by Jan Feed
“Sure I mean it.” Kathleen leaned forward, enthusiasm lighting her face. “We could start with half a dozen of the soaps I already make, but I’d love to experiment with others. I could aim for some that were really distinctive.”
“Like the chocolate one.”
“Right. Go for the unexpected, the…the…”
“Sybaritic,” Jo contributed.
Both heads swung toward her.
“Luxurious,” she said helpfully. “Sensual. Voluptuous.”
“Yeah. That,” Helen agreed, turning back to Kathleen. “Instead of just the citrus scents or the lavender that everybody does—although I like both—we could market you more effectively if your soaps are unique.”
“Market me.” If she still had a headache, she’d forgotten it.
“Your skill.”
“You really think we can do this?”
For the first time, Jo realized that Helen was pretty, perhaps even beautiful when she glowed with purpose and enthusiasm.
Cheeks pink, eyes sparkling, she radiated excitement. “I do.”
“It’ll mean more work. After we get home from our actual paying jobs.”
“Yes, but just think. What if we built a real business? If we started selling through a Web site, or talked one of the major catalogs into carrying your soap, or started our own catalog…?”
Kathleen threw back her head and laughed. “Do you have the slightest idea how to do any of those things?”
Helen laughed merrily, too. “No, but I can learn.”
Jo stood and started work on dinner, leaving her two housemates to plot. Soon they were passing a notebook back and forth with scribbled designs for a label even as they talked about ways to expand into baby soap, bath herbs, pet shampoo for the indulgent owner and laundry soap that would leave hand-washables delicately fragrant for weeks.
Kathleen explained the process of soap-making and the difference between cold-process, hand-milled and melt-and-pour soaps. “The hand-milled is made from already cured cold-process, so of course I didn’t make any last night, but it makes a harder bar with a smoother texture than either of the other methods.” She talked about why it had to “cure” for anywhere from two to eight weeks, depending on the recipe. “We’d have to have room for huge quantities to be curing,” she worried. “I don’t know about the temperature in the garage….”
“We could heat it,” Helen suggested. “Or, for now, clear out the den, put in makeshift shelves, and use it. If Jo doesn’t mind,” she added scrupulously.
Both turned to look at Jo, who was draining macaroni into a colander.
“Nope,” she said. “Never use it.”
“The kitchen would be tied up a lot, too,” Kathleen said.
“We can work around you,” Jo assured her. Or not. They could order pizza, Chinese takeout, fast-food burgers… Personally, she wouldn’t mind if she cooked dinner only once a week instead of twice.
“The other thing is…” Kathleen sat back, new anxiety tightening her face. “Well, this will cost.”
Helen nodded. “We’ll have to get printing done and buy stuff for packaging and probably letterhead and business cards…but we can do that at Kinko’s.”
“Not just that. I’ll have to make lots of soap. I should experiment, try to develop recipes that are mine alone or find ones that we’re all agreed are the best. And the ingredients can be expensive. Lye, of course, cocoa butter, glycerin, fats—and the oils! I can’t just snap them up at the grocery. Olive oil, for example. Unless I buy pomace, the soap would smell of olives.” She wrinkled her nose. “Coconut oil, castor oil, palm oil, jojoba…not to mention the essential oils that provide the scents and the therapeutic qualities. And I’ll need more molds and a food processor or spice grinder. I’ve always done without, but…” She shrugged. “You see? We’ll have to invest. And I don’t know if I can afford to.”
Helen sat silent for a moment. “We could start small,” she said at last. “Try to sell in just a couple of stores, then use any income to buy more supplies.”
“I guess we’ll have to,” Kathleen agreed, “but that will mean not experimenting as much, and keeping the packaging really minimal. No boxed sets, for example.”
Jo put the casserole dish in the oven, closed the door and turned to face her housemates. “I have a better idea.”
They looked at her in surprise. “You do?” Kathleen said.
