Blooming All Over

Praise for Blooming All Over:

Even the most goyische reader will get a kick out of Arnold’s novel… As simple and scrumptious as one of Bloom’s Heat-’N’-Eat entrees. Memorable!

— Publishers Weekly

"Blooming All Over is a story that will stay with you long after you read it… This book will be loved by everyone, no matter what kind of food you like."

— Romance Reviews Today

Blooming

All

Over

Judith

Arnold

Story Plant Books by Judith Arnold

Love in Bloom’s

Full Bloom

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

The Story Plant

Studio Digital CT, LLC

PO Box 4331

Stamford, CT 06907

Copyright © 2004 by Judith Arnold

Story Plant hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-61188-296-4

Fiction Studio Books E-book ISBN-13: 978-1-945839-47-4

Visit our website at www.TheStoryPlant.com

All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by US Copyright Law.

For information, address The Story Plant.

First Story Plant printing: June 2020

Printed in the United States of America

To my boys,

Ted, Fred, and Greg

with love

The Bloom’s Bulletin

Written and edited by

Susie Bloom

A fellow addicted to knishes

Found at Bloom’s, all the food was delicious.

He bought bagels, a blintz,

And some stuffed cabbage, since

Bloom’s cuisine fulfills all of his wishes!

Welcome to the May 14th edition of the Bloom’s Bulletin, which is jam-packed with tasty tidbits, recipes and—of course!—news about sales and specials throughout the store. Bloom’s has become the most famous kosher-style food emporium not just on Manhattan’s Upper West Side but all over the world by fulfilling our customers’ wishes.

All over the world? Yes, indeed. Jay Bloom is the director of Bloom’s Internet and Mail-Order Services, which distributes Bloom’s Seder-In-A-Box, a package containing matzo, gefilte fish, horseradish, charoseth, chicken soup with matzo balls, salt, and Haggadahs—just add wine and serve. According to Jay, by mid-April, the store had filled Seder-In-A-Box orders from thirty-seven states and fifteen foreign countries, among them Finland, Japan, South Africa, New Zealand, Bolivia and…are you ready?…the research station at the South Pole! Yes, Bloom’s has extended its reach into Antarctica. When an order arrived from the McMurdo Station on Ross Island, Bloom’s was able to get four Seder-In-A-Boxes prepared and ready for delivery by the New York Air National Guard, which serves the U.S. Antarctic Program. The Seders arrived in time for the holiday, along with two complimentary bottles of Passover wine, Bloom’s gift to the intrepid researchers who live and work at the South Pole. Good yontif!

Feeling bleu?

French cheeses are specially priced all this week at Bloom’s. Camembert, Port Salut, Brie, Roquefort—come on in, buy some cheese and keep the change!

Did you know…

The word schmaltzy, which is used to describe music or a story that’s overly sentimental, is derived from the Yiddish word schmaltz, which means congealed fat. In Ida Bloom’s day, chicken schmaltz spread on a slice of dark pumpernickel was considered a gourmet treat. Now, the mere thought of it is enough to give most people heartburn. If you’re in the mood for schmaltz, listening to Rachmaninoff is a whole lot healthier.

Employee Profile:

Who’s that tall-blond-and-handsome fellow standing behind the bagel counter? None other than Casey Gordon, co-manager of the bagels department. Casey studied at the Culinary Institute of America before transferring to St. John’s University, where he earned a degree in English. Ask nicely, and he might just recite a little Shakespeare while he counts a dozen sesame seed bagels into a bag for you.

Since joining the Bloom’s staff three years ago, Casey has put his culinary school experience to work by designing a variety of new flavors of bagels. Thanks to him, Bloom’s sells pesto bagels, cranberry bagels, apple-cinnamon bagels, and sour-yogurt bagels along with the standard plain, egg, garlic and poppy-seed varieties. Some flavors rotate in and out, Casey says. Some are interesting experiments that just don’t click. Others become very popular, so we make them a permanent addition to our inventory. Among those that didn’t click he mentioned curry bagels and banana cream bagels. His most recent surprise hit? Dill pickle bagels, which customers seem to love.

