But let's get specific.
Let's draw blood.
The history of innocence would be incomplete without this.
Christmas Eve, the final mad dash of the holiday,
and we could count on some of our favorites showing up.
These were men racing in from a quick stop at Frank Murphy's
carrying shiny black boxes with big pink bows, the Murphy's
insignia, as ours was a silky powder pink box with the firm's
name cast across it in gold script like a line
from the Declaration of Independence.
These last customers of the holiday
were classicists, men who bought cashmere cardigans
at Murphy's and roses and chocolates from us.
They could leave their shopping to the last minute
because their wives had already bought
everything for the holiday.
All these husbands had to do, really,
was make a lavish gesture for the wives.
That we awaited them at the big marble tables
with our pale green order books and our utter exhaustion.
Latecomers, they were the easy ones--
they'd take anything.
And in he walked, 15 minutes before closing,
an officer of the Navy, shoulders
squared, commanding face, already slightly impatient.
I'd never seen him before, and being in uniform,
he was certainly from out of town,
but he headed straight for our table
as if he knew his way around, a man with a mission,
my kind of customer.
I dipped around the table and made for him
before anyone else could approach him.
I didn't often get a chance like this.
The clerks didn't work on commission,
but none of the big customers, the happy spenders, came to me.
If Ollie and Mrs. Butler were busy,
their good customers waited for them,
wandering around, idly turning over Hummel figurines
to check the prices, inspecting the candy counter,
putting their faces down to a gardenia's overpowering matte
petals.
Then Ollie or Mrs. B would rush over and claim them,
apologizing for the wait.
Sometimes if a regular customer was in a big hurry,
he might turn to me standing at the table in my blue and white
serge convent school uniform and say
without disguising his disappointment,
"I suppose you could take care of this."
But for the most part, I spent my time on the one poinsettia
cash and carry crowd who streamed anonymously
in and out during the holiday.
My father had told me, "treat everyone the same."
He knew the arch ways of Ollie and Mrs. Butler,
and he didn't try to change them.
Maybe he didn't want to.
The graciously run households of Crocus Hill and Summit Avenue
were our essential clientele.
I adopted Ollie's hauteur, taking
a mean-spirited satisfaction and grabbing the first plant
I saw on the floor, when the low end
amateurs wheedled around asking me to pick the very best one.
In the lunchroom at coffee break,
we disposed of this entreaty with withering contempt.
"Mrs. B, would you be sure to pick out
the very best donut for me over there in that box Vic
brought in?"
And Mrs. Butler would pantomime an exaggerated inspection
of the donuts in the half sheet bakery box on the sink counter.
She paused, shook her head, gazed intently,
an expert's discerning frown on her brow
as her hand dipped and rose, dipped
and rose over the glazed zeros before her until finally,
finally, "ah!
Here it is," she cried, lifting the very best one aloft.
No such fool, this Navy officer who strode toward me now.
I could see that.
He was handsome in a craggy, can hold his alcohol kind of way,
modern, not a man with the smooth matinee
idol looks of my earnest father, who belonged,
I knew, to another age.
This man had been around, you felt,
had seen the world, been marked.
It was part of his handsomeness.
He came forward resolutely, a man with better things
to do with this time, ready to hand over his gift list,
ready to trust me with the details.
I approached him without my order pad.
Ollie and Mrs. Butler greeted their good customers
like friends for whom a purchase was somehow
a given and yet also secondary.
"How may I help you?"
Another Ollie touch.
Don't say, "May I help you?"
Say, "How may I help you?"
"I'm looking for a lot of roses," he said.
I didn't blink.
"Red?"
I asked professionally.
He looked at me, took me in for the first time, I think,
as if I might be a tricky one, but this passed instantly.
He smiled, a surprise, and a charm, that radiant
smile coming from that stern face.
"Yes," he said, right into my eyes.
"Red, for Christmas."
We had a small laugh over this meeting of minds.
At this season, what other color could a rose be, after all?
I led him to the display cooler, which wasn't the real cooler--
that was in the basement--
but the one meant to tempt people with possibilities.
Slim pickings there.
A bucket of long stemmed red roses
stood at attention, two dozen.
There wasn't much else left in the cooler--
a few buckets of lemon leaf and winter greens, holly and cedar,
with several bunches of chartreuse cymbidium
orchids slashed at the throat with maroon
that would require the rare customer with daring taste.
"Those," he said pointing to the roses with the resolve
I expected of him.
Then, he surprised me again.
"Any more?" he asked.
I could look downstairs.
"Do that," he said.
But downstairs, the designers wouldn't
let me touch what was left in the big walk-in cooler.
"There are still funerals to think of,"
they said, with the annoyance of people
who have to remain at their posts
no matter what crazy illusion the rest of the world
is off to.
Christmas or no Christmas, you have
to keep some stock back for death, our bread and butter.
"And you can forget about the greenhouse,"
they said, as I went to the telephone.
"They've been out since yesterday."