The Wildwater Walking Club (3 page)

TESS WAS SITTING CROSS-LEGGED IN MY DRIVEWAY WHEN I
came out at 8
A.M
. She jumped up when she saw me, and we fell into step beside each other. She liked to be on the outside of the sidewalk, I noticed. Fine with me.

“Left okay?” she asked when we got to the end of Wildwater Way. “Or do you want to go right again?”

“Left is okay.”

We walked in silence. It was another beautiful day, with flowers popping up all over the place. I wished I knew what they were. When I was working, I was too busy to notice the things I didn’t know, but now my ignorance seemed vast. I didn’t have kids, I couldn’t identify plants, I didn’t have a clue about clotheslines. I didn’t even know whether to try to start a conversation or keep my mouth shut. I’d have to take another look at the outplacement resources that had come with my package. Maybe there was a workshop I could take. Assimilating in Suburbia?

“So, why does your daughter hate you?” I finally asked.

Tess started swinging her arms like crazy. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

So much for starting a conversation. Maybe this walking-with-the-next-door-neighbor thing wasn’t such a great idea. I wondered
how I’d get out of it if it really got bad. She’d certainly seemed a lot nicer yesterday.

The neighborhood was waking up. People were driving off to work. One man was watering his garden. Some little kids were out running around their yard already. Someone had painted their shutters a bright yellowy green, and it gave a fun contemporary touch to their weathered natural shingles. Maybe I should look into painting my house. How hard could it be?

“Sorry,” Tess said. “It’s tough enough trying to live through it, without having to talk about it, too.” We walked past two guys unloading long pieces of wood from a truck. “So, what made you decide to take a buyout?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

Tess burst out laughing. “Touché,” she said.

High Street, the street we were walking on, meandered inexplicably, the way old roads do in New England, until we were parallel to our newer, perfectly laid-out street. A weathered wooden sign next to a dirt driveway read
LAVENDER.

“Have you ever been up there?” Tess asked.

“No. It’s the original estate that used to own our street, right? I’ve always wondered if it would be rude to walk up and check it out.”

“It’s still a working lavender farm. I’m sure they want you to walk right up—that’s the point. I haven’t been up there since the new owners bought it, but they used to have some nice stuff for sale. I brought my class on a field trip here once. One of the kids started a rumor about pony rides, and when that didn’t pan out, it was kind of a bust.”

We were already walking up the dirt road. It was narrow and twisty and threaded its way through what even I could identify as a forest of pine trees. The bed of pine needles under our feet felt great after the hard sidewalk, and it was quiet and shady and al
most magical. I wondered if Wildwater Way had been this wildly beautiful before they put in the houses and lawns.

Something ran in front of us. I screamed as it ran off. “What was that?” I asked.

Tess gave me a look. “A rabbit. Wow, you
are
a city mouse.”

At the top of the hill, the trees gave way, and we were standing in the middle of a big, sunny clearing. There was a main house, with some trucks out front, and a couple of smaller buildings.

“Breathe,” Tess said.

I did. How do you describe the scent of lavender? Like a spa? Strong and heavy? Sweet and spicy? Soothing. Exotic and yet familiar, too, maybe a not-too-distant cousin of fresh-cut hay or new-mown grass. Earthy and pungent and sexy, definitely sexy. I remembered once reading about a study where men rated pumpkin and lavender as the most arousing scents. The smell of lavender wrapped around me like a pair of strong male arms until I was completely enveloped in it. I was pretty sure I could even taste it.

“Great Aunt Millie,” Tess said.

“Where?” I said.

Tess laughed. “No, Aunt Millie’s long gone. But she was my Yardley English Lavender aunt. She positively reeked of the stuff. We had to walk up three flights of creaky wooden stairs to get to her apartment. I can still remember the smell of the hallway, all old and dry and airless, and then the second she opened the door—
bam!
—it was like being attacked by a cloud of lavender.”

I followed Tess into the smallest outbuilding, a rickety old dark wood shack with a sign that matched the one out by the road. Dried bouquets hung upside down from the beams that crisscrossed the ceilings, and every available surface was covered with something involving lavender. Lavender books, postcards, prints, stationery. Lavender oil, soap, candles, scone mix, jelly, even lavender chocolate. My stomach growled.