When he’s not dreaming up sensational new bagel flavors, Casey says he likes to play basketball, analyze movies, and spend time with his girlfriend. What’s her favorite kind of bagel? Egg, Casey reports. But she’s adventurous. She’ll try anything.

Wise Words from Bloom’s founder Ida Bloom: There’s a reason for everything, but some reasons are stupid.

On sale this week: pita crisps, all varieties of blintzes, smoked sable and more. Turn the page for details!

Chapter One

Susie could have been using this time to contemplate the course of her life. Instead, she was driving a truck—which was a lot more fun.

It wasn’t so much a truck as a van on steroids. The rear seats had been removed, leaving a vast cargo space in the back. The front seat was elevated, the windshield broad, and the steering wheel as big as a bicycle tire. She and her sister had rented the van from a downtown outfit called Truck-A-Buck, which specialized in cheap rates and vehicles that looked as if they kissed bumpers with slutty abandon. Among the van’s special features were an ashtray crammed with chewing gum wrappers, a crack in the passenger’s side mirror, mysterious streaks of dark red paint—or maybe it was blood—staining the driver’s side door, and an aroma of gasoline with notes of Lysol and barbecue sauce permeating the interior.

Susie loved the idea that she, a member of the Bloom family, a poet, a Bennington College alumna, the Bloom’s newsletter writer/editor—a position which came with the fancy title of creative director—and a sometime pizzeria waitress, was driving a truck. It felt right.

It felt more right than mentally rehashing the conversation she’d had last night with Casey, when he’d asked her to move in with him.

Casey was wonderful, she adored him, he was without a doubt the sweetest, hottest, smartest guy she’d ever hooked up with. But merely thinking about living with him caused her soul to break out in hives. So she decided not to think about it. She thought instead about inching her way through the ooze of traffic on the West Side Highway, wishing she were actually driving across the North American continent behind the wheel of an eighteen-wheeler packed with freight of incalculable value—gold ingots or high-tech machines or cartons of Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate.

It would be a lot easier to imagine if Grandma Ida weren’t riding shotgun beside her.

You’re driving too fast, Grandma Ida said. She sat strapped into her seat, her arthritic hands clenched in her lap, her hair so black it looked like a blob of licorice glued to her skull. Someone ought to talk to her about her stylist’s lack of skill with hair color. Someone had talked to her about it: Susie and her sister Julia had both mentioned to their grandmother that perhaps a new coiffure was in order, one that matched her face. Grandma Ida was eighty-nine years old, and for eighty-nine she looked amazingly good. But even if her face hadn’t been laced with lines, her eyes slightly faded and the skin of her neck pleated like an accordion, the ink-jet hair wouldn’t work. She needed a softer style with variations in the color, some silver mixed in, some gray. Something that looked as if it might have actually sprouted from a human scalp.

Grandma Ida should have gone in the car with Sondra, Julia, and Joffe. All four of them could have fit comfortably in the Toyota Camry Joffe had borrowed from his brother, and Susie could have driven the van up to Cornell University solo. She could have blasted Ben Harper and Ani DiFranco through the van’s admittedly feeble-looking speakers and sung along at vocal-cord-popping volume.

Of all the configurations the family might have sorted themselves into for their journey, assigning Grandma Ida to the van rather than the car had made the least sense. Climbing into the high-riding vehicle had been as big a challenge for her as scaling Everest might be for an aging Sherpa. The seats were stiff and unforgiving, and the smell could upset an elderly woman’s delicate constitution. But Susie’s mother had wanted to ride in the car so she could discuss Julia and Joffe’s wedding plans during the trip, and everyone except for Susie felt Susie should not have to make the four-hour drive to Ithaca alone.

For a person who shared a tiny one-bedroom walk-up with two other women, four hours alone would be a luxury. Of course, if Susie moved in with Casey, she wouldn’t have to share the tiny one-bedroom walk-up with Anna and Caitlin anymore.

No. She wasn’t moving in with Casey. He lived in Queens, for God’s sake.

You’re driving too fast, Grandma Ida said again.

I’m driving three miles an hour, Susie retorted. It’s impossible to drive too fast on the West Side Highway.

You’re going faster than three miles an hour. You think I can’t tell? You think I don’t know from cars?

