Who Would You Choose? Read online

  No! She must absolutely not think that way. She knew how to delegate effectively. She had put everything into their hands, and that’s where everything would have to be until it was safe for her to return. She decided to treat herself as an employee. She gave herself instructions.

  You will rest. You will not think about Lady Fair until the doctor signs off on your medical leave. You will not return to the office until you have medical permission. You’ve made the necessary delegations. You will do what’s necessary to preserve your health. Not only for your sake, but for the sake of the magazine. You will rest and you will have fun.

  And now, having taken herself through that drill, here on the deck, in the glorious sun and under the blue sky and with an ocean breeze cooling her, she did finally slip away into sleep and didn’t move for almost two hours. She woke up smiling, and if there’d been dreams, she didn’t remember what they were. She’d slept off the tequila, she was hungry, and she decided to call Bridey and see if she was still in town. Only five minutes away. She’d call and she would drive in and meet her.

  * * * *

  Macario’s—right near the pier at Wellfleet Harbor—was not busy, now that the summer people were gone. Bridey was at a table off in a corner, and when Marge arrived, she was reading the Cape Cod Times and copying out a recipe for Portuguese-style pork chops onto her note pad.

  “Something good?” Marge said, as she sat down.

  “Sounds yummy. Too late to try it tonight; it needs to marinate a really long time. Maybe tomorrow night.” She folded up the newspaper and put her note pad away. “So, did you get some rest?”

  “I did. I slept for a couple of hours.”

  The waitress came to the table and they both ordered coffee and a platter of steamed clams to share. Macario’s clams, taken out of the bay’s water that very morning, were a necessity when you were in Wellfleet.

  “I had a good afternoon, too.” She dug into her tote bag and pulled out something wrapped in tissue paper. “I bought a set of these bowls. There’s a potter here in town who makes them.”

  By the time they’d examined the bowls and Bridey had oohed and ahhed a bit about the great shop where she’d bought them, the clams arrived, a platter of littlenecks piled high, along with a basket of Portuguese bread, a bowl of coleslaw, a plate of butter rolls, and a bowl for the shells.

  “I’m starving,” Marge said. She broke off a hunk of the bread—good, plain everyday sourdough—slathered butter on it in an unladylike manner, took a big bite, and continued to talk with her mouth full. “Did you do the shopping yet? I definitely want to get some steaks. I haven’t been hungry like this in many weeks. Months.”

  “It’s the sea air.”

  “Right.”

  “It’s so good for you. You’ll eat. You’ll sleep. You’ll recharge all your batteries.”

  “Right.”

  “And then what will you do?”

  “That’s the thing, Bridey. I am absolutely not planning to do anything. I’m going to just put one foot in front of the other until the future rides up over the horizon. I’ll think about it after you go back to town.”

  Marge dug into the clams, picked a shell out of the pile, held it up and lifted her face, and the clam slid out of the shell right onto her tongue, a delicate, briny young thing right out of the sea, all buttery smooth and tangy with lemon juice, a couple of chews and it slipped down her throat.

  “Oh, that is so good,” she said.

  “You can stay up here as long as you like. Just veg out. As long as you need to. The place is yours as long as you want.”

  “I may stay here forever. And just eat clams.” Another young clam slid down her throat.

  Bridey laughed as she demolished a few clams herself. “In about ten years, Llewellyn and Henrietta may kick you out. They’ll be teenagers by then and they’ll be wanting to come up with their friends, and a haggard old weathered crone, which you will be by then, will get in their way. Spoil all their fun.”

  “Okay. I promise I’ll leave by then.”

  “Yes. You’ll have everything straightened out by then.”

  Marge gave her friend a good, long look.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll have figured out the elephant by then.”

  “I sure hope so.” She took her iPhone out of her bag. “But right now, I have to make a shopping list.”

  “Put plenty of ice cream on that list.”

  And there was no more talk of Marge’s plans for the future.

  Chapter Nine

  The future had been Marge’s focus ever since she was a very little girl, ever since she had clomped around the living room in her mommy’s high heel shoes. And later, when she went on to stage a one-kid fashion show for her first-grade show-and-tell. Ever since that first moment, playing “dress-up,” when she’d looked into the mirror and realized I am good at this! she understood the serious art of dress-up, that there was meaning in what we choose to wear, in what our culture tells us we must and must not wear, in fashion—high and low. In that moment, the whole universe fell into place and she knew this is what I’m going to do! In fourth grade, she’d created a newsletter featuring her classmates’ “fashion statements.” And by junior high, she’d become the go-to person for anyone—girl or boy—who needed advice about what to wear for any occasion, any event, any celebration, or, if they needed it, counseling on how to overcome fashion confusions.

  She’d always known where she was headed, and the future was a path ahead of her that she’d followed as naturally as a plant turns to the light. Of course she’d written a fashion column for her high school newspaper. Of course, she went on to Parsons after high school. And of course, it was like baby to mama for her to seek her first real job at Lady Fair. She’d driven herself forward into her future all the years of her adult life, from the time of cutting her teeth on her first assignments, through rising to the very top of the fashion media world, putting out the kind of energy it takes to make her product the very best and to make herself the person sitting at the very top of the precarious and very competitive world she inhabited.

