The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [22]
“Remind me what part of our personal fortune we gave away to get Sally to keep the kids for two nights,” he asks as they turn off the parkway into the maze of downtown streets. Sally is Ginger’s younger sister.
“Devon is going to stay with us on their anniversary weekend,” she says, naming their four-year-old nephew.
“Perfect. You offered to keep the son of the devil.”
“Devon will be fine. He always goes into zombie mode if you let him watch a movie. We’ll rent something innocuous, like March of the Penguins. Animals. Adventures. G-rated. He won’t budge for an hour.”
“Right. Lots of shots of the big eely-looking seal opening its mouth and showing its teeth, but nothing of him actually taking a bite out of the mother penguin or making her blood spurt. He’ll be bored.”
“Eddie, he’s four.”
“All he’ll see is Mama Penguin trying to climb out of the water onto the ice and being pulled back. He won’t be fooled. What ever happened to Big Ugly Bad Guys Have to Eat, too?”
The light turns green, but the traffic sits. Ginger knows why Eddie is trying to sound outrageous about a topic too ludicrous to provoke a real argument. It’s part of the bravado he assumes every time they go to a pool-and-spa event—a reminder of a battle that was never fought, actually, because each side was ready to surrender to the other before it began.
Years ago, when Eddie quit his computer job to run the store, Ginger had been furious. Why hadn’t he consulted her? Because his dad was sick. Because there was no choice. Ginger didn’t forgive him. Being married to a hot tub salesman embarrassed her. Worse, he was no good at it. When out of desperation he began asking Ginger for advice, she discovered that she usually knew what to say. Selling spas (she soon learned to call them spas and not hot tubs) was not so bad. The clientele was upscale, moneyed, polite. Why, half of them were friends, neighbors, social acquaintances, people she’d known for years. Working part-time at the store was more interesting than staying home. Years before either of them thought the time was right, Ginger was ready to take over the business, solo. Eddie wanted to fine-tune his computer program, the Teacher Toolshed, and send it to market. Both of them felt guilty. Selfish. Frustrated.
Then along came Paisley, the catalyst. For all Ginger knew, the way she’d talked both of them into doing exactly what they wanted to do, it might have saved their marriage.
In the months after Eddie’s father died, Paisley overheard Eddie telling at a party how Ginger had saved the store from floundering by suggesting they stop selling swimming pools. Pools were expensive and risky. Better to concentrate on hot tubs, which were profitable. Better to expand their line of pool chemicals, which provided the bulk of their repeat, bread-and-butter business.
“Now’s your chance, girl,” Paisley whispered to Ginger. “Your father-in-law is gone, so you don’t need to keep up appearances. I bet Eddie would go back to computers if you’d tell him you’ll run the store.”
“There’s nothing I’d like better. But I’m going to wait until Rachel’s in school.”
“Wait two more years, and your hair will turn gray and you’ll be living on antidepressants.”
“That quickly?” Ginger had tried to joke.
“Oh, yes. Coarse, unruly hair—the texture changes when it turns gray—and pills that put you in la-la land. Then you’ll wish you’d taken over the store. You surely will.”
In the oddest way, this had seemed to Ginger absolutely convincing and true. Not three months later, she was managing the store and Eddie was working in an office on the top floor of their building, putting the finishing touches on a web-based program for teachers that he now sells to school systems up and down the East Coast.
And here they are, driving to a luxury hotel in the