Dear Emily (13 page)

“Hear! Hear!” Emily said.

“Let’s finish the pie and coffee. I’ll get it ready,” Kelly offered.

“It was a fun night, Emily. It really was,” Zoë said.

“Who says you’re dead after forty?” Lena chortled.

When their coffee cups were full, Zoë made the toast. “To Emily, to calories, to caffeine, to wet dreams, and to our newly decorated kitchen.”

The Demster twins, Rose and Helen, who rented the apartment over the garage, slid off the kitchen chairs at the same time. “They do everything together,” Nancy said. “They were snakeroot after the first glass of wine. I think we should just cover them up.”

“Okay,” Emily said agreeably.

Martha Nesbit, a friend of the Demster twins, and who never said two words if one would do, looked down at the twins, reached for a cushion from the kitchen stairs, and lay down beside them.

“Great evening,” she said before she fell asleep.

“I have the early shift at the hospital tomorrow,” Martina said. “Leave everything. I’ll clean it up before I leave. I had a great evening, Emily. It’s real nice living here. Night.”

“Want to go for a walk, Lena?”

“Sure.”

“Just up and down the street. It’s a nice evening.” They walked a block in silence, then Emily began to speak. “You know, Lena, it’s been a long time since I really noticed anything but my own misery. I know I’ve had too much wine but that has nothing to do with it. Take right now, for example. The stars are out. I can see the Big Dipper. It looks like someone shook out a blanket full of bright sprinkles. The air around us is like crushed velvet, all soft and silky feeling. That’s because there’s no humidity tonight. The moon is gorgeous. Tomorrow it will be full and we’ll all get cranky and out of sorts. Way back when I used to work at the clinics, you’d be surprised at the things that happened when there was a full moon. I can smell honeysuckle. It’s late this year, probably because we haven’t had much rain.

“I need to do something, Lena. I realized that tonight more than ever. Two years out of the mainstream of life wasn’t in my game plan—not that I have a game plan, but I need to get one. I need a life, a goal, something to work for, or toward, however you want to say it. I want to think and feel again. Tonight I did for a few minutes. I don’t mean that silly thing I did with…that silly thing I did. I’ll chalk that up to the wine. How about you, Lena?”

“I’m content, Emily. It doesn’t take much to make me happy. I feel like I found a family in my middle years. We all tried to tell you tonight, each in our own way, how grateful we are to you. Me especially.”

“Is that another way of saying you’re content to stay in the supermarket and be on your feet for eight hours and then go on to a part-time job?”

“I need the benefits, Emily, you know that. My husband, as well meaning as he was, thought any kind of insurance was a waste of money. I have no other choice so I accept it.”

“If I found something, a business, something that would earn us both a living, would you be interested?”

“If you provide benefits, I’d be delighted to join you.”

“I’m going to work on it. Maybe I can come up with something.”

“It would be great.”

“I wish every day could end as nice as this one did,” Emily said, turning around to head back for the house.

“I’m glad we took the time to become friends. My husband used to want all my time when he was home. I didn’t begrudge it, but I see now that I missed a lot. You’re a nice person, Emily.”

“I know that. Now. For so long…Forget it, that’s all in the past. I don’t live there anymore.”

Lena waved her arms about. “Welcome to the world, Emily Thorn.”

E
mily groaned when she sat down at the table for her first cup of coffee. This was her first hangover. The ones with Ian didn’t count. But it was worth it. The evening had been everything she’d expected it to be. If she hadn’t known before, she knew now that the diverse group of women who were her boarders, and now her friends, were true friends. They all had problems, though some were quicker to talk about them than others. Actually, what they were was a support group, something she’d only read about until now.

A gurgle of laughter bubbled in her throat when she stared up at the latest decorating endeavor. The laughter exploded when she tried to imagine the meter reader’s expression when he came to calculate her electric bill. He had to knock on the door and go through the kitchen to the laundry room. “Life goes on,” she muttered.

