Georgia on Her Mind (5 page)

T
uesday at eight the Single Saved Sisters gather at House of Joe’s for coffee, consolation and consultation.

The club emerged two years ago when Tamara Clayton and I had an epiphany in the church parking lot.

“Where are all the good Christian men?” Tamara asked. We stood by my old car.

“Married.” I unlocked my door and tossed my purse and Bible onto the passenger seat.

Tamara laughed. “So what are women like us supposed to do?” Tamara raised her arms toward heaven. “Please, Lord, where are all the good, available men?”

That’s when I suggested we get Lucy and several others to meet at House of Joe’s for coffee to discuss the gravity of the situation.

The first meeting of the Single Saved Sisters consisted of me; Lucy; Tamara, a gorgeous, intelligent, fiery black woman; Adriane Fox, a writer, muse and introspective philosopher; and last but not least, Beka Roth, a preppy, Rory Gilmore–type lawyer.

Two years later the crowd is the same except Beka, who recently joined the Happily Ever After club by marrying a colleague, Rick Gainer.

I abandoned them briefly, but I am back with a clear head and renewed commitment to getting it right. When I arrive at the coffeehouse Tuesday night, Lucy, Tamara and Adriane are already seated on two of the love seats.

“It’s about time you showed up.” Tamara lunges at me with her arms wide. “Hiding out with Chris is no excuse.”

“I was hoping he would rescue me from this excuse of a girls’ club,” I retort, giving Tamara a tight squeeze.

I drop my handbag on the coffee table, kiss Adriane on the cheek and fish out my wallet to buy a large fat-free latte.

Adriane leans forward and examines my bag with her fingertips. “A Hermès Birkin?” She regards me with her angular chin in the air, her wrist poised as if she held a cigarette. She quit smoking four years ago, but her hand has never forgotten. “Did you rob a bank?”

“No,” I say, proud of my signature handbag. “eBay.”

“How much?” Adriane picks up the purse for closer scrutiny.

If I tell her, she’ll never let me hear the end of it. She’ll lecture me on the needs of the world’s poor and homeless.

But I didn’t take money designated for the poor to buy this expensive accessory. No, I bought the bag when I thought my career was on the rise and perhaps I would become the wife of a successful financier.

“She’s not saying.” Tamara takes the bag from Adriane. “Must be bad.”

“Two thousand,” I blurt. “And change.”

Lucy’s mouth drops open. “I thought it was a knockoff. Are you telling me you bought a real Birkin?”

I twist my lips into a halfhearted smile and squeak out a yes.

“How much change?” Tamara pinches the purse handles between her thumb and forefinger. “Don’t want to smudge the leather.”

I mutter. “Five hundred dollars of change.”

“Oh, Macy!” All three speak at once. Twenty-five hundred dollars for a handbag? Of all things…

I cover my ears and foot it over to the coffee bar. I order my latte and go to the ladies’ room while Zach whips it together.

I don’t feel guilty for buying a Birkin. I’ve wanted a designer bag since my first trip to Manhattan in ’97. But the Single Saved Sisters’ brutal honesty causes me to question my priorities.

According to my recent tax return, I spent less than the cost of that purse on my charitable giving last year. Way less. Sure, I didn’t spend funds designated for the poor to buy that luxury item because I didn’t designate any money for the poor. I curl my lip at my reflection in the ladies’ room mirror. Not a thrilling revelation about myself.

I pick up my latte and decide to make a foxhole confession to my comrades that I’ll be more charitable this year despite my recent career setback.

But the conversation at the table is no longer about my expenditures. They are arguing about the reality show
Average Joe.

“No way would a handsome man choose an Average Jane. Would not happen,” Lucy argues, her cheeks as red as her hair.

“Oh, no way,” I agree, taking my place on the couch as if I’d never missed a Tuesday.

“Let’s see them create the Average Jane series.” Tamara gives Lucy a high five. “One hunky man choosing among twenty very average women.”

