Blueprints

by Barbara Delinsky

  “What about age before beauty? Who always said that?”

  “Your grandmother, rest her soul, but she didn’t know the television business. Neither do I, which is why I defer to your father on this. Beauty before age seems to be the way of the world today.”

  Jamie was dismayed. “Is that why I’m working my tail off now, so that by the time I hit my stride, I can be laid off because I have wrinkles?” She searched her grandfather’s face, finding wrinkles in abundance. “Is anyone saying your face is too old and asking you to step down?”

  “No,” he said with a dry quirk of his lips, “because I own the company, so I’m the one who decides, and I’m not ready to step down.”

  “What if Mom isn’t either?”

  “Has she said that?”

  Jamie let out a frustrated breath. “No. She doesn’t know about this yet. I’m hoping to get it changed before she has to. She’ll be devastated. Think of what you’d feel if someone said you were too old to do what you do best.”

  “They’d probably be right.”

  “I’m serious, Granddad.”

  “So am I, but everything is relative. This is television, which apparently is a whole other ball game when it comes to age. Personally, I like seeing those little blondes reading the news in their cocktail dresses—not that I’d want your grandmother to know that,” he said with a penitent heavenward glance. “But I do understand why the station wants you. Roy is proud.”

  “Roy is blind,” Jamie countered, knowing that if she was out of line, Theo would blame it on her youth. And wasn’t that an irony? “He isn’t thinking about Caroline at all. But you love her. You always stand up for her.”

  “And I would now if I felt that show was her future. She’s much more than a carpenter, and—no offense to you—she’s much more than a host. I see her doing other things.”

  “On the show?”

  “In this company.”

  “Like what?” Jamie asked, because, as gratifying as Theo’s confidence in Caroline was, this was the first she’d heard of her mother doing other things within the business.

  Theo only waved a knobby hand. “Not important right now.”

  “Okay. So right now, why not let her do what she loves? All it would take is a phone call.”

  “Oh-ho, no you don’t,” Theo scolded with a spasmodic shake of his head. “A phone call to any one of three people who have their minds made up? I’ve learned to pick my battles, little girl. This is one I’m not fighting.”

  “But why?” she asked, not understanding how after so many years of protecting Caroline, he could desert her now. “Mom’s been loyal to you.” She took his hands between hers. “Speak to Dad. Speak to Brian or Claire. Please? You can make them change their minds.”

  * * *

  But Theo refused to commit, and she wasn’t about to wheedle. I’ve learned to pick my battles, little girl. This is one I’m not fighting.

  More and more, she felt like a lone warrior, but at least Caroline was still in the dark. When Jamie arrived at the Victorian to make dinner, her mother seemed as blissfully unaware of any problem as she had been that morning, so at least Roy was keeping his word on that.

  With the heat so oppressive, Jamie had opted for lobster salad. No cooking was required, since she bought the lobster meat already boiled and out of the shell, and turning it into salad was so easy to do that she couldn’t screw up. That was important, given how distracted she was. Theo was Theo; she could accept his position. But Brad? He was the one who gnawed at her as she cut the lobster into chunks. She didn’t understand why he couldn’t see her mother’s side of things. Actually, she could. He wasn’t close to his own parents. They lived in Minneapolis and didn’t travel. Jamie had only met them once. They had been sweet enough to her in a polite, aren’t-you-lovely way, but chatty they were not. Throughout Brad’s upbringing, they had never shared thoughts, much less invited a discussion of problems. Caroline did both.

  As Jamie took mayonnaise from the fridge and spooned it into a cup, she worried. Brad knew how important Caroline was to her, but hadn’t made the connection that she should be important to him, too. He would in time. Only they didn’t have time when it came to Gut It!

  Cutting a lemon in half, she squeezed it over the mayo and stirred, then poured the mixture over the lobster chunks and folded it in. There was plenty for two, but not enough for three. She hadn’t invited Brad. From the start, she had envisioned Caroline’s birthday dinner to be strictly mother and daughter, as it had been for so long. She wondered now whether excluding him was only perpetuating the distance between him and Caroline, causing jealousy, resentment, even dislike.

