“I don’t think you should make any decisions this week,” Maux said. “Even the ones I agree with. It’s going to be a hard week.”
“I know, I know. It’s just . . . when I think about staying in Forsyth, and running the store, that seems right. Grad school just seems like a band-aid.”
“Band-aids do keep you from bleeding all over your clothes.” Maux put a box of cookies in the cart.
Dora didn’t want to let it go. “I thought you didn’t think grad school was a good idea,” she said.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. I just want you to decide when you’re not grieving and missing Mimi.” Maux grabbed a package of napkins and some paper plates. “And what about Gary?”
“What about Gary?” Dora said. “There’s not any ‘about Gary.’”
“I thought you said there might be, if you only got rid of your inconvenient undergraduateness.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a long shot. At best. He’s emailed all week to say that he misses me . . . in the context of running out of Snickers bars and needing the number of the exterminator.”
“Two weeks ago, Gary just saying your name out loud would have had you over the moon.”
“Two weeks ago seems like forever ago.”
“Look out, friend of Mimi’s at two o’clock. I’ll run interference if you want me to.”
“No, it’s okay.” Dora managed to smile at the woman, whose name she once knew. She didn’t have to do anything other than nod a lot and look appropriately sad, and eventually the woman went away, with promises to come to the service on Saturday.
Maux had been quietly stocking the cart while Dora accepted condolences. “Let’s get the hell out of here before we run into anyone else,” she said.
In the car, Maux brought up school again. “Have you heard back from the admissions office yet? I mean, you might not even have a choice you have to make. Not that I think you would have any trouble getting in, of course.”
“Not yet. I should hear by next week, I think. So it’s not even certain that I have a grad school to go to, and I really think I’d rather be here. Grad school isn’t going anywhere, but once I give up the store, it’s gone.”
“And you’ll just live with Gabby?” Maux braked a little too hard. “Think you can keep her out of trouble? That’s a big job.”
“She has been more scattered than usual,” Dora said. “She didn’t answer her phone for hours on Saturday, and when she did show up she was missing an earring. I think she might have even forgot to put it on.”
“Gabby forgetting jewelry? That’s like the sun forgetting to rise. It’s probably just the stress . . . But you should think about what other commitments you’ll be taking on if you come home, Dora.”
Dora just looked out the window. She didn’t want to think about that right now.
Camille was there when they got back to the house. “Oh, hi,” she said to Maux. She made no move to help bring in the groceries from the car. Camille was done with sympathy, it seemed.
Gabby looked cornered. “I’ve just been letting Camille know about Mimi’s wishes for the service.”
“I don’t know why she wanted to be cremated,” Camille said. “It’s just unnatural. All burnt up.”
“Camille . . . ,” Gabby began.
“I know, I know. It’s what she wanted, blah, blah. I just think it’s strange, is all. There’s a space for her in the Winston plot and everything, and now she won’t even fill it up.”
Dora almost laughed, but knew Camille would take it the wrong way.
“John called a while ago; he’ll be here late this afternoon. We’ll stay at the golf club; John likes it there. He doesn’t want to impose.” Gabby did an elaborate eye-roll. Dora’s uncle John hadn’t stayed in Mimi’s house since Gabby had moved in.
Maux pulled Gabby aside. “Gabby, I need your help. I know it’s not the best time, but could I ask you some wedding questions?”
“Oh, honey, of course. And Mimi wouldn’t have minded—except for not being here for your big day. Have you looked at any of the dresses at the store?” Gabby let Maux draw her aside.
Dinner was ham again. Maux stayed, and they told Mimi stories. After dinner they each had two bowls of ice cream.
Dora went to bed, if not with a light heart, then with a restful mind. She could do it. She could stay in Forsyth, and live with Gabby (and take care of her, if it came to that, better than she had managed to take care of Mimi), and run the store. Bicycling to the store in a June Cleaver dress every morning suddenly seemed like the most normal thing in the world. She’d read through all the secret lives tomorrow, Dora decided, and learn all about the dresses as Mimi had seen them. . . .
And then there was Con. . . . Dora didn’t let herself think too much about Con, but he was there as she drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Twelve
D
ora woke with a gummy mouth, a lingering bad dream, and a complete absence of NPR. The gummy mouth and the bad dream weren’t unusual, lately, but the lack of somebody’s soothing tones explaining the geopolitical situation or something about baseball was puzzling, until Dora saw that the switch on her alarm clock was firmly at
OFF.
