Fortune Is a Woman (25 page)

Some of both. “I don’t think I…do I know you?”

“You might. Did you like the bracelet?”

Venus cleared her throat. “Can you hold for a second? I’ve got another call.”

“I’ll hold.”

She set the receiver down and left her office. “Who put that call through?” she growled at her two remaining assistants, both busy picking out the crud from a computer keyboard.

“I did.”

“You did?”

“Yes.”

“What is your name, please?”

“I’m…my name is Billy.”

“Billy what?”

“Kendle. Billy Ken–”

“His son?”

“Actually his nephew.”

“I see,” Venus said, looking quite vexed. “You need this job, Kendle?”

He gave her a sheepish grin, put his hands in his pockets. “Not really,” he admitted.

“Good, because–”

“Cool,” he said, taking his coat off the rack and picking up his briefcase. “No problem,” he muttered as he walked out.

“And you?” Venus quizzed her last assistant. “Do you need this job?”

“I do,” the young woman answered in a small voice. “Student loans and…and stuff.”

Loans and stuff Venus could understand. “Fine, you’re hired. Screen all my calls from here on in. Visitors, etceteras. No one gets past you, understand?”

The girl nodded.

“What is your name?”

“Kate Fitz-Simone.”

“Okay, Kate,” Venus said, amazed that anyone was left standing today. “You’re in charge. Now I’ve got to get rid of this caller and after that you’ll get your instructions.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Venus stopped in her tracks. Ma’am is such an ugly word. She was not ready for that title yet. If ever. “Ms. Angelo will do,” she corrected.

“Yes, Ms. Angelo.”

Great Enterprises and Proof of Prowess

Either winter had set in before she left and Lydia had failed to notice it or Helaine had taken the fair weather with her, because every day she had been gone was the same, eight days of cold and damp, the gray skies intermittently weeping, the mercury plummeting at midnight promising snow.

It had brought the exterior work on the lake house to a standstill and Marilyn Beaumont was sorry to have to report to her daughter this week that the porch, which had only needed a few more days of favorable temperatures, would probably languish another season before it was complete. The disappointed crew was moving the operation indoors for now, intent on restoring the battered walls and woodwork, the parquet floors Lydia had completely forgotten about.

“But everything’s under control, sweetheart. Don’t worry about a thing.”

Lydia couldn’t get out to the lake house as often as she would like. In her stead, her mom was proving to be an adept project manager, visiting the site at least twice a week to supervise.

“Keep up the good work, Mom. See you…whenever, I guess. A few weeks maybe.”

Initially the contractors had reservations about Mrs. Beaumont’s visits. Lay people can be difficult and pesky, hindering more than helping with their unwanted advice and their quirky attentions, often squandering hours of a laborer’s valuable time with nostalgia and drivel. The highly skilled worker is the one who shows up for work with kid gloves and ear plugs, who knows from experience that a cold shoulder can be the most valuable tool in the toolbox for getting the job done.

To the crew’s relief, Mrs. Beaumont did not require this approach. She was neither a nostalgic eccentric nor a demanding chatterbox. Nor was she undecided, willy-nilly, crooked, or cheap. Whenever she drew one of them aside to chat, she tipped them for their time, whether the consultation amounted to only a few minutes or lasted beyond an hour. She didn’t ask them to cut corners or quibble over receipts, she didn’t pull them off one project to begin yet another or send them in five different directions at once only to later bitch at them that nothing but extras was done by the due date. She didn’t show up in the middle of the day with cookies and tea, preposterously dressed or scantily clad. And if one of them needed to consult with her at her home, she didn’t, as some customers had an annoying penchant for doing, answer her door nude.

The crew liked Marilyn Beaumont and were enthusiastic about working for her because it was clear to them that she had only two main objectives: that the house be fully restored by her daughter-in-law’s birthday next year–bar no expense–and that the flower beds not be trampled in the process. In short, she was a model customer and the lake house was coming along beautifully because of it.