Yes, Susie almost answered. This is a van, not a car.

It’s too big. Who needs all this room?

Adam does. He’s graduating from college. He’s got four years’ worth of junk he has to move out of his dorm room.

Junk? You rented this van so he can move junk?

He doesn’t think it’s junk, Susie explained.

What is he, an idiot? All that money for a fancy-schmancy education, and he wants to move junk, Grandma Ida muttered. Where is he going to put the junk?

In Mom’s apartment. And then he’ll take it with him when he leaves for graduate school in September.

Graduate school. Grandma Ida sniffed disdainfully. Where’s he going again? That place with the chickens?

Purdue, Susie told her. And it has nothing to do with chickens. It isn’t even spelled the way the chicken company spells it.

Purdue. Grandma Ida sniffed again. I never heard from Purdue. It’s out in the middle of nowhere, right?

Indiana.

That’s what I thought. Who needs graduate school, anyway? I never went to college, and I made a life for myself. My Isaac, he never even finished high school, but he knew how to sell knishes. You don’t need graduate school with Indians to know how to sell knishes.

True—and if Adam wanted to sell knishes, he wouldn’t have applied to graduate school, Susie pointed out. He doesn’t want to sell knishes. He wants to get a Ph.D. in mathematics and become a college professor.

He should consider sales. You and Julia work at the store. It wouldn’t kill Adam to work at the store, too.

Julia’s the president of the store. I’m only a part-time consultant. Julia had given Susie that fancy title—creative director—in an effort to entice her into a full-time job with the family enterprise. But she refused to give up her waitressing at Nico’s. Keeping the waitressing job reminded her of her roots—or, more accurately, helped her to escape her roots.

I don’t know why you want to sell food downtown and not in your own family’s store, Grandma Ida muttered.

Susie sighed. If she was going to have to listen to the old lady rant all the way to Cornell, it was going to be a very long drive.

As for Adam, Grandma Ida continued, clearly warming up, Isaac and I never got Ph.D.’s. We never even got Ph.A’s or Ph.B’s. And we built the biggest delicatessen in the world.

Susie knew she ought to keep her mouth shut, just nod and smile and let Grandma Ida run at the mouth. But she couldn’t help herself. Bloom’s is not the biggest deli in the world.

The biggest good deli. We started with my parents’ push cart—they were selling knishes from the cart, in all kinds of weather, you shouldn’t know from standing in the rain on a cold day in November and trying to sell knishes…

Susie braced herself for the entire up-by-the-bootstraps saga. She’d heard it enough times to be able to recite it verbatim. Her lips moved, shaping Grandma Ida’s words as the older woman spoke them.

Just a cart on Upper Broadway, that was all it was until Isaac and I moved the store indoors. And it grew, and we expanded, first to the storefront on one side of us, then to the storefront on the other side, until we took up the whole block. I did the books, but your grandfather— she wagged her index finger at Susie for emphasis —he knew how to sell. Borscht, gefilte fish, bagels, stuffed derma—if it was edible, he could sell it. Chicken soup. I didn’t think we’d do so well with the chicken soup, but people got sick, they came into Bloom’s and Isaac would sell them chicken soup. And before you know it, they’d be feeling better.

Right, Susie said wearily.

Adam wants to be a doctor? Your grandfather Isaac was a doctor without college. People came in sick, he sold them chicken soup and they went home and got well. Without college he did this. Who could afford college? We were too busy working.

I know.

So, your brother is going to the chicken school out there with the Indians to get a doctor degree, and your sister is marrying that reporter. And what are you doing with your life, Susie?

Right now, what I’m doing with my life is driving you to Cornell so we can see Adam graduate. And I’m listening to you—for which I deserve a medal.

You’re a waitress. All that education, and you work as a waitress.

I work for Bloom’s, Grandma. You know that.

Once a week.

"More than once a week. I write and edit the Bloom’s Bulletin. That takes a lot of time."

It’s an advertising circular.

It’s a newsletter with ads mixed in. Julia hired me to write it because I’m a good writer. And I redesigned the store windows, too, and spruced up the interior. And she wasn’t going to do a damned thing more for the store. Enough was enough.

