by Fern Michaels; Marie Bostwick; Janna McMahan; Rosalind Noonan
One day I would tour Biltmore again, but this was not the day. I sighed as I drove past the grand estate’s entrance and turned into Biltmore Village, an upscale shopping area, also built by the Vanderbilts as support for the estate and to generate the local economy. What had once been furriers and coopers and bakeries were now women’s clothing stores, art galleries, and restaurants. I parked in front of the Country Corner Café and went inside. I was seated on a glassed-in patio at a large window where I could watch shoppers who seemed already to be hoarding treasures for the holidays even though the trees were still a fierce green with the end of summer.
People strolled with shopping bags dangling from the crooks of their arms. Unlike downtown, where the crowd could be more eclectic and scruffy, this group was groomed, perhaps retired with the time and money to enjoy themselves. What would it be like to be one of those women who were taken care of? Those women of diamond rings and BMWs.
I ordered a glass of white wine and studied the menu which offered everything from country caviar (apparently made with black-eyed peas) and gazpacho to cheese soufflé and blackened tuna steak salad. I opted for the tuna and sat back to watch the shoppers. A table of people in the corner laughed loudly and their happiness bounced off the glass ceiling and rained down on me. I smiled and looked their way and one of the men at the table caught my gaze and returned my smile. I felt my face warm and I quickly turned away. I suddenly remembered my clothes, jeans and a loose red sweater. My hair was pulled back into a messy bun. I was sans jewelry except for my wedding ring. I certainly hadn’t thought I’d be eating in such a swanky restaurant when I had dressed for the day. I felt all wrong and it took the rest of my meal and a second glass of wine before I shook the feeling of being out of place.
Outside again, I breathed a little better. I decided to walk off my meal with a stroll around the village. After all, this was the first real time I’d had to myself for months. I had forgotten how much I liked Asheville. Randy never wanted to come into town, never cared about going to the museum or the Bele Chere Festival. As I ducked in and out of shops I noticed a number of HELP WANTED signs on doors. I certainly wasn’t dressed nicely enough to ask for a job application at one of the women’s clothing stores, nor would I have had the clothing to work there anyway. But then I saw the Christmas shop, Season’s Greetings. The shop was housed in a cottage; twinkle lights entwined the railings on its white front porch. More lights winked from every window. Holiday music called from some unseen place under the eaves.
The HELP WANTED sign wasn’t large, but I noticed it on the entrance door peeking from behind a massive wreath. On impulse I went in thinking that my red sweater might seem appropriate here. I pushed open the door and jingle bells rang out, making me think of Santa’s sleigh. A bored teenager behind the cash register showed no interest in helping anyone. I walked around the store feeling slightly claustrophobic. There was barely a pathway carved between the massive Christmas trees that dominated every room. Most rooms had a fireplace with mantels decorated with candles and garland. Whole walls were given over to ornament displays. The scent of evergreen became cloying after a while, but I didn’t mind. I loved the Christmas store.
Around every corner was something that brought the tug of a warm familiar feeling. Ornaments and things that I loved as a child. A ballerina I had wanted to be. A gingerbread man who was always her savior. The rocking horse they used to ride away. I loved that rocking horse. I touched the small animal’s face and remembered my mother and gifts piled up four-feet high around the Christmas tree.
I approached the bored teenager. “Excuse me?” I said. “I see on the door that you’re looking for help. What type of position is available?”
“I dunno,” the girl said. “Let me get the manager.”
A short, pleasantly round woman with a mass of teased hair and makeup to rival a televangelist’s wife came from behind a curtain. “Hi. I’m CeCe. Can I help you?” she asked. Her red jingle bell earrings bobbed when she spoke.
“I saw your sign and well…I was just wondering what type of help you are looking for. Anything on weekends?”
“We need an assistant manager. That’s some weekend work, but we’d need that person around a lot during the week too. You know Christmas is almost upon us.” The way she said it, you knew she was happy in her work.
“Well, I can’t during the week. I have a job. I was just…I don’t know…drawn to your shop.”
“I know. Isn’t it wonderful? Christmas every day.” Her smile was genuine. “Here. Just take an application.” She reached behind the counter and came out with one. “Go on. Take it. You never know.”
I took the application and thanked her. Before I left I bought the tiny wooden rocking horse with a wreath around his neck. The smell of evergreen swirled from the cute shopping bag on my way to pick up my mother.
Inside the facility I spied her in a corner with her newfound friend. They were both heads down, working a puzzle.
“Hey, Ms. Duncan,” the director greeted me.
“Michelle, please.”
“Well, Michelle, your mother seems to have had a wonderful day.”
“I was surprised you didn’t call.”
“Oh, no. She’s been happy all day. She did have a few moments when her mind drifted some, but she came right back and everything was fine.”
“Thank you so much. She looks great.”
“Why don’t you go on over and speak with her?”
My mother was happy to see me, but she seemed a little disappointed when I asked her to gather her sweater and purse.
