Destined

by Gail Cleare

  The Prius was not in evidence when I parked in the alley behind the store. Letting myself into the back door, I heard feminine voices and laughter coming from the showroom. I realized it was Friday, Pilates day, and the girls were all here for our early morning class. I glanced into the kitchen and saw that scones were cooling on a rack. Our menu board, a giant drawing pad that we displayed by hanging it from a hook on the wall behind the coffee bar, was lying on the table with a couple of magic markers nearby. Reading it upside down, I saw that Siri had made curried chicken salad with almonds today, and we were also offering a dark chocolate fudge cake, which was probably in the fridge. It looked like everything was under control, and we still had over an hour before it would be time to open the shop. I hung my raincoat on one of the hooks by the back door, and turned to follow the sound of my friends’ voices.

  I stood in the doorway watching for a minute before they noticed me. The lunch tables and chairs had been pushed back against the wall. Six exercise mats were laid out on the floor, five of them facing the one where our teacher, Mindy, demonstrated for us. Everyone was dressed in T-shirts and leggings or sweat pants. The class consisted of Laurie, Siri, Bella and me, plus Mei and my newest friend, Alyssia. She was the mother of Rashid, the boy who had carried my cake upstairs at The Palace, and the happy baby who usually shared the carriage with Siri’s daughter. Her low melodious voice rang out now, as she made everyone laugh with a remark about the hamstring stretch they were trying to hold.

  “Bellies, bellies, bellies…” Mindy reminded them to pull in their stomachs. “Good!”

  Bella groaned and flopped onto the ground. “Holy cow, that one kills me!”

  “It’s your bad knee, try the modified pose, like this,” Mindy suggested, showing her what to do. A petite woman with a mop of curly golden hair and an incredibly strong, limber body, she was a physical therapist friend of Laurie’s who taught Pilates classes for extra income. She was teaching us about “the mind-body connection,” and we all agreed that the more toned our muscles became, the more focused our minds became as well. It worked in reverse, too. By thinking about moving muscles we hadn’t moved in years, we were training them to respond. Mindy had a huge smile, a vibrant voice, and she radiated energy.

  Laurie looked up and saw me. “Emily’s back! Hooray!!” They all sat up and applauded and cheered. I took a bow. Then everyone started getting up to hug me, as each one welcomed me home. I felt loved and important, basking in their warmth. After Mindy hugged me, she looked at the clock on the wall and suggested this was a good time to stop for the day. We all agreed to meet again next week, and the girls started to tidy up the space. I put the electric kettle on and brewed several pots of Irish Breakfast tea. When all the tables and chairs had been repositioned, we gathered around the coffee bar and drank a cup together.

  “So, how was it?” Laurel asked, looking slim and fit in her purple leggings and Green Thumb T-shirt. Today she wore tiny silver moons and stars dangling from her ear lobes.

  “Well, first of all, F. Scott Fitzgerald was absolutely right!” I replied.

  “’The very rich are different from you and me…’” Alyssia said, recognizing my reference. She taught English at the high school and nodded knowingly. She had slipped a bright blue tunic on over her leggings and sports bra, and was wrapping her head in a colorful turban. Like several of the women, she would be heading straight to work from here.

  “You got it,” I confirmed.

  “Lexi Land is a pretty weird place, eh?” asked Bella, sitting perched on one of the bar stools, a cold pack balanced on her knee. Mindy stood next to her and held it in place while they secured it with Velcro straps.

  “Was it all these snobby rich guys with snooty British accents, or what?” perky little Mei wanted to know, piping up in her high girlish voice, and we all laughed.

  “Lots of white-haired old geezers wearing black suits, and incredible huge diamonds and pearls on all of the women. At least half of them were over seventy. They all looked so much alike it was impossible to tell them apart. The most interesting characters were Lexi’s immediate family, her parents and her two brothers,” I said, taking a scone off the plate Siri had brought in from the kitchen. Suddenly I was starved, and remembered I hadn’t eaten since last night. Getting off the Island while the opportunity was available had seemed more of a priority this morning.