From the time she was old enough to daydream about what she wanted to be when she grew up, she’d resisted working at Bloom’s. Her father had been the president of the company until his death two years ago, and the store had been the pulsing heart of his existence. Her mother had worked side by side with him, and now she was working side by side with Julia, whom Grandma Ida had named president of the company last year. Her father’s brother, Uncle Jay, ran the store’s on-line business and its mail-order program. Enough Blooms had been sucked into the place. Susie preferred to live her own life, a life that had nothing to do with borscht, gefilte fish, bagels, stuffed derma or any of the hundreds of other items that filled Bloom’s shelves: breads, gourmet coffees, overpriced olive oil, cookies and kugel, cheese and chopped liver, and a spectacular array of kitchen tchochkes—potato peelers, garlic presses, melon ballers, pepper mills, vegetable steamers and egg timers.

She just wanted to live downtown, go to poetry slams, stay up late drinking wine, have mind-blowing sex when the opportunity arose—and not make a capital-C Commitment, or do capital-S Something with her life. She just wanted to be herself and enjoy each day. Was that so much to ask for?

Apparently, if you were a Bloom, it was.

o

Adam felt Tash stir against him. You’re not asleep? she asked.

No.

You always fall asleep after.

No, I don’t. He knew he sounded gruff, but now wasn’t a good time for her to complain about their sex life. As far as he knew, that sex life was about to end. Sex, pot, music, freedom—every fun activity he’d indulged in over the past four years would become taboo starting tomorrow. College graduation was supposed to be a joyous event, but in his case, graduation doomed him to spend the next three muggy, dreary summer months in his mother’s Upper West Side apartment, where he was sure that bringing a woman to his room and firing up even the skinniest little joint would create a family crisis so huge, World War II would seem like a minor tiff in comparison.

He loved his family. But he loved them a hell of a lot more when they were two hundred miles away.

Thinking about tomorrow? Tash asked.

Thinking about the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow was commencement. He’d don his cap and gown, pose for photos, grab his diploma, load up the van Susie and Julia had rented and travel back to New York City. The day after tomorrow he’d wake up in his mother’s apartment.

Shit.

It won’t be so bad, Tash assured him. She stretched, and he tried not to stare at her body. She wasn’t fat, just solid, with lots of firm curves and dimpled knees. She ate a lot and didn’t care what she weighed.

That was what he liked best about her: she didn’t care. She didn’t care about impressing people. She didn’t care about high fashion. She didn’t care about being graceful or elegant or loved, or any of the things every other girl he knew cared about. She did care about the decimation of old-growth forests and the exploitation of Third-World laborers. She could get a little sanctimonious when she launched into one of her diatribes about eight-year-olds stitching soccer balls in Bangladesh for ten cents a day—or maybe it was ten-year-olds stitching soccer balls in Bangladesh for eight cents a day. Adam listened to her harangues, but they tended to bleed together in his mind.

So she was passionate about that stuff. Why shouldn’t she be? Her mother worked for Planned Parenthood and her father published a socialist newspaper, and they’d named her Natasha. She’d told Adam how they used to sing her to sleep with Woody Guthrie and early U-2 songs and explicate her bedtime stories for their political subtexts. ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ is about the exploitation of the proletariat, her father would instruct her. The wolf represents capitalism. When he devours her grandmother, it’s like management devouring the laborers.

Adam didn’t agree with her about everything. He didn’t disagree with her about everything, either. Mostly he let her rant and then had sex with her. And he didn’t always fall asleep after. Usually, but not always.

In a matter of hours, his mother, his grandmother, his sisters and his future brother-in-law were going to drive onto the Cornell campus and bring his sex life to a crashing halt. He’d have one more night with Tash, and then he’d graduate and return to New York City with them.

Shit.

I’m going to miss you, he confessed, tangling his fingers into the frizzy brown curls that churned around Tash’s face.

It’s just for the summer. In September, you’ll go to Purdue, and I’ll find meaningful work in Indiana, and we’ll be together again.

What kind of meaningful work? They don’t have old-growth forests in Indiana, do they?

I’ll find something, Tash promised. I’m sure there are downtrodden people in Indiana. They live in Indiana, after all. By definition they must be downtrodden.

