The Flower Shop: A Coming-Of-Age Novel

By Tanya Park

What if you are nineteen, agonizingly shy, and need to get a job?

Lacking a lighthouse in New Mexico, Gwendolyn Springfield applies for a job at the local flower shop and gets it. She tries to hide from the world, but the world, alas, comes to her.

Weddings, funerals, gatherings large and small; all of them parade through her door-and into her life. She sees-and hears-it all.

Meet Marjorie Wilkes, the Boss. She doesn't understand the "invisible cage" Gwen constantly finds herself in. Then there's Mrs. Hardcouer, the town troublemaker. All the townsfolk unload on Gwen, but to whom does she confide?

The Flower Shop unfolds like a Willa Cather Novel: slow, with the sweep of insight and understanding gathered up at the end. Through others, Gwen comes to know herself.

This novel is not recommended for girls under fifteen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 28, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469747705

Tanya Park

Tanya Park is a Southern California native. She describes herself as being "pathologically shy" when she was younger. Since the first rule of writing is, "write what you know," she created Gwendolyn Springfield, the heroine of this novel.

Book preview

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

About the Author

To my husband John Mayberry and

daughter Bailey Park Mayberry, with love.

Chapter 1

All babies secretly know they are thrown out of Heaven; that’s why they cry so much. For some, they get picked up and held and cuddled, and they start to forget the warm breath and the arms of God and what it felt like, and they transfer their love of God over to the love of their parents. They grow up and walk through the world straight and tall, never searching, never aching for what once was theirs but now is long gone, wondering where it all went. Wondering if they’ll ever know that feeling again.

Then there are the rest of us.

When I first started work at the flower shop, I thought I was screening myself from the world, using the flowers like a dancer’s fan: I could see out, but they couldn’t see in. I never thought I could see so much through the leaves of the fan, or that it would all come to me.

The door shooshed shut behind me.

No one was in right now, or maybe she was in back. I looked around me.

Rows on rows of flowers, all stuck behind glass cases, waiting their turn. Some out front to catch your eye, or maybe to give the people something to touch—I couldn’t guess.

I closed my eyes and breathed deep. There was a rich, airy smell, brought out by the cold of the shop—so light you’d think that air would just naturally smell that way if people weren’t around.

It wasn’t the kind of air hawks can see—it wasn’t desert air. Maybe it was what a forest smelled like. I’d never been to one so I couldn’t say for sure, but somehow it didn’t seem right; this wasn’t rainy or warm air, this was delicate air. The kind that holds butterflies up in it.

Just then I heard something slam in front of me and opened my eyes to see a woman just as she lays eyes on me.

Oh, she said, kind of startled. She was standing there aways behind the counter with something that looked like a bunch of sad celery sticks in her hands. I’m sorry, dear. Were you standing there long? She set the droopy things down and wiped her hands on her dress.

No, I wasn’t. I just come in.

It wasn’t true—I must have been there five minutes but I didn’t mind; I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot. I saw your sign out front. I stayed where I was because I could see she was coming around to me.

The Help Wanted sign? You’re looking for work?

She was polite about it, but I could tell I wasn’t what she expected. She reached me and stood with her hands folded in front of her.

I could see they were dyed almost completely green in the cracks and folds, and I bet she never got the green out of her fingernails. I wondered why she didn’t just wear polish. For some reason I kind of admired her for that.

Yes, Ma’am. I started to talk some more, but changed my mind.

Do you know anything about flowers? Have you ever worked with them before?

I had to shake my head. No, but I like them, I said. That wasn’t right. I tried again. I think I’d like working with them. I learn fast, and I could be of a lot of help around here. I shut up again.

She looked like she was getting ready to shake her head no, when she took another look at me.

Do I know you? she asked me. Are you from around here?

It was a silly question; everybody was from around here. But I knew what she was getting at.

I’m Gwen Springfield. You may have known my mother—Mrs. Helen Springfield? I saw a light go on in the attic.

Of course! Helen! You must be her daughter. Why, I haven’t seen either of you in ages! Last time I did, you were just a little girl.

I didn’t think she’d remember me. I’ve known Mrs. Wilkes all my life; I grew up in this town seeing her about. But our families weren’t close, and after her husband died, I didn’t expect to hear much from her. That’s why I was surprised she had opened this flower shop last year.

How old are you now, dear? she was squinting her eyes, trying to get a fix on me. Her glasses were hanging around her neck.

Nineteen, I said, and I was, too, even though I knew I didn’t look it. She blinked at me.

Nineteen, she said. I could see she was trying to wrap her mind around all those years passing. Tell me—how is your mother?

She’s fine.

