Window Dressing

“There are worse things than feeling stupid,” Moira said.

“Like what?”

“Like having your feet hurt. Yours are swelling even as we speak. You better go home, hon, and soak them or you’re not going to get your Mary Janes on in the morning.”

I smiled weakly. “Now that’s a warning I never thought I’d hear at the age of forty-one.” I picked up the scuffed white shoes and ambled to the door.

Moira followed. “Just keep reminding yourself that it’s not going to last forever. Nothing ever does.” She grabbed me into a big hug. “And you’re not stupid. You’re human. A good human. One of the best. But you’re not mistake proof—none of the species is.”

When I walked home that night, I paused under the maple tree in front of my house and took a deep breath, letting the crispness of the night fill my lungs. There was a sudden wind and orange-and-crimson leaves fluttered down all around me and skittered across the sidewalk. Soon the tree would be bare and my hands would be blistered from raking. Autumn would be over and winter would come blowing in.

Moira was right. Nothing lasted forever. Even blisters, I thought with a small smile. They only felt like they were going to.

Buoyed by Moira’s pep talk last night, I tied on my pinafore the next morning, vowing to move product. I arrived at East Side Groceries in a good mood and in full costume. For three hours I was charming and chatty and sweet enough to turn those braids into the real thing. And then my mother spotted me.

Her hand had been hovering above a carton of fat-free cottage cheese when she got a look on her face like Tippi Hedren in the movie The Birds. And I don’t think it was because she suddenly remembered what fat-free cottage cheese tasted like.

In my freshly polished Mary Janes, I skipped over to her just to see the mortified look on her face. “Care to try our new yogurt, ma’am?” I asked in my best milkmaid voice.

“You know,” she said, her mouth tight, “I was glad when you didn’t immediately run to another man after Roger. I wanted you to have time just for you. To discover yourself. But look at you. You’ve wasted the last ten years of your life.”

“What do you expect, you old bat, when you make the kid dress like that?”

Both my mother and I swung around toward the raspy voice to find a tall, scruffy-looking man, leaning on a cane, and eyeing my mother beneath a critically lowered brow.

Bernice was momentarily speechless. I was pretty sure that no one had ever called her an old bat before.

“A joke,” he said, staring at her and then looking at me with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. “Doesn’t have much of a sense of humor, does she?” he asked.

“Afraid not,” I answered while I noticed that the scruffiness wasn’t so much scruffy as it was a rather attractive five o’clock shadow.

“Excuse me,” Bernice said, “but I’d rather not be talked about like I wasn’t here.”

“Then perhaps you should leave,” the man suggested. “In fact, that probably would be for the best. Leave, woman,” he intoned like he was playing to the back of the house, “and let your unfortunate daughter get on with earning an honest day’s wages.”

“I’ll thank you to mind your own business,” Bernice said in her best ice-maiden-of-the-’50s fashion.

The man leaned closer to her. “I think the manager is on his way over to see what the commotion is about. If I were you Mama, I’d get my skinny ass out of here. If you get sis here fired, she’s gonna have to move back in with you and that would sort of cramp your style, wouldn’t it, doll face?”

Regal as a queen, my mother turned away from him. “Expect a phone call tonight,” she said to me before she headed for the seafood department.

“You’re my hero,” I said to the man with the mouth. “Have some yogurt.”

“I’ll take the yogurt, Heidi, but I reject the mantle of hero. Those suits they have to wear are always so confining,” he said with a look of distaste and a little shiver. Then he tossed the free carton of yogurt into his cart, hung his cane on the handle and limped out of the dairy department.

“Mother,” I said into the phone later that night, “I swear to you that I have no idea who he was.”

I was in the wingback chair in the living room, my feet in a basin of sudsy hot water, waiting for a cup of tea to steep and listening to my mother tell me for the fifth time how appalled she’d been to find me handing out samples at the supermarket.

“To think that you would settle for being a vendor—a hawker in a ridiculous costume. I have important clients who live in that area, you know.”

My mother didn’t have customers. She had clients. I found the perfect dress for a client during my last buying trip to New York, she’d say. The same women had been keeping her in business for years. And they brought in their friends and their daughters and their daughter’s friends. The boutique, in a converted town-house east of the river on a little street off Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee, was so exclusive you could barely find the sign.

The kind of women who dressed like my mother just seemed to know how to find it. I was sure that if my mother didn’t manage the place, I’d have absolutely no idea where it was.

I wiggled my toes in the satiny water, took a sip of chamomile tea, and let my mother elaborate on all the ways I was a disappointment to her. When I could get in a word, I said, “Mother, I have to start somewhere. Besides, it’s only temporary.” I added a good-night and hung up.

The phone immediately rang. I picked it up.

“The least you could do is let me wish you a good-night,” Bernice said. “And I know you have to start somewhere and I’m proud of the fact that you’ve at least started. But for heaven’s sake when you’re walking around with that basket of yogurt, stand up straight. That slouch just makes you look even more ridiculous. Goodnight, dear.”

CHAPTER 4

“I’m Your Handy Man,” the deep voice on the other end of the line said.

Oh, my, I thought. The name of the company was the reason I’d decided to call it but I hadn’t expected someone with a deeper voice than James Taylor’s to answer the phone.

“Hello?” the deep voiced asked.

“Oh—uh, I need an estimate.”

“For?”

“Some work in my kitchen. A breakfast nook has to come out—”

“I always liked breakfast nooks,” said the voice.

“Oh, me, too. But the house is going up for sale and the Realtor said they weren’t popular anymore, so—”

“Well, that’s just sad.”

