Lilacs

         Lilacs. Lilacs everywhere.
         I stood rooted to my spot, the mail still held in my hands, my purse still hanging slightly askew from my shoulder.
         I love lilacs. There had been several gigantic bushes in the backyard of my grandparents home. When they bloomed the scent would perfume the entire yard. My most favorite of flowers.
         And now they covered my desk, poured off my shelves and even filled the chairs. Bushels worth of lilacs. Hundreds. Their smell enveloped me.
         “Wow!” Susie said from behind me. “Lilacs.”
         “I love lilacs.”
         “Well, I hope so, you certainly got enough of them. Is there a note?”
         “What?”
         “A note, you know. Unless I’m mistaken, flowers don’t just decide to grow out of carpet and furniture. Someone brought them.”
         “Oh. I haven’t looked yet.” I made my way into what had once been my office but what now was a garden of memories. Why does smell do that more than anything else?
         “Check that big basket on your desk. It might be considered the center piece.”
         I found a note.
         “It doesn’t say who they are from.”
         “Well, what does it say?”
         “It says, ‘For Ms. Burke.’”
         Susie was incredulous. “That’s it? That’s it! That can’t be it.” She trundled up next to me and peered at the note. “That is terribly rude! No one can just drop a ton of flowers and then run without leaving a name.”
         “Maybe they’re from Benny. Maybe Benny will call later.” I ventured.
         Susie sent me a look. “Don’t be ridiculous. That asshole wouldn’t send flowers to his dying Grandmother.”
         “Well, someone will call. I mean, they have to. Like you said, no one just leaves a bunch of flowers without taking credit. I can’t think of how much this must have cost.”
         “Don’t be so unromantic Bernie. They must be from a secret admirer.”
         “What?”
         “You have a secret lover.” She pronounced it as lovah.
         “Now you’re the one being ridiculous. They’ll be from Benny, or from Dad or from, oh I don’t know, Jimmy. Someone I know and who does love me and they will call and admit it or I will find out through the natural coarse of time and the want to be recognized for this...this... heroism.” I reached out and ran my fingertips lightly over the tiny petals. “It has to be someone I know. They knew how much I love lilacs.”
         Susie made a humphing noise.
         The door jingled and she went out front. I set to work clearing a space on the desk for me to sit and work. Then I picked up the phone and called Benny.
         “Hey,” I said. “It’s me.”
         “Me? Who the hell is me?” He sounded annoyed.
         “Bernie.”
         “Oh, hey baby. What do you want?” I heard music and voices in the background.
         “Where are you at?”
         “Where you think I am? The club, Jess is wanting a band tonight and I’m doing auditions. So far they all suck, local talent. If you could call any of this crap talent. I keep telling Jess that if he wants the crowds and the name of a good place then he’s got to get a known name. You know, spend money to make money. Hey! Asshole, that’s house speakers, you break you buy.”
         I pulled the phone from my ear when his voice rose unexpectedly.
         “Anyway, whatever you want make it quick, ok babe? Kinda busy.”
         “Well, I was just calling to thank you.”
         “For what?”
         “The flowers. They are lovely.”
         “Flowers? Babe you know I don’t got the money to waste on that crap. What is it? Your birthday? You can’t expect me to remember all these dates. You like flowers so much go by the shop and look all you want, it’s not like they won’t die anyway.”
         “No, I meant the…”
         “Look Bernie baby, gotta go, next group is ready to rock and roll.” He hung up.
         I put the receiver down and considered calling Dad, but it was late enough that he’d already be gone to work. So I tried Jimmy but got his message service. Shrugging it off, I went through the mail, tossing the junk, filing the bills and enjoying the pleasant surprise of a letter from Mimi. Along with the latest gossip she had sent a list of titles from a friend of hers who was planning an auction. Then I went out front.
         “Hey Suze, good news.”
         “You found out who your admirer is?”
         “No, better. Mimi pulled a favor and gave me first pick on some good titles a friend of hers is getting rid of. Take a look at this list.” I handed it over.
         Her eyebrows raised as she scanned down the page. “This is amazing! Who is this guy? How did he get so many treasures?”
         “Apparently a recent heir who doesn’t have the same tastes as his predecessor. Bless him.”
         “So, which ones are we taking?”
         “All, if we can afford it. I’m hoping the guy doesn’t realize what a trove he’s got and we’ll get them for cheap. If not, there are so many first editions, first printings on the list that we would have to pick out whatever we could haggle him down to. Who was in here earlier?”
