Fifteen Read online

  Flowers? Jane chewed the end of her pen and considered this idea. She could go to the flower shop, select some flowers, write a few words on a card, and ask the florist to deliver her gift for her. Stan would know she was sorry about his bad luck and they would not have to meet in case he didn’t want to see her. But flowers to a boy? Well, why not? Anyone in a hospital ought to enjoy receiving flowers. The more Jane considered sending flowers—masculine flowers, of course—to Stan, the better she liked the idea. It would be a friendly but not overeager thing to do. And she had resolved to act like Jane Purdy and nobody else, hadn’t she? No matter how Stan felt toward her, she was truly sorry to hear that he was in the hospital and she really did hope he would get well soon. Well, all right then. She would send Stan some flowers.

  But a hint of doubt still lingered in Jane’s mind, because she had never known a girl who liked a boy who had his appendix out, and so she had no precedent to follow. Jane did not like to ask her mother’s advice about anything, because she almost never liked the advice her mother gave, but this time she felt she had to consult someone.

  Jane found her mother reading a magazine in a deck chair in the backyard. Sir Puss, who always sought the most fragrant spot, was sunning himself in the middle of the herb garden. “Mom,” she said, eyeing with disapproval her mother’s bare legs, “do you think it would be all right if I sent Stan some flowers at the hospital?”

  Mrs. Purdy looked up from her magazine. “Why, I think it would be a very nice thing to do. The begonias are about gone, but there are some pretty chrysanthemums on the other side of the garage.”

  “I’ll go look at them,” said Jane noncommittally.

  “If you want to pick some I could drive you over to the hospital,” suggested Mrs. Purdy, “It’s too late for visiting hours, but you could leave them at the desk and a nurse would take them to Stan.”

  “Not right now,” murmured Jane vaguely, as she walked around the garage on the pretense of examining her father’s chrysanthemums. Imagine her mother thinking she could just go out in the yard and pick a bunch of flowers and take them to Stan at the hospital! If that wasn’t just like Mom. She probably expected her to wrap the homegrown flowers in a newspaper or in a piece of waxed paper from the roll in the kitchen and then walk into the lobby of Cronk Memorial Hospital with a bouquet that looked too loving-hands-at-home for words. The nurses would probably laugh at her. And what did Mom expect her to use for a card? A piece of notepaper? That was the trouble with Mom. She meant well, but she just didn’t understand.

  Jane lifted the head of one of her father’s chrysanthemums, a great spidery blossom in a delicate shade of pink. It was fragile and lovely, but honestly, what was Mom thinking of? Pink flowers for Stan! A boy should have masculine flowers, like geraniums or something. No, not geraniums. They were too common. But some kind of masculine flower.

  The conversation with her mother had cleared up one point for Jane, however. It was perfectly proper for a girl to send flowers to a boy who was in the hospital. Tomorrow, after school, she would walk confidently into De Luca’s Flower Shop next door to Nibley’s, select some masculine flowers, write her message on a proper florist’s card, and have Mr. De Luca deliver the bouquet to the Cronk Memorial Hospital. What could be simpler?

  Twenty-four hours later Jane, who had never before sent flowers to anyone, paused in front of De Luca’s Flower Shop. One window displayed a bouquet of white stock and chrysanthemums suitable for a wedding. The other was filled with philodendron, its split leaves the size of dinner plates, climbing a moss-covered stick. Confidently Jane opened the door and stepped into the cool shop.

  “May I help you?” asked Mr. De Luca, who was wearing a green smock.

  “Yes, please.” Jane glanced around at the displays of vases, figurines, and potted plants. “I want to send some flowers to someone in the hospital.”

  “We have some nice yellow roses,” said the florist, reaching into the refrigerator at the back of the shop and producing a container of roses. “We can give you a nice arrangement of a dozen and a half roses tied with yellow satin ribbon and set in a round glass bowl for five dollars.”

  Dubiously Jane looked at the roses. They were too pretty. It was difficult to believe that such perfect blooms had once been attached to bushes with roots growing in soil and manure. No, hothouse roses with a satin ribbon were not right for Stan, Jane decided. “I don’t think that is exactly what I had in mind,” she told the florist.