Omitting the unfinished wraparound and a paint job, all the exterior work had been completed by the first flurries. The leaky slate roofs looked mint again, their numerous broken or missing shingles replaced with matching slate salvaged from a dilapidated barn the roofing contractor had discovered half a county away; the gutters permanently removed; the damaged soffits and fascia repaired as needed. The collapsed foundation beneath the corner of the building and the rotted posts and beams of the porch were also history. The lake house was once more standing plumb and true. The masons had been required to jack those parts of the building–one inch a week for six weeks–and after that they had installed temporary supports so that the collapsed foundation could be excavated by hand and the fallen fieldstone re-laid. The hand-hewn sills and uprights that had rotted down in some places to the consistency of dust and paste were chopped away in bits and clumps and then hauled off in wheelbarrows to continue their decomposition in Mrs. Beaumont’s old compost heap. They were replaced with brand-new hand hewn ones made of locust, a wood known for its resistance to rot and fungus. The various clapboards, trim boards and gingerbread that had deteriorated from lack of paint and overexposure to the elements had originally been milled of red and white cedar, trees which still grew abundantly on the neighboring landscape. A purist, the master carpenter assigned to this cosmetic work sought to supply the finishing lumber for the project from the same mill he surmised must have furnished the wood over a century ago, an enterprise which still thrived and which was located, as well, halfway across the county. Once the board lengths had been obtained, the carpenter then meticulously carved them at home in his turn-of-the-century wood shop and when the customized pieces were finally installed, they matched the existing ones so perfectly that Marilyn Beaumont was sure when it was all covered with a uniform color no one would ever be able to distinguish the modern master’s work from the old. He had wowed her in the same way replicating the new balusters and the curved balustrade of the porch, the replacement columns, the mahogany tongue-and-groove flooring, the ornate wooden screen doors. Upstairs, off the master bedroom, he had stolen her heart away by miraculously restoring her elegant little balcony to its original glory, having at first horrified and alienated her by stripping it of everything but the cantilevered floor joists. It had been decades since she could stand up there, sheltered from the rain and sun, and stare out at the peaceful lake waters. The only things missing from the reclamation were her children playing below on the bank, swimming, boating, or squabbling, as they often did–or grandchildren. In fact, so reviving was it all to Marilyn Beaumont that she didn’t seem to care anymore about not having grandchildren or even to realize that her husband, too, was out of the rosy picture.

_____

The master carpenter was a widower who lived a few towns south of Marilyn in a log cabin he had built for himself after his wife died. In his early sixties, he was a quiet man with a soothing voice and penetrating eyes, wild silver hair he attempted to tame in a ponytail. At first Marilyn had been taken aback by him, his craggy good looks and watchful demeanor, his rugged hands and strong silence. She had thought he must be common to act like this, to be so speechless and to send her sideways glances while he toiled. Several times this past summer she had caught him observing her as she walked in her former gardens and spoke with her roses. Immersed in her pinks and mauves and scarlets, she would suddenly look up toward the house and see him standing there, his hands idle, his amber eyes glinting in the sunlight like a cat’s, like a cat, following her every movement. There was an aim in them she had not seen in decades, a man concentrating on the flower he was thinking of plucking. She had been flabbergasted by those encounters, feeling her heart racing like a girl’s, that healthy fear long forgotten rising inside her, feeling foolish again as, with nervous fingers, she clumsily checked for her wedding ring through her garden gloves and hastily packed up her tools to drive home beside herself.

Each time he had done this to her she would make up her mind to fire him, return resolute to the lake house the following week, look into his eyes, hear his singsong, “Hello, Mrs. Beaumont,” find another of his miracles waiting for her inspection, go breathless, and change her mind again.

“Please,” she had finally said, giving in to the inevitable, “call me Marilyn. Mrs. Beaumont sounds too…too formal. Actually,” she added, meeting his gaze, “I rather hate it.”

“Marilyn,” he said softly. “There’s fish in your lake, Marilyn. See them jumping?”

She peered out beneath her ring hand. The water was bubbling like a glass of champagne.

“Shall I bring two poles tomorrow?” he asked.

She hadn’t fished here in a thousand years. Not since her husband–she dropped her hand. “He’s not dead, you should know.”

He leaned against the pillar and smiled tolerantly. “Three poles then?”

