A Bouquet of Dreams

Chapter 6

Don’t wait for someone to bring you flowers. Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul.

—Luther Burbank

Sophie leaned over to whisper to Claire. “You sure got Jim Turner riled up. I’ll bet you ten bucks that he’s leaving to call his girlfriend and ask if she’s dumping him.”

Claire watched Jim Turner march toward the back of the room to the exit. The thing was, she wasn’t trying to get him riled up. This was how she acted with customers. It hadn’t been an unfamiliar customer interaction for Claire, maybe more so in the last few months since she’d gotten “squirrelly.” She never started out with the intention to deliberately upset a customer. It wasn’t a habit. She just couldn’t seem to hold back on sharing her opinion, especially when it came to the possibilities of flowers.

Take yesterday. A customer had called in to say he needed a lavish flower arrangement that would convince his girlfriend to take him back. Still stinging after being chastised by MaryBeth for telling Mr. Wilson more than he wanted to hear about fiftieth wedding anniversaries, Claire knew not to ask any leading questions. Stick to the facts. Her job, MaryBeth reminded her, was to take down the flower order, get it done, and get it delivered. So she asked the customer how much he wanted to spend on the arrangement.

“How much should I spend?” he asked.

“If you really messed up, then I’d suggest a budget of one hundred dollars.”

The man cleared his throat. “What if I really, really, really messed up?”

Three reallys. She took in a deep breath and kept her voice as businesslike and nonjudgmental as possible. “Then I would suggest you triple your budget.”

“Okay.” Long pause. “And could you send an identical bouquet to my other girlfriend?”

Ick.Claire lost it. Her voice dripping with distaste, she gave this man a piece of her mind for cheating until he hung up on her.

MaryBeth came out of the workshop, shaking her head. “Sweet pea, how much of a sale did you just lose?”

Claire cleared her throat. “How much?”

“Dollars. How much?”

“Two sales, actually.” She swallowed. “Three hundred each.”

MaryBeth didn’t say anything, which was worse. She seemed more tired than angry. She just returned to the workshop, shaking her head.

So maybe Claire did have a habit of riling people up. For the first time, she got a glimmer of understanding for MaryBeth’s complaints, like she had peered into her own house from an outside window and discovered a new perspective on a familiar scene.

Even while Claire was back in high school, working at Rose’s Flower Shop, Rose would chide her now and then, reminding her that not every thought needed to be expressed. “Consider what a great forest is set on fire with a spark,” she would quote. “The tongue also is a fire.”

A man in the breakout circle cleared his throat, and Claire realized they were all waiting for someone to take charge. This she could do. “Surely you know about the meaning of flowers?” Her gaze swept the circle. Blank faces looked back at her. “I’ll tell you what. I’m going to give y’all a crash course, so don’t just listen up. Take notes.” She pointed to them. “This is how to take your flower skills to the next level.”

Nine eager faces leaned forward in chairs, hands poised with notepads and pens.

Claire enjoyed sharing her knowledge of flowers. “It all goes back to the Victorian era, when so much was forbidden. The culture put taboos on just about everything you could imagine. A woman’s exposed ankle could create a scandal. Any part of the human body could not be mentioned. It was considered improper. Why, even piano legs were covered in homes. So flowers ended up becoming a secret language to express emotions that couldn’t be said aloud. A fancy word for it is floriography.”

Sophie lifted her hand in the air, like an obedient child in a classroom. “Can you give us an example?”

“Yes, ma’am. Let’s think about a Victorian man who was interested in developing a friendship with a woman. He might send her a bouquet of periwinkles. If she replied with an iris, it meant she reciprocated his feelings. Let’s say things started to advance between these two. If he sent her a red rose, it was a way to tell her that he loved her. If she responded with a bouquet of red tulips, it meant she loved him too.”

“What happened next?”

“Between our two lovers? Well, let’s see.” Claire was on a roll. “There came a day when he saw her chatting with another man, so he sent her pink larkspurs, which represent fickleness. And that made her mad.”

“So what then?”

“So she sent back a geranium, which means stupidity. Turned out, she’d been talking to her brother. With that information, her lover felt terrible. So he sent her a purple hyacinth to let her know how sorry he felt.” She wagged her finger in the air. “But our girl wasn’t having it.”

“No!” Sophie clapped her hands on her cheeks. “She wouldn’t forgive him?”

Claire shook her head. “She was offended that he didn’t trust her, and a purple hyacinth wasn’t enough to soften her heart. So he sent her pink roses to beg her to believe him. Then primroses to say he couldn’t live without her. And finally, he sent her Cleome.” Claire’s voice dropped to a whisper. “He was asking her to elope with him.”

Sophie grabbed Claire’s arm. “Tell us! Did she say yes?”

“It took her a very long time to decide how she was going to respond. She wanted him to suffer. But at long last, she sent him a bundle of narcissus. It was her way of telling him that he was the only one she would ever love.”

Sophie sighed with happiness. A skeptic in the circle squinted at Claire. “And how is that supposed to take our business to the next level?”

Claire clapped her hands on her knees and leaned forward. “Flowers are not merely tokens of beauty. They have meaning and purpose. Start sharing your knowledge of the language of flowers with your customers. Trust me, your business will blossom.”

That, in a nutshell, was the bedrock for Claire’s future flower shop empire.