Chapter Eight
"Nan, do you know you have messages?” Sarah hauls the large paper bags in and puts them on the kitchen table, then she starts to unpack the groceries.
“Oh I know, darling.” Nan picks up a pile of coupons from the grocery store, walks over to the answering machine and lays the coupons on top of the blinking red light. “It’s terribly annoying seeing that thing flashing all day. I keep putting papers on top of it and someone—” she shoots a look at Sarah—“keeps taking them off.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” Sarah says, and laughs, “but generally red blinking lights mean there are messages, which means someone’s trying to get hold of you. Don’t you want to listen? What if it’s important?”
“It’s Andrew Moseley.” Nan sighs. “He wants to talk to me about money, and while I think he’s absolutely charming, I really don’t want to talk to him.”
Sarah stops unpacking and watches Nan light a cigarette, worry in her eyes.
“What are you going to do?” she asks gently. “I know things are tough. Will you have to . . .”
Nan looks up sharply. “Sell Windermere? Absolutely not. I don’t need much, so I was thinking perhaps I ought to sell some of the furniture, some of the things in the house that I really don’t need.”
Sarah looks dubious.
“Some of this stuff is wonderful, the antiques dealers would have a field day. And think of all those tourists and people spending twelve and a half million dollars on houses—don’t you think they need furniture? And this isn’t that reproduction stuff you find at the furniture stores, this is the real McCoy—people will pay a fortune for this.” Nan gets animated as she gestures around at an antique Welsh dresser, the oak kitchen table.
“Right,” Sarah says, trying to sound upbeat, and not wanting to point out that almost every piece of furniture in the house has coffee-cup rings, cigarette burns, is in a condition that no antique dealer would be the slightest bit interested in.
“And then there’s my mother-in-law’s jewelry collection. She collected paste earrings for years, and I have them all in boxes in the attic.”
“Okay.” Sarah recalls opening the boxes once upon a time and seeing what she thought was a load of junk. But she’s not a jewelry expert, and who knows what people will pay. “So you think this would be enough?”
“For the time being,” Nan says, enthusiastic now, excited at the prospect of a project. “And once it’s over we can figure out what to do next. Who knows, maybe I’ll get a job.”
“Folding T-shirts at Murray’s Toggery?” Sarah grins.
“You never know.” Nan winks. “Stranger things have happened. Why don’t we start pricing some of the furniture? Let’s see what we can actually get rid off.”
By the end of the afternoon, Sarah’s clipboard is filled with scribbles and notes, rough sketches of the furniture Nan has deemed suitable for selling.
“Are you sure you don’t need your bed?” Sarah asks, somewhat dubiously.
“I’ll keep the mattress,” Nan says firmly. “But the damn thing’s too high for me anyway and I’ve never liked how ornate it is. That was Everett’s choice, not mine.”
“And the chest of drawers?”
“No. I feel like it’s time to spring-clean. Clear out all the cobwebs, start afresh. I feel lighter already just thinking about it. So tell me, my dear, how much does all this come to?”
Sarah looks down at her clipboard, and clears her throat. “Well, if everything is worth what you think it’s worth, we should make around two hundred and fifty thousand from this sale.” She wants to laugh, the figure should be laughable, except it isn’t funny. It’s just completely and utterly mad.
Nan spent the afternoon pulling figures out of thin air. “This is beautiful,” she’d gesture at some ugly little stool. “People pay a fortune for these on eBay, so let’s price this at five thousand dollars.”
Five thousand dollars! She’d be lucky if anyone paid five, Sarah thought.
“Are you quite sure you want to get rid of all your things?” Sarah asks again.
“I’m quite sure I need the money. And it will be fun! You and I can advertise it this week, and just imagine, we’ll fill the house with billionaires snapping up our furniture. Honestly, Sarah, I know you’re worried, but this is good stuff, and they won’t find anything like this anywhere else.”
Sarah casts a glance over at the fraying tapestry chair in the corner that has one broken leg and is falling apart. Nan priced it at six thousand dollars. And then there are the clothes. Moth-eaten dresses from the sixties, and fur coats that have developed alopecia while reclining in a hot attic over the years—bald spots all over them, but Nan believes there is a thriving market for vintage clothes, and as she said to Sarah, modeling a particularly skimpy fox-fur jacket, “What woman doesn’t feel beautiful in a real fur?”
Well, she thinks, Nan’s certainly right about them not finding anything at this price anywhere else.
She takes a deep breath and follows Nan downstairs to draft the wording for the ad, wishing that Nan hadn’t cloistered herself away quite so much, for why else would she be pricing things so ridiculously? If she had any idea how the real world worked, she wouldn’t dream of asking what she’s asking, and good reproductions of most of this furniture can be found at every Pottery Barn in the country.
WONDERFUL ESTATE SALE IN FAMOUS SCONSET HOME!
Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Beautiful antiques— beds, hutches, dining table—Chippendale-era, stunning collection of 1920s jewelry, vintage clothes and genuine fur coats! Everything must go!
Open House, Saturday, 30 June, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Sunday, 1 July, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
No early birds please!
Nan has made a special effort for the sale. Resplendent in one of her vintage dresses, her hair is pulled back in a chignon, her lipstick is perfect, and she truly does look like the lady of the manor.
Sarah, on the other hand, is exhausted. She doesn’t want Nan to be humiliated, but she can’t see any other outcome. She has spent the last few days cleaning furiously, attempting to patch up the furniture to make it presentable, trying to justify the absurdly large price tags Nan has insisted on placing on everything.
Nan has set up a folding table by the front door. At the back of the hallway is a large chestnut table ($25,000) on which are two enormous glass decanters filled with lemonade, a platter of chocolate chip cookies in front to entice the buyers.
The first people arrive at 8:45, and Nan flings open the front door and invites them in.
“We just bought a home in town,” says the wife, enthusiastically entering the hallway. “And we’re desperate for furniture. We’ve found fabulous pieces in estate sales at home in Boston, so we can’t wait to see what you’ve got.”
“Oh how wonderful.” Nan welcomes them in, and proceeds to walk them around the house, not seeing how their faces fall as they see the condition of the furniture, nor their shock at the prices.
“I think she’s crazy,” Sarah hears the wife whisper to the husband at one point when Nan, playing gracious hostess, excuses herself to personally welcome some more people who have turned up.
The house fills up, and Nan notices something curious: there are several men on their own, clearly disinterested in the sale, but interested in the house. More than once she finds someone on the widow’s walk, gazing out to the ocean, or walking around the garden, winding their way through the long grass to the beach.
“Developers,” she says to Sarah and sniffs, watching one man get out a notebook and scribble something.
“You’re right,” a voice says, and she turns to see Mark Stephenson, builder of the twelve-and-a-half-million-dollar house, standing in the doorway.
“Mr. Stephenson,” she says, genuine warmth in her voice as she extends a hand.
“Mrs. Powell,” he says, stepping over the threshold and bending down to kiss her cheek.
“Nan,” she corrrects.
“Nan. Of course. I saw you were having an estate sale and couldn’t resist. I’m still waiting for my invitation for drinks, you know.”
“I can offer you lemonade.” Nan gestures to the table with raised eyebrows and a smile, and Sarah watches with fascination, for while Nan is twenty years older than this man, she is clearly flirting, and Sarah suddenly sees how stunning, how irresistible, she must have been.
“I’ll take it,” he says, taking her arm as they cross the room. “And you are a clever woman. I know most of these men.” He nods hello and waves at someone walking upstairs. “They are all developers and they’re all checking out your house.”
“I’m not selling it, you know. Everything inside the house. Not the house.”
“You wouldn’t want to sell it to any of them anyway,” Mark said. “Even if you were interested they’d tear it down in a heartbeat and have four McMansions up before you could blink.”
“I take it you wouldn’t do that sort of thing?” Nan looks at him with a smile. “You’re, what? A developer with a heart?”
“I’m an artist who fell into developing,” Mark says. “I’d love a house like this but not to tear down, I’d love to live in a house like this.”
“An artist?” Nan gazes at him coolly. “I knew there was more to you than met the eye. What sort of an artist?”
“I paint,” he says. “I went to Parsons many moons ago, but couldn’t make a living out of it and fell into my father’s business of real estate. I hate saying I’m not like all the others, but it’s true, and I think it’s one of the reasons why people like working with me. I’m not a shark. I live in Nantucket because I love how strict the planning and zoning regulations are, I love that the houses have to be shingle, and although I have built ridiculous houses, it’s to cater to the changing market, not because I would ever want to live in a house like that. Basically,” he adds, shrugging, “I have always believed there is 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 a very different light—but they had found a way of making it work.
While she was married Daff would have told you they had a great marriage, but she knows that Richard would not have looked for someone else, would not have been able to fall in love with another woman, if that had been the case. Partly she thinks they got married too young—neither of them had had enough time to sow their wild oats, and partly they had become complacent. They took one another for granted, and she can admit now that she missed affection. Intimacy. Sharing things.
She and Richard had never had the sort of relationship where they would kiss, or cuddle, or hold hands. It felt, she can see this now, more like a business relationship that worked, even sex becoming a transaction.
What had happened to the loving, excitable, affectionate girl Daff had always been? She told herself, while she was married, that this was a real relationship, this was what grown-ups did, this was how she was supposed to behave, and it was only afterward that it began to occur to her that she had simply been with the wrong man. A man she liked enormously, but a man who wasn’t her true partner in any way.