         “Mr. Vedier. He was hoping we had restocked lately. But he still picked out a couple. I swear, it seems sometimes we’d go out of business if it weren’t for him”
         “Him and Mr. Conway.”
         “Maybe if we took in some new inventory? Perhaps a few records? Or a small selection of antiques?”
         I glowered at her, feeling my hackles rise instinctively. I tried smoothing them down but it was hard. I still wasn’t over Susie actually trying to bring a shelf of new releases into ’Books of Time’ last month. She should know better than to already be sounding me out for something else.
         “Now don’t look at me like that Bernie. I am more than well aware of your aversion to progress, but variety is the spice of life and it would be nice to give our customers more of a selection.”
         “Susie, I will not crowd my books in beside rotting furniture, broken lamps and especially not by archaic records. This is a book store. Books stand on their own and I will not distract my patrons with other paraphernalia or other people who are junk hunting. You do know what I think of this and I wish you would stop trying to turn my shop into a…a…one stop shopping, outlet, retail store.”
         Susie threw her pudgy hands up and shook her head. ”You’ll think differently when you can no longer afford a home for all your darling books.”
         “And you’ve been saying the same thing for three years. I’ve done all right, no reason to go out of business now, especially with this payload that just got dumped into our laps. We’ll run our add in the paper again and mention a few of the better titles. At least once they get in. I’m going to call Mimi and thank her and get the number to the heir.” I headed back toward my office, then stopped “Hey Suze?”
         “Yes?”
         “Who dropped the flowers off?”
         “I don’t know dear.”
         “But weren’t you here when they arrived?”
         “No, I was just as surprised as you.”
         I stayed quiet a moment looking at Susie. She looked back at me, realization dawning in her eyes.
         “The door was locked when I got in this morning Bernie.”
         “I know, I locked up last night.”
         We were quiet for a minute longer.
         “Did you leave the shop for any reason this morning? Coffee run to Tony’s? Get the paper?”
         “No, I did both before I opened.”
         I licked my lips feeling a quick jolt up my spine. “Check the register would you Susie?” I began a rapid but thorough inventory of the shelves. Nothing was missing, not even one of the rarer volumes. It sounded like Susie was starting her tenth count of the accounts. I went to the door but couldn’t find any signs of forced entry. I checked both of our large front windows that looked out onto the street even though they didn’t open. Then I check the alarm system, and it showed no signs of tampering. I walked to the front counter and leaned my elbows on it and stared at the plaque hanging on the wall while I waited for Susie to finish her last count. I’d had it made the week before opening my shop, and it had hung in it’s place of honor since. One of many quotes said by John Ruskin, and perhaps my favorite.

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour,
and the books of all time.

         “Well, that’s it. All accounted for. Not one thing missing. Shall we call the police?”
         “And tell them what Suze? That we want them to find the phantom florist? Nothing was stolen, what complaint do we have?”
         “Someone broke into the shop!”
         “Well, whoever did it, did a good job of it. I didn’t see any signs of forced entry and the alarm is still ok. I don’t know Susie, there has to be an explanation. What kind of maniac would break into an antique book shop and leave a couple hundred lilacs for the proprietor? I don’t know, maybe someone borrowed my key and made a copy or something. So they could surprise me.”
         “Benny?” Susie sounded anything but convinced.
         “No, I don’t think it was Benny.”
         She nodded. Satisfied. “Called him did you?”
         “I’ll be in the office. Tell me when you want to go to lunch.”
         I spent the morning making calls. One to Mimi, which took most of an hour. She is a dear but loves to talk. The next to the heir, a Mr. John Donovan. He was pleasant, easy to talk with and had no idea of the value of the books he held. We came to a mutual agreement, me trying to ignore the twinge of guilt I felt at taking such advantage of the man’s ignorance.
         After hanging up I looked around at all the flowers and began wondering all over again who had left them. Perhaps Jimmy had gotten lucky at the tables. That thought didn’t make me happy. I would rather that he would simply stop gambling altogether. All the same, I tried his number again.
         “Hello?”
         “Hi Jimmy, it’s Bernice.”
         “Oh, hey. What’s up?”
         I took a deep breath, not quite knowing how to handle this. “Well, lilacs actually. A lot of them, here, in the shop and I’m just trying to figure out who sent them over.”
