Chapter 40 #2
Oh no. Since meeting Havisham, I’d feared what would happen if these two got together, and now it had. The world would never be the same.
Salcedo cleared her throat. “But that coin purse was also made by Vera Bradley. The founder of that company was over forty when she started the business.”
“Uh-oh. There’s going to be a message to all of this, isn’t there?”
“Very good, Stark! Look at you figuring out that happiness is being a lifelong learner.” Havisham held up the chocolates.
“Let these remind you of the famous episode of I Love Lucy where Lucy and Ethel eat all the chocolates from the assembly line. Because Lucille Ball didn’t achieve fame until that sitcom. ”
“Let me guess . . . she was forty?”
“She can be taught!” Havisham then picked up the bottle of champagne from earlier.
“The Widow Clicquot may have started her champagne house before she was forty, but she didn’t come up with her revolutionary riddling method, nor the delightful idea of rosé, until she was forty.
Or very close to it. Now back to the third bag with you. ”
I reached into the bag and came out with a copy of Beloved.
Salcedo spoke this time. “Toni Morrison was thirty-nine when she published her first book. She was over forty when she won the Pulitzer Prize for this one.”
Next, I pulled out a paintbrush. “I think y’all know I’m not much of an artist.”
“That you know of,” said Nana. “Alma Thomas was sixty-nine when she started painting, and Grandma Moses was seventy-seven.”
“Is this like Mary Poppins’s bag?” I asked as I drew out a pair of black leggings.
“No,” said Havisham. “Stop trying to ruin this poignant moment. Not only are leggings comfortable, but these were designed by Vera Wang. She was over forty when she started her fashion empire.”
Now having to stand again to reach the bottom of the bag, I picked up Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Nana, who could cook well if she wanted to, said, “Julia Child graduated from culinary school when she was thirty-nine and didn’t get her own television show for another ten years.
And Mastering the Art of French Cooking later served as an inspiration for Ina Garten, who didn’t publish her first cookbook until she was fifty. ”
I wanted to say something like “The Art of Microwave Cooking would be more my speed,” but I didn’t. The thoughtfulness behind these gifts touched me in spite of myself.
“Come on, you’re almost finished,” Salcedo said softly.
I looked at these familiar faces. Even Trace leaned forward as if he wanted to know what would come next.
I picked up a DVD of A Wrinkle in Time and looked at everyone in confusion.
“Ava DuVernay didn’t pick up a camera until she was in her thirties,” Salcedo said. “And she got her first Oscar nomination when she was forty-two but didn’t direct this movie until four years later. But that’s not all.”
She paused, letting the anticipation build.
“Madeleine L’Engle’s novel, the one that was a basis for this movie?
Written after she was forty. At the age of thirty-nine, she contemplated giving up writing because it was taking time away from her family with little to no return, but then she got the idea for her most famous book, A Wrinkle in Time. ”
“I hope y’all don’t want me to write a book,” I said.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Havisham said as she stood and walked briskly to her bar and then behind it. From Salcedo’s confused expression, I could tell this wasn’t part of the scene they had rehearsed. My favorite bartender soon returned with a copy of Agatha Christie’s Murder in Mesopotamia.
“Agatha Christie? I can solve mysteries, but I sure as heck can’t write them.”
“No, that’s not it,” Havisham said with a smile. “This whole bag of gifts is about not believing it when society tries to tell you you’re over the hill or that you should give up. L’Engle almost gave up on writing, and Christie almost gave up on love.”
“Havisham,” I said in warning.
“Agatha Christie’s first marriage ended in divorce,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “Two years after that divorce was final, Dame Agatha was taking a ride on the Orient Express. She visited an archaeological site for the fun of it, and there she met Max Mallowan.”
“I’m not a dame.”
“She wasn’t either at that time, and she wasn’t looking for love, but young Max Mallowan must have been persuasive, because he became her second husband. This is the first book she wrote after meeting him. She was forty. He was twenty-six.”
“Dang, girl. Rob that cradle!” Salcedo said.
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” Nana murmured. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that she was squeezing Lucius’s hand even though they were the same age.
“I mean, it’s working out great for me,” Trace said. “That cradle was getting dull anyway.”
“Havisham, my situation is different.”
“I’m not telling you what to do,” she said. “I’m just saying . . . sometimes we all need a mulligan. Or a Finnegan. Maybe even a Branagan.”
“A do-over for a do-over for a do-over?”
“Neither love nor life is golf. We get as many opportunities as we need,” Havisham said as she slid her arm around the waist of her cowboy. “If we’re brave enough to try again, at least.”
Salcedo’s eyes cut between Havisham and me. She could sense the tension and asked, “How about champagne, everyone?”
The next morning, I awoke to a presence very close to my face, a fuzzy presence that purred.
I opened my eyes and saw, in the morning light, that even my emotional support cat was now taunting me. BB’s eyes had changed as she matured. The eye behind the patch of black on her face was green. The eye on the other side, the side with white and yellow, was blue.
“Really? Not you, too.”
I rolled out of bed and went to the bathroom, but what was wafting through the ceiling somehow? “All Too Well.”