The Restoration of Celia Fairchild - Marie Bostwick Page 0,68
GPA,” she said, rolling her eyes at the memory of her younger self. “It’s a miracle that I graduated at all; I damn near didn’t. The geometry teacher took pity and let me take the final again, but I didn’t know if I was going to be allowed to walk until the day before graduation. That’s why I got so drunk at the bonfire. That was a new low, even for me, but I wasn’t celebrating, I was trying to drink down the terror. At that moment, every college I’d applied to had turned me down and I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I was terrified. Eventually, my mother called a cousin from Decatur who somehow got me into Agnes Scott, but I think we could have predicted how that was going to turn out.” Polly took another big bite and rolled her eyes. “Me at an all-women’s college? Please. My grades were so bad that I doubted they’d invite me back for a second year, even with an influential cousin. When I came home for spring break and Jimmy proposed, it seemed like the answer to everything, for both of us.
“He joined the navy because he thought it might give him some direction. I hoped marrying him would do the same for me. I was determined to grow up and be a good wife. But Jimmy was deployed on a submarine for months at a stretch, and I was stuck on base in Groton, Connecticut, with nothing to do.
“Well”—she tipped her head to the side, flashing a retired party-girl grin—“nothing that wouldn’t have gotten back to Jimmy’s commander. Gossip spreads fast on a naval base. I didn’t really clean up my act for years, but instead of going out drinking and partying, I stayed home drinking and knitting—and crocheting and quilting and embroidering and hooking rugs. If it involved fiber, I was into it. That’s why I ended up carrying some of everything in my shop; I love it all, couldn’t pick just one.
“Anyway, after a while I realized I liked crafting a whole lot more than I liked Jimmy, so I got a divorce and moved to Atlanta. Kept his name, though: Mercer is a lot easier to spell than Schermerhorn.”
“How long were you in Atlanta?” I asked.
“Almost nine years. I got a job working in a big chain craft shop and teaching on the side. The pay was lousy but my manager was nice: recovering alcoholic.” Polly raised her brows meaningfully, as if to say I could guess what happened next. “Dorothy had me pegged in the first month. The company insurance policy included rehab, but the program didn’t take the first couple of times. I’d be okay for a few months and then something would happen and I’d fall off the wagon. One day, Dorothy sat me down and said, ‘If you could do anything you wanted with your life, anything at all, what would it be?’ I was thirty years old but I’d never once asked myself that question.” Polly blinked a couple of times and stared sightlessly past my shoulder for a moment, as if still amazed by her own lack of imagination.
“Dorothy drove me to the rehab herself. On the way, we stopped at a bank and I put fifty dollars in a savings account for my craft shop. Took me seven years and a lot of overtime to save enough to make it happen.”
“That’s amazing,” I said, and meant it. When we were kids, Polly had been long on enthusiasm but short on follow-through. In the course of one year, she’d enrolled in ballet, gymnastics, karate, and Brownies, only to give each one up within a month or two. I remember her mother complaining about it once to Aunt Calpurnia: “Polly’s interest in a new hobby only lasts until the credit card payment for the uniform comes due.”
Seven years of saving to fulfill her dream and open her shop? I was looking at a different and more determined Polly. But would determination be enough? Not if she’d been serious when she said she’d only seen twenty customers in the days since I’d been in the shop. But maybe she was exaggerating? Business couldn’t be that bad, could it?
“Thanks,” Polly said. “But it really started with Dorothy. I don’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t come along when she did. That’s the amazing part, don’t you think? How the people you need most show