  Knowing she was getting carried away, she reached for the tomato she had bought. It was huge and locally grown, which meant that it was likely a sin to discard the insides. “No problem,” said a woman who stood beside her at the tomato bin. “Save the insides for salsa or, even better, for homemade Bolognese.” Like she had the time to make either? Ignoring the guilt she felt, she sliced her tomato in half, scooped the innards down the drain, and piled in the salad. Once the stuffed tomato lay on a bed of Boston Bibb lettuce, with a mound of marinated mushrooms, a fresh baguette on the side, and a glass of wine nearby, the plate was gorgeous.

  Where to eat? There was the Caroline-made dining table in the parlor, but that would mean seeing her own tension in her grandmother’s Victorian lace, and the porch table was covered with flowers. So they ate on a quilt in the backyard, where the sun had fallen enough to allow for shade and a small breeze stirred the air.

  Thinking that her mother was the only person on earth with whom she wanted to communicate just then, she turned off her phone.

  * * *

  The downside of that, of course, was turning it back on. Her home screen had barely appeared when the dinging began. She told herself not to look. Dinner had been great, an escape from all things unpleasant. But just cruising away from Caroline’s with the streetlamps flashing sequentially in and out of her car, she felt her serenity begin to slip away.

  The phone didn’t help. It lay like a coiled snake on the seat beside her. She ignored it as she passed through the center of town and continued to ignore it as she approached newer homes. In contrast to Caroline’s neighborhood, parts of which were settled in the early 1800s, this side of town had been farmland into the mid-1900s. Tract by tract, houses began to appear then, first a gaggle of ranch-style homes, then small regiments of Colonials, and then split levels that were a hybrid of the two.

  Her condo complex was an eight-year-old MacAfee Homes development that captured the spirit of New England in shingled faces and gabled roofs. Each condo was two stories high, with its own walled patio and built-in garage.

  Pulling into hers, Jamie turned off the engine and, resigned, picked up the phone. Why not? Every one of the day’s worries was back anyway, from Roy’s bombshell reveal early that morning to Brad’s one-sided cheerleading to Theo’s refusal to stop the change.

  She studied the screen. There were several work-related messages. She skipped over them to the personal ones. How’d it go? Brad had texted an hour earlier. Did she like the cupcakes?

  The cupcakes were birthday ones that she and Caroline had thoroughly enjoyed but that should not have been his first concern. She would have confronted him on it if he’d been staying with her that night. Just then, she was glad he wasn’t.

  Her thumbs typed Yup, then SEND.

  His answer came in seconds. No mishaps?

  Still not the right topic, but a wry one. He knew her well. Nope.

  What time’s your flight?

  6:58.

  Sure I can’t drive you to the airport?

  No need. Client pays for parking.

  Okay. Have a safe flight.

  It was an innocuous exchange that left her feeling empty as she sat in her garage. And you, Brad? came the snide little voice that was usually reserved for Roy. Did that little back-and-forth do anything for you?

&n
bsp; She knew she was being unfair. A text was a text. Only he could have called once he knew she was in. Or asked her to call him. Or sent a longer e-mail. He might have even insisted on driving her to the airport so that they could talk, though attempting serious discussion at 5:15 A.M. was dangerous, as they had proven this morning with regard to choosing a wedding date.

  Wedding date. Gah. Another problem to try to solve.

  But first, Roy. He had texted her, too. More than once. She could guess why.

  Grabbing her purse, briefcase, and the heels she’d kicked off to drive, she left the car and went inside, where she dropped her things on a glass table in the short hallway that connected the garage to the main living space. Right there, determined to face the devil before she stepped farther into her home, she pulled up Roy’s texts.

  Theo just called, he had written shortly after she arrived at Caroline’s. Why did you involve him? Then, an hour later, Have you told your mother yet? And an hour after that, Did you tell her?