She had plans for today. She was going to hire a personal trainer to help her tone up her body. Weight loss was one thing; loose, flabby skin was something else. She didn’t even know if she could tone up, but she was going to find out if women over forty still had elasticity.

She eyed the bathroom door, looked away. Not yet. Soon. Maybe. Maybe never. Her gaze rose upward. Ian never looked that good. He’d been thin, stringy actually. For a fair-haired, fair-skinned man, he’d had little body hair, and what he did have was golden so it was hardly noticeable. Chest hair on a man was so…so…sexy.

“You are horny, Emily Thorn. You need to get laid, Emily Thorn.” She stared at the Polaroid shots on the wall and at the series of photos they’d all paid for.
“Yesssss,”
Emily said, breathing hard.

The realization that she wanted sex, needed it, was another milestone she’d conquered. Not too long ago she thought all her emotions were dead. The young, glistening body last night had proved how wrong that kind of thinking was.

Emily poured a second cup of coffee, lit her first cigarette of the day. She savored it. Okay, number one on her list of things to do was to get laid. Number two was to find a business she could go into and earn some money. Number three was to provide jobs and security for the women who now lived with her.

All of her boarders had been done in, one way or another, by men. Some willingly, some unwillingly.

Lena’s husband hadn’t provided for her in the event of his death because he didn’t want to pay premiums. Now she was forty-four, cashiering in a supermarket because she needed health benefits. She had nothing of her own, no nest egg in case something happened to her. Twenty years from now, if she was lucky, at sixty-four, she’d be ready for Social Security and still living in a furnished room, here or somewhere else.

Nancy, with no college education, was working as a clerk in the lumber mill for $6 an hour. Her husband had left her for life on the open road. She was forty-five and had nothing to her name but her personal possessions because she’d been forced to sell off the furniture in her one-bedroom apartment. She had limited health benefits and a bleak future to look forward to.

Martina, a nurse’s aide, had walked out on a husband who was a drinker and who refused to get help. She was in the process of getting a divorce, but the drunkard had a better attorney than she had. With almost no equity in the four-room house, she didn’t stand much of a chance of providing for her old age when and if the house was finally sold.

Kelly Anderson, age forty-four, held down two part-time jobs and had no benefits at all. She’d never been married, but had been in a fifteen-year relationship with a traveling salesman who said he would marry her, but died instead. Her future looked as bleak as the others.

Zoë Meyers, the assistant librarian, was poorly paid, and according to her, an old maid. She was forty-eight, the oldest of them all, but she was the one who might eke by with her small pension and Social Security.

Rose and Helen Demster, the forty-five-year-old twins, ran a tree-cutting service and lawn maintenance company. They had a small nest egg, but that could be wiped out in one bad year. They’d given up their garden apartment to move into the apartment over Emily’s garage. Neither had ever been married. Helen said it was because they wore bib overalls all the time and Rose said it was because they had big butts and no boobs.

Martha Nesbit, age forty-two, had been dumped by her husband of twenty years after she put him through law school. His parting remark had been, “Martha, living with you is like watching paint dry.” She’d gotten a $25,000 settlement and lifetime health benefits, but she’d blown the $25,000 in the hopes of snaring a husband. It hadn’t worked so she got a job as a mail carrier. She had bunions and bursitis from walking and carrying the mail bag. She hated men, lawyers in particular, and her car carried a bumper sticker that said
FIRST WE KILL ALL THE LAWYERS
!

All of them, including herself, were emotional cripples. Emily knew in her gut that none of them, including Lena, had the courage or the motivation to do anything about it except to go on as they had. If things were going to change, it would be up to her to change them.

