The endless bronze ocean stretched out before her. The thick green lawn, still damp from an afternoon downpour, glittered in the fading sunlight. A pair of ancient Douglas firs, their boughs sagging tiredly downward, bracketed the view perfectly.
A fleeting if only passed through her mind; she immediately discarded it. Her painting days were long behind her. But if they hadn’t been, if she hadn’t let that once-hot passion grow cold, this was what she would paint.
Close by, a bird cawed loudly. A plump crow, berating her, no doubt, for daring to invade its space.
But this was her place, her solace. From each of the three hundred bulbs she’d planted in the garden, to the picket fence she’d built and painted white, to every stick of furniture inside the house. Each square inch of this property reflected her dreams. No matter how unhappy or stressed-out she felt, she could come out to this quiet porch and stare at the ocean and feel at peace.
She watched the golden sun sink slowly into the darkening sea, then got to her feet and went back inside.
It was time to start dinner.
She had just walked through the front door when the phone rang. She answered it. “Hello?”
“Hey, kiddo, are you done saving the Oregon coast for the day?”
Elizabeth smiled in spite of her exhaustion. “Hey, Meg. It’s good to hear from you.” She collapsed into a Wedgwood-blue-and-yellow-striped chair and put her feet up on the matching ottoman. “What’s going on?”
“Today’s Thursday. I wanted to remind you about that meeting.”
The passionless women.
Elizabeth’s smile faded. “Yeah,” she said, “I remembered,” although of course she hadn’t.
“You’re going?”
Yeah, right. Walk into a room full of strangers and admit that she had no passion? “No, actually, I’m not. It’s not my thing.”
“And what exactly is your thing?”
That stung. “You’re using your lawyer voice.”
“What are you going to do tonight, alphabetize your spice drawer? Believe me, Birdie, you’re going to wake up one day and be sixty years old, and you won’t remember the last time you were happy.”
Elizabeth had no answer to that. The same ugly scenario had occurred to her. Often. “If I went—and I’m not capitulating, mind you—but if I went, what would it be like?”
“A bunch of girlfriends getting together. They’ll probably talk about how it feels to be lost in the middle of life.”
That didn’t sound so bad; she’d imagined an Inquisition. Perhaps with torture aids. “Would I have to talk?”
“No, Marcel Marceau, you could sit there like a rock.”
“You really think it would help me?”
“Let’s put it this way, if you don’t go this week, I’ll make next week such a piece of hell that by next Thursday you’ll be begging to go.”
Elizabeth couldn’t help smiling. Years ago, when Meghann had suffered through her terrible, heartbreaking divorce, Elizabeth had treated her in exactly the same way. Tough love. Sometimes a friend had to strong-arm you; that was all there was to it. “Okay, I’ll go.”
“Promise?”
“Bite me.”
“For the hearing impaired, I ask again, you promise?”
This could go on all day. “I promise. Now, don’t you have some deadbeat dad to harass?”
“No, actually, but I have a date. He’s Italian. Giuliano.”
“You finally ran out of Americans, huh?”
They talked for another twenty minutes about Meghann’s lack of a love life, then hung up. Elizabeth poured herself a glass of wine and took a pair of chicken breasts out of the freezer. As they defrosted in the microwave, she checked the answering machine. There was a message from her younger daughter, Jamie, and one from Jack. He was tracking down a big story and wouldn’t be home until late tonight.
“There you have it, sports fans,” she said aloud. It was yet another of her crazy-older-woman traits; she talked to herself. “I’m going to the meeting.”
She took a shower, then went into her walk-in closet. She stared at her neatly organized clothes. So much of what she bought was bright and colorful: hand-painted scarves, hand-knit sweaters, batik silk-screen prints. She loved art in all its forms. Since her teen years, she’d been complimented on her fashion sense. But none of that helped her now. The last thing she wanted to do was stand out in the crowd.
Look, there. A woman with no passion.
After several false starts, she chose chocolate brown wool pants and a cream-colored cashmere turtleneck. She decided against a belt. It had been years since any of her good ones fit, anyway. She applied her makeup, then pulled her straight blond hair (in need of a dye job, she noticed) back into a french braid. She removed the dangly hammered-silver-and-turquoise earrings she usually wore and put in a pair of pearl studs, then studied herself in the mirror.
“Perfect.” She looked as bland as a wren.
At six, she left Jack a note on the kitchen counter, just in case he got home before she did. It was a wasted gesture, of course. With his homing skills, she’d be through menopause by the time he found it.