Dating. The very word filled her with dread. She didn’t think she would ever be ready for dating, but almost as soon as she was single, people started wanting to fix her up. Good Lord, she thought, who are all these single men supposed to be in my town, where everyone seems to be married?
Some of the married couples she and Richard had known were still friends, but many of them were not. She had always assumed, while married, that newly divorced women were a threat, which is why they always complained that they had been abandoned by their still-married friends, but now she understands that she is a threat for different reasons: if her own marriage, her marriage which appeared to be so perfect, could come apart so easily, what did it say about theirs?
The dissolution of her marriage seemed discomforting for many, raising uncomfortable questions about their own relationships that they weren’t ready to ask, so when she stopped being invited to events she would always have been invited to with Richard, she accepted it.
During those early months she had often felt lost, hadn’t wanted to go anywhere, see anyone. She remembers a newly single divorcée at work saying the hidden blessing of divorce was she got to have every other weekend off from the kids, and one night a week to go out and have fun.
Fun? What does that mean? Daff didn’t know. She would go to bed and sleep away her depression—sleeping pills prescribed by her concerned doctor knocking her out until midday.
The weekends when Jess was away were the hardest. Not easy when Jess was there, with Jess already blaming Daff, but when she was with her father, Daff had no idea what to do with herself. She would drive over to friends’ houses, the lone single woman, and the husbands tried to act as if it were normal that Daff would be there without Richard, without Jess, while their own children—many of whom had grown up with Jess, were friends with her—played in swimming pools and followed their parents’ advice not to ask Daff about Jess.
She spent the entire weekend in bed a few times. Watching television, gossip shows, home-decorating shows, the food network, over and over, drifting in and out of sleep, unable to answer the phone or the doorbell.
She doesn’t know when she started to feel normal again, but at some point she did, and finalizing the divorce gave her closure, enabled her to truly move on. She had heard of some people throwing “divorce showers,” celebrating when the decree nisi came through, but she felt a deep sadness on the day of her divorce, sitting in the courtroom with Richard, both of them having shared so much, having created a life, a child, both of them now feeling like strangers.
The train rumbles along the tracks as Daff buries herself in her book. She loves this journey, has started coming into the city once every couple of weeks, to see a play, go to a museum, visit friends. All the things she used to love doing before she got married, before she got buried in suburban life—being home to get Jess off the bus, PTA meetings, school plays.
Through the tunnel and into Grand Central, Daff thinks of Sam’s last e-mail to her, and smiles. She is new to this world of computer dating and is only just starting to dip a tentative toe back into the pool of potential partners. She joined match.com last month, and Sam was the first person to “wink” at her.
They have been corresponding now for three weeks. He is in his early fifties, a little older than she would normally have gone for—Richard and she were both the same age, forty-one—but he was fit, and handsome, and funny, at least in his e-mails.
She is first to arrive. She looks expectantly at the men standing around the bar, hoping to recognize him, hoping he will recognize her, but there is no spark of recognition in anyone’s eyes, and she takes a seat, ordering a vodka and tonic to sip until he shows up.
She feels someone looking at her and turns, catching the eye of a nice-looking man in a suit. He smiles at her and she gets up. “Sam?” she says. He doesn’t look anything like the photo, she thinks, but nice.
“No. Sorry.” He shrugs with a smile, and she sees he has a female companion.
“Oh God,” she groans quietly as she sits back down, wanting the ground to open and swallow her up.
"Daff ?” He is late. Daff looks up from where she has been buried in her book the last twenty minutes, and frowns.
“Yes?” Do I know this man?
“Hello!” Delight is written all over his face.
“I’m sorry,” she is confused but polite. “Do we know each other?”
“I’m Sam!” he says, pulling out a stool and perching next to her.
But you can’t be, she wants to shout. Sam is fifty-one, and handsome, and tall. You are eighty-five and look not unlike my grandfather.
“Well, you are gorgeous.” Sam leers at her. “You never know what to expect when you meet these women. Let me tell you, some of those pictures they post up look like supermodels, and then you meet them and they’re dogs.”
Are you kidding? Daff wants to say this, but doesn’t. Instead she thinks she might burst into tears.
Sam orders a vodka martini, then looks her up and down, running his tongue over his lips as he grins at her, not noticing her suppressing a shudder of horror. “We’re going to have a good time tonight,” he says lasciviously, pressing a knee against hers. “I’m a very energetic man.”
“I’m sorry.” She jumps up. If he had been a sweet old man she might have humored him, but this? This is a horror that no woman should have to put up with. “I’m actually not feeling well. I have to go.” She fumbles around in her purse and throws a twenty on the counter. “Here,” she says. “I’ll get the drinks.” Sam looks down at the guilt money and sneers.
“You’re all the same,” he starts, and without hearing whatever else he says, Daff turns and runs out.
One day I will laugh at this, she tells herself on the train going home. But right now, all she wants to do is cry.