  “We have some nice chrysanthemums today,” suggested Mr. De Luca, pointing to a container of tousle-headed blooms, the kind Jane hoped to wear to a football game someday when she was in college.

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Jane.

  “Or how about these?” asked the florist, pointing to some spidery pink chrysanthemums.

  Jane felt that these blooms were not nearly as pretty as those in her own backyard. “Well…no, I guess not.” She was beginning to be embarrassed. By now Mr. De Luca must be impatient with her.

  “Are the flowers for a new mother?” asked the florist. “Perhaps if I had some idea…”

  “Oh, no,” said Jane hastily. “They are for a—a man.”

  “I see.” Mr. De Luca’s voice was grave, as if he realized the importance of the occasion. “A young man?”

  “Sort of. I wanted something more…well, something more masculine.”

  “Yes, of course,” agreed Mr. De Luca. “Let me see,” he muttered to himself, “masculine flowers.”

  Jane began to feel uncomfortable. She had not realized it would be so difficult to select flowers.

  “Would a nice dish garden do?” the florist asked helpfully. “We have some made up with ivy, variegated peperomia, and white-veined fittonia.”

  Jane, used to the lovely flowers her father grew in their yard, decided that plants without blossoms did not appeal to her. “No, I want to send flowers,” she insisted, wishing she was not so much trouble to wait on.

  “I have it!” exclaimed the florist. “How about glads?” He reached into the refrigerator and brought out a couple of stalks of pink gladiolas and held them up for Jane’s inspection. “Nothing sissy about glads, is there?”

  Jane scrutinized the blossoms on the long straight stems. They were pink, but not a delicate, feminine pink. They were more of a flaming sunset pink. Yes, Jane decided, gladiolas could probably be called masculine flowers.

  “With a few delphiniums and some ferns they make a nice arrangement,” said Mr. De Luca hopefully. “I can give you a dozen glads, half a dozen delphiniums, and throw in some ferns for three dollars and a half.”

  “All right. I’ll take them,” agreed Jane, glad to have made a decision at last. She dug into her coin purse for some of her babysitting money, which she handed across the counter. “And would you please send them to the Cronk Memorial Hospital?”

  “I’m sorry, miss,” said the florist. “We don’t deliver under five dollars.”

  “Oh.” Jane was taken aback by this news. Still, it was only about four blocks to the hospital, and she could easily walk over with the flowers and leave them at the information desk to be sent up to Stan’s room, the way her mother had suggested. The flowers would be wrapped in proper green florist’s paper and would not have the loving-hands-at-home look of flowers picked in the garden and wrapped in waxed paper, so she would have no reason to feel ashamed of them. “I’ll take them anyway,” said Jane. “I can carry them over to the hospital.”

  “You can be writing a card if you like,” suggested Mr. De Luca. “I’ll have the flowers ready for you in a few minutes.”

  Jane sat down at the desk in the corner of the shop and chose a plain white card. She wrote, “Dear Stan, I am sorry to hear about your operation. I hope you get well soon. Jane.” Then she carefully wrote Stanley Crandall on an envelope and was about to put the card inside when she realized her message was all wrong. It was too stiff and prim, too Miss Muffetish. She tore the card into bits and dropped them into the
wastebasket. On a second card she wrote, “Sorry to hear about your bad luck. Hope you get well soon. Jane.” That was better. It was friendly and casual and not so prim.

  “Here we are,” announced Mr. De Luca.

  Jane turned from the desk to look and it occurred to her that it was a good thing she was sitting down. Otherwise, the shock of seeing her flowers might have been too much for her. They were not discreetly wrapped in green paper, as she had anticipated. The flaming sunset gladiolas, the intense blue delphiniums, and the ferns were arranged in a foil-covered container ornamented with a blue ribbon. The stalks of flowers stuck out like the spikes on the crown of the Statue of Liberty, and the spaces between were filled with asparagus fern. The whole lurid thing was at least three feet across.

  “Made up real nice, didn’t it?” Mr. De Luca adjusted a fern and stood back to admire his work.