  “Tell us about their house! Is it incredible?” demanded Mindy, taking her teacup and settling down onto the stool next to Bella’s.

  “Is it obscenely enormous?” Laurie asked.

  “Yes! What was it like?” Siri stood behind the coffee bar, cup in hands. She had wrapped one of her wide, long blue-green scarves like a sarong over her low-cut black spandex exercise clothes, and she looked like a voluptuous sea goddess once again.

  They all chimed in curiously, and awaited my response with shining, eager eyes.

  “It’s pretty big,” I answered, “I think there are eight bedrooms in the main house, plus there’s an addition on the back of the kitchen where the housekeeping couple live. Each bedroom has its own bathroom, and some have a private sitting room too. The house sits up on this big hill overlooking the beach in two directions. And there’s also a four-car garage and two other buildings, guest cottages. Two of Lexi’s cousins were staying there, they both have young kids. All together, they could probably put up about twenty-five or thirty people, I think, with nobody sleeping on the couches.”

  “Wow,” said Siri. The others nodded agreement. “Where did you stay?”

  “Lexi has a suite in the main house, with a second bedroom that opens into her sitting room. I stayed there, with her. The whole place is gorgeous, beautifully decorated, right out of a magazine. Lexi’s rooms are all done in Laura Ashley floral prints, very girly and romantic.”

  “Was she really flipped out?” Bella asked.

  “Totally,” I confirmed.

  “Did you have to scrape her up off the floor, or what?” she persisted.

  I nodded.

  “Everyone totally lost it at the funeral and they were sobbing and crying,” I said, “And then they all got drunk, which kind of made it worse. Some people seemed to brighten up and have a great time, though. I guess it depends on your body chemistry!”

  “People can get pretty wild at a funeral,” Mindy remarked. “It almost like they need to express an affirmation of life, at a time of death.”

  “Yes,” Laurie nodded. “There is usually a lot of illicit sex going on. Have you ever noticed that?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh yeah, I noticed!” The girls all giggled.

  Siri looked at me with her eyebrows raised. “Emily! Not you!”

  “No, no, not me,” I replied. “Though it wasn’t for a lack of invitations. Lexi’s brothers are very competitive, and at some point they decided I was going to be the prize. A bunch of the younger people gathered at one of the guest houses to hang out after the service, and there was a lot of sneaking off happening.”

  “Does Lexi have a boyfriend? Was he there?” Alyssia asked.

  “Actually, yes. He’s a doctor!”

  Everyone said, “Ooooooooooh!” in silly voices, and then we all laughed.

  “So how come Mr. Doctor didn’t come here to pick her up instead of you having to do it?” Bella asked, sniffing disdainfully.

  “Because he was scheduled to perform spinal surgery in Boston, and people were going to be crippled for life if he didn’t show up, you know, stupid stuff like that,” I said.

  “Excuses, excuses!” Bella shook her head.

  “He’s a very nice guy. Good looking, too. And he really seems to adore Lexi! I guess the only problem is, he works all the time. She’s thinking about moving her art business to Boston, so they can see each other more. Her clients will follow her anywhere. ”

  Everyone nodded, agreeing this would be a wise move on her part. I realized we were all sitting there sympathizing with Lexi, just like she was a real, normal woman like
us. I’d been having this unusual sensation quite often over the past few days. It was disconcerting. But it felt, right. Lexi was a real, normal woman like us. With the caveat that her point of view was different, so her expectations and definition of “normal” were different.

  Being around Lexi was like watching a soap opera happening in 3D all around you, live and in person. She and her fair-haired clan were bigger-than-life, and they all were perfectly dressed and perfectly air-brushed at all times. They all had carefully modulated voices. The women wore tailored suits by Dior or Chanel, and they were lean and beautiful with smooth faces, red lipstick and perfect teeth. They had beautifully styled blonde or silver hair, depending on their ages. Most of them didn’t even notice me, but the ones who did at first appeared shocked, then sympathetic in a sort of you-poor-thing way. I guess they didn’t think my black linen was appropriate for the occasion, but it worked fine for blending in with the background, which was my chosen vantage point.