         “Lilacs? What? Wasn’t me. Don’t you know who it was?”
         “No, no idea. I was thinking it would be you or Dad.”
         “Well I doubt it was Dad. He don’t talk about it much, but business ain’t so good lately. And it wasn’t me. Are there a lot of them?”
         “Yes, hundredsI think.”
         “Wow.”
         There was a silence. I was aching to know if he’d been playing the casinos, but didn’t dare ask it.
         “So, was that all you wanted to know?”
         “Um, ya, pretty much. Hey, I don’t suppose you’ve talked to Mom lately, have you?”
         His voice took on the tone he used whenever she came up. “Ya, the other day. Wanted me to come over for supper tonight.”
         “Oh? Are you?”
“Sure, I thought I would. Haven’t really seen her in a while. Maybe it was that punk, Benny.”
         “No, I already asked him.”
         “No surprise there. When are you going to lose him anyway?”
         “I gotta go Jimmy. Take care ok?”
         “Alright. Love ya.”
         I smiled into the phone. “Love you to.”
         We hung up and I was left staring at all the flowers. I felt some relief that Jimmy had given me a good enough reason not to call Dad. He wasn’t one to spend money when he couldn’t afford it. I laughed to myself when I thought about it. Spend it? No, though wasting it was a whole other issue. But all that was for another time and place, when I was in the temper to work myself up into a stressful mood.
         Susie came to the door. “Going to lunch. Have some errands to run so I might be a little longer than usual. Do you mind if I take some of these?” She gestured to the lilacs. “I’m thinking of visiting Bo today and a little cheer would do him some good.”
         “Go right on ahead Suze. I‘ve got more than plenty. Give him my best, won‘t you?”
         She shifted her shoulder bag further up her arm and began gathering some of the flowers into manageable bundles. I got up and helped her, listening to her excited chatter. She was always a little nervous on the days she went to see her son.
         “He really will be pleased to see the flowers. I know that he’ll just love them Bernie. When he was a little boy he loved flowers and plants of just about any kind. That was before he got older and realized that other boys his age weren’t into that kind of thing, but I knew that he still loved them. And now that he is… well now he loves them all again. It is sweet really, his favorite part of the day is when he can take a walk in the gardens. They have really lovely gardens there, have I told you about them Bernie? But that’s right, I don’t have to. You’ve been there before to visit my Bo. My, but he did sometimes get into trouble when he was little. And all because of how interested he was in plants and such. You know he got poison ivy no less than three times? Three! And poison oak at least once. It was like to send me off. I just couldn’t believe how any boy could get it so many times. But I didn’t mind. Not really. You know that don’t you Bernie? I didn’t really mind.”
         She looked at me, suddenly anxious.
         I nodded. “I’m sure you didn’t Suze.”
         We were walking out through the shop to the door.
         “Well, anyway, he will like these flowers. I’ll have one of the nurses find a vase of some kind to put them in and then he’ll have his own garden inside. He’ll like that. I’m off then. Shouldn’t be gone more than a couple hours. You should close up and go out, it’s not healthy that you eat in all the time. Even for lunch!”
         “Make sure to say hello to him for me. Ok?”
         “Oh I will.” She hurried off down the street, her arms full of flowers.
         As I often did, I wondered if Bo had ever told her that he and I had dated. Somehow I doubted it, and he probably wouldn’t even remember now. Sometimes I felt guilty in not telling her, but it hadn’t been much. Just a few weeks while we were teens. He’d given me my first kiss. That always made me smile in remembering it.
         I’d been hoping and wanting a kiss for the longest time and he had somehow managed to make it perfect. It had been one of those great summer days slowly fading into a beautiful summer night. We had been both barefoot in t-shirts and shorts, sitting on the lawn in the back of Grandma’s house, with the smell of the lilacs in the air. Mom had given us some ice-cream sandwiches and we were trying to eat them before all the good, sticky cream melted down our hands. He’d finished his, looked over at me and laughed.
         “Hey Bernie. You got some on your face!” And he’d reached over wiped my cheek and then he had kissed me lightly on the mouth.
         It is amazing how time changes things.
         I rifled through the back closet in the shop and found various objects that would act as vases and decorated the store. There were still loads left over, so I began giving some out as a complimentary gifts to all the customers, whether they bought anything or not.
         Susie made it back in time to help me close up, then I loaded my car full of the rest of the flowers and drove home.