He wasn’t sure that made sense, but he let it go.

So, is your mother going to be bringing bags of bagels with her? she asked.

He’d told Tash about Bloom’s. Growing up in Seattle, she’d visited New York City once, but she’d never heard of Bloom’s until Adam had mentioned it to her. He found this bizarre. Everyone in the world had heard of Bloom’s. Tourists from Belgium, Brunei and Botswana visited the store and posed for photos outside its main entrance, holding kosher salamis. People from Yonkers and Massapequa and Bayonne showed up at the store at seven a.m. Sunday morning to shop for the brunch they’d be eating later that same day. A few years ago, a New York City guidebook had labeled Bloom’s the eighth wonder of the world, and the wonder with the most cholesterol.

But like so much else, Tash didn’t care about cholesterol or wonders of the world. And she sure didn’t care about kosher salami. She was a vegetarian—almost a vegan, but she couldn’t bring herself to give up cheese omelets, a fact that caused her some remorse but not enough to switch to granola for breakfast. Adam had described to her the variety of cheeses and meats sold at the deli, the mile-high corned-beef sandwiches, the smoked fish, the stuffed cabbage. I don’t think I’ll ever set foot in there, she’d said.

Adam gazed at her now. She was lying on her back, her head resting on his shoulder and her voluptuous breasts flattened against her chest like mounds of dough. Her skin was pale, her fingernails short, her nose a pudgy button at the center of her face. She wasn’t what you’d call beautiful, but she looked warm and natural, at home with herself.

He really liked her. He adored her passion, her confidence, her laugh and those big breasts, as well as her big hips and her thick thighs and her enthusiasm for sex—and her access to free birth control, thanks to her mother’s job at Planned Parenthood. But he couldn’t picture himself spending the rest of his life with a woman who wouldn’t enter Bloom’s. Not that he shopped at Bloom’s himself, not that he made a habit of eating the gourmet kosher-style delicacies the store sold, but Bloom’s was his legacy.

My mother won’t bring bagels, he said. Even if she did, they’d be frozen bagels from the supermarket down the street. She never eats Bloom’s food.

Why not? Doesn’t she own the place?

My grandmother owns it. I think, he added. He wasn’t too clear on the Bloom’s corporate hierarchy. My mother works there. So does my Uncle Jay. My sister Julia is the president. My other sister Susie does freelance work there.

Freelance deli work?

I don’t exactly know what she does, he admitted. One of the blessings of attending college two hundred miles away from home was that he didn’t have to be on top of such things.

And they buy their food at a supermarket down the street? Why?

Because they’re crazy? He shrugged, jostling Tash’s head. They do what they do. I don’t know. I don’t live with them.

When are they going to get here?

They said they were leaving New York City around nine. He craned his neck to peer past Tash at the clock radio on the windowsill. A little past noon. Shit. I’ve got to shower and get dressed, he said, shoving himself up to sit.

His dorm room looked alien to him. The walls were bare, his posters of Josie and the Pussycats, Zippy the Pinhead and Sequoia National Park—that last one a birthday present from Tash—rolled inside cardboard tubes. His stereo speakers were nestled into molded foam inside the carton they had come in, his printer packed into another carton and his laptop stashed in a canvas computer bag. More cartons held his clothing, his books, his Frisbee, his video of his freshman year roommate hurling after an all-night beer-pong tournament, the smiley-face eraser he always tucked into his pocket when he was taking an exam, and other essential mementos of the past four years. He hadn’t dealt with his rug yet, and the bed linens wouldn’t get stripped until tomorrow. In his closet hung his rented cap and gown and the Cornell T-shirt and khakis he planned to wear underneath.

The room wasn’t his anymore. Tomorrow he would be evicted, exiled to New York City. He should have lined up a summer job in Indiana—or in Seattle, with Tash. Maybe she could have found him employment sitting in a tree for three months, protecting it from the chain saws of lumber companies. But that probably wouldn’t pay well, and besides, his mother would kill him if he didn’t spend the summer at home. His father had died two years ago, and his mother kept reminding him that he was now the man of the family.