She also saw that it was nearly eleven o’clock.
“Hell,” she said, to no one in particular, and jumped out of bed. Mimi might be gone, but she wasn’t letting the store go, too.
She’d have to drive, parking be damned. Her car had that musty undriven smell, and the steering was stiff. She finally found a space four blocks away, crammed between an SUV and the yellow curb of a tow zone. She slammed the door shut and ran for the store.
At the shop, Dora fumbled with her keys, but as she leaned against the door, it opened. The lights were off inside; had she forgotten to lock up on Wednesday? It seemed like a million years ago.
Dora pushed the door all the way open. Camille was behind the counter, with the register drawer out. She shrieked and dropped a roll of quarters.
“Dora! You gave me a turn! I thought you were breaking in.” Camille sniffed. “This store isn’t in the nicest part of town, you know.”
“What are you doing here, Camille?”
“You looked so worn out last night, I just decided to let you sleep, and come in early and open the store myself.”
Camille was wearing denim capri pants, hems liberally encrusted with rhinestones, blinding white sneaker-slides with no socks, and a fuchsia tunic top with a bejeweled neckline. Dora’s eyes hurt looking at her.
“Camille, it’s okay, I’d really rather be working.”
Camille heaved a heavy, dramatic sigh. “Dora,” she said, shaking her head, “you really need
time
to
pro-
cess. You’re young, why would you want to be around all these dusty old things, especially now?”
Dora stiffened. “I love this store, I love these things. . . .” She suddenly noticed that Camille had cleared a rack right at the front of the store. “Where did . . .” The empty rack was as ugly as a missing front tooth.
Camille interrupted. “I know you feel you owe it to Mimi, but she wouldn’t have wanted you to waste yourself here.”
“Mimi would have wanted me to be happy.” She was
not
going to cry again, not in front of Camille.
“See? Exactly my point. You wouldn’t be happy here, not for long.”
Dora was steeling herself for another assault against Camille’s certainty when the door opened again. It was Tyffanee, dragging in a large cardboard box. She looked up at Dora.
“Little help here?”
Dora automatically turned to help Tyffanee with the door. Tyffanee up and active before noon was a bad sign.
“What’s in the box?”
“Just some stuff for the store.” Tyffanee straightened up and turned to Camille. “Ma, where do you want all this?”
“Oh, anywhere’s fine, honey.” Camille looked slightly nervous.
“What is in the box, Tyffanee?” Dora ignored Camille.
Tyffanee shoved her gum to the side of her mouth, and cocked her hip. She looked at Camille. “Well, you see,” she said, flicking her hair back over her shoulder, “a girl in my Fashion Merchandising class said she could get us some great new stuff, and Ma and I thought it would go well in the store as we transition to more of a contemporary boutique—’cause it’s vintage-y but, like, new.”
Dora opened the box and pulled out a mess of random garments, some on hangers, some not. What they all had were tags from an upscale chain store.
“Tyffanee, these can’t be sold here.”
“Why not?” Camille interrupted. Camille’s petulant face had reappeared.
“Because they fell off the back of a truck, is why. Look at this. These are new, with new tags, from another store.”
“Are you saying that my friend is a thief?” Tyffanee reddened under her makeup.
Dora was furious. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Your friend is a thief, and you two should have known it.”
Camille sputtered. “I’m sure we had no idea. . . . We were just trying to
help
. . . . Some people are so ungrateful. . . .”
“You’re not trying to help. You’re trying to take over. Mimi would hate this, and you know it!” Dora’s face was crimson.
“What-
ever
,” said Tyffanee. She grabbed her handbag from beside the counter, and pulled on Camille’s sleeve. “You heard her, Ma. Let’s go.”
“And take this with you.” Dora pointed to the box. “Or I’m going to call the cops and ask them to come pick it up.”
Camille said nothing, but glared at Dora while she and Tyffanee struggled with the heavy box. Dora pointedly held the door open for them. She could hear them whining to each other as they stuffed it in Camille’s car.
“That better not end up back at the house,” she yelled after them. Dora went over to the counter, to close the register. The roll of quarters that Camille had dropped was the only thing in it. They must have used the opening money to pay for the hot merchandise. Dora fumed.