Of all of them, she was the best off, if there was such an expression. She had a nest egg, the jewelry, and the furs. While she hadn’t actually received a salary while working for the clinics, Ian had paid into Social Security for her so she could count on that when she reached sixty-five. Few people could survive on Social Security alone. She didn’t plan on being one of those few people. She couldn’t, ever, lose this house. If she did, she would feel personally responsible for all her boarders’ lives. They were her friends now and she had to help them, the way she’d helped Ian. Only this time her reward would be different. There would be nothing sick and obsessive about her help, and there would be no white shirts. In her heart she knew that if she came up with a business that could earn them all a living and give them back their self-esteem, they’d work like Trojans. None of them would be an Ian Thorn. They would all give back, a hundred percent. Women helping women. She liked the way it sounded.

Emily let her gaze go to the closed bathroom door. It was amazing, it really was, how none of the women had ever asked questions about that particular bathroom.

Before Emily left the kitchen to get ready for the day, she gave a jaunty thumbs-up salute to the dancer cavorting around the walls. “Nice buns.” She laughed. “Real nice. I mean
really
nice.”

Outside, Emily took time to admire the garden she’d planted years ago and still tended. Some of the flowers were going to seed, and the grass between the flagstone walkway needed to be sprayed. The lawn needed water, but she hadn’t been using the sprinkler system these past two years because she didn’t want high water bills. She didn’t care too much about the lawn because it would come back, but the shrubbery, which added eye appeal to the house, needed water desperately. She added it to the list of things she had to do at the end of the day. And if she didn’t get around to it, one of the other women would do it. Nancy liked to work outside and, from time to time, gave each bush and shrub a five-gallon bucket of water if it didn’t rain. If you watered by the bucket, you didn’t waste water, she said.

Emily reached down to check the dirt in the clay pots that lined the walk. Someone had watered the New Guinea impatiens and her glorious pots of bicolored dahlias. In another month the summer flowers would be replaced with mums and pumpkins. Her flowers and the garden had gotten through some bad times.

Emily gave herself a mental shake. The bad times, as far as she was concerned, were over. There might be a setback from time to time that she would have to endure, but she could handle it.

Her first stop on her list of things to do for the day was the ATA Fitness Center. She walked away with the names of three personal trainers who would come to the house. From ATA she went to the Inman Racquet Club and was told all their trainers were booked solid. She tried the YMCA in Metuchen, where she was given two more names. She then stopped at the First Fidelity Bank, where she asked to see a loan officer—the same loan officer who had given Ian the loan for the first clinic.

Five minutes into their discussion, Emily knew she would be fighting a losing battle to try and convince the officer that she was entrepreneurial material.

“Mrs. Thorn, you aren’t actively employed and you haven’t worked in some time. You have no collateral. I’m sorry, but I—”

“You should be sorry, Mr. Squire, because I’m going to get a loan somewhere. You couldn’t wait to lend my husband money when he hadn’t even started to practice medicine. Who do you think set those clinics up? Me, that’s who. I know everything there is to know about operating a clinic. All my husband did was treat patients. I’m not trying to make light of his abilities, but I’m the one who paid off those loans by working nights and half days at the clinics. That should count for something.”

“It should, but it doesn’t, Mrs. Thorn. This is a bank and without collateral we can’t help you. You could try the SBA, but in the end you have to go through a bank. There’s tons of paperwork involved.”

“Are you trying to discourage me, Mr. Squire?”

“No.”

“All your loans were repaid, by me, in a timely manner and still you won’t help me. Is it because I’m a woman?”

“Absolutely not. Are you planning on opening a clinic on your own?”

Was she? Why not? “Yes,” she said.

“A family clinic?”

“No. What difference does it make if you aren’t willing to lend me money?”

“Mrs. Thorn, do you have any personal credit? I don’t mean credit cards with Dr. Thorn’s name where you sign your name on purchases.”

“No. I don’t use credit cards. I pay cash for everything.”

“What about your utility bills?”

“They’re…in Ian’s name. I never changed them over when he…when he left.”

“You need to do that right away. You say you’ve been paying them for over two years?”

“Yes, I have. Am I going to need a credit card?”

“Bankers like to see a credit history. I truly am sorry, Mrs. Thorn. I don’t think you’ll have much luck at any of the banks in the area unless you have collateral to put up. Sometimes collateral isn’t the answer either. Banks don’t gamble.”

