The Do-Over (15 page)

She picked up a netted bag that held dozens of tiny wheels of cheese wrapped in red wax. She’d never noticed them before. All the years warehouse shopping, she’d always bought mild cheddar.

She swung around to show Dan the new discovery, but he held up both hands and backed away. “You’re gonna have to throw that at somebody else.”

She watched him leave past the gallons of shampoo and buckets of vitamins until he disappeared around the giant cakes and twenty-four packs of over-sized muffins.

She held the cheese against her chest and whispered. “I found something new.”

She walked underneath the Abundance sign, swinging the bag of cheese as she headed for her apartment. She flipped her phone open, hit auto dial and braced herself for the mother-in-law. But it was a voice, cracking with the changes of twelve-year-old vocal chords, that filled her with relief. “Mulligan’s residence.”

“Logan, it’s Mom.”

“Hey, Mom. What’s goin’ on?”

“Just bought some cheese.”

“Excellent. I’m happy for ya.”

She laughed. “It doesn’t sound exciting to you? Cause I’m pretty excited about it.”

“Grandpa’s taking me to the skateboard park.”

“Well, cheese can’t top that.” She opened the door at the bottom of the stairs. “Logan?”

“Yeah, Mom?”

“Always be excited about things.”

“Ohhhkay.”

“No, really. I want you to feel like you do right now, even when it gets harder to feel like that, even when you have to find a new cheese and change the way you think about things. Don’t ever let your life just grind by.” She made her way to the top of the stairs.

“Mom?”

“Yeah, Logan.”

“You okay?”

She leaned her head against the loft’s door and smiled. “I’m a different kind of okay.” She stepped back and put the key in. “I’m just not sure what it looks like yet.” She stepped into the loft and felt both embraced and lost in the newness of it.

“Hey. Grandpa’s ready.”

“Good, you go have fun.”

“He’s taking me fishing next weekend, camping fishing for three days.”

“That’s great.”

“Bye, Mom.”

“I love you, Logan.”

“Duh.” His voice cracked.

“Duh.” She heard hers crack too.

While she’d brainstormed the next catalog page, she’d eaten the little cheeses for dinner then eaten the little cheeses as a bedtime snack. Breakfast? Little cheeses. She’d discovered they were not only tasty but fun to open. The red waxy rind peeled away like a man-made orange, but even then, it was time for another food group.

She checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror. After she washed the smudge off her uber-cool butterfly sunglasses and embraced the fashion fact that it clashed terribly with the geometric rayon top and tight black eighty’s pants, she’d swing by Abundance and see if anyone wanted to have a lunch, a lunch that involved vegetables, bread, coffee even. But coffee without cream. She’d had enough dairy for a while.

She studied her cleavage, mild in the world of cleavage, but to her it felt like a flesh exclamation point in the middle of her chest. She certainly hadn’t worn her push-up bra because she might run into John. Who would suggest such a thing? Well, Dan would, but Dan didn’t understand that a woman didn’t say what she meant when she meant something she’d said. Hell, she couldn’t remember how that had gone at the picnic, but she did remember it had been brilliant and made perfect sense at the time. She definitely needed less cheese and more caffeine.

“God, I love those sunglasses.” Celia sighed behind the counter.

Mara smiled and pulled them off. “They’re yours. You’ll look great in them.”

Celia put her hand to her chest. “I couldn’t. They’re so…”

“Uber-cool?”

“Yes.” Celia nodded in complete seriousness.

“Happens to me a lot. I’m a trend setter.”

Celia looked impressed. “Really?”

“No.” Mara laughed, shook her head. It felt great to be so light, to learn how to play.

“I almost forgot.” Celia reached under the counter and pulled out a clipboard, the metal clasp straining to hold a stack of papers. “We had orders yesterday!”

“That’s good.”

“No. We had orders because of the warehouse thing you did.”

She had a flash of hitting Dan with the tissue box. She’d nearly forgotten how the sample handing out had ended. In bloodshed.

But Celia wasn’t talking about bloodshed, she was talking about sales. “A couple of women called and ordered the bubble bath. They really got the English picnic thing. Then a lady came in and said that you’d hit a guy.” She shook her head and laughed like there sure were some crazies in the world, and Mara was certainly not one of them.

But she was one of them, and she felt the chest-sitting heaviness of guilt for the first time since the box had left her hand. She hadn’t been sorry she’d nicked Dan, but she didn’t want to let her friends at Abundance down.