Who was this guy? A deep voice and an appreciation for breakfast nooks. Quite a combination.

“I think so, too,” I told him. “But it’s kind of not my decision.”

“Oh. Then what is yours to decide?”

I was left sort of speechless. His voice was so—well, deep—and a little unnerving for it’s lack of inflection. Cave man stuff with a kinder, gentler edge.

“Well, it’s for me to decide who to hire to do the work.”

“Then I suggest you hire me.”

There was a smile in his voice this time that I found hard to resist. “Maybe you should come over so I can have a look—um, I mean so you can have a look at the work I need and then you can um…” What was the word? For the life of me, I couldn’t remember it.

“Give you an estimate?”

“Right,” I said, rolling my eyes at the woodwork.

“Sounds cool. Tomorrow morning? Nine o’clock?”

“Can you make it earlier? I’ve got to be at work at 9:30.” I was scheduled to hawk cereal in a superhero costume at a grocery store on the south side.

“Eight, then. I like my coffee strong and black. I’ll bring the bagels.”

He not only brought bagels, but he brought a carton of cream cheese spread—and a set of shoulders that filled out a softly worn flannel shirt better than any man I’d actually ever seen in person.

He held out the bag. “Your voice told me honey and cream cheese,” he said with a quirk of the corner of his mouth. “Am I right?”

“Actually, you are right. But, come on, how could my voice tell you that?”

“Okay, it wasn’t just your voice. It was a combination of your voice and your fondness for breakfast nooks.”

“Ah,” I said. It made perfect sense to me. After all, I had decided he was one of the good guys because of his voice and his fondness for breakfast nooks. His dark, almond shaped eyes held my gaze for a beat too long. I cleared my throat. “Uh—why don’t you come into the kitchen and meet the doomed booth.”

He treated me to a sudden, lethal grin. “Lead the way,” he said.

“Toasted?” I asked, once we were in the kitchen. It seemed like a good idea to keep my hands occupied.

“Is there any other way?”

I split a bagel and popped it into the toaster then poured him a cup of coffee and handed it to him.

He took a sip. “Hmm. Nothing like the first cup of the day.”

Watching him appreciate my coffee was such a pleasure I could barely take my eyes off him. He ran a hand through his hair—dark, parted in the middle and long enough to brush the back of his collar—and it dutifully fell back into place.

“You’re going to join me, aren’t you?” he asked.

I thought about my hand joining his in that silky, straight hair but I had a feeling he meant the coffee.

“Of course,” I said and turned away from him to fill a mug. I turned back to find him studying the breakfast nook. “So,” I said, after I’d taken my first sip of coffee, “what do you think?”

“I think it’s a shame to get rid of her—”

“I know, it breaks my heart.” I ran my fingertips over the scarred wood. “This is where my son did his homework while I cooked supper. Where he frosted his first Christmas cookie. Where—” I stopped, suddenly embarrassed by my emotional display, as well as the deepening grin on his face.

“You sound like a hell of a mom,” he said. “My mom was like that. I miss her.”

“She doesn’t live nearby?”

“Actually, she died a few years ago.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said, just as his bagel popped up.

“That’s okay. It was cancer. By the time she went, it was a relief just to know she wouldn’t be in pain anymore.”

I felt immediately more comfortable with him. I reminded him of his mother. That was safe. That was a role I knew how to play.

“Sit down. I’ll get you some butter,” I said as I put his bagel on a plate. He slid into Gordy’s side of the booth, which just made things more comfortable still.

After my bagel popped up, I slid in across from him. My mother would not approve of this familiarity, nor would she approve of the sweats I was wearing. I could almost hear the lecture she’d give me on preserving decorum and boundaries. It was like she was in my head and I couldn’t get her out.

“I’ll rip her out for free if I can have her.”

“Excuse me?” I said, wondering how he’d get Bernice out of my head and, more puzzling still, why he’d want to keep her.

“This booth. I’ll take it out for free if I can have her.”

“Oh—the booth.” Of course he was talking about the booth. “For free? Really?” Roger would be overjoyed at this perk, although I would have preferred that Quint was ripping my mother out of my head for free. Oh, hell, who was I kidding? I’d pay.

He shrugged. “What can I say. I have a thing for breakfast nooks.”

I saluted him with my coffee cup. “I’ll be glad to see her go to a good home. Now, what about the floor? How much do you think that will cost?”

“Well, that depends on what you have in mind…”

Over toasted bagels slathered with cream cheese swirled with honey, we discussed ceramic tile versus vinyl flooring with a smattering of laminated wood tossed in. I had no idea what I wanted—after all, it’s not like I was going to be walking on the new floor. Or sweeping it. Or scrubbing it. I looked at the old linoleum that shined only because I was willing to wax it once a month. Finally, a new kitchen floor and it wouldn’t even be mine.

“I could take you shopping,” Quint said.

I looked up at him, wondering how he knew I was bummed. How he knew that shopping would cheer me up.

“I could even get you a discount in a couple of places.”

Oh, of course. He was talking about flooring.

“Does that service usually come with the contract?” I asked with a careless laugh to hide my embarrassment.

He shrugged, his mouth quirking again. “That’s one of the cool things about being your own boss. I can do pretty much anything I want.”

“I bet you can,” Moira shamelessly purred from the back door.

“Hello,” Quint said, flashing his brief, kilowatt smile.

“Quint, this is my friend and neighbor, Moira Rice. Moira, Quint Mathews.”

Quint rose as Moira sashayed into the kitchen, looking spectacular and mussed in a long silk robe the color of champagne.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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