by Nancy Thayer
“Just the one. The others are all different. I’ll check with you every time to be sure I don’t wear it to the same event. Besides, we text each other every day.”
Feeling like a total idiot, Juliet watched through a sliver of space between the curtains as her mother wrapped the dresses in tissue, slipped them into bags, and rang up the sales. Zoe and Cynthia checked their phones and then dropped their platinum credit cards on the counter and signed the receipts.
“Thank you,” Lisa called, as the women left her shop.
Juliet stepped out of her cubicle wearing the navy dress. “What do you think?”
“Oh, darling! You look absolutely elegant.”
“Right, that would be me,” Juliet said, but she was flattered. She knew her mother wouldn’t let her buy anything that was wrong for her. “I’ll take it.”
“I’ll give you the family discount,” Lisa told her.
“Good, because your stuff is expensive,” Juliet said.
“Did you hear my customers talking about Ocean Matters?” Lisa asked, as she delicately folded the dress in tissue.
“Ocean Affairs,” Juliet snorted. Then she straightened, hit by a thought. “Of course everyone will get the name wrong until I get the website built. I’ve got to go back and talk with Beth.” She picked up her pretty lemon-colored bag with Sail on it in navy blue. “Thanks, Mom!”
Juliet strode down the brick sidewalk, swinging her bag and buzzing with excitement about her new dress. Oh, God, she was such a girl. She could understand statistics and write code, but she was so totally a girl.
And she kind of liked it.
She reached Beth’s office on Easy Street. The door was open, and the office had been set up so that it looked professional and welcoming.
Beth was at a table, eating her salad. “Your brother left about ten minutes ago,” she said.
“It’s you I want to talk to.” Juliet pulled out a folding chair and sat across from Beth, carefully setting her bag on the floor. “We need to get the website up as soon as possible. Can we discuss its design, colors, and so on? We can always add and change, but we’ve got to get it up. I just heard someone call it Ocean Affairs.”
Beth laughed. “I know. We do have to get busy. Theo was so helpful with the furniture—” She saw Juliet’s impatient scowl. “So now, let’s get going on the website.”
“I want to use GoDaddy, because it’s the fastest,” Juliet told her. “But I need to know what you want the general appearance to be. Colors. Logo? Contact box.”
“I think blues for the colors, don’t you?”
Beth spun her chair over to her laptop. Juliet carried her chair over next to her. Beth was young, educated, smart, slow to anger, quick to understand, very quick to laugh. Plus she smelled good. This was more fun than working at Kazaam, Juliet decided. Beth moved back so Juliet could work, and Juliet’s fingers flew over the keys.
seventeen
Lisa closed her shop at five on the dot and hurried home. The guys were still plastering somewhere on the first floor, but she didn’t stop to say hello. Theo and Juliet weren’t around, which was a blessing. She had time to focus on herself.
She took a long hot soaking bath. When she got out, she dried carefully and spent a luxurious time rubbing creams and lotions into her skin, everywhere on her skin, bum and inner thighs as well as feet and neck. After double-checking that she’d locked the bathroom door, she dropped her towel and studied herself in the mirror.
She saw a perfectly healthy woman with a not unattractive body. She still had a waist. Her hips were larger than they once had been, but in general, she looked okay. She’d never been embarrassed when she wore a bathing suit to the beach.
But tonight would be different. Could be different. Tonight she was going to Mack’s for dinner.
Wrapped in a towel, Lisa left the bathroom and headed for her underwear drawer. She wore ivory or black bras, with cups to conceal her nipples, wide straps for support. There wasn’t an inch of sexiness about them. And her panties! She always wore cotton for comfort, and the waistbands were stretched and the fabric was tired from hundreds of washings. And they were so huge! Lisa had never been comfortable in bikini panties. Once, years ago, she and Rachel had experimented with thongs. That had been hilarious. Why would any woman wear them? You certainly couldn’t when you had your period and in the past few menopausal years—dear God, she was in menopause! Several times, with no reason or warning whatsoever, Lisa’s period showed up and then she had to race to the bathroom for a pad.