“Borrow from your brother. He’d love to help. He’d give you money—” she waved off objections before Kathleen could voice them “—which I know you wouldn’t take. But this is different. Pay him interest. Offer him a small percentage of profits. Make it business. You’ll need an investor if you’re going anywhere with this. Why not Ryan?”
Kathleen stared at her with a blank, almost dazed, expression. “Why not Ryan,” she echoed. She gave herself a shake. “I just don’t want charity.”
“We’ll find a way to pay him back even if we fail,” Helen said strongly. “I could put in more overtime at the store if I had to.”
“Look at it this way,” Jo suggested. “You could keep him in soap for the rest of his life.”
Kathleen rolled her eyes at the frivolity of this idea. But she looked as if she was seriously thinking about Jo’s advice. “You really think he’d be interested?”
“I think he’d be thrilled,” Jo assured her.
She cut up broccoli and put it in the steamer while the other two women continued to talk and scheme and dream. With her back turned to them, she was more aware of their voices, vibrant in a way they hadn’t been before. At night, after a day of work at jobs they disliked, both tended to sound tired, heavy. Jo had never heard Helen crackle with this kind of energy and excitement and hope.
Let this work, she prayed. She wanted very badly for their hope not to be false, their dream dead-end. Because if they failed, they’d be more discouraged than they’d been before they started.
Ginny slipped into the kitchen and went to her mother, pressing up to her side and laying her head on her mother’s breast as Helen automatically wrapped an arm around her. As was her habit, she said nothing, becoming invisible, only listening as the women talked, her eyes alive and aware in her small face.
“I could ask my brother-in-law, too,” Helen said suddenly. “He’s offered to help before, but I didn’t like to feel…dependent.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother-in-law,” Kathleen sounded startled. “You’ve never mentioned him.”
“I don’t think he ever liked me.” Helen glanced down at her daughter, then said quickly, “No, that isn’t right. We always got along fine. It’s that…I think Lyman admires women who are go-getters. Women who are smart and ambitious and capable. I was just a housewife. He didn’t understand why Ben loved me.”
“But he offered financial support after your husband died?”
“Yes, but with an air of…irritation. Duty. His brother might have chosen foolishly, but he felt obliged. You know?”
Kathleen nodded, her lips thin. Jo felt a spurt of rage. How dare that…that jackass have made this kind, gentle woman feel inadequate, and at a time when she grieved so terribly for his brother?
“But I could ask now. He’d loan us money, I’m sure.”
“You know what?” Kathleen said. “Let me ask Ryan first. I’d much rather tell your brother-in-law to go to…” her gaze flicked to the little girl listening, “um, where to go.”
Relief lightened Helen’s face again, restoring her prettiness. “Okay. I like Ryan better.”
“Then we’re agreed? We’re going into business?”
“As partners.” Helen held out a hand.
Kathleen took it and they solemnly shook.
“I wonder,” Kathleen said, “what Emma will think.”
EMMA WAS POUTING when she opened the door to Ryan. “Uncle Ryan,” she said unenthusiastically. “Mom’s in the kitchen.”
“Hey! Wait.” He put a hand on her arm to stop her and had a hell of a time n
ot recoiling. God! She was nothing but bone.
“What?” she snapped.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“What would be wrong?”
“You don’t seem to be in a very good mood.”
She shrugged.
“Okay,” he said, letting her go. “Talk to me when you’re ready.”
His niece went up the stairs without looking back. He couldn’t help noticing how slowly she went, as if she had to drag herself up each step.
In the kitchen he found all three women clustered around the table, so intent on their conversation they didn’t see him right away.
“Aroma, fragrance, essence,” his sister said.
“Attar,” Jo contributed with satisfaction. She sat as she often did with one foot tucked under her, the baggy sleeves of her shirt pushed up. “I always loved that word.”
“Bouquet,” Helen said. “Or how about ‘natural’ or some takes on that?”
“Pure,” Kathleen said thoughtfully. “But that sounds more like a description of ingredients than a name.”