In the car, she waved to her friend, who raised a hand in reply.
“You seem like you like it,” I said as I drove out of the parking lot.
“It’s fine, sweetheart. Much better than I thought it would be.” She paused and looked out the window as we passed through town. “Although, the cupcakes were a little dry.”
I smiled. My mother was back.
I found the Interstate and we left Asheville behind.
Shadows fall early in the mountains and a cloak of calm descends on the valleys in early evening. My road to home was nearly dark as I turned into my drive.
“Would you be interested in going back?”
She took the longest time to answer and I worried that she hadn’t really enjoyed herself.
“Mom? Did you hear me?”
“What? I’m sorry. Did you ask me something?”
“I asked if you enjoyed it enough that you’d be willing to go back again.”
“Of course,” she said and sighed. “It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”
Chapter 6
I pulled up my sloping drive and parked. I helped my mother from the car and we entered through the porch door. I tried to avoid coming in through the garage now with Randy gone. The garage was his domain and it somehow seemed wrong for me to intrude.
Inside she brushed off my attempts to help.
“My mind may be going, but my legs still work just fine,” she said and headed upstairs.
At least she still has a sense of humor, I thought.
In the kitchen, I flung my purse on the counter and opened the refrigerator. I found the orange juice carton and was reaching into a cabinet for a glass when I saw the note on the table. I could tell it was Randy’s scratchy handwriting before I even picked it up.
Dear Michelle,
I came home today to talk to you, but you’re not here. I’m sorry I’m not a big enough man to wait around to tell you this in person.
I’ve been thinking about us a lot and I’ve decided I’m not coming home. I want a divorce. You know we haven’t been in love for a long time and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with you and have both of us regretting it.
I don’t mean to hurt you. You’ve been a good wife.
Randy
I sank into a chair. My hand trembled as I reread the note. “Haven’t been in love for a long time”? What did he mean? How long
had he felt that way and why hadn’t he said anything? Didn’t he know that people worked out their problems? They went to marriage counseling and talked to their preacher. Nobody just walked out on a marriage without some sort of warning, without trying to fix things.
My parents had had their problems. I heard more than one heated discussion in our house over the years, but they always seemed to work things out. There had been the overly quiet dinners and the days we didn’t do things as a family because of a spat, but everything eventually turned out okay.
I was going to be divorced.
I flung open the door to the garage and there I saw all of Randy’s stuff growing like chunky moss from the unfinished walls. He’d hammered nails into the joists to hang tools and fishing rods and camping equipment. Weed-whackers, gas cans, coolers, and tools were jam-packed along the walls. I grabbed a handful of the first thing I could reach and ripped. A tent came tumbling down onto the floor. Pinions pinged against the concrete and scattered. I crunched my foot through the fragile wall of an ice bucket. I pushed the button to open the garage and cranked the riding mower. It sputtered to life and I backed it out and up to the trailer on his johnboat. That stupid boat had taken my spot in the garage long enough. I was going to clean house—to pile all his stuff in the front yard and set it on fire with gas like I’d seen a woman do in a movie. I hooked the johnboat up to the yard tractor and put her in gear, but the mower lurched and stalled. I tried again and again, but I couldn’t get the damn thing to cooperate. The battery made a feeble whir, but the engine refused to turn over.
“Damn it!” I screamed. “Damn it! Damn it!” I kicked at the metal wheel wells until a pain shot up my leg.
That’s when I laid my head over on the steering wheel and cried. Plump tears popped onto the dusty gearshift between my legs. Most of my tears fell on the big N and the irony wasn’t lost on me. I’d been in neutral for a long time. Safe. Expected. That’s what I was like. A neutral kind of person. Maybe that’s what had finally run Randy off. Maybe I bored him. Maybe he had found somebody else who wasn’t quite so boring.
I had snot running, so I climbed off the mower and headed into the house. Inside I dug in my purse for the tissues I always kept in a side pocket. As I raised the crinkled tissue to my nose I noticed another bit of paper peeking from an outside pocket. I pulled the paper out. It was the job application from Season’s Greetings. I grabbed a pen from my kitchen desk and sat down. I hadn’t filled out a job application since I graduated college fifteen years before, but something told me that this was going to be a new start for me. I couldn’t very well keep my regular job if I had to take care of my mother all the time. If she didn’t get into a nursing home soon, I was going to be in a pickle with nobody to help me. Maybe this was what I had needed—a good kick in the butt to get me going down a different path.
I spent the next hour carefully filling out the job application and when I finished I realized that my penmanship was beautiful and my qualifications exceeded the job description that had been attached. It was a full-time position with pay equal to what I was making at the mulch company. If they hired me, I could drop Mom off in the morning at adult day care and pick her up in the afternoon. Season’s Greetings could fix some of my immediate problems. It was a plan.
I called Randy’s cell phone number and in a calm voice I left this message:
Randy, this is Michelle. I found your note. If you want a divorce then you can have one. Go ahead and hire a lawyer and draw up the papers. I want the house. I think that’s only fair since you’re the one who wants out. Oh, and we need to work out a time when you can come clean your stuff out of my house. I want to be able to park in my own garage.