  “Uh…yes,” answered Jane. Now what was she going to do? She couldn’t tell the florist she had changed her mind after she had paid him and he had gone to all that work and looked so pleased with what he had done. For a frantic moment Jane considered rushing out of the shop, never to return. She couldn’t do that either, and she did not know what she could do except deliver the monstrous bouquet. Good old Jane Purdy, she thought grimly. She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a talent for it.

  Since she had made up her mind to be herself and since she was the kind of person who always did the wrong thing, Jane decided she might as well make the best of it and start out by delivering the flowers to Stan. That was exactly what she would do. She would see this thing through if it was the last thing she did. Jane felt a kind of triumph at this decision. What if she did run into someone who knew her? What if the kids from school did tease her? She would find an answer for them. A little confidence was all she needed.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Mr. De Luca. “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s very pretty,” answered Jane faintly. And it was pretty in a gaudy way. The blossoms were fresh, the blue bow was jaunty, the colors harmonized. It was just that it was so big. Jane told herself she might as well get started. She couldn’t just sit there all day. In spite of her decision she rose reluctantly and lifted her flowers from the counter. “Thank you for—for arranging the flowers,” she said as she peered through the foliage at Mr. De Luca.

  “Here, let me open the door for you,” said the florist. The bouquet was too wide for the door, so Jane walked sideways out of the shop.

  Jane had to pass Nibley’s on her way to Cronk Memorial Hospital and, as she had expected, a gang from Woodmont High was congregated in front of the entrance. A gang of boys, she gathered from their voices. And this time she was not going to let anybody tease her, she told herself severely. She would show them. She would remember she was Jane Purdy and no one else. Maybe she was doing the wrong thing, but that was the way she was.

  “Hey, look what’s coming!” she heard a boy’s voice exclaim, and there was a hoot of laughter from the crowd.

  “What is it?” asked another boy.

  “It has a skirt and legs and feet. It must be half human,” said another boy.

  “Yes, and the legs aren’t bad.” Jane recognized Buzz’s voice. She had tried to avoid Buzz since he had kissed her, but this time she didn’t care if he did see her. Ha, she’d show him. That wolf, junior grade.

  Jane lowered her bouquet and peeped over the blossoms. “Hi,” she said.

  Buzz grinned at her, that annoying grin he had flashed at her since the morning he had kissed her. Jane felt her face flush in spite of herself. “What do you think you’re doing, hiding behind that?” Buzz asked.

  “I’m taking this to Stan, at the hospital,” Jane said coolly. “Is that all right with you?”

  “You call that thing a bouquet?” asked Buzz.

  “No, I don’t call it a bouquet,” Jane answered pertly. “I call it a camouflage.”

  This time everyone laughed at Buzz. Score one for me, thought Jane. The door of Nibley’s opened and Marcy, followed by Greg, walked out.

  Jane did not wait for Marcy to make her feel like Miss Muffet. “Hi, Marcy,” she said. “Look at the flowers I’m taking to Stan. Did you ever see anything so enormous in all your life?”

  “Wow!” exclaimed Greg with a friendly laugh. “I’ll bet he’ll be surprised.”

  Jane giggled. “Not half as much as I was when I saw it.”

  “You mean you’re taking Stan flowers after he took someone else to the dance?” asked Marcy.

  Meow to you, too, Marcy, thought Jane, but she said, “Why not? He could hardly break a date he had made before he met me, could he?”

  Marcy looked surprised. “No, I suppose not,” she had to admit.

  Score two for me, thought Jane, and said sweetly, “Stan told me all about it.”

  “Oh,” said Marcy.

  That takes care of that, thought Jane. Good-bye, Miss Muffet. Good-bye forever. “And now if you gentlemen will step aside, I’ll be on my way,” she said to the crowd of boys.

  The boys parted, and Jane saw Julie and Liz approaching Nibley’s. “Jane!” cried Julie in horror. “Are you…you’re not—”

  “Yes,” answered Jane calmly, “I am.”

  “Why didn’t you have them delivered?” whispered Julie, when she had reached Jane’s side.

