Beach Colors

by Shelley Noble

  “Don’t you have a head to dye?” Margaux asked.

  Linda looked down at the brush in her hand. “Oh yeah, but don’t close the door. I want to hear everything.”

  “Sorry about that,” Margaux said. “Linda isn’t the most patient soul in the world.”

  Margaux took Mrs. Prescott around the room, showing her fabric and the designs and explained what she envisioned. Jude stood out of the way, but Connor wedged himself in between his grandmother and Margaux.

  “Would you be interested? I’m not quite ready to set up. I have no machinery yet and . . . And it would only be for a few weeks until I can get enough designs to hold a show.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to see samples of my work?”

  “Like the suit you’re wearing?” Jude asked.

  Adelaide blushed rosily. “I copied it years ago from a Chanel suit I saw in Vogue.”

  “It’s beatifully made,” Margaux said.

  “We’d be in your debt, Adelaide,” Jude said. “I can’t think of anyone we could trust more to manage the workshop. We really need your help, if you think you could find the time.”

  “Well . . .” Mrs. Prescott hesitated, then looked at Margaux. “You’ll need space to begin with. I don’t have enough room at my house for cutting, sewing, and fitting. I do have an industrial Pfaff. It isn’t new. It’s in good working order, but we’ll need a serger. Silk thread. Are you going to use premade binding?” She wrinkled her nose. “I’d advise against it. Using the original material as binding is time-consuming and not cost-effective, but gives a much nicer look.”

  “I agree,” Margaux said, imagining her expenditures soaring into the stratosphere. Cost-effective? She’d be lucky if she didn’t go bankrupt. Again.

  “Would you like to think about it and let me know?” asked Mrs. Prescott.

  “No-o-o,” came Linda’s voice from the salon. “You’re hired. Give me a minute and I’ll come over.”

  They continued to talk about fabrics and construction until Linda popped her head in. “Last one’s cooking. I’ve got twenty-five minutes. Walk this way.”

  She led them upstairs. “Wal-lah.”

  “What do you mean, Voilà?” Margaux asked. “This is your apartment.”

  “Yeah, but I still have two empty bedrooms. She opened a door on her right, reached in and turned on a switch. “Wow, look at that. Looks like a sewing room to me.”

  It was empty except for a pile of cardboard boxes.

  “I’ll just move those . . . somewhere and it’s yours.”

  “Linda you can’t—”

  “Of course I can.”

  Mrs. Prescott stepped inside. “Good. There’s room for at least three sewing machines, a steamer. We could put a cutting table in that corner. Cramped but workable.”

  The woman knew her stuff.

  Linda went back to finish with her client, and Jude, Margaux, and Mrs. Prescott sat down to organize. Feeling sorry for Connor, who hadn’t spoken a word since his initial whispered “Hi,” Margaux found a scrap of rejected chiffon and tied it around his neck like a cape. She tied a narrower piece around his forehead.

  “Now you’re a bona fide pirate,” she said.

  Mrs. Prescott looked on, her expression so wistful that Margaux was afraid she’d done something wrong.

  “If your grandmother says it’s okay.”

  “You look mighty fierce,” Mrs. Prescott said, and Connor grinned and brandished an imaginary sword.

  They were going full steam when a cell phone rang. Mrs. Prescott reached for her purse. “Sorry, Nicky insisted I get this.” She opened it. “Hello?”

  “Because Connor and I aren’t at home,” she said to the phone. “We’re both at Margaux Sullivan’s design studio. It’s across the hall from Linda’s.” She smiled at Margaux and Jude and looked at the ceiling. “We’re talking about the possibility of me working for her.” She moved her ear away from the phone. “Yes. We’ll be here when you get here.”

  She hung up. “Just like his father. Has to take care of everything and everybody all the time.”

  Margaux didn’t need to ask who she was talking about. “Will he object to you working here?” The last thing Margaux wanted was to cause a rift in the Prescott family.