  It was ten now. Like Brad, Roy slept with the phone by his bed, but Jamie couldn’t bear to go into the Gut It! dilemma with him now. She was emotionally drained and physically tired, and she still had to run through a checklist for tomorrow. And, oh yeah, she had to be up at 4:30 A.M.

  But she knew Roy. He would keep at it until she wrote back.

  Quickly, she typed, Just got this. Am leaving for Atlanta early tomorrow, back late. Talk Saturday.

  She hit SEND, connected the phone to the charger on the table, and walked away with only her briefcase and shoes.

  Entering the body of the condo, she felt instant relief. The foyer was open to a small dining room, beyond which were an eat-in kitchen and a great room, all of it done in a soft white with accents in soothing shades of sand. Setting her briefcase on the island, she sank low in a leather sofa, put her feet on the limestone coffee table, and listened.

  All was quiet. She appreciated that for all of two minutes, at which point she began hearing echoes of the day.

  Needing to escape them, she was off the sofa in a flash and barefooting it up the stairs. There were two bedrooms here, one for sleep and one for work. Both were decorated in the same minimalist way, everything low and sleek, done in varying shades of white with sprinkles of sand—the bathroom marble, the bedroom dresser, the wall-to-wall on the office floor to soften the effect of the starker white desk and chair. Color came from art on the walls, though there wasn’t much. What she had was large and contemporary, bringing in the neutrality of brown, khaki, and blue. She couldn’t say what she loved about each, other than that it had spoken to her on a visceral level. Each was soothing and, regardless of hue, pristine.

  She took slow, deep breaths as she undressed and pulled on a silky T-shirt and shorts, and she breathed her way into the bathroom to wash her face. When her freckles appeared, she eyed her mirrored self in despair. She’s had her turn, Brad had said of Caroline; She’s fifty-six, said Roy. But me? Jamie thought. Twenty-nine going on twelve, to judge from that freckled face.

  Closing her eyes, she braced her hands on the marble countertop and continued to breathe, ignoring the voices as she focused on the movement of her diaphragm, belly, breasts, and hips. She really needed an hour with her yoga instructor. She used to do classes several times a week, but weekends seemed the only time for them now.

  Saturday was the day after tomorrow. She could make it till then.

  Clinging to that thought, she brushed her hair and piled it on the top of her head, then went back downstairs and opened her briefcase. Before leaving the office, she had packed it with every folder that she might have even a vague chance of wanting. Now, needing it as streamlined as her home, she sorted through. She did not need bubble diagrams, since she had two sets of formal plans ready to travel. Nor did she need printouts of every e-mail to and from the client. She did need her notes from multiple meetings with the client on his vision and the needs of his company. These she would reread during the two-and-a-half-hour flight, so that they would be fresh in her mind during her presentation.

  She skimmed those notes now, along with the quote package Dean had prepared. The bottom line was more than the client wanted, which meant that there would be hard discussions. Best-case scenario, they could reach a comfortable compromise. Worst-case scenario, she would be paid for time spent and discharged. Hoping it didn’t come to the latter, she repacked the briefcase. She had barely placed it by the garage door when she saw the message light on her phone.

  That would be Roy.

  Unable to deal, she headed upstairs to pick clothes. Her closet was built in behind a hinge-less white door and organized to the extreme, with full-length spaces for dresses and pants, half-length ones for skirts and blouses. There were a dozen drawers, as many open shelves, and more shoe cubbies than she could ever fill herself. Brad would help with that if he moved in. That said, he had a condo. She had a condo. Pooling resources, they could afford a house. They talked of this often—dreamed of it.

  But she loved her place. It was the first one she’d ever owned.

  For tomorrow, she picked a chocolate brown suit in a summer-weight merino that refused to wrinkle, and a pale silk tank. Once she had set her alarm for 4:30 and drawn off the fitted duvet cover, she climbed into bed with the remote. She didn’t usually watch the news on television, preferring to read it online, where she could skim or not. The instant she tuned in now, though, she was riveted. Personally, I like seeing those little blondes reading the news in their cocktail dresses, Theo had said, and to her amazement, he was right. The co-anchors were female, with long blond hair and impeccable makeup. They couldn’t have been any older than Jamie, and they looked disturbingly alike in a Barbie way. The main things setting them apart were their dresses. One was red, the other purple; one had cap sleeves, the other no sleeves; one had a plunging neckline, and the other was ruched to show just a hint of cleavage.