But younger women had to deal with periods every month, Lisa thought, and felt a little better. She found an old pair of black panties to go with a black bra. She put them on and thought she needed to start doing sit-ups. Crunches. The thought of that torture was enough to make her consider, briefly, forgetting about men for the rest of her life.
Oh, she looked fine, she told herself, and no one was going to see her underwear tonight. If she had time, she’d order some new undies. With lace.
In a green sundress and sandals, she walked to Mack’s house. It felt good to stretch her legs, and it calmed her nerves to walk through this charming town, plus no one would see her car parked in front of his house.
She’d wondered what his house would look like, feel like. He was a hard worker, and from what she’d seen of his truck and the way his employees left her house at the end of the working day, she expected a tidy minimalist interior with few possessions and all of them in their appropriate places. His house was a large Cape with a simple lawn and no flowers, but his door was a cheery yellow with a brass whale for a knocker.
“Come in,” Mack said, holding the door wide.
“Wow.” She stepped into the hall and immediately into a long open plan room serving as living room, dining room, kitchen and den.
“I knocked some walls down,” Mack told her, giving her time to look around. “Remember, I had a little girl to raise, and I wanted her to have friends over, and this way I could keep an eye on her while I cooked dinner.”
Lisa walked around the long room. The glossy wooden floors were covered with thick Persian rugs, subtly marking different areas. The walls were ivory, and bare except for a few pictures that were probably done by Beth as a child. The furniture was mix and match, inviting armchairs with soft cushions, an heirloom mahogany dining table with diverse chairs—antique wood, pale white Ikea-ish, light oak, all with non-matching quilted chair pads that made the area colorful.
The kitchen was modern. Gleaming chrome appliances, a long granite work counter, a cork floor, and the ceiling hung with a rack of copper-bottomed pans.
“Beautiful home,” she told him.
“Thanks. I thought we’d eat outside if that’s okay with you,” Mack said.
“Of course.”
Mack poured her a glass of red wine—he’d learned her preferences—and led her to the patio. It was brick, with bright blue tubs of red geraniums set around the edge. “Beth’s contribution,” Mack said. A large state-of-the-art grill stood at one side.
Mack lifted the lid to test the roast. “Hungry?”
“Very.”
“About fifteen minutes more,” Mack told her.
They sat at a round patio table in canvas chairs next to each other, sipping a delicious pinot noir. The striped sun umbrella had been closed, and for a while they made light talk while they watched the sky change over the neighboring trees. Mack’s backyard was as plain as his front yard, simply a lawn with untamed shrubbery around the perimeter.
“I used to have a swing set here,” Mack said. “Then a large wading pool. Beth and I discussed putting in a real swimming pool, but somehow I never got around to it, and she prefers going to the beach with her friends.” He sighed. “At least she used to. She grew up so fast.”
Lisa swiveled in her chair to look up at the back of the
house. “You have a large house.”
“I do. Well, we did, my wife and I. We planned on having several kids. But that didn’t happen. When she died, I thought I’d move from this house, but the therapist told me it would be good for Beth to remain in a place she knew, where she felt comfortable, rather than changing her young life even more. But I had to make some kind of visible acknowledgment of Marla’s life and death, I wanted Beth to feel her mother was with her still in some way. So I turned the master bedroom into a playroom for Beth. I got rid of the bed and most of Marla’s belongings. I put Beth’s toys in the dresser and turned the closet into a dress-up space, a hiding space, storage for whatever stuffed animals she’d lost interest in. I knocked out the wall between the two rooms and built a small three-fourths wall with shelves on it holding Beth’s books and separating her bed and bedside table from the larger area so she could have her own private space. It might sound like a strange thing to do, but it worked well for her.”