“No one would watch,” Adriane drones, her hand still waiting for that cigarette. “No one, not even women, want to watch or read about a homely girl. She has to be beautiful.”

“Oh, come on, Adriane, you’re kidding?” Lucy digs through her shoulder bag for something. “What kind of message does that communicate to teens and young women?” Lucy slaps the table with her notebook.

I sense a story in the making.

Adriane looks right at her and says, “If you aren’t beautiful, you’d better be smart. And if you aren’t smart, you’d better be funny.”

“And if I’m none of those?” Lucy challenges. She flips open the pad and jots a few notes with a House of Joe’s pen.

“What do you mean? You’re all of those,” I interject. Lucy is sickening. She’s beautiful in a Julianne Moore kind of way. She’s smart, funny and logical. I feel like sticking my tongue out at her.

She looks at me as if I’m an idiot. “I don’t mean me. I mean women in general.” She jots a note. I stick out my tongue.

“What is it about the human race that makes us desperate for beauty?” Adriane waxes philosophical. It’s what we love about her. Yet what annoys us. Who can answer that question? But there she sits, waiting for one.

“I think God made us to desire beauty. But I’m learning we have to first find our beauty in God.” Lucy sips her coffee, glancing around at each of us.

I nod, feeling far away from that reality. I chew on my stir stick, meditating on her words.

Tamara bobs her head at me. “All right, out with it. What happened with Chris?” Her lips are puckered with attitude and her brown eyes are wide. As a corporate accountant, she likes details.

“He fell in love with someone else.” I meet her gaze and am happy to say the words didn’t sting at all.

“Just like that?” Tamara snaps her fingers over her head.

“Just like that.” I mimic her snap. “I didn’t know there was someone else until two weeks ago.”

“How could you be so naive?” Adriane clicks her tongue in disgust.

“Right,” I retort. “Who here had a gay boyfriend?”

“Hmm-hmm, that’s right.” Tamara points at Adriane.

We stifle our laughs behind our mugs. We can’t help it. The expression on Adriane’s face is comical, yet oddly disturbing.

“I wasn’t a Christian then.” Adriane defends herself. “I had absolutely no discernment.”

“So what’s your excuse, Macy? Why didn’t you know what was going on with Chris?” Lucy pokes me in the side with her finger. How annoying. I frown at her. How can someone so beautiful, so smart and funny be so annoying?

“The ringing,” I say, sipping my latte.

“The ringing?” Tamara echoes, looking at Lucy and Adriane.

I nod. “My biological alarm clock was going crazy. Ringing and ringing.”

Tamara slaps her knee. Lucy laughs and Adriane smirks. They know.

“Anybody know how to turn that thing off?” I glance at each of them.

“No,” says Adriane, the oldest among us at thirty-four. “Best you can do is hit the snooze button.”

“There’s a snooze?”

Tamara asks, “Well, I for one would like to find the Men-of-God tree. I’m tired of waiting.” She’s only thirty-one, but anything over thirty feels like the Terrain of the Desperate.

Adriane turns to Tamara. “Haven’t you found it yet?”

“No, but at least I’m looking. Not pining away for four years like this one.” Tamara jerks her thumb toward Adriane.

“Don’t drag me into this. I’m focusing on my writing and my relationship with God. I don’t have time for men.”

Lucy takes this opportunity to reveal secrets from our Monday-night shopping spree where I downloaded the Dylan details. “Macy knows someone she could pluck from the Men-of-God tree.”

“Hold it!” Tamara holds up her hand. “I’ll be right back. More coffee.”

I eye Lucy as Tamara scoots over to the coffee bar. “What are you talking about? There’s nothing to tell.”

She makes a face. “Please, there’s plenty to tell.”

Tamara returns, breathless, sloshing coffee on the table. “Okay, now tell me. Who?”

“Dylan Braun,” Lucy reveals like she’s announcing the Oscar for best actor.

Tamara curls her lip. “Dylan? That guy from your high school?”

I give Lucy an I-told-you-so face. “Yes, my sisters, Dylan from high school. Move on, there’s nothing to see here.”