         My Grandfather was an alcoholic.
         Growing up, if we wanted to visit him, we had to get to his house before eleven in the morning if we wanted to catch him sober. All day he would sit in his chair by the window, smoking his chain of cigarettes and every so often dumping a bit of whiskey into his coffee cup. He kept his bottle down on the floor beside his chair and a little behind the end table he put his things on.
         When I was very young, I could remember when he would go out. He would put on some old cowboy shirt and older slacks and a red cowboy hat, but that stopped around my eleventh birthday. Then he never went out, except maybe to stroll around the yard. Then even that stopped. All his time he spent between his bed and his chair, wearing an old, ugly, purple bathrobe trimmed in yellow with matching knitted slippers. He sat most often with his legs crossed and the robe would fall back to display stick thin legs so white that his veins showed a loud purple and blue.
         He was near deaf. For him to hear any part of a conversation we had to shout, sometimes the same thing, several times over. Except each time we shouted what we wanted to say, it would keep getting shorter and shorter until it was only a few words.
         This was all I personally knew of him. Yet I always heard stories about him while I was growing up that was at total odds with the Grandpa I knew. He had been a cowboy, a soldier, a farmer and a preacher. So I once asked Mom when he had gone from what he was to what he had become. It had been a slow process, at first only a glass of wine during dinner, then on to a few beers after dinner and on until it was a bottle of liquor in week or less.
         I hated going over to visit him and always felt guilty about that. Walking into his house meant walking into perpetual second hand smoke, constant shouting and a bitter, stubborn, drunken Scotsman who was my mothers father. A man I was obligated to love. I still don’t know if I ever really came to love him or just convinced myself into it.

         “This place is dead. Dead, not dying but dead. Terminal.” Benny emptied the rest of his bottle and waved at Rachel for another. “Jess could triple his business if he listened to me but the man’s an idiot.”
         I glanced around the semi-filled room. “Oh, I don’t know Benny. It’s only a Wednesday and it doesn’t look to bad. Jess’ll do alright.”
         He snorted. “That’s what you think huh? Let me tell you, let me tell you. Hey! Rach! Where’s that beer? Let me tell you, this place is dead.”
         I nodded. “If you say Benny.”
         “You bet I say. And I’ll say it again, cause it’s true. Place is dead, belly up. I’d bet everything that the doors’ll be closed by next month. Just watch. Just wait.”
         I nibbled at my sandwich and idly watched the band do their sound checks.
         “Where is she? Can’t nothing get done around here if I don’t do it. Hey babe, go get me another one.”
         I got up and made my way to the bar. Jess was with another customer so I sat on one of the stools and studied all the paraphernalia that he had on the walls around the mirror.
         “Hey Bernie! Didn’t see you come in.”
         I smiled at him. “I think you were in the back. Could I get another one for Bennie?”
         He lost his smile. “Ya, alright.” He got the beer, popped the cap off for me but didn’t hand it over. His eyes were directed over my shoulder.
         I turned to look, and saw Bennie had made his way over to a table with three young women at it. He was smiling and waving his arms around in gestures to punctuate whatever he was saying.
         “Bernie?” Jess’s tone made me grit my teeth, knowing what was coming. I’d heard it all before but he never tired of trying. I faced him.
         “Bernie, you know that I love you. Love you like family, and you know that Deb feels the same. It’d be great to have you as my sister in name, but not worth you stickin with Bennie! The guys a loser!”
         “He’s your brother Jess. Be nice.”
         “Ya he’s my brother, and I am being nice in letting him pull a paycheck off of me. Lord knows he can’t hold down any other job. You’re smart, you’re pretty, you can even be funny when you want. What the hell are you doing with that jackass?”
         I took another look over my shoulder. He had the girls laughing now. Bennie could be very charming when he wanted to be. “Let me get that beer Jess, alright?”
         He handed it over, shaking his head. I made my way over to Bennie, handed him the bottle and slipped an arm around his waste. “Hey baby, miss me?” I grinned ferociously at the girls.
         They smiled back, exchanging looks.
         “Oh. There you are babe. Was wondering where you’d got off to. Where’d you go? The bathroom? Gone long enough.”
         The band was finally starting up. I tugged on his waist. “Come on Bennie, let’s dance.” He followed me easily, without protest. Most guys would hate to be the only couple on a dance floor on a weekday night. But Bennie could dance, he could dance real good.