“It sounds like a unique way to deal with such a major change in a child’s life. And Beth has grown into a lovely, successful young woman.”
“Thank you,” Mack said. His voice softened, his gaze settled on Lisa. “After dinner maybe you’ll come upstairs with me and I can show you the rooms.”
Lisa said, “I’d like that,” and she knew he understood exactly what she meant.
When the roast was ready, Mack attended to unskewering it and deftly carving it on the carving board attached to the grill. He had already set the table with placemats and plates and cutlery.
“What can I do?” Lisa asked.
“Bring out the bottle of wine?”
Lisa fetched the wine and filled their glasses. Mack had broiled Brussels sprouts coated with olive oil and salt on the grill in an aluminum package, and he transferred them into a serving dish. They ate as if starving, feasting on the meal, using the bread to sop up the peppery juice of the meat.
“This is amazing,” Lisa told him. “You’ll have to stop me or I’ll eat the entire roast.”
“Oh, I’ll stop you,” Mack said with a smile. “I have other pleasures planned.”
And that did bring her to a halt. The words I haven’t, I can’t, flashed through her mind but her body strongly reminded her that she certainly could, and after they’d brought the food and dishes in and quickly put everything away, she was ready for him when he turned to face her.
“Now for dessert,” he said.
“Oh?” Her heart was pounding hard.
“What a cliché, right?” he asked. “I should have a curly pointed mustache to twirl. Ah, my pretty, want to see my etchings?”
She smiled. She thought he was as nervous about all this as she was. Mack wasn’t yet fifty, but years of manual labor had taken its toll on his beautiful body. The fourth finger of his right hand had been knocked out of line with a careless blow of someone’s hammer. He was solid and muscular—she’d studied his body thoroughly when he was working on her house—and he was beautiful, but he wasn’t young.
But he was ten years younger than she was.
He took her hand, leading her up the stairs to the several bedrooms and baths. They passed Beth’s rooms quickly, neither in the mood for the sweetness of childhood or the turbulence of adolescence. They wanted their own particular sweetness and turbulence.
Mack’s bedroom was large but plain. A queen-sized bed with clean white sheets and a light quilt at the bottom. A modern ergonomic reading chair with a standing light behind it. A long dresser. A flat-screen television on the wall.
It wasn’t quite sunset, and the light from the two windows was an indigo blue, a kind of iridescent darkness. They stepped into the bedroom. Mack closed the bedroom door. The harsh yellow hall light vanished and they saw each other in the kinder, more romantic dusk that revealed and hid so perfectly that it was as if this light, this time of day, had been created exactly for making love.
Lisa stood still. Mack moved toward her, put his arms around her, pulled her against him, and bent to kiss her. At the kiss, they both changed, in a kind of magic, from reasonable friends to ravenous beings who had been denied what they craved for far too long. Lisa had forgotten what desire felt like—had she ever felt this?
But when Mack ran his hands down her body, Lisa pulled away. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“Lisa—”
“Please.”
“Don’t be frightened.” Mack took a step back, giving her space.
“I’m not frightened,” Lisa said. She saw the concern in his eyes and admitted, “I’m terrified.”
And wonderfully, after a tense second, they both smiled.
“Come over here,” Mack said, patting the side of the bed. “Sit. Just sit. Let’s talk.”
She carefully sat on the edge of the bed. “Mack, it’s not just the…sex. I haven’t been with a man since Erich. Maybe that’s odd, but it’s the truth. But it’s more than the sex. I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t know if this, whatever it is, between us, is temporary or…”
“Or permanent,” Mack finished for her.
Shocked, Lisa said, “Well, that’s a frightening word, isn’t it?”
Mack nodded. “It is.” Reaching over, he took her hand. “I guess this is happening all too fast. We’re like a couple of teenagers.”
Lisa smiled ruefully. “I know. But I’m certainly not a teenager.”
“Nor am I.”