“He told her she was pretty.”

I laugh. “Lucy, can you
be
any more junior high?”

Adriane has a faraway look on her face. “All my best love stories begin with the hero calling the heroine beautiful, or pretty.”

“Well, fine and dandy, but this is my life, not a romance novel. He said
was
pretty, past tense.”

“Bite your tongue.” Adriane wags her finger at me. “Besides, truth is stranger than fiction.”

“You are stranger than fiction, Adriane. The queen of skepticism. You can write it, but you can’t live it,” Tamara challenges.

“And what about you?” Adriane returns the challenge. “I don’t see you blazing a dating trail.”

“I’ve been on a few dates,” Tamara confesses with a heavy sigh. “Dweebs. All of them.”

We raise our mugs and clink them again.

“Lucy’s the only one here who manages to date decent men on a regular basis.” I won’t let her escape this conversation.

“Hey, that’s right.” Tamara pokes Lucy’s leg with her pointy fingernail. “Where are you hiding them?”

Lucy evades the inquiry. “Macy is also going to emcee our class reunion.” She is just full of Macy Moore news tonight.

“Gee whiz, Lucy. Maybe, I said maybe,” I protest a bit too loudly. “I’m not sure I’m even going this year.”

“I thought you loved going to your high school reunions.” Does Tamara remember everything about me?

“Well,” I begin, “I used to before my life went belly-up.”

“Belly-up? What are you talking about?” Adriane asks.

“Work woes,” Lucy blurts. I eye her again. She’s hiding something about her own life by blabbing about mine—I just know it.

Now I have to tell them about my job fiasco. But first, more latte.

I
hum to myself on the way home from the Single Saved Sisters java jam, turning into the supermarket parking lot, tired of my refrigerator with its sodas, a loaf of moldy bread and an occasional half-eaten apple.

I’ve thrown away enough food to feed a small Guatemalan village. Never mind how much food I could buy with the twenty-five hundred I spent on a designer leather handbag.

Now that the Sisters have pointed it out, I feel silly walking around with a purse that is intended for the rich and the famous. Of which I’m neither.

I wouldn’t feel quite so bad if I’d done more for others this past year. But I haven’t. Lavishing time and money on myself netted me nothing.

Funny how a crisis can put life into perspective, fine-tune
the eye of the heart, like laser surgery. In less than a minute everything comes into a twenty-twenty view.

I regard the Hermès, riding like a kid in the shopping cart. I stop my cart in the middle of the aisle and peer inside the bag.

There’s the weathered wallet I paid fifty bucks for ten years ago when I started at Casper. I ate ramen noodles for a week so I could afford it. There’s my beat-up makeup bag with assorted lipsticks and powders I bought on QVC from Lisa Robertson. Eyedrops, an assortment of pens I think I’ll use but never do, my cell phone and my keys.

Did I think owning this bag would make me happy? Define me?
Look at Macy Moore. She’s successful.

“Excuse me!”

I look around to see a large angry man. I scoot my cart out of the way.

“Sorry.” I smile sweetly, but he snarls as he pushes past.

In the checkout line I tear off one of the coupons at the cash register and donate ten dollars toward food for the needy. The old put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is routine.

Now only $2,490 to go.

When the rude guy gets in line after me, I flash him a big grin. “Have a nice night.”

He grunts.

At five to eleven I pull into my garage and unload groceries. I string all the plastic bags on my arms—seventy-five dollars and I can carry it all inside with one trip.

I close the trunk with my elbows.

“Macy?” A small voice calls me.

“Yes?” It’s dark, but I catch Mrs. Woodward’s silhouette in the low glow of the streetlights.

“It’s me, Elaine.”

“Hi, Mrs. Woodward. Is everything okay?”

“Yes, thank you.” She shuffles into the garage wearing her robe and slippers. Despite my bags, I give her a neighborly hug and breathe in the scent of lemon drops.

“Would you like to come in?” I motion toward the door. I’m sort of tired, but I get the sense she wants company.