Dora had made it back from the bank with change for the day just as the first customers arrived. The empty rack looked terrible. Mimi would no more have opened the store with an empty rack than she would have worked naked.
Camille had unceremoniously dumped the dresses on the floor of the back room, and Dora worked furiously to refill the rack.
As she smoothed the disrespected dresses with the steamer and lint brush and rehung them, Dora couldn’t help speculating about their secret lives. This brocade cocktail dress must have been owned by the wife of a university professor, with its label from a shop in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And this sundress was a young wife’s, in a honeymoon summer after a June wedding. This shirtdress—Dora couldn’t think of where it had been. She checked the tag, looked at the number: 124.
“Let’s see what Mimi thought your life was like,” she said. She was talking to dresses; she must be truly losing it.
The file drawer was stuck, and Dora really had to pull to open it. But there it was, an envelope for number 124. Dora remembered her resolve to read all the secret lives. She’d start with this one, take the rest home tonight. Dora pulled the drawer all the way open, dumped all the envelopes into her bag, and read.
I didn’t think that I’d ever be a witness to this kind of thing. If it were going to be anyone, wouldn’t you bet on the red sheath, or the black chiffon? Not me. Wash ’n’ wear isn’t really what you wear for an affair, is it?
I think it was a Monday when I got the first inkling. She was halfway down the stairs with a basket of dirty laundry when the phone rang, and she nearly killed us both running back up to the extension in the bedroom, even though the kitchen was probably closer.
I only heard her side of the conversation, of course. But it was enough.
“Oh, it’s you.” Her voice was darker and thicker than usual, and there was a purr in it. I don’t know if I’d ever heard that purr before.
“Tuesday? No, no, I couldn’t possibly. Thursday? My, you are eager, aren’t you?” She was coquettish. It didn’t sound like she was planning a bridge foursome.
“All right, all right—Thursday. Afternoon? Oneish?” She paused. I could feel her heart beating hard. She must have still been breathing hard from the dash up the stairs.
“You’re terrible. Simply terrible. But Thursday. Just for old times’ sake, mind you!”
She practically skipped down the stairs.
He was waiting at the foot.
“Who was that, honey?”
“Oh, just Keith. He wanted to know where he could go to get his car serviced. I told him to go to Andy’s; I wouldn’t trust Booth’s for a foreign car. But if you think he should go to Booth’s . . .”
“Oh, no—I would have said Andy’s, too.”
She leaned over the banister and kissed the top of his head. “I’m glad, it would be just too embarrassing to call him back and say I made a mistake!” Then she pushed past him, headed down to the laundry room.
She wore me again on Thursday, as they sat companionably across from each other at the breakfast table.
“What about I play hooky today, eh, and we go do something fun? A picnic? Drive up to the lake?”
“Oh, darling, that would be wonderful! But I’ve got so many errands to run—I have to go to the butcher today, and I promised to stop by Mrs. Torini and check up on her. I could call her, though, and tell her I’ll come over tomorrow, and we could have the butcher deliver. . . .” She looked up at him. “Do you really think Charles wouldn’t mind if you took the day off? You haven’t in a while. . . .”
“He probably would mind, the old ogre. It wouldn’t do to get him riled up, with the Benton account about to close . . . and I know how Mrs. Torini relies on you. How about this: I’ll tell him today that right after that account closes I’m going to take a long weekend and take you to the city. We’ll see a show. You can even do some shopping, if you keep it reasonable.”
“Shopping is not an activity that can be qualified with the word ‘reasonable,’ dear.” She gave him a big smile. “I’ll give your love to Mrs. Torini.”
“No, don’t! Keep it all for yourself. Mrs. Torini got plenty from Mr. Torini, in her day.”
“You’re terrible.”
“You like it.”
“I’m not going to admit it, though.”
He got up then, and grabbed his briefcase. She turned her face up for a kiss.
After she did the breakfast dishes (with an apron over me, which she usually didn’t bother with), she spent a long time over her hair and makeup. She must have put on the red lipstick and wiped it off three times. She finally left it off. I agreed; red lipstick looked silly with me.
We took nearly no time at the butcher’s; she must have called in the order early. And then Mrs. Torino wasn’t home.