Actually, Adam suspected that his sister Julia was the man of the family, even if she was a woman. She was the oldest, the big success story, the lawyer who’d taken over Bloom’s and increased its profits. And now she was engaged to a hotshot columnist from Gotham Magazine. Let her be the top dog; Adam would be just as happy sitting in a tree for the summer, especially if someone paid him to do it.

Then again, he’d survived last summer in New York. He’d devoted six weeks of the summer to bagging groceries at Bloom’s—Julia had pleaded with him, and he’d had nothing better to do. He and Tash had been sort of together before last summer, but not together together, so he hadn’t missed her that much.

This summer… Hell, he didn’t want to have to bag groceries again. He was a goddamn Cornell graduate, ready to begin work on his Ph.D. in mathematics. He wanted to do something interesting, something profound. Something like what he’d been doing the past four years in college—studying hard, sleeping, sleeping with women, listening to alt-rock, and getting stoned every now and then.

My parents won’t be getting here until five o’clock, Tash said, shoving a dense mass of hair back from her face. Time zones and all. They’re probably going to fall asleep the minute they check into their hotel room.

Lucky you. His family wouldn’t be drowsy when they arrived. They’d be full of energy. They’d demand a campus tour. They’d argue, hug him mercilessly, force him to pose for photos and argue some more. You may as well get dressed too, he suggested. You can hang around with my family until your parents get here.

I’ve still got some packing to do. But I would like to meet your family. I bet your mother will be carrying a bag of bagels.

I already told you… Unwilling to repeat himself, he let the thought drop. Tash would probably never understand that Blooms didn’t eat food from Bloom’s. He wasn’t sure he understood it, himself. His mother always used to insist that the store’s food was for selling to others and that if the family ate it, they’d be consuming their profits.

Maybe things were different with Julia at the helm. Maybe she’d be the one who arrived in Ithaca carrying a bag of bagels. Her fiancé loved Bloom’s food. Maybe he’d make her bring bagels. As if she’d ever do anything just because someone made her do it.

Tash socked him in the arm, leaving an aching spot just below his shoulder. Chill, Adam. It’s graduation. You’re supposed to be happy.

Yeah, right. He faked a smile. See how happy I am?

She socked him in the arm again, in exactly the same place. She packed a wallop; he didn’t have to worry about her ever getting mugged. I can’t wait to meet your family, she said, swinging out of the bed. I bet they’re lots of fun.

Yeah, right.

But they were the only family he had, and in about an hour they would be descending upon him like the plague of frogs upon the Egyptians at Pesach. Unlike the Egyptians, at least, he wouldn’t be subjected to a blood sacrifice.

Doing without sex and weed for the summer was almost as bad.

Chapter Two

Julia’s head felt like an egg with hairline cracks running through the shell, thanks to having spent the past four hours trapped in a car with her mother, who refused to talk about anything other than how utterly wonderful a wedding at the Plaza Hotel would be—Remember your cousin Travis’s bar mitzvah? That’s the kind of wedding I want for my firstborn. Remember those little portobello quiche hors d’oeuvres? To die for. Ron, have you ever been to an affair at the Plaza? Trust me, I know what I’m talking about… Just one tiny push, one jarring motion and the shell would shatter, allowing Julia’s runny yolk of a brain to spill out.

So she was not in the right frame of mind to deal with a hassle at the hotel. Not a minor hassle, either. A hassle tricky enough to scramble her brain and serve it on a platter with a side of hash browns.

She’d been looking forward to this trip. She was proud of her baby brother. Adam had survived four years at an Ivy League university, undaunted by the trauma of their father’s death during his sophomore year, and she’d just wanted to come to Ithaca and kvell over his achievement. She’d been excited about the prospect of spending a couple of days out of the city with Ron, including him in this outing because she already thought of him as family, even if they weren’t married yet. She hadn’t even objected to the car arrangements, although she’d known her mother would spend the entire drive talking about the wedding.

No matter what her mother said, no matter how good the portobello quiche hors d’oeuvres were, she and Ron were not getting married at the Plaza. She was the president of Bloom’s, and her wedding was going to be catered by Bloom’s—not just to show loyalty to and confidence in the business she ran but because Bloom’s food was delicious, and even the Plaza’s portobello