Bird in Hand - Christina Baker Kline [81]
Maybe she was simply going through a phase, pulling back to focus on her book and other priorities. She was allowed to do that. They weren’t joined at the proverbial (or was that literal?) hip. Plenty of unconventional marriages survived, even flourished. Look at Bloomsbury —Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. And hadn’t he read somewhere that Margaret Drabble and Michael Holroyd lived in the same English cul-de-sac, married to each other but inhabiting separate houses, meeting in the afternoon for tea? He and Claire didn’t have to live a conventional life, damn it; he loved her enough to respect her wishes for autonomy and freedom, even if—God forbid—it were sexual.
And if it wasn’t a phase, if she was genuinely pulling away? Well, he would find out soon enough.
THE FLOWER SHOP on Eighty-second and Columbus, a narrow space with painted brick walls, was one of Ben’s favorite places on the Upper West Side. It was hard to define what set it above ordinary florists—was it the Zen-like simplicity, rare outside SoHo, that showcased the beauty of individual blooms, or the bold colors and combinations, bunched beautifully in old-fashioned tin buckets along one wall, or the floor-to-ceiling display on the opposite wall of bright earthenware pots and exotic glass vases? Whatever the reason, Ben loved it. The florist was part of a neighborhood he’d carefully carved for himself out of the overwhelming variety available within the ten-block radius of his and Claire’s apartment. Ben’s world was composed of several good restaurants, a dependable dry cleaner and Vietnamese takeout, a twenty-four-hour pharmacy, two coffee shops, a tiny, ancient, used-book shop and a giant Barnes & Noble, and two gourmet grocery stores. If he didn’t have to go to work, Ben could imagine living out his life quite contentedly on this mile-long stretch.
Today he wanted something lush and elegant, a bouquet that would convey both congratulations and sincere, old-fashioned love. Claire was coming home. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, he thought, if they could both see this as a new beginning? Standing in the flower shop, looking around at the variety—you couldn’t go wrong, really, and anyway he’d ask Zoë, the owner, with whom he was on a first-name basis, for her opinion—he basked in the glow of possibility. He felt an odd, unfamiliar excitement, like the buzz of a new relationship. It was as if he and Claire had recently met and then she’d gone away on a long trip, and tonight she was coming back. Would he cook something, or should they go out? Maybe somewhere new, to surprise her—or perhaps it’d be best to stick with an old standard. He’d make several reservations, just to be sure.
He chose an eclectic mix of blue irises, yellow roses, white snapdragons, and purple tulips. “Gorgeous, perfect!” Zoë declared when he explained that Claire was coming home from her book tour. She wrapped the cut ends in a damp organic paper towel and then folded the flowers into a paper cone, as neatly as a midwife swaddling a baby. “Voilà,” she said, handing it to him with a flourish. “No woman would be able to resist.”
It was a sunny day, the first of the season warm enough for people to be out in shirtsleeves. And out they were, breathing in the spring air—parents with baby strollers, joggers in spandex, dogs. Leaving the flower shop Ben took off his jacket and slung it over one arm. He headed down Columbus Avenue, working his way toward Fairway at Seventy-fourth by zigzagging degrees—west on Eightieth to Amsterdam, south on Amsterdam to Seventy-ninth, west over to Broadway. At the entrance to the grocery store he grabbed a basket—carts were impossible on a Saturday; it’d take hours to get through—and roamed up and down the aisles