“If heaven exists,” I said, “this is definitely what it smells like.”

There was an old wooden box with a slot in it sitting on a counter, along with a sign that said
PLEASE PAY HERE.
I unzipped the pocket of my exercise pants and pulled out a crumpled five-dollar bill. Years after I started bringing my cell phone everywhere, I’d finally stopped carrying change for a phone call. But I still rarely left the house without emergency money. “Just in case,” my father used to say as he slipped me a few bills every time I ran off to meet my friends.

When I picked up an oversize tea bag made of unbleached muslin, my calves practically mooed in anticipation.

“Okay, time’s up,” Tess said. “You can come back later. We’re supposed to be walking, not shopping.”

I pushed my money through the slot in the box and stuffed the little bag into my pocket. I jogged a few steps to catch up with Tess.

As we got closer to the main house, we could see a redheaded woman about our age sitting on the porch steps and lacing up a pair of battered, formerly pink high-top sneakers she must have been wearing since the late ’80s. I watched her Velcro them tight around her ankles. Yup, they were definitely Reebok Freestyles.

“What a gorgeous place,” Tess yelled. “You’re so lucky to live here.”

“Some days,” the pink-footed redheaded woman yelled back. “Hey, you don’t want some company, do you?”

“Cool,” Tess whispered under her breath. “A lavender connection.”

We made our way to the porch and introduced ourselves. I took another look at the dilapidated Freestyles. “What size shoe do you wear?” I asked. “I think we need to get those things to a shoe museum fast.”

I’D SPENT SOME
time over the weekend reading up on the out-placement services that had come with my buyout package. Balancing Act had contracted with a company called Fresh Horizons, whose services were available for ninety days from my redundancy date.

The Fresh Horizons brochure was a lot like a catering menu. Pick one from Column A, two from Column B, and one from Column C. Or pick one from Column A, one from Column B, and two from Column C. Or pick two from Column A and call it a day. But instead of choosing between Apple Brie Crostini and Scallop Ceviche in Cucumber Cups, I had to decide between twelve hours of private career coaching, a boxed set of Fresh Horizons career-coaching DVDs and five hours of private coaching, or three months of unlimited small-group meetings and a first edi
tion copy of the Fresh Horizons job search and résumé writing manual.

Just thinking about it gave me a headache. I was nowhere near ready to deal with any of this. I mean, talk to me when my eighteen months of salary and benefits were about to run out. But I knew that as soon as my ninety days were over and my outplacement services had dried up, I’d be sorry I hadn’t at least given it a try.

There was a little coupon tucked into the brochure that was good for one free-trial small-group meeting. I figured I’d start there, see how it went. If I decided I wanted to opt for all private sessions, maybe I could make an appointment with a career coach while I was there.

I found the Small-Group Meeting Schedule. It didn’t say anything about signing up in advance, so I wondered how they could guarantee the small part. I suppose it didn’t really matter. None of us had anything to do, so the more the merrier. There were even meetings in the South office, which meant I wouldn’t have to drive all the way into Boston. The South meetings were on Monday and Friday afternoons. Did they schedule them that way to give some semblance of structure to a work week that no longer existed?

I wasn’t sure what the appropriate dress was, but I didn’t want to be mistaken for a loser who couldn’t get a job—as opposed to someone who’d
chosen
to take a buyout—so I took a second, après-walking shower and put on a crisp, white blouse and a taupe summer-weight suit. I blow-dried my hair, something I hadn’t been doing a lot of lately, put on some makeup, and added an overpriced steel and black watch I thought of as my power watch, plus some silver hoop earrings.

When I got to Fresh Horizons South it didn’t look too promising. It was actually a room in what was once an elementary school and was now mostly occupied by the South Shore Senior Center. “Geez,”
I said out loud, when I realized where I’d landed. “You’ve got to be kidding.” I mean, I didn’t even have an AARP card yet.