  “He’ll come around. Now about that cambric. It will have to be hand-finished if you want it to look seamless.”

  Nick walked in five minutes later. He looked hot, flustered, and spoiling for a fight.

  Just what Margaux didn’t need.

  “Hi, honey, come look at the fabric Margaux’s designed.”

  “I’ve seen it. Could I talk to you for a minute?”

  Mrs. Prescott’s lips twitched, much as her son’s did when he was trying not to smile. “Nicky, where are your manners. You didn’t say hello to Jude or Margaux.”

  “Hello.” Nick looked from one woman to the other. “Where’s Connor?”

  They all looked around. Margaux had forgotten all about him.

  “Here I am, Uncle Nick.” Connor crawled out from under the table wearing the chiffon cape and bandanna Margaux had made him.

  Nick blinked and Margaux realized that Connor had spoken in a normal voice. “Nana’s going to work for Margaux making clothes.”

  Emotion flickered across Nick’s face, but Margaux couldn’t tell if it was surprise or anger.

  They all stared at Connor, who suddenly looked frightened.

  “Isn’t he a great pirate?” Margaux said, thinking, Please don’t scare him.

  “The best,” Nick said, sounding bemused.

  Connor didn’t move, he seemed to barely breathe.

  “A great pirate,” Nick repeated, and knelt down to take a better look at the chiffon costume.

  “Actually,” Jude said, “we’ve been begging your mother to run the construction department for us.”

  “What?” Nick stood up.

  “Margaux is designing a new line and she needs someone who can construct them for her.”

  “What about Connor?”

  “I’m going to help,” Connor said, back to his whisper voice.

  “Do you have any objection?” Mrs. Prescott asked, the balance of power somehow shifting from her son to her.

  Nick shook his head slightly as if it were all too much for him. “No. If that’s what you want.”

  “It is. When would you like me to start?”

  “I was going to start cutting patterns on Saturday. Is that too soon?”

  “Not at all. Ten o’clock?”

  “That would be great. Thank you so much, Mrs. Prescott. This really relieves my mind.”

  “My pleasure and please call me Adelaide.”

  They left soon after that. “Well,” Margaux said to Jude, “now all I need is a way to pay her.”

  Nick walked into the studio around five that afternoon. Margaux braced herself for a tirade about hiring his mother and thinking she was better than they were. The man had issues, which was too bad because other than his streak of stubborn, my-way-or-the-highway attitude, he was just the kind of man she respected. And any woman would be glad to have at her side.

  Or in any other position. Margaux blushed hot. She was not here to have those kinds of thoughts about the police chief. It was bad enough that her heart gave a little lurch every time she saw him. Not good at all.

  “Hi,” she said. “If you’re upset about your mother coming to work—”

  “I’m not. It’s her choice.”

  Somehow that didn’t relieve Margaux’s wariness. “Then—”

  “I’m here to . . . ask if you wanted to go to dinner. Sometime.”

  Margaux’s mouth opened, but if she had meant to say something, it flew right out of her head.

  “I’m off Friday night. If you’re not busy.”

  “She’s n
ot busy,” echoed from the beauty salon.

  Nick shut the door.

  “I’m not busy,” Margaux said. He was asking her out? On a date? She hadn’t been on a date for thirteen years. And from his hesitant invitation, he sounded like he hadn’t either.

  “Do you have a place you’d like to go?”

  Margaux shook her head. “I’m kind of out of the loop.”

  “Okay I’ll—”

  The door opened. Linda stuck her head in. “You’re killing me here. I got a date tonight and you’re making me late. Take her to the Cove Inn, they have great ambi-ants. Steak ain’t bad, either.” She grinned at them. “He’ll pick you up at seven-thirty. Wear something sexy. Whew, that’s settled. I gotta run.”

  She shut the door, Margaux looked at the floor, feeling like a gawky teenager. She listened to Linda bound up the stairs; when she heard a door closing on the floor above her, she looked up at Nick.