But there was a man waiting by the gate that led from Mrs. Torino’s house to the house next door. We’d been here quite a bit, but I’d never noticed this man before.
“Keith,” she said. That was the first time I saw him. She cut across the lawn and met him at the gate. He opened it and she stepped through.
“Barbara.” He kissed her on the cheek, an urbane kiss. She blushed.
“You’re the only one who calls me Barbara,” she said. “I’m Babs to everyone here.”
“Babs, then.” He smiled.
“Oh, no, please call me Barbara. I miss it.”
“Do you want to see the house?”
I could feel her stiffen a bit, but she didn’t sound reluctant. “Of course I do. Every woman in town wants to see what the notorious bachelor Keith Rickert has done with the old Townsend place.”
“You’re hardly every woman in town.”
“I still want to see it.”
All houses look pretty much the same to me. I’m interested in sinks, and laundries, and closets, and things like that, but he showed her his library, with a bar (which had, I must admit, a tiny sink) and books and heavy leather furniture.
“Drink?”
“Keith, in the middle of the day?”
“It’s five o’clock somewhere. And when we were working together we had many a drink at this hour.”
“That was when I was a career girl. In the city. With a big lunch!”
“Want me to make you a sandwich?”
“That’s okay, I’ll just take the drink.”
I’d never seen her drink a real drink before. Coffee, sure, and iced tea, and orange juice, but not something with a slice of lime in it. She shivered after she took a sip.
“I see you still make ’em strong.”
“All the better to eat you with, my dear.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. She laughed.
“So what brings you back here? Surely you’re not ready to settle down and live in suburbia, Keith?” She had kicked off her shoes, and tucked her feet up under my skirt on the big leather sofa. Her drink was already nearly empty.
“Well, suburbia does have its attractions. And when this house came on the market—it’s an excellent investment.”
“You always did talk about real estate.”
“What else did I always talk about? Or have you forgotten?”
“Keith . . .”
“Don’t ‘Keith’ me, Barbara.”
“You went to Hong Kong!”
“You could have come, too.”
“Not the way you wanted me to.”
“Oh, I forgot.” He looked at her with a sardonic smile. “You weren’t that kind of girl.”
I could feel her blush. She swirled the last lonesome ice cube around her glass, and put the glass on the wide arm of the sofa. I suspected it was going to leave a mark, but neither of them seemed to care.
“Barbara, I’m sorry.”
She didn’t reply.
“Barbara . . .” He reached over and took her hand. He pulled her, gently, and she unwound towards him like a piece of string.
I’m not entirely sure what happened next. To tell you the truth, I tried not to pay attention. I knew it was wrong, I guess. I did get very wrinkled and mussed, though, and one of my buttons actually came off. She didn’t seem to care; she hummed all the way home.
She barely had time to get in the door and start dinner before he came home.
“And how was your day?” he said, as he came up behind her at the stove. His arms went around her waist. She wasn’t wearing the apron.
“Oh, the usual. The butcher’s . . . I went to see Mrs. Torini, but she wasn’t home! I’m wondering if she had a doctor’s appointment she had forgotten about. But—oh, Keith was home, you know he took that Townsend place next door, right?”
“Yeah, I heard he had. What’s he done with the place?”
“I didn’t see much of it—I saw him in the yard and said hello, and he asked me where he should put the toaster in the kitchen. Poor man, he hadn’t unpacked the kitchen at all! He’s been eating off paper plates for two weeks!”
“Sounds good to me, no dishes to wash. . . .” She wriggled out of his embrace, and turned to set the table.
“You would say that! Anyway, I helped him unpack some, then I came home. Hand me those napkins, will you, dear?”
“You two used to work pretty closely together, didn’t you, back at the agency?”
“Ah, well, as closely as a
very
junior girl copywriter and the head of the account ever worked. Mostly I got him coffee and sharpened pencils.”
“And he was lucky to get that, I think.”
“I am considered an excellent pencil-sharpener.” She grinned up at him. I don’t know how she managed it.
“I’ll have to put you to the test sometime. . . . Do you want a drink?”
“No, dear—I’m just going to change into a fresh dress before dinner, okay?”
We went upstairs and she tossed me into the laundry. And after the laundry, I went into the mending pile for that missing button, and I’ve been there ever since. And I don’t know what’s happened. I’m not sure I want to. She can leave me here forever, for all I care.