“Mack, I have to say this.” Lisa took a deep breath. “I worry about the difference in our ages. I’m so much older than you.”
“Lisa,” Mack said seriously, “I’ve gone so many years without meeting the right woman. Now I’ve found you. I don’t care about our ages. I want to be with you.”
“Yes,” Lisa said. “I want that, too. But I still need time…”
“I can wait. I’m not a kid anymore. I know who I am and what I want. I want you. But look. No one knows how long he has to live. All the wisdom says to seize the day. I want to seize each day with you. Actually,” he said with a smile, “I want to seize you.”
Lisa smiled. “I want that, too.” Reluctantly, she added, “Just not yet.”
“I’ll be ready whenever you want,” Mack said. He stood up. “Let’s go back downstairs. Sitting on this bed with you is keeping me from thinking logically.”
Because she was shaking, Lisa held on to the banister as they went downstairs. She hoped this didn’t make her seem like a little old lady who was afraid of falling, and as she turned to explain this to Mack, who was right behind her, she thought, But I am afraid of falling, afraid of falling in love.
They went into the kitchen. Lisa sat at the table while Mack brewed two cups of decaf.
“If I have real coffee after eight o’clock, I can’t sleep,” Mack explained.
“I know. I’m the same way.”
He set her cup before her and sat down across from her. Lisa stared into her cup, stirring it as if her life depended on it.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t be,” Mack said. “Look, Lisa, whatever is happening between us is something rare, I think. I certainly haven’t felt this way before.”
“No, I haven’t, either. It’s not only physical, Mack.”
“I know. And it’s new. But it’s strong. And it’s real.”
Lisa lifted her eyes to meet his. “So what do we do?”
Mack smiled. “I guess we slow down. I mean, on the physical part. I think I’ve got a lot to learn about you and a lot I want you to know about me, and something about you makes me want to be around you, even if it’s just walking on the beach.”
The front door slammed.
“Hey, Dad!”
Lisa froze.
Mack said, “She said she was going out with the girls. I was sure she’d be gone all evening.”
“Dad?” Beth strode through the large room, a shining princess with her long blond hair and willowy frame. When she spotted Lisa, she stopped dead, blushing crimson, wide-eyed. “Oh, Lisa.”
“I invited Lisa to dinner,” Mack told her.
“Oh! Oh, wow, so that’s why you were marinating that giant roast.”
“Hi, Beth.” Suddenly Lisa was grateful for the years of practice her own children had given her with awkward situations. “Your father’s been working on my old house and we’ve become good friends. He invited me to dinner, and what a surprise! He cooks as well as he restores old homes.”
Beth smiled uncertainly. “Oh,” she said again, obviously struggling through her emotions to find words.
“I thought you were having a girls’ night out,” Mack said.
“I did, kind of. I left early because I have to work tomorrow.”
“Want a cup of decaf?” Mack asked.
“No thanks. I’m good.” His question eased the situation, and Beth joined them at the table. Shyly, she turned to Lisa. “I saw Theo today. At the Corner Table Café. He came over to the Ocean Matters office and helped me unload and hook up the computers and printers.” Quickly, Beth brightened. “Oh, and I saw Juliet and asked her to help build a website for Ocean Matters and she agreed.”
“That’s great,” Lisa said, but secretly thought, and now Mack’s daughter is going to be involved with both of my children. So much had happened in the last half hour that Lisa couldn’t think straight. I’ve just been kissing your father, she thought giddily and she glanced over at Mack. He was smiling at her. Lisa was dazzled, and frustrated that she couldn’t continue the intimate conversation with Mack, and all she could do, really, was leave. “I should go home. I’ve got my shop to open tomorrow.”
Mack stood up. “And I’ve got your ceilings to finish.” He put a hand on her waist as they walked toward the front door.
Lisa paused at the door. “Thanks so much for the delicious dinner. That roast was almost the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
