more to life than money. I think that’s what makes me different.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” Nan leads him up the stairs to show off her house. “You can protect me from the rest of those sharks. Now let me show you some of my furs—imagine how thrilled your wife would be with a beautiful vintage fox.” And he follows her into the master bedroom.
“Three hundred dollars? Three hundred dollars? Good Lord.” Nan sinks down in the chair with dismay and Sarah looks defeated. “Don’t these people have any taste? Don’t they know good furniture when they see it?”
“What do you want me to do?” Sarah asks. “Shall I take the price tags off?”
“Oh Lord, I don’t know,” Nan says. “I need to go and lie down. I’m exhausted. Let’s just leave things as they are for now. Let me have a nap and let’s talk later.”
At two o’clock in the morning Sarah’s phone rings. She snaps on the light and grabs the phone, immediately worried, for phone calls in the middle of the night can only mean an emergency.
But this is no emergency. This is Nan, unable to sleep with excitement.
“I’ve got it!” she says. “I’m going to open up my house!”
“What?” Sarah’s voice is croaky.
“I’m going to rent out rooms! My furniture may not have sold but everyone loved the house, so we’re going to turn it into a summer boarding house! I have five bedrooms I could rent out, and that’s the solution! It may not make me a fortune but it will certainly bring in enough to live on. I’m so excited I can’t sleep. Come over in the morning and we’ll start planning it, but, oh Sarah, just imagine it—Windermere filled with people again. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this years ago!” And with a peal of laughter she disappears, leaving Sarah to roll over and go back to sleep.
Daff props her full-length mirror against the wall in her dressing room at just the right angle to take off around ten pounds from her reflection, and smiles in approval. She is smart but casual in dark jeans, ballet flats, a white shirt and a tan belt. The jeans are new—her closet is stuffed full of clothes that no longer fit her, fifteen pounds miraculously melting away during the divorce.
She is now a size six—she has never been a size six in her life, was always a comfortable ten—and although for a while she felt skinny and gorgeous, now she has decided she will be perfect if only she loses another ten pounds, hence the propping-up of the mirror to make her appear even skinnier.
Tonight she has a date. Her first in a while. And she is excited. She is going into the city to meet him at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central. She has seen his photo and he is handsome and sounds fun, and Lord only knows she could do with a bit of fun.
For a few months after they separated, Daff had cried herself to sleep at night with loneliness and exhaustion.
As a young single girl, right before she and Richard got together, she had been more than capable, she had thrived. She could do anything herself, from dealing with the IRS when there were problems with her tax returns, to driving to Home Depot and having them cut timber to size so she could build her own bookshelves.
Nothing had been too difficult for Daff before she was married, and yet when she was first single again, post-separation, she found she was overwhelmed by everything. She had got so used to the rhythm of being married—she looked after the house,
Richard looked after the money—and when she had to do everything herself she found she had forgotten how to do it, couldn’t face it.
Bills would come in and mount up in piles in the kitchen, Daff forgetting to pay on time, or not getting around to ordering new check books. Her cell phone was forever getting cut off, her gas running out, not because she didn’t have the money to pay, but because she was so disorganized, so overwhelmed, that she spent her life in a constant state of inertia.
When Richard was still at home they shared tasks, and if ever anything got too difficult, or she didn’t want to deal with people, Richard would step in and take over. Theirs may not have been a perfect marriage—since the day he moved out she had begun to view their marriage in