“That would be lovely.”

Mrs. Woodward offers to help me with my packages, but I ask her to push the garage-door button instead. It glides shut as we go inside. I drop my purchases on the kitchen counter and tell my neighbor to make herself comfortable.

“Would you like some tea?” I peer into the living room from the pass-through window. Mrs. Woodward sits on the edge of the couch with her hands folded and legs crossed at the ankles. She’s as regal as any queen.

“Oh, I don’t want to be a bother.”

“It’s no bother.” Ducking back into the kitchen, I put on the kettle. I can’t imagine what has Mrs. Woodward up and visiting at this late hour, but I’m captured by her gentility and elegance.

“Here we go.” I carry in the tea tray with my grandmother’s china rose teapot, matching cups and saucers, sugar bowl and creamer. It’s rare for me to break out the antique set, but Mrs. Woodward deserves it. I open a new bag of gingersnaps and arrange them on one of the saucers.

“Oh, how lovely.”

“My grandmother gave me the tea set several years ago. It belonged to her grandmother, a true Englishwoman.” I pour and pass.

“I adored my grandmother.” She holds her tea and gazes absently across the room into her past.

I let her reminisce in silence for a moment. “Do you have grandchildren?”

She shakes her head. “No, just one son. He’s been married several times, but no children.” She spoons sugar into her tea.

“Does he visit? I’ve never seen him around.” I hold out the plate of gingersnaps.

“He and his father argued over money. When I sided with my husband, Walter—” she takes a cookie “—James became very angry and left.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“He accused Walter of hoarding cash and he wanted some of it to start a business. But I assured him we did not have a secret bankroll.” She sighs. Even her sigh is elegant. “We raised James the best we could, but he turned out spoiled and selfish.”

“Time mends relationships, Mrs. Woodward. Don’t worry.”

“It’s been too many years to worry now.” She presses her hand on mine as if to comfort me.

We lapse into casual talk for the next fifteen minutes or so, sipping tea and munching cookies. I tell her about my work in Atlanta and the weekend in Beauty.

She tells me the news of our community, The Gables, and assures me she’s had no more stomach episodes.

“Nevertheless, you need to see your doctor.” I pop the last cookie into my mouth. I’m worried about her. Regal and lovely, she also seems fragile and frail.

“Perhaps, dear. We shall see.”

Did I say fragile and frail? Forget it. She’s stubborn and feisty.

At eleven-thirty she thanks me for the tea and announces she must go.

“Thank you for coming over.” I escort her to the door, realizing that in the three years I’ve lived here, I’ve never invited her inside until tonight.

“Your home is lovely, Macy.” I notice she shakes slightly when she speaks.

(Mental note 4: be a better neighbor, get Mrs. Woodward to the doctor, second reminder to rejoin the gym, find a place to write down dumb mental notes.)

I watch her walk home, making sure she’s safe before locking my front door and flipping off the porch light. Such an odd visit—no purpose, no reason. Just for company.

My heart is content as I wash my face, slip into my nightshirt and crawl into bed. Thinking of the Single Saved Sisters, my grocery-aisle epiphany and Mrs. Woodward’s visit, I’m reminded of the good things in life. I’ve been missing them for too long. I poured everything I had into Chris and Casper. Now I’m emotionally and spiritually bankrupt.

Clicking on my bedside lamp, I reach for my Bible. It’s covered in dust, an embarrassing discovery. I run for a damp cloth.

Has it been that long since I read my Bible? That’s like Christianity 101. I hop back into bed and flip to the verse Pastor Gary used Sunday morning at Beauty Community Church.

Isaiah 61:3. “To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes.”

I close my eyes and slip down under the covers. Change is in the wind. What, when, where, why and how? I’m not
sure. But I’m ready for the path of beauty. I set my Bible aside and click out the light.