  There was a slash of color across his cheekbones, accentuating their contour and making him look sexy and adorable at the same time.

  Wrong, she admonished herself. Adorable isn’t a word in your vocabulary. And it was something she was pretty sure Nick Prescott had never been, even as a baby.

  He laughed uncomfortably. “Well, I guess I was making a hash of this. I’m a little out of practice.”

  “Me, too.”

  “So would you like to have dinner on Friday?”

  “I’d love to.”

  Jude opened the sliding glass doors to her balcony and stepped outside. Margaux was up and running and she felt at loose ends. And lonely. Roger had been gone for less than twenty-four hours and her apartment felt empty without him.

  She looked out at the vista as she did every morning and every night. Below her, the water of the sound sparkled with sunlight. The beach was alive with sunbathers and romping children.

  Once, it had been her down there, reading in her beach chair, waiting for Henry to come home from his commute to Hartford while Danny and Margaux played at the water’s edge.

  Life had been good then, their future spreading before them like the water below her. Henry would come straight from the train station to the beach with his suit jacket thrown over his shoulder. Danny and Margaux always saw him first, and as soon as they began to run toward the house, she knew that when she turned around, she would see Henry smiling at her as they pulled him to the chair next to hers.

  Emotion welled up inside her—threatened to spill out. Her children had grown into beautiful young adults. Then Danny was gone.

  Henry was never the same after that. They still came to the beach in summer and returned home to Hartford in the fall. He went through the motions and he still loved her and Margaux as he always had. But he aged rapidly. His hair turned grayer and his shoulders stooped. Then Margaux married Louis. Jude still sat at the beach every afternoon, but it was she who saw Henry first—and last.

  And then Henry was gone, too. It seemed as if the longer she lived, the more was taken from her. Not gradually, as old age fell into the inevitable, but lobbed off in great chunks, the healthy branches sacrificed along with the frail.

  Life was about loss. One minute standing on the promise of your dreams, then free-falling backward into nothingness. Is this what it meant to grow old? To gradually be stripped of all you cared about. And then what? Were you supposed to spend the rest of your life, dreaming about the past while you waited to die?

  Or did you start a new life, set the cycle in motion once again. Take the chance of losing that, too. And if you did, what happened to the old life? Did it die away from lack of attention?

  Her love for Henry was like a rock in her gut. Growing heavier and larger each day. It only hurt sometimes—set off by a smell or a color or the unfurled wings of an osprey. But it was always there.

  She had lost Henry and Danny, and she was afraid of losing Margaux, too. Not to death—she quickly crossed herself—but to bitterness.

  What shall I do, Henry? Tears dropped onto the backs of her hands where they grasped the railing. I know I can’t go back, but I’m afraid to go forward. What should I do?

  Eighteen

  On Friday, Margaux met Jude and Roger in front of the bank.

  Roger smiled and held open the door. “I know you must be anxious, so let’s get this show on the road.”

  “And I’m going to cosign,” Jude said. “So no argument.”

  “Mom, no.” Margaux’s stomach turned sour. “I’m a bad risk. Maybe I should forget it.”

  “We are not,” Jude said. “I have total faith in you. And it isn’t fair not to let me do this.” Her jaw jutted out.

  Margaux heaved a sigh. “Let’s go for it.”

  Two hours later, when they walked out of the bank, Margaux had a business loan and a new checking account.

  “Congratulations, sweetheart.” Jude hugged her.

  “It was all you and Roger. Thank you. I won’t let you down.”

  “You’ve never let me down. And I’m so happy that I could help.”

  “Can I take you two ladies to a late lunch?”

  Margaux shook her head. “I’d love to, but I’d better get back and tell Linda the good news. She’ll be ecstatic. Thanks, Mom. Roger, you were incredible.” She reached over and kissed his cheek. He looked pleasantly surprised.

  The salon was crowded. Linda was just putting someone under a hair dryer when she saw Margaux. Margaux gave her a thumbs-up.