She stifled a laugh at that and searched the water, and then the sky, and then the ground. At length she answered him. “I can’t stand to clean the things…the guts and…and all.”

“Well, that’s all right. Can you cook?” he asked in a bargaining tone.

Oh, god, could Marilyn Beaumont cook. The man was in for a treat. She studied his eyes to see if he already knew that. They looked inside her. “I can cook,” she murmured, glancing over her shoulder and fumbling in her pocket for her car keys.

“Tomorrow morning?” he asked.

Tomorrow was a Saturday. Her thoughts had gone to Lydia then. She wished she knew whether she would be coming out for the weekend. She hadn’t been able to for so long. It was desirable to know first before deciding, but she didn’t want to make him wait for an answer or put herself in the position where she would have to call him later, because she knew she wouldn’t call him later. Shouldn’t.

“Say nine o’clock?”

Nine was a respectable hour, she thought. For fishing. If he had said evening, now that would have been different.

“Or would you prefer later in the evening?” he asked. “Say five?”

He abandoned the post and perched on the railing, an aged Adonis, Atlas retired, Odysseus returning to bend the bow and claim his Penelope, he flirting, she unraveling, his teasing eyes saying, “Whatcha knitting, honey?”

“Whichever,” she heard herself respond.

He heard the quake in her voice. “Nine’ll be perfect, Marilyn. Perfect for fishing.”

Nine had been perfect for fishing that morning and by noon she had caught four legal trout and he three. She avoided the sight of their massacre and cleaning, sitting it out on the porch swing he had brought for her in his work van, where she listened and kept vigil for a vehicle on the long winding driveway, worried that Lydia might think to surprise her with an unannounced visit. She was not concerned that her husband might show up; he rarely came to see her anymore.

She wasn’t sure what she would do if her daughter came, though. She could say she had been fishing. That was true. That the man in the kitchen was the carpenter. He had been fishing, as well. What a coincidence, Lydia might challenge. Would she say yes, indeed, agree with her it was so, just a weird coincidence? Would she lie to her daughter? Or couldn’t she just tell her the truth, how lonely she had been till the restoration, till he came upon the scene, that she hadn’t known it? Lydia was devoted to her father but she knew what kind of man he was. She had heard their arguments when she was little, his midnight exits punctuated with the sound of a slamming door. Would she still think it wrong, the strongman in the kitchen making her feel weak again?

Marilyn swung, wondering now what her friends might have to say about it, a he-man in the kitchen wearing her apron and preparing to pan-fry lake trout for her lunch, forcing her to relax while he peeled the potatoes and tossed a salad of greens he had grown in his own garden, coming outside at intervals to keep the swing going and to give her his silly anecdotal accounts of fishing escapades and hunting mishaps, to ask if she was getting hungry yet, if she wanted more wine. It was this day that Marilyn had learned everything she needed to know about Roy Mann, the master carpenter, to determine whether he was worthy of the sparks he had been kindling, this same day that she agreed to meet him again, say for a leisurely walk around the lake, or a movie, or more fishing, now and then perhaps some grocery shopping, or even a candlelight dinner.

_____

Like so many women of her generation, Marilyn Sanders had only ever been with one man–Edward Beaumont–and that was only after they were married. Consequently, what qualities defined a good man and proved his masculinity to her were those epitomized in her husband, notions arrived at through lack of experience and propped up by the hearsay of the times. Edward was an excellent breadwinner so he was “a good man.” Edward was a philanderer. This is “what men do.” Manhood equaled prowess.

Perversely, a girl in Marilyn’s time became a good woman either through chastity or marriage or both. No rites of passage here, a good woman was one physically mature enough for sexual relations, but morally unwilling to have them until her wedding night, and even then only for the purposes of having children. Girls were taught that good men only proposed marriage to good women. So for good girls like Marilyn and her friends, womanhood equaled chastity, which led to marriage, children, fidelity and domestication. Success.

How, in these bizarre equations, good men would ever find the libertine women they needed on the side and were entitled to have, nobody asked, but Marilyn discovered early in her marriage that there were, paradoxically, plenty of them to go around and that, in fact, her husband seemed to desire the company of such women much more than that of a faithful wife, the mother of his two children.