“You gambled on my husband.”

“He was a doctor, Mrs. Thorn. Doctors are usually very successful. He had a profession that was unequaled in the eyes of most bankers.”

“You know what, Mr. Squire? That stinks, and if my words offend you, I’m sorry. Thank you for your time.”

Purse in hand, Emily walked to the low gate on the platform that led to the main part of the bank. She was about to unlatch the gate when she changed her mind and walked back to the banker’s desk. He looked up, a frown on his face. “When I’m as successful as Ian was, I’m going to come back here and show you my bank balances in other banks. That’s a promise, Mr. Squire. Now I’m leaving.”

Emily didn’t start to shake until she got to the car. She fired up an unauthorized cigarette and smoked it down to the filter. She lit a second one, then made a mental note that she had to forgo the two cigarettes she allowed herself in the evening.

So she was stupid. She should have thought about the utilities, should have thought about a credit card. She had collateral at the First Jersey Bank. She should have told him that. As long as she wasn’t borrowing more than the collateral there shouldn’t be a problem. Unless she failed. And then her old-age nest egg would be gone and she’d be in the same position as the women at the house. She might not even have a house if that happened. “And there go all my wonderful plans,” Emily muttered as she slipped the car into gear.

Fear. That terrible, awful feeling that made you sick to your stomach. She’d read, somewhere, that there was nothing to fear but fear itself. Whoever said that must be a man, she thought.

Ian had had no fear when he’d started out. And why should he—he had me to do all the worrying, all the work. He just sailed in in the morning and sailed out at the end of the day and everything was taken care of, right down to those awful white shirts and his underwear. Ian didn’t know the meaning of the word
fear.
Maybe there was a lesson to be learned here. If it wasn’t for her, he wouldn’t have succeeded. She corrected the thought—he would have succeeded, but not as quickly. If I could make it work for him, then why can’t I make it work for me? The question is, Emily Thorn, do you have enough faith in yourself, in your ability, to make things right, to give up your financial security? Think about that.

Emily pulled into the parking lot of the United Jersey Bank. She pep-talked herself for five minutes. If I’m going to give up my nest egg for a loan I’ll be paying interest on, what’s the point? If I’m going to do this, I can use my own money and not worry about a payment to some bank which will end up owning my very soul. Ian always said never use your own money, use the bank’s money. Well, that was fine for Ian to say because he had an Emily in the background. She didn’t.

Emily backed out of the parking lot. She needed to go home and sit down at the kitchen table with coffee and another unauthorized cigarette. If she kept this up, she’d be into tomorrow’s allotment. Whatever it takes, Emily.

Damn, she was mad now. She stayed mad all the way home. By the time her coffee was ready, she was seething with fury. Instead of drinking it and smoking a cigarette she wasn’t supposed to have, she opted for her workout room, where she put in three hours on the treadmill, the NordicTrack, and her exercycle. Dripping sweat, she stretched out on the floor to think.

“Are you dead?” Lena asked from the doorway.

“I know first aid,” Martina said, peering over Lena’s shoulders.

“Listen to this,” Emily said, rolling over on her belly. She told them about her day. “I have a germ of an idea. If I can make it work and all of you are willing to work for very little. Actually, you have to work for nothing. For a while. Listen carefully. Mr. Squire asked me if I was going to open a clinic and I said yes. I said that just to have a response, but I’ve been thinking about it. That’s how Ian started out. A storefront clinic. Walk-in-off-the-street kind of thing. I can start an exercise clinic. Not a health club, but a clinic. The biggest expense would be the rent and the machines. We might be able to lease those. I already have three. I have tons of books on nutrition. Lena knows all about herbs and stuff. We can buy wholesale and package the stuff ourselves. If we all commit and work at it, I think it might work. Those house payments…that’s the only thing that worries me because I need your rent to pay the mortgage payments. Any ideas?”