Chapter 8
Lucy
I’m reluctant to take off the dress. I love it. I give another twirl. Too bad if Dirk is uninterested for now. It’s a little sad I couldn’t keep him on the phone longer, but there’s no point coming on too strong.
I try the dress with several pairs of shoes, high heels and higher; with a silver belt, and a gold one; and with various evening bags, shawls, scarves and jackets.
I replay the day’s events, sort the facts.
Dirk is generous. If that car is any indication, he’s wealthy. He cares enough about Jill to bring her coffee, perhaps every day. That would be lucky. Coffee drinkers are creatures of habit.
I wander past Jill’s a few times each morning for the next week, but see no sign of Dirk’s gleaming red car. Maybe he has multiple cars. Maybe he’s travelling. A man like Dirk belongs in Paris, New York and London now and then – with me. Maybe even Geneva. Money seems to be no object.
My unpacking work takes me to another part of the city I’ve never visited before, a place of jackhammers and tall, clanking metal cranes, where urban renewal sees new towers under construction beside others, gleaming in their fresh completion.
I find a car space, my second-hand little green hatchback conspicuously different to all the builders’ macho trucks.
The cranes are already at work hauling up materials. Blowtorches flash sparks off enormous steel beams as they’re welded into place. Jackhammers pound.
I check the address Donna gave me and walk a couple more blocks, handing the banana from my lunch bag to a person who clearly spent his night on the street.
One more block and I find the apartment building, brand spanking new. I buzz the number on the shiny panel.
Donna lets me into the gleaming foyer and I head on up in the elevator.
She’s already busy in the master bedroom, unpacking box after box of high-heeled shoes into a rack that runs the length of a mirrored wall.
Every wall in this walk-in closet is mirrored, creating an infinity of Donnas, amplifying her delight as I hand over her gift.
“Can you stop for a moment, and open it?” I ask.
“Sure. I think there’s an armchair or two in place out there. The dining table is in, but not the chairs. Wait till you see the view. I have to keep my back to it, this place is up so high! You better do the living room accessories once all the sofas are in.”
I agree. It’s no hardship for me to sit this high in the sky, to watch another couple of towers take shape beside us. We won’t break for long. It takes a team all day to unpack a whole household, especially for a place this nice.
Donna loves the purse. Unpacking people’s possessions is a strange experience, but sometimes we see things we love.
It’s given Donna and me expensive taste.
I’m so thrilled she loves the evening bag.
She actually hugs it to her chest before she puts the strap over her shoulder and retreats to the dressing room to admire it from all sides. I follow her in.
“I found it in a boutique right near my new place last week, Donna. You must come and visit me. Oh, and I had an adventure, but you’ll have to wait until lunch to hear all about it.”
“Can’t wait!” she says. “Can you do the kids’ bedrooms?”
“Sure.”
I wonder about their lives, all these strangers destined for the homes we unpack.
There are two children in this household; a boy and girl, each with their own bedroom and ensuite.
Judging by the mix of pink and denim, the girl is probably a tween, and the boy is younger, still reading picture books – about bulldozers and trucks and fire engines and space.
I come to a pencil case, and start to set up a little chair and table for him, and add a small stack of his coloring books.
It sends me back to childhood as I work, my hands busy now unpacking toys and setting them on a shelf beside the books.
My Mom and I never finished all the coloring books she had with her in the hospital. I had to complete them without her, not truly understanding she was never coming home. I was lucky, surrounded by caring neighbors – and my father did his best to be everything to me; to be both parents.
Turned out coloring so carefully on paper lent itself to drawing faces, which led me to painting actual faces. By middle school, I was sculpting voluptuous lips and deep and fascinating eyes on myself and my friends.
Never mind simply curling hair and straightening it and covering up blemishes.
Beside that row of school washbasins, I practically invented contouring before it became a social media sensation.
I graduated, got the job at the tv network, fell in love with Bart and then had my own little girl to cherish, my baby Phoebe.
I was only seven when my mother died, but I reached twenty one before my father died. At least he died doing what he loved – playing squash.
His attorney gave me a key and a number and the address of a bank vault in Seattle.
Back then, Bart called on me all my time to do his hair and makeup, and it wasn’t until Phoebe left school, that I remembered that key.
Bart was wearing toupees by then, so no longer needed me for his hair before he went on air. He still needed me for his “invisible” makeup, but I drew the line at giving him injections. I just couldn’t do it.
While he was recovering from plastic surgery, I took that trip to Seattle, drove up in my little van. I sourced more old furniture and upholstery for my shabby chic business on the way, along with a few more lamp bases, and finally visited the bank.
Ahead of me, a woman with a howling baby waited in line for the teller.
She rocked and jiggled her bundle, and I offered to help, but just then, a man in a black jacket stepped away from the window and she pulled out her card and spoke to the teller.
The baby patted at the glass screen and quietened, and I studied the posters, of boats and happy families and European holiday destinations.
Butterflies rose in my stomach as I stepped forward and slid the key and documents under the barrier.
The teller stared at them, then called a supervisor.
They both demanded identification, and when I produced it, the manager beckoned me aside, towards a door, and made a phone call as I waited in a red faux leather chair.
The manager disappeared as a man with a blank face and a gun stood guard. He returned with a metal box and faced the keyhole towards me.
Inside the box were half a dozen tiny old boxes and an envelope bearing my name, in a shaky script; inside, a simple sheet of paper, folded twice, and a message.
My darling Lucy,
Wishing you rainbows day and night. Be happy.
Love always,
Mother
My fingers trembled as I opened the first box – tissue paper, creamy with age, and inside it, an elegant, old-fashioned ring set with three diamonds, already transforming the ordinary room with its icy fire and light.
I slid it onto the middle finger of my left hand.
It fit perfectly, outshining even Bart’s ring, the bold solitaire – our wedding ring.
In the box at the bank were all the rings I’d admired and played with on my mother’s fingers.
So many memories came back to me as I slipped each one onto my own fingers. I haven’t taken them off since.
People say diamonds are inanimate things, too white and too cold, but to me, they’re close to magic. They cheer me up. How I would love to continue the tradition and pass these rings to my own daughter one day – if only she’d agree to see me.
That these diamonds exist for me beyond my mother, beyond the tragic shrinking of her body, is almost miraculous. They hold the moment she slipped them off her frail fingers and left them as a glittering promise to me that her love would never really leave me.
Well, Bart made the same promise when we married. Shame he didn’t keep it. But life moves on.