  Two minutes later, Linda stuck her head in the doorway. “Great. Now go get ready.”

  “For what?”

  “Your date.”

  Margaux jumped up from the drafting table. “Oh God, I forgot. What time is it?”

  “Two o’clock.”

  “Oh.” Margaux sank back on her chair. “Plenty of time.”

  Linda rolled her eyes. “You have two hours to work, then come across the hall and I’ll wash and blow you out.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  Linda pulled her glasses down to the tip of her nose and peered over them. “You look fine, but you don’t look great, you don’t quite have the knack of blow-drying down. And you’re not taking my hairstyle to the Cove Inn with crinkles. Two hours.” She pushed her glasses up and disappeared.

  Margaux was too excited about her loan to do any work, she just walked from sketch to sketch dreaming about the finished product. And if she were honest, a few of those jitters were because of the upcoming date with Nick.

  Which was really stupid. She partied with international moguls, celebrities, rich Upper East Side investors, jet-setting sheiks, Parisian playboys. But she was tied in knots over dinner with a small-town police chief.

  Nick did weird things to her peace of mind, not to mention the flash of heat he aroused in her whenever he was near, or she heard his voice, or—not going there. She had a career to jump-start . . . tomorrow.

  She forced herself to concentrate for the next two hours and was actually grateful when Linda came in and strong-armed her across the hall. By the time she left Le Coif, she was washed, dried, styled, and bullied. And she was feeling a little dizzy.

  “And if you get lucky, just remember, I’m not listening.” Linda gave her a cheeky grin.

  “Not to worry. We’re going to dinner. And I have a feeling it wasn’t even Nick’s idea.” She raised her eyebrows at the hairdresser.

  “Of course it was his idea. Does he look like a man easily coerced?”

  “No, but I don’t underestimate your powers of persuasion.”

  “I predict this is going to be the start of something big.”

  “Don’t start singing or getting expectations. It’s dinner. And that’s all.”

  “We’ll see.” Linda pushed her out the door. “And don’t get your hair wet when you shower. You do have a shower cap? Here, better take one of these.” She
thrust a plastic cap at Margaux. “You do have a slinky dress, don’t you?”

  “I just happen to have a new one. A nice sea green sheath.”

  “Great with your hair.”

  Margaux worked her way to the door. “See you tomorrow.”

  Linda stood at the door and watched her walk across the street, half mother hen, half Mae West, and all grins.

  Nick cursed and yanked the knot out of his tie, pulled the tie from his neck, and threw it on the closet floor. He chose another one.

  Navy blue with a thin gray stripe. Did this tie even go with his jacket? Was the jacket formal enough? He knew zip about fashion.

  The Cove Inn was way too elegant for Nick’s taste, but thanks to Linda he would be sitting beneath a crystal chandelier trying not to spill his wine on the white linen tablecloth. He’d rather take Margaux to some place where they could just relax, talk, maybe reminisce a little, get to know each other without having an overattentive waiter hovering nearby waiting to fill his water glass every time he took a sip.

  It was going to be a disaster, not to mention setting him back a bundle, which he didn’t begrudge at all until he thought about the Eldon School tuition. But it seemed he’d waited his entire life to have dinner with Margaux Sullivan. This would get it out of his system. He’d make a fool of himself, a bull in a china shop, and she would be thoroughly disgusted.

  And if she had a horrible time, then things would be tense between her and his mother. Was he crazy? He was going on a date with his mother’s employer.

  He didn’t even want his mother to work. He wanted her to enjoy life. Go out with the girls. Get her hair done at Le Coif. Play bridge or whatever ladies her age did.

  He didn’t want her slaving like she’d slaved her entire life to make ends meet. To give her family an extra little something. And he especially didn’t want her working for Margaux. His motives were partly selfish. He didn’t want the difference between them brought constantly to attention.

  And he had to pick her up in a truck, he thought morosely. He couldn’t very well use the police cruiser or his mother’s old Buick.