  And now, it was time to stop. No, now it was necessary to stop. She’d brought herself to the point of her own imminent physical collapse. She was about to be a Looney Tunes character running frantically off the cliff, legs going furiously, until she looks down and—oh, no!—realizes she’s running on thin air—and only then obeys the laws of nature and comes crashing ignominiously down to earth.

  Or, to pursue that image, she was also that other cartoon character, the one who comes to a screeching stop, dug-in heels churning up ruts in the dirt.

  That first image, falling to earth—that one was her own fault, wearing herself out to the point of collapse. But the second, the screeching stop—it was Sam Packard who was standing there, like a red flag, saying, “Stop, Marge. It’s time to go back.”

  * * * *

  She said nothing to Bridey. She needed to catch her emotional breath. She needed to be on a kind of mental cruise control for a few days, and just keep up the idle chatter. She needed to let the sun and the peace and quiet roll over her, and wait till Bridey returned to New York so she could be alone to think about this very new place in her life she’d come to. Bridey understood, and let her fill the few days they were together with nothing important. They sat in the sun, they cruised the gift shops, they walked around P-town in flip-flops and sun hats, with cover-ups over their swim suits, and they people-watched and ate ice cream and, because they were not tourists, they intentionally did not buy post cards to send out to tell the world what a great time they were having.

  Until the four days had passed and it was time for Bridey to get back to Mack and the kids. Marge drove her to Provincetown’s little airport, and waved goodbye to her as the little six-passenger plane fought the cross-currents off the ocean and wobbled off to Manhattan. She drove back to th
e house on the beach, opened up a nice dry Riesling, got out the bowl of chicken salad Bridey had left in the fridge, made a sandwich, took it all out on the deck, and got comfy with her thoughts.

  Finally.

  She closed her eyes and let the image of Sam Packard appear—Sam Packard as he’d appeared to her in that corridor in the courthouse—Sam Packard now a grown man, a very attractive grown man, no longer the skinny, gangly, eighteen-year-old she’d been so in love with twenty years ago. He was no longer that boy, but she remembered that boy very well. And with that memory, for the first time ever, Marge stepped off that path to the future that had been her only concern for as long as she could remember, and she allowed herself to travel down memory lane.

  To a time when she felt all the power and fun of youth and was sure she knew everything she needed to know and would be able to do everything she would want to do or would need to do. To a time when friendships were casual and easy, not full of the land mines of competition and envious resentment that filled her world now. When energy was spent carelessly, as though it would always last, an endless supply like the sun, and good health could be taken for granted.

  To a time when falling in love was like being washed in a radiance that created a world of its own, with its own rules and its own landscape, occupied by only the two of you, a world that excused all faults and answered all questions.

  To a time twenty years ago.

  * * * *

  Every high school has a kid like Sam. He’s the boy everyone knows. The boy everyone can get along with. The boy who breaks up every fight without taking sides. The boy who’s just naturally the class president and who gets great grades without being the school genius. And who isn’t exactly hot-looking, but who is not bad looking, either—though in his case, it was a near thing. He was skinny enough that every girl wanted to feed him and just casual enough about his appearance that every girl wanted to brush his hair and see how he’d look in a suit. Every girl pined for him, but no one snagged him.

  And then one day, in the cafeteria, while Marge sat with her friends, spooning up a yogurt, Sam Packard stopped at her table, asked if he could join the group, said he was writing a piece for the school paper about students’ career expectations, and hoped they could answer some questions about their thoughts about the future. They were a table of freshmen and they were all eager for the attention. One chair was available—the chair next to Marge—and when they all said, “Sure. Join us,” he pulled it out and sat down next to her.

  A strange thing happened then as his leg brushed against hers. It was just a light touch, utterly inadvertent, but it startled her. She turned to look at him—did he feel it, too? It wasn’t electricity, exactly; it was too gentle for that. But something very sweet seemed to pass between them. And yes, he glanced at her and there was the tiniest bit of surprise in his expression. His eyes rested briefly on her face, as though he was making a special note of what had just passed between them. He looked away quickly.

  He had a notepad and pen ready. “Okay,” he said, “who wants to start?” He looked across the table to Ginny Morse and said, “How about you? Okay if I ask you a couple of questions?”

  Ginny was a small girl, blond and delicate and still a little overwhelmed by actually finding herself in high school. But she was pleased to be singled out, and in a minute he had her feeling comfortable talking about herself. She had no idea about career plans—that was too far in the future—but she thought she’d like to work in an office somewhere and wear nice clothes.

  “Not me,” said Eleanor Mestrovic. “I’ve got an uncle works a farm upstate and I’m going to grow organic vegetables and sell them by the roadside, like he does. He’s the happiest man I know.”

  “Oh, you are not,” said Leigh Anders. “You’d get grubby and have dirt under your fingernails all the time, and it would be awful.” Leigh was already pegged as the class snob, but she wasn’t malicious so they let her sit with them. “And you’d get all sunburned and your skin would turn leathery.”

