by Claire Cook
“Ouch,” I said.
“Are you all right?” my neighbor asked.
Are you? seemed the obvious answer, but probably not the best thing to say to a potential psychopath. “Fine,” I said. I shuffled a few steps closer to the garage door, tilting my head in an attempt to see around the boxes.
“Did I actually call her ‘young lady’?”
“Hmm,” I said noncommittally.
A box dropped off the top of the pile and landed on my toes. “Shit,” I said.
My neighbor picked it up. “Here, let me take one of those for you,” she said. She reached out and grabbed another box off the pile. She was about my age, with blondish highlighted hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Right now her pale blue eyes looked more sad than crazy.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” she asked.
I shrugged and took another step toward my garage.
“Listen,” she said. “I’m really sorry I snapped at you. I should have heard you out. Are you planning to sell or something? I’ll take the clothesline down temporarily if you think it will hurt your property value. Or if you’re staying, but you’re planning to have a cookout or something. I just hate like hell that some elitist town ordinance is telling me I can’t have a clothesline on my property. But I’m not an unreasonable person.”
I wondered what the teenage daughter would say to that one. “All I wanted to know,” I said, “was if you’d be willing to give me a clothesline referral. You know, the name of someone who installs them locally.”
She scrunched up her forehead. “Is this a trick?”
I shook my head.
“You really don’t know how to put up a clothesline?”
I shook my head again.
“Seriously?”
“Stop,” I said. “You’re giving me a clothesline complex.”
“Sorry.” She smiled. “I’ll put one up for you. As long as you don’t mind being my cell mate if someone drops a dime on us.”
“It’d be the most excitement I’ve had in ages. Hey, what size shoe do you wear?”
“I CAN’T BELIEVE you’re an eight and a half,” I said. We’d taken a right at the end of Wildwater Way, and once more I was heading in the direction of the beach. Maybe people who lived in beach communities were automatically pulled toward the water whenever they left their homes.
“Well,” my neighbor, who’d reintroduced herself as Tess Tabares, said, “actually, I used to be a seven and a half, but my feet stretched out a half size with each kid.”
“Really?” I said. “I wish I’d known that. It would have been a great shoe concept.” My calves were still a little tender, but I seemed to be walking normally again, now that they’d warmed up.
Tess matched her steps to mine. “What? You mean you would have invented a shoe that stretched during pregnancy?”
I laughed. “No. We probably would have come up with a new model in a choice of pink or blue, and pitched the fact that new mothers can’t possibly fit into their old walking shoes.”
“Oh, please,” Tess said. “You just cram your toes in until the shoes wear out. Once you have kids, it’s all about them.”
Since I didn’t have any expertise in that area, I kept my mouth shut.
“It’s a pregnancy hormone thing. Relaxin. Loosens up your tendons and ligaments, and your feet stretch out along with the rest of your body, especially if you have a high arch. And they never come back, but then again, not much else comes back either, at least after the second pregnancy. Have any kids?”
I shook my head.
“Smart move. Well, anyway, thanks. Best barter I’ve done in a while. I’ll have your clothesline up by the end of the week.”
“No rush,” I said.
“I’ve got plenty of time. I’m a teacher. Third grade. Usually I tutor over the summer, but I took this one off to spend time with my youngest before she heads off to college.”
I nodded. We looked both ways and stepped down into a crosswalk. Maybe it was the fact that our feet were the same size, but we’d already fallen into a nice walking rhythm.
“So, you want someone to walk with every morning, let me know. My daughter’s not speaking to me, my son took a job in New York, and all the good tutoring jobs are gone at this point.”
“Great,” I said. “I mean, great about the walking part. What time of day are you thinking?”
“Whatever. The earlier the better, I guess. Although I was actually planning to gain weight this summer.”
I turned to look at her, but she was staring straight ahead. Maybe it was a joke, but I wasn’t sure enough to laugh.
“Yeah, so, my husband and I went on a cruise for our anniversary. His idea. Anyway, we’re eating for like the eighth time that day, and I said, ‘If this keeps up, I’ll weigh four hundred pounds by the end of this cruise.’ And he says, get this, ‘Then I guess you’ll be going home alone.’”
Tess started swinging her arms hard and picked up her pace. I tried to keep up, even though my calves weren’t too crazy about the idea. “Do you believe that?” she said. “With the gut he has on him? I will never, ever forgive him for saying that to me. I mean, whatever happened to for better and for worse, you know?”
“I think you look great,” I said.
“Right,” she said. “Anyway, my plan was that I was going to eat all summer just to drive him crazy. Once, when the kids were younger, maybe fourteen and ten, he made a crack about the house turning into a pigsty. So, I cut a little hole in a full vacuum cleaner bag, and every afternoon before he came home, I sprinkled some dirt around the house, a little more each day, just to see how long it would take before one of them actually cleaned it up.”
“What happened?”
“Not a thing. Nobody ever noticed. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore, so I broke down and put in a new bag and vacuumed it all up.”
We were going up a hill, and she was sucking in little gasps of air every few words. “Shit,” she said. “I’m in even worse shape than I thought. How far do you usually walk?”
I pulled out my pedometer and pushed the memory button. “Well, it varies. Two days ago, I walked five point two miles”—I switched from mile mode to step mode—“and yesterday, twenty-four steps.”
Tess leaned back against a tree and slid down to the sidewalk. “I say we start somewhere right about in the middle, and work our way up from there.”
I put my hands on the tree trunk and tried a careful calf stretch. “Sounds like a plan,” I said.
Day 8
6333 steps
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 pa
inted 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 almost 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.
* * *
ACHES AWAY LAVENDER TEA SOAK
1 cup lavender
½ cup chamomile
¼ cup sage
¼ cup rosemary
6 crushed bay leaves
Mix all ingredients. Fill a metal tea ball or muslin or organza bag. Hang on the tap or float under warm running water in tub. Climb in and soak liberally to relax muscles, increase circulation, soften body, and re-energize soul.
* * *
“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 edition 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.”