  The girls started packing up their bags to go home or to work. I told Siri she should take the rest of the day off with my thanks for filling in while I was gone. She looked relieved. I knew it had not been easy for her to spend so much time away from her family.

  “Come here,” I beckoned as the others went out the door. I pulled a little white paper bag out of my purse and handed it to her.

  Siri smiled delightedly and opened the bag. There was a white jewelry box inside. She opened the box and found a small gold Nantucket Basket pendant hanging from a fine gold chain. These charms are a traditional keepsake from the Island, and the design is based on actual historical baskets that have long been made there. Inside the little gold basket with its lid that really opened, was a tiny diamond chip.

  “Thank you so much for covering for me, Siri!” I said.

  “Oh, you are very welcome!” she said, “Thank you, too! This is beautiful!”

  She took the necklace out of the box and put it around her neck. We both admired it on her in the mirror on the wall.

  “You know, Bella did a great job of helping out in the shop,” Siri said, to my reflection. I looked at her reflected eyes and nodded.

  “Well she’s a doll, I’m sure the customers liked her!”

  “Oh they did,” Siri confirmed. “Check the receipts! I think you’ll be surprised.”

  “That good, eh?”

  She nodded, smiling, and raised both eyebrows. She started to wave her hands around in that excited manner of hers, and turned to face me directly.

  “She starts telling those jokes and people love it! You should hear the way she talks to people on the phone. She creates a very happy atmosphere. Not that you and I are boring,” Siri said earnestly, “But we are not stand-up comics.”

  I knew what she meant. Bella was the one who always made us laugh. That was a very good thing. It was something we could all use a lot more of. Laughter is healing and energizing. It builds trust when shared between friends, and gets things flowing.

  The energy always seemed to flow the best when we women merged our motley assortment of characteristics together, balancing and supplementing each other. Each of us was unique, different from all the others in many ways. But we also were very much the same in essential qualities of the heart, the spirit.

  For example, we were all women of imagination and creativity. Women who looked ahead, who cared about shaping the future. When we deliberately linked our thoughts and feelings together we created a new being, the group itself, which was way stronger than the sum of its individual parts. We gained power from each other and were emboldened by it, daring to try to make a difference in more and more audacious ways. This was one of the most beautiful things, to me, about having these wonderful women as friends.

  We usually ended our Pilates sessions with a short group meditation. We all joined hands in a circle, closed our eyes, and envisioned a clean and verdant planet Earth, serenely spinning through space surrounded by a big fat shiny bubble of healthy atmosphere. We pictured frozen polar ice caps, lush rainforests, thriving species of all kinds. And wise politicians all over the globe joining their intelligence and power to enlighten and evolve mankind. We were getting pretty good at holding that mental image, now that we’d been practicing for a while. Sometimes I called the image up in my mind when I had trouble falling asleep at night. I found it comforting.

  “I’ll talk to Henry about asking Bella to give us some hours on a regular basis,” I said, and Siri nodded in agreement. “We’ve been getting busier, anyhow, and it’s a lot easier when there are at least two of us here. We need to be careful not to get burned out from stretching ourselves too thin. Our business is growing!” I took a step back, mentally, and looked at the long-term progress we had made. It was impressive and I was proud.

  While Siri prepared to go home, I went upstairs to tell my employer I was back. He was getting ready to go out and seemed to be excited. He greeted me enthusiastically, kissing me on both cheeks. He had never done that before! I immediately wondered what was up. The old boy was very jazzed about something.

  “How have things been going while I was gone?” I ventured, watching him alertly.

  “Excellent! Swimmingly, in fact! Couldn’t be better,” he crowed, bustling around the room looking for something. “Of course, we missed you immensely, my dear.”

  “And how is Tony?”

  “What? Tony? Very well, very well. Gave him your message, of course.”

  I had called the store yesterday and informed Henry of my estimated arrival time, as soon as our travel plans were confirmed. I’d asked him to pass the news on to Tony and Siri.