Oh, said Mrs. Wilkes. Well. Does she still teach at the elementary?

No, Ma’am. She moved away to teach at the state college. She was just waiting for me to grow up. She nodded at that.

And your father…? she tilted her head sideways as if the words had to trail out of her mouth like a stream of bubbles.

He’s around. I didn’t want to say anymore.

She thought about that and let it go.

So. You’re all alone, dear.

I’m not alone. I have my cat.

She thought about that.

Listen. Gwendolyn. I need someone who knows flowers. Someone who really understands the business. She looked at me and tried again.

You don’t just cut them and stuff them into a vase; there’s an art to it. Most people don’t know that.

I could tell by the way she said art that she felt most people didn’t appreciate that fact enough about her and her business.

I just nodded, staring at my shoes. I was noticing a little hole starting to fray just where my right big toenail was trying to push its way out. The toes always go first, then the shoelaces. Why is that?

I heard her sigh.

Look, you can start by sweeping the floors. It’s not much, but it will be something to do. But if someone with more experience comes in, I’m afraid I’ll have to give them the job. I nodded.

All right? I could sort of sense her bending down and trying to look through my hair.

That’s fine by me, I said. She asked me if I could start that day, and I did.

It was wonderful. It wasn’t just that it was cool inside and the air always smelled so fresh; it was alive! I felt like there was an audience watching me for whatever I chose to do.

So I swept the floors that day and the day after, and I kept my head down and always asked for more work to do, and she always found it for me. After she showed me where to stash my purse—I wasn’t to leave any personal items lying around—I got started.

Mrs. Wilkes didn’t say anything about the purse, but I could see she looked first at me, then the purse, sizing the two of us up. I once had a friend who said he’d actually done an informal study on it—down at the mall I think—and he swore that the smallest women carried the biggest purses, and the big fat women carried these itty-bitty things.

It never makes me feel good when I fit into someone else’s category—it seems too unfriendly; it doesn’t take into account all the differences among people—but if his theory wasn’t true for others it held for me.

I stuffed it under the counter and looked around.

There was a lot of work to do. I didn’t think it’d be an easy job, but I didn’t think there’d be so much to it either—not a lot of work, actually, it’s just that it never stops.

After sweeping, there were water buckets to empty and fill again, but you couldn’t just turn the hose on and leave it at that. No, it had to be special water and that was just the first of it I learned from her.

You had to dump it out and scrub it out with soap and cleaners to get the slime out, then rinse it to get the soap out, then fill it again and put particular chemicals in to keep the flowers fresh.

Mrs. Wilkes pulled a face when I told her about putting things like aspirin and sugar into the water of the few flowers I ever got in my life; she said it wasn’t wrong, really, and it might work up to a point, but professionally speaking it was a terrible thing to do to the blooms.

That’s what she called them. Or blossoms. One of the first things I learned whenever I started work at a new place is that they have their own words for things; as if everyday words aren’t good enough.

So they weren’t flowers, never flowers. They were blossoms or blooms. I called them that to her face, but secretly I thought of them as flowers.

So I came in the next day and the day after that, and I didn’t leave until she told me to go home, and I didn’t go home until she did, and I think after a while she got so used to me she started to wonder what she ever did without me. I still wasn’t allowed to handle the customers, but I didn’t want to anyway; I never was much of a people person and I didn’t come here to work with people, I came here to work with the blooms, so it suited me just fine that every time the bell rang she came swishing out from the back to greet the new arrival.

After that first time with me, when she didn’t even know I was there, she had me put bells on the door. That way she’d know when someone came in. So I hung up a string of bells and then I didn’t have to go back and get her every time the door swung open.

And her customers came all right. Her shop was a success. But from what I heard when I was out front with my head bent down and my hands wrapped around a broom handle, they weren’t the kind of customers she counted on.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like the people themselves. Most of them were friends of hers who went way back. I just don’t think she counted on the difference between them being the kind of people they were as friends and the kind they were as customers.

She and I grew up in this town knowing most of them on a first name basis and those we didn’t know we recognized by face. But in the years since, our town kind of grew from middle-of-nowhere to edge-of-somewhere, and while that was good for business, we lost track of who was who.

When she started this business, maybe she knew what she was doing or maybe she guessed, but she got a pretty steady stream of regulars and strangers alike, and as it turned out, the strangers were the better end of it.

Once we got a man who accidentally locked his wife out of their hotel room, and since he was taking a shower when she was banging on the door, he didn’t hear her for some time and she was mad as hell when he did get to her.

I asked him why she didn’t just go to the owner and he said it was late and she was in her nightgown and that kind of made a whole picture pop up in my head.