“The lady wanted one of everything!” Celia’s eyes were large with excitement. “She said she was really sick of buying in bulk, and her husband bugs her. She said that. What does she mean about buying in bulk?”

Mara leaned over the counter, pinning Celia with her intensity. “Stay single for a long time. Twenty years more. Thirty. And never purchase anything that comes in twos. Or jugs. No buckets either.”

Celia held up her Girl Scout hand, and Mara relaxed. “Okay then.”

Celia checked her watch and yelled into the backroom. “Lunch, everybody.”

“I came to see if anybody was free, but don’t you guys stagger lunch breaks?”

Celia shook her head. “Nope. Close the whole place down. It’s English.”

“God, I love Canada.”

“No cheese, please.” She watched the woman construct her sub sandwich. “Lots of banana peppers.” The woman picked up a couple and dropped them on the salami. “More. Yeah, more.”

She felt John’s shoulder brush hers as his ham made its way down the line. “Fan of banana peppers, huh?”

“They have been my favorite since… let me think…” She counted back the chocolate kisses she’d pulled off the teddy, “Friday.”

He leaned closer to her but smiled at the woman behind the counter who smiled back in recognition of his general charm. “I’ll have the same.”

Stella proved to be a roast beef and provolone kind of gal, Celia ate tuna fish, and Dylan ate everything. His sandwich, the longest roll available, looked like a Mardi Gras float.

“And what,” John raised his soda cup in a kind of toast to her and made her blush, “brilliant plan do you have for the next part of the catalog?”

She shifted in her hard plastic chair. Hell. She’d forgotten her mission. She’d been distracted first by cheese, then sunglasses, and, she had to admit, John. She closed her eyes and thought shower gel. What had been her brilliant plan with shower gel? And then she remembered, opened her eyes and the corners of her mouth lifted as she looked into John’s green ones. “I’ll tell you what. We’ll meet tomorrow. Eight a.m.”

He grinned at her like a man who didn’t schedule fun because he’d never forgotten how to have it. “Where?”

She could be like that too. “Tiffany’s.”

She wished she could see the cab as it made its way down the empty street toward Tiffany’s, but she was in it and would have to imagine the scene. There was the quiet morning street, the yellow shine of the cab as the lone woman steps out onto the sidewalk. Her enormous sunglasses shield her from the early sun as she hands the cabdriver her last five. She waits until she hears the driver pull away then throws back her head and takes a huge gulp of cool morning air, feeling the strand of pearls luxurious at her throat.

Fake pearls, sure. Borrowed from Gretchen, sure. But Mara knew it was her real hair up in the French twist, and her very own skin dressed in the black and white evening gown and gloves. She swayed side to side to feel the cool satin against her legs then took tiny steps toward the window of Tiffany’s, the hem of the gown barely allowing for even that. The pastry bag swung from her right hand, the white paper stark against the dark satin of her elbow length gloves. Why had women ever stopped wearing gloves? She wanted to imagine a world where they were practical simply because of their impracticality. She reached up and touched the tiara shining out from the top of her head. Impractically practical? How about pretty? How about she’d underrated the power of pretty things, and she wouldn’t do it again?

She could hear the window call to her. Diamonds weren’t just rocks. They winked and held rainbows, and who didn’t love a rainbow? The purples and blues and reds and yellows of the spectrum really caused feelings if you were open to them… calm, warmth, joy, pleasure. She closed her eyes to the longing and romance of it all.

“Holly, I presume.” John walked toward her in black slacks and a gray tweed jacket that might have been contemporary, but the buttoned wool vest and slickly parted hair couldn’t have been more perfect.

“I’m crazy about Tiffany’s.” She opened the bag and handed John a pastry, taking one for herself as they stood on the sidewalk, side by side, admiring the treasures through the glass.

John moved to the next window, and Mara followed. “Wasn’t it the crazy reds?”

“Crazy reds?” She tilted her head to better see the tennis bracelets. She was now a woman who wore diamonds to play racket sports.

“You know, Audrey Hepburn went to Tiffany’s to get over her depression.”

“Mean reds.” She wished she’d brought an extra pastry. It was the best thing she’d ever eaten, and that wasn’t just the gloves talking. “It wasn’t depression. She was afraid.” She felt the stirrings, a memory of the panic that night in Seattle and at Gretchen’s when Dan had cancelled her card, and she’d not been able to catch her breath.