“What’s in a name?” Ryan asked rhetorically. “That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Laughing, his sister said, “Thank you for that contribution.”
His eyes meeting Jo’s in a silent greeting, Ryan pulled a chair up to the table. “Contribution to what?”
“Well.” Kathleen glanced at the other women, who started to push their chairs back. “I wanted to ask you something.”
That zeroed his attention in on his sister. “Is this about Emma?”
“No, it’s…um…” She took a deep breath and clasped her hands together on the table. “I actually wanted to ask you…”
With a last look at him, Jo followed Helen out of the kitchen.
“I’m starting a business,” Kathleen said in a rush.
“What?”
“A business!” She scowled. “Is that so unlikely?”
“It’s just…not what I expected.” He’d been waiting to hear that Emma had collapsed, or that the son-of-a-bitch Ian had decided to quit paying child support, or that… “What kind of business?”
“Soap.” She looked defiant. “I’m going to make it and Helen will sell it.”
“Helen?” He felt guilty raising doubts, but felt obligated. “She’s so timid. How the hell is she going to sell anything?”
“That’s what she does, you know. She works for Nordstrom on commission.”
He shook his head. “It’s a long ways from smiling at women shopping for clothes and telling them how wonderful they look in puce to convincing store owners to carry a product.”
“Yes, but I think she can do it. When she suggested the idea, she came alive.” Remembered amazement crossed Kathleen’s face. “She’s the one who pushed me into trying to sell my soap.”
Frowning, Ryan considered. “I like the soap you’ve given me. It smells nice, and it lathers better than the stuff I buy at the grocery store.” He hesitated, not wanting to rain on her parade, but not wanting to see her stumble and fall, either. “The question is, can you make better soap, or package it more appealingly, than all the other noncommercial ones already available?”
She didn’t like being doubted by him, that was clear, but she was a fair woman. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“And?”
She tilted up her chin in pride. “I make extraordinary soap. Whether we can get it out there to compete, I don’t know. Helen believes we can.”
Ryan smiled and tilted his chair back. “Okay. What did you want to ask me?”
Now she twitched and fidgeted, a sight he thoroughly enjoyed. His big sister hadn’t had to ask many favors of him in her life, and she was clearly wishing she didn’t have to ask this one, either.
Finally she spit it out. “I need an investor.”
“You want money.”
She flushed. “I don’t want money! I need equipment and supplies to make soap on the scale we’re envisioning. Plus we’ll have costs for printing labels, invoices, business cards and so on, as well as buying the material for packaging. This is strictly a business proposition.” She was getting madder as she went. “I’ll pay you interest or a percent of my profits so that you’re essentially a minority partner. But if you’re not interested, I can find someone else!”
He crossed his arms and grinned at her, going for infuriating. “What makes you think I’m not interested?”
His sister gritted her teeth. “Are you?”
“Maybe.” He drew the word out. “Now, let me think…”
She let out a huff of rage.
Ryan let the chair legs drop to the floor, hard. “Damn it, Kathleen! How many times have I offered financial help? If you just asked me for money, I’d give it to you! It insults the hell out of me that you’re doubting for a minute that I’d be there for you.”
She wrung her hands in agitation. “I don’t want ‘help!’ You know how I feel about that! I’m asking you to risk money because you have faith I can pay you back. That’s not the same thing.”
Ian had done a number on her, Ryan thought not for the first time, but with new anger. Yeah, his sister had always been independent, but at eighteen or twenty she wouldn’t have been terrified by the idea of depending on someone else.
He reached across the table and gripped her hand, feeling it quiver in his. “Kathleen, I have always had faith and pride in you. You’ve never set out to do anything and gone halfway.” He didn’t add that he’d spent much of his life feeling inadequate in comparison. “You can count me in. I’ll enjoy watching ‘Kathleen’s Soaps’ burgeon into an empire.”
Cheeks flushed again, but this time, he thought, with pleasure, his stubbornly self-reliant sister made a small sound of protest and tugged her hand free. “I’m not hoping for an empire. Enough success so that Helen and I could quit our day jobs would satisfy me.”
“Then,” he said, “let’s celebrate a beginning. Where’s the champagne?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“WANT TO STUDY at my house?” Ryan asked.
“Sure,” Jo said readily. “I’ve got to feed everybody first, though.”
He shifted his cell phone to his other ear as he climbed the stairs in a client’s home to inspect the tile work a subcontractor had done in the bathroom. “Are you cooking?”
“Kathleen has commandeered the kitchen.” Jo sounded remarkably cheerful about it. “We’re doing Chinese tonight. You want to join us?”
“I’ll do even better. I’ll pick it up if you call in an order.” He crouched to get a better look at the work around the tub. “Crap,” he muttered. “I wish you worked for me.” The simplest damn job, no elaborate pattern, just a plain, muted peach-and-white checkerboard, and Jacobson had screwed up just because he was in a hurry.
“What?” Jo asked.
“Tiling. Damn it, you should see the size of the gap between the outlet pipes and the cut edges of the tiles.” He whipped out a tape measure and laid it across the hole, shaking his head at the result. “The fixture isn’t going to cover it.”
“What will you do?”
“Call my subcontractor back and make him redo as much of the job as necessary. I get the clients I do because I set high standards. We don’t hide mistakes.”
“Oooh,” she teased, “a hardnose.”
He grunted and eyeballed the work around the sink. Better. “That’s me.”
They agreed on a time and he stuck his cell phone back in its case on his belt.
Things were going well with Jo. Better than before Thanksgiving. She’d relaxed in small ways, as if she were more willing to let him get closer to her.
Earlier in the fall, she hadn’t liked to bring her books over to his place, for example. Dates had to be just that—planned, definable occasions, after which he was to bring her back to her house. Now she seemed content just hanging out at his place as well, or letting him hang at hers.
It was also true, though,
that she’d never said a word about his declaration of love. He hadn’t repeated it—she hadn’t asked him to—and she sure as hell hadn’t echoed it. She’d chosen to pretend he’d never opened his mouth.
Ryan told himself he was willing to pretend, too. He’d known it was too soon, that she wasn’t ready, that he might even scare her. He was lucky she hadn’t pulled back, or sent him packing. She’d warned him she wanted neither his heart nor his hand. And what had he done? Fallen in love anyway and been stupid enough to tell her, that’s what.
For a couple of weeks, he didn’t push, he didn’t demand, and he demonstrated his passion when they made love but bit back the words. In one way, he was content with the results: she was becoming more open, more likely to tease, to tell him a secret from her childhood or about why she’d isolated herself the way she had. But he also knew his frustration was growing as they treated each other like great friends who happened to sleep together sometimes.
If she hadn’t changed her mind, was he doing himself any favor to spend this kind of time with her? More of his heart seemed to crumble off every day, every time she smiled just for him, every time she came to him for a kiss or argued with him because she held so many strong beliefs, every time he saw how gentle she was with Hummingbird. Maybe he could still save himself now, if he didn’t let her keep shattering him with the way she moved and laughed and thought.
There were days when he had hope, when he’d swear she felt the same as he did, words or no, when she smiled down at him as they made love with her eyes dreamy and her mouth so soft, or when they were walking down the street and she laughed and elbowed him and then laid her head on his arm as if doing so came as naturally as breathing.
That evening was one of the times he could believe marriage was in their future. When he showed up with the food, everybody gathered in the living room, where they passed around cardboard containers of rice, spring rolls, sweet-and-sour pork and chicken with snow peas, dishing up onto paper plates. Ginny sat on her heels using the coffee table to dine, while the adults sprawled on the sofa and comfortable chairs with their plates balanced precariously and their cans of soda near to hand. Jo settled next to Ryan on the couch as if her place was a given, and her smile was slightly mischievous and even a tiny bit provocative. A promise.