto a porcelain platter, and Julia’s spirits lifted. The eggs were done, neither too dry nor too wet. That meant she’d be eating soon. She’d eat until there was no longer a trace of tinted lip gloss on her. She’d eat until she was drunk on the marvelous food, drugged by it. Warm, fresh bagels, lox and eggs and…oh, was that a plate of rugelach, glistening with honey, on the table? Her heart thumped.
She carried the basket of bagels and her mug back into the dining room. Lyndon followed her, conveying the rest of the food on a tray. Grandma Ida’s expression changed almost imperceptibly, a flicker of approval brightening her eyes as Lyndon set the heavy serving plates down on the table.
“The bagels are already sliced,” he informed Grandma Ida. “The cream cheese is softened. Let me refill your cup, and then you two can have your little chat.”
Those two ominous words—
little chat—
tempered Julia’s ec
stasy. Food this good didn’t come free. Grandma Ida was going to make Julia pay.
She didn’t care. She’d feast, and then she’d settle up.
She scooped a small mountain of eggs onto her plate, took a bagel and smeared cream cheese on its warm surfaces. The thick china was a dull white, the silver bulky and ugly. Grandma Ida had been using the same table settings for as long as Julia could remember. They’d been her mother’s, she’d told Julia—and someday, if Julia was very, very good, they’d be hers. If ever Julia had had an incentive not to be good, that was it.
The stout plates and silverware didn’t bother her today. For a brunch this spectacular, she’d eat off paper, out of the pan, on the floor. The eggs were divine, the coffee heavenly. The bagel’s crust resisted her teeth for a moment and then yielded, warm and thick in contrast to the cool, smooth icing of the cream cheese.
“That’s it,” she said with a swoony sigh. “I’m never eating doughnuts again.”
“You’re too thin,” Grandma Ida criticized. “What do you eat?”
“For breakfast? Doughnuts.”
“And for lunch?”
“I usually don’t have time for lunch,” she admitted. “I try to make up for it at dinner.”
“With that boy? That blond boy? The lawyer. What does he make you eat?”
Julia stifled a chuckle. In her blissful gastronomic state, she couldn’t take offense at her grandmother’s apparent dislike of her current boyfriend. Julia wasn’t sure
she
liked him, either, so it wasn’t worth arguing about. “He doesn’t make me eat anything. If we go out for dinner, we choose a place together. If not, I go home and eat whatever is in my refrigerator. Or I’ll pick up something on my way. If Bloom’s were on my way, I’d pick up stuff here.”