“Thanks, Lord, for Your love and patience, and that I still have a job. Thanks for my home and car.” I close my eyes, fading. “For the Single Saved Sisters, for Mrs. Woodward and for simple things like food—”

I bolt up in the darkness. Food. Supermarket. I scramble out of bed and tumble to the floor, my foot caught in the sheets. My groceries are still in the bags on the counter. And I bought ice cream!

Mike pops his head around my office door. “S-o-o-o, Macy…”

I eye him over my laptop. Nothing that starts out “S-o-o-o, Macy” is ever good.

Several weeks have passed since my Atlanta trip and I’ve adjusted well, if I say so myself, to my new role at Casper.

Not much has changed, really, other than that I report to Mike and he reports to Roni. Since he’s so clueless about how to manage anything but his TiVo machine, much less a customer service team, I graciously assist. I could be pigheaded about it—he and Roni deserve it—but in the end that will only make me look bad and there is enough of that going on already.

People stop talking when I pass by in the hall. Sometimes they meet my gaze and smile with sympathy. I hate that expression the most. I’d rather be the target of their gossip.

But seeing Mike in my office makes me churn with suspicion. I haven’t seen him ride off with Roni again and I’m glad I don’t have any more of those scenes added to my arsenal.

“What can I do for you?” I ask in my most professional tone.

“I put a couple of trips on your schedule. Suddenly the sales team is frantic for W-Book installations.”

“We knew it’d be a hit.”

“It’ll put Casper & Company on the map.”

“Kyle Casper gets what he wants.” I finish the e-mail I was typing and click Send.

Kyle, a contemporary of Bill Gates, seethes to this day that Bill beat him to the market with his everyman’s computer company. Then he invested a chunk of change in search-engine technology and spent a night in hospital with heart palpitations when the Google guys launched their search engine six months before the Casper engine was ready. He had to scrap the whole project.

“Check your schedule. Let me know if you have questions.” Mike pounds his palm with his pen.

I double click on the shortcut to the company Intranet to check our schedule.

“I might need some vacation days.” There’s Dad’s launch party, and the reunion, though I haven’t decided if I’m going to either yet.

“Oh?”

I glare up at him. “I still get vacation, don’t I?”

“Um, well, I can check with Roni, but I’m sure you do.”

I feel a little sick to my stomach as the schedule opens. I find my name and check out my assignments. Lovely. Just lovely. Two weeks in Smallville, Kansas, another two in Podunk, Mississippi, and a week in Desert Town, Nevada.

I snap my head up. Mike continues to stand in the doorway. “And I get all the small towns because…”

“Just worked out that way.”

Yeah, right, it just worked out that way. Who’s he kidding? I see New York, L.A., Portland, Dallas, Seattle, St. Louis on the schedules of less senior people. Don’t I get some credit for hanging around for ten years?

If I didn’t know better, I’d say Mike—or Roni—was trying to get rid of me. Do they know I saw them out the window that day?

No. Besides, it’s all innocent, right? Roni promoted Mike because she wants someone to control. He’s got more loops for puppet strings than Pinocchio.

After Mike walks away, I study the schedule for a swap possibility. Aleta is going to New York City when I’m going to Desert Town, Nevada.

I dial her office. “Aleta, have I got a deal for you.”

“What?” She sounds skeptical.

I’m hoping my rank as her former boss holds clout. “How about you take Nevada, I’ll take New York?” Decisive. Bold. One would think I’m still in charge.

She laughs in my ear. “Are you kidding me? I have tickets to a Broadway show.”

“Come on.” I’m not above begging. “Do your old boss a favor.”

“Okay.”

My heart lightens. “Great.”

“But you have to give me your BMW.”

I slap the receiver to the cradle. I dial Mick next. His Portland trip fits my schedule just perfectly. He answers, “I’ll do it for your Beemer. And you have to have dinner with me.”

“Not in a million years.”

Mick was my last option. I’m stuck. I exit the schedule. Life on the road is bad enough, but life in one-horse towns is pure torture.

I have the urge to vent. I check the time. Five-thirty. The Single Saved Sisters are gathering tonight and I’m ready to unload.