I didn’t think it could possibly be good for my post-redundancy self-esteem, but I was already here, so I figured I should at least check it out. I made my way down the center hallway, with its rows of ancient, dented, kiddie-size lockers. I wondered if any of the seniors had actually gone to elementary school here. Talk about déjà vu.

A handful of people were already sitting in folding metal chairs in a semicircle when I walked into the Fresh Horizons room. Fortunately, the chairs were adult size.

A scruffy but cute guy about my age patted the chair next to him. “Welcome to never-again land, honey,” he said. He hadn’t shaved in a while, but maybe that was a statement of style as opposed to a red flag for sloth. I headed in his direction.

Another guy, at least as disheveled, but possibly even better looking, patted a chair next to him. I hesitated.

“Fickle,” the first guy said. “My first wife was like that. Never really knew what she wanted.”

I took a step in the direction of the other guy. “Have some dignity, man,” he said. “Enough with the never-again garbage.” He looked up at me and smiled. “Welcome to Boomer Club. Squint and you can almost imagine it’s 1973, and we’re all back in detention hall.”

A woman with dark hair that hadn’t been brushed in a while smiled, too. One thing for sure, Boomer Club would never be mistaken for Groomer Club. “Sad, but true,” the woman said. “It’s like we’re stuck in a bad sequel to
The Breakfast Club
.”

I sat down on the end chair next to the woman and closest to the door. “Wait till you get a load of the coach,” she whispered. “You won’t know whether you want to mother him or sleep with him.”

As if on cue, an adorable cherub of a guy walked in. He was in
his late twenties or early thirties, with curly blond hair and little wire-rimmed glasses. He was wearing chinos and an untucked white dress shirt with a navy blue tie, and he was carrying a briefcase and a tripod. “Aww,” I whispered to the woman next to me.

“Told you,” she whispered back. Maybe once things got going, we could start passing notes to each other.

Our career coach cleared his throat and placed his briefcase on one of the chairs. He set up his tripod. He opened his briefcase, pulled out a small video camera, and attached it to the tripod. I automatically started running my fingers through my hair. The brochure could have at least warned us that we were supposed to be camera ready.

The coach shut his eyes and let out three quick puffs of air. He opened his eyes again, tilted his chin up, and threw his shoulders back. “Welcome,” he said. “Welcome to all of you, and make that welcome back if you’ve been here before. My name is Brock, and I’ll be your Fresh Horizons certified small-group career coach for the next ninety minutes.”

Nobody said anything.

“Okay,” Brock said. “Our job here today is to get to know one another, and ourselves, a little better.”

One guy groaned, and most of the rest of us slouched down in our chairs.

Brock adjusted the camera and pushed a button. “Okay,” he said, “let’s start with you.” He nodded at me.

“Me?” I said. “You know, I think I’d prefer just to watch.”

“My second wife was like that,” one of the cute, messy guys said.

Brock crossed his arms over his chest. He looked about twelve. I wondered if his tie really tied or if it was a clip-on. “Look right at the camera,” he said, “and pretend it’s not even there.”

I looked at the door and tried to calculate my chances for escape.

“Just be yourself,” Brock said.

I froze. I hated that expression. I mean, if I even remotely knew who I was, would I be here?

Brock cleared his throat. “You can start by telling us your name, and a little bit about yourself.”

“Oh, boy,” I said. “Okay, my name is Noreen.” I shook my head. “Nora Kelly.”

Everybody was looking at me. I felt like an idiot. I cleared my throat. “Okay,” I said. “I just took a buyout. For the last eighteen years I’ve been employed by Balancing Act Shoes, most recently as Senior Manager of Brand Identity, a position I’d held since May of—”

“Okay, fine,” Brock said. “Tell us about you.”

“I reported to—”

Brock put up one hand. “No, tell us about you.”

“I was responsible for—”

“No, no, no.” Brock clapped his hands once for each word, which made him look like a toddler having a tantrum. “You’re regurgitating your résumé. Tell us about
you
. Who you are. What you hate. What you love. What you’re good at. What you hope you never have to do again for the rest of your life. Tell us the story of Noreen Nora Kelly.”