  Next, going around the table, he came to Bridey. She and Marge had hit it off from the first day in high school when they met in home room, discovered that they each had a goal that had been set long ago and each had decided what her future was going to be. They were immediately best friends.

  “I don’t think it’s so awful, getting dirt under your fingernails,” Bridey said. “I like hands that look like they do hard work.” Sam was taking notes furiously. “I’m going to go to cooking school,” Bridey said, “and I’m going to be a chef and write cookbooks and maybe own my own restaurant.” She lifted her head, maybe a little defiantly, and added, “Chefs always have hands that show the marks of their work. Little burns and scrapes and cuts. On the cooking shows on TV, look at their hands. Hard-working hands. I like that.”

  “That’s true,” Carrie Kim said. “Like dancers. Have you any idea what a ballet dancer’s feet look like inside those toe shoes? I’m going to be a dancer, if I’m good enough, and I know what toe work does to your feet. It’s part of the job, and you just do it, if you love what you’re doing.”

  Leigh and Carrie started to argue about how much physical or cosmetic damage a woman should bear for the sake of her work, but Sam intervened.

  “I think I know what Marge here thinks she’s going to do.” She was surprised that he knew her name. And her face showed her surprise. “Yes,” he said. He was looking at her as though he already knew her well. Almost as though they were –what?—already friends? “I read the piece you submitted to the paper,” he said. “About fashion and girls in high school. And how a girl could look super cool and smart without having to spend a fortune. I was really impressed.” Every girl at the table turned to look at Marge.

  “I don’t see how Marge gets away with it,” Leigh said. “Every day, she comes up with the weirdest outfits. I mean, look at what she’s wearing today. It’s great, Marge. Really. It’s a talent. And we all love you for it, but honestly! Every day. The weirdest outfits!”

  It was true. Every day was something brand new and sometimes just barely this side of comical. Or, if not comical, then dramatic, or theatrical, or just plain outrageous. Today it was a man’s white shirt, a man’s tie, cropped black pants, and an oversize gold-brocaded vest.

  “It’s my Annie Hall look,” she said. She turned and looked at Sam directly. “Do you like it?”

  “I actually do. I like it a lot.” He really had the nicest smile.

  “And you think you know what I’m planning to be doing when I ‘grow up’?”

  “I do. I’d bet you think you’re going to be the editor in chief of Lady Fair. Someday.”

  “Not someday. By the time I’m thirty.”

  “By the time you’re thirty? Really? You sure aim high,” he said. He was writing it all down. “But in the meantime, to help you get there, how about you come and work on the school paper? We need good writers, and it’s a great bunch of guys. We can use someone like you.”

  The girls around the table were clearly impressed.

  “Could I write a fashion column?”

  Now he studied her even more carefully. “That would be something new in our paper,” he said. “Do you think you’d be able to produce a column a month?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then we’ll try you out.” He thought for a moment and then said, “If it works, we’ll call your column ‘The Clothes Horse.’ Can you get your first piece to me by a week from today?”

  “I can get it to you tomorrow.”

  “You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

  She just smiled. And he smiled back at her.

  * * * *

  They worked well together on the paper. She saw him regularly in staff meetings, and strategy sessions. She always turned in her column two weeks before publication, and it became one of the most popular columns in the paper. Sam teased h
er regularly about her wild outfits, but he was funny and not mean-natured and she enjoyed the attention.

  Within a month, he’d asked her out. They were in a small school in a small town, so everyone soon knew that Sam Packard, a senior, was dating Marge Webster, who was only fourteen and a freshman. The comments were good-natured, because Sam was liked by everyone. And he was dating other girls, too. But still—

  Sam’s response was to insist that Marge was a very interesting girl, and anyway, he’d be going away to college in the fall, so they were just friends and he thought she was fun.

  But for her part, Marge was sure she was in love. At fourteen, it’s so easy to fall in love. Look at Romeo and Juliet. Weren’t they just teenagers? If they were alive today, the story would probably have been different. No one would have been forcing her to marry an old man, and a month or so later, Romeo would have gotten interested in some other girl, or Juliet would have dumped him and taken up with someone else—Mercutio, maybe, if he weren’t such a hothead and got himself killed.

  Anyway, Marge was fourteen and in love—‘goofy,’ as Bridey said—and no one knew what Sam was really thinking because he kept his more serious thoughts to himself. Marge wasn’t sensitive enough to notice the signs, the way he was careful of her, careful of her feelings, careful to keep them both from getting too seriously passionate, respectful of the fact that she was, after all, only fourteen. She noticed but didn’t understand what it meant that he paid attention to everything she said, with an indulgent gentleness in his expression while she ranted on about what was fashionable and what was not, and about her writing and her future in journalism and all the great things she was going to do. She didn’t realize that her plans for her future seemed pretty juvenile to him, but he would never have tried to shoot her down. He figured she’d outgrow all that stuff about being an editor in chief by thirty. Maybe someday she’d be on the staff of some fashion magazine, but editor in chief of Lady Fair? The premier fashion magazine in the world? Little girl from a little upstate town? Not likely.