Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [51]
I own this gift shop. I love that, too. It’s never going to make me rich, but I wake up every morning and want to go in, and I know plenty of people who can’t say that about what they do. And it’s all mine, and, let’s face it, I know that I like to be in charge.
There haven’t been any men, not since the divorce. As far as that part of myself, it isn’t so much that I was unhappy. More like cryogenically frozen. When I was first divorced, there just wasn’t the time. I had three girls at home, one a small baby. The shop was in its infancy, too. I would work all day in the shop and all evening in the house, washing and ironing and tidying, and fall into bed exhausted barely an hour after my daughters. It was pride, and determination, and, probably, obsession.
Now that Lisa and Jennifer were gone, and Amanda was at school and becoming a little grown-up, maybe there was more time. But now there was no inclination. I just assumed the time had just passed. I knew that forty-four wasn’t exactly old, not anymore. I knew I looked all right, if you didn’t mind a bit of gravity and a few fine lines…. But anyway, where were these men you might choose to go out with, fall in love with, or into bed with? Every magazine you bought was full of articles about the lack of available men. Anyone would have thought the First World War had just ended and all the bachelors had been killed off.
When Donald and I had first divorced, I’d allowed myself to think, maybe, just maybe, I’d find someone else who’d had the same thing happen to them, maybe someone with kids, and that maybe we’d lick our wounds together and have a little happiness. A bit like the Brady Bunch, with darker undertones, and better fashion. That hadn’t happened, either.
And it was okay. I didn’t lie in bed at night weeping with frustrated longing or empty loneliness. I was buggered if I’d give in to that sort of self-pity. Most of the time, I just didn’t think about it….
And then he wandered into the shop one day and turned everything upside down. Of course I noticed that he was handsome. I said I was resigned, not dead. He was Harrison Ford—circa Raiders of the Lost Ark—without the earring. Stubbly, which wasn’t a look I normally went for, but it suited him. He looked a little like he’d dressed in the dark, but in a wardrobe full of good stuff, if you can picture that. So, of course I noticed. But he was young. Far too young.
So far, not that unusual. I asked him if I could help. He said he was looking for something for his mother. I showed him the shawls. They were beautiful Indian embroidered shawls in exquisite jeweled colors. I was impressed when he knew his mother’s eyes were hazel, and even more so when he chose the three colors that would go best with hazel eyes. And then I felt him look right at me, and that was when this average day changed. Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? But it did. He looked right at me and said that her eyes and her hair were a similar color—although he himself was much darker—and asked if I would model a scarf for him, and when I did, I realized that my breathing had quickened. Just from him looking at me. Which made me blush, because it was so silly, and teenage, and then he noticed me blushing, and I couldn’t turn away, because I was modeling the scarf, and then he blushed, because he’d made me blush, and then, thank God, or damn them to hell, I wasn’t sure which, the door opened and two pregnant women came in to ask for birth announcement cards, and the spell broke as quickly as it had been woven.
But he bought two, and said he’d let his mother choose her favorite, and I knew that he would come back with the one she rejected. And I wondered, that evening, as I cooked frittata for myself and Amanda—God, I even remember what I cooked!—whether he had done that on purpose. (Much later he told me that he had. His mum had wanted to keep them both, and he felt bad telling her she couldn’t, because he needed one as an excuse to come back.)
He came back five minutes before closing on a damp Thursday evening. This time