He turned to her, his wavy hair subdued and parted like a good boy’s, which made the way he looked at her even more dangerous. “What was she afraid of?”

She thought of the chocolates stapled to her teddy, nineteen left. “The only thing to be afraid of.” She lifted her bare shoulders, felt the satin shift and smooth over her skin. “She was afraid of her own fear.”

He seemed to consider it in the thoughtful way he took in everything she said. “Churchill was wrong?”

She gave a smile at her reflection above the Tiffany gems, sad enough she saw Holly in it. “He was very, very right about the only fear being fear itself. But it’s still enough to ruin us.” She turned away from the window. “About the catalog…”

“Holly.”

She smiled despite herself. “Yes?”

“There are four more windows on this side alone.” He lifted up his left hand and swung a white bag. “And I’ve got six Danishes in here.”

She laughed, and John began to sing, not very well, but certainly as well as Audrey Hepburn had, about crossing Moon River in style.

“Someone who looks like Katherine Hepburn?” Gretchen ran her hand over the satin gown Mara returned, and she heard the longing in her sigh. The dress had been divine. Sweats weren’t divine. Mom jeans weren’t divine. Divine should be her new standard for everything.

“Katherine Hepburn was the one that had that New England jaw thing.”

“Oh, the trousers.” Gretchen draped the gown over a satin hanger and hung it back on display. “She wore those wide-legged trousers, so elegant, but her top looked like she could go golfing.”

“That’s her.” She tried to picture herself dressed as Katherine Hepburn, golfing. She thought of that nice hotel man her first night in Vancouver telling her about M. Janie Mulligan, the do-over golfer. “Hey, keep a look out for a pair of trousers for me. In a couple of days I’m getting a very tiny paycheck from Abundance, and I want to buy something divine.”

Gretchen laughed. “Gotcha.”

“But what I really need is someone who looks like
Audrey
Hepburn, the one who looked lost in the best kind of way, like a homeless big-eyed cat you love instantly. Oh, and I’m gonna need a cat.” She considered the final scene of
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
when Holly had rescued the cat, the wet cat. “And a hose of some sort. I’m going to need the model wet.”

Gretchen raised her eyebrow. “Well, I think I can point you in the right direction. Where you go from there is up to you. Tonight, you can come along.”

“Great.” She felt herself grinning. She hadn’t always wanted to be the kind of woman who wore divine clothing, but she had always wanted to be the kind of woman who went out with girlfriends, and she was pretty sure she’d just been invited.

The Farrah hair, original jacket, and t-shirt with the push-up bra had been a good choice since the women in the bar really dressed up. She admired their great color combinations, olive and coral, pink and brown… They were all relatively young, and she wondered if any of them would get it if she said,
teach me, Grasshopper
?

The place was crowded and most people stood. She had a sense of tables around the edges that faced the empty stage and dance floor, but there were too many people to really see.

A woman in a pair of farmer bib overalls squeezed past, a woman who seemed to be one of the only exceptions to the well-dressed women. The men, the few that were there, didn’t share the female sense of fashion. She’d seen several in large oxford shirts, not even tucked but hanging out over beat-up jeans. They weren’t going to get very far in a bar with women this attractive.

“Here you go.” Gretchen handed her the modern triangle of glass that said martini in every language.

“It’s pink.” She held it up and admired its clear blush.

“This isn’t your daddy’s martini.” Gretchen sipped her own, eyed the room, and waved at a group of women crowded in a corner booth. “There they are.” She moved across the room, and Mara followed, but there were so many bodies along the path, she nearly gave in to her impulse to grab the back of Gretchen’s shirt and be towed through the crush.

Gretchen pointed to the women seated in a curve around a kidney shaped table. “Elaine and Amy and that’s Heather, Jodi, and Ashley. This is Mara.”

Gretchen slid into the booth, and Mara stood, smiling at the women and knowing she wasn’t going to get the names straight. The redhead was… Amy, Jenny? The one on the end, Ashley, maybe, scooted in to make room. Mara took the seat beside her, sipped a pink drink that was too delicious to be a martini, and tried to subtly check them all out. Not one of them looked anything like Audrey Hepburn. She hadn’t considered the possibility Gretchen didn’t really understand what she was looking for. She might resort to accosting strange women on the street to find someone.