  “Because they won’t deliver anything under five dollars,” said Jane, “and being me, I didn’t find it out until it was too late.”

  “Don’t you want me to go with you?” asked Julie.

  “No, thank you, Julie,” answered Jane. Actually, Jane would have been grateful for her friend’s company, but she had made up her mind to see this thing through and she was going to see it through without any help from anyone. “I can peek through this, you know. I don’t need someone to guide me. But thanks anyway for the moral support.”

  “It’s a pretty bouquet,” said Julie, “even if it is sort of big.”

  “You know, you remind me of Birnam wood,” remarked Liz.

  “What’s Birnam wood?” Jane wanted to know.

  “Haven’t you read Macbeth?” Liz sounded superior.

  Jane stood her ground and refused to let Liz make her feel fluffy and not very bright. “No, I’ve only had As You Like It and Julius Caesar,” she answered, and it occurred to her that high school students, except intellectuals like Liz, always said they had had Shakespeare’s plays instead of saying they had studied them.

  “You’ll get Macbeth next year,” explained Greg, making Shakespeare sound like the measles. “This bunch of soldiers broke off a lot of boughs and branches and stuff in a place called Birnam wood and held them up in front of them for camouflage and crept up on Macbeth’s castle. It looked like the wood was advancing.”

  Jane laughed. “That’s me. I’m creeping up on Cronk Memorial Hospital.”

  “Say, I’ll walk over with you,” offered a boy in a second-year letterman’s sweater.

  “No, thank you,” said Jane, and smiled at the crowd. “Bye now.”

  “Funny, I’ve never noticed her before,” she heard the letterman remark as she left.

  A delicious feeling of satisfaction flowed through Jane as she proceeded behind her flowers toward the hospital. She had been herself, Jane Purdy, and no one else. It hadn’t been easy, but it had worked! People turned to stare at her, cars tooted at her, but Jane did not care. She only smiled and went on her way, past the shops, down a shaded street, and up the steps of the Cronk Memorial Hospital.

  Inside, everyone—doctors, nurses, visitors—stopped to stare at Jane and to smile as if highly amused. Her ordeal was nearly ended. Jane propelled her bouquet across the lobby to the information desk where, free of it at last, she set the bouquet on the counter. “I would like to leave this for Stanley Crandall,” she said.

  The attendant, obviously trying to suppress a smile, flipped through a file of cards. “I’m sorry, but Mr. Crandall was discharged this morning,” she inform
ed Jane.

  “So soon?” asked Jane in dismay.

  “Yes, we don’t keep them long nowadays,” explained the attendant, glancing at the card again. “You can reach him at seventeen Poppy Lane.”

  Jane’s confidence wavered. “Seventeen Poppy Lane,” she repeated blankly. That was only three blocks away. There was nothing to do now but go ahead and deliver the flowers to his house. If she didn’t, Stan was sure to hear about them from the crowd at school and wonder why he had never received them. Stifling a sudden desire to giggle, she picked up her flowers once more. Here goes Birnam wood again, she thought, and advanced behind her bouquet across the lobby, out of the hospital, and down the street toward Poppy Lane.

  When Jane reached Stan’s block, a stocky little girl about eight years old, who had been roller-skating aimlessly up and down the sidewalk, darted up to Jane. “What are you carrying that for?” she demanded.

  “Because,” answered Jane.

  “Because why?” persisted the girl.

  “I’m taking them to a sick friend,” Jane told the child.

  “My brother had his appendix out. He just came home from the hospital today,” the girl informed Jane.

  Jane lowered her bouquet for a better look at this child, who had brown pigtails, a dirty face, and Stan’s gray-green eyes.

  “Say!” exclaimed Stan’s little sister. “I’ll bet you’re taking all those flowers to my brother!”

  Jane felt she might as well admit it. “Yes,” she said. “I am.”

  The child’s face lit up with excitement. “Gee!” she exclaimed, and darted off, her skates going ching-chung against the cement. At number seventeen, she turned and clomped up the steps. “Hey, Mom,” she yelled, as she threw open the front door. “Come quick! Somebody’s bringing flowers to Stan, and it’s a girl!”