  “Hm,” he said, stopping for a moment. “Forgot what I was…oh yes!” He located a straw panama hat on the desk, and put it on his head at a rakish angle. I admired him, nodding in approval.

  “Where on earth are you going, Henry Paradis?” I asked suspiciously. He was wearing Teva sandals and carrying a walking stick.

  “For a stroll!” he replied, pulling out a pair of sunglasses from the desk drawer. He put them on and struck a pose for me. I chuckled. He swept out the door with a dramatic swoosh.

  OK, he obviously was telling me nothing, which was not a new phenomenon around here. My employer was the maestro of mystery, when he chose to be, and he got a tremendous kick out of it. Which was fine with me, cause I loved the old boy and anyhow, carpe diem, I had work to do downstairs in my place of business.

  I grumbled a little to myself as I went down the stairs. He had already disappeared, as had Siri, and I was alone in the store. I wandered around, looking at everything with fresh eyes. Being away for a while had given me a new perspective. I’d gotten some display ideas from the shops on Nantucket.

  I unlocked the front door and put the A-frame sign out on the sidewalk in front of the building. It was a sunny, hot summer day. There was lots of activity up and down the street and across the way I saw John with his straw hat on, pushing a wheelbarrow through the garden in front of the flower shop. He saw me and we waved. I realized how much I loved this neighborhood and the friendly, open, positive attitudes of the people who worked and lived here.

  Heading back inside to get to work, I thought about how different they were from the people I had met at the Gladstone funeral. None of my new friends were rich, or dressed in gorgeous clothes, or lived in huge mansions. But they were wealthy beyond the dreams of any reasonable person in terms of happiness and fulfillment. They cared about things that were really important, and if they ever had a spare moment from struggling to pay the bills, they used the time to help someone else. They were a community, a melding of resources and attitudes, and faiths, and races, and ages, and genders, and sexual orientations, and everything else. Like my circle of women, this community was also way stronger than the sum of its individual parts.

  I worked on my new display for the antique lace and linens for most of the morning, with very little interruption from either customers or the telephone. It was a quiet day in the neighborhood, and th
ere was no sign of either my wayward employer or my wayward boyfriend. Perhaps they were off being wayward together somewhere, I wouldn’t have put it past them. I felt oddly left out and a little jealous. In any case, my day was quiet to the point of nearly being boring, when I heard the back door open and Amy stuck her head into the room.

  “Hey!” she greeted me with enthusiasm. She came across the room to talk to me while I was staple-gunning a floral bed sheet onto the free-standing partition I had just made out of the lid of one of the giant wooden crates in the basement.

  “What’s up?” Amy asked. As an afterthought, she flashed me a peace sign. “You back now? Like, for good and all?”

  “Yeah, I am totally back,” I said, “Hey, is your Mom OK? How is she doing?”

  Amy shuffled back and forth nervously, avoiding eye contact.

  “Well, she’s better, actually. She might be getting a job soon!” She looked up and I saw she was trying to suppress her hopeful excitement.

  “Wow,” I said encouragingly, “That is way cool! It’s great to hear she’s feeling well enough to work!”

  “Isn’t it?” said Amy. “I thought we were movin’ to the hospital at one point.” She brushed her ragged bright red and black striped hair out of her face, tearing up. She looked up at me with her heart in her eyes, saying, “I want to thank you for what you did for us, Emily.” She looked out from under her long bangs shyly.

  “No problem,” I said briefly, tearing up a little bit myself. OK, more than a little.

  We blinked rapidly at each other for a few minutes, but did not touch. She wasn’t ready for that yet, it was clear from the prickly energy that radiated from her body.

  “Hey Amy,” I said, thinking.

  “Yeah?”

  “Want to do a couple more things around here every day, and maybe, like, get paid for it?”

  She looked stunned. “Like, what?”

  “Like, help in the kitchen or clean and dust stuff, pack boxes, that kind of thing.”

  “I can do that,” she said slowly, wonderingly. “I mean, I think I can. Do you really want me to? Like, a job?”