Relief rushed over me when I pushed the mobile button that ended my connection with Randy.
Chapter 7
A month went by and I heard nothing from Randy. Two weeks after my meltdown in the garage, I became the assistant manager at Season’s Greetings. CeCe practically begged me to take the job when she found out that I had bookkeeping skills. In only a few weeks I had gotten the employees more motivated and had reorganized the stockroom. I still didn’t feel comfortable decorating displays, but I was getting there, experimenting with designs, ordering unusual things from our supply catalogs.
CeCe insisted I had good taste, that I could be a decorator. But I had always leaned toward a country style that I knew wasn’t hip or artsy or something designers appreciated. I came to realize that the country part of me was just because I’d been living in a log cabin my entire adult life. Having logs for walls sort of limited the types of decorating you could do and Randy’s taste had run to mounted dead animals and the occasional print of a barn or a river. He’d liked his comfortable lounge chair and the country kitchen table set we’d inherited from his parents. I’d never really had the chance to find out what my own style was. I had been thinking that if I did get the house in the divorce that I would sell it and move into Asheville. Living in town had appeal and I realized that I enjoyed being around people who were into the arts, people who liked to socialize and eat out and go to community events.
But I was still responsible for my mother and even though I saw a lot of interesting things going on in Asheville I wasn’t able to connect with any of the fun. I was also in limbo about Randy. I tried to put the fact that I hadn’t received divorce papers out of my mind. I bounced back and forth between being really enthusiastic about my new life and wishing I could see Randy again. I still had feelings for him and I found it hard to believe that he could just wipe away all our history, just dismiss all those feelings he had for me. I wasn’t sure that I wanted him back, but I did need some closure and without seeing Randy face to face it seemed impossible.
I knew that if I contacted a lawyer and drew up papers that he would be forced to make contact with me. But something kept me from being the one to make the first move toward divorce. Something in me felt that if he hadn’t taken up with another woman that we could put our lives back together again. But then the next day I’d be indignant and resolve to end his bullshit and move on with my life.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss him. At night, his soft snores were now replaced with the rumble of lumber trucks on the road. I still couldn’t bring myself to sleep in the middle of the bed, although I’d read in a magazine that it was therapeutic to spread out. Life was lonely without Randy sitting at the table with his cup of coffee and his newspaper in the morning. It wasn’t that we ever had in-depth discussions about the current day’s events or religion or politics, but there was a void without the rustle of the paper and his man noises.
Some mornings I would reach into the medicine cabinet and take out his razor and look at the little bits of beard he’d left behind. I’d smell his cologne and look at his dress shoes on the floor in our closet, waiting, like me. Once I went into the garage and retrieved a garbage bag I’d filled with his clothes and I’d thrown into the johnboat. I opened the bag and smelled his Randy smell.
My mother had seen my melancholy a few times, but stayed quiet on the subject of Randy. She respected my privacy and didn’t offer up her opinion on my situation during our drives into Asheville. Instead we both preferred to look forward to our days in town. My mother and I had slipped into our new routines. I’d drop her at the adult day care where the social scene was surprisingly active. She’d been getting attention from an older gentleman and never one to shy away from a man’s attention, my mother began to be more concerned with her appearance.
“Why, Miss Edwina, don’t you look fine today,” the director would purr when she arrived after a trip to the salon. “Is that a new scarf you’re wearing?”
“Oh, this thing? I’ve had it for years,” Mother would say.
I was so relieved that she was having a good time. Most days I couldn’t wait to drop her off so I could get on to work. Christmas season for retailers started with the fall festival and the influx of color-seeking tourists.
This day I was app
rehensive. CeCe was going to Atlanta on a buying trip and I was in charge for the first time. The outdoor displays tended to sell the fastest and it was my job to see that new displays were up and ready for the weekend. I’d come to really love the teenage girl who had been there the first day I came in. Her name was Renee. She was a skinny little thing with droopy hair and unfortunately one of those nose rings that made her look like she was trying too hard to be something she’s not. I’d complimented her appearance a couple of times and she perked up and became helpful.
On this day, CeCe was packing and giving me last minute instructions on what needed to happen that day. It was a Friday and I had to make the front lawn display, do the time cards and place an order. Since we were close to Christmas we had boxes of merchandise delivered every day and I had to reconcile the box content with our orders. We didn’t open until ten and with so much to do I had intended to wait until the afternoon to do the front display, but as soon as I came in CeCe pulled me and Renee out on the front lawn and started making suggestions.
“Now, honey, I don’t want to tell you what to do, but experience has shown me a couple of things that work and a couple of things that don’t.” I was listening intently when a beat-up blue van pulled across the street and a tall man with a head full of curly brown hair and a goatee started to unload from the back. CeCe’s words faded in my ears as I watched this guy pull sculptures from the van and carry them into the art gallery across the road.