  What had happened to chic business suits? Or to trying to win the respect given a man by dressing like one? Or, at the very least, to rejecting the stereotype of the sexy little woman?

  Did Jamie hear the story being reported? No. She was too busy frowning at the cleavage on display and thinking how inappropriate it was to be dressed to the hilt to read the 11:00 P.M. news. She couldn’t imagine either of these women actually going out into the field to gather information. Clearly, that wasn’t their job. They were entertainers.

  Did she feel confidence in someone her age who did this? No. They moved their hands, looked at the camera in a comfortable enough way, looked disappointed or downcast or jovial at just the right times. Did she trust that they had insight into world affairs? No.

  Maybe brains didn’t matter when there was someone else to write the words. In fact, the lead story, to which they returned repeatedly during the broadcast, was the weather. The heat and humidity would be around for another day at least, with no storms to bring relief until Saturday. Since Jamie was flying morning and evening tomorrow, this was good news.

  Mesmerized in the way of morbid curiosity, she kept watching. Beauty before age, Theo had said, and that might work here, but not on Gut It!

  Or did it? What if Brian and Claire wanted her to host solely because she was young and attractive? What if she were as noncredible, as interchangeable, as these women? If so, she hadn’t accomplished anything in life, at least not where Gut It! was concerned. She was simply being rewarded for her age at the expense of her mother, who was being punished for hers.

  It was all wrong. Caroline was a hands-on host who knew what she was talking about. Even when smiling, she had a gravitas that these two on the screen lacked.

  The news ended, but Jamie was aggravated enough to be hearing voices again. Aware that she had to be up in five hours, she pulled up reruns of American Idol and let the music exhaust her.

  * * *

  Soon after dawn, she was on her way to the airport, and, yes, there were messages on her phone from Roy and Brad. Ignoring them, she read one from
Caroline thanking her for the birthday celebration, and several from clients on project issues. Once she boarded the plane, though, she turned off her phone. Minutes later, the plane took off, and she was on her way to Atlanta, oblivious of the disaster about to unfold at home.

  six

  Caroline was sitting in the middle of her unmade bed, in a mess of fuchsia sheets and scattered sections of the newspaper, when she called the MacAfee shop Friday morning. Fresh from the bath, she had placed herself directly under the ceiling fan, so that it would cool her as it dried her skin.

  At the other end of the line, she heard the high-pitched screech of a table saw, then the voice of the shop’s manager. “McGinn here.”

  “Hey, Brady, it’s Caroline. Just checking in. Have my dowels arrived?” The dowels in question were small pins that would anchor the top to the legs of a trestle table she was building from white oak. The pins were a hybrid of wood and steel that was new enough to the market to make them a special-order item.

  “Hold on. I’ll look.”

  He was gone for several minutes, during which time the upstairs cats joined her on the bed—Biscuit, the youngest, to bat at the newspaper, AnneMarie, the mama’s girl, to stretch out along Caroline’s thigh. Caroline was stroking her orange back when Brady returned.

  “I don’t see them. They should’ve been in by now. Want me to track ’em down?”

  “That’d be great. Thanks, Brady. What’s doing there?”

  “Same old. Norris and Watts are working on prefabs for the Connolly house. Turino’s cutting decking.”

  “Not on-site?”

  “He says it’s too hot. Me, I’d be out there anyhow. It’s pretty hot in here, too.”

  Caroline didn’t doubt it. Her house seemed to be absorbing more humidity with each passing hour, and though she had every ceiling fan running on high, they could only do so much when the moisture became entrenched. Lethargy was the order of the day, not that she was about to do anything strenuous, like take a wood chisel to teak. Her wrist was still achy.