Midas Touch

by Frankie J. Jones

  Laura had traded her flannel pajama top for a creamy white pullover that complimented her bronze skin.

  If the fashion police could only see you now,” Laura teased as she tossed her waist-length ponytail over her shoulder.

  “There’s already enough for everyone to gossip about. What I’m wearing won’t even matter.”

  Laura pulled a pan of muffins from the oven. She placed two on a plate in front of Sandra. “Sit down. Try these cranberry and apple muffins. It’s a new recipe, so tell me what you think.”

  Laura wrote cookbooks and acted as a menu advisor for one of the largest restaurants in Dallas.

  Sandra pulled a muffin apart, inhaling the fragrant steam before taking a bite. She closed her eyes in appreciation as the delicious morsel melted in her mouth. “Better than sex,” she moaned as she swallowed.

  Laura sat a cup of coffee in front of her. “My dear woman,

  thank you for the compliment, but if you truly believe that, you’re doing something wrong.”

  Sandra gave a sour laugh and sipped her coffee.

  “I’m sorry,” Laura said, reaching for her hand. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “I’m not sure I know myself,” Sandra admitted, pinching off another piece of muffin. It no longer tasted as wonderful as it had.”Talk to me,” Laura coaxed.

  “Nothing feels right anymore. I spend my days running from one meeting to the next. In between meetings, I’m on the telephone setting up more meetings. I can’t remember the last time I actually designed a building. My personal life is non-existent.” Her voice rose. She took a deep breath and shoved the plate aside.

  Laura pushed it back toward her. “Eat,” she commanded.

  “You’re skin and bones.” She waited until Sandra began to nibble again. “It sounds like you need a vacation.”

  Sandra snorted. “I don’t have time to scratch my butt. How am I supposed to take a vacation?”

  “I haven’t heard that awful expression since we were in college,” Laura said, walking to the counter with their coffee cups and refilling them. “You’re the boss,” she said, placing a cup back in front of Sandra. “You could get away if you truly wanted to.”

  Sandra heard the added emphasis to the latter part of Laura’s statement and started to protest, but a small nagging voice stopped her. Laura was right. There were plenty of people at Tate Enterprises who could carry the workload while she was gone.

  Why was she hesitating? Frustrated, she ran her hands over her face. “That’s part of the problem. I don’t know what I want.”

  “Have you talked to Carol?”

  Sandra stood abruptly and began to pace. She vaguely noticed the worn red-and-white rag rugs lying before the sink and beneath the antique, unfinished walnut table. The scratches and stains on the table’s top read like a hieroglyphic testament of its decades of use.

  0

  Glass-fronted cabinets revealed a treasure-trove of mis-matched dishes gathered from the innumerable garage sales and flea markets Laura haunted. Nothing matched, yet everything fit together with a sense of completeness Sandra could not explain.

  There was a serenity here Sandra found nowhere else. After several circuits around the small kitchen, she sat down.

  “I feel like my whole life is one big screwed up jumble.

  Nothing makes sense. I’m not happy at work. I’m not happy at home.” She stopped, surprised by her outburst.

  “You’re doing good. Don’t clam up,” Laura said, squeezing her hand.

  “You’re the only person I’ve ever been able to talk to,” Sandra acknowledged, recalling the long nights, starting in college, when she and Laura hashed over their turbulent love lives, or in Sandra’s case, the lack of one. After college, their continuing sessions helped work through Laura’s failed marriage, the death of Sandra’s father, and the ups and downs of their careers. Sandra withdrew her hand and rubbed her eyes. She was so tired.

  “What’s going on with Carol?” Laura asked with her usual bluntness.

  Sandra shrugged. “I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be anything left between us except arguing. I can’t do anything right where she’s concerned. I’m never home. I can’t manage to get away when she needs me for something. I embarrass her in front of her friends.”

  “I’m hearing a lot of I’s in this conversation. It couldn’t be the old tendency you have of trying to carry the weight of the world on those scrawny shoulders of yours, could it?”

  Sandra stood up angrily. “I thought we could talk.”

  Laura’s eyebrows knitted together. “We can, as long as were honest with each other.” She pushed her cup away. “Let’s start over. What happened last night? Why were you in the park at dawn this morning looking like the loser in a barroom brawl?”

  Sandra sat down and slowly revealed the events of the previous evening.

  “This is your need to control thing, isn’t it?” Laura asked

  when Sandra fell silent.

  “I know you don’t understand,” Sandra said, “but to me it’s important. It’s who I am.”

  Laura frowned. “Haven’t you ever just completely let go?

  No restraints. No worries about what someone else is going to think?”

  Sandra looked down at her hands. She began to twist the ring on her finger. The wide gold band, with its intricate black onyx and pearl pattern, was the only material possession she truly cherished.

  “What about when you’re making love?” Laura asked.

  Sandra felt her face turning scarlet. She could not remember the last time she had made love to Carol. It had been almost seven years since she touched Carol. The less than desirable first year had been their best. Even with her lack of experience, she knew something was not right. Early in the relationship, she discovered Carol hated sex. The few times Carol allowed Sandra to make love to her ended with Carol criticizing Sandra’s inexperience.

  Daunted by her inadequacies, Sandra finally stopped touching Carol altogether.

  With no prior relationship to base her ability on, Sandra assumed the problem was her lack of experience. Occasionally, she wondered if there was something more, another reason for Carol’s rejection. She once suggested to Carol that maybe their problems in the bedroom stemmed from something other than just her lack of experience. After all, Carol’s refusal to allow Sandra to touch her was strange. The mere mention their problems might also include Carol sent her into a rage.

  “What could you possibly know about making love?” Carol demanded. For all your money, Sandra Tate, you’re still no more refined than common trailer trash.”

  The jab cut deep, as Carol knew it would. No matter how much money she made, the number of accolades she received, or how many magazine articles praised her talents, deep down, Sandra Tate was still the little girl who lived in a trailer court.

  The little girl who raced home from school to clean the trailer

  and have dinner on the table for her father when he came home.

  He was the only family she knew, and she’d loved him dearly.

  She grew up believing it was her responsibility to care for him since her mother abandoned them when Sandra was four. In her heart, Sandra knew she was the reason her mother left. She must have been, because everything had been fine between her parents before she was born.

  Sandra’s father worked odd jobs, and was constantly hooking up the tiny trailer they called home to relocate to a new city in search of better paying work.

  Sandra learned to appreciate the frequent moves. They kept her from having to deal with making friends and explaining why her mother never came to school with cookies and treats on party days.Their final move to Dallas occurred when Sandra was a senior in high school. This move would eventually turn her life around.

  With little spare money for the frivolities enjoyed by other kids, Sandra devised ways to amuse herself. One of her ongoing pastimes was planning the dream home she and her dad would have someday. As she grew older, she
accepted the reality that the house would never exist, but continued to dream and sketch. By the time they settled in Dallas, she possessed a battered boot box full of adaptations and additions to the plans.

  Fate took a hand in Sandra’s life when she enrolled in a home-making course. The instructor, Ms. Angelo, a short, olive-skinned woman who Sandra fell in love with, believed in pushing her students to go beyond the normal cooking and sewing requirements the class normally required. Her major project for the term was to challenge her students to create the house they would someday like to live in. They were to plan and decorate the design. It could be drawn or constructed from the materials on hand. The project was due before Christmas break.

  Excited by the project, Sandra allowed herself free rein, knowing this would be as close as she would ever come to building her dream home. She also wanted to show Ms. Angelo she could

  meet her challenge.

  Having lived in what was basically a travel trailer, Sandra’s ideas were free of conventional architectural constraints. She constructed a wide, two-story home with a porch spanning the width of the front. Inside, she designed rooms with open seating areas. Many of the rooms displayed unique and slightly hidden alcoves. Each alcove contained a window, which filled the area with sunlight and allowed an unobstructed view of one of the many scenic landscapes she patiently created from twigs and construction paper. She used clever closets to provide an abundance of storage space; something there was never enough of in the small trailer.

  Sandra spent two weeks working on the spacious kitchen. She craved sunlight and color, so in addition to the hot house window above the kitchen sink, which she filled with miniature plants, she used thin glass slides to represent a bay window beside the breakfast nook. A row of small, colorful, plastic squares replicated stained glass and ran the length of the outer wall, just below the ceiling. When light struck the model, the kitchen glowed with rainbow hues.

  Although she finished the project several days before its due date, Sandra held off turning it in. Every day after school she would sit by the model and dream about someday living in this house. At the last possible hour, she carried the model to the home-making room and gently placed it among the other models.

  On her return after Christmas, Sandra found a note on her locker summoning her to report to Ms. Dysan, the student guidance counselor. This was not a new experience for her. The years of moving from school to school often left her reassuring some adult she was well-adjusted and doing fine. On more than one occasion, they moved so often her school records were lost at some distant location behind her.

  During her first and second grade years, she took numerous notes home to her dad requesting her birth certificate. He would read the notes and sigh. A few days later, Sandra would arrive

  home to find the trailer hitched to the old truck and they would move on to a new town.

  Sandra would have a few weeks of peace before the notes began again at the new location. By the third grade, her records were so jumbled no one cared anymore.

  Sandra’s heart raced when she entered the office and found Ms. Dysan was not alone. Ms. Angelo was there and Sandra’s model sat on Ms. Dysan’s desk. She experienced a sense of dread.

  There must be something wrong with her project.

  Ms. Dysan smiled and motioned to a chair in front of her desk. “Come in, Sandra. Have a seat. We want to talk to you about your project.”

  From her chair, Sandra studied the slightly overweight woman, whose short, curly hair framed a face suggesting a no-nonsense attitude.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Quite the contrary,” Ms. Angelo assured her and gave Sandra a smile that set Sandra’s heart pounding. “I’d love to have a sitting room like this.”

  You can have it, Sandra’s heart pledged as Ms. Angelo’s fingertips caressed the top of the model. Sandra burned to have them touch her with such loving tenderness.

  Ms. Dysan stood and approached the model. “I’ve never seen such an original plan. What does your father do?”

  “My father?” She was having trouble concentrating with Ms.

  Angelo standing so close. Sandra could smell her perfume. She focused her attention on the floor to keep from staring at Ms.

  Angelo.

  “Yes,” Ms. Dysan said, walking around the table where the model sat. “The clever closets and the way these areas are separated, yet part of the room.” She pointed to the alcoves. “He must have put a lot of work into this.”

  Sandra raised her eyes to find both women watching her.

  They thought her father built her model. There was an instant stiffening of her back and her chin came up.

  “My father had nothing to do with it. I did the work myself.”

  “You did all of this by yourself?” Ms. Dysan asked. “No one helped even a little?” She persisted as a look passed between the two women.

  “I didn’t need anyone’s help,” Sandra answered coldly. Why was Ms. Angelo looking at Ms. Dysan as though they shared a secret? They exchanged another glance as Ms. Dysan returned to her desk. Ms. Angelo moved to stand by her. Sandra wanted Ms.

  Angelo to stand closer to her, to move away from Ms. Dysan who doubted Sandra’s honesty.

  Ms. Angelo placed her hands in her jacket pockets and leaned onto Ms. Dysan’s desk. “How did you know to do this? You never asked me for any help.”

  “I just knew,” Sandra said and shrugged. How could she explain the finished product was already in her head? All she did was copy it onto the paper.

  Ms. Dysan rose and walked to Sandra, handing her a pencil and a pad. “Sandra, if I came to you and said, design me a four bedroom, two bath English Tudor, with a two car garage. How would you design it?”

  “Nancy,” Ms. Angelo said, so softly it hurt Sandra to listen.

  Why did she call this woman by her first name? Sandra wondered.

  Ms. Dysan gave Ms. Angelo a look and actually patted her hand.

  “I wouldn’t,” Sandra blurted, determined not to let her anger show. People could not hurt you, unless you cared.

  “Why not?” Ms. Dysan asked, as she arched a perfect eyebrow.

  “Because I don’t know what an English Tudor looks like.”

  Ms. Angelo dropped her head quickly, but not before Sandra saw her smile. A wave of warmth rushed over her.

  “I see,” Ms. Dysan said, with a slight smile. “Then how did you design this model?”

  Sandra thought about it for a moment. “I just copied it from my head.”

  Ms. Dysan tipped her head to one side and stared at Sandra.

  “So you’ve seen it somewhere in a magazine or something?” Ms.

  Dysan persisted.

  “No.”

  “Sandra,” Ms. Angelo said, her dark brown eyes mesmerizing Sandra. “I have a Boston Terrier and two cats. I love to read and listen to music. I hate to cook and have little use for a kitchen.

  I’m a homebody. When I entertain, I prefer small, intimate settings. How would you design my home? Can you give me a rough sketch?”

  Sandra’s heart pounded. She would walk across West Texas barefoot, with no water, if Ms. Angelo asked her to. Taking the pencil, she balanced the pad on her lap.

  “Sit over here,” Ms. Angelo instructed, motioning to Ms.

  Dysan’s desk.

  Sandra tried not to notice the heat from Ms. Angelo’s body as she eased by her. Sandra sat down and closed her eyes. She thought about what Ms. Angelo wanted. Slowly, the rooms formed in her mind’s eye and began to come together. She opened her eyes, still seeing the scene going on inside her head. The pencil began to move, roughly sketching the home Ms. Angelo wanted.

  She drew a spacious living room with a stone fireplace at one end. Tall, deep-set windows graced the living room walls.

  In the master bedroom, a large window seat overlooked the back yard. Next to the window was a smaller, more intimate fireplace.

  The kitchen was a simple design with French doors leadi
ng out to a trellised patio. Lost in the joy of her creation, Sandra rapidly penciled in crude outlines of furniture.

  She closed the yard off with a short picket fence and added a doggie door to the back door. She drew a quick line sketch of two cats sitting on the window seat in the bedroom before blinking and gazing at the design before her.

  She felt disappointed. The house was not majestic enough for Ms. Angelo. Unable to look up to see her disappointment, Sandra pushed the paper toward her. A hand reached out to take the pad.

  “My God,” Ms. Dysan breathed. “If I hadn’t been standing here, I would not have believed it.”

  Sandra looked up to find the two women staring at each other and smiling. She looked away quickly and swallowed her pain at their closeness.

  Finally, Ms. Dysan cleared her throat and pulled a side chair up close. “Sandra,” she began, “have you given any thought to college?”

  Embarrassed, Sandra stared down at her hands. There was no money to send her to college.

  “I’m not going.”

  “Why not?” Ms. Angelo exclaimed. “Sandra, you have a very unusual talent. You could…”

  From the corner of her eye, Sandra saw Ms. Dysan reach out and touch Ms. Angelo’s hand and she fell silent.

  Ms. Dysan placed the pad back on the desk before Sandra.

  “I think your grades alone are good enough to guarantee you at least a partial scholarship, but what I’d like to do is enter your model in an architectural design contest. Of course, I would need your father’s permission to do so.”

  Not able to follow the turn of the conversation, Sandra frowned.

  “Nancy, explain it to her,” Ms. Angelo prodded.

  “Every year the National Association for Women Architects sponsors a contest,” Ms Dysan began. “It’s opened to women between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five. They are looking for young women who show promising architectural skills. First prize is a full scholarship to your choice of three very prestigious colleges.” She took a deep breath and smiled at